The Evolving Leader

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to award winning science writer David Robson. David has previously worked as a features editor at New Scientist and as a senior journalist at the BBC as well as writing countless articles for The Guardian, the Psychologist and many others. Sit back and listen as our co-hosts explore David’s life and work

The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life

The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions

0.00 Introduction

2.51 What gets you excited about your work? 

3.51 Your work spans many different scientific disciplines including neuroscience and psychology. How do you bring those two things together to understand how human beings operate?

5.04 Can you give us the pitch to your first book, The Intelligence Trap?

7.18 You have said that intelligent people are more susceptible to fake news and conspiracy theories. Can you elaborate on that? 

12.55 Is this problem getting worse?

14.31 Can we dig into a few of the mechanisms that are at work, such as over claiming and earnt dogmatism?

17.38 How do you build cognitive inoculation?

21.10 You’ve written that unconscious bias training may not be as straightforward and you present a more nuanced view about it. Could you talk to us a little about this?

23.56 Your second book is titled The Expectation Effect. Can you tell us what the expectation effect is and is not?

26.19 You have written how it’s possible to create different levels of change in your body for a long period of time that creates general conditions for good things to happen. Your research into the effect of the placebo is probably the most significant in this regard. Can you tell us a little more about that? 

30.01 You also talk about the opposite which is the nocebo. Tell us about this.

33.40 The research by Alia Crum on fitness and eating is exciting in terms of giving us practical potential solutions for rethinking our mindset around these things.  

39.03 You list some practical things that the reader can do to harness the expectation effect. Could you give us some examples of things that our listeners could start doing right now?

42.35 There are some potent takeaways around the expectation effect and its influence on longevity. Could you talk us through what you’ve learnt there?

46.45 What else should we be asking you?

51.29 What are you working on now?

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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 special 100th episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Scott Allender and Emma Sinclair talk to one of our usual co-hosts on the podcast, Jean Gomes. As many listeners will know, Jean is a leadership expert, trusted advisor to CEOs and senior leaders, and New York Times bestselling author. During this conversation, Jean talks about his new book ‘Leading in a Non-Linear World, Building Wellbeing, Strategic, and Innovation Mindsets for the Future’.

 Leading in a Non-Linear World

 0.00 Introduction

2.48 Why did you write ‘Leading In A Non-Linear World’? 

6.16 Why is this important now?

8.54 We often hear that we should simplify things, but you’re saying that we should meet complexity with complexity. Can you tell us more about that?

11.10 Can you give us some examples of the kinds of mindsets that you’re talking about building?

14.48 When writing about mindset, you refer to the interplay between feeling, thinking and seeing grounded in own self-awareness. This feels like something that is accessible to everyone. How did that idea start to form for you?

22.18 When we talk about self-awareness or mindset, nobody thinks that they’re not self-aware.  Is it easier for some people to be more connected to what’s going on in their body and mind, and for those people who find it harder, how can they start to build these skills? 

29.34 Can you tell us about your sixteen months of experimentation? What did you actually do during that time?

35.20 Understanding and knowing how to manage our internal physical resources is something that is often bypassed by leaders. How could you encourage them to make a shift in how they approach their wellbeing?  

40.11 Now that we’ve done a deep dive into the body, could you delve deeper into the emotional centre?

46.14 You refer to negative uncomfortable emotions, and how some people may externalise that rather than getting curious about why they might be feeling this way. How could they get practically curious while in the middle of a very uncomfortable feeling?

52.36 So the idea of feelings and emotions as a means of accessing mindset may be route that a lot of people may not have thought about before. How have you taken that and built it into this interconnection between thinking and seeing as well? How do they all interact together in your definition?

57.04 What mindsets can we build for our future? 

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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 neuroscientist Dr Hannah Critchlow. Hannah is best known for demystifying the human brain on regular radio, TV and festival platforms as well as through her three books, the most recent being “Joined-Up Thinking, The Science of Collective Intelligence” (Hodder & Stoughton, August 2022). In 2014, Hannah was recognised as a 'Top 100 UK scientist' by the Science Council and one of Cambridge University's most ‘inspirational and successful women in science’. In 2019 Hannah was named by Nature as one of Cambridge University's 'Rising Stars in Life Sciences'. 

