Our founder

Cerebra was founded by Brendon Clark, a Christchurch-based executive and consultant with 20 years working in applied psychology and corporate training. He has as Masters in Psychology, Postgraduate qualification in Health (forensic psychiatry endorsement), and qualifications in adult teaching, professional supervision counselling, and alcohol and drug studies. In that time, he has worked with financial institutions, government agencies, schools, emergency managers, first responders, healthcare providers, community groups, and others.

He started Cerebra to ensure that workplaces get programmes that are based on science and evidence rather than pop. No, learning styles, brain-hemisphere personality types, or wellbeing initiatives that are fun make no difference to anyone’s actual week. The real research on human performance, from psychology and applied neuroscience, is more useful and more interesting than the myths, and it deserves better delivery.

Every programme is co-designed with you and grounded in published evidence.

About us

We treat human performance as an asset. Like any other operational asset it needs regular maintenance: vehicles get warrants, equipment gets checked, and infrastructure gets maintained. That’s how we approach performance.

Performance is the goal.

Cerebra helps you build operational performance through psychological safety and wellbeing, which are two key mechanisms to support performance. Our work is grounded in current research, and has been tested in high-stakes operational environments where having the best tools matters. You don’t just get a session. You get practical, evidence-based frameworks, policies, and material your people keep and use, long after we’ve been. It’s a lot more than just an introductory wellbeing session which, in our experience, often leaves people wanting something deeper and more solid that never appears.

Think about it like this…

You’re looking at what we do. Let’s pick a common one, say, a workshop on stress or resilience.

Done it you might think. Heard it. And maybe you have. But we’d like you to ask more, and scratch a little deeper, with more searching questions, like:

• Did it deliver outcomes that were explicitly and directly connected to your purpose and values?
• Is that what you asked for?
• Did you get actionable, practical stuff to do, along with the Why, that made people want to commit to something right then and there, because they recognised it was good for them and you?
• Did you get people admitting to a group that they were originally there against their will but got takeaways they hadn’t anticipated, and then recommended it to others?
• Did you get eye-widening enlightening moments? (True, people spontaneously say things like that in our workshops.)
• Did people recognise the benefits for themselves and others?
• Did people feel invigorated about their work?
• Was the evaluation better than questions about whether they enjoyed it, how the food was and whether the air conditioning worked?
• Did it dive down to, and then align with, your business objectives?
• Were people immediately recommending it to others?
• Did it lead to measurable personal and organisational change?
• Is everything referenced, credible, and defensible?

That’s what working with us is like, and that’s what gets us out of bed. We help improve performance.

But don’t stop there. Asking how these things happen is also revealing.

What’s the how?

We consult, train, and coach, and our aim is to help improve performance, for you, your teams, and your organisation.

To do this, we take contemporary research from neuroscience and psychology and synthesise it into programmes for you and your people. We’ll work with you to understand your needs and wants, and then co-design a programme with you. This can be a mix of things, and could involve one or more of the following:

• Seminars and workshops to educate and inspire
• Executive and individual coaching to help clear obstacles from performance
• Consulting and facilitation to assist with your problem-solving, decision making, policies and procedures
• Group facilitation to work with your teams to create opportunity and change
• Team sessions where we’ll help your teams grow and develop

You can package this in different ways depending on the audience.

We don’t sell things that don’t fit. We don’t give you a one-size-fits-all product just because it’s easier for us or that’s all we. an do. We customise to suit what you need. For example, one organisation asked for two days on wellbeing. They’d canvassed everyone, found out what people wanted, and we built a programme to suit, including a fully bespoke 60 page workbook. Based on questions we got on Day 1, we created additional material and handouts overnight, and had them ready to go for our 8.30am start on Day 2.

And importantly, our material is researched and evidence-based.

We’re not keen on fads, neuromyths (hello Learning Styles, Left Brain,/Right Brain, Myers Briggs and various others!), or pop psychology, and we can reference what we do. Sometimes that means we might not endorse something that’s shiny and new because there isn’t enough research to support it. Over time of course, research might come to support it and so would we. We like to be confident in what we’re saying, and for you to be confident in us.

Lastly, we think that investment in your people is a valuable investment. We’d love to help.

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Why use Cerebra?

We work with organisations who truly believe that by investing in people, both they and the organisation will perform better.

If you choose to work with us, you’ll be able to tell others (such as your customers, teams, potential recruits, boss, Board, and other stakeholders) that you care enough about the people you work with to provide an environment where they can flourish, do their best work, and deliver great results. You can, for example:

• report on Psychological Safety, and wellbeing, to the Board
• promise recruits that you’ve invested in protecting performance
• demonstrate you’ve made Psychological Safety a strategic pillar of your organisation
• promote yourselves as ethical and responsible
• demonstrate a safer, more responsive culture to customers, suppliers, and funders
• highlight your investment in people.

We help your people to perform well; we’re sure it’s something that both you and your people prefer. This increases people’s productivity, creativity, and engagement. It improves their collaboration and delivery. It reduces costs associated with time to market, failure, absenteeism, turnover, and the resulting recruitment. We believe we’re a worthwhile investment.

Further, our work helps ensure that you provide adequate health and safety input for your teams, and provide an environment for them that maximises their outputs and outcomes for you.

We’d love to talk.