The Neuroscience of Change: Opening the Blind Window at Will
An interactive workshop with Anna Birch
We all learn about the Johari Window in EO forum training. And many of us experience its power firsthand—when a forum mate reflects something back to us that we simply couldn’t see on our own. But what if you didn’t have to wait for that moment? What if you could intentionally open your Blind Window—on demand—to unlock new insight, innovation, and possibility?
In this fast-paced, perspective-shifting workshop, Anna Birch—20-year EO member and co-founder of the Polaris Institute—will show you how leading EO members, forums, and companies are learning to access what’s been hiding in plain sight all along. She leads the Polaris Institute, where they engage the truth of neuroscience to activate sustainable human change in top performers and their teams.
In this workshop, you’ll explore:
Why the Blind Window exists, grounded in the latest brain science (and why it’s actually working for you).
Practical listening and coaching techniques to open your Blind Window in forum.
Tools to access new perspectives in your personal life and leadership.
Ways to open the Blind Window inside your company to unlock untapped team potential.
Event flow:
1:00 PM – Soft start + light lunch
2:00–4:00 PM – Interactive workshop (hard start at 2:00)
4:00–5:00 PM – Social, afternoon snack + continued conversation
This is a highly interactive session designed for deep engagement and real application—not a lecture. Forum mates are encouraged to attend together to maximize shared language, insight, and post-event integration back into forum conversations.
If you’re ready to see what you’ve been missing—and learn how to access new possibilities at will—this is an afternoon you won’t want to miss.
This workshop is open to EO members, SLPs, emeritus, and key executives—no forum training required.
Speaker Biography
Anna is an entrepreneur and gifted executive facilitator and experiential trainer. A serial entrepreneur, she currently leads Polaris Institute, where she engages the truths of neuroscience to activate sustainable human change in top performers and their teams.
Anna’s superpower is her ability to build immediate rapport and command a room, creating outcome-based experiences that connect, inspire, and invite leaders into action. Each year, she impacts thousands of leaders as a sought-after global facilitator and speaker for executive planning retreats, forum retreats, executive coaching, management workshops, and international learning events.
She propels real-world learning through humor, insight, targeted program design, and professionalism, and has worked with founders and executive teams at organizations such as Sony, Voyager Space, the World Bank, Fannie Mae, CACI, Allstate Insurance, NAVAIR, and Discovery, among many others, over her 30+ years of professional facilitation.
Anna lives for the legacy she inspires in her two adult daughters, Audrey and Autumn, and happily resides atop the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.