Being Human: Recent Episodes
Richard Atherton
Being Human is for people who want go deep on what it means to be a human making a difference. We’ll discover how to be better humans at work and in life. We’ll explore leadership, relationships and how to make changes in ourselves and our environments. Nothing will be off limits. Welcome.
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What if what’s really wearing you out isn’t your to-do list, but the hidden burden of everything your mind is juggling at once?
In this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton talks with Dr. Liane Davey, an organisational psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and co-founder of 3COze Inc. Liane has spent more than thirty years studying what helps teams succeed and what causes them to quietly fall apart. Her new book, Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work, began with a moment on stage when someone in the audience challenged the idea that workload was the main problem. Liane paused during her talk and said for the first time, "It's not the workload that's killing us — it's the thought load." That line caught the room and launched the idea.
Thoughtload is the hidden cost that affects how you perform and show up at work. It comes from growing mental demands, an emotionally unsettled world that follows you into the office, and the idea that you shouldn’t take time to recharge.
We talk:
- Why "priorities" had no plural
- The invisible tax on your focus
- Emotions vs. feelings at work
- Energy as a renewable resource
- The 15-minute overwhelm fix
Links:
Liane Davey
Thoughtload (book + resources)
Liane on LinkedIn
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if the movement meant to free women has actually made them less happy, and people have struggled to discuss it?
In this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton talks with Carrie Gress, a philosopher, co-founder of The Theology of Home, and author of eleven books, including The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us. Carrie, who has a PhD in philosophy, originally planned to write a short chapter on first-wave feminism. Instead, she spent four years discovering how its roots are closely linked to socialism, the occult, and a view of womanhood shaped more by envy than by freedom.
She links Mary Wollstonecraft's call for equality to the consciousness-raising methods used in Mao's China, revealing a history that is new to many people. Her argument is not against women. Instead, she argues for restoring what feminism has quietly removed: the unique strengths women bring to families, workplaces, and culture when they embrace their own identity.
We discuss:
- The hidden origins of feminism
- Why women are less happy now
- Motherhood as feature, not flaw
- The false binary no one questions
- What men really love about women
Links:
Carrie Gress / The Theology of Home
The End of Woman (Book)
Carrie’s Substack
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Have you ever thought that the hardest things you’ve faced might actually be preparing you for the life you’re meant to live?
In this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton talks with Ali Mahlodji, CEO of futureOne, keynote speaker, five-time author, and guest lecturer at the University of Cambridge.
As a toddler, Ali found himself in a refugee camp in Austria. At 13 he started stuttering and didn’t stop until he was 22. He left school early, worked more than 40 jobs ranging from floor cleaner to carpenter, and taught himself software engineering using library books. After 70 application letters to OG Silicon Valley giant, Sun Microsystems, Ali lands himself his first tech role. What made the difference for him was something his mother did every day, no matter how tough things got: she told him she loved him just as he was. Not for his grades or achievements, but simply for being himself. Now, through futureOne’s Heroes programme, he helps people in 40 countries break free from old patterns. In this conversation, he shares why, with AI on the rise, doing this inner work is more important than ever.
We discuss:
- Escaping Iran aged 2
- Dealing with his father's mental breakdown
- Getting his break in Tech
- Building a start-up and exiting
- Recovering from burnout and building futureOne
Links:
Ali's Website
futureOne
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if drinking the same milkshake could make you gain or lose weight, just based on what you believe about it? The same idea could also affect your stress, how you age, and your relationships.
In this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton talks with David Robson, a science writer and author of The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life and The Laws of Connection. David used his mind training approach to go from an average student to getting in to Cambridge University to study mathematics. He is now a respected science journalist in the UK, writing for the BBC, The Guardian, and New Scientist. His work explores how our beliefs not only shape our actions but also affect our cortisol levels and our health.
For example, just having a positive view of ageing can add 7.5 years to your life. David also challenges the idea that willpower runs out as the day goes on, showing that what we believe about self-control is more important than the time of day. He explains why self-compassion is the key to lasting performance, backed by scientific evidence.
We discuss:
- The art of being a "Beautiful Mess"
- How to rapidly build rapport
- It's not just about listening to them
- Why they might like you more than you think
- How to eat decadently and lose weight
Links:
David’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if the most important leadership skill has nothing to do with leading others and everything to do with the person you're choosing to become?
In this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton is joined by Andrew Bryant, worldwide self-leadership thought leader, keynote speaker, and author of five books, including Potential-ize: How Leaders Unlock Human Potential in the Age of AI.
Andrew trained as a physiotherapist in London in the early eighties, working with athletes, football players, and even a ballet company, learning how the body performs under pressure. But what he was really learning was that performance lives or dies in the narrative, our internal dialogue, that we tell ourselves in the moments that matter. That insight carried him from sports clinics to boardrooms across 40 countries, and ultimately into a framework for self-leadership that treats intentionality, identity, and personal agency as the foundation on which everything else is built. When a cancer scare during lockdown brought him face-to-face with his own mortality, the philosophy he'd spent decades teaching became the philosophy that carried him through.
We discuss:
- Self-leadership as daily practice
- Identity shifts that transform everything
- The IGNITE framework explained
- AI efficiency vs human effectiveness
- The Pygmalion Effect at work
Links:
Andrew’s Website
Potential-ize - The Book
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What to make of a man who designed Sweden's mining infrastructure, mapped the human brain, and then spent the last 30 years of his life in daily conversation with the dead? Could Emanuel Swedenborg be the greatest 18th century thinker you've never heard of?
In this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton is joined by Curtis Childs, producer and director of Off the Left Eye, a YouTube channel approaching 2,000 videos on the life and teachings of Swedenborg.
After spending 30 years as one of Sweden's greatest scientists, inventors and anatomists, at 53 he started having what we would now call near-death experiences, except he appeared to be able to slip in and out of these states with ease. He documented these across 30 volumes, work that would go on to influence Carl Jung, and quite possibly the 12-step programme.
Curtis came to Swedenborg not as a scholar but as someone in crisis, searching for a model of consciousness that made sense of the chaos inside his own mind. This conversation explores what that model offers people navigating mental health challenges and interior growth, and those seeking potential answers to what lies beyond.
We discuss:
- How Swedenborg eased Curtis’ depression
- How the Enlightenment and Christianity can threaten spiritual growth
- The real meaning of Heaven and Hell
- Sorting things out in the After Life
- The Self as Selector
Links:
Off the Left Eye
Curtis' Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Richard is joined by Rupert Brown, a fractional Chief Transformation Officer.
In January 2005, Rupert was driving down a motorway when he heard on the radio that Procter & Gamble had just bought his company, Gillette, for $57 billion. Nobody had thought to tell the employees first, and so started Rupert’s quest to figure out how to do change well.
Rupert has since penned Lost in Transformation: Discover the Leadership Blind Spots Derailing Change, detailing his time at Gillette and elsewhere. He has over 30 years of HR experience across some of the world's most complex organisations.
Rupert’s experiences taught him something most change stalls because leaders can't see their own blind spots: the arbitrary deadlines that crush emotional processing, the flattery that makes us say yes without thinking, the inner voice we never make time to hear. We dive into the wisdom gained from Rupert’s interviews with over 30 executives as well as his own formidable track record.
We discuss:
- Five blind spots derailing change
- Kairos vs Kronos timing
- Why empathy disappears at work
- Three levels of resistance explained
- Leading with integrity under pressure
Links:
Rupert’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Most of us know that modern tech is hijacking our nervous system at some level, and, if you’re anything like me, even after trying to get a lot of ‘tech hygiene’ right, you’re still feeling some of the effects.
On this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton is joined by Justin Hai, an award-winning British entrepreneur and author of the international bestseller, Stress Nation: Escape the Technology Trap and Eliminate Stress. Justin started his work in health in the biotech skincare industry. His company, Alastin, which specialises in regenerative skincare with peptides and growth hormones, was sold to Galderma in 2022 for over a billion dollars. But in the process of his research, Justin stumbled upon something he called "the master hormone": cortisol.
Justin discovered that increased levels of cortisol suppress melatonin, leading to sleep deprivation, which stops the body from producing the necessary hormones – and once this cycle keeps going, things start falling apart. Weight gain, brain fog, poor libido, mood swings, and exhaustion. Not as individual issues to deal with, but all manifestations of an underlying problem are being exacerbated each year due to technology.
We discuss:
- Why cortisol is the master hormone and how it controls everything
- How the modern world removed your body's natural off switch
- Why 95% of the supplements you're taking are destroyed in your stomach
- Men go through menopause too — and most have no idea
- Simple daily habits that bring cortisol down and sleep quality up
Links:
Stress Nation - The Book
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if your healing journey that took you years could have taken months and the tool to get there is growing in the Colombian jungle?
In this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton is joined by Sam Believ, marine engineer and founder of Lawayra, an ayahuasca healing retreat in the Colombian countryside. Born in the Soviet Union and raised in post-independence Latvia, Sam grew up in a household shaped by intergenerational trauma: alcoholic, abusive father, an emotionally unavailable mother, and a culture where emotions were a sign of weakness. He channelled everything into his engineering career, built the life he was supposed to want, and found himself empty.
After quitting his job and travelling South America, Sam discovered ayahuasca in Colombia. Initially it was out of curiosity, he then rediscovered it in a crisis. When the lockdowns forced him to stop for the first time in his life, everything he had suppressed caught up with him. A ceremony gave him both his healing and his purpose. He never left.
Today Sam has guided close to 3,000 people through ceremonies at LaWayra, where the mission is simple: connect, heal, grow.
We discuss:
- Surviving Soviet childhood trauma and escaping intergenerational pain
- Why achieving the "right" life left him completely empty
- What actually happens inside an ayahuasca ceremony
- Therapy vs ayahuasca
- Addressing abuse by shamans
Links:
LaWayra Retreats
Sam's Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if your body could tell you exactly where you're out of balance—before it shows up as illness or burnout?
In this episode, Richard sits down with Daniel Zavrel, co-founder of ConsciouzScan, to explore a cutting-edge, powerful technology that claims to map your body and mind through your energy field.
From his early career in consulting at Accenture, to his shift into spirituality and human performance, Daniel shares how this technology is being used with elite athletes, executives and individuals seeking deeper awareness.
Daniel performs a full body scan on Richard to reveal how this technology works.
Together, they explore:
- How one super simple 5-minute yoga technique transformed one CEO’s health
- How stress actually shows up in the body
- The link between focus, emotion and energy
- Why high performers often miss the real source of their exhaustion
- And what it means to “listen” to your body at a deeper level
Whether you’re sceptical or curious, this conversation will challenge how you think about health, performance and consciousness.
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▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if many chronic symptoms - pain, IBS, migraines, fatigue, insomnia - aren’t caused by damage in the body, but by patterns in the brain?
In this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton speaks with Nora Rodden, CEO and co-founder of the health app Nervana. After being hit by a car during university, Nora developed chronic back pain that persisted for five years despite countless treatments and no obvious lasting damage in her body. Later, severe digestive issues and insomnia followed.
Everything changed when she joined a clinical trial exploring neuroplastic pain, the idea that the brain can learn and sustain physical symptoms long after an injury has healed.
Through mind-body techniques including journaling, somatic awareness and visualisation, Nora eliminated her pain and restored her sleep.
Her experience led her to build Nervana, an AI-guided program designed to help people retrain their brain-body response and recover from chronic symptoms.
We discuss:
- Facing the triple whammy of chronic pain, GI symptoms and insomnia
- The "medical" trial that changed her life
- The drug-free approach that cured her symptoms in 3 months
- Her ground-breaking providing relief from pain
- Should Advil carry a warning?
Links:
Nervana App
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Why do the same painful patterns keep repeating in our lives, in love, work, and relationships?
In this episode of Being Human, Richard Atherton is joined by New York Times Best Selling Author Katherine Woodward Thomas. Katherine originated the concept of Conscious Uncoupling through her book of the same name. She’s the author of the huge hit Calling in The One and has just released What's True About You.
Katherine shares how the stories we developed in childhood, which she calls “source fracture stories,” quietly shape our adult lives, relationships, and future possibilities. We think these are just “who we are,” but what if these are actually false stories developed way before we had the capacity to truly understand our lives?
We discuss:
- The real point of manifestation (it's not the result)
- When visiting the past is valuable and when it's not
- Who is really the toxic one in your relationship?
- What therapy gets wrong
- The path forward for a merging of therapy and coaching
Links:
Katherine’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Is hope naïve or is it the missing ingredient in modern leadership?
In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Jen Fisher, former Chief Wellbeing Officer at Deloitte and author of Hope Is the Strategy. After experiencing severe burnout herself, Jen discovered that hope isn’t wishful thinking — it’s a measurable, actionable skill grounded in research.
We explore why burnout may actually be a symptom of hopelessness, how leaders unintentionally kill hope through language and behaviour, and why cultivating agency, multiple pathways, and honest truth-telling transforms culture. Jen shares practical tools, including hope audits, hope spotting, and the power of vulnerability in leadership.
We discuss:
- Burnout as a crisis of hopelessness
- What real hope actually means
- Leadership language that builds or kills hope
- Practical tools to cultivate hopeful cultures
Links:
Jen’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What happens when trust breaks down in relationships, in leadership, in organisations?
In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Dennis and Michelle Reina, founders of the Reina Trust Building® Institute and authors of Trust & Betrayal in the Workplace. Drawing on decades of research and lived experience, they explain why trust is far more fragile than most leaders realise, and why rebuilding it requires courage, accountability, and choice.
We explore the three dimensions of trust, how victimhood traps us in blame, and why trust repair is not about forgetting but about responding differently. This is a deeply human conversation about conflict, repair, and responsibility, relevant to leaders, partners, and anyone navigating broken expectations.
We discuss:
- Growing up with an alcoholic father
- Why trust is fragile
- The anatomy of betrayal
- Victimhood vs responsibility
- Practical steps to rebuild trust
Links:
Reina Trust Building
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if creativity isn’t a talent for the few, but the defining quality of being human?
In this episode of Being Human, I’m joined by Fredrik Haren, global creativity expert, speaker, and author of The World of Creativity. Fredrik has spent decades travelling the world studying where ideas come from and why modern organisations and education systems so often crush creative thinking.
We explore why creativity has little to do with confidence, why having ideas brings profound joy, and how each of us carries an “inner theme”: a unique perspective the world needs.
If you’re someone who sees yourself as ‘not creative’, or if you struggle to get your creativity flowing, this episode is a must-watch.
We explore:
- How we don’t create for others
- Why creativity defines humanity
- How the get the ideas flowing
- The joy of having ideas
- Discovering your ‘inner theme’
Links:
Fredrik’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What actually happens when the sense of “self” disappears — and does it make you wiser?
In this episode of Being Human, I’m joined by Ken Wilber, one of the most influential philosophers of human development and the founder of Integral Theory, something which played a big role in my own intellectual development. Ken shares his early awakening experience, in which he experienced a complete dissolution of the separate self, and explains why spiritual awakening alone does not equal psychological maturity or ethical wisdom.
We explore the crucial distinction between waking up and growing up. And why this explains how many spiritual gurus and their communities can become so toxic. Drawing on decades of scholarship, meditation, and systems thinking, Ken offers a comprehensive framework for understanding consciousness and development. This helps us to appreciate the multiple vectors and methods of human expansion.
We explore:
- What happens when the self dissolves
- Waking up vs growing up
- Stages of human development
- Why maturity still matters
Links:
Ken’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if great leadership requires more than IQ and EQ? In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Dr. Yosi Amram, psychologist, executive coach, and pioneer in developing our understanding of Spiritual Intelligence (SQ). Yosi offers a research-backed framework for translating spiritual values into practical action. Drawing on extensive empirical studies, Yosi shows how SQ predicts leadership effectiveness and personal well-being in ways traditional models miss.
And Yosi is not speaking only as an academic. Yosi held the record for the fastest promotion to captain in the history of his regiment in the Israeli Air Force. He has taken two tech start-ups to IPO. He’s a man who knows how to lead.
We explore how to make spirituality accessible without dogma, how SQ helps leaders navigate complexity and suffering, and why meaning, purpose, and inspiration are no longer optional in modern work. Yosi also shares principles from his clinical and executive coaching work on how to lead with integrity, compassion, and presence.
We explore:
- What SQ actually is
- Spirit → action translation
- Leadership + meaning + purpose
- Beyond IQ and EQ
- His recommendations for developing SQ
Links:
Yosi’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Is AI about to take over knowledge work? And what does that mean for the rest of us?
In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Alastair Moore, AI strategist and co-founder of ventures helping organisations navigate the machine intelligence revolution. Alastair argues that we’ve already crossed a threshold: AI isn’t just assisting knowledge workers — it’s now performing tasks at the frontier of research, science, and complex problem-solving.
We explore how large models are reshaping entire categories of white-collar work, why organisations are unprepared for the acceleration curve, and what skills will matter in a world where cognition becomes a shared capability between humans and machines. This is a grounded, practical, and sometimes unsettling conversation about the next decade of work.
We discuss:
- AI at the scientific frontier
- Automation of knowledge work
- Human–machine complementarities
- Skills for the post-GPT economy
Links:
DeepFlow - the company co-founded by Alastair
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Can energy healing be measured? And if so, what does it mean for medicine?
In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Dr. Shamini Jain, founder of the Consciousness and Healing Initiative (CHI) and one of the leading scientific voices bridging mind-body medicine and biofield science. Drawing on controlled laboratory studies on cells, tumors, animals, and humans, Dr. Jain explains why the evidence for biofield mechanisms can no longer be dismissed as placebo or wishful thinking.
We explore how ancient healing practices map onto modern physics, why the biomedical model struggles with subtle energy, and what a paradigm shift in healthcare could look like. This conversation sits at the frontier where science, spirit, and healing converge.
We discuss:
- Evidence beyond placebo
- What “biofield” actually means
- Cancer and cell line studies
- Why medicine must evolve
Links:
Dr. Jain’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if love isn’t just an emotion — but the deepest truth of reality itself?
In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Dr. Stephen G. Post — bioethicist, medical humanities professor, and founder of the Institute for Research on Pure Unlimited Love. Drawing on decades of work in medicine, neuroscience, spirituality, and ethics, Stephen explores love as a lived practice, not a vague ideal.
Stephen shares extraordinary stories from medicine, caregiving, near-death research, and neuroscience, including a striking insight: pure unlimited love may be the first thing we encounter when life ends. We explore why modern education and culture often strip meaning from life, how service transforms suffering, and what it means to live aligned with a deeper calling.
A profound conversation about love, purpose, and what truly matters.
We explore:
- Following your calling
- All are suffering
- Love tough vs the 'carefrontation'
- Addressing the Nature Deficit Disorder
- Pure unlimited love in the workplace
Links:
The Institute for Research on Pure Unlimited Love
Stephen’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Is modern education preparing us for the world we’re actually living in? Or is it accelerating our collapse? In this episode of Being Human, I’m joined by Jim Garrison, founder of Ubiquity University, to explore why today’s education system may be failing humanity at the deepest level.
Jim argues that Western education prioritises left-brain development: memorisation, analysis and knowledge acquisition, while neglecting ethics, inner growth, and wisdom. Drawing on philosophy, systems thinking, and decades of institutional leadership, he explains how this imbalance fuels ecological destruction, political instability, and moral drift. We explore what a new educational paradigm could look like. It includes somatic, creative, and experiential learning, along with the development of our rationality. Ultimately, it focuses on pursuing the good, the beautiful and the true.
We discuss:
- Why memorisation replaces wisdom
- Education’s role in global crises
- The loss of ethics and values
- What transformative learning requires
Jim is a brilliant orator and true pioneer of a new educational paradigm.
Links:
Uniquity University
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What happens when a high-flying executive loses himself in the pursuit of success? Breaking down in a bar with his CEO became the turning point for rebuilding his entire leadership philosophy on compassion? In this episode, Nigel Kilpatrick shares his remarkable journey from burnout, toxicity, and emotional collapse to becoming a leading voice for compassionate leadership.
Nigel reveals how confronting his own behaviour and facing multiple health crises reshaped his understanding of work, responsibility, and what people truly need from leaders today. He explains why compassion is not “soft,” but a strategic and measurable foundation for performance, culture, and wellbeing. He shares why organisations that ignore it risk losing both their people and their purpose.
We dive into his book The Ten Traits of a Compassionate Leader, his creation of the Compassion Exchange, and his mission to transform workplace culture from fear-driven to human-centred.
We cover:
- From toxic leadership to self-healing
- Compassion as a business strategy
- Why empathy alone isn’t enough
- Building cultures rooted in trust and honesty
Links:
The Ten Traits of a Compassionate Leader - The Book
The Compassion Exchange
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What does it really mean to live in balance — not by escaping pain, but by transforming how we meet it? In this episode of Being Human, filmmaker and Tai Chi teacher George Thompson shares his journey from anxiety, self-doubt, and overthinking to presence, spaciousness, and embodied awareness. After travelling to the Wudang Mountains in China to study Tai Chi and Daoist philosophy, George discovered a radical shift: “To hurt is to be human. Balance is possible. Practice is the path.”
We explore how ancient wisdom meets modern life, and how spirituality becomes actionable, grounded, and deeply human.
We cover:
- Turning up at the wrong temple
- Scrolling Reddit on the Sacred Mountain
- Materialism vs dualism vs panpsychism
- The role of compassion and connection in leadership
Oh, to have so much wisdom so early in life! George is a treat.
Links:
George’s Website
Taoist Wellness Online
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if your identity is far bigger than your thoughts, your history, or your body?
In this episode of Being Human, I sit down with Christy Whitman — New York Times bestselling author, transformational coach, and teacher of the Seven Universal Laws. Christy shares her core insight that we are not the ‘meat suit’ we inhabit, but energetic beings expressing light, intuition, and divine intelligence.
Christy is the embodiment of an abundant spirit. She has very evidently ‘done the work’ to transform divorce and debt to transform herself into the powerhouse she is today.
We discuss:
- How to shift from victim consciousness into deliberate creation
- How frequency shapes every result in our lives
- Practical tools to shift our energy in the moment
Links:
Christy’s Website
A powerful conversation about identity, energy, and the creative force within each of us.
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Is telepathy real — and can it be proven scientifically?
And what does it mean for our understanding of consciousness?
In this episode of Being Human, we speak with Dr. Diane Hennacy, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, former Johns Hopkins faculty member, and author of The ESP Enigma. Diane has spent years rigorously testing individuals — including autistic savants — who appear to demonstrate astonishing telepathic abilities.