Joined-Up Thinking, The Science of Collective Intelligence

0.00 Introduction

3.29 Tell us about your background and what led you into neuroscience and your passion for public engagement?

9.01 Tell us about collective intelligence.

12.07 Can we explore the research that you share in your book around collective intelligence and particularly how amongst neurodiverse groups this leads to more creative thought?

19.09 You talk about the genetic predisposition, was there any research around epigenetic’s role in this predisposition?

36.02 You talk about synchronisation of brainwaves amongst groups helping with collective intelligence and the importance of their emotional state in this regard. Can you tell us a little more about that?

41.56 You talk about listening in fostering collective intelligence and you suggest a game that families can play to get better at it. Can you tell us about that?

45.17 You’ve also written about sitting in silence at the start of a meeting. 

46.30 There is a lot of pressure and uncertainty facing teams, and you talk about the need to cultivate curiosity rather than fear in that environment. What advice do you have to help us achieve that?

49.13 What have you come to understand about interoception in the context of social intelligence?

53.29 How do you envisage our collective intelligence developing over time with advances in technology?

58.32 What’s next for you in the coming year?

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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 talk to poet Pelé Cox. Formerly the poet in residence at Tate Modern, the Royal Academy, Keats-Shelley House and British School at Rome, Pelé now takes her art into companies such as PwC, Nielsen and a variety of hedge funds tutoring leaders and employees in creative innovation.

 
‘Lift Me Up I Am Dying’ (Pele Cox, 2021) https://youtu.be/NFQjKWiOYn8

‘Chelsea Barracks Frieze’ https://pelecox.com/

0.00 Introduction

0.54 POEM: Spectacle (Pele Cox)

3.53 Can you give us the edited highlights of your journey as an artist?

4.50 Was there a moment when you thought ‘I want to be a poet’?

5.39 Who are some of your favourite poets?

7.05 What is your creative process?

12.09 POEM: Afterwards (Pele Cox)

13.59 It’s not obvious to most people that poetry can be used in so many different ways. How did you get to that? 

15.59 What happens when you take your experience in to the hedge fund audience? 

18.23 When you are working with a leader, what does that process look like?

21.42 Help us understand how we can best appreciate this art form?

31.58 POEM: Snake (D.H.Lawrence)

39.10 Can you talk to us about your relationship with your emotions and how that’s changed as you have developed?

43.39 Can the utterance of a poet have any more relevance than the extraordinary impact of social media?

46.31 POEM: Death and the politicians (Ian Crichton-Smith)

47.30 Can we turn to some of your more recent work particularly some of the things that you’ve done during lockdown including the film ‘Life Me Up I am Dying’ with Damian Lewis?

52.45 Can we talk about Frieze as well?

56.23 POEM: Swelling (Pele Cox)

57.14 How might someone get in touch with 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 Scott Allender and Jean Gomes talk to the no B S coach Paul Glover. Paul is a former attorney who went on to serve time having been found guilty of white collar crimes. He describes himself as a “recovering” trial lawyer, an unabashed Starbucks addict, and the author of Workquake™, a book dedicated to those in the work environment seeking to not only survive, but also to thrive in the Knowledge Economy.

0.00 Introduction

3.36 Can you tell us about the concept of having a fool in your life?

6.26 What’s the contract that you’re striking when you invite someone in who might not be open to feedback that you might be getting?

10.44 Tell us more about your story. As you were coming out of prison, how did the role of the fool change you?

19.08 What did you find hardest to accept in yourself when receiving feedback from your wife and your friends when they were allowed to see you? 

30.26 When coaching, how do people feel about you and feel about themselves in your presence?

34.00 You talk about daily windows of opportunity. What are they and how do you find them? 

38.02 In 2012, you wrote ‘Work Quake. How organisations can successfully make the seismic shift to the knowledge economy’. I’m curious to hear what you’ve been observing in the last 10 years since you published that book.

