The Evolving Leader

In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, Jean and Scott talk to Anja Lovén. Anja founded the Danish ngo Land of Hope in 2012, and is a human rights activist dedicated to protecting and rescuing children in Nigeria accused of being witches. She gained media attention when in 2016 a photo from one of her rescue actions went viral and later that year was named as the world’s most inspiring person (ahead of out-going US president Barack Obama and the pope). Land of Hope 0.00 Introduction3.04 Tell us about your background prior to starting Land of Hope10.35 What did you experience when you went to Africa?22.03 You became widely known when in 2016 you were photographed rescuing a small boy who you subsequently named Hope. How is Hope doing today?27.44 Tell us a little about ‘witch children’34.20 What personal risks do you encounter in communities where you might find yourself confronting fear and sometimes corruption? 37.36 Is the ultimate goal with the education reunification?43.44 What’s next for you?50.06 How do you deal with the trauma associated with some of the situations you find yourself confronted by?55.29 How can our listeners get involved with your organisation? 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 podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Steve Killelea. Steve is the founder and executive chairman of the global think tank the Institute for Economics and Peace and Steve’s funding and thought leadership behind the Institute have seen him recognised as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People on reducing the onset of armed violence.The Institute for Economics and PeacePeace in the Age of Chaos: The Best Solution for a Sustainable Future 0.00 Introduction2.57 Tell us your story. How did an IT entrepreneur find himself championing peace?4.57 Can you tell us about the paradigm shift that you are working to create.7.45 What are people’s biggest misconceptions about peace9.42 In your book you say that in the past peace may have been the domain of the altruistic, whereas now it’s everyone’s self-interest because peace is central to a safe and productive society. Can you tell us more about that? 10.47 In the book, you also say that most of our leaders are trapped in an early age, a kind of Darwinian race to complete, and that dominates how they think about international relationships. In our increasingly interconnected world, how should leaders be evolving?14.32 Tell us what your thinking is around the need for leaders to think at a systems level. 20.26 What would have to happen to for different organisations to integrate/un-silo?22.26 From a systems perspective, what was your analysis of the last five years, the increase in popularism, what happened at Capitol Hill etc? 27.23 When you look at the world through the index of the eight pillars of positive peace, which countries are most vulnerable to being destabilised at the moment?29.43 What are your thoughts or reactions to the formation of a world government?32.04 How has the US faired on the index over the last five years culminating in the attack on Capitol Hill?  35.22 How did your entrepreneurial background influence the way you conceptualised and manage the IEP and actually created the international peace index?39.11 Tell us a little bit about how you have developed yourself in relation to your own world view and the things that you do to sustain the level of energy that you must have to be driving all of this.49.09 How can our listeners get involved with the work that you’re doing?  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 podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Rob Murray. Rob is a co-founder and CEO of Transformed Leader and a leadership thinker who strives for a deep level of authenticity whilst at the same time being supremely pragmatic in the realities of organisational life. The Human Operating System. Recovering the Heart and Soul of Your Leadership (Jack Nicholson and Rob Murray, 2021) 0.00 Introduction2.34 Let’s start with your story. Tell us about the work that your organisation does, and what motivated you to start the business in the first place?6.16 What do you mean when you say that you were lonely with yourself? 7.39 What can this loss of identity be attributed to?11.09 So having had time to reflect on this, what was your first move?16.34 Exploring the relationship that we have with our partners, and the effect that this has on our leadership.29.16 How have these scenarios influenced the work that you’re doing today, your writing and your research?33.59 So if ‘how are you feeling?’ is a heart question, what is a soul question? What’s the difference?40.45 On this show we’re fascinated with emotions, not as this hard-wired thing but as a sense making mechanism. You’re currently doing some research in this area for your PhD, can you tell us a little about that? 44.25 What are the most prevalent emotions that people are running away from, avoiding or suppressing that are governing their behaviours? 49.40 You mention that showing weakness is counter cultural in many business settings, so many people feeling this way supress it resulting in resentment.53.09 Can we talk about anger, the emotion that is repressed in a lot of organisations, sometimes resulting in a feeling of false positivity. 57.22 Thinking through the lens of intentionality, of recovering the heart and soul of leadership, what is something specific that you could encourage our listeners with right now?  Social: Instagram           @evolvingleader LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast Twitter               @Evolving_LeaderThe 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