We explore why she believes consciousness is not produced by the brain but decoded by it, and what this means for our understanding of what it is to be human.
Diane is hugely entertaining in this profound conversation linking neuroscience, intuition, and human potential.
We explore:
- Early experiences with extrasensory perception
- First meeting a telepathic autistic child
- Finding fame with The Telepathy Tapes and plans for even more sophisticated experiments
- Implications for society
- What is consciousness and can AI develop it?
Links:
Diane’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if magic were real — and science could prove it?
In this week’s episode, I speak with Dr. Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and author of The Conscious Universe and Real Magic. For more than forty years, Dean has studied telepathy, precognition, and mind–matter interaction under rigorous laboratory conditions. From his time in the U.S. government’s secret psychic research program to his pioneering experiments at IONS, he has gathered remarkable evidence that consciousness can influence the physical world.
We explore what quantum physics may reveal about psychic phenomena, why materialism is no longer enough to explain the mind, and how “real magic” might simply be the science of tomorrow. A fascinating conversation about belief, evidence, and the hidden potential of human consciousness.
We explore:
- His role in US psychic espionage
- Manipulating the future
- "Changing the past"
- Practical exercises for developing your magical skills
- The extraordinarily strong evidence that psychic phenomena are real
Links:
The Institute of Noetic Sciences
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Can human consciousness extend beyond our brains?
For more than two decades, this week’s guest, Roger Nelson, founder of The Global Consciousness Project, has been exploring exactly that question. From a network of random-number generators placed across the planet, Roger and his team have gathered evidence suggesting that when millions of people share emotion — in moments of tragedy, joy, or global focus — the fabric of our existence becomes more ordered.
Roger explains how these subtle patterns may reveal a deep interconnectedness in human awareness — a kind of worldwide mind that responds when our hearts and attention align. We discuss the origins of the project at Princeton’s PEAR Lab, the surprising results from world events such as 9/11, and what this research might mean for the future of consciousness studies.
Roger is a rigorous scientist and an exemplar of the open-sceptic approach to life.
We explore:
- First proof that mind extends beyond the brain
- Can we really affect the past?
- 9/11 and the impact on global consciousness
- A three-in-a-trillion chance that we’re not all connected
- The noosphere - the next step for human evolution
Links:
The Global Consciousness Project
Connected: The Emergence of Global Consciousness - The Book
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What really happens when we die?
In this week’s episode, I speak with Dr. Raymond Moody, pioneering psychiatrist and author of the classic Life After Life. The man who coined the term Near Death Experience or NDE..
Across every culture and background, people who were pronounced dead and revived describe the same extraordinary scenes: a radiant light, a feeling of profound peace, reunions with loved ones, and a sense that death is not an ending but a beautiful transition.
Dr. Moody reflects on five decades of research that have transformed his understanding of consciousness. Once a skeptic, he now believes that something continues beyond the body and that these experiences hold vital lessons for how we live, love, and face our own mortality.
He’s also a very funny guy!
We explore:
- His first examination of an NDE
- Why we must now accept that consciousness is not simply biochemical
- Connection to his own grandma beyond the grave
- Appreciating nonsense
- The coming consciousness revolution
Links:
Dr.Moody’s Website
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What if telepathy isn’t a rare gift, but a skill anyone can learn?
In this episode of Being Human, I sit down with Ditte Young - family therapist, author, and internationally renowned animal communicator. Ditte shares her extraordinary journey from working in Danish television to becoming a trusted voice for both humans and animals. She explains how she teaches telepathy, why 100% of her students succeed, and what animals reveal about love, presence, and our polluted world.
If you’re already sold on people having these abilities, you’ll love Ditte’s story. If you’re sceptical about this stuff and think it’s all woo-woo nonsense, this episode might just give you pause to think again.
We explore:
- Teaching telepathy
- How animals mirror their owners’ emotions and health issues
- Battling scepticism, direct evidence, and practice
- Enhancing leadership through trusting intuition and self-belief
- How her life as the mother of Philip, her neurodivergent son, shaped her healing path
Links:
Ditte’s Website
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What if your brain isn’t creating consciousness but filtering it?
Could the scientific study of so-called ‘psi’ abilities break the assumptions of materialist science?
In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Jeff Tarrant — psychologist, neuroscientist, and author of Becoming Psychic.
Jeff shares his research on psychics, mediums, and channelers, revealing surprising EEG findings that suggest our minds may tap into a broader field of information.
We explore:
- Why the brain blocks 99% of reality
- The American mum who suddenly started chanting indigenous hymns
- How meditation and psychedelics can loosen our filter
- What happens when intuition takes the lead
- The mysteries of human potential
Links:
Jeff’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
What if the greatest treasure isn’t buried in the earth but hidden in your own mind?
In this episode, I speak with Eileen Hall — artist and activist — about her extraordinary life at the crossroads of adventure, grief, and consciousness.
Raised in Ecuador amid volcanoes, jungles, and legendary treasure hunts, Eileen turned inward after the sudden death of her father, famed explorer Stan Hall. Her search led her into jungles, caves, and the world of psychedelics, where she discovered that the most valuable journeys are the ones we take inside ourselves.
We explore:
- Growing up around treasure hunters and explorers
- Lessons from silence and solitude in the jungle
- Grief, healing, and psychedelic therapy
- Consciousness as the ultimate frontier
Links:
Eileen’s Website
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Back pain is the silent epidemic affecting millions — and it doesn’t have to be. In this week’s episode, osteopath and yoga practitioner Anji Gopal reveals why most of what we believe about back pain is wrong, and how simple changes can transform your spinal health.
From banker to healer, Anji’s path into healthcare was unconventional. After more than a decade in corporate finance, she chose to retrain in yoga and osteopathy, eventually joining the NHS. There, she helped design innovative approaches to treating chronic pain that combined medical science with holistic practices.
Our conversation ranges from personal health to systemic change, challenging old assumptions and offering practical, hopeful guidance for anyone living with pain or leading others.
We talk:
- The unspoken back epidemic
- The three myths of back pain
- What you can do for your spine regardless of limitations
- Spinal health in the workplace
Links:
BackCare Foundation
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
In this fascinating conversation, I sit down with Daniel Hulme, an AI expert, innovator, and thought leader. Daniel has an extensive track record, from founding the AI optimization startup Satalia (acquired by the advertising giant WPP) to exploring groundbreaking ideas in AI consciousness, neuromorphic computing (building computers that work more like human brains), and agent verification (checking that an AI is really who it claims to be).
Together, we discuss the intersection of humanity and technology, diving into the limitations of artificial intelligence, the significance of empathy, and how creativity remains our most vital skill in the age of automation. Daniel offers thought-provoking perspectives on education reform, critical thinking, and project-based learning as the future of personal and professional growth.
We talk:
- Apple’s doubts about AI reasoning ability
- The rise of the AI scientist
- Use of AI in business - where to invest
- Can an AI be conscious?
- What to advise your kids
Links:
Consicum
Moral.me
If you’re curious about how humans can thrive in an increasingly AI-driven world, this episode provides valuable insights into fostering innovation, adapting to change, and embracing what makes us human.
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
In this challenging episode (challenging in a good way), I sit down with Steven Young, author of ‘A Fool’s Wisdom’.
Steven’s path is remarkable. From a PhD in nuclear physics, to having all his assumptions about reality turned upside, it’s been emotional. Atomic theory, accepted cosmology, and the theory of gravity - he now questions it all.
Steven takes his place amongst a growing cadre of intellectuals rejecting Modernity’s scientific orthodoxies.
But this isn’t just about poking a stick at accepted dogmas. Steven is now embracing a notion of science that integrates a broader understanding of consciousness. A return to the powerful, intuitive alchemical principles on which early science was founded. One that can inspire and empower creatives and leaders alike.
We discuss:
- How a nuclear physicist starts questioning the globe theory
- Letting go of the atomic theory
- Finding alchemy
- An alchemical approach to product development
- Towards an artistic and societal renaissance
Links:
Steven’s Substack
Steven’s Website
Don’t miss this fascinating conversation—it might change how you view creativity forever.
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
My guest in this episode, Piers Fallowfield-Cooper, was an unlikely city slicker. With keen interest in literature and a qualification in hotel management and hospitality, he got into commodities trading by chance. Once there, he found that he had a considerable knack for it.
From trading, he pivoted to a distinguished career in business leadership.
We talk:
- Foundations of high performance
- Nearly dying as a child
- Authentic leadership: skirmishes vs battles
- Why not to set goals
- Adaptability and adoptability
Links:
Piers’ Website
Whether you’re a leader in your field or someone seeking profound insights into personal and professional growth, this conversation is packed with wisdom, humor, and practical takeaways.
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
In this highly energising episode, I sit down with Joel Zuckerman, author of the new book Gratitude Tiger and a passionate advocate for the power of gratitude.
I’ve been a some-time gratitude journaller for a while and I’ve known about the power of gratitude for a long time.
Joel has taken this to another level, having written over 280 gratitude letters in a process that started as a one-off and has become the defining theme of his professional life.
Joel reveals how building a gratitude writing habit doesn’t need you to have great skill, but can be as simple as a few heartfelt sentences. He introduces the philosophy behind his acronym "TIGER" (Tapping Into Gratitude Engenders Rewards) and offers actionable advice for cultivating meaningful connections both personally and professionally.
We talk:
- The transformative power of simple acts of gratitude
- The "Seven paragraphs, seven sentences, seven words" philosophy explained
- Practical tips for expressing gratitude in the workplace
- Joel's journey from golf writing to gratitude advocacy
- The emotional impact of handwritten notes and letters
Links:
Joel’s Website
Enjoy!
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
This week’s episode is perhaps one of the most uncomfortable I’ve yet recorded. A conversation with Jeffrey Pfeffer, the renowned author of "Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't" and “Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time”, and professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, we dive deep into the principles of power, influence, and career acceleration.
Jeffrey offers his view on the raw truth about what it takes to stand out, thrive, and succeed in a world shaped by competition and perception. From strategies to gain influence to the controversial role of self-promotion, this conversation is packed with insights that challenge conventional wisdom about leadership and integrity.
Learn why keeping your head down might be holding you back, how deliberate practice can transform your career, and why following Jeffrey’s proven methods have made many of his students wildly successful.
As Jeffrey takes a torch to leadership development orthodoxy, we cover:
- How many leadership authors espoused values don’t match the reality of their behaviour
- To change the world, we must first have power
- Leadership training fails—because it ignores power and influence dynamics.
- Authenticity at work? Not so much if you want to be a leader, says Pfeffer.
- Pfeffer’s 7 rules of power—practical, provocative, uncomfortably effective.
Links:
Jeffrey’s Website
Jeffrey’s Books
Whether you're a budding leader or seasoned professional, this episode will inspire and empower you to take charge of your path. Don't miss out on this transformative discussion—subscribe for more thought-provoking conversations about what it means to be human.
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This week, I sit down with Douglas Mulhall, author of the bestselling book Discovering the Nature of Longevity: Restoring the Heart and Body by Targeting Hidden Stress. Douglas has spent over 30 years creating products that are not only good for people but also the environment, with significant contributions in collaboration with European governments.
We take a deep look at elastin, a major area of interest for Douglas. It’s a vital protein key to your body’s resilience.
Elastin is in more than 30 organs. It’s in your arteries. It’s essential for everything in your body to expand and contract.
We talk:
- Elastin defined
- The tragedy that spurred his quest
- The story of calcification
- How to reverse the hardening of our bodies
- Hope for a heart disease breakthrough
Links:
Discovering the Nature of Longevity - The Book
Douglas’ Website
If you’re curious about unlocking your body’s potential, this episode is an absolute must-watch! Don't miss out—subscribe for more thought-provoking conversations about what it means to be human.
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
This week, I sit down with Bill Benjamin, co-owner of The Last 8%, to explore the concept of tackling life’s most challenging moments—the “last 8%.” According to Bill, we excel in 92% of situations, but it’s the difficult, high-stakes moments—when tension, conflict, or pressure arise—that define us.
Bill shares how leaving a successful career in software to pursue his passion for emotional intelligence transformed his life. He dives into practical strategies for managing emotions, navigating tough conversations, and building thriving teams.
Whether you’re seeking personal growth or leading others, this episode offers powerful tools for managing challenges and making an impact.
We talk:
- How to prep for difficult conversations
- What empathy really means
- How to deal with triggers in the moment
- Dialling up and dialling down assertion
- How to build a care and courage culture
Links:
The Institute for Health and Human Potential
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This week, we are thrilled to feature two remarkable guests: Sensei Zen Takai and Edward Olver.
Sensei Zen Takai, is a 16th-generation samurai warrior. After a brief stint as a punk rocker, he chose to return to his roots. With no descendants of his own and to ensure it lives on, he's on a mission to share his family's samurai tradition with the world. He teaches mastery of the familiar samurai arts with creative expressions like calligraphy, poetry, and dance. Dedicated to self-mastery and spiritual alignment, Sensei encourages others to live harmoniously and connect deeply with their life's purpose.
A former military man and banker, Edward Olver experienced a profound awakening after realising that external success—the Hollywood actress girlfriend and the Knightsbridge corner office—did not fulfill him. Through personal upheaval, he rediscovered his dharma and embraced growth aligned with life's natural rhythms. Now based at Broughton Hall - a UK hub for cutting edge research into consciousness - Edward focuses on regenerative practices, living in harmony with nature, and integrating timeless wisdom to foster holistic well-being.
Their combined perspectives will offer insight into purposeful living.
We talk:
- Training Samurai as a boy
- Samurai and the five elements
- How poetry can make you a better warrior
- Three-pointed thinking
- Beyond competition
Links:
Sensei Zen Takai at Broughton Sanctuary
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Our guest this week is renowned author and speaker Byron Katie. Her work, referred to as 'The Work', is a simple yet profound method of self-inquiry aimed at identifying and questioning negative thoughts that cause suffering.
At its core are four questions: Is it true? Can you absolutely know it’s true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without it?
By moving these thoughts from the mind to paper and reflecting deeply, individuals can access greater clarity, love, and wisdom - and freedom from ego.
Katie emphasizes integrity and fearlessness in this process, offering her tools freely to empower individuals to transform depression, fear, and limiting beliefs into peace.
We talk:
- A night on the floor that changed Katie's life
- The fallacy of a positive mindset
- Attending to the projector not the projected
- Seeing all as beauty
- Knowing that pain is an illusion
Links:
Katie’s Website
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▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
This week we see Marcel Schwantes return to the show.
Marcel is an author, leadership coach, and advocate for humane workplace practices. His journey into leadership began during his time working in a toxic hospital environment, where relentless stress landed him in the emergency room—an experience that profoundly shaped his views on leadership and well-being.
He now challenges traditional, warlike business narratives, advocating for radical love and humanity in leadership.
His work inspires leaders to foster compassionate, thriving businesses by shifting focus from competition to collaboration and introspection.
We talk:
- Agape love
- “Eufear”: the good fear
- Retiring "target customers"‘
- Working for love
- The 5 principles of Love In Action
Links:
Humane Leadership: Lead with Radical Love, Be a Kick-Ass Boss - The Book
Marcel’s Website
Marcel’s LinkedIn Profile
Marcel’s Substack
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My guest this week is Dr.Ibrahim Karim, renowned for pioneering BioGeometry, a science that harmonizes energy in living systems and environments.
Educated as an architect, Dr. Karim initially followed in his father's footsteps. His talents were recognized by the Egyptian government who asked him to manage the plan for the whole Red Sea area and South Sinai, contributing to a huge rise in tourism.
Dr. Karim later began to synthesize modern concepts of physics and harmonics with the insights he gained from his interest in ancient Egyptian knowledge, Radiesthesia, and Pythagorean theories. Culminating in his founding of BioGeometry, he started to integrate his knowledge with architectural principles to create designs that enhance the energetic quality of spaces.
His work in BioGeometry has profoundly impacted urban planning, environmental design, and holistic health, offering innovative solutions for energy balance and well-being.
We talk:
- The hidden life force driving everything
- Turning a Tesla into a healing cocoon
- Using shapes to boost milk production
- Why reincarnation is a flawed concept
- Who really built the pyramids
Links:
Dr. Karim’s Website
Books by Dr. Karim
The BioGeometry YouTube Channel
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▶️ Join a free leadership masterclass: https://www.firsthuman.com/masterclass/
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
My guest this week is Matt Presti, a multidisciplinary artist, philosopher, and filmmaker.
He has dedicated his life to preserving and promoting the legacy of Walter Russell, a visionary polymath of the early 20th century.
Such was Russell’s genius that Nikola Tesla once told him to lock his cosmology in a sepulcher for a thousand years because mankind was not ready for it.
Matt is now bringing Russell’s extraordinary insights on cosmology and the human experience to a modern audience.
Through his efforts, Matt seeks to inspire humanity to embrace deeper introspection, creativity, and the transformative potential of a life connected to universal truth.
We talk:
- Russell’s philosophy applied to management at IBM
- Two-way thinking: inwards and out there
- Thinking, knowing and action
- Trauma release and spirituality
- Owning our own genius
Links:
Matt’s Website
The University of Science and Philosophy - save 20% off book and booklet purchases using the code MARCH20
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▶️ Join a free leadership masterclass: https://www.firsthuman.com/masterclass/
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My guest this week is Peter Merry, multifaceted thinker and social entrepreneur with a background in languages and theater.
Influenced by radical ideas on sanity and society, Peter's journey blends philosophy, social entrepreneurship, and education.
Peter’s extraordinary life path has taken him from avant-garde theatre in Paris, to delivering education in Ghana, to helping an IBM business unit achieve triple-digit business growth.
He's now working on cutting-edge technology with the potential to help humankind make its next leap in consciousness.
Meet the man on the frontier!
We talk:
- How flatworms don't just grow back their heads
- The nature of time
- Working energetically with businesses
- Can we reintegrate the feminine?
- The ultimate magic lamp
Links:
Peter’s Website
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My guest this week is Kute Blackson, a transformational teacher and author.
At 8, he was giving impromptu sermons in his famous father’s megachurch. At 18, he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. Instead, he left everything behind in Ghana to pursue his dreams in Los Angeles with just two suitcases and $800.
Renouncing an ordained ministry that wasn't his true calling, Kute embraced the realm of personal growth and self-help, studying with mentors like Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra.
Through extensive global travels, he has hosted numerous transformational retreats and seminars.
If you’ve ever struggled with letting go, trusting your path, or feeling aligned with your purpose, this conversation is for you.
We talk:
- The true nature of magic and how we unknowingly block it
- How to reconnect with intuition and hear life’s subtle guidance
- The balance between surrender and goal-setting
- Overcoming fear, ego, and conditioning to live authentically
Get Kute’s book: The Magic of Surrender
Learn more about Kute & his work: KuteBlackson.com
Listen to Kute’s podcast: Soul Talk: http://podcast.kuteblackson.com/
Join his free course: 8 Levels of Gratitude: 8LevelsofGratitude.com
Subscribe for more transformative conversations! 🙌
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My guest this week is Dr. Mauro Zapaterra, a Harvard-trained MD and PhD, directing Multidisciplinary Catatonic Research at the Innovation Medical Group.
An expert in cerebrospinal fluid, his work explores its role in the human system, combining insights from both science and spirituality. Dr. Zapaterra's research highlights the dynamic nature of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), its importance during brain development, and its complex composition.
We discuss:
- The 'aha' moment when Mauro first discovered CSF
- Virtuous brainwashing
- DMT, the pineal gland and cerebrospinal fluid
- Why you should drink more
- Why heart rate variability is a good thing
Links:
Dr. Zapaterra’s Website
▶️ Join a free leadership masterclass: https://www.firsthuman.com/masterclass/
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
My guest this week is Joel Schafer, a personal empowerment mentor & shamanic dreaming arts teacher.
Joel’s work is rooted in Toltec knowledge - source of renowned book ‘The Four Agreements’.
His approach involves waiting for moments of clarity and receiving visions to guide his actions, rather than traditional planning, focusing on personal growth, stress reduction, and accessing higher states of consciousness through shamanic practices and life experiences.
We discuss:
- Guidance over goals
- Joining the local shaman at 16
- Understanding the meaning of Totality
- Just imagination or there really other realms?
- Movement and energy awareness
Links:
Joel’s Website
▶️ Join a free leadership masterclass: https://www.firsthuman.com/masterclass/
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
Executive coach, ju-jitsu champion, and author Josefine Campbell joins us for a second appearance.
She shares insights from her new book ‘12 Tools for Managing a Selfish Leader’ outlining practical strategies for dealing with leaders who exhibit dark personality traits in the workplace.
We discuss:
- The prevalence of sociopathy in organisations
- Finding resilience to stand-up to bad bosses
- Tools for handling selfish leaders when you're an introvert
- Is there a role for sociopaths in organisations?
- What hope exists for those with dark traits?
Links:
Josefine’s Website
▶️ Join a free leadership masterclass: https://www.firsthuman.com/masterclass/
▶️ Connect with Richard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardatherton-firsthuman/
My guest this week is Lisa Strbac, a person with an incredible life story. Lisa's life took an unexpected turn when conventional medicine failed to help her daughter's autoimmune condition. Skeptical but desperate, she explored homeopathy on a nutritionist's recommendation. The immediate, profound reaction her daughter had to a homeopathic remedy left Lisa astounded. This experience ignited a burning curiosity that led her to abandon her 12-year corporate career as an accountant at Deloitte (where I was also once a consultant).
Embracing a radical life change, Lisa dedicated four years to studying homeopathy. Now a practicing homeopath, she passionately advocates for this alternative healing approach.
Lisa's journey from skeptic to believer fuels her mission to spread awareness about homeopathy's potential, drawing on her unique perspective of having crossed over from the conventional world.
We discuss:
- How doctors were all once homeopaths
- The principle of like curing like
- How it works when ‘there’s nothing there’
- The bigger context of a societal shift
- Towards a pill-free remedy
Links:
Lisa’s Website
Lisa’s Instagram Page
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My guest this week is Harry M. Jansen Kraemer, Jr, Professor of Leadership at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, author of multiple books on leadership and former CEO of Baxter International Inc., a $12 billion global healthcare company.
Harry's professional trajectory was marked by rapid ascension and notable achievements in corporate leadership. Rising to the position of CEO earlier than anticipated, Kraemer distinguished himself through a leadership philosophy centered on influence rather than mere authority. His approach emphasizes self-awareness, genuine humility, and the ability to foster productive relationships across all organisational levels.