41.11 Based on the coaching conversations that you have had over the last 2 years, what do you think is going to happen as a result of Covid and the lessons that leaders have gained from that experience?

46.07 You talked earlier about your daily gratitude practice. What are you feeling most grateful for today?

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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 talk to author, entrepreneur and former scientist Rob Ashton. Rob’s work encompasses cognitive and social neuroscience, cognitive and social psychology and behavioural and neuroeconomics, giving him a unique perspective on why so much of our written communication simply doesn’t work. 

 0.00 Introduction

4.32 Given your background as a scientist, how did you become fascinated in how we communicate?

9.51 Why is it that so much of our written communication doesn’t work?

18.26 What are some of the things that we can do to overcome those limitations?

24.36 If somebody wants or needs to communicate (perhaps with a large group) quickly, how can they reduce the chance that their message may be misinterpreted by individuals who receive the message?

30.34 What’s the easiest way of getting people to open their minds to what they are about to read?

36.45 if we switch to the reader or recipient of emails and texts, what can we do to avoid misunderstanding the written word?

42.30 When you think about writing, how do you get into a more empathetic headspace?

48.02 When we write something and then read it back we may sometimes find flaws in how our writing could be interpreted. From a neurological perspective, how do those different processes work? 

53.50 Do younger generations read and write differently?

56.20 How can our listeners get in touch with 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 Scott Allender and Jean Gomes talk to psychological safety expert Stephan Wiedner. Stephan’s work focusses on developing sustainable high performance leaders, teams and organisations. He is cofounder of Noomii.com, Skillsetter.com and most recently Zarango.com with a published mission to ‘unleash the collective potential of people with the power of psychological safety’.

Here's a link to the free Psychological Safety Assessment mentioned by Stephan during this episode:   https://zarango.com/freepsi/

0.00 Introduction
04.08 Can you give us a working definition of Psychological Safety?
05.08 In our experience, when leaders first encounter that, some may feel that making people feel ok isn’t always ok because there can be consequences. What’s your take on that?
06.34 So in your experience, what happens when leaders make the mistake of being incredibly nice but don’t hold teams to account to deliver?
07.16 Why psychological safety for you? What got you into this topic?
09.03 What is your assessment process?
10.30 So happens in those situations typically?
12.18 What does psychological safety deliver in terms of performance?
14.37 Amy Edmondson talks about creating the conditions so we’re able to have those conversations without the fear, so the desire outweighs the risk. Can we talk about the feeling of vulnerability that’s necessary in order to be able to do that?
17.51 How do you raise an honest level of awareness in the leader who is well intentioned but may be just not getting it right?
18.52 Can you tell us what the origins of ‘deliberate practice’ are and how it’s been applied in different fields?
21.59 Let’s talk about conflict. How do leaders with high safety and accountability teams tend to mitigate conflict or even encourage healthy conflict when appropriate?
24.24 How do you start to get leaders to recognise their part in perpetuating a culture where these things can’t really be aired?
27.55 What kind of things do you see when psychological safety starts to take root in an organisation?
29.38 What is the importance of safety combined with accountability in terms of unleashing exponential creativity?
33.33 How do you see psychological safety playing out across different generations?
38.07 Where do you think this field is going and what’s next in your work?
43.10 In your analysis, do you see any trends in terms of things that are changing in people’s reactions to different types of situations? Are some situations becoming more or less problematic, how are we evolving?
46.08 What deliberate practices are you engaging with at the moment?
48.15 How can our audience get in touch with 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 Scott Allender and Jean Gomes talk to social entrepreneur Anna Anderson. Anna is the founder and CEO of Kindred, an independent members club in West London, and Cellar at Kindred, a public café, counter and bar; dedicated to bringing the ethos, spirit and values found in the members club to the wider community. 

