Measuring behavioural change in a PhD cohort — Neuroscience Academy Denmark

Why Neuroscience Academy Denmark asked us in

Neuroscience Academy Denmark develops the next generation of researchers, and a research career increasingly turns on more than the science. The ability to communicate your work, collaborate across disciplines, take an intellectual risk in front of peers and recover well when it doesn't land — these shape whether talented people thrive or stall. They are also rarely taught.

NAD asked us to build those capacities in a new PhD cohort, and to do something most training avoids: measure whether behaviour actually changed. Satisfaction scores tell you whether people enjoyed a day. They say nothing about whether anyone behaves differently a month later. We set out to track the behaviour itself, across the whole programme.

The challenges that shaped our design:

• Academic training rewards certainty. Researchers are taught to be sure before they speak. The behaviours that build collaboration — offering a half-formed idea, experimenting out loud — ask for the opposite.
• Exposure feels high in a cohort of peers. Taking an interpersonal risk in front of fellow researchers is exactly where people hold back.
• Change had to outlast the room. A single inspiring session fades. The brief was lasting behavioural change, which meant designing for the weeks between sessions as much as the sessions themselves.

What we delivered

A six-session masterclass, built on our three-phase architecture and grounded in the 5 Guiding Principles of IMPROV. Each session was experiential — participants do, then reflect, then commit — and each built on the last.

Running underneath the programme was a self-assessment tracker. At three points, participants scored themselves one to seven on the same fifteen behaviours, grouped into the four areas our work is designed to move:

• Presence and attention — staying with the moment, noticing subtle cues, staying engaged without rehearsing a reply.
• Offering and failing well — the Yes, And muscle — expressing half-formed ideas, building on others rather than evaluating them, experimenting with new ways of communicating.
• Staying regulated under pressure — reacting constructively to others' mistakes, communicating clearly under time pressure, staying steady when exposed.
• Connection — adjusting to how others respond, and supporting others to take interpersonal risks.

Measuring the same behaviours repeatedly does two things: it shows whether the work is landing, and the act of self-rating is itself a reflection that deepens the learning.

What the data showed

The cohort moved upward, and most of the movement arrived late. The overall index sat at 4.83 at the first session, held almost flat at 4.88 by the third, then lifted to 5.05 at the fourth. That shape matters. Behavioural change rarely arrives in a straight line — people often plateau in the middle, as the new way of working feels harder than the old one, before it settles into something they can do under pressure. The late lift here fits that pattern closely.

The clearest growth was in the behaviours that ask people to offer something before they're sure of it.

Behaviour (self-rated, 1–7)	Session 1	Session 4	Change
Experimented with new ways of communicating	3.36	4.55	+1.19
Stayed engaged without planning my response in advance	4.18	5.00	+0.82
Expressed incomplete or half-formed ideas in front of others	4.91	5.64	+0.73
Supported others in taking interpersonal risks	4.36	5.09	+0.73
Noticed subtle cues — tone, body language, hesitation	4.36	4.82	+0.46
Built on others' ideas rather than evaluating them	4.64	5.09	+0.45

Experimenting with new ways of communicating rose the most, and it started as the lowest-rated behaviour of all fifteen by a clear margin — which makes sense, as it asks for the most exposure. That it climbed more than a full point suggests people now reach for it rather than avoid it. Read together, these are the divergent, creative behaviours — offering, building, experimenting, staying present without rehearsing. They are exactly what the work is built to grow, and they are the ones moving.

One dip is worth sitting with, because it may be a good sign. Staying regulated when feeling exposed or challenged fell across the three points, from 5.09 to 4.36. On its own that looks like a problem. Read alongside the gains, it tells a more encouraging story. As people offer more, experiment more and put themselves forward more, they feel more exposed — so staying regulated while exposed becomes a far harder thing to do well. They are not regulating less; they are facing more of the discomfort that regulation is for. This is the amygdala doing its job as people leave their comfort zone, and it tells us precisely where to hold attention in the sessions that remain, so courage and composure grow together.

The individual spread is the honest story. Among the nine present at all three sessions, personal scores moved in both directions. One participant climbed nearly two full points, most of it in the final stretch. Others rose more modestly, including some from low starting points, which is often where the most lived change is happening even when the number stays modest. And a few who began most confident saw their scores fall — which, in this work, is usually a sign of sharpening self-awareness rather than lost ground. Someone who once rated their listening a six comes to understand what real listening demands, and rates it a four while actually doing it better. The falling number can be the clearest evidence the training is landing.

What this means

On the evidence here, the programme is doing what it is meant to do. People are offering more of themselves in the room, and feeling the discomfort that comes with it. That discomfort is the cost of change showing up in the data, right on cue — not a sign of the work failing.

It also shows something we believe sets our work apart: we are willing to measure behaviour, not just collect applause. The numbers move in the directions the methodology predicts, including the honest dips, which is what real change looks like when you track it properly.

Bring this to your institute or cohort

Any university, academy or research institute developing its people faces a recognisable version of the same question: how to build the human capacities a research career now depends on, and know whether they actually grew. Our approach transfers directly — an experiential, multi-session masterclass built on the 5 Guiding Principles, the three phases that turn sessions into lasting behaviour, and a measurement approach that tracks the behaviours themselves rather than the mood in the room.

Source: anonymous self-assessment collected at sessions one (early February), three (early May) and four (1 June 2026). Eleven to thirteen people answered each round; nine were present at all three. With a cohort this size, the direction and the pattern are the finding, rather than any single decimal point.