His academic curriculum stresses the importance of self-reflection, work-life balance, and authentic leadership. His career exemplifies a blend of corporate acumen and social responsibility, positioning him as a respected figure in both business and academic circles.
Included in the episode:
- A most unusual initiation to his future wife’s family
- Self-reflection as rocket fuel for professional progression
- Befriending everyone you meet
- Harry’s daily self-reflection ritual
- How to encourage even the most resistant to self reflect
Links:
Harry’s Books
One Acre Fund
Daily and Annual Self-Reflection Questions
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Once a driven tech entrepreneur, Matt Zemon's life took an unexpected turn after a profound psychedelic experience.
Selling his successful businesses, he embarked on a journey of self-discovery, pursuing advanced studies in psychology and neuroscience. His quest led him around the world, learning from shamans and exploring various psychedelics.
Now, Matt dedicates himself to bridging the gap between science and spirituality in the realm of psychedelic medicine. Through his books and social media presence, he shares his insights, aiming to help others find healing and personal growth. From boardrooms to ayahuasca ceremonies, his transformation embodies the potential for radical change and a deeper understanding of the human experience.
We discuss:
- A radical transformation from his first trip
- Responsible consumption: source, mindset and setting
- Increasing acceptance, study and legality
- Why they're still banned in most places
- A potential resource for leaders?
Links:
Matt’s Website
The Veteran's Guide to Psychedelics: A Preparation and Integration Workbook
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
My guest this week is Josh Bloomfield, a man whose journey began with an unexpected opportunity to develop grant management software straight out of high school, skipping traditional post-secondary education.
His career evolved through various tech projects, including work with under-resourced entrepreneurs and nonprofits. In 2017, inspired by his wife, he recognized the potential to support an entire underserved market of world-changers tackling global challenges.
This led to the creation of Givecloud, a platform designed to empower nonprofits with technology. Throughout his life, Bloomfield has balanced his tech career with a deep commitment to his faith community.
He's also openly discussed his family's history of addiction, which has shaped his perspective and approach to life and work.
We discuss:
- Discovering his Dad's secret addiction
- His faith's reaction to him seeking therapy
- Recognising everyone is one bad choice away from addiction
- The power of talking to yourself
- Prayer as a state of being
Links:
Givecloud - Josh’s Company
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
My guest this week, Jay Jakub, started his professional journey as a strategist for Mars, Inc., where for 14 years, he navigated the corridors of the global headquarters.
As part of the chief economist's team, he worked with Mars’ internal think tank with a groundbreaking idea: the "Economics of Mutuality."
The idea? That by investing in social, natural and human capital, you can increase your returns on financial capital.
It erases the idea that investments outside the four walls of the business need to be traded off against profit. His work proves that it’s possible to achieve win-win-win-win’s.
We discuss:
- The four types of capital
- Chewing gum for good
- Improving DIY sales by getting homeowners to trust handymen
- Measuring Natural Capital
- How Stakeholder Capitalism can appeal to the Left and the Right
Links:
The Economics Of Mutuality Alliance
Jay’s LinkedIn Profile
Completing Capitalism - The Book
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My guest this week, Dr. Edith Ubuntu Chan's journey into holistic wellness, is a tapestry of ancient wisdom and modern science. By integrating Chinese medicine, acupuncture, biology, and practices like qigong and Tai Chi, she guides individuals towards heart coherence and alignment with their true selves.
Dr. Edith’s work extends into the realms of education and parenthood, where she champions a revolutionary approach to nurturing young minds. Through her minimalist lifestyle, she discovers profound joy and invaluable lessons from her children. Her teachings inspire a mindful, sustainable path to personal and collective well-being.
We discuss:
- The moment that had her quit her tech lifestyle
- The instant healing that first opened her eyes to alternative approaches
- Why diet nor exercise are the highest priorities for health
- The practices more potent than yoga
- Maintaining throughout the day without coffee
Links:
Dr. Edith’s Website
SuperWellness - Dr. Edith’s latest book
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From managing a single furniture store to President at Starbucks.
Meet my guest Howard Behar.
His philosophy is not something you will learn at business school, yet the growth of Starbucks during his tenure speaks for itself.
Howard’s approach is to lead with love.
We discuss:
- Knowing who you are
- The power of affirmation.
- When the list of layoffs gets leaked
- Breaking Japan
- Compassionate emptiness
Links:
Howard’s Website
It’s Not About the Coffee - The Book
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My guest this week, James Rhee, has had an extraordinary path through life.
With a Harvard Law degree, he chose to become a middle school teacher. From there, James switched careers to join one of Boston's most prestigious private equity firms.
His leadership star rose through his transformative leadership at Ashley Stewart, a company on the brink of collapse. During a solitary six-month struggle, he fought tirelessly to avoid liquidation, eventually dedicating seven years to revitalizing the business.
Through his work, James champions a vision where kindness and compassion are integral to leadership, advocating for a life where work is just one sustainable aspect of overall joy.
We discuss:
- The moment he learned the meaning of kindness
- The real meaning of assets and liabilities
- Small 'p' product vs big 'P' product
- Kindness, Goodwill, and Math
- Applying counterpoint in business
Links:
James’ Website
red helicopter - The Book
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My guest this week is Rich Diviney, a retired US Navy Commander and former Navy SEAL, who, over his illustrious career, has become a thought leader in optimal performance, authoring the influential book "The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance".
Rich's journey emphasizes the critical role of soft skills and character traits in achieving excellence. Drawing from systems theory, he underscores that a team’s success hinges on the interactions between its members rather than their individual prowess.
With a mission to translate military-won insights into the business world, Rich advocates for the clear articulation and teaching of key performance attributes.
We discuss:
- When he knew he was going to survive Hell Week
- As a Navy Commander, the attributes he most values for high performance
- How to develop attributes
- What he misses most about the Navy
- Why skills training is going to become less relevant
Links:
Rich's Website
The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance - The Book
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Oneness: that was my guest Brendan D. Murphy's nickname in his twenties, such was his early spiritual development.
He went on to write 'The Grand Illusion', a book that integrates paranormal phenomena with contemporary science, aiming to empower humanity and chart a new course for civilization.
His work methodically catalogues the wealth of scientific literature describing paranormal effects, providing a powerful bridge for those of us who are more scientifically minded into the world of spiritual phenomena.
His insights challenge our conventional notion of reality.
We discuss:
- Photographic proof of the aetheric body
- Playing computer games blindfolded
- Torsion fields and DNA expression
- Sex adventures in the astral plane
- The real costs of ugly buildings
Links:
Brendan's Website
The Grand Illusion - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week's guest is Stephanie Mines, Ph.D., shock and trauma researcher, founder of the TARA Approach (a unique fusion of Western neuroscience and Eastern energy medicine), and author of 'The Secret of Resilience'.
Stephanie's work focuses on the transformative power of compassion and the inherent brilliance within each individual. She combines her background in creative writing and literature with her personal experiences to help others find stability, express their innate creativity, and sustain faith in humanity during difficult times.
We discuss:
- Life as a bohemian in San Francisco
- Discovering the link between her father's head trauma and sexual abuse
- Finding Energy Medicine via a Japanese hippy
- A remarkable relief from Cerebral Palsy
- Rediscovering our original brilliance
Links:
The Secret of Resilience - The Book
Stephanie's Website
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This week's guest is Hollie King, a fireball with an incredible life story. After being diagnosed with cervical cancer, she chose to forgo chemo and radiation therapy, opting instead to heal herself with a natural, holistic approach.
As a result of remarkable healing, she doubled down on her kitchen-table natural cosmetics and wellness brand. It’s now in hyper-growth mode, expanding to 50 employees and manufacturing across the US and the UK.
We discuss:
- Surviving on Benefits
- Refusing chemo
- Healing through intention and mushrooms
- Building a 50-person business
- The leadership principles helping to fuel her outstanding success
Links:
Sweet Bee Organics - Hollie's Brand - get 20% off when using code BEINGHUMAN20 at checkout
Hollie's Instagram
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This week's guest is Shay Wheat, an accomplished event producer who creates transformative experiences through events.
If you're planning an event soon or part of planning one, this could be the episode for you.
Shay's early experience creating social events at her isolated farm, to later forays into entrepreneurship, set her up for her current business.
We discuss:
- Dropping out of Med School
- Losing it all in Network Marketing
- First experience with Reiki
- Managing energy in event production
- Three principles for producing outstanding events
Links:
Shay's Website
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week's guest is Brandon Bozarth, the founder of Integrated Somatic Inquiry (ISI), a process that deals with the root cause of our mental/emotional suffering and physical disease.
Dropping out of college to pursue network marketing, he found success but felt unfulfilled. After experiencing a raft of medical conditions he was unable to resolve, Brandon discovered German New Medicine in his quest to heal. This modality offers a radical new perspective on the nature of disease and recovery.
After an apprenticeship with a renowned mentor, Brandon experienced intense, hands-on healing work. Witnessing profound transformations, he decided to launch his own practice.
Brandon now helps others achieve meaningful change in their lives, with his clients having seen improvements in and have resolved depression, cancer, arthritis, psychosis, anxiety, skin rashes, grief, IBS and many other psycho-somatic symptoms.
We discuss:
- Can losing a son lead to testicular cancer?
- How tumours may not be what you think they are
- How brain scans can reveal conflicts in your past
- Why your great uncle lived to 100, smoking and drinking every day
- What it means to live 'biologically'
Links:
Brandon's Website
Brandon's Instagram Page
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This week's guest, Connie Zweig, Ph. D., is a retired psychotherapist, author, and speaker whose recent book highlights the unique opportunity for healing and spiritual growth during 'the afternoon of life'.
Connie's distinguished career highlights her unwavering commitment and passion for facilitating wisdom circles and spiritual shadow work groups, offering a transformative approach to navigating the later stages of life.
We discuss:
- Connie's early experience with Transcendental Meditation
- The Shadow of the Guru
- The peril of taking spirituality out of psychology
- The dangers of spiritual bypass
- Ageing as a spiritual practice
Links:
Connie's Website
Connie's Books
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This week's guest is Alex Soojung-Kim Peng, an author and consultant who has emerged as a leading advocate for the four-day workweek.
Alex dismantles traditional work paradigms, presenting compelling arguments for shorter work hours backed by scientific studies and real-world applications. His unique insights stem from a blend of personal heritage, scholarly exploration, and a deep belief in redefining the future of work.
We discuss:
- Sticking to 4 days when the going gets tough
- How to make it work in practice
- Why workaholics succeed (for a while)
- Work until 2 and keep your lunch hour
- The unlikely innovation boon of the 4-day week
Links:
4 Day Week Global Website
Alex's Books
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This week's guest is Samantha Fey, a former literature teacher who, after making a series of uncanny predictions about the lives of those close to her, could no longer ignore the psychic gifts.
Encouraged by her boss and a visiting priest, she followed her heart to become a professional intuitive and author. In 2022, she published The Awake Dreamer, a call to engage with our dreams as a source of insight and inspiration.
We discuss:
- Napoleon Hill's Commission of the Wise
- How to Lucid Dream
- Coming out of the spiritual closet
- Evidence of Global Consciousness
- Having fun with 'micro manifesting'
Links:
Samantha's Website
Listen here, or watch here.
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This week's guest is Jonathan Hunt-Glassman, CEO of Oar Health, a seasoned executive with over 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry, including strategic leadership roles at Humana, Optum, and Bain & Company, that decided to use his personal journey in overcoming addiction to make a meaningful impact in the way people approach Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) treatment.
His approach to recovery emphasizes the possibility of improvement at any stage and the importance of exploring a broad spectrum of help options. He challenges the orthodoxy of 'sobriety or nothing' and advocates for varied and numerous treatment possibilities, including medication, peer support, therapy, and professional behaviour modification, promoting a message of hope and the potential for a brighter future for those struggling with addiction, especially not ready to quit completely.
We discuss:
- Managing his disorder while keeping down a job
- First experience with Naltrexone
- The 'miracle' effect
- Starting Oar Health
- His message for those with Alcohol Use Disorder
Links:
OAR Health
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This week's guest is Michael André Ford, an American Angel Intuitive who helps people meet, hear and see angels.
I'll be honest: This conversation took me way out of my comfort zone. When I started this podcast, I committed myself to breaking open the range of topics we could discuss in a business context. I never expected that to include talking with angels!
Michael is a highly compelling guest with scintillating tales of encounters with angels of all kinds.
If you want to expand your notion of how this realm might operate and what's really going on in the fifth dimension, this is the episode for you.
We discuss:
- Michael's first wild angel encounter
- The power of less thinking
- Meeting angels at the coffee shop
Links:
Listening to Angels - The Book
Michael's Website
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This week's guest is Dr. Chris Fuzie, a former police officer with a unique perspective on leadership. He is also the author of multiple books on this topic, including his latest, 'Liminal Space'.
Having had more than his fair share of hair-raising moments, Chris explores leadership and followership dynamics within high-pressure environments. His premise is that we all must develop outstanding leadership and followership capabilities, regardless of position in any formal hierarchy.
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We discuss:
- Confronting armed assailants
- Intellgient disobeidence
- The Liminal Leader explained
- Using shapes in communication
- Tesselated behaviours
Links:
Liminal Space - The Book
Dr. Fuzie's Website
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This week's guest is Josh Dickson, an accredited EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Consultant, accredited drugs and alcohol counsellor, and an exciting innovator in trauma healing. Josh is the clinical director of the Resurface programme, which uses surfing as a core element in developing new positive resources for those with a traumatic history.
His approach is grounded in the belief that engaging with the natural elements and participating in challenging physical activities like surfing can significantly enhance mental health and emotional well-being.
We discuss:
- Flow state: what it is and is not
- Flow state and therapy
- Surfing and trauma release
- Teaching resilience to kids
- Flow state vs drug-assisted therapy
Links:
Resurface
Resurface's Instagram Page
Josh's LinkedIn Page
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This week's guest is Betsy Polatin, author of Humanual - A Manual for Being Human - and former professor of the Alexander Technique at Boston University College of Fine Arts.
Betsy's work combines movement principles and anatomical knowledge to foster self-awareness, resilience, and holistic healing, helping individuals overcome traumas and stress for enhanced personal growth and well-being
We discuss:
- How not to ground
- The Spirit-Mind-Body
- Why we get traumatised
- Dealing with trauma
- Why we need to go beyond 'techniques'
Links:
Betsy's Website
Humanual: A Manual for Being Human - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week's guest is Wendy D'Andrea, a professor of psychology at The New School in New York, where she specializes in trauma and psychobiology. She also works with Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score) at The Trauma Research Foundation as its Chief Science Officer.
Wendy's career began early, working with sexual assault survivors. She has gone on to become a researcher of extraordinary breath, having studied widely across the psychobiological effects of trauma to a panoply of trauma treatments at the individual and community levels.
We discuss:
- Her challenging childhood as a carer
- Working with assault survivors
- Trauma-informed sports
- Psychedelics and integration
- The psychobiology of trauma
Links:
The Trauma Research Foundation
The New School Trauma and Affective Psychophysiology Lab
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This week's guest is Greg Wrenn, an associate English professor at James Madison University, blending climate science with literary studies.
His book, "Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis" explores healing from complex PTSD through connecting with nature, psychedelic plants, and the beauty of endangered coral reefs.
Greg's approach is deeply intertwined with his appreciation for the natural world, which he looks to as a source of recovery and understanding. His work reflects a journey of personal healing, advocating for ecological compassion and mental wellness through a unique fusion of his academic focus and individual experiences.
We discuss:
- Awakening to an abusive childhood
- The trap of therapy
- First Ayahuasca ceremony
- Integration of the psychedelic experience
- New freedom
Links:
Mothership - The Book
Dreamglade Center
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week's guest is Hunter Hastings, an eclectic professional whose career encompasses roles as an economist, venture capitalist, education reformer and co-author of 'Aberrant Capitalism'.
Born in a working-class family in the industrial northeast of England, his career trajectory has seen him engaging in global branding and consulting and contributing significantly to the realm of business education.
Hunter is fascinating as a man who, while working in venture capitalism, clearly sees the ills of financial capitalism and is passionate about transforming the way future business leaders prioritize service for the betterment of society.
We discuss:
- In defence of the consumer
- The rot of Financial Capitalism
- A new vision for business education
- Entrepreneurship as process, not personalities
- What leaders and managers can change right now
Links:
Hunter's Website
Hunter's LinkedIn Page
Aberrant Capitalism - The Book
The Value Creators
Bialla Venture Partners
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This week's guest is Lauren Magers, who has to be the highest-energy woman I've ever met. She's been told she could be the 'female Tony Robbins', and I can understand why.
She went from winning a top soccer college scholarship to a national sales leader in outdoor advertising sales. Her drive was such that she refused to leave the office without making 100 cold calls a day!
At 27, she found herself as co-leader of an Inc. 5000 company and a mother of four. She discovered that in order to create the happy family life she lacked as a child, she would need a system. Thus, the Happy Life System was born.
The Happy Life System is not just a game; it's a transformative tool. It introduces gamification into daily life skills for children, empowering them to understand and leverage the 'why' behind their actions. By fostering adaptability and promoting conscious awareness, the system turns routine activities into exciting opportunities for personal growth.
We discuss:
- Being forced to eat soap as a child
- Discernment in preserving energy
- Reframing our view of children
- Gamifying Family Happiness
- Loving from a distance
Links:
The Happy Life System
Get 20% Off Lauren's Crack the Parenting Code Course
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This week's guest is Rick Jordan, a man with a veritable panoply of hats.
Entrepreneur, pastor, podcaster, keynote speaker, IT and cybersecurity CEO, and author of the book 'Situational Ethics', Rick gives his all in every area of his life.
An early family tragedy set him on a path of high achievement, faith and giving back.
We discuss:
- Losing his father at 16
- Making $30k over Christmas in commission at 17
- Relaxing the ego for impact
- The real lesson from Noah's Ark
- The right relationship with money
Links:
Rick's Website
Situational Ethics - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week's guest is Jan Winhall, a seasoned trauma and addiction psychotherapist and author of the book 'Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model'.
Jan had a remarkable start to her career. In her early twenties, she found herself leading group sessions for incest survivors. Over time, she learned the power of the Felt Sense and then how to integrate this with the Polyvagal Model.
We discuss:
- Beyond Fight-Flight: The Polyvagal Theory
- The importance of the Felt Sense in healing
- The nonsense of the DSM diagnoses
- The issue with 12-step programmes
- You can cure your addiction
Links:
Jan's Website
Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
I am delighted to welcome Peter Levine back on the show. Peter is a world-renowned trauma recovery expert and the creator of the Somatic Experiencing method.
While discussing his latest book, An Autobiography Of Trauma, Peter bravely delves into the painful childhood experiences and the early steps that led him to develop his somatic approach.
We discuss:
- Taking our dreams seriously
- The role of psychedelics
- Confrontations with the academic establishment
- His life's mission
Links:
Peter's Website
An Autobiography of Trauma - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I speak with Lou Lebentz, trauma specialist, mental health campaigner, author, speaker, and therapist.
With over 25 years of working in the mental health arena and a deeply personal understanding of the impact of trauma, Lou has developed The Voyage Academy, a theoretical model used for helping others navigate their healing journeys. Her approach is trauma-informed, emphasizing the importance of compassion, understanding, and resilience. Her work is a testament to the transformative power of recovery and the possibility of finding hope and healing.
We discuss:
- From the rag trade to The Priory
- Recovering from psychosis
- Integrating and befriending the body
- Alignment and community support
- The journey from trauma to resilience
Links:
Lou's Website
The Voyage Academy
Lou's Books
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I speak with Michael OBrien, a speaker, author, business coach, and the creator of the Pause, Breathe, Reflect movement.
Whilst enjoying his life leading marketing for a $700m brand, in July 2011, whilst out riding his bike, Michael was slammed through the windshield of a speeding Ford Explorer. The devastating impact broke bones and damaged nerves throughout his body.
Experiencing depression as the enormity of his injuries bore down on him, Michael learned the power of gratitude and mindfulness.
Having now left corporate life, Michael is on a mission to share the strategies that have worked for him with the world.
We discuss:
- The simple gratitude practice that resulted in his Last Bad Day
- The breathing technique that started his mindfulness journey
- How he used his Pause, Breath, Reflect approach to powerfully navigate corporate life
Links:
Michael's Website
The Pause Breathe Reflect app
Shift: Creating Better Tomorrows - The Book
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This week, I speak with Pete Kusiak, a proponent of The Fun First Strategy, author of Drop The F-Bomb In Your Business, and advocate for ringing fun and youthful concepts into learning and workplaces
Pete's approach proposes that the cornerstone of a genuinely successful office environment is what most current CEOs view as unimportant or distracting: fun. He argues that incorporating fun into day-to-day operations can have profound benefits not only for businesses’ productivity but also for the mental health of employees.
We discuss:
- Prioritizing laughter and youthfulness
- Introducing fun for better engagement
- Incorporating playfulness in problem-solving
- Boosting productivity through a positive culture
Links:
Pete's Website
Drop the F-Bomb in Your Business - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I speak with advisor, bestselling author and TEDx speaker Tony Martignetti about his new book, Campfire Lessons for Leaders: How Uncovering Our Past Can Propel Us Forward.
Originally an artist with dreams in the creative realm, external influences pushed Tony into finance. Achieving early success, he faced burnout and lost touch with his identity. A significant boardroom moment prompted him to leave his high-flying corporate career to seek to create a meaningful path.
We discuss:
- Making an office campfire
- Disrupting yourself
- Work, home and your third space
- Fulfilment in being not doing
- Coach, therapist or something else?
Links:
Campfire Lessons for Leaders - The Book
Tony's Website
Tony's LinkedIn Page
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This week, I speak with Dr. Arielle Schwartz, PhD, a seasoned clinical psychologist, EMDR Therapy consultant and author recognized for her expertise in resilience-informed therapy and post-traumatic growth.
Drawing from her personal experience of overcoming trauma, Dr. Schwartz emphasizes the significance of addressing the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of one's being in order to achieve profound and enduring transformations.
What stood out for me in interviewing Dr. Schwratz was her brilliant integration of the Western scientific lens on trauma and the yogic wisdom on those same aspects of the human experience.
We discuss:
- The need for trauma awareness in coaching
- Are psychedelics a shortcut in therapy?
- Trauma release and the energetic body
- Yoga as therapy
- Trauma-aware dentists and more.
Links:
Dr. Schwartz's Website
Dr. Schwartz's Books
Dr. Schwartz's Instagram Page
Dr. Schwartz's Facebook Page
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This week, I speak with author David Heinemeier Hansson, a man with a seemingly unending list of achievements. He's the creator of the famed Ruby on Rails programming development framework, multiple best-selling author, business owner, and Le Mans-winning racing driver.
