The Evolving Leader

In this episode of the Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to serial entrepreneur, engineer, inventor and pioneer in artificial intelligence Peter Voss. Peter spent more than 15 years studying what intelligence is, how it develops in humans and also the current state of artificial intelligence, resulting in the creation of a natural language intelligence engine designed to “adapt and grow” with the user. During that time Peter was part of a group that coined the term AGI (artificial general intelligence) and is now focused on commercialising the second generation of an AGI-based conversational AI technology called Aigo. His mission is to provide “highly intelligent and hyper-personalised assistants for everyone”. 

Reference in this episode:

Aigo.ai

Peter’s articles on Medium

0.00 Introduction

3.31 How did you get into the artificial intelligence space?

4.57 Can you give us a simple definition of AI?

9.37 So when we look at these systems, why is it different this time?

12.24 There’s a lot of excitement and a lot of fear surround AI. How will AGI solve problems that need to be solved, and what are the risks?

15.06 With this radical abundance, there is always a flip side. With every technology, human nature does what it does, good or bad. What are the ethical and/or moral challenges facing us with this technology?

18.02 How in your mind would AGI stand in the gap between psychology and AI?

20.38 The current investment that is being placed into all technologies is dependent on the current ways that the global economic system works. When we unleash this abundance, it changes some of the basic assumptions about how capitalism works. What are thoughts regarding that disruption and how is it going to change the fabric of our society?

22.49  Are we at risk with getting to a level of AGI in every facet of our lives where people will struggle to find their human purpose other than depending on this technology?

24.19 Where does AI start to harm us and how to prevent that existential crisis?

26.07 Turning to what our audience should be doing to prepare for this AI revolution? Is there something that they should be thinking about and doing now?

29.32 If you were advising a CEO on how to ready their organisation for the next decade, what would your checklist of top priorities be in getting them to think about things?

30.52 What are the moral considerations to make sure that we can advertise to people but not take over their independent thinking in how they live their lives or what they want to buy?

34.24 The reason why we’re lured into this is that it’s seemingly free. How do we break that economic cycle?

35.52 Coming back to the fears, how do we ensure that the personal assistant is secure, that it won’t flip and reveal all of our secrets to the world?

39.39 How is the area that you’re working in playing out compared to the big model systems?

44.42 Can you set a time frame for us? What do you think the next 5-10 years holds in terms of what you’re doing? When will it really start to change our lives?

47.00 Your day job is commercially utilising this conversational AI technology and there are huge opportunities there. 

49.36 So what is standing in your way to accelerate this?

50.37 How can people get in touch with you?

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In this episode of the Evolving Leader, co-hosts Scott Allender and Jean Gomes talk to Kerry Cullen. Kerry is a business psychologist who has been coaching for more than 20 years. Working with both the public and private sector internationally, her focus is to create a coaching environment where people can come home to themselves. Kerry loves to explore and train in polyvagal theory and in 2022 she launched a polyvagal course for coaches.

References from the episode:

KerryCullen.com

Polyvagal Institute

Deb Dana’s Rhythm of Regulation

Somatic Resilience and Regulation, Stephen Terrell

0.00 Introduction

4.48 Can we start with you sharing your journey and the challenges that you’ve faced?

5.55 Can you give us a definition of resources?

6.44 Can you give us a beginners guide to polyvagal theory?

8.12 Is neuroception synonymous with interoception?

12.47 We have this constant unconscious monitoring system that isn’t grounded in our perception, but when it’s activated it does quickly engage the brain into an interpretation. How does this play out in how we make sense of things?

16.21 If you are someone who is stuck in a disconnected state, how does our nervous system see that as a way to protect us? 

19.03 How does this help people who have experienced trauma?

23.23 How does this thinking work in the leadership space?

26.06 There’s a big narrative around psychological safety amongst leaders and teams. What are your thoughts around rupture and repair as the underlying mechanism of psychological safety?

29.33 You quote Stephen Porges “If you want to improve the world, start by making people feel safe”. Do you think he’s meaning that the best way to improve the world around us is for us to find our own healing? Is that your North Star?

31.52 Kerry guides Jean, Scott and our listeners through a system developed by Stephen Tyrell that offers regulation to the nervous system as a way of bringing a sense of safety and connection. 

47.08 For people who are listening to this, how does this differ from mindfulness and meditation practices that they may have tried in the past?

