The Evolving Leader

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Professor Deborah Ancona about the importance of X-teams. These are a brand of team that emphasizes external outreach to stakeholders, extensive ties, expandable tiers, and flexible membership. The resulting X-teams are not only are able to adapt in ways that traditional teams are not, but they actually improve an organization’s ability to produce creative ideas and execute them increasing entrepreneurial and innovative capacity.During the conversation Deborah highlights the shift from traditional team structures to distributed leadership, where leadership is distributed across all levels. She also explores the concept of "family ghosts," which are behaviours and attitudes formed in childhood that influence leadership and stresses the importance of creating a sense of belonging, vision, and innovation in leadership to navigate today's rapidly changing world.In 2007 Deborah and Henrik Bresman wrote the book ‘X-Teams: How To Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, And Succeed’.Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)Social:Instagram           @evolvingleader LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast Bluesky           @evolvingleader.bsky.social YouTube           @evolvingleader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

To kick off 2025, we’re releasing a conversation that Evolving Leader co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender had with Mark Weinstein. Mark is a tech entrepreneur, contemporary thought leader, privacy expert and one of the inventors of social networking. His work around social media, privacy, AI, free speech antitrust and protecting children online is widely published in publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fox, CNN and the BBC (to name but a few). Mark has been listed as one of the ‘Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy’ and his book ‘Restoring Our Sanity Online’ was published in September 2024.In this conversation, Mark talks about the profound impact of social media on society, politics and well-being, highlighting the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 where users became the product, leading to surveillance capitalism. This is an important listen.Social:Instagram           @evolvingleaderLinkedIn             The Evolving Leader PodcastBluesky           @evolvingleader.bsky.socialYouTube           @evolvingleader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

Back in 2020, we released a two-part conversation (S1 Ep15 and 16) with neuroscientist Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett. We’re long-time admirers of Lisa’s work and were thrilled that she agreed to join co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender to discuss her work on The Evolving Leader podcast. It’s also clear that Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work is a big hit with our listeners as four years after release these two episodes continue to sit at the top of our listener chart, so here we’ve decided to pull them together into a special extended episode.Lisa Feldman Barrett is profoundly changing our understanding of the brain and in particular, our emotions. Since the ancient philosophers, and into our last century of scientific endeavour, emotions have been seen as hard-wired responses to external stimuli, located in specific regions of the brain. Lisa’s work has over-turned this age-old model which shapes everything from our current beliefs about emotional intelligence to facial recognition software widely being deployed around the world.Beyond this extended conversation, you’ll find more of Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work in her two books, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (2020) and How Emotions are Made (2017), as well as hundreds of peer reviewed scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience.Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)Social:Instagram           @evolvingleaderLinkedIn             The Evolving Leader PodcastBluesky           @evolvingleader.bsky.socialYouTube           @evolvingleader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

This week on The Evolving Leader podcast, hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender spend an hour with Salim Ismail. In 2011, Salim Ismail co-wrote ‘Exponential Organizations’, a book that has since been widely read by CEOs who are looking for a new way to navigate uncertainty and embrace disruptive technologies and business models. In 2023 Salim and his co-authors updated the book and during this conversation he talks to Jean and Scott about ‘Exponential Organizations ExO 2.0’.Salim is also the founder and chairman of OpenExO which helps companies implement the ExO playbook. He is a serial entrepreneur, the Founding Executive Director of Singularity University and serves on the board of the XPRIZE Foundation, and all of that is really just scratching the surface as to the work that Salim Ismail is part of.Topics covered during this conversation include:Core Principles of Exponential OrganizationsThe Exponential Mind Map and Hyper ScalingChallenges and Successes in Adopting Exponential OrganizationsThe Role of Purpose in Exponential OrganizationsThe Impact of AI on OrganizationsNavigating the Unknown and Embracing TechnologyThe Future of Leadership and Institutional EvolutionReferenced during this episode:https://salimismail.com/ Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)Social:Instagram           @evolvingleaderLinkedIn             The Evolving Leader PodcastBluesky           @evolvingleader.bsky.socialYouTube           @evolvingleader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