David shares his story of his early days building businesses in high-school before finding co-founder of Basecamp Jason Friend and together creating a highly successful tech firm with no outside funding and ignoring all of the received wisdom on succeeding with start-ups.
We discuss:
- The real definition of work ethic
- Building Ruby on Rails
- Our AI future
- The power of working within constraints
- How not to bring your whole self to work
Links:
David's Website
David's Books
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I speak with author Florence Williams, author of 'The Nature Fix' and winner of the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing for her book 'Heartbreak'.
Florence shares insights on the hidden connections between human health and the environment, drawing from her experience as a science and environmental journalist. The conversation highlights the transformative potential of spending time in nature and the ways it can enhance focus, inspire, and promote a happier and healthier life.
We discuss:
- Rediscovering our primal connection to the Earth
- How she's used nature to help with heartbreak
- Mindfully engaging with nature
- Forest bathing for inspiration
- Tips on getting your nature fix no matter your lifestyle
Links:
Florence's Website
Florence's Books
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This week, I speak with Maureen K. McCarthy and Zelle Nelson, Co-Founders and Co-Directors of the Center for Collaborative Awareness.
Maureen's life is a wild story. Doctors told her she would die young of a rare, genetic lung disease with no cure in sight. She couldn't change her body, so she decided to change her mind. Knowing that she might die at any time, with her partner Zelle, they had to figure out how to live each day, not knowing if there would be a tomorrow.
We discuss:
- Getting married every day
- Consciously designing relationships
- Finding joy with 10 per cent lung capacity
- Publishing your 'Blueprint of Me'
- Radically rethinking business contracts
Links:
The Center for Collaborative Awareness
Listen here, or watch here.
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This week, I speak with Licia Sky, a highly regarded trauma educator and Co-Founder with Bessel van der Kolk of the Trauma Research Foundation.
In the midst of experiencing severe domestic abuse, at age twelve, Licia attempted suicide, resulting in a near-death experience. From this out-of-body moment, she received a clear message that she had an important purpose in life.
It led her on an extraordinary path into bodywork, the arts and now her role as a pioneering researcher and educator.
We discuss:
- The gift of nearly dying
- Breaking the mould of 'bodywork'
- Artistic expression as therapy
- Meditation for healing
- How MDMA isn't just for raving
Links:
Licia's Website
The Trauma Research Foundation
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I speak with Doug Fleener, a business advisor, coach, author, and keynote speaker, also known as The Daily Performance Expert.
As hero's journey arcs go, Doug takes some beating, from a former addict bankrupting his family business to a successful businessman and coach.
Doug has brilliantly developed the recovery mantras of 'Keep it in The Day' and 'Keep It Simple Stupid' into a philosophy for life and business.
I personally spent many years in 12-step recovery and benefitted enormously from the 'wisdom of the rooms', so this one is close to my heart.
We talk:
- Waking up after blacking out on a flight to Hawaii
- Bankrupting the family business
- Getting sober and learning to keep it the day
- Applying the principles of recovery to business
- Practising relentless simplicity
Links:
Doug's Website
The Day Makes the Year (Makes a Life) - The Book
Listen here, or watch here.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I speak with Tian Dayton, PhD, a psychologist, prolific author with over fifteen published books and developer of the Relationship Trauma Repair programme.
This brilliant conversation explores the themes of resilience, emotional healing, therapy, and personal growth while emphasising the significance of finding outlets for emotions, connecting with others, and being heard and understood. Tian emphasises the importance of self-reflection, emotional literacy, and support in navigating life's challenges.
We talk:
- Growing up with an alcoholic dad
- Getting conscious at 14
- The fight with her husband that changed it all
- Learning to feel
- The power of sociometrics
Links:
Tian's Website
Tian's Books
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I speak with Ryan A Bush, a philosopher, author and co-founder of Designing The Mind.
With a design background, Ryan uses the metaphor of individuals having their own psychological software that they can design for a more fulfilling life. He emphasizes the importance of nurturing virtues and understanding our strengths to unlock our true potential while challenging the conventional notion of the importance of meaning in our lives. We talk:
- Why to not let go of your ego
- How depression might be serving you
- Why self-approval, not self-esteem, is the key
- Living the good life
- Why not to live your purpose
Links:
Designing The Mind
Ryan's Books
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I speak with T. Mark Meyer, author of 'The Art of Being Authentic', and advocate for authenticity in our lives and cultures.
Mark's story is a dramatic example of following your purpose. Mark walked away from riches and status as the CEO of a successful start-up to follow a calling to lead a more intentional life. His transformative epiphany became the catalyst for his ambitious mission: to illuminate the pathway to authenticity for people everywhere.
We talk:
- Finding authenticity
- What it means to be authentic
- Understanding intention
- Trauma and intention
- Purposeful living
Links:
T. Mark's Website
The Art of Being Authentic - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I speak with Glenn Akramoff, team building consultant and the author of The Human Centered Team.
Glenn led an extraordinary public career, starting as a maintenance worker and rising to City Manager. Experiencing the tragic loss of two work colleagues during his climb to the top led him to re-appraise what it means to be a leader.
We talk:
- Showing love in leadership
- Gaining trust and permission to lead
- Building a 'communication culture'
- Surfacing 'hidden rules' of culture
- The issue with rolling out change programmes on a schedule
Links:
Glenn's Website
The Human Centered Team - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week I speak with Damon Lembi, a working CEO, leadership expert and author of "The Learn-It-All Leader." Lembi explores the mindset and traits that distinguish exceptional leaders in our rapidly changing world.
Drawing from extensive research and real-world examples, he explores the concept of continuous learning as a cornerstone of effective leadership. He emphasizes the importance of adaptability, curiosity, and embracing challenges as opportunities for growth.
We talk:
- The importance of learning agility
- The "trust tax" in business
- How humility requires confidence
- Dealing with imposter syndrome
- Purposeful awfulizing
Links:
Damon's Website
The Learn-It-All Leader - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week's guest is Eileen Day McKusick, a trailblazing researcher in the realm of electric health and author of Electric Body, Electric Health. Eileen unveils the fascinating connection between sound, frequency, and the human body in this extraordinary conversation. We explore the enigma of our energetic bodies and probe a potent approach to wellness based on a very different understanding of physics.
Plus, get a front-row seat to a live Biofield Tuning session in this electrifying episode.
We discuss:
- Our plasma bubble
- Aether and healing at a distance
- Initiating self-healing with sound
- The geometry of natural law
- Why sound healing works so quickly
Links:
Eileen's Website
Electric Body, Electric Health - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
Join me this week as I chat with world-renowned art therapist and author, Cathy Malchiodi, about the transformative power of art therapy. Art therapy can reduce stress and anxiety, improve mood and emotional regulation, boost self-confidence and self-esteem, enhance problem-solving and communication skills, and even alleviate symptoms of trauma and PTSD.
We can also use the principles in day-to-day coaching and interaction with others.
We talk:
- Learning the ropes in a women's shelter
- Getting out of the therapist's chair
- Expression not creativty
- Journaling and the immune system
- How we can all use expression to self-regulate
Links:
Cathy's Website
Trauma And Expressive Arts Therapy - The Book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Josefine Campbell - executive coach, ju-jitsu champion, and author of 'Power Barometer.' Discover how Josefine's insights on managing personal energy levels can lead to business success using a unique tool called the power barometer.
In our conversation, we delved into the importance of taking responsibility for your energy levels and their direct impact on team performance. Learn practical strategies and techniques to harness your personal energy for optimal success.
Highlights include:
- Balancing Time, Cost, Quality, and Energy
- The power of Body Awareness
- "Grazing trauma" for inner release
- Lessons from using ju-jitsu in the dark
- Breaking the stress cycle
Links:
Josefine's Website
Power Barometer - The Book
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Prepare for an inspiring conversation with Rijon Erickson, a world-renowned consultant, author and trailblazer in Open Space Technology (OST). If you aren't familiar, OST is a cutting-edge meeting facilitation process that flips traditional agendas on their head. With its unique approach, participants take the reins of their discussions by creating their own agenda and forming self-organised working groups.
I've seen this transformative power firsthand since attending my first Open Space in 2015. It's now my number one facilitation tool. With its ability to enable any group to produce astonishing outcomes, it is the most effective way to enable any group of people to have the magic happen, bar perhaps doing actual magic.
We talk:
- From jazz musician to IT helpdesk to high-level facilitator
- Discovering Open Space for the first time
- The core principles of Open Space
- The issue with Hackathons
- Tilling the soil for self-organisation
Links:
Rijon's Website
The Open Space Institute
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This week, I speak with Deb Dana, a renowned clinician, author and pioneer in elucidating and applying Polyvagal Theory.
Polyvagal Theory is a breakthrough in understanding how our nervous system works. It explains how our subconscious detection of danger cues trips us into one of three dominant states: calm, connected, curious - ventral vagas; fight or flight - sympathetic; and shutdown - dorsal vagal. Appreciating this aspect of how our nervous system works can help us to understand our reactions to everyday situations and how to help ourselves, and others return to a connected state.
We talk:
- Beyond the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system
- What a fidgetting colleague tells us
- How to ladder up to achieve calm
- Why employee 'disengagement' is not the problem
- When to direct and when to give options
Links:
Deb's Website
Deb's Books
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The leading cause of death for men between 18 and 49 is suicide. Not cancer, not heart disease, men taking their own lives.
It was this statistic that prompted my guest this week, veteran broadcaster Russ Kane, to create The Men's Radio Station. On the station, Russ has interviewed many men who have come back from the brink and survived.
His show provides knowledge, ideas and solutions across a range of physical and wellbeing areas.
We talk:
- Why men choose suicide
- Why it’s now worse than ever
- What we can all do about it
- How his work has changed him
- Giving up all his possessions
Links:
The Men's Radio Station
The Women's Radio Station
Russ' Website
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This week, I speak with Ben Guttmann, an author, marketing expert, former CEO of a successful marketing agency and educator at Baruch College. He has worked with the biggest brands in the world and came to the conclusion that the most successful ideas are simple.
In his book 'Simply Put', he provides a guide to designing simple messages that encourage action - an invaluable skill whether you're a professional marketer or just want to be a better influencer.
We talk:
- Why we complicate things
- The definition of a simple message
- The 5 principles of writing simply
- Fluency over concision
- Could you really beat a wolf in a fight?
Links:
Ben's Website
Simply Put - The Book
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This week, I speak with Brent Michael Phillips. MIT-trained Brent was a successful software engineer and entrepreneur who suffered a series of significant personal setbacks. After years of failed treatments, he experienced a miraculous healing and dedicated himself to studying spirituality and energy healing.
He started a business and got off disability, but still struggled with relationships and money. One day, he met a mentor who taught him a healing process called Movement Feedback Holography, which helped him achieve breakthroughs in both areas. Now, he is on a mission to share this powerful technique with the world.
We talk:
- Generation 1, 2 and 3 Healing
- How The Law of Attraction doesn’t work
- How the body provides clues to subconscious blocks
- Surviving divorce, bankruptcy and cancer
- Getting consciousness back in the body for health and financial breakthroughs
Links:
Brett's Website
Brett's YouTube Channel
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I've never been much of a horseman. I've been scarred off them since my dog was once aggressively chased and kicked by one when I was a boy. But that, as they say, is another story.
So I was intrigued to chat with this week's guest, Rosie Tomkins, a successful entrepreneur, author and now leadership coach. She keeps horses on her smallholding in the west of England and uses them in her work.
Rosie's approach differs from conventional methods as she harnesses the inherent potential of the natural world as inspiration for her work in empowering leaders.
We talk:
- How a trip to a friend's stables helped Rosie turn around her business
- Why nature is such a powerful source of inspiration
- How 'we are nature'
- Using our bodies to change our state
- Worm poo for good
Links:
Rosie's website
N-stinctive: The Power of Natural Intelligence – her current book
Let Nature Be Your Compass: Introducing the Power of Natural Intelligence – her upcoming book
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I interview Damian Hughes, host of the hugely popular The High Performance Podcast, academic, international speaker and best-selling author. I first heard him speak at a client we both share. He enraptured the audience with his humour, fantastic stories and insight. He combines his deep understanding of human psychology with what he's learned interviewing some of the most accomplished people on the planet.
We talk:
- Growing up as the son of a world-class boxing coach
- Creating High Performance cultures
- Low efficacy vs. high efficacy personalities
- Lessons from football legend van Persie
- High Performance defined (not what you'd think)
Links:
Damian's Website
High Performance: Lessons from the Best on Becoming Your Best- The Book
How to Change Your Life: Lessons on Transformation from the World of High Performance - The Book
The High Performance Podcast
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This week I speak with Gilbert Bates, multiple author and practitioner of Janovian Primal Therapy - a highly effective approach for resolving early trauma and leading a rich and love-filled life.
Following a breakdown at age 46, Gilbert sought help by traditional psychiatric means. He was told he'd have to be on medication for the rest of his life. After experimenting with shamanistic practices, Gil realised that medication blocks the flow of traumatic memories from coming to conscious awareness, serving to keep his feelings down. In contrast, he discovered that Janovian Primal Therapy gets underneath the brain's inbuilt defences to allow us to experience painful memories for what they are and to heal from them. Today he's sharing the results of his incredible journey.
We talk:
- Curing his depression by 90%
- Feeling love for the first time in his 70s
- The fatal flaw in the human psyche and how to resolve it
- Reconnecting with our animal nature
- Resolving our primal pain and letting the love flow
Links: Gilbert's Website Three Levels Of Mind YouTube Channel Love and the Three Levels of Consciousness - The Book
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This week I speak with Brent Pohlman, the author of 'Leaders Look Within' and owner and CEO of Midwest Laboratories.
Brent started working at 15 in the company his father started and ended up in charge. Through decades of building on his father's legacy, Brent has learned that no matter what incentives you offer, employees will only truly listen to a manager that leads from the heart. After a cardiac scare in 2006 and the loss of his mother a decade later, Brent realised he needed to change how he led. Some introspection led him to a purpose-oriented and people-first approach.
We talk:
- Developing a personal 'Why' and 'How'
- The power of monitoring our Heart Rate Variability
- Rubber bands and negative self-talk
- A killer morning routine
- Prayer in the workplace
Links: Brent's Website
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I've got a great one for you this week. I speak with the fantastic Fini Cooper, a Breathwork Therapist based in London.
I first met Fini hosting the Wellness In The Wild festival, and her speech was brilliant. Despite being a part-time yogi for two decades, I hadn't realised the extent of the benefits of breathwork: the impact that taking conscious control of our breathing can have on our health and well-being.
We talk:
- Foundational breathing
- The difference between talk therapy and deep work
- Why CO2 is good for us
- Playing with inhale vs exhale
- Taping your mouth at night
Links: Fini's Website
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This week we speak with Jason Lippert, President & Chief Executive Officer of LCI Industries (LCII), a New York Stock Exchange-listed company with 15,000 team members, over $5.2bn in yearly sales, and one of the world leaders in producing RV components.
Jason has taken to heart Bob Chapman's teachings on leadership and hopes to inspire other people through his work, even founding the Lippert Academy of Leadership.
We talk:
- How’s Jason faith helped him to re-evaluate his approach to business
- Changing his ways as a leader
- The importance of emotional control as a leader
- Taking culture out of HR
- Great leadership requires training
Links: The Lippert Academy of Leadership
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This week I swing out with Andrew Genovese, a Dimensional Breathwork teacher/facilitator, sacred space holder, plant medicine guide, visionary, and New Earth Ambassador.
On his journey to heal his traumas, Andrew found breathwork and now uses it to tap into the central nervous system to calm the mind and purify the body. This work allows us to let go of our physical body and permits the subconscious and unconscious mind to bring to the surface whatever is ready for us to process and release fully.
He has now become an ambassador for a technology he claims to be as powerful as breathwork: reduction/oxidation or redox. Redox signaling molecules are produced within every cell in your body and act as cellular messengers or activators. These molecules are critical in keeping oxidation in check and preventing cellular damage. The company he represents claims to have created a bottled form of these molecules.
We talk:
- How Andrew cured a chronic, painful condition through breathwork alone
- Why the lack of ‘chi’ is at the root of ill health
- The Redox breakthrough
- The ending of the dark age of the Kali Yuga
Links: Andrew's Website
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This week I speak with Stoyan Yankov, productivity and performance coach and author of PERFORM: The Unsexy Truth About (Startup) Success.
Stoyan has a fantastic life story to share. Starting in his native Bulgaria and pursuing a finance degree in Denmark, he discovered a passion for filmmaking that saw him eventually work as a producer for more than 500 films. Then the epiphany happened. When delivering a speech, he realised a person's life could truly be changed with a one-hour speech. After that, he quit filmmaking and pursued a career as a motivational speaker and workshop host.
We talk:
- Washing dishes and giving speeches
- Keeping purpose present
- The Art of Prioritisation
- Are you eating frogs or honey?
- Can 'self-work' be an avoidance strategy?
Links: Stoyan's Webiste PERFORM: The Unsexy Truth about (Startup) Success - The Book
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This week I speak with Garret Kramer, an author, coach and consultant with over 28 years of experience helping athletes, actors, and business leaders.
What started as an inkling in the back of his mind that life was more than it was cracked up to be, Garret's work has led him on a path of self-exploration, discovering non-duality on the way and its relevance to performance, happiness, and psychology.
Garret shares:
- When he realised that conventional, 'fix-the-self' coaching wasn't his path
- Mainstream coaching and therapy vs the path of non-duality
- How wonder is schooled out of us
- Our societal obsession with individual identity
- Tricking the seeking mind
Links: Garret's Website
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This week's Being Human episode guest is Dr. Vincent Esposito, a holistic doctor trained in chiropractic, nutrition, and herbal medicine.
Dr. Esposito has a fantastic health journey that started during his time as a college athlete. Noticing an increase in body weight and the onset of gut issues, he started to dive deeper into anatomy and psychology, understanding the biochemistry that allows our bodies to run properly. After developing a regimen of healthy eating and living rules, he's resolved his gut issues and has developed a plant-based system that allows people to live healthy lives inside and out.
We talk:
- Using the five flavours for great vegetarian meals
- Is it about plant-based, or it is about whole foods?
- The peril of not going organic
- How you eat, not what you eat
Links: Dr. Esposito's Website Dr. Esposito's YouTube Channel
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This week we speak with Gillian McMichael, teacher, healer, coach and author of the book Coming Home: A Guide to Being Your True Self.
Coming from a working-class background, Gillian's path from being an administrator and holiday rep to coaching at the highest levels in business is remarkable. A pioneer in the field, Gillian set up the very first professional coaching body in Scotland and has gone on to master multiple disciplines in the healing and coaching arts.
Gillian shares:
- Recovery from sexual trauma
- Finding meditation
- The power of answering big questions
- Resiliency and Reiki
- Stacking habits
Links: Gillian's Website Coming Home: A Guide to Being Your True Self - The Book
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This week’s Being Human guest is Sol Luckman, a confessed beachaholic and obsessive cultural creative.
Preferring hard play over a so-called honest day’s work, these days in the New Abnormal, Sol spends his time on a new small island mostly bodysurfing, painting, and writing—not necessarily in that order and usually not all at once.
How while on a permanent vacation, he became a multi-award-winning and international bestselling author and prolific professional artist is anyone’s guess.
We talk:
- From athlete and star student to suffering a vaccine injury
- Eras I, II and III of Western Medicine
- Discovering the codes to achieve a bioenergetic reset
- Turning frogs into salamanders
- Are we living in a sound hologram?
Links: Sol's Website
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This week’s Being Human episode sees the return of Michael Sahota, this time joined by with his wife Audree Tara Sahota.
Michael and Audree are the co-creators of the SHIFT314 Evolutionary Leadership Framework™ (SELF), which provides a practical step-by-step guide for the inner and outer shifts needed to unlock Business Agility, Teal and other new ways of working.
We talk:
- How consciousness is awareness
- Awareness starts with noticing the consequences of your behaviours
- The triangle of trauma impact
- Healing fast and slow
- What is driving your desire?
Links:
Leading Beyond Change - The Book
EmotionalScience.com
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This week I speak with Niels Pflaeging, researcher and author on organisational leadership and transformation.
Niels is a tour de force on a mission to create a world of 'Beta' organisations. He borrows the 'beta' concept from software development, where 'beta' systems are constantly being iterated. Beta organisations are decentralised and comprise small, self-sustaining autonomous teams in the mould of Handelsbanken or Buurtzorg. Niels claims his beta model is the best a company can adopt to thrive in complexity and to enable human flourishing.
Niels pulls no punches in describing our present management paradigm, nor his views on applying complexity science in business.
Niels shares:
- Why command and control 'Alpha' organisations stink
- The difference between Blue (complicated) and Red (complex) systems
- Why complexity frameworks are BS
- The issue with consent-based decisions making
- How to transform to a decentralised 'Beta' organisation in 90 days
Links:
Organize for Complexity - The Book
Niels' Website
gomenius
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This week I speak with Andrew Thorp King, author of the book "FAILURE RULES!: The 5 Rules of Failure for Entrepreneurs, Creatives, and Authentics".
Andrew has had a wild ride - from working a steel production line, to managing a hard rock label, to owning gyms and finance companies.
We talk:
- How failure purifies
- Love meaning, not money
- The 'Thing One/Thing Two' strategy living your dream
- A soul on fire is a soul alive
- Soulful resilience
Links:
Failure Rules! - The Book
Andrew's Website
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This week I speak with Phil Simon, author, speaker and recognized authority on technology, collaboration, and the future of work.
Phil predicts a growing gap between the workplace of the future and how we operated pre-COVID. In his latest book, The Nine, he outlines the major interlocking trends that will shape this new world.
We talk:
- Addressing the mental health crisis
- We're not going back 5 days a week
- Optimism for the impacts of Generative AI
- Combating Zoom fatigue
- Options for moving forward
Links:
Phil's Website
The Nine - The Book
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This week’s Being Human episode is with James Priest, exploring Sociocracy 3.0, the liberating approach to business based on the consent, not consensus, process.
James combines extensive experience in sociocracy with 15 years of practice in the fields of holistic organizational development, facilitative leadership and personal and relational transformation across a variety of sectors, from corporations to non-profits, children and communities.