 48.58 What’s next for you?

49.30 Is there a central resource that our listeners can go to if they’d like to explore this further?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader, co-hosts Scott Allender and Emma Sinclair welcome Rob Murray back to the podcast. Rob last came onto the Evolving Leader back in December 2021 (season 3, episode 12), he’s a researcher, change agent and thought leader in emotional intelligence and transformational leadership who strives for a deep level of authenticity whilst at the same time being supremely pragmatic in the realities of organisational life. Rob is co-founder and CEO of Transformed Leader, he is host of the Talk of Change podcast and in February 2023 Rob’s new book ‘Fighting For Heart’ was published.

0.00 Introduction

3.55 What motivated you to write ‘Fighting For Heart’

7.13 Why is this so important now?

12.15 How are you defining emotional intelligence?

26.37 You identify that there are six common resistances that keep leaders from investing in emotional growth. Can we start with ‘self-protection against social shame, pressure or judgements for being emotional’

36.03 The next resistance is that ‘people hold a belief that leaders should not be distracted by emotions’

38.33 Number three is ‘avoiding emotions feels easier, safer and more manageable’

39.29 Fourth is ‘a lack of emotional modelling when growing up’

43.41 Finishing up with five and six, we have ‘ignorance of any other way than performing and producing’ and ‘not justifying the time and money to prioritise emotional development’

45.10 It can be difficult to know when we lose our emotional awareness. What can people listening (who don’t have the benefit of spending time with you) start to do?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott talk to entrepreneur, Chief Executive, broadcaster, and author Dr Margaret Heffernan. Margaret writes, speaks and blogs about business leadership, management, innovation and creativity, and her TED talks have been seen by over 14 million people. Margaret has written six books and her third book, ‘Wilful Blindness, Why We Ignore The Obvious’ was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times. Her most recent book ‘Uncharted: How To Map The Future’ was published in 2020 and was nominated for the Financial Times Best Business Book award.

'Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore The Obvious At Out Peril'

0.00 Introduction

4.04 How would you introduce yourself to someone you’ve not met at a dinner party?

5.33 You wrote ‘Wilful Blindness’ in 2012. Considering the vast changes that we’ve seen since the book was published, how do you see its central thesis today?

8.53 If you were talking to a group of leaders today, what would you ask them to confront to raise their awareness of wilful blindness and prevent the conditions for it flourishing?

21.02 What behaviours have you seen from leaders who are great at eliminating or reducing wilful blindness?

24.11 If we turn to your book ‘Beyond Measure’ which you wrote in 2015, in it you describe how transforming a company can be a process of making small systemic changes that empower people to speak up, collaborate and share. Can you tell us more about that?

28.51 In Uncharted, you write ‘being prepared in an age of uncertainty can intensify the craving for models’. Can you build on that?

38.55 This relationship between uncertainty and predictions is fascinating. What are your thoughts on the role that machine learning is playing in our relationship with predictions and what are some of the risks that you see?

45.29 If you could go back to Margaret Heffernan at 20, what advice would you give yourself as a future entrepreneur and leader?

51.03 What’s next for you, what are you working on at the moment?

53.36 It’s interesting to hear how you are currently reinventing yourself and therefore putting yourself into a high degree of vulnerability which sounds like it’s making you feel very alive. How is that effecting your wider life?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes, Scott Allender and Emma Sinclair talk to Alex Zekoff. Alex is CEO and Co-founder of Thoughtful, an organisation with a mission to accelerate the world’s adoption of automation and AI so humans can solve our most complex existential problems. He believes that automation gives human workers the freedom to pursue the creative strategic work that builds companies as well as their careers. Thoughtful’s Robotic Process Automation aims to help businesses save up to 90% of their workforce’s time, increasing operational efficiency and lowering expenses. 

0.00 Introduction

3.31 Can you tell us about your background and why you co-created Thoughtful?

6.51 Can you give us clarity on what you are selling?

9.19 Can you tell us more about what all of this means and where it’s heading in the context of the future of organisations and job security?

13.09 If we fast forward five years, it’s going to fundamentally change the nature of work. Have you got a sense of what the world is going to look like when that happens?

16.52 You talked about health care claims and how you see that in terms of automation. Given the breadth of what you work on, I wondered if you see certain industries that are way behind the curve. What’s your view on leaders and laggers in this space?

18.47 You recently wrote that to avoid a sinking ship, leaders need to approach management by cutting through the noise and focussing on first principles which are defined as a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. What are these first principles?

20.36 We see this in action all of the time. How do you help people to get there? What’s your process?

22.38 How do you help people to break through the assumptions that are holding them back?

24.52 You’ve described how smart people can lie to themselves because they use their intelligence to make convincing arguments that undermine their long-term interests. You mention using a blue and a red team to disrupt that thinking. Can you talk to us about that process?