0.00 Introduction
4.12 Can you give us your perspective on the power of business to achieve social change?
6.35 You have a background as a social worker, working in child protection, domestic violence, children in gangs and more. How did this inform your concept of community and the role that business can and should play in the world?
10.57 Tell us a little about Kindred and how does it work?
14.00 You started two years pre pandemic. How did Covid impact the business model?
16.05 A lot of people might have walked away. Where does your passion come from?
18.55 Staying with the challenge of balancing the economics and the purpose. Tell me what you’ve learnt about the shared values that you have to create between your team, your audience, the community. What are the shared values that hold this together for you?
23.13 Regardless of Covid, what value is most likely to be compromised when trying to pursue your commercial viability and sustainability? 
25.37 How do you make people aware of your community?
28.23 Do you have a vision for scaling beyond West London?
30.51 What lessons have you been learning about yourself as a leader?
34.19 How do you see how you create, capture and deliver value in your business model tying in to the problem you’re solving?
39.17 What’s a word you might have for a listener who is nowhere near West London but is really compelled by what you’re saying and is acknowledging to themselves the idea of loneliness while they have no suitable space near them. What might they do?
45.36 Your point about how somebody can be in a great relationship and have great colleagues but can still feel lonely. You gave some diagnostic questions, but is there anything else that would help people to come to terms with what they’re feeling?
49.54 Is there anything else that we should be talking about or any messages that you would like to give to our audience?

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Recommended listening:
Unpredicting with Stuart Firestein  (full episode on Apple Podcasts)
What is Unpredicting with Stuart Firestein (YouTube clip)

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 talk to human behaviour expert Ciela Hartanov. Ciela is a former Head of Innovation and Strategy at Google and is founder of Hum Collective where she consults with leaders who are overwhelmed by the pace of change and need help creating the time, tools, and innovation models to create a new paradigm of work. 

0.00 Introduction

4.05 A little more about Ciela’s background and work.

5.46 How do you build a mindset to face uncertainty?

9.07 How do you help individuals become cognisant of the kind of mindset that they’re currently holding?

17.19 Can you give us an example of the sort of thing that you’ve done to move people who might have a more sceptical mind into a position of acceptance?

21.46 What’s the starting point where you can try to bring more sense making when maybe you can’t find the component parts to start engaging with that story?

24.44 How have you grown and developed through the work that you’ve done?

26.42 This speaks to the need to embrace vulnerability in an uncertain situation where you as a leader are expected to be certain. Have you thought about that and what it means?

 29.35 Talk to us about the importance of sensitivity as a leader.

34.27 Can you tell us a little about the book?

38.36 What can our listeners do to reclaim their sensitivity? What are some of the practices that you’ve found most helpful for yourself?

41.14 Leaders are expected to know the answer and to know the truth.

45.32 Which organisations are you seeing that are moving along down this path and adopting some of the things that you’re talking about?

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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.

Join co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender as they close season 4 of the Evolving Leader podcast by sharing some of our favourite moments from the 20 incredible episodes as well as previously unheard bonus material from the Evolving Leader vulnerability interviews.

The Evolving Leader podcast will return in September for the start of season 5, but in the meantime sit back and listen to conversations with Caroline Williams, Oliver Burkeman, Steve Fleming, Amy Herman, Susan Neiman, Ranjay Gulati, Dan Toma, Rob Cross, Annie Murphy Paul, Simon Roberts, Tony O’Driscoll, Azeem Ahzar, Rita McGrath and Todd Kashdan. 

0.00   Introduction
1.01   Caroline Williams
3.52   Oliver Burkeman
9.12   Vulnerability interview: What’s the biggest lie you’ve told at work?
11.14   Vulnerability interview: What personal development topic do you most avoid confronting?
13.09   Steve Fleming
15.36   Amy Herman
18.15   Susan Neiman
21.45   Vulnerability interview: Where do you feel most vulnerable in your work?
26.34   Ranjay Gulati


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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 talk to Professor Henry Shue, Professor Emeritus of Politics and International Relations at Merton College, Oxford and author of the book Basic Rights (Princeton 1980; 2nd edition, 1996; 40th anniversary edition with new chapter on climate change, 2020). Today, Henry’s focus is the moral responsibility that we have in slowing and reversing climate change, arguing that ‘we are the pivotal generation, the time is now’.