We talk:
- Becoming a leader of a spiritual community at 27
- First forays in using Sociocracy
- Preventing teenage pregnancies
- Developing Sociocracy 3.0 for use in business
- The unexamined drivers of our behaviour
Links:
Sociocracy 3.0
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This week I speak with Dr. Gerald Pollack, a man who is on a mission to challenge everything we know about water.
We've always been told that water has three states: Solid, Liquid, and Vapor. Dr. Pollack's laboratory findings imply the presence of a surprisingly extensive fourth phase that occurs near certain surfaces. The formal name for this fourth phase is exclusion-zone water, aka EZ water, with its discovery opening the way for new and profound implications in chemistry, physics, and biology.
We talk:
- Getting inspired to study water
- First discovering 'EZ water'
- How it makes all of biology wrong
- Health implications for EZ water
- Does water have memory?
Links:
The Pollack Lab
Professor Gerald Pollack Facebook Page
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This week I speak with Neil Markey, a man with a remarkable story.
After serving in the US Army Rangers and doing three tours in Iraq and twice in Afghanistan, he was discharged suffering from depression and PTSD. This led him to alternative well-being practices and he began a profound healing journey with mindfulness and psychedelics. Via the prestigious consulting firm McKinsey and a stint in private equity, he now leads healing retreats across Jamaica and the Netherlands.
We talk:
- Recovering from PTSD
- Experiencing psilocybin for the first time
- Relating to Nature
- The psilocybin risk/reward
- Neil's new vision for capitalism
Links:
Beckley Retreats
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This week I speak with author, speaker, and therapist Tom Fortes Mayer.
In 2000, after a chance encounter with a holy man at the wind down of a rave in Goa, Tom experienced a profound event that changed how he viewed himself and his life. Since that moment, he has been obsessed with how these moments happen and has dedicated his life to learning how to engineer them for others in the most powerful ways possible.
We talk:
- Experiencing epiphany
- From nightclub impresario to seeker
- Unpicking self-sabotage
- Fusing music and therapy
- Finding sober joy
Links:
Tom's Website
Tom's TedX Talk
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This week I speak with Lisa Bragg, author of the upcoming book Bragging Rights: How to Talk About Your Work Using Purposeful Self-Promotion.
Personally, I have had blocks around self-promotion, and it's something I still work on. However, it's a skill more and more of us will need as jobs become more abstract and people choose to follow more independent career paths.
We talk:
- Why we need to brag
- Pride vs bragging
- Where to start in telling people who you are
- Just get it out there
- Getting teams to shine
Links:
Lisa's Website
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This week I speak with Peter G. Klein, economist and co-author of Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company.
Having been a veritable fanboy of super flat organisations since the start of my business career, this week we hear from the other side of the argument.
We talk:
- Myths and reality of 'bossless' organisations
- Do flat organisations perform better?
- Are people really better off without bosses?
- Management for knowledge workers
- Humanising bureaucracies
Links:
Why Managers Matter - The Book
Peter's Website
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This week I speak with Melissa Swift, author of the book Work Here Now: Think Like a Human and Build a Powerhouse Workplace.
Sawdust on the factory floor is the metaphor Melissa uses to describe the modern workplace. Just as un-cleared sawdust was a safety hazard in 1800s factories, our accelerated work regimes imperil workers today. As Transformation Leader at HR-focussed consultancy Mercer, Melissa has developed a suite of strategies to build thriving workplaces.
We talk:
- Intensification of work
- Perils of modern tech
- Trauma awareness
- How we recover
- Rituals to rehumanise work
Links:
Work Here Now - The Book
Melissa's LinkedIn
Melissa's Twitter
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This week I speak with Liz Kislik, a management consultant, executive coach, and prolific Harvard Business Review and Forbes contributor.During her time consulting businesses of all types and sizes for over 30 years, Liz has developed a wealth of experience in dealing with workplace conflict. We usually think of conflict as something that happens between people, but people are just the part of the story that’s easiest to see.We talk:
- The key elements of conflict
- Where to start with addressing conflict
- Zooming out
- The issue with "I statements"
- Building relationships at work
Links:Liz's Website
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This week I go solo to share my perspective on the topic of trauma awareness in the workplace.Taking hints from the work of Dr Ingeborg Bosch and Daniela Seiff, both previous guests on the show, I talk:
- Defining trauma
- Why awareness is important
- How we defend against trauma
- Signs that people are triggered
Links:Dr. Ingeborg Bosch's EpisodeDaniela Seiff's Episode
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This week I speak with human potential coach and technology leader Reiner Kraft, Phd.While working as the director of engineering at Yahoo, he started to notice a decrease in his performance, and early signs of burnout, ultimately culminating in getting hospitalised for an anxiety episode. He realised he needed to change. So began a journey of mindfulness and meditation. Reiner is a prolific innovator with 120 patents to his name. He is now employing these talents in his data-driven & scientific approach to mindful leadership and stress resilience. We talk:
- Measuring the empty mind
- The first steps to mindfulness
- Improving IQ
- Debugging reactive patterns
- Applying the 10X approach
Links:The Mindful Leader
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This week I speak with serial founding entrepreneur, start-up investor and democracy reformer Hermann Arnold.
In 2001, Hermann decided to ‘build a company to fix the traditional way of working’, developing HR software and naming the company Umantis. He chose to run that company on a democratic basis, having the staff vote for major direction decisions, striking a balance between two worlds: hierarchy and agility.
We talk:
- Mining the corporate shadow
- Removing internal middlemen
- Electing leaders
- Letting anyone make any decision
- A Henry Ford of self-management?
Links:Umantis42hacks - Hermann's climate change hacking project
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This week I speak with blogger and former Head of Technology at The Guardian Nik Silver.
Nik has spent his career navigating the boundary between Tech teams and The Business. He shares his wisdom on how we can bridge the gap and his approach to leading interventions where communication has broken down.We talk:
- Start with a problem statement
- Listening with Clean Language
- The power of verbatim quotes
- Connecting coders to users
- Will AI replace programmers?
Enjoy!Links:Nik's Blog
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This week I swing way out with teacher and healer Paul Fletcher.
According to Paul, all challenges in life are due to negative information energy and matter that gets stored in your vibrational field (soul), while all success is due to a positive build-up. The secret everyone is looking for is to understand where and how the harmful accumulation occurs and how to remove it and maximize the positive. We talk:
- Tao forgiveness practices
- Acknowledging the soul
- Soul Marketing
- The 21-day gratitude practice
- Distinguishing heart and soul
Links:Paul's Website
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I've got a great one for you this week. I speak with Doug Kirkpatrick, organizational change consultant, TEDx speaker, executive coach, and author.
Doug began his career in the manufacturing sector, ultimately becoming one of the founding employees of The Morning Star Company, a world leader in the food industry that has become famous for its entirely self-managing workforce - that's right, a major blue-collar operation with no formal bosses. He now shares his extraordinary experience at Morning Star with other businesses around the world.
We talk:
- The two principles underpinning self-management
- How to get started in any organisation
- How self-management turbocharges innovation
- 'Adulting' company culture
- Self-management as leadership training
Links:Doug's WebsiteBeyond Empowerment - The Book
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This week, I speak with Arnaud Collery, a former stand-up comedian, a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker and a coach in tech, entertainment and personal growth
After 20 years of globe-trotting, he has settled in France, where he leads a personal growth platform called Humanava that teaches human skills through masterclasses.
Arnaud is a raging dynamo in all things related to human thriving. We talk:
- Starting out as Chief Happiness Officer
- The power of storytelling
- Three ingredients for happiness: gratitude, purpose and transparency
- Using comedy to address l'éléphant dans la chambre
- 'Otanda': keeping the fires of passion burning
Links:Arnaud's WebsiteHumanava
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This week, I speak with Yuri van Geest, co-author of the book Exponential Organizations.Yuri is a master in helping companies scale and has worked closely with Ray Kurzweil's Singularity University. Until just a few years ago, he was delivering up to three hundred keynotes a year, but he was experiencing burnout. A moment of self-reflection made him re-evaluate his life. This new perspective led him to take a 300km walk in India, meditating five times daily and to spend five days in a one-square-metre spot without food or water. With a profound shift in consciousness from these experiences, he has changed his life and career. Yuri is now re-embracing his creativity with a monthly DJ slot and is committed to causing a change in consciousness across the world.We talk:
- Building exponential organisations
- 'Immanence walks' for kids
- Confronting your shadow
- Connecting to nature
- Applying Nature's principles to everything
Links:Exponential Organizations - The BookYuri's LinkedIn Page
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This week, I speak with Patricia Pulliam Phillips and Jack J. Phillips, authors of the book Show the Value of What You Do.Jack’s journey started in Learning and Development at Lockheed Martin when he was tasked with justifying why the company should continue investing in free college tuition for new recruits. He won his case and so started a lifelong passion for helping others prove the value of their projects, however intangible the benefits might appear at first glance. We talk:
- How negative ROI can be a good thing
- The power of the ROI pilot
- The ROI of complaincy
- Using ROI to develop data-led decision making
- Using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to drive ROI
Links:Show the Value of What You Do - The BookThe ROI Institute
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This week, I speak with Alexander Kjerulf, author of the book Happy Hour is 9 to 5: How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life and Kick Butt at Work.Alexander gives detailed, practical advice on building the skills and energy to become happier and more successful at work and on learning how to deal with everything from nightmare bosses, bullies, miserable co-workers, long-running conflicts, stifling bureaucracy and management who refuse to see anything beyond the bottom line.We talk:
- How quitting is for winners
- Financial freedom
- Why not to ask: 'what would make you happy?'
- Happiness = relationships and results
- Happiness is about them
Links:Happy Hour is 9 to 5 - The BookAlexander's Website
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This week, I speak with Justine Clement, breath coach, founder of multiple companies and a formerly self-confessed ‘on-the-go’ CEO.For many years, she was CEO of an experiential travel company, and no words of warning from others about the importance of slowing down could stop her. She only started to listen after a series of injuries forced her to stop. Her slow recovery invited her to start learning how to ‘be’ rather than ‘do’ … and she found some powerful lessons in those enforced moments of stillness.
We talk:
- Conscious Connected Breath
- Yin versus yang breathwork
- Forest Bathing (no bath required)
- Inhaling the phytoncides
- Going phone free
Links:WonderbreathForest Bathing Made In BritainSelsey Sea Bathing Society
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This week, I speak with Lloyd Roberts, author, serial entrepreneur and tech company co-founder.
His book G Cubed: The Only Formula You Will Ever Need to Become Personally Fulfilled, is a powerful self-help guide that pairs real-life stories with a practical recipe for a personal fulfilment formula that will revitalize your potential, activate your success, and level up your entire world.
We talk:
- How losing his sister changed his life
- Almost going blind
- Changing your standards
- Gratitude, Growth, and Giving as life satisfaction multipliers
- How to embed rituals
Links:G Cubed - The BookThe G Cubed FormulaBecome More
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This week, I speak with Julius Manni, CEO of the Finnish tech company Vincit.
Vincit was originally founded in 2007 with a motto. To be a workplace that wouldn’t suck – not even on Mondays. Starting there, they're blossomed into The Best Place to Work in Finland. They've managed to do that using something they call Leadership as a Service, whereby employees are encouraged to develop themselves and their skills through self-management.
We talk:
- Being a father and public company CEO
- Self-management and worldwide scaling
- The change leader as facilitator
- Music as a creative outlet
- Learning to let go
Links: Vincit Julius' Music
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This week, I speak with Katie Brindle - a force of nature, life healer and expert Chinese Medicine practitioner.
After a car accident ended her dreams of becoming an opera singer, she eventually found healing through a visit to a Chinese Doctor on the King's Road in London. The experience was so profound it inspired her to train as a practitioner. Katie's approach focuses on the gap that Western medicine doesn't address, and that's the 'almost-well', the 'not feeling so good', the tired out and over-stressed.
We talk:
- Katie's transition from marketing exec to therapist
- The practice that healed her
- The three foundations of health
- Cupping for energy
- Tuning into the seasons
Links: Katie's Website Katie's Instagram Katie's TikTok The Hayo'u Method
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This week, I speak with Paul Green, Jr., Assistant Professor of Management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin.
Paul has a fascinating life story. What started for Paul as a seasonal job testing tomato juice became the start of an adventure in researching and understanding The Morning Star Company. Morning Star is the largest tomato processor in California. With no bosses, it has been called “the world’s most creatively managed company,” with Paul now leading the Morning Star Self-Management Institute.
We talk:
- Turning down banking for tomatoes
- Every man, a mission
- Whether self-management works for everyone
- Firing people when there is no boss
- The need for a ‘moral protector’
Links: Paul's Website The Morning Star Company
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This week, I speak with Kyle McDowell, author, leadership coach and former top executive.
Kyle has had an extraordinary career. He left high school to work in a call centre, paid his way through college and ended his corporate career managing tens of thousands of people.
In his book, Begin With WE: 10 Principles for Building and Sustaining a Culture of Excellence, Kyle examines the root causes of dysfunction in the workplace, highlighting the plague of a "me-oriented" paradigm.
His inside-out approach cultivates courageous "WE-oriented" leaders who recognize that great things can only be accomplished by great teams with a shared vision and a common set of guiding principles.
We talk:
- We not me leadership
- Relating to all levels
- Dropping the corporate persona
- Holding the line on principles
Links: Begin with WE - The Book Kyle's Website
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This week, I speak with Philippa Kindon & Taryn Burden, representing the UK software development company Mayden. Philippa and Taryn share Mayden's genuinely pioneering culture. Mayden has taken self-management from the software team and applied it to the whole company.
Philippa and Taryn absolutely give the lie to the belief that removing formal hierarchy inevitably leads to chaos. In fact, it's given them an outstanding culture.
We talk:
- A coach for everyone
- Personal growth, not promotion
- Building culture bottom up
Links: Mayden's Website
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This week, I speak with Cesar Perez, author of Chase the Light. A professional actor with a promising career, Cesar was on a meteoric rise until a car accident left him with a severe brain injury and almost entirely incapacitated. His remarkable resilience, through a grueling physical recovery and the breakdown of his relationship, forms the core of our conversation.
We talk:
- Being coached by an extraordinary mother
- His big break
- Getting hit by two trucks
- Recovering for the sake of others
- Keeping it in the day
If you’re going through dark times right now, you may find great inspiration in Cesar’s story.
Links: Chase The Light - The Book Cesar's Instagram
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This week, I speak with Narada Kush, someone who has changed my life. He was my personal Vedic meditation teacher. Since taking up this practice, my life has transformed in multiple ways: my sleep has improved, my mind has cleared, and I'm far less reactive to daily events.
Narada is the author of the book The Vedas For Everyone. He has made it his life's mission to bring the ancient wisdom of the Vedas to the masses and teach their practical applications to inspire people to follow their own unique (inner) path.
We talk:
- his journey into Vedic meditation
- gathering insight in an age of ignorance
- finding personal stability through meditation
- transcending your current state of consciousness
Links: Narada's Website The Vedas For Everyone - The Book
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This week, I speak with Richard Newman, one of the world's foremost communication trainers.
Richard's extraordinary career journey began with a stint in a Tibetan monastery. The challenges he faced there set him on a path to helping others to communicate powerfully.
We talk:
- teaching monks that spoke no English
- overcoming his autism
- turning his business around in the middle of the pandemic
- his potent morning routine
- how communication starts with mindset
Links: UKBodyTalk - Richard's website Richard's LinkedIn profile Richard's Instagram profile
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This week, I go solo to share my experiences of the last year practising Vedic meditation.
Previous guest Jillian Lavender first introduced me to this style of meditation in her book 'Why Meditate?'. My new habit has transformed my life and especially my well-being.
I share:
- How Vedic meditation is so easy
- Sleep vs meditation
- What is and what is not meditation
Links: Jillian's book - Why Meditate? Because It Works Jillian's London Meditation Centre Narada's online courses
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This week, I sit down with Michael Glauser, author and Professional Practice Professor at the University of Utah.
During a stint working in the Middle East, Michael began a study of Islam. It sparked a quest to find parallels across all the major religions and philosophical traditions. It led to One People One Planet: 6 Universal Truths for Being Happy Together, Michael’s manifesto for happiness and a path to healing the divisions emerging in many of our societies today.
We talk:
- From academic to building a 600-person company
- Giving up the ego
- To judge or not to judge
- Saving a marriage with one question
- Learning from Confucius
Links: One People One Planet - The Book
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This week, I sit down with Chuck Blakeman, serial entrepreneur, international speaker, best-selling business author and world-renowned business advisor.
Chuck is on a mission to create a world where all members of companies share in the creative process of building the company together. He is a man who pulls no punches in calling out the current de-humanizing corporate paradigm—his message is a true tour-de-force.
We talk:
- Corporations as Ponzi schemes
- You can't just fire the bosses
- Thinking for yourself
- Capitalism not industrialism
- The Participation Age
Links: Chuck's Website The Crankset Group
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This week, I sit down with Michelle K. Johnston, PhD., author and professor of management at Loyola University in New Orleans.
We discuss her book, The Seismic Shift in Leadership: How to Thrive in a New Era of Connection, and how the overriding imperative for leaders today is to connect; to themselves and others.
We talk:
- From pantsuits to heels
- Dropping perfection
- How to build connection
- The power of ritual
- Lessons from a great quarterback
Links: The Seismic Shift in Leadership - The Book Dr. Johnston's Website
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This week, I sit down with Ron Baker, author of Bright Lights, Big Empty.
When I first accepted Ron onto the Zoom call for this episode, I was blown away by how extraordinary youthful Ron looked for a man in his early sixties.
Ron is a man who has very visibly done The Work. I was also profoundly moved by how loving, and present Rob is. The conversation stretched me in many ways.
We talk:
- Walking away from a career in the performing arts
- Building his School of Self-Mastery
- How his business partner became a channel for Gabriel
- Scanning our past for trauma and the good
- How the split we're seeing in society right now was expected
We go all the way out there with this one, and it's well worth the ride!
Links: Ron's Website Bright Lights, Big Empty - The Book
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This week, I sit down with Roberto Martinez, co-founder of the software company Nearsoft.
As a follower of famous business radical Ricardo Semler, Roberto built a company culture based on:
- No formal hierarchy
- Meaning and belonging as foundations
- Transparency and decentralisation
The number one message from Roberto that I took away from our conversation is that if you want a vibrant, humane culture, you've got to find ways to have everyone participate. We talk:
We talk:
- Cooking for the team
- High participation and fast decisions
- Handling transparency in larger organisations
- Letting go of hierarchical mental models
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This week, I sit down with Mick Spiers, long-time executive in the world of urban mobility and author of the new book You're a Leader, Now What? We know that only 16% of people genuinely love their job and like their boss. People spend up to 1/3 of their lives in jobs and workplaces where they struggle to find meaning and purpose. Mick sees the way to change this as being through building competent, inspiring leaders. He's focused on helping leaders early in their careers. If you're a new leader, this episode could be the one for you.
We talk:
- Building your own leadership model
- The five factors humans need to thrive
- The perils of using "actually"
- Going beyond active listening
- Leader as the architect of rituals
Links: Mick's Website
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This week, I sit down with Meike Bartels, Professor in Genetics and Wellbeing at the Department of Biological Psychology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She's also the president of the International Positive Psychology Association.
Professor Bartels is one of the world's leading scholars of the science of well-being. She looks at what aspects of well-being are innate, what we can train and what's outside our control.
We talk:
- What we mean by well-being
- The top external factors affecting our happiness
- Habits for well-being
- What we get wrong with well-being programmes
- Bringing well-being awareness to your leadership
Links: International Positive Psychology Association
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This week, I sit down with Rebecca Ward, author of The Paper Tiger Syndrome.
Can you remember a time when you felt genuinely fearless? When you knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that your world was safe? For the average person, consistently experiencing that kind of freedom sounds like wishful thinking. But what if that weren't the case? What if most fears and anxieties were just paper tigers?
Rebecca and I discuss how to deal with our pager tigers, including:
- Why we hide our emotional pain
- Grieving past injuries
- Connecting to our Vegas nerve
- The soul in the body
- A new 'voo'
Links: The Paper Tiger Syndrome - The Book Rebecca's Website
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This week, I sit down with Diane Dreher, author of The Tao of Inner Peace.
Translated more often than any other book except the Bible, the Tao Te Ching has been a spiritual guide for centuries, helping millions find peace within themselves, with each other, and with the natural world around them.
Diane's The Tao of Inner Peace adapts the principles of Tao to today's world, showing us how to integrate the many facets of our everyday lives to create a balanced, dynamic, harmonious whole.
We talk:
- The power of savouring
- Healing society's divisions
- Overcoming chronic stress
- The abundance of nature
- 15 minutes in the forest
Links: Diane's Website
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This week, I sit down with Kath Blackham, CEO of the revolutionary Australian digital transformation agency VERSA.
She has used VERSA as a platform to move the needle on the things she's most passionate about—mental health in the workplace, diversity, flexibility and using technology for good. She famously instituted a four-day week, anathema within the crazy-hours digital agency sector. By creating a swathe of people-first rituals in her business, retention has gone up, sick days and mental health issues are down, and profit has spiked.
We talk:
- The experiments that failed
- Happiness first
- Mindful check-ins
- Three o'clock walkies
- Building culture remote-first
Links: VERSA
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This week, I sit down with Federico Zuppa and Jorge Silva, the founders of the Argentinian self-managing software company 10Pines.
10Pines is a company with a horizontal organisational structure, where nobody is above anyone else. They make decisions based on consent, not consensus or voting, making for a dynamic, highly adaptive culture..
We talk:
- Developing citizens, not leaders
- Choosing your own salary
- Getting things done when all work is voluntary
- The hard parts of being self-managed
- The temptations of being a boss
Links: 10Pines' culture page
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This week, I sit down with fellow podcaster and YouTuber The Uneducated Economist.
Four years ago, whilst selling lumber during the day, he spent hours researching economics in his free time. He tried to share his insights with his colleagues until one day; a colleague confessed that it was all going over their heads and that perhaps he should start a blog. The blog became a YouTube channel that now has ninety thousand subscribers.
Although he left formal education at high school, he takes complex economic issues and breaks them down so anyone can understand and have a conversation about them.
We talk:
- Economics 101
- Debt as an addiction
- Prospects for the dollar
- What's happening with inflation
- Quitting alcohol and climbing out of debt
Links: Simon's Website Simon's YouTube Channel
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This week, I sit down with leadership and change consultant Dr Sharon Varney. She recently published 'Leadership in Complexity and Change: For a World in Constant Motion.' Sharon is adept at making complexity science accessible and has a wealth of experience applying it in business.