27.04 If in five years we’ve brought our lagging industries forward in terms of automation and we’ve got more valuable stuff, but we’ve still got humans with a finite amount of potential skill, what will humans be doing in that space?

29.35 It feels like there are broader ethical concerns here (that we must confront) if we continue automating everything.

34.38 In Forbes you made some predictions about this year, and one of them was ‘Goodbye Wokeism, being woke is out in ‘23’. What’s your definition of wokeism and why is it out? 

39.13 In terms of a growth mindset approach, can we still pursue wanting to make sure that we’re evolving in our language and how we treat groups and individuals while also potentially directing our attention to larger scale issues such as staying on the planet?

42.27 You've said that companies building software to track productivity and KPIs precisely win over companies that aren’t measuring performance at that granular level. Can you talk to us about how you are seeing this playing out in the relationship between people and organisations?

45.28 We’ve touched on the notion that AI introduces a load of peril, so what are the moral implications for leaders today as we embark on this journey? What do they need to do to prevent future disasters where AI might collapse a company, destroy a marketplace or worse?

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to future of work writer and speaker, business leader, best-selling author and podcaster Ollie Henderson. Ollie believes that work life balance is a myth, and instead sees career and personal life as two opposing forces. He argues that the secret is to design an integrated approach that allows them to work in harmony. 

‘Work/Life Flywheel. Harness the Work Revolution and Reimagine Your Career Without Fear’

 0.00 Introduction

3.54 It’s your birthday. Which musical artist (living or dead) would you invite to your party?

5.26 Tell us about your career to date?

8.56 You’ve experienced burnout and trying to understand what you’re feeling in that situation is difficult for a lot of people. What kind of consequences did that have on your life?

12.28 How long do you think were burnt out before you acknowledged it?

13.21 So you decided to leave your job and take up writing and at the same time a pandemic hit. 

19.29 People are often afraid to make changes and you say that 75% of people are wanting to make big changes to their work lives. Why is that happening?

22.24 I’m interested in the data you collected. In the UK and many other countries there is currently a large focus on getting older people back in the workforce.

28.13 We’ve had lots of guests talking to us about various aspects of innovation. Is there anything that you’ve learnt about how we can get people to bring more of their creative and innovative self into our working environments?

32.21 Coming back to your three-year burnout, what have you adopted as practices to pay closer attention to what you are feeling and experiencing inside so you don’t find yourself going through another three year burnout before you acknowledge it?

40.17 [Ollie asks Scott and Jean] How much are people talking about the relationship between their work and personal life? Is this significant or are we reverting to how life was before the pandemic?

46.43 Where can people find the book and where can they find you?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, Scott moves over to the guest seat and talks to Jean and Emma about his new book ‘The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence, A Journey to Personal and Professional Success’. In addition to being co-host of this podcast, Scott is a certified Emotional Intelligence coach and Enneagram teacher, and in his new book Scott brings together these two systems to evolve our understanding of what Emotional Intelligence really is and how to cultivate the awareness we all need for success and wellbeing. 

‘The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence, A Journey to Personal and Professional Success’.

0.00 Introduction

3.56 Can you tell our listeners about your background and what led you to attaining these certifications in psychometrics and personality systems?

6.17 Can you give us a brief overview of what the Enneagram is?

9.45 Why is this book so important for you and why now?

17.17 There are lots of definitions and interpretations of Emotional Intelligence. How do you define it?

20.36 You mention the concepts of the true self and the denied self. What are some of the signs that your true self is being denied, and how does denying our true self actually hurt us or hold us back from future success?

26.26 Can you take us through these five different components of emotional intelligence and how they unlock some of the insights that sit behind the Enneagram?

30.28 In the book you identify nine types of fear, and write that acknowledging our fear is essential for developing awareness. Can you unpack that for us?

33.23 There is a counter-voice in the world around all psychometrics calling them out as akin to horoscopes etc. arguing that you can see yourself in any description of personality types. What’s your take on this?

36.54 The Enneagram reveals the nine personality specific defence mechanisms that will interfere with a person developing or sustaining an openness to the world. Can you tell us about those defence mechanisms and how they are attached to each of the types?

43.11 Every day we see examples of people avoiding change or suppressing the things that they need to do to respond to it. Have you found quick ways of helping people to accept that and start on the journey of being more open to change?