0.00 Introduction

2.38 Can you take us on a quick tour of your life’s work and ideas?

5.28 Which thought leaders and ideas have most informed your thinking?

10.32 Why are we the pivotal generation?

14.13 How can we be sure that we don’t underestimate the intelligence, foresight and determination of those who want to prevent the policy changes that need so desperately?

19.29 Can you give us an insight into the kind of questions that you are putting to leaders of organisations who might be impacting the problem?

25.03 The moral imperative is that we should be taking responsibility for the solution to this, so why aren’t governments forcing organisations to divert profits into developing new cleaner technologies?

27.14 How could we educate more people to accept the realities before them and put more pressure on companies who exacerbate climate change?

32.17 You’ve talked about the relationship that we have time and how it effects our sense of urgency. Can you talk to us a little about that?

37.17 How do you think (particularly) younger generations who are feeling angry about poor leadership are feeling about it?

41.23 Are there any tangible/practical pieces of advice that you can give to our listeners who are thinking that they want to do their part?

47.28 How are we deceiving ourselves around climate change?

54.36 What’s your next area of focus?

Recommended listening from the Evolving Leader archive:

Always Day One with Alex Kantrowitz

Part One

Part Two

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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, host Jean Gomes talks to Dr Lucy Hone. Lucy is an adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury (NZ) and author of Resilient Grieving: Finding Strength and Embracing Life After a Loss that Changes Everything. In 2020, she also delivered the TED talk 3 Secrets of Resilient People, which to date has over five million views and is one of the Top 20 TED talks of 2020. 

0.00 Introduction

1.20 Can we start with your story, and how the journey that you’ve been on has led you to discover new things about yourself and the ideas of resilience?

6.48 Many people will have read about the Kübler-Ross model which describes the five common stages of grief. How does that model sit with you? 

13.13 Can you run us through some of the highlights of the ideas that you shared during your TedX talk?

21.31 You describe three stages which are all thought processes. Where does the meta emotional part play into this?

26.41 What have we learnt about resilience through the pandemic? 

28.47 Where do you think people fall into thinking traps around resilience, misinterpreting what it really is?

31.41 What have you learnt about how parents can be best support children with grief while also allowing themselves the capacity to grieve?

35.27 What are doing next?

37.31 You mentioned earlier what some organisations might be getting wrong around resilience. Can we talk about the importance of psychological safety?

Recommended listening from the Evolving Leader archive:

What Makes a Pioneer with Philip Clarke?

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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 Dan Olsen. Based in Silicon Valley, Dan is a consultant, speaker, host of the monthly Lean Product & Lean UX Meetup and author of bestselling ‘The Lean Product Playbook’. 

The Lean Product Playbook

0.00 Introduction

2.28 Tell us about your background and what fuels your passion for product development?

3.50 Why do products fail and why do organisations keep on building things that we may not want? 

5.14 Can you give us your definition or poor product fit? 

6.45 Talk us through the layers of the product-market fit model.

12.02 How do you build the awareness to recognise when you’re sliding into the solution before you have an understanding of the problem? 

15.26 Can you tell us the story of the space pen?

19.28 How do you help people to change their mindet around being able to avoid the immediate gratification?

24.28 Tell us what you’ve learnt about the idea of the MVP.

30.00 What’s the most extraordinary pivot that you’ve seen?

32.24 Can you say more about when it’s time to listen to the customer as opposed to when it’s time to take an alternative approach?

36.04 How should we be using data to better understand consumer behaviour?

38.16 The other problematic part of this is pricing. What have you learnt about approaching that?

43.20 What have you learnt about how to help leaders make better decisions and make good bets?

51.54 Given everything that’s happened in the last two years, how do you think that’s going to play out in terms of how people think about creating great products in the future?

Recommended listening from the Evolving Leader archive:

The Art of Insubordination with Todd Kashdan

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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.

Is it time for organizations to start hiring chief collaboration officers? In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean and Scott talk to Rob Cross, Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, author of ‘Beyond Collaboration Overload’ and consultant. Rob explains that while collaboration can be the answer to many business challenges, leaders must learn to recognize, promote, and efficiently distribute the right kinds of collaborative work, or their teams and top talent will bear the costs of too much demand for too little supply.   