For years explaining exactly how our brains conjure subjective conscious experience has been described by cognitive scientists as ‘the hard problem’. In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Professor Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex whose book (Being You, Faber 2021) continues this exploration, proposing an idea of the human mind as a “highly evolved prediction machine”, rooted in the functions of the body and “constantly hallucinating the world and the self” to create reality. 0.00 Introduction2.11 Let’s start with what consciousness is, and how your approach is about getting to the subjective experience3.49 Until recently consciousness studies were held outside of science and more in the realms of philosophy. What’s changed to allow you to break down the unfathomable nature of the topic. 7.00 What drew you into this as a field of study?8.30 Having read ‘Being You’, it’s clear that you take a multi-disciplinary approach to your studies. As a team, how are you successfully approaching this in terms of moving outside of the individual silos of thought.10.15 You provide a really helpful picture of neuroscience and how it’s shifted as the metaphor of the brain as a computer to a prediction machine. Can you give our listeners a sense of how this helps to construct our sense of reality.13.57 In ‘Being You’, you also provide an introduction to Bayesian inference and how our brain is performing this form of abductive reasoning unconsciously. Can we start with some basic definitions of the different types of reasoning and why Bayes has been such an influence in your work.22.33  Can you tell us about your experience of LSD micro dosing, what was it like and why were you doing it?25.36 What were you trying to discover with your hallucination machine?28.26 You talk about consciousness as a construct, and that psychedelic experience gives evidence to that. Could it be argued that the psychedelic experience is actually a disruption to what’s going on?30.58 Could you help me understand the free energy principle.36.26 How are you seeing your work influencing our thinking on the development of AI?45.04 Given everything that you have discovered and that you are continuing to work on, what does all of this tell us about being human that the people taking leadership roles in the world need to know about themselves?48.51 What are the next frontiers for your research?53.22 As exponential computing power and imaging continues to evolve over the next decade, what do you think you might be able to do then that you can’t now?57.55 Do you think we need more multi-disciplinary approaches to exploring consciousness, or is that happening?60.25 Who is most inspiring you as a thinker?  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, co-hosts Scott Allender and Jean Gomes talk to Monika Bielskyte. Monika is a futurist, VR and AR expert, internationally renowned public speaker and founder of the bleeding edge edutainment platform Protopia Futures, designed to explore visions of radically hopeful & inclusive futures centering Queerness, Indigeneity, Disability & previously marginalized cultural perspectives.Protopia Futures Framework0.00 Introduction2.14 Tell us about your life11.11  In one of your works you say that mainstream futurist thinking tends to extrapolate from the status quo. Can you lead us through this problem and into a better understanding of futurist thinking.19.55 You’ve been speaking about how some people can be dismissive or even work to destroy the thing that runs contrary to the view that they hold and the ideal that they want. Do you see that at all, has it been a response that you’ve seen from some people during the pandemic?31.01 What is Protopia and how does it help us think about the future differently?42.56 Referring back to the Protopia Futures framework, as you say that was a collaborative effort and collaborations between a large group of clever people with strong opinions can be difficult. So how does that work in your world and how do you get this group of people to arrive at a form of words that they can back?     Social: Instagram           @evolvingleader LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast Twitter               @Evolving_LeaderThe 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

“It’s clear that we have a massive problem in the way that we run our biggest and most powerful organisations.”Listen as co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Philip Clarke, founder and CEO of strategic innovation consultancy Hunch, podcast host and author, about the eight pioneer principles needed to change the world.Pioneers Wanted: ' A manifesto for radically ambitious leadership '0.00 Introduction1.56 How do you help leaders move away from incremental thinking?7.28 What are the costs and implications from maintaining the status quo?14.26 How do people make the leap from incremental thinking to being a pioneer who drives real growth?22.07 Can you give us a summary of the eight pioneer principles that you describe in your book?32.15 Two of the pioneering principles seem connected more to one’s mindset. Can you tell us a little more about resilience and what an appropriate level of expectation might be as a leader?41.09 Do you think the next generations are inherently more pioneering?49.26 What has been the most impressive or unexpected shift from pioneers during the Covid pandemic?52.39 Which of your podcast episodes would you recommend to a new listener?  Social: Instagram           @evolvingleader LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast Twitter               @Evolving_LeaderThe 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