46.59 In your book you talk about ‘setting off on a never ending path of self discovery’. So what’s next for Scott Allender?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to human rights barrister Dr Susie Alegre. Susie is a legal pioneer in digital human rights, in particular the impact of artificial intelligence on the human rights of freedom of thought and opinion. Without a moment’s pause, many of us will share our most intimate thoughts with the largest tech companies and in doing so make it possible for them to categorise us and potentially jump to troubling conclusions about who we are. In her new book Susie argues that only by recasting our human rights for the digital age can we safeguard our futures.

‘Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate our Minds” (Susie Alegre, 2022)

0.00 Introduction

3.18 Can you tell us about your career and what’s led you to your current focus?

5.20 You argue that the online environment undermines our independence of opinion and in your book you illustrate this by starting with a brief history of legal freedoms to both holding beliefs and their expressions. 

9.44 I’d like to focus on this manipulation. It’s hard to keep up with what’s happening in terms of the speed and number of platforms that are spreading ideas. How do we balance the fact that this is happening with the rights to form our own thoughts?

14.18 This whole area must be incredibly challenging. Can you give us a sense of what you face in trying to move legislation around like this?

18.10 How do you feel about your own experience of being manipulated on-line?

19.47 Can we turn to AI and how technology is now thinking that it can infer what our inner thoughts and feelings are? 

24.01 What are thoughts on big tech company’s approach to ethics?

26.06 How do you think organisations in the tech space are going to give the application of human rights more teeth?

30.05 What are your thoughts on how the Chinese and Russian governments are wielding influence over their populations?

33.55 If we take the GDPR digital services act as an example, we can see that it’s a tricky balancing act to introduce legislation to achieve those goals and engage the public and commercial sectors. Can we do a better job in capturing the public’s imagination in these things?

37.34 What are the implications for leaders and organisations as they increasingly become dependent on digital and social technologies to prosper?

40.10 What reaction have you had across the political spectrum to your ideas?

42.14 You talk about how nobody wants to be manipulated and nobody thinks that are being manipulated. How do people get more honest and take more inventory in the ways that perhaps they are being manipulated?

45.41 So thinking about the freedom to think for younger people, what advice might you give them?

47.34 What are the next set of challenges for you? What are you working on at the moment?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to John Mullins. John is Associate Professor of Management Practice in Marketing and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, has written four books and has had more than 50 articles appear in publications that include Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal to name but a few. 

John’s latest book ‘Break the Rules! The Six Counter-Conventional Mindsets of Entrepreneurs that Can Help Anyone Change the World’ was published in January 2023.

0.00 Introduction

2.48 Can we start by getting to know you a little?

3.54 Tell us about your entrepreneurial ventures.

7.46 How does your body of work apply to everyone (not just entrepreneurs in start ups)?

11.30 What advice would you give to a young entrepreneur to help them avoid early failure?

13.41 If you could go back to your 25 year old self where you were a young entrepreneur, what would you say?

15.15 Entrepreneurs can often be very defensive about their product and their idea. What have you learnt about the ability to hear differing perspectives?

17.01 Moving to your latest book, can you give us the pitch and why you wrote it?

21.40 So let’s talk through those mindsets. Let’s start with ‘Yes you can’ and how does this change conventional thinking?

23.43 Next you have Problem First not Product First logic. What have you learnt about those who succeed in this respect think and act differently?

28.40 The next of the six mindsets is Think Narrowly not Broadly. That’s pretty counter intuitive, so tell us more about that.

30.55 The fourth mindset is ‘ask for the cash, ride the float’. Tell us about that.

35.03 Have you had any experience with your clients adopting that principle in an otherwise conservative environment?

36.53 The fifth mindset is Beg, borrow but don’t steal. Tell us about why this is important.

42.26 And finally there is Instead of Asking for Permission, Beg for Forgiveness. What convention is this breaking?

45.05 How have you seen that principle handled well in a corporate environment?

48.26 You conclude the book by saying that not every entrepreneur displays these mindsets, but Lynda Weinman (the founder of Lynda.com) seems exceptional as she seems to display many (if not all). Can you tell us a little about her story?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Richard Medcalf. Richard is the founder and CEO of Xquadrant, a consultancy that he set up in 2017 with a mission to help top leaders reinvent their success formula and multiply the impact that they have on their purpose, people and their profit. Richard also runs Rivendell, an international peer community of entrepreneurs and CEOs. His book ‘Making TIME for Strategy’ was published in November 2022.

BONUS RESOURCES

0.00 Introduction

4.27 Can you start by telling us how you’ve come to be who you are?

6.42 Who is your book aimed at and what is the problem you’re solving for?

8.40 In your book you talk about how you see rising demand, constant overload and seemingly no hope except possibly more of the same. Can you give us a sense of what you are seeing in this regard and how have those demands have changed over recent years?