Beyond Collaboration Overload (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021)

 0.00 Introduction

3.02 Can you give us some background to your work and approaches, particularly in network analysis that led you to the ideas you write about in Beyond Collaboration Overload?

5.35 Can you give us an overview of the two parts of the book and tell us what the payoff is for those who read it?

8.20 What do you mean by identity triggers? 

10.40 How can someone identify their particular identity trigger, that gets them stuck in patterns of behaviours and responsiveness that are counterproductive for them?  

11.49 Can you give us a snapshot of what a day in the life of ‘Scott’ (a character in your book) might be?

15.59 How are the command and control fanatics that still exist in some organisations coping with collaboration overload?

18.26 When you go into a C-suite, how do you help them better understand this strategically? 

20.03 What have you observed about the different types of collaboration?

25.44 Can you share some of your other ideas around how we might avoid other forms of overload and/or other recurring microstressers that impact on us? 

32.41 Is all of this reliant on your getting to grips with your identity trigger first?

34.22 What have you learnt about how high performers are now spending their time, especially those who might get back 18-24% of their time by incorporating these tactics?

39.44 Can you talk to us about the cumulative effects of microstressers?

45.43 The point you made earlier about understanding your needs requires a certain type of self-awareness because as we get busier, we run the risk of being cut off from what we’re feeling. What have you learnt about high performers and their ability to tune into those needs?

49.08 What happened to the character ‘Scott’ who we mentioned earlier in the interview?

52.26 In ten years time, what could an organisation that embraces more of this understanding look like?

Recommended listening from the Evolving Leader archive:

The Science of Seeing Differently with Dr Beau Lotto

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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 and Scott talk to Amy Herman. Amy is a lawyer, art historian, author and founder and president of The Art of Perception Inc. a New York-based organization that conducts professional development courses for leaders around the world, from Secret Service agents to prison wardens. By showing people how to look closely at paintings, sculpture, and photography, she helps them hone their visual intelligence to recognize the most pertinent and useful information as well as recognise biases that impede decision making. 

Fixed.: How to Perfect the Fine Art of Problem Solving

smART, Use Your Eyes to Boost Your Brain

0.00 Introduction

2.59 Tell us how you combined your skill as a lawyer with your passion for art to form what is a pretty unique job.

5.21 Where does the term visual intelligence originate?

8.59 What’s the take away for people who attend your course? 

10.56 Can you give us a deeper explanation as to what visual intelligence is? 

13.18 So how do you learn to see what’s not there? Can you talk us through your process?

16.36 Many people coming on to your course will be out of their comfort zone. Can you tell us what they’re going through?

19.09 Tell us about their emotional response to this situation. 

20.49 Can you give a bit more about distinguishing between objective and subjective conclusions?

23.02 How do these experiences with art help to confront and maybe even resolve some biases?  

26.05 You have the opportunity to be quite provocative with people in some of the things that you do. What does that create in people?

29.36 How do you help people come to terms with making the distinction between thinking and seeing?

32.23 Is important to also ask ‘what are we not seeing’?

36.05 Towards the end of Fixed, you suggest that you may have reached the limits of what you could achieve using art and open ended questions. However, talking to you today it sounds like you’ve overcome that. 

40.45 Tell us about your new book smART.

42.45 As we draw to a close, what’s the biggest take away here?

Recommended listening from the Evolving Leader archive:

Distinguishing Risk and Uncertainty with Sir John Kay

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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.

During this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Caroline Williams, whose latest book ‘Move’ explores the emerging science of how movement opens up ‘a hotline to our minds’. Caroline is also a public speaker (including her 2014 TedX titled ‘Pimp My Brain’), consultant and writer for New Scientist and is the editor of two of New Scientist’s Instant Expert Guides, How Your Brain Works: Inside the most complicated object in the known universe (John Murray, 2017) and Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain (John Murray, 2017).