We talk:
- How starlings demonstrate complexity
- Increasing your 'complexity aperture'
- Change management vs managing in change
- The importance of slowness
- Ethics in a complex world
Links: Sharon's Website - space for learning
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This week, I sit down with Shanghai-based coach and author Jamie Dixon. As well as being a great storyteller himself, Jamie is also someone who helps others share their own stories.
Our conversation is one of two halves: at first, we look at productivity and how he managed to write his latest book in 24 hours flat. In the second, we explore the habits of great storytelling and how you can use them to engage and influence others.
We talk: - Getting things done without willpower - How to say no to the boss - How experiments fuel productivity - The art of relating - How to use story habits to influence others
Links: Jamie's Website Jamie's Books
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This week's guest is former medical doctor, corporate retiree, and spiritual adept Kevin Krenitsky. Seven years ago, he left life as a successful executive to devote himself entirely to going within. He recently released The Still Point: The Simplicity of Spiritual Enlightenment.
According to Kevin, we are amidst the most significant wave of awakening or self-realisation this planet has ever seen. Our unconscious living has not only created stress, anxiety, wars, and famine; our choices have brought us to the edge of mass destruction. He believes there's a better way, one in which we can live our lives in alignment with our true selves.
We talk: - Following the Direct Path - Our addiction to experience - How we can't solve the mind with the mind - Decoupling thoughts and feelings - The 'journey' trap
Links: The Still Point - The Book Kevin's Website
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This week we see the return of a former guest to the podcast, Professor of Complexity and Management at The University of Hertfordshire Chris Mowles. He's back on the podcast to talk about his new book, Complexity: A Key Idea for Business and Society.
Drawing on the natural and social sciences, he describes how complexity models are helpful but insufficient for our understanding of complex reality. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, he explains how, whenever humans are involved, it will be 'predictably unpredictable' whether we like it or not. But rather than this being a cause for despair, Chris emphasises how understanding complexity can give us more options for action.
We talk: - Handling the discomfort of uncertainty - Ethics in complexity - Sources of group resilience - Unstable stability - There is no system!
Links: Complexity: A Key Idea for Business and Society - The Book Chris' University of Hertfordshire Page
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This week we're releasing a talk I did with friend of the show Tom van der Lubbe at the Forward Summit, a conference dedicated to redefining leadership and management to create happier people and successful organizations.
We talk: - Applying The Golden Rule in business - Why being small is beautiful - Leading through your frustrations
Links: Management 3.0
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This week's episode is very special to me, Bob Chapman, a man who's been a personal inspiration for many years. Bob is the award-winning CEO of Barry-Wehmiller and author of the critically acclaimed book Everybody Matters.
Bob's life changed after a friend asked him what dream he most feared taking to his grave. This conversation led him to ditch his traditional management approach to start treating his team members as if they were each his own precious child.
We talk: - Leadership as listening - Validating people's dignity - Better financial metrics than Buffet - Human wealth, not economic wealth - Flipping the frame
Links: Everybody Matters - The Book The Privilege of Leadership
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This week I speak with Henry Shukman, author and current Spiritual Director of The Mountain Cloud Zen Center. He teaches mindfulness and awakening practices to a wide range of students from all traditions and walks of life.
Henry is a man who seems to have led several lives: author, singer and now Zen adept. His battles with severe eczema at an early age, coupled with the break-up on his parents' marriage, led him on a life-long quest to find relief from his suffering.
After a spontaneous spiritual awakening at the age of 19, followed by a difficult few years, he embarked on a long journey of healing and awakening. His Zen quest ultimately led to the international abbot of Sanbo Zen appointing him a teacher in 2010.
We talk: - The Zen atheist - Trauma release and spirituality - Childrearing for awakening - The arduous path
Links: Mountain Cloud Zen Center Henry's Books
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This week I speak with Dr. Steven MacGregor, the founder of The Leadership Academy of Barcelona, Honorary Professor of Health and Wellbeing at the Glasgow School of Art, and External Advisor for McKinsey & Company.
After completing his first degree, Steven continued his education, and athletic pursuits whilst his friends took corporate jobs. He watched his own wellbeing sore as his friends' nosedived. Seeing these companies squashing the vitality of his colleagues set him on a mission to change things.
Steven is also a former international-level duathlete currently racing for FC Barcelona and has trained with Olympic athletes, Tour de France cyclists and Ironman champions.
We talk: - wellbeing as a function of habit - nutrition and movement - stealth exercise
Links: Dr. MacGregor's books The Daily Reset
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This week I speak with an extraordinary woman, Dr. Ruby Gibson, the developer or the technique called Somatic Archaeology, a transgenerational approach to wellness and reclaiming memory.
For the past 35 years, Dr. Gibson has been dedicated to the craft and science of Historical Trauma recovery internationally and among Native Peoples. As a mixed-blood woman, Dr. Gibson's life experience and ceremonial life guided her to develop these healing techniques. She has learned how to simplify the complexity of trauma recovery through the inspiration of her spiritual grandmothers and the four worlds of creation.
We talk:
- The 5 archaeological steps
- Learning from the natural world
- 7 generations in each direction
- Healing her family history of alcoholism and abandonment
- The power of the indigenous medicine wheel
Links:
Freedom Lodge My Body My Breath
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My extraordinary guest this week has dedicated his life to connecting to nature, out there as well as inside. ‘Uncle’ Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq is a shaman, traditional healer, storyteller and carrier of the Qilaut (winddrum), whose family belongs to the traditional healers of the Far North from Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland.
We talk the importance of smelling each other (yes), melting the ice, meeting Mandela, and the simple acts of connection that can restore our humanity.
Links: Ice Wisdom
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Our guest this week is psychotherapist and executive coach Dr. Tom Cotton.
He's a man who stands for the power of deep work. So much so that he invites people to spend three days with him in an abandoned village in the Haut-Languedoc mountains to get beneath their surface thinking.
We talk about exploring deep work for connection, creativity, and shared mission. Tom also shares the principles of his approach to deep work for those unable to join his fantastic retreats.
Links: Sue Prideaux - I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche
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For any parents out there, our guest this week is Dr. Gordon Neufeld, author of Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers.
He speaks about the perils of peer attachment in our children and what we can do to win them back. I'm joined by a colleague in my co-working space, Suzanne, who is facing this right now, and Gordon provides Suzanne with some real-time advice, including sharing how he rescued his relationship with his own daughter.
We talk about effective strategies for preserving our child-parent relationships in the context of today's ubiquitous social media presence.
Links: Hold On To Your Kids - The Book The Neufeld Institute
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I'm delighted to say that we're back this week with one of the most thoughtful guys I know, Kayvan Kian. He has a new book, What Is Wisdom?: A Collection of Practical Thoughts for Better Decisions in Life, in which he invites us to channel different philosophers to help us think through life's challenges and opportunities more carefully.
The main takeaway from my conversation with Kayvan was the importance of slowing down. Also, the need to make time to think whilst reflecting on how we're thinking. It's this that can help us to dramatically improve our decision making.
Links: What Is Wisdom - The Book Kayvan's Website
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This week's guest is author and Jungian psychotherapist Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, PhD.
The lasting effects of individual trauma are now widely recognized. But what of the consequences of trauma two, three or four generations down the line?
Tirzah's book Wounds Into Wisdom makes a compelling case that trauma legacies can be transformed and healed.
We talk:
- Facing your loss
- Trauma passing down generations
- Weaponising our trauma
- Embracing, then releasing victimhood
- Seven principles of recovery
Links: Tirzah's Website
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This week's guest is Dr. Howard Schubiner, director of the Mind Body Medicine Center at Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan and Clinical Professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine.
According to Dr. Schubiner, our chronic pain is often a learned response or association, meaning that we have conditioned ourselves to associate a trigger with a reaction.
Dr. Schubiner suggests that we can "re-wire" our neural circuits to undo this conditioning using his Mind-Body approach.
If you're suffering from chronic pain or have friends and family that do, Dr Schubiner is well worth a listen.
We talk:
- Howard's conversion to mind-body thinking
- Medicine's blind spot
- Job satisfaction and back pain
- How forgiveness can heal you physically
- How pain protects us
Links: The Unlearn Your Pain Website Resources recommended by Dr. Hubiner:
- The TMS Wiki - for those suffering from Tension Myositis Syndrome
- The Psychophysiologic Disorders Association - dedicated to ending chronic pain
- SIRPA (UK) - providing a cutting edge approach to chronic pain
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This week's guest is Jesse Thistle, author of the inspiring debut memoir, From the Ashes.
Abandoned by his parents before becoming a high school dropout, Jesse is now a rising Indigenous scholar. His book charts the story of his life on the streets and how Jesse overcame trauma and addiction to discover the truth about who he is.
We talk:
- Hiding from the police as a toddler
- Attempting to get killed by his dealer
- Finding redemption in prison
- From undergrad to professor in 7 years
- How recovery happens in loving communities
Jesse's truly is an incredible story.
Links: From The Ashes - The Book Jesse's Website
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This week's guest is Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and medical director for the McLean South East Adult Psychiatric Programs. A licensed physician and board-certified psychiatrist, he also has a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. Observing the common denominators of people who have beaten the odds, Dr. Rediger reveals the immense power of our immune system and unlocks the secrets of the mind-body connection.
We talk:
- Remarkable recoveries
- The curse of sugar
- Overcoming Decartes’ mind-body split
- The 4 pillars of great health
- The power of prayer
Links: Cured - The Book Dr. Rediger's Website
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This week’s guest is Kevin Hancock, CEO of one of the oldest family businesses in the United States. Kevin used to be a hard-charging, traditional leader, until one day, when felt his throat tightening and found it difficult to speak or be understood. His diagnosis: spasmodic dysphonia, an incurable and rare condition that causes throat spasms. Out of this adversity came a radical shift in leadership and a brand new set of ideas that focused on him doing less, flipping the script on the leadership model, bringing unprecedented performance to his company.
We talk:
- Asking questions as leadership
- Getting clear in Pine Ridge
- Astonishing business results
- Travelling from the head to the heart
- Advancing humanity
Links: The Business Of Shared Leadership
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This week’s guest is perhaps one of the most experienced change leaders and advisors on the planet, Jake Jacobs. For over 35 years, he has worked in 61 industries, helping over 210.000 people implement changes in their businesses. What I love about Jake is his fearlessness in calling out what leaders really must do to achieve change in their businesses.
We talk:
- The importance of leverage
- Thinking and acting as if the future were now
- Following the energy (you don’t always have to start at the top)
- The importance of large group work
- The paradox of honouring continuity to achieve change
Links: Jake Jacobs Consulting
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This week's guest on Being Human is Dr Will Van Derveer. Will is the founder and medical director of the Integrative Psychiatric Healing Center where he has practised integrative psychiatry for 15 years.
After discovering that his conventional psychiatric training was inadequate to answer many of his patients' challenges, he took an entire year out to meditate. Finding that meditation alone was also not the answer; he began investigating psychedelic therapy to resolve the root causes of common problems such as depression, anxiety, and insomnia.
We talk:
- The power of using MDMA in therapy
- Will's ayahuasca experience
- The importance of sleep
- How meditation is not always enough
- 'Weirding' your way to healing
Links: The Integrative Psychiatry Institute
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This week's guest on Being Human has one of the most extraordinary life stories of anyone I’ve met. I give you Guy Felicella. Guy grew up in a middle-class home but fell into addiction at a young age. He spent 30 years in the repeated cycle of gangs, addiction, treatment, and jail. But a pivotal meeting with one of Canada’s most celebrated doctors changed the course of his life. Guy is now nine years sober and in a stable relationship with three children, a remarkable turnaround. We dive into how he was able to achieve such a remarkable recovery.
We talk:
- 30 years of gang life
- Meeting Gabor Mate
- The trauma therapy that changed everything
- Practicing 'doing kind'
- Confronting his abuser mother
Links: Guy's Website Guy's Twitter
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This week's guest on Being Human is Darcia Narvaez, Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. I love Darcia's work because, unlike other psychologists, she doesn't simply look at our society's current pathologies and ask, how do we fix this? She takes in the broad sweep of human societal evolution and notes how our current ways of being and relating haven't always been so. She focuses especially on what we can learn from past and present indigenous cultures.
We talk:
- How agriculture gave us hierarchy
- Predatory individualism and the cycle competive detachment
- Pre-competitive cultures
- Feeling the trees scream
- The power of the Gift Economy
Links: Breaking The Cycle - The Film Evolved Nest Kindred Media Darcia's University of Notre Dame Website
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This week's guest on Being Human is complexity theorist and author Ian Snape. A former research leader and executive at the Australian Antarctic Division, he has led teams on expeditions to both polar regions before focusing on coaching and training CEOs, Olympic athletes, and frontline professionals. We discuss how resilience isn't just the ability to tough it out; it's dependent upon an interconnected set of skills, techniques, creative processes. It's about new understandings of how we think, act, and interact with our environments and each other.
We talk:
- How and why to quiet the Left Brain
- Clean language for resilience
- The power of using perspectives
- Coaching marines for breakthrough performance
- The one about the abductive turkey
Links: Resilience By Design - The Book Frontline Mind
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This week's guest on Being Human is Christopher D. Lee, PhD, author and the HR Director at one of the USA's oldest and most prestigious colleges, William & Mary. Christopher has a passion for human performance. There are three things we know about traditional performance appraisals: they are widely used, universally despised, and probably ineffective. What should leaders do instead? Adopt a coaching mindset and commit to regular, structured performance conversations. Christopher offers a wealth of insight and practical ideas about how to elevate these conversations for deep impact.
We talk:
- The mentor that changed Christopher's life
- Why relationships matter
- Your job is not to evaluate
- Focus on intent
- Have people feel good
Links: Performance Conversations - The Book The Performance Conversations website
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This week's guest on Being Human is psychiatrist, empath and author Judith Orloff. Judith is the bestselling author of "The Power of Surrender", where she advocates for the art of letting go as the secret key to manifesting power and success in all areas of life, including work, relationships, sexuality, radiant aging, and health and healing.
We talk:
- Surrendering to her intuition as a medical professional
- Let's talk death
- Tuning in to the quiet voice
- Integrating ego and intuition
- Embracing your multitudes
Links: The Power of Surrender - The Book
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This week's guest on Being Human is peace-pilgrim, life-long activist and former monk, Satish Kumar. As a teenager, Satish trekked from India to America via Russia to deliver ‘peace tea’ to the leaders of, what were then, the four major nuclear powers. He walked 8,000 miles without any money totally depending on the generosity of strangers. Now in his 80s, he has devoted his life to campaigning for ecological regeneration, social justice and spiritual fulfilment.
We talk:
- Becoming a monk at 9 years old
- Cultivating trust
- Staying committed
- Introducing The Cosmic Relationships Department
- Embracing 'enough'
Links: Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine
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This week's guest on Being Human is facilitator and author Corena Chase. Corena is co-author of The Five Lost Superpowers: Why We Lose Them and How to Get Them Back. Corena believes that everyone has superpowers when they are a child. While we tend to lose track of them as we grow up, they’re always there, right below the surface, ready for us to reactivate them and fully manifest our human potential.
We talk:
- How her niece taught her the glory of curiosity
- Presence and resilience
- Why a jack of all trades might be a master after all
- Daring to play
- Smashing corporate taboos
Links: The Five Lost Superpowers - The Book Corena's Website
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This week's guest on Being Human is intuitive healer, mentor and life teacher Fiona Arrigo. What I found so compelling about Fiona is her profound belief that we can heal ourselves. With so many of us right now - including me sometimes - seeking external sources for our wellbeing, she's part of a growing movement of people rediscovering their innate healing potential. On this basis, she has developed her healing method The Arrigo Programme, where she offers a multi-layered approach to anything from anxiety and depression to relationship issues, chronic pain, or simply a feeling of losing our way.
We talk:
- What it means to be human
- Working on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels
- How surviving a severe car crash became a spiritual awakening
- How there is no blueprint
- Owning "I don't know"
Links: The Arrigo Programme Fiona's Instagram
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This week's guest on Being Human is ecological economist and writer Tim Jackson. Tim's view is that we need to give up our obsession with GDP and focus instead on human progress. He envisions a return to a focus on virtue and a re-prised role for institutions to integrate the desires of individuals with their social obligations. His book Post Growth is both a manifesto for system change and an invitation to rekindle our connection with what it means to be human.
We talk:
- Progress not economic growth
- Labour vs work
- Mugumo trees in Kenya
- The perils of unconstrained novelty-seeking
- Finding flow for sustainability
Links: Tim's Website Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity
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This week's guest on Being Human is Marina Efaimoglou. She has an interesting life story, to say the least. Whilst still in her twenties she was running her own investment firm having survived a cancer with 25% survival odds. The scare caused her re-evaluate her life. She later received a second diagnosis. This time, she was able to heal purely through natural methods. Her health quest led her to create the Euphoria Retreat in the Taygetus Mountains near Sparta in Greece. But it’s not all salads and massages, at its core is a spiritual inquiry into why we’re here.
We talk:
- Surviving cancer twice
- The family crisis that set her free
- Using the Chinese 5 Elements to understanding healing
- Staring her own investment firm
- Leaving banking for her new life
Links: Marina's Retreat - Euphoria
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This week's guest on Being Human is educator, mental health counsellor, yoga teacher and co-founder of the Center for Trauma and Embodiment (CFTE), Jenn Turner. Trauma is a pervasive aspect of all human experience. Understandably, it's one that no one wants to talk about, and yogis are no exception. Jenn's work is piercing this taboo in the yoga world. She's learning lessons about dealing with the impacts of buried pain that we can all apply in our lives, no matter our walk of life.
We talk:
- The double-think of mainstream yoga
- Shifting from didact to 'holder of space'
- Embracing the chaos
- Why survivors must always be the authors of their healing
- The essence of trauma-sensitive leadership
Links:
Jenn's Website Center for Trauma and Embodiment (CFTE) Embodied Healing - The Book
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This week's guest on Being Human is Professor of Economics Steve Keen. Professor Keen has been on a mission to expose the failings of mainstream economic theory and policy. An economics dissident and author of 2001’s Debunking Economics, he warned about the 2008 economic crisis long before it happened.
We talk:
- Why Neoclassical economic models are fantasies
- How nations manage to keep their ‘zombie economies’ going
- How economists are not prepared for the looming climate crisis
- How those wary of "watermelon" communistic greens have reason to be fearful
- A realistic model of the economy
- A new politics to de-zombify our economies
Links: Professor Keen's Books Professor Keen's Patreon eCONomics - The Comic
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Why are measures of stress and anxiety on the rise when materially we seem to have it so good? This is a question that my guest this week, Mark Blyth has set out to discover. In his book Angrynomics, Mark explores the rising tide of anger and proposes radical new solutions for an increasingly polarized world.
Mark is as entertaining as he is passionate, we talk:
- Why we're so angry
- The failure of 'trickle-up' neo-liberalism
- The golden opportunity that rich governments are not taking
- Why inflation isn't the problem
- Towards a Capitalism 4.0
Links: Angrynomics
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How many of us during our school years learned the teachings of Epictetus or Seneca? Perhaps you were lucky. With the world as it is right now, there's a great need for the perennial wisdom of the ancients. My guest this week, Kayvan Kian, has been leading a series of philosophical dialogues within the Young Leaders Forum he founded. He condensed the essence of these conversations into his book What is Water? In it, Kayvan shifts the focus away from overwhelm and toward virtues and strategies that will help you grow stronger through it all.
In this episode, we talk:
- The Bricks, Pillars and Schools metaphor
- Magical celebrations
- Learning to talk less
- The power of dialogue
- Cultivating virtue
Links: What Is Water? - The Book
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Why are some people magnetic, confident, comfortable in their skin, and in charge of their destinies? What’s their secret? This week's author Leslie Ehm, believes she has the answer in one word: Swagger. Leslie talks about how her philosophy shatters the myths around “fake it ’til you make it”, and we why need to dig deep to uncover and express our real selves. What I love about Leslie is that she’s not shy about tackling what’s blocking many of us from finding our swagger and that’s addressing our underlying pain.
In this episode, we talk:
- The true definition of swagger
- What's blocking your real self
- How far we can heal pain
- Embracing our weirdness
- Professionalism vs. authenticity
Links: Swagger - The Book Leslie's Website Leslie's Instagram
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What does it mean to be a good organisation in a world of unbounded individualism and ferocious social Darwinism? A rebellious professor and a business insurgent believe they have an answer. Professor at the University of St. Gallen Antoinette Weibel and Otti Vogt, ex-COO of ING, join us this week to talk about the new project they've co-founded called Good Organisations. They believe the “anything goes” narrative of our postmodern world cannot be upheld. Antionette and Otti join the show to tell us that we need to re-learn how to put virtues first and craft “good organisations” that enable human flourishing.
In this episode, we talk:
- Healthy feminine and healthy masculine
- The role of healing and dialogical learning
- The curse of unbounded individualism
- How Agile = 'Lipstick on a Pig'
- The need for revolution
Links: Good Organisations
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We're back with much loved former guest, David Chislett. David is a South African punk rocker-turned-creativity consultant, now living deep in a Dutch forest. As well as helping companies to unleash his weapons of mass creation, David is a poet supported by a band of loyal Patreon subscribers. David shares with us his journey to create a virtual community around his poetry and the steps he took to achieve it.
In this episode, we talk:
- Discipline in creativity
- We are what we do
- Dealing with psychological triggers
- Can art truly impact culture?
- Managing tour bands
Links: David's Poetry Patreon With All Of You - The Book David's Personal Website
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What if being honest with ourselves and others made us be better business leaders? That is the issue this week's guest, Ron Carucci, addresses in his book, To Be Honest. The origins of his book are fascinating. He put hundreds of his firm's past client interviews through IBM Watson's AI engine to uncover patterns associated with business success. He found that honesty was crucial. He discovered that just four factors could make organisations 16 times more likely to have people tell the truth, behave fairly, and serve a greater good.
In this episode, we talk:
- How BS slowly kills businesses
- How honesty is a muscle
- Going beyond engagement surveys
- The secret of Microsoft's turnaround
- Ron's path to getting more honest
Links: Ron's Book To Be Honest - The Website Navalent - Ron's Consultancy
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Jillian Lavender used to run a large division of an international publisher, always between two planes and walking right up to the line of major burnout. On the recommendation of a friend, and with some scepticism, she took a meditation course. From that point, things changed for her in a big way. She could handle her fast-paced life. After a complete career change, she now teaches meditation in London and New York and has written a book called Why Meditate? Because it Works.