12.20 You talk about the power of strategic time as being the number one predictor of success as a leader, but the reality of immediate demands means that for many leaders this is out of their grasp. How do can they rethink this?

16.38 Could you walk us through your solutions and specifically the TIME acronym that you use and how that works?

21.28 In your experience working with leaders, how challenging is it for them to be honest about the time wasters vs the things that really add value? 

23.26 So, the tactical move doesn’t operate in isolation for the leader. Does it solve the problem or do they need to be thinking wider than this?

25.23 Can you give us an example of a particularly challenging type of conversation that leaders need to have that they may be avoiding or finding difficult to have?

28.08 From your perspective what are the specific mindset blocks that are of particular importance when making this work?

32.50 When you talk to leaders about having to shift their mindset, the block is often a feeling of helplessness or powerlessness. How do you help people cope with what’s going on inside them to deal with that shift in their thinking?

34.58 Turning to the final part of the acronym, what’s the environmental challenge? 

36.20 You point out that incremental progress is no way to beat infinity. Can you talk about the bold moves necessary to make real impact?

43.03 We’ve been talking about this from an individual perspective, but how does a team facing these challenges incorporate these?  

47.20 Richard, I want you to inspire us. What can I do when I get some time to myself to start my journey along some of these ideas, and I’d like us to think about someone at the start of their career as well as the more mature leaders?

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Adam Bulley. Adam is a postdoctoral fellow at the Brain and Mind Centre and School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, and the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. In his research, Adam uses the tools of cognitive science to study the mind and human behaviour, with a focus on the evolution, development, and psychological mechanisms of imagination, foresight, decision-making, and emotion.  

Adam Bulley’s first book ‘The Invention of Tomorrow’ which he co-wrote with Thomas Suddendorf and Jon Redshaw was published in 2022.

During the conversation, Adam also references the following books:

The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age (Bina Venkataraman, Riverhead 2020)

The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time (Richard Fisher, Wildfire 2023)

0.00 Introduction

2.58 Can you start by telling us about yourself and what led you into your research and career?

4.21 Let’s dive into your book ‘The Invention of Tomorrow. Can you give us your pitch for the book, who is this book for and what will your audience gain from reading it?

6.02 We take our ability to think about the future for granted, but how and why do you think this remarkable capability evolved? 

8.56 What would have happened to our species had we not evolved this human foresight capability? 

10.33 What role does memory play in foresight?

13.27 So let’s skip back to how foresight and innovation are intwined with one another. Can you bring to light some of the research and how you’ve come to understand how that relationship works?

15.32 What have you learned about how this ability impacts our morality?

17.27 As children we have amazing imaginations from an early age but our ability to envisage our responsibility takes longer to develop. So how do things like metacognition (our ability to imagine what that looks like from somebody else’s perspective) sit alongside foresight?  

19.35 What have you learnt about our capacity to harness this and improve it? Is this a muscle that can be improved? 

22.35 You mention short termism and our ability to ignore our foresight. What has your research uncovered about the profound mistakes that we can make when choosing to ignore foresight?

27.02 One of our former guests, futurologist Monika Bieleskyte believes that the role of the futurologist should be to try and create positive optimistic scenarios that we can get behind. How do you feel that our capacity for foresight works with that?

30.23 How much of our brain’s foresight is routed in our own subjective biased view of reality?

34.01 What have you learnt about foresight and wellbeing and what can we take forward from that?

36.33 How can we get more effective and efficient at testing our assumptions about the future and our ideas?

40.16 What are you working on at the moment? What’s next for you?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and 
.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Dr Tim Palmer. Tim is a Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics, he is a senior fellow at the Oxford Martin Institute Programme on Modelling and Predicting Climate and a professorial fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. Tim is a major contributor to improving climate models and is among the researchers who won the 2007 Nobel Prize for authoring the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

In October 2022 Tim Palmer's book ‘The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand our Chaotic World’ was published.  

0.00 Introduction

3.46 In your work we see what appears to be an intuitive approach to embracing uncertainty. Can we start there?

6.52 Is it true to say that our economic systems are experiencing more uncertainty and non-linear occurrences recently?

9.19 Can we talk about some of the most fundamental scientific concepts of uncertainty that you explore in the book, and how we might take some of that thinking to the challenges that we might be facing in running organisations? 

12.46 If we recognise that there will always be uncertainties, but also imagine a world in the future where there might be unlimited computing power where we have the singularity and an abundance of senses, does this increase in knowledge take us closer to a world with no uncertainty? 