New for season 3, we’re excited to release this first Under the Hood episode. Our intention is that these monthly discussions (which we’ll release alongside our regular weekly Evolving Leader episodes) will allow co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender additional airtime to dive a little deeper into many of the fascinating topics that they have explored with our guests since launching the podcast way back in September 2020.During this episode, Jean and Scott focus on discussions that they enjoyed with guests from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and explore the emerging understanding of emotion and how that understanding can help leaders evolve.  Social: Instagram           @evolvingleader LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast Twitter               @Evolving_LeaderThe 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, Jean talks to English rugby international Leanne Infante (née Riley) about what she’s learnt as a leader during her career both on and off the pitch. Leanne’s debut in the England squad was against South Africa in 2013 and she has since been central to England’s success including winning the Six Nations Grand Slam in 2019.0.00 Introduction0.41 How has the profile of women’s rugby developed during your career to date?3.47 Give us some background to your career and career highlights5.36 How has the game changed?9.08 Tell us a little bit about the mindset of dealing with the setbacks, refusals, and uncertainty that you have faced.12.33 How do you deal with the emotion (in the moment) that could be triggered when facing a setback? What’s your process for reframing those events?14.58 What’s the mental process that allows you to view an individual as an opponent on the club rugby pitch and then switch to that same person being an ally in the international squad?17.41 As scrum half, part of your role on the pitch is to co-ordinate the backs and the forwards. Talk a little bit about your role as a leader when co-ordinating those two elements within the team.20.40 In addition to your technical excellence on the pitch and your obvious high levels of fitness and resilience, you also display a real ability to sense what’s happening in the game and as a result you often adapt your role taking it beyond what could be described as the text book scrum half. Is this ability to lean into the detail one minute and then pull back and make sense of what’s going on a natural thing or have you developed that? 24.32 Who has inspired you from a leadership perspective?27.07 Both your profile and the profile of women’s rugby are growing and alongside that you have to deal with the ever-present social media that comments when things go well and also not so well. How does that play out in your life?30.37 What does the future hold for the sport of woman’s rugby and also what part would you like to play in that?34.15 Tell us about the challenges that you’re facing having recently moved from Saracens to the ambitious but potentially less high profile Bristol Bears.38.04 Let’s talk about 2022 and the world cup. What are you most looking forward to and what are going to be the biggest challenges?Social: Instagram           @evolvingleader LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast Twitter               @Evolving_LeaderThe 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

Talking to Jean and Scott this week is Steve Ingham, one of the world’s most successful performance scientists. Steve has worked with over one thousand elite athletes, and over 200 of those (including Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent) have gone on to achieve World or Olympic medal success.Steve is author of the bestselling book ‘How to Support a Champion: The art of applying science to the elite athlete’. 0’00 Introduction3.06 Background, career to date.7.27 Can you tell us how you turned around the fortune of the British Olympic rowing team in a period of just 18 months.14.08 What led you to focus on rest and renewal when working with those athletes?18.49 Talk a little about what you’ve had to do in the past when faced with a coach who might not appreciate the value that your renewal approach brings.22.37 Can you give us your thoughts around how the cumulative effect of making marginal gains over time can result in very significant advantages.29.29 Often your work involves a deep dive in to the human needs and motivations of people in an organisation, and this in turn challenges businesses to think differently about how they deliver personal and organisational performance. What does this look like in an organisational setting?34.07 When working with teams, your work will often include a focus on how members of the team engage with each other, as well as the importance of how you turn up, the trust, empathy and collective accountability. What impact has that had on you personally in terms of self-awareness and the way in which you have to think about setting your intent when working with others?40.51 What practical advice would you give to a leader around prioritising their own recovery?47.11 What are your thoughts about the future? What are we going to be hearing about in the area of performance development in the coming years?  Social: Instagram           @evolvingleader LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast Twitter               @Evolving_LeaderThe 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, co-hosts Scott Allender and Jean Gomes talk to RJ Cordes. RJ is a research fellow at (American think tank) the Atlantic Council, and his research includes work around the fields of sensemaking and knowledge management. However, it feels like we may have just scratched the surface during our hour with polymath RJ Cordes - if you’d like a broader picture of RJ’s extensive research interests, you’ll find that on his personal website.  'Making sense of sensemaking' (Atlantic Council, 2020)0’00 Introduction2.36 Could you start by giving us some insight into your background, and also how you define sense making.10.15 Your recently published paper ‘Making sense of sense making’ is full of useful insights that extend beyond Covid. What compelled you to write that paper, and could you talk us through some of the central take-aways.20’04  Could you expand on what happens cognitively in your observation when people are no longer able to make sense of something.28’03 What advice would you give someone trying to navigate division and uncertainty?34’31 In a world where so many of us get information from highly curated feeds, what are the implications for leaders (thinking specifically about the future of work and knowledge transfer between teams)?40’50 Could you share some of your findings from your research into the relationship between government funding and innovation.42’42 In your opinion, what does the next decade hold in terms of the socio economic outlook? Social: Instagram           @evolvingleader LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast Twitter               @Evolving_LeaderThe 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