Move: How the New Science of Body Movement Can Set Your Mind Free

 
0.00 Introduction

2.33 What drew you into studying movement?

4.50 What are the implications of living a sedentary life?

7.26 In your book you write about the evolutionary internalisation of movement. Can you elaborate on that? 

11.35 You write about how breathing and related exercises aid decision making, and also cite a 2016 study that shows that we can synchronise our breathing with our brainwaves. Can you talk to us about that? 

14.17 What have you learnt for yourself through this work, what have you taken on board?

15.55 What advice would you give to leaders about how to ensure that their team are adopting movement practices in order to get the most out of them?

18.19 Was there anything that surprised you whilst researching the book? 

20.18 You mention (in particular) one study about First Responders and 9/11. Can you talk to us about that?

23.31 What are we learning about elderly physical movement?  

25.36 What are your favourite movements?

27.10 What else is catching your attention right now? 

32.24 What did you learn about osteocalcin?

36.01 What’s the ideal amount of exercise and how should people be approaching that with intentionality?

39.43 What’s your next project?

Recommended listening from the Evolving Leader archive:

The Next 15 Years with Kevin Kelly

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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 episode of the Evolving Leader podcast features a conversation between co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender and future of work thought leader Professor Lynda Gratton. As professor of management practice at London Business School, Lynda Gratton designed the human resource strategy and transforming companies programme, which she has since led for over 20 years. She is founder of the global research advisory practice HSM Advisory and has written ten books exploring the changing relationship between people strategy and business performance. Lynda Gratton is also a fellow of the World Economic Forum.

Redesigning Work: How to Transform Your Organisation and Make Hybrid Work for Everyone

0.00 Introduction

1.48 Can you give us a pen portrait of your career and the key areas of your focus?

3.37 What’s your assessment of what’s currently going on in the workplace?

7.10 Can you take us through the four steps that you believe organisations need to make in order to make the most of the global shift?

11.54 Who are you seeing getting this right?

18.07 Seeing as this was the first time that so many people around the world went through the same experience, our value sets and world view may have changed. What are you observing on that front?

23.39 Is the doubling of the number of meetings because we’ve lost the ability to pop in on each other and have the ‘water cooler’ conversations?

27.05 Going back to your ‘Hybrid Working’ article in HBR, what do we take forward from what we’ve learnt through this intense experiment and what do we let go of do you think? 

32.12 So as organisation’s experiment, and employees are looking at the realities of working longer and the added complexities of their lives, what should companies be doing to support the wellbeing of their teams?

37.13 Do you think organisations should reconsider freezing again and what do you think are the most dangerous assumptions that we might be making right now to leave untested?  

39.41 I love what you’re saying about baking in agility.

41.12 If you could guess, what do you think the world of work is going to look like in 20 or 30 years time?

46.50 How can people get in touch with you?

47.53 Can we plant a question in our audience’s mind about how to think about the future of work?

Recommended listening from the Evolving Leader archive:

Heritage and Innovation at Wimbledon with CEO Sally Bolton

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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 Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to author and former Guardian journalist Oliver Burkeman. For more than 10 years, Oliver Burkeman wrote the weekly ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’ column in the Guardian newspaper providing readers with ideas for a better life. In his latest book 4000 weeks, he rejects the obsession with 'getting everything done,' and introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations.

Four Thousand Weeks (Vintage, 2022)

This Column Will Change Your Life ‘the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life’. Oliver Burkeman's final weekly column in the Guarding (pubished 4 September, 2020)

 
0.00 Introduction

2.40 Could we have a brief tour of your world and how you became a chronicler of ideas about living a good life.

5.20 When you look back at your Guardian column, what were some of the ideas and people that most stood out to you?

8.11 Tell us why you wrote 4000 weeks. 

10.41 How has our concept of time changed through the ages?

15.43 Can you tell us about the paradox of limitation?

18.09 You describe how the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger argued that our finite existence is bound with time and that most of us spend our time denying this fact either through distraction or denial – what can we take from his thinking by flipping the constraints of mortality?