18.44 Can you help us understand Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle?

21.48 If you could go back in time to the 2008 financial crisis, could you use some of what you know and have learnt about uncertainty to moderate that somehow? 

33.26 How widespread has the adoption of ensemble methods been?

35.13 Can we talk about ensemble methods, specifically focussing in on climate change? How has your work helped us to develop our current understanding of the world’s greatest challenge?

43.24 How do you see the science of uncertainty developing over the next decade?

47.34 Where do you see uncertainty sitting in the educational curriculum because currently it feels like it hasn’t been adopted into secondary education or across other fields?

51.04 Can you bring to life what a typical day looks like to you?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Marianne Lewis. Marianne is dean and professor of management at the Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati having previously served as dean of Cass (now Bayes) Business School at City University, London, and as a Fulbright scholar. A thought leader in organizational paradoxes, she explores tensions and competing demands surrounding leadership and innovation. Marianne has been recognized among the world’s most-cited researchers in her field (Web of Science) and received the Paper of the Year award (2000) and Decade Award (2021) from the Academy of Management Review.

Marianne Lewis’s book (co-author with Wendy K Smith) ‘Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems’ was published in 2022. 

0.00 Introduction

4.36 Can you give us an overview of your work?

5.22 How do you distinguish between tensions, dilemmas, and the paradoxes in our lives?

7.16 Why is it so important to be working on paradox right now for leaders?

9.13 Can you walk us through the four types of paradox that you identify and how we experience them?

14.01 How does either/or thinking cause issues for leaders and can you give us some examples of how that sets us up to fail?

19.10 The trench warfare, or the war of defences seems to be prevalent in politics right now. What do you think is causing that either/or thinking?

21.26 You describe a pros and cons list as being one of the mechanisms that encourages either/or thinking. What other mental shortcuts are leaders and others taking that encourages either/or thinking?

26.05 How do we enable both/and thinking?

34.58 You mention that it’s not easy to look at the assumptions that we should consider if we want to build this paradox mindset. Why is that and how have you helped leaders find a different way forward?

39.48 Knowing that people want to move away from negatively experienced emotions, what other tactics or approaches do you take with leaders to arrive at this alternative approach without moving away from those negative emotions?

46.20 Organisations are designed primarily to align resources with their goals and minimise risk. Can you tell us about how your research and ideas can help leaders think about structures to stabilise the organisation in the face of uncertainty?

50.33 Can you tell us about the research you’re doing into how individuals manage building a paradox mindset?

54.19 Did you find a difference in motivations behind various people’s experience with either/or thinking? 

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Dr Joe Barnby. Joe is a computational neuroscientist, assistant professor at Royal Holloway in London where he leads the social computation and cognitive representation (SoCCR) lab, and the founder of Senscapes. Through his research, Joe is working to develop better theories of the brain and behavioural basis of social interaction, and how these might be used to explain and treat psychiatric and neurological  disorders.

https://www.senscapes.com

 
0.00 Introduction

2.49 Can you give us an overview of your work?

7.28 Can you explain how these mathematical models are built?

10.28 What are you learning from this about people with an open mindset versus a fixed mindset?

14.36 In some of your recent work you mention that there’s been a shift in how neuroscientists and psychologists look at social cognition and how it operates. Can you take us through some of the underlying ideas in this shift of thinking?

17.42 What do we do with the output of this work?

21.14 What are the moral implications?

23.58 In the past you have described the possibility of being able to analyse the nature of an individual’s social threat from others enabling us to build healthier teams. Can you tell us about that?

26.15 When we think about how an individual makes sense of the world, they are triangulating between their physical, emotional and all the other senses that are creating this map of the world plus the predictive element of it. How do you start to make sense of that huge amount of complexity and where are we on the journey of being able to capture that complexity?

34.49 In your recent research, have you had any ah-ha moments in terms of making progress with those building blocks?

39.34 What are the key pieces of insight that someone listening could take from with them from this conversation?

41.42 Tell us about Senscapes.

46.29 Where will your research go in 2023?

49.35 Through the work that you’ve carried out, what have you learnt about yourself and how have you put those learnings into practice?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with Richard Firth-Godbehere. Richard is one of the world's leading experts on disgust and emotions, he is an independent researcher and consultant in the history, language, science and philosophy of emotions, and author of ‘A Human History of Human Emotion – How the Way We Feel Built the World We Know’. 

