What we offer
We'll join you where you are and give a power boost to your people-related initiatives!
Consulting
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We can diagnose strengths and opportunities in the organization and help you navigate the path to higher performance, resilience, and retention.
Group Programs
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We can create competency models, leadership brand, and shore up skillsets and mindsets to meet dynamic organizational needs.Â
Speaking Events
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Award-winning, content-rich speakers will open, expand, and shift audience thinking for your keynote, breakout, retreat, summit, or meeting.
Testimonials
Mara Bain, Director of Salesforce and Mayor of Fridley, MN
"I have to tell you how often I've reached for your book and your materials in the past few months! ..... I literally think about your book and use its tools every single day. It has helped me to set limits and find space for professional life, personal life and brain healing.
While this is a very unconventional testimony to your work (and perhaps not the recommended path for many people), I wanted to say thank you and that you've literally been on my mind lately. :)
Many, many thanks!!"
Roland Sullivan, Change Agent
"I approached Erika when she presented to the Association of Change Management Professionals in Minnesota. I said that her session was the absolute most engaging, exciting, useful learning experience I've had in Minnesota in the last 10 years. She's on the cutting edge utilizing the "brainy" neuroscience competence in organization transformation. I just received her book, "The-Brain Friendly Workplace." It's cutting edge. It's so important that I'm giving it to my daughter this week because her passion is integrating Transformative Neuroscience with OD. Erika is positive, humorous, trustworthy, helpful and effective as a leading organization change and development and transformation expert. I know. She was the internal change agent that I worked with at [former client].
Welcome from Dr. Erika Salina
Founder and CEOÂ
WorkingSmarts helps organizations build better leaders, stronger teams, and healthier workplace cultures—using practical, neuroscience-based management strategies that actually work.
We combine tested, research-based management practices with neuroscience-informed insights to address the real challenges leaders and teams face—such as conflict, disengagement, productivity breakdowns, and change fatigue. Our work is practical . . . immediately applicable on the job.
WorkingSmarts partners with corporate and public-sector organizations to solve your people problems, such as:
- underprepared managers
- interpersonal conflict
- widespread distrust
- intolerance for risk and innovation
We can work with individual leaders or an entire company/agency. Our solutions are designed to scale—from workshops and leadership programs to licensed curricula and certified trainer models—so organizations can build lasting capability, not just short-term compliance.
At our core, we help people work smarter together.
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Why is WorkingSmarts unique?
WorkingSmarts is unique in its ability to translate neuroscience and evidence-based management research into practical, teachable skills that leaders can apply immediately in real workplace situations.
Rather than focusing on abstract concepts or personality frameworks, WorkingSmarts targets the core drivers of workplace behavior—how people think, regulate emotions, communicate, and respond to challenges—and develops these as observable, repeatable skills.
Our approach integrates:
- Science-based insight (how the brain drives behavior under everyday conditions)
- Practical application (tools leaders can use in the moment, not after the fact)
- Scalable delivery (programs, curricula, and licensing models that extend impact across organizations)
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What makes our products and services so valuable?
WorkingSmarts delivers value by solving the problems that consume the most time and energy in organizations:
- Reducing interpersonal conflict and miscommunication
- Improving leadership consistency and accountability
- Strengthening team effectiveness and collaboration
- Increasing productivity by addressing root behavioral patterns—not just surface issues
Our clients value WorkingSmarts because the results are:
- Immediate — leaders can apply tools right away
- Practical — no translation from theory to action required
- Sustainable — skills become embedded in daily work, not forgotten after training
The result is measurable improvement in performance, relationships, and organizational culture.
Featured on YouTube: "Dr. Erika Salina: Radical Productivity, More Ease!"
Your Difficult Person Isn't the Problem
Does this sound hard to believe? Managers and leaders often connect problematic staff behavior with the person they think is the source. This can be premature and can be a mistake. Instead of reacting to the unwanted behavior by correcting the individual, it's important first, to assess what systems or procedures in the work group may be missing or unclear. The difficult person you think is the problem, may not actually be.
Individual problem employees are typically a signal that there is a misunderstood, unclear, or absent process or expectation held in the group. This is the place for a manager or leader to direct attention first. Then, address communicating the process, procedures, expectations. Lastly, address individual behavior as needed.
ViewHow to Improve Staff Accountability - Part 1
In this first part of a 3-part series on building accountability at work, Dr. Erika Salina shares a more useful way to look at accountability. Trying to push on accountability at work is largely futile, because it's not actionable. Accountability has components . . . ingredients. In this video, Erika shares the first two components -- responsibility and transparency. She also offers suggestions for what to do in order to improve each for your team or with your colleagues.
ViewHow to Get Over Workplace Bullying
Dr. Erika Salina (was Garms) of WorkingSmarts, Inc. shares three ways to get over workplace bullying -- understand your goal is not to "get over it" but rather to "get through it" to a more self-assured, focused, calm, and productive version of yourself. This is possible! The second way is to pick a scope that you want to put your energy into, and thirdly, take first action steps toward recovery at the scope level you chose.
Dr. Salina discusses how the RESTORE program uses a path with sequenced steps toward recovery after enduring a "work hurt", some sort of emotional injury at work.
ViewDon't Focus on Resistance to Change
Instead of focusing on and talking about resistance to change at work, Dr. Erika Salina suggests focusing on living gracefully with transition as the "new normal" in our organizations. Our language reflects our mindset. When we (especially managers and leaders) use language that imply that a change initiative is separate from us, that it stands in confrontation with our organization or current systems, we signal to staff that the change is unwelcome, and an intrusion.
Using language that reflects the belief that we will always live and work in a state of transition, and this is expected and welcomed, greatly influences others' reactions to change. This is one of the roots of how our organizational cultures address change.
ViewMore Testimonials
Bernice Moreau, Hospital Social Worker, Allina Health Systems
"Thank you again for the wonderful information and presentation yesterday on “Your Brain on Change”. I learned so much but the one nugget that will be my mantra for a very long time is “living gracefully with transition” will be my goal! The world of healthcare is ever-changing and evolving and to resist this is to set one up to be in a continued state of stress!"
Jason Eccles, Operations Manager,
Branches, LLC
"I have viewed two separate presentations by Erika from WorkingSmarts. She clearly translates her knowledge and understanding of how our brains work, connecting hard-wired realities to human behavior. Her influence has caused our company to change the way in which it views and conducts performance evaluations. I would highly recommend Erika to any company that seeks a deeper understanding of its most important asset, human capital."
Download the free Micro-Assessment!
See how Brain-Friendly your Workplace is!
