The Power of the Pertinent Negative

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.

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After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

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