A Human History of Human Emotion (Fourth Estate, 2023)

0.00 Introduction

3.29 As a historian, why did you start to focus on emotions as a way of making sense of the past?

5.11 You suggest that emotions are a modern construct. Can you tell us about that?

7.37 How do you describe what an emotion is?

9.04 How do you study the history of emotions?

11.40 In your book you talk about how certain emotions have been a driving force of change throughout history whereas we generally think of ideas as being the thing that propels history. Can you elaborate on that a little please?

13.54 Can you take us back to Ancient Greece and Plato where you begin your story about understanding emotion’s evolution?

17.06 What have you learnt about our relationship with desire?

22.07 Your main field of study has been disgust, an emotion that many of us might think is a universal experience. However you’re not so sure…

25.03 What does your research reveal about love?

31.40 Your research into witch crazes is particularly revealing and relevant to today’s polarising world. 

35.50 What does history tell us about the effect of the more optimistic feelings associated with things such as progress and freedom?

39.08 You mention several people who have had a profound influence on our modern understanding of emotion. Where was the turning point at which that shifted our understanding of human nature?

45.18 In all the things you are currently doing, what’s the area you are wrestling most with in terms of your own uncertainty about what you’ve learnt around emotion?

46.40 How can a leader who is listening to this podcast make use of your research findings?

49.30 Solastalgia, the emotion that is expressed across the world by people who have had their homes destroyed by climate change.

51.57 Do you think there was a highly characteristic and shared emotion around Covid?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-host Jean Gomes welcomes back former guest Will Page. Will is the former chief economist at both Spotify and PRS for Music, visiting fellow at London School of Economics and his widely acclaimed book ‘Tarzan Economics’ has just been published in paperback under the slightly different title ‘Pivot: Eight Principles for Transforming Your Business In A Time Of Disruption’.

Pivot: Eight Principles For Transforming Your Business In a Time of Disruption

Jo Caulfield ‘Supermarket loyalty card’ 

0.00 Introduction

2.14 Why has the title of the book changed for the paperback?

3.04 A quick summary of the eight principles.

5.39 You say in the book that these principles give us cause for optimism and even confidence. Can you talk about why that it?

11.38 Which is the principles would be most salient for our audience? 1. Big data, big mistakes.

17.27 How can we stop ourselves making a snap judgement or challenge the contradictions around data, and how do you hold that in your head in other forms of decision making?

19.42 2. The growing gig economy

23.57 Given the Tarzan Economics predictions, what do you think are the most likely few things that will change this year? 

27.20 How are these principles changing your life and mindset? How is it shaping your world?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Scott Allender and Jean Gomes take some time to discuss and reflect on a new definition of mindset. Scott also gets Jean to road test a new set of questions that (in future episodes) our two co-hosts will be asking guests about how they think, feel and see the world.

 ‘Leading In a Non-Linear World’ by Jean Gomes

 0’00 Introduction

3’27 We’re going to be questioning our guests on how they make sense of the world by building intentional mindsets to confront challenges that they face

5’22 Remind us what you mean by feel, think and see

10’16 How can people build the connective tissue between all of these things?

14’29 Testing the new questions on Jean : Q1. What have you learnt about your mindset as you have developed as a leader?

18’11 Q2. When and where have you seen others or yourself hold up the wrong lens to a situation? 

21’44 Q3. Can you recall any situations in your career where you and others made significant breakthroughs by challenging fundamental assumptions about what was possible, feasible or desirable? 

26’03 Q4. What is the primary way that you tune into you body to determine what’s happening?

30’37 Q5. Of all the mindsets that we build and need, what is the single biggest mindset challenge that you personally struggle with the most?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, we’re pleased to welcome back our occasional host and friend of the podcast, Emma Sinclair. This week Emma is in conversation with consultant neuroscientist and researcher Oscar Hutton. Oscar is also part of the Greater Human community, with whom in 2022 he explored (and made sense of) the neuroscience research designed to answer the question “Does listening to your body help you become more empathetic?”. Part of the findings from this research paint a picture that challenge our understanding around how we understand others and how we build empathy as human beings.
This is an important listen.

0.00 Introduction

4.04 Introducing Oscar and his research.

5.21 Let’s think about the concept of empathy.

10.56 Why do we need empathy? 

13.02 What evolutionary benefits has empathy brought us as human beings?

19.04 Where do we start with this, in terms of how we build empathy?

21.10 How does interoception help us to more empathetic? 

23.08 So this is literally raising our awareness of what’s going on inside?

26.42 Is this a part of what helps us identify what we’re feeling?  

28.12 So rather than trying to ignore what the body is telling us, we should all learn to identify how we’re feeling and then work with it?