23.24 How are we using distraction as avoidance, and how could positive distraction be useful?

28.30 Let’s turn to the benefits of procrastination.

32.34 In the context of organisational life, how should leaders think about the idea of inevitable limitations?

37.45  How can the mindset shift that underlies 4000 weeks be applied in an organisation? As a leader, what steps can be taken to normalise a change in philosophy whilst at the same time preventing it from being misused as an invitation to stop making plans for the future?

42.25 This is where we hobbies and family life makes such a difference to our lives – how we’re almost embarrassed to confess we have such a thing as a hobby. Can you talk about paying yourself first?

 
Recommended listening from the Evolving Leader archive:
How Emotions Are Made with Lisa Feldman Barrett Part 1 / Part 2

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LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
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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.

“Meet a stressed young manager, Mae B, whose teams are being led by an authoritarian CEO. We join her on her mission to overhaul the outdated leadership systems obsessed by power, profit and process and fight for central leadership that prioritises people, purpose and principles.”

Talking to Evolving Leader hosts Scott and Jean, Tony O’Driscoll (professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and a Research Fellow at Duke Corporate Education) and Gary Zamchick (illustrator, innovation strategy consultant and co-founder of start-up Words-Eye) explain their novel approach to writing ‘Everyday Superhero – How You Can Inspire Everyone And Create Real Change At Work’, a book that one reviewer refers to as ‘an entertaining tale with a serious message’. 

‘Everyday Superhero – How You Can Inspire Everyone And Create Real Change At Work’ (Penguin Business, 2022)

0.00 Introduction

2.46 What’s the single most purpose driven aspect of your work? 

4.42 Why did you decide to move away from writing a traditional business book?

8.28 Give us your pitch for the book.

11.23 What was it for you personally that led you realise that ‘the human piece is really missing’?

14.14 If businesses move to competing based on imagination, what’s the environment that would give them a competitive edge?

16.28 Talk us through the story behind the book.  

22.34 How did you meet?

26.00 How does your creative partnership work?

29.41 Can we focus a little deeper on the issue of change? 

35.41 Who is getting this right? Where are you seeing evidence of the kind of change that you’re talking about?

39.27 As markets and communities are coming together to drive change (as opposed to organisations), how does that influence your thinking? 

45.06 In your book, the character Mae B is trapped in a bureaucratic system and is the person we all end up wanting to associate with. Tell us a little about this character.

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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 are joined by Dr Nate Zinsser. Dr Zinsser is an expert in the psychology of human performance and has worked at the forefront of applied sports psychology for over 30 years. His research has been published in several journals and in the widely used textbook ‘Applied Sport Psychology: Personal Growth to Peak Performance’. Dr Zinsser is the director of the performance psychology programme at West Point (The United States Military Academy) where he has been the lead performance psychologist since 1992, personally conducting over seventeen thousand individual training sessions and seven hundred team training sessions for cadets seeking the mental edge for athletic, academic, and military performance.

Nate Zinsser’s book ‘The Confident Mind, a Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance’ was published in 2022. 

0.00 Introduction

2.29 Could you give us a picture of what West Point is? 

5.46 How has the field of performance psychology evolved during your 30 years as director at West Point?

11.15 Can you take us through some of the building blocks of the skills that you have brought from the world of sports psychology into the military?

13.49 Can you give us an example of something that you did that would have been quite counterintuitive to the culture at West point at the time?

16.15 Have the values and culture at West Point changed as a result of the work you’ve been doing?

19.18 How do you help somebody who feels that they don’t belong here? 

24.03 What do you mean by confidence, and what can we do to help ourselves and others become more confident?

27.45 From a practical perspective, what do you do to help people who are at an inflection point in their career to build confidence?

31.35 During your time at West Point, have you seen a change in the self-awareness and the knowledge around psychology and performance science in the cadets who come into the college?

34.40 Tell us about your new book ‘The Confident Mind’

39.19 What would you say to a leader who is struggling to help someone on their team increase their confidence?

42.02 How do we bring up confident children?

46.32 What is exciting you right now? Where is your attention at the moment? 

Social:
Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

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