In this episode, we talk how meditation: - Can be easy and non-wierd - Improves your sleep - Can be done anywhere - Enhances your clarity of thought - Doesn't require you become a hippy!
Links: Jillian's Book London Meditation Centre New York Meditation Center
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Over the next few years, we will experience more disruption than in the previous 100 years. Yet are things changing too fast and too regularly to notice? Futurist Eric Pilon-Bignell sees modern change presents as a giant, rogue wave emerging on the horizon. He asks, will we surf these waves with mastery? Or will we let them swallow us whole? In his book Surfing Rogue Waves, Eric shows us how to gain from the greatest period of opportunity in all of human history.
In this episode, we talk:
- The Six D's of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Thinking in exponentials
- Why improv is the crucial 21st-century skill
- Everlasting worms
- Learning to surf complexity
Links: Surfing Rogue Waves Eric's Website
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with John Kay, one of Britain's leading economists, whose career has spanned the academic world, business and public affairs
In his recent book, Radical Uncertainty with Mervyn King, he describes how, as a society, we regularly crave certainties which cannot exist and invent knowledge we cannot have. We forget that humans are successful because we have adapted to an environment that we understand only imperfectly and that, throughout history we have developed a variety of ways of coping with the radical uncertainty that defines our lives.
In this episode, we talk:
- The problem with bias-obsessed behavioural economics
- The power of abductive reasoning
- Understanding economics' failing record
- Our love for doomsday scenarios
- The folly of misapplying probabilistic reasoning
Links: Radical Uncertainty John's Website
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Paul Collier, the author of the barn-storming new economic treatise 'The Future of Capitalism'. From humble beginnings in Sheffield, England, to life as an Oxford don, Paul understands the power and limitations of capitalism from both sides of the tracks. In our conversation, Paul reflects on the role businesses must play in creating a more sustainable version of capitalism. Packed with great anecdotes and some sobering insights, I really enjoyed this one
We talk:
- From England's poorest city to celebrated academic
- Why 'oughts' trump 'wants'
- How General Motors failed at Lean
- How the capitalism that has brought us closer is now pushing us apart
- Why we can't treat humans like cats
Links: Paul's The Future of Capitalism Nicholas A. Christakis - Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society Michael J. Sandel - The Tyranny of Merit Robert D. Putnam - The Upswing Paul Collier, John Kay - Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism
This is an interview with Tom van der Lubbe around the theme of self-management. We get into the history of his founding of Viisi on self-management principles. We also take several practical questions for the webinar audience members. Well worth a watch/listen if you want to learn more about this topic.
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Gabriel Jurj, who is a complexity practitioner and seasoned executive working in Romania. He didn't take the standard path, dropping out of University to join a monastic order, running hostels in Budapest. Still practising some of his monkish disciplines, Gabriel leans on these to help him lead. He also sees the strong links between a spiritual appreciation and the ability to embrace and work in an uncertain world.
In this episode, we talk:
- What he learnt being a monk
- Retrospective cohesion
- The links between self-work and complexity thinking
- Spiritual practice in business life
- Letting go of goals
Links: Cynefin at 21 - The Book Ananda Marga
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with David Woods, a professor at Ohio State University who discovered and pioneered the concept of Graceful Extensibility. As the opposite of brittleness, graceful extensibility is the ability of a system to extend its capacity to adapt when surprise events challenge its boundaries.
In this episode, we talk:
- Dealing with shock
- The need to stretch at the boundaries
- How all systems are fragile
- Staying alive to 'weak signals'
- How viability requires extensibility
Links: The Theory of Graceful Extensibility: basic rules Graceful Extensibility - short presentation The Strategic Agility Gap
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This week on Being Human, I speak with Nigel Thurlow, ex-Chief of Agile at Toyota and co-author of The Flow System. Tired of the framework merchants and the over-commercialisation of the Agile movement, Nigel could see that a new approach was needed. A philosophy that went beyond Lean and Agile to embrace complexity thinking, team science and the critical question of leadership. He believes, first and foremost, in education as the driver of change. Present people with the science and trust them to apply it in their context.
In this episode, we talk:
- The holy triad of complexity, team science and distributed leadership
- Why leadership training must change
- Going beyond Systems Thinking
- New physics
- How information is upstream of energy
Links: The Flow System - Read the Book The Flow System - Buy the Book Flow Guides
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with author, speaker and CEO Sunny Bonnell. Together with her co-author, Ashleigh Hansberger, she wrote Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different, a book that empowers people to take what society deems as "vices" and turn them into unrivalled assets. Sunny, herself a rare breed, dropped out of pre-veterinary school to start a branding agency with Ashleigh when branding agencies weren't a thing. Together, they built the hugely successful firm Motto around a 'rare breed' mindset.
In this episode, we talk:
- Owning your weirdness
- Her Dad's pivotal advice that kept her going
- What it means to be a rare breed
- Embracing your misfits for business agility
- The dark side of the rare breed
Links: Are you a rare breed? Find out Sunny's Company - Motto Rare Breed - The Book
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with complexity practitioner and well-being advocate Marion Kiely. Marion has dedicated her career to figuring out how the latest complexity thinking can bring sustained change to organisations. From her home in Cork in Ireland, she talks passionately about how we can truly be well at work.
In this episode, we talk:
- Why yoga and yoghurt is not the answer
- Could your work culture be a Health & Safety issue?
- The alternative to Powerpoints and plans
- The power of story
- Humble leadership
Links: Marion's Practice - Upstream The Cynefin Wiki
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with author and complexity consultant Sonja Blignaut. Meteorologist then IBM consultant, Sonya took a varied path to her latest role as CEO of leading complexity practitioners, Cognitive Edge. Sonja is a born-and-bred South African. As she points out, things don’t get much more complex than in the Rainbow Nation.
In this episode, we talk:
- Complexity and mindfulness
- The individual versus the system
- Letting go of the certainty merchants
- The diversity within
- Facing your triggers
Links: Sonja's Medium Page Sonja's Practice - More Beyond
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This week on Being Human, I speak with former bomb disposal team leader and pioneer in adaptive strategy Steve McCrone. Adaptive strategy applies complexity thinking to the art of high-level planning to enable firms to build resilience in the face of uncertainties. Steve is a very passionate speaker and presenter and brings this approach to life brilliantly using a strategically placed whiteboard. A good one to watch on video.
In this episode, we talk:
- Rules of thumb for bomb disposal
- The three aspects of adaptive strategy
- "Dark constraints" in organisations
- The stupidity of current/future state thinking
- Riding the new paradigm
Links: Steve's Practice AGLX
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with psychological researcher, consultant and author, Malcolm Parlett. From an orthodox academic background, at Cambridge then MIT, Malcolm discovered Gestalt psychology, which changed his life and work. It opened up a new sense of connectedness and took him away from more traditional, reductive approaches. Malcolm went on to co-found the UK's Gestalt Psychotherapy and Training Institute and to create the British Gestalt Journal. His book, 'Future Sense: Five explorations of whole intelligence for a world that’s waking up' has been an inspiration for coaches, educators and therapists worldwide. Malcolm is a powerful, tender soul, and he was a joy to interview.
In this episode, we talk: - Getting out of your head - Practical Gestalt - Embodying - Self-Recognising - The power of gardening
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Malcolm's Books
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with embodiment coaching specialist Mark Walsh. Embodiment is about working through gentle non-athletic movement, posture, awareness, and breathing to pursue deeper, faster and more permanent change. In this conversation, Mark shows us how to make friends with our bodies and feel at home again in our skin.
In this episode, we talk:
- From drug dealer to aikidoka
- The three levels of embodiment
- How to be become trauma-aware - Saving lives in the Middle East - Training circus acts in Ethiopia
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: The Embodiment Conference Embodiment Coaching
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with psychologist and former U.S. Army mental health specialist Dr. Timothy Yen. Dr. Yen has used his experience to create a framework that helps you build up your inner decision-making capability and use it successfully to address your most important choices.
In this episode, we talk:
- How trauma impacts how we make decisions
- 5 pillars to help you make great choices - Growing up in an Asian-American family
- Dealing with Iraqi vets - Blind spots for Eastern and Western cultures
Links: Dr. Yen's Website
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In this episode of Being Human, our favorite tangoing, mountain-climbing business philosopher Dr. Thomas Juli returns to share the wisdom in his new book 'Human Business: Life and Work in the Digital Age.'
As well as being an Agile Transformation Coach for the insurance giant Allianz, Thomas is a regular speaker at international conferences worldwide. These have included the NASA Project Management Challenge, the World Economic Forum and the Corporate Social Responsibility Forum Germany.
In this episode, we talk:
- Going beyond customer-led business
- Infusing your workplace with joy
- How to tap your intuition while you sleep - Bringing gratitude to the office
- The Golden Rule 2.0
Links: Dr. Thomas' Website
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with author, former cop and serial entrepreneur Jeff Wald. After selling WorkMarket, the multi-million dollar labour platform Jeff helped build from scratch, he found some time to pen The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations. Jeff claims that we're now entering a fourth great leap forward in technology, after mechanisation, electrification, and computerisation. With robots and AI, we face the first services revolution, meaning we will need to renegotiate the social contract, set clear rules for companies, and provide stability for society.
In this episode, we talk: - Jeff's surprising prediction for post-COVID remote working - Staying resilient through start-up highs and lows - How to manage mixed robot and human teams - What it takes to succeed in the NYPD - Is blockchain going to change the world?
Links: Jeff's Website
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This week on Being Human, I speak with Trent Hone, an authority on the U.S. Navy of the early twentieth century and a leader in applying complexity science to organisational design. Trent hooked me with his powerful story of U.S. Navy's rapid learning techniques in the 'Cyenfin at 21' book, the subject of my recent podcast with Dave Snowden. In our conversation, we talk about how the U.S. Navy was forced to learn some tough lessons combating a stealthy Japanese navy in the Battle of Guadalcanal in WWII and how they adapted and improved their fighting capabilities whilst pursuing combat.Trent helps goliaths like The World Bank and U.S. Government to foster innovation using the simple methods he has learned meticulously researching naval strategy.
In this episode, we talk: - Countering Japanese covert tactics - The power of doctrine - When admirals get psychological safety - Creativity under fire - Lessons for corporate agility
Links: Trent's Website
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This week on Being Human, I speak with Dr. Kevin Dutton, University of Oxford Research Psychologist, Bestselling Author and Elite Performance Consultant, also known as The Psychology Guy. The topic might seem odd for a show dedicated to humanising people’s lives and workplaces, but psychopaths are part of the forest of humanity. As we’ll explore in this episode, they can and often do take on productive roles in our society, but it’s important to understand how psychopaths operate and what we can and can’t expect from them. Like his charming psychopathic father, Dr. Dutton is hugely charismatic and it was a joy to spend tme with him.
In this episode, we talk:
- Growing up with 'Del Boy' - Hot vs cold empathy - Saying 'no' like a psycho - The positive role of psychopaths in society - How psychopathic are you?
Links: Dr. Dutton's Website The Wisdom of Psychopaths - The Book
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Karin Tenelius, one of the world's leading experts in self-managing organisations, or, in her own words, "workspaces that work for people and bring out the best in them." Karin not only trains others to lead through self-managing principles, but she has served as CEO to several businesses that she has managed in this way. For those of you who loved our episode with Lisa Gill, her co-author of Moose Heads on The Table, this is a brilliant follow up, diving into real-world examples of fully empowered teams delivering explosive results.
In this episode, we talk: - Letting go of driving - Who are you being? - Creating the right environment - Straight talking - The extraordinary gains of self-management
Links: Karin's Website Moose Heads on the Table
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My guest this week, Jos de Blok, has been on the bucket list of Being Human for a number of years. He's the founder of Buurtzorg, a community nursing organisation that has embracing the self-organising principle to stunning effect. In recognition of his contributions, Jos shares the RSA's Albert Award with the likes of Tim Berners-Lee and Stephen Hawking. Recently, having grown Buurtzorg to become an international operation, he is taking an interest in applying his principles to politics. A big thank you to Tom van der Lubbe to helping to make this happen.
In this episode, we talk:
- Letting go of products and activities - The ‘needing’ principle - Forgetting your MBA - Ditching risk thinking - The human society
Links: Buurtzorg
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This week on Being Human, we talk with Robin Rice, an internationally published author, transformational speaker, social change artist and mentor to leaders. A big thank you to renowned Transformation Coach Lyssa Adkins who recommended Robin to me as a guest. Our conversation was a powerful reminder for me of that paradox that developing enhancing our personal impact rests in dropping our 'I' in service of the 'We'. Robin offers what she calls consciousness training to executives, artists, medical professionals, civic leaders, and entrepreneurs. I hope our conversation might help you to see a path to new insights and perspectives.
In this episode, we explore:
- Your 'Little Gen' vs Big Brain
- Personal evolution vs social pressure
- Your 'Minimum Viable Change'
- Interrupting your patterns
- Dissolving Self
Links: Robin's book
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In this episode of Being Human, we talk with Nancy Giordano, one of the world’s top female futurists. Nancy has worked with many leading companies to evolve over $50 billion worth of business. The first TEDx licensee and guest lecturer with Singularity University, Nancy is currently advising an AI startup and advancing horizon efforts that aim to dramatically reshape the ways we recognize, create, and exchange value with each other in the decades ahead. Nancy's campaigning for ditching the 20th century’s industrial playbook—driven on growth—allowing humanity to instead focus on building new, more expansive practices committed to human-centric innovation, regenerative solutions, and the creation of long-term value.
We explore: - Waking up - Connecting - Empowerment vs Sovereignty - The Productivity Era - Beyond learning
Links: Leadering - The Book Femme Futurists Society
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This week on Being Human, we talk with Jack Parsons. He's an entrepreneur, public speaker and subject expert on youth, and serves as CEO of The Big Youth Group. Jack has made it his mission to help young people better themselves, in order to help them take advantages of opportunities in the business world. Jack's efforts have paid off, as he has become publicly known as the UK’s Chief Youth Officer.
In this episode, we explore: - Overcoming an alcoholic mother - Seeing the whole person - Safe spaces - The Three C's for success - Be kind, now
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: The Youth Group
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In this episode of Being Human, we talk with Bjarte Bogsnes, Chairman of The Beyond Budgeting Institute and an HBR/McKinsey Management Innovation Award winner. Beyond Budgeting is a movement from CFOs themselves to kick out budgets from corporations. Yes, you read that correctly, CFOs burning budgets, and Bjarte was ripping them up before Beyond Budgeting was a thing. How does this relate to Being Human, you might ask? Well, the budgeting process, when you really think about it, is one of the most stifling and humanity-killing aspects of our working lives. Eliminating them represents a major vote for trusting in people's greatness and their ability to make wise choices.
In this episode, we explore: - Why budgets must go - What to do instead - How trust demands leadership - Killing targets - Getting onboard
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Implementing Beyond Budgeting - Bjarte's Book Beyond Budgeting - The Original Book
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In this episode of Being Human, we discuss cybersecurity with expert in the field and author Christian Espinosa. Don't worry, we're not talking about bits, bytes, and firewalls. We're talking about the biggest security threat of them all. The one between the keyboard and the chair. Christian shares with us his journey becoming a world-renowned cyber security coordinator, managing on one hand the whims of extremely brilliant, but fickle security specialists, and on the other hand the needs of major clients like the US Army. Christian also shares his self-development journey from a very rough start to success in his field.
In this episode, we explore: - From trailer park to entrepreneur - Choosing your own meaning - The power of self-reflection - Excellence for technical leaders - Extreme ownership
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Christian's book
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
In this episode Being Human, we have a return visit of one of our most popular guests, Dave Snowden. Dave is by far my favourite Welsh National Treasure. He's a philosopher-cum-management thinker and developer of the Cynefin framework, a decision making framework that has transformed the way people work and think from the military generals to software developers to humble business coaches like me.
Professor Snowden is part academic, part entrepreneur, part raconteur and a brilliant conversationalist. He's back to discuss the book created to celebrate 21 years of the Cynefin framework.
In this episode, we explore: - The latest (and final) incarnation of Cynefin - Snowden vs Taleb - Snowden vs Stacey - Sense-making unpacked - Slaying fluffy bunnies
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Dave's Blog The Cynefin Book
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This week on Being Human, I speak with someone who's significantly influenced my lifestyle and how I eat. I think many of us understand that our diets aren't as healthy as they could be. But what if we were able to eat in a way that had us experiencing an abundance of energy from dawn till dusk?
David 'Avocado' Wolfe is that possibility made manifest. He has spent a lifetime researching and seeking out the most nutritious foods on the planet.
If you were to read his Wikipedia, you might instantly dismiss him. But on matters of health and nutrition, he's worth hearing out. As we discuss in the podcast, you don't have to believe what he has to say. Just try what he suggests and judge for yourself.
We talk: - His beginnings in a 'health gang' - Foraging for food when starting out broke - Where to begin getting healthy - Clearing that colon - Planting nearly 100k fruit trees
To your humanity, Richard
Links: David's Website The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Richard Stobart, an old friend and the CEO of successful start-up char.gy, a business devoted to transforming lampposts across Britain to start charging our electric cars.
If you want to learn more about building a start-up culture within your business, this is the episode for you. Richard shares candidly about how he initially failed to create good start-up ideas within his existing consulting firm. He then tells us what worked in creating his fast growing char.gy..
We talk: - Business Model Canvases - How 'Hack Days' can fail - The in-house incubator that worked - Conditions for building start-ups - Getting investors
To your humanity, Richard
Links: char.gy Unboxed Consulting
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In this episode of Being Human, we're doing a little experiment with my friend and regular guest Tom van der Lubbe. Tom is a fellow traveller seeking to humanise the workplace. He's also a historian with a huge brain.
He is Dutch, but let's not hold that against him. Tom and I review one of the most influential books of 70's, Small Is Beautiful, written by the economist E F Schumacher.
Schumacher's central thesis is that the way we approach economics improves our living standards whilst degrading our culture.
In this episode, we explore several aspects of Schumacher's thinking: - Buddhist economics - Education as our greatest asset - Economic reductionism - Man and machine - The role of the State
Do let me know what you think of this format.
To your humanity, Richard
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A conversation with Perry Marshall, a man who runs several companies, has written a string of best-selling books and who founded the world's biggest science prize. If you want to get the essence of building a life where you make an extraordinary impact, this could be the episode. It gets a little repetitive, but his message bears repeating.
We talk: - The curse of our digital devices - What to start eliminating - Renaissance time - Your $1k-per-hour time - Remember you're paid to think
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Detox, Declutter, Dominate - The Book Perry's Website
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A very Happy New Year to you all. We kick off 2021 with a brief message. I share a few thoughts on where to focus to show this year and a call to action.
In the episode, I talk: - Food as medicine - Community - Taking Being Human to a new level
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
I hope that you're all enjoying your Christmas break.
This week my guest is Anna Liebel. Anna is a on mission to empower professionals to thrive by helping get into what she calls one's Zone of Genius. This particular episode is a special one, as it has an addendum where Anna goes into detail with a subject close to my heart: journaling. Just watch out for it at the end of the recording.
In the episode, we talk: - Your 'zone of genius' - Staying on track - Journaling - The 'Euromaidan' protests in Ukraine - Leading others from your zone of genius
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Anna's LinkedIn Profile
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This week we turn the tables and I become the interviewee. Jan Ake Johnsson is my interviewer. He's the star of episode #64 and a man who cured himself of epilepsy through trauma release work. Jan is 80 and still in excellent health - an inspiration to us all.
In the episode, we talk: - Preparing for interviews - Childhood influences - Idols - Medicalisation of society - Returning to the earth
Enjoy and a Merry Christmas to all of our listeners.
To your humanity, Richard
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
If Management 1.0 was how we managed how factories functioned in the Industrial Age, then what’s management for a Knowledge Economy, or even a Transformation Economy? Enter Management 3.0 – an approach that represents a major cultural shift, empowering team members to take on more decision-making responsibilities, while encouraging managers to create a collaborative work environment. My guest this week is Ralph van Roosmalen. When the current team inherited the company from founder Jurgen Appelo, they needed a new leader. In the spirit of the approach, the team asked Ralph to take up the mantle
We talk: - The essence of Management 3.0 - How our schools must adapt for a new age - Signs of a big shift - Growing up with freedom - Becoming CEO
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Management 3.0
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If you're a frequent listener of the podcast, you're probably familiar with our guest this week, Tom van der Lubbe. For those of you who don't know him, Tom is the Lead Link of Dutch mortgage broker Viisi, one of the companies that have implemented the radical business operating system Holacracy to create an extraordinary high-trust culture. Today's episode is a recording of an interview with Tom that was part of the Forward management conference, organised by Management 3.0.
We talk: - Tom's battle with a life threatening illness - The Golden Rule - Growing the cake vs. cutting the cake - Long-term vs. short-term interest in a company - Opening decision making to the intelligence of the group
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Viisi
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In 2008, my guest this week Ed Evarts was unexpectedly laid off from his job as a senior HR director at records management giant Iron Mountain. In the middle of a recession and with no network outside his former employer, he set about building his own coaching practice Excellius. It’s now thriving and Ed tells us how he made it happen. Often my pods can get a bit philosophical, but this one is packed with practical advice, whether you’re building your career within a proper job or you’re out there on your own.
We talk: - 3 keys to psychological safety - Positive relations with your boss - Raising your visibility - Effective networking - Play the hand you've been dealt
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Excellius Drive Your Career - The Book
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My guest this week, David Chislett, dropped out of private school in South Africa to become a rocker. From playing punk to managing bands he ultimately made his way to Utrecht in the Netherlands to become a self-proclaimed Weapon of Mass Creation. He teaches people how we can put creativity at the heart of our armoury of workplace skills. Doing this can help us become not just better innovators, but better decision makers.
We cover: - Preconditions for creativity - Punk rock in South Africa - Which dots to join - Everyday creativity - Making it happen
To your humanity, Richard
Links: David's website The Playful Creative summit
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My guest this week is Loizos Heracleous, Professor of Strategy and Organisation at the Warwick Business School and author of the recently published book, Janus Strategy. After serving as an advisor to major international companies for years, he started to observe that some companies got a competitive edge when adopting a more flexible strategic approach, as opposed to companies that stuck to tight, orthodox strategies. Loizos has called this type of thinking The Janus Strategy, after the Roman god Janus who surveys two or more directions simultaneously. It’s about an abundance mindset, for example, how can we reduce cost and increase quality at the same time?
