The Evolving Leader

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 Introduction1.20 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?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.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

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 Introduction2.28 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 KashdanSocial: 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.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

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 Introduction3.02 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 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.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

Amy Herman, a lawyer and art historian, teaches leaders how to improve their visual intelligence. She helps them recognize biases and make better decisions by analyzing paintings, sculpture, and photography. The podcast explores the concept of visual intelligence and its importance, stepping out of comfort zones, distinguishing thinking from seeing, and the power of the pertinent negative. Amy Herman also shares advice on finding beauty in repetition.

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 Introduction2.33 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 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.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

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 Introduction1.48 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 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.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

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 Introduction2.40 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 2Social: 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.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

“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 Introduction2.46 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. 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.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

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 Introduction2.29 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. Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

"My purpose is simple; I want to create a world where everybody in every workplace feels they genuinely have the choice to put up their hand and ask for help when they are suffering from mental ill health" (Geoff McDonald, LinkedIn Profile).This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, host Scott Allender talks to Geoff McDonald. Former Global VP of HR at Unilever, Geoff is now a speaker and a business transformation consultant who inspires leaders to embrace mental health and empower organisations to put purpose at their core and play their positive role in the world.Listen as Geoff shares his very personal inspiring journey.https://geoffmcdonald.co.uk/https://www.mindsatworkmovement.com/The acronym that Geoff describes:CAN DOConnectionActiveBeing Nice to somebody every dayDiscoverObserve  0.00 Introduction1.25 Could you start by telling us about the event that changed the course of your life?5.50 I’d like to understand more about your first anxiety fuelled panic attack, and the support that you received.14.17 What can leaders do with their teams to normalise the mental health conversation?26.25 Could you tell us about your charity Minds At Work?31.23 What are your thoughts on the accountability and responsibility that social networks are taking around the mental health of their users?36.33 How can parents help their children with regard to their mental health and the external pressures that they face? 39.07 How can people who are listening to this podcast get more connected with their inner experience before their bodies sound the alarm?   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.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team