29.00 How new is interoception as an area of study and what have you started to find during your research?

32.49 Where have you started to go with your findings?

35.49 So when we are around people who we are very close to, you’re saying that there is a good chance that we could be experiencing what they are experiencing if we raise our awareness to it. 

37.33 Is this suggesting that the more we know someone, the greater the likelihood is that our bodies will feel the same as a result of an external stimulus?

40.32 Is it possible for anyone to switch on interoception accuracy?

41.52 Is it also something that can get lost if you don’t keep using it?

42.34 So where is the connection between interoception and empathy?

45.48 So how can we can begin to start to use this awareness?

52.37 Considering the amount of time we all spend interacting with others on the screen, is there anything that could be built to help us in that environment with those social cues? 

55.06 Is there anything else related to teamwork that you are starting to draw connections on?

57.53 How can someone who might not have heard of interoception before today begin to work on this new super skill?

64.09 So what have you done in this area for yourself?

67.30 So if more people were aware of this, could we avoid those difficult encounters?

69.48 Is there more that you can share from your research?

79.09 What can we leave the listener with? 

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 The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Scott Allender and Jean Gomes are joined by entrepreneur, venture capital investor and author William Kilmer. A product and innovation strategist at heart, William has spent his career working with hundreds of companies as a start-up leader, coach, investor and board member. He has been founder and CEO of several cybersecurity and data analytics companies, formed a wireless operator in the UK, and has served on the board of over twenty five technology companies and other organizations. He was previously the managing director of Intel Capital, a corporate venture capital fund where he managed worldwide investments and formed a targeted venture fund to invest in the Middle East and North Africa.

Transformative: Build a Game Changing Strategy, Retool Your Organisation and Innovate to Win

0.00 Introduction

3.10 Can you tell us a little about how you got to where you are today?

4.28 What attracted you into working in technology and leadership?

5.18 Can we talk about innovation and the challenge that it poses for many organisations? 

7.37 Some organisations may sometimes lose perspective on why they are innovating. Why might that be?

9.53 In many organisations, innovation sits on the periphery rather than being central to the core business. Is that what you’re seeing?

12.09 What’s the difference between innovation and transformation?

16.50 If you were sitting with a CEO who wasn’t successfully transforming their organisation, what high level advice would you give to that individual?

22.59 Can you tell us about the ‘confidence bubble’?

27.57 Why do you think primary business model innovation isn’t happening at the same level as the technological innovation?

31.03 When was the last time you witnessed a pitch where you thought, ‘yeah that idea could really be transformative’?

33.33 Are there any currently under represented emerging technologies that you think might come to the fore in the future?

37.42 How have you evolved as a leader?

42.17 What mindset shift is required for an individual who is prone to defending ideas as opposed to challenging them?

43.34 If we fast forward three years, what are the things that we should be looking at in terms of combining new technologies and business models in order to solve some of the big challenges facing organisations?

47.08 Is there anything else that we should ask you?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, Jean and Scott hand the mic to Emma Sinclair who talks to cognitive neuroscientist Emily Clements. As part of her PhD at Kings College, London Emily is currently leading one of the world’s first studies into the neuroscience of entrepreneurship. She aims to uncover what might be different within entrepreneur’s brains and how we might develop our mindsets to become more entrepreneurial?

Sit back and listen to this fascinating conversation during which Emma and Emily explore a key foundation for tomorrow’s leaders, building mindsets to navigate uncertainty and improve their capacity for disruptive thinking. 

0.00 Introduction

2.47 Emily, could you please begin by introducing yourself and what you are currently working on?

5.53 What is disruptive thinking?

8.00 What brain mechanisms are coming in to play when we go against the grain? 

8.35 Could you give us a quick summary of what you mean when you refer to brain networks? 

11.26 So are we focussing in on networks when we refer to disruptive thinking?

12.58 How often are we using our multiple demand network?

14.31 What would you define as being a hard task?

17.08 What’s the flipside to this?

20.05 I’d love to understand more about self-referential thought. 

24.20 If you were in deep meditation, which network are you operating in?

26.14 What have these brain networks got to do with disruptive thinking, why are they important?

29.30 Is it true to say that highly creative individuals are actually changing how their brain is operating? Is it possible to make your brain more creative? 

32.02 How can we consciously build a mindset that enables us to be more creative?

39.52 How can we all be more disruptive?

44.49 How important is environment for us to recognise that we might be in the wrong state to address a particular problem solving task?

49.43 We’ve talked about the constant demand on people. Is this current demand for our attention meaning that it’s harder to stay in either mode?

54.09 What can leaders take away from this? 

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.