During this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with Dr Dacher Kelter. Dacher is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. His pioneering research focuses on the cultural and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, beauty, power, social class and social inequality. He has over 200 scientific publications and has written several books, the latest of which is Awe - The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life. In this book, Dr. Keltner investigates the elusive emotion of awe - and presents incredible research on how the emotion of Awe can transform our brains and bodies, and how we can cultivate more experiences of awe in our everyday lives.Referenced during this episode:Greater Good In Action - https://ggia.berkeley.edu/Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender: Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)Social:Instagram           @evolvingleaderLinkedIn             The Evolving Leader PodcastTwitter               @Evolving_LeaderYouTube           @evolvingleader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

In this episode, we’re delighted to welcome Susie Alegre back to The Evolving Leader. Susie is a leading human rights barrister at the internationally renowned Garden Court Chambers. She has been a legal pioneer in digital human rights, in particular the impact of artificial intelligence on the human rights of freedom of thought and opinion and she is also Senior Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton.Artificial intelligence is starting to shape every aspect of our daily lives, from how we think to who we love, and in her latest book ‘Human Rights, Robot Wrongs, Being Human in the Age of AI’ Susie Alegre explores the ways in which artificial intelligence threatens our fundamental human rights – including the rights to life, liberty and fair trial; the right to private and family life; and the right to free expression – and how we protect those rights.This is an important listen for us all.Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)Social:Instagram           @evolvingleaderLinkedIn             The Evolving Leader PodcastTwitter               @Evolving_LeaderYouTube           @evolvingleader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

Have you ever wanted to travel through time and see what your life will be like in the future? While we want the best possible future for ourselves, we often fail to make decisions that would make that a reality. So why are so many of us so disconnected from our future selves?This week on The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to psychologist Professor Hal Hershfield. Hal is Professor of Marketing, Behavioural Decision Making, and Psychology at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and is committed to the work of helping people make better long-term decisions. In his 2023 book ‘Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today’ Hal explains that in our minds, our future selves often look like strangers. Many of us view the future as incredibly distant, making us more likely to opt for immediate gratification that disregards the health and wellbeing of ourselves in the years to come. He says that people who are able to connect with their future selves, however, are better able to balance living for today and planning for tomorrow.This is a fascinating listen.Referenced during this episode:Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better TodayOther reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)Social:Instagram           @evolvingleaderLinkedIn             The Evolving Leader PodcastTwitter               @Evolving_LeaderYouTube           @evolvingleader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

Are you feeling stuck? Finding your purpose changes everything.During this new episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-host Jean Gomes talks to self-confessed purpose nerd James Glover. James is the founder of The Excitable Soul, an organisation through which he and his team address the challenge that is helping people find their purpose. James is a World Champion athlete and a former Olympic performance coach, and after leaving elite sport he has worked all over the world with large organisations including Google, Microsoft and Sky helping them invest in their people and nurture a happier, stronger workforce. James is also the host of the Excitable Soul podcast (on which both Jean and Scott have been guests).  Referenced during this episode:The Excitable Soul - https://theexcitablesoul.com/ Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

Steve Rader is a leader in the thinking behind open innovation, open talent, and the future of work. In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, Steve joins Evolving Leader cohosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender to share how leaders can learn from his important work and use their learnings to solve complex problems. Steve tells us that open innovation and open talent are key strategies for organisations to stay competitive in a rapidly changing world.References from this episode:"Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI" by Ethan Mollick (April 2024)RapidMiner (https://altair.com/altair-rapidminer)Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)Social:Instagram           @evolvingleaderLinkedIn             The Evolving Leader PodcastTwitter               @Evolving_LeaderYouTube           @evolvingleader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

What happens when everything changes, when your core assumptions about your life and work seem no longer to hold true? A key responsibility of the leader is to be honest with themselves and others about anticipating, accepting and preparing for new realities while acknowledging that human beings often resist reality in ingenious and self deceiving ways.In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Sharath Jeevan O.B.E. about his work helping leaders confront inflection moments where the external environment poses a significant threat or opportunity to an organisation’s business model. Sharath has also written two books “Inflection: A Roadmap for Leaders at a Crossroads” (2024) and “Intrinsic: A Manifesto to Reignite our Inner Drive” (2021) and teaches leadership at both Oxford and Cambridge universities.Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender: Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)Social:Instagram           @evolvingleaderLinkedIn             The Evolving Leader PodcastTwitter               @Evolving_LeaderYouTube           @evolvingleader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team