We cover: - The god of gods - Embracing opposites - Open heart surgery for $2000 - 4 phases of breakthrough thinking - Why you've got to care
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Janus Strategy - The Book Loizos' Website
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My guest this week is Remy Bertrand, a Frenchman in London and an improvisation facilitator. Kicked out of school at 15, Remy worked a succession of jobs that never quite fulfilled him. Nearing 40, he realised that improv was his passion and it was time to plunge in and build a business around it. With a loan from the bank, Remy gave himself a year to build a business. It took another three before he had something that regularly paid the bills. He now has a thriving improv operation attracting actors, artists and executives.
In this episode, we bring you: - Why improv is not what you see on TV - How improv helps with social anxiety - Why so many people are choosing to train in improv right now - Improv for self-knowledge - A live demo
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Imprology
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My guest this week is Julian Wilson, CEO of British engineering firm Matt Black Systems and author of "500%: How Two Pioneers Transformed Productivity". Along with his business partner, through a series of counter-intuitive steps, he experimented his way to a 500% gain in productivity. The change saw his staff triple their income, come alive as human beings, whilst delivering extraordinary returns for him and his co-investors. His is a story of returning to the original translations of Taiichi Ohno's pioneering work at Toyota to apply its essence to a creative, design-led operation.
We talk: - Why Lean/Agile transformations fail - Why centralisation does not remove duplication - Business as a social institution - How business culture starts in our families - Self-leadership pushed to its limits
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: 500%: How two pioneers transformed productivity - The Book Matt Black Systems
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My guest this week is Bruno Cignacco, international speaker, coach and author of 'The Art of Compassionate Business'. Bruno is committed to putting love at the centre of our business relationships. First and foremost, Bruno is an advocate of what he calls The Human Oriented Enterprise, a type of business that prioritizes human interaction over everything else.
We talk: - Love in the office - Generosity - Natural conversations - Passion and resilience
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: The Art of Compassionate Business Book Bruno's Website
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My guest this week is Mike Ettore, leadership coach and ex-infantry officer with the US Marines. He's the author of 'Trust-Based Leadership', where he explains how he adapted and applied military leadership concepts while serving as a business leader. After leaving the Marines, Mike has served as a top executive for the staffing company Kforce, where he rose to the position of Chief Information Officer, despite not having any formal tech training. Over his years in corporate life, Mike learned how to apply the Marines Core Values - Honour, Courage and Commitment to business.
We talk: - Forgetting ammo on the battlefield - Leadership eats culture - Integrity above all else - Leader as scholar - The art of planning
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Trust-Based Leadership Book Fidelis Leadership Group
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Sam Conniff Allende is back on the show. Last time Sam had just hoisted his Jolly Roger to the world in the form of his breakthrough bestseller 'Be More Pirate'. This week he's back on Being Human with his Right-Hand Pirate Alex Barker. Alex joined Sam in 2019 to turn a book of culture-busting ideas into a movement. Alex and Sam make a great double-act. Sam is the embodiment of the pirate spirit, whilst Alex is the anchor getting real change done in Navy-like corporates.
We talk: - Going pirate with Mercedes vans - Finding your inner pirate - Professional rule breaking - Scaling vs impact - Salty language
Enjoy me hearties!
Links: How To: Be More Pirate book Be More Pirate website
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My guest this week is Alain Hunkins, a veteran leadership coach. He's worked with over 2,000 groups of leaders in 25 countries, and he's author of the just-published 'Cracking the Leadership Code: Three Secrets to Building Leaders'. Alain was raised by a mother and grandmother who were both Holocaust survivors. Their trauma-bound personalities were his first experiences of leadership. This sowed the seed for his life-long quest to discover better ways to lead. Over years of working in men's groups, Alain learned to identify and reframe his beliefs on leadership, and, through his leadership coaching, he has learned what works for others.
We talk:
- Building connection
- Dealing with rage
- Outside-in vs inside-out development
- What limits organisation growth
- How parenting shapes the workplace
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Alain's Website Alain's Book
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My guest this week, Pete Walker, is a man who has travelled far physically and metaphorically. A Vietnam War veteran, he sought spiritual salvation in India before finally confronting his inner grief at an Encounter group workshop. Learning to feel and grieve deeply set Pete on a path to dealing with his Complex PTSD. He has since written several books on these themes and treated hundreds of others as a deep feeling therapist. Pete and I have walked similar paths and talk frankly about the joys and pain of deep work.
We cover: - Pete's LSD trip that opened new possibilities - His path to grieving - Complex PTSD explained - Getting started with grieving - Why real men cry
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Pete Walker's Books Pete Walker's Website
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Perhaps the phrase 'A Man of Many Hats' was created for my guest this week. A Google Exec, investor, record label boss, YouTuber, I give you Kiwi-in-London Craig Fenton. Craig began life as a barrister, then switched to consulting before landing as Director of Strategy and Operations at Google in the UK.
We talk:
- Phone-only podcasting - Managing multiple pursuits - The evolving Google culture - Discovering music talent - The upside of Glass-holes
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Big Community Records Coffee, Eggs & Inspiration Google
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In this week's episode, I speak with therapist Theresa Sheppard Alexander, author of 'Facing The Wolf: Inside The Process of Deep Feeling Therapy'. Theresa shares her story of finding Primal Therapy in her early twenties and how she helps clients climb down ‘the staircase of feeling’ to experience their deepest pain, and ultimately, to find more joy and light in their lives. I found this one of my most challenging conversations so far on Being Human. As a veteran of Primal Therapy myself, I reveal more about my own journey than I have in any other public conversation.
We talk: - The benefits of 'descending into feeling' - Getting your whole self back - The problem with cognitive therapy - Will I become just a puddle of tears? - Therapy and sexuality
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Theresa's website 'Facing The Wolf' book
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My guest this week is Lisa Gill, host of the ground-breaking podcast Leaderphormosis. She’s also co-author of the just-released 'Moose Heads on the Table: Stories About Self-Managing Organisations from Sweden'. Lisa has helped businesses across Europe to let go of their boss culture. Her approach, along with fellow liberator Karin Tenelius, is to focus on creating different forms of dialogues between employees within companies, as opposed to looking at complicated the structures and processes.
We talk: - The benefits of moving to boss-free cultures - How to make decisions without managers - How to sustain self-management or Agile transformations - How going autonomous is no easy ride - The meaning of bringing our whole selves to work
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Moose Heads On The Table - The Book Tuff Leadership Training Leadermorphosis
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My return guest this week, Alex Goldfayn, is back with a new book '5-Minute Selling', which is already an Amazon bestseller.
Now, I hate sales. I've always hated sales and yet it's an absolutely critical skill in my business life. In fact, it's crucial even if you're not a proper salesperson, but someone who needs to be able to influence and persuade others.
What I love about Alex his approach is that it's the antithesis of 'oily' or 'pushy'. At its core, sales is about connecting with people and asking them if you can help.
With that as the ethos, we talk: - The mindset to have you make that call - Why we hate sales and how to learn to love it - The Minimal Viable Proactive Sales Habit (MVPSH) ;) - Why the phone is so important - Why system trumps individual actions
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: 5-Minute Selling Alex's Website
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This week's guest, John Hagel, is a 40-year veteran of Silicon Valley. John co-founded the Center for the Edge in 2007. The Center has brought insights that have helped me to understand the megatrends in the economy throughout my career. He was the first to identify the growing 'topple rate', i.e. how when large companies gain leading market positions; they are then losing them at an increasing rate. I’m delighted that I'm getting to share his takes on the current state of capitalism in this episode.
We talk: - The Big Shift - The importance of passion - The problem with the Learning Organisation - Creation Spaces - Management consultants - problem or solution?
Enjoy!
Links: John's website The Power of Pull
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From his cabin on an island off the coast of Sweden, Henrik Kniberg, author of the viral 'Spotify Culture' video, joins me in this week's episode to share what he learned as a top Agile Coach at Spotify. Henrik is a creative powerhouse with prodigious talent as a musician, coach, author and developer. He brings these skills together to transform the organisations with which he works.
In this episode, we talk:
- Teams 'self-aligning' for scale
- Patient leadership
- Why we draw
- Achieving Agile Rhythm
- Dealing with technical debt
Enjoy!
Links: Spotify Culture Video Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell Friendly Guide to Climate Change Books by Henrik
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This episode's guest, Rich Sheridan, was a VP in a successful software firm in Michigan when he brought his daughter to work. She was impressed. She figured her Dad must have been very important, as for anything to get done, he had to give his say so. He was "The Answer Man". And yet for Rich, this was a devastating moment. He was a hero in a hero culture. The only way to scale Hero Organisations is to scale the hero, which would mean longer hours for Rich and less time with his daughters. This moment set Rich on a path to ultimately build Menlo Innovations, a firm built on a foundation of joy.
In this episode, we talk: - how to kill meetings permanently - the power of pairing - managing the system not the people - equipping people to say no to curveballs - how to make more babies!
Enjoy!
Links: Joy, Inc The Chief Joy Officer Menlo Innovations
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Nicknamed "The Gentle Giant from Denmark" from his time resolving conflicts in a troubled part of Asia, my guest this week, Lars Kure Juul, is a gifted facilitator. With his book 'Organizational Happiness', Lars is on a mission to improve our experience of working life - and especially how to sell happiness to your CFO.
In this episode, we talk: - compassion - strengths-based leadership walking away - unlocking potential - why transformation doesn't work
Enjoy!
Links: Motivational Landscape site Free strengths test
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Late last year, my guest this week, Mark Creighton, CEO of Avado, listened to a proposal from his CTO to bring the Agile practices into his management team. Although a bit sceptical, Mark accepted the challenge. They shifted from a 90-minute weekly management team meeting to a daily stand-up, plus an end-of-week retrospective. This tweak to their practices had a significant impact on Mark's leadership style. It was also instrumental in their successful navigation of the COVID crisis.
In this episode, we talk: - Agile for Management - Leading with vulnerability - Saving 50% of planned redundancies - What the COVID recovery should really mean
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Avado's webiste
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In this episode, we talk with Garland Vance, author of 'Gettin' (un)Busy' on: - The secret to purpose, productivity and peace - Elon Musk: examplar of un-busyness? - Transitions and batching - Taking a sabbath - Wisdom in business
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Garland's website
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My guest this week, Csaba Toth arrived in the UK from Hungary in 2004 with enough money for a couple of nights in a hostel. After a stint in hospitality, Csaba co-created a highly successful table-booking start-up. But despite his academic training in personality differences, he was unable to resolve his issues the CEO, which ultimately led to him leaving the business. This spurred him to create Global DISC, a powerful assessment tool endorsed by John Mattone, coach to the late Steve Jobs.
In this episode, we talk: - The difference between inclusion and diversity - Why gender, age and ethnic diversity won’t necessarily drive company performance - The Global DISC approach and how it differs from other personality tests - What we mean by cognitive diversity and why it matters - Why achieving inclusion can take intensive self-work and team development
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Global DISC
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This episode's guest is Nick Bloom, a fellow Brit and professor in economics at Stanford. He's been an avid researcher in remote working since 2014. Pre-COVID likely only 8% of employees worked from home. Nick expects this to be 40% in the aftermath of the pandemic, an extraordinary transformation of economic life.
In this episode, we talk: - What Nick learned studying working from home at 'China's Expedia' Ctrip - The optimum set-up for home working - The shape and drivers of inequality in today's society - How lockdowns may be driving inequality - The future for capitalism
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Nick's research
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On 14 January 2018, as he attempted to board a flight to London, my guest this week, Marek Zmyslowski, felt a hand on his shoulder from the Polish customs agents. His business partner in Nigeria had bribed the local police to get him placed on Interpol's Most Wanted List. This is just one of many extraordinary incidents during his adventures in building start-ups in Poland and Africa, including co-founding 'The Amazon of Africa' Jumia.
We talk: - Defending accusations of being a 'white saviour' - His fight with the Nigerian justice system - His lessons building software teams - How to stay resilient - How we must reform capitalism
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: Chasing Black Unicorns - The Book
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A conversation with Wharton scholar Robert Meyer on his book 'The Ostrich Paradox'.
In this episode, we talk: - Why we fail to learn from past disasters - The biases that stop us making investments for the long term - How we can use herding and other biases in our favour - How we must change our approach to managing risk - The truth about ostriches
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
Links: The Ostrich Paradox Robert's profile at Wharton
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My guest this week on Being Human is Tanmoy Goswami, who holds that rare distinction of being the world's only 'Sanity Correspondent' for, well, The Correspondent. He is a passionate advocate for us talking more openly about mental health. He first got on my radar with his article "From the myth of meritocracy to the rise of bullshit jobs – it's time we admit work doesn't make us happy" in which he lays out how our workplaces can not only make us unhappy but send us to an early grave. Yes, things must change.
We talk: - Moving away from the language of war in business - Living with depression and anxiety - What we really mean by recovery - What we must change about our workplaces - The dark side of mainstreaming the mental health conversation
Enjoy!
To our humanity, Richard
Links: Tanmoy's profile on The Correspondent Tanmoy's Twitter
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Author and speaker Daniela Sieff is a former student of evolution under Richard Dawkins. She has turned her attention to trauma and its impacts. She brilliantly articulates the way adverse events and conditions shape our lives and how we can emerge from a Trauma World.
In this highly personal conversation, we cover: - The definition of trauma - Daniela's own turning point in her facing her past - Healing versus curing trauma - How society ignores the magnitude of child abuse, neglect and its effects - How we can heal and why therapy works
Enjoy!
To our humanity, Richard
Links: Daniela's website Daniela's mailing list
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This episode is with Phil Driver, author of 'From Woe to Flow: Validating and Implementing Strategies'. In it, he sets a way that anyone can think about strategy based on decades of work with a wide range of organisations.
Let Phil take you through a fresh way to think about strategy from his cabin in rural New Zealand.
We talk: - Living the permaculture life - The art of strategising 'right to left' - How to get three hundred people to agree on a way forward - The common issue with 'Open Space' meetings and how to fix them - How emerging from Covid-19 is not about returning to normal
Enjoy!
To your humanity, Richard
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This episode's guest, Michael J. Gelb, has published 17 books, including 'How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci' and 'The Healing Organization', which he co-authored with recent guest Raj Sisodia. He takes the view that our intellects are highly malleable, even into later life, and by using specific exercises, we can better integrate our left and right brains to enhance our reasoning and creative powers.
In this conversation, we take a tour through three of his books, from 'How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci', the 'The Art of Connection', landing at 'The Healing Organization'. The underlying theme is one of embracing all of our humanity, as individuals and in our organisations.
We talk: - How to think like Leonardo da Vinci - The power of curiosity for unlocking creative potential - The Indra's Net metaphor for consciousness - The need for 'whole-brain thinking' in economics and in life - Why "Healing Organizations" are part of the megatrend for capitalism
Enjoy and have a great weekend!
To your humanity, Richard
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As well as researching psychological safety with his colleague Amy Edmondson , my guest this week, Mike Lee, Professor in Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, takes a deep interest in how company structure affects how people act.
In this episode, we cover: - Psychological safety defined - How changing the default choices managers make can improve psychological safety for others - The radically flat business operating system Holacracy: its benefits and limitations - How getting to know your colleagues improves productivity - Mike's spirit animal: a live demo
Enjoy!
Have a great weekend, Richard
Links: Mike's website INSEAD profile link
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A conversation with Dr. David A. Bishop, author of "Metagility: Managing Agile Development for Competitive Advantage".
We talk: - How we must now reconsider the Agile Manifesto - The concept of "Agile Vorticity" - How to change as fast as your market - How the rise of smart devices is changing the rules for agility - A happy marriage of Agile and Waterfall techniques - Agility as your Product Engine
Enjoy and have a great weekend, Richard
Links: Metagility book Agile Worx
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Author and business philosopher Raj Sisodia is back with a new book, The Healing Organization, which takes a deep look at the role of a business within its community.
In this episode, we talk: - The four energies we must balance when building Healing Organisations - What The Founders missed when learning from the Iroquois to write the American Constitution - Saving lives by baking cookies - A call centre boss' epiphany - Raj's take on Amazon's business practices
Enjoy!
Best wishes and be well, Richard
Links: The Healing Organization book The Conscious Capitalism Institute
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A conversation with Howard Lewis: art collector, investor and YouTube street stunt artist. Although now obviously suspended, he runs OFFLINE, a monthly gathering with a simple aim: to share a meal. The prospect of sharing a refection with anyone beyond our immediate household is a distant prospect for many of us right now. However, Howard provides us with some inspiration for the lives we might want to create when we can all let go of the current strictures.
In this episode, we talk: - The inspiration for his 'chocolate challenge' street initiative - The primal power of dining together - Why we must bring more spontaneity to our gatherings - The gift of developing conversational skills - The need for us all to be more human in our public lives
Enjoy!
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This week, I speak with Matt Homann, CEO of Filament, a firm dedicated to faciliating great meetings in-person or online.
We talk: - the fundamental principles that make for an excellent meeting - how to make meetings work online - the common mistakes that people make in offline meetings that you should not transfer online - a future of Chief Collaboration Officers - humanising virtual working
Enjoy!
Best wishes Richard
Links: Filament website
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In this episode Tom van der Lubbe shares how his company Viisi took their entire workforce 100% remote in two days and so far have seen no loss in revenue.
Viisi is a pioneer in self-organisation. They have implemented the radical business operating system Holacracy to create an extraordinary high-trust culture. They are now reaping the rewards of their stellar human capital during the current crisis.
In this episode, we talk: - why people-first businesses will win during this crisis - how Viisi's self-organised structure allowed them to go remote so quickly - how removing fear from the environment has seen their revenues unaffected - how the teams themselves are accommodating those with essential-worker spouses - how purpose is replacing the CEO in self-managed organisations
Links:
Tom's profile on Viisi Brian's Robertson's Holacracy book Tom's recent article in Corporate Rebels
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In this episode, I interview author, speaker and strategist Dawna Jones. Dawna has been podcasting more than a decade. She's a "lover of the power of the human spirit" and has a deep interest in how businesses and consumers together can restore our social and ecological health.
In this full-blooded conversation, we talk: - her emergence from homelessness after the '08 crash - making sense of life's interruptions - the key factors of decision making in complexity - the organisation as part of life itself - why we need to think more broadly than just collective intelligence
Enjoy and stay safe.
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My guest for this episode is Associate Professor Jonathan Trevor from Saïd Business School and author of the Financial Times' Book of the Month, 'Align'. Jonathan talks a broad view of alignment across all aspects of the enterprise.
We talk:
- What is alignment and Jonathan's Strategic Alignment Framework
- The universalists (best practice is best) vs the contingency theorists (context matters)
- Why we must look at alignment as more than a 'people issue.'
- Why you must pick between stability and agility
- The Enterprise Leader as Organisational Architect
Enjoy!
Align book link Jonathan's Saïd profile
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My guest for this episode is Tom Szaky. Tom is an extraordinary multi-award-winning entrepreneur who embodies the notion of the purpose-driven enterprise. His company Terracycle is a world leader in offering commercial solutions to fully recycling our products.
From his plant in the middle of one of the most deprived districts in New Jersey, we talk: - Why for-profit companies beat non-profits in saving the world - How being purpose-driven leads to negative marketing budgets - How they have no crime incidents despite their location - How growing up in communism has made him a better capitalist - The issue with framing big corporations as evil and how to make them care
Enjoy!
Links:
Tom's company - TerraCycle
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As I upload this video, many people are facing working from home fulltime for the first time in their careers.
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Sara Perry from Baylor University, a leading researcher in the field.
We talk: - How to be a successful remote worker - When remote working works and when it doesn't - What remote working could mean for our society - The personality types that struggle with it - What to do to make the most of the opportunity if you've been given it
Enjoy!
Richard
Links: Join Dr. Perry's study Her book 'Organized Innovation'
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In this episode, I speak with leadership coach Helena Demuynck, a world expert in the field of Conversational Intelligence.
We talk: - How to engage any group (and avoid the situation above) - The six brains involved in a conversation - How moving people into 'Level 3' conversations amplifies outcomes - Drilling down, and the power of curiosity - The importance of breathing in co-creation
Enjoy!
Links:
Conversational Intelligence book Oxygen 4 Leadership
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Helping to create a 'trauma-aware' society is a significant aim of this podcast, so I'm delighted that for our 100th episode we talk with Darius Cikanavicius. He a prodigious blogger and author of 'Human Development and Trauma'.
We talk:
- Darius' childhood growing up in a single-parent home
- Why trauma is not just about significant events
- The power of having an 'enlightened witness'
- Why therapy rocks
- Where to start with Self-Work
Enjoy!
Links:
Self Archeology site Self Archeology Facebook Darius Instagram
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I'm thrilled to say that after a year of stalking (!), Pim de Morree agreed to be my guest this week.
Pim is one-half of the founder team of the trailblazing Corporate Rebels.
His adventures to the cutting edge of progressive business cultures have been inspiring me for years.
In this episode, we talk: - How the seeds of his corporate rebellion formed in his childhood - The Belgian civil servant changing the world - Where Google are getting it wrong - His Number #1 f*ck-up building Corporate Rebels - How to achieve psychological safety
Enjoy!
Links: Corporate rebels website Corporate rebels book
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In this episode, I present to you Part II of my conversation with ex-Bomb Disposal Officer, Change Manager and leadership author, Ben Sawyer.
Ben has an incredible story. He fulfilled his boyhood dream to be the guy in the big suit walking down the street to defuse the explosive threat. He now works as a Change Manager with one of the largest publishers in the world, The Oxford University Press.
In this concluding segment, we talk: - His favoured strategy for change management - Staying one step ahead of the terrorists in Afghanistan - Improving bomb disposal technology with no budget - Agility in the military - Ben's biggest failure as a leader and lessons for workplace stress
Enjoy!
Best, Richard
Links: Part I of this conversation Ben's forthcoming book: Paradox and Power in Caring Leadership L.David Marquet - Turn The Ship Around!
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In this episode, I talk with ex-Bomb Disposal Officer and leadership author Ben Sawyer.
Ben has an incredible story. He fulfilled his boyhood dream to be the guy in the big suit walking down the street to defuse the explosive threat. He now works as a Change Manager with one of the largest publishers in the world, The Oxford University Press.
The conversation was so fruitful that we've split this into two parts.
In this first part, we talk: - Checking for bombs under his Dad's car at seven years old - The motto at Sandhurst that stayed with him - The moment he had to break the rules for the greater good - The critical leadership trait that kept his team safe - His biggest mistake as a military leader
Enjoy!
Best, Richard
Links: Ben's forthcoming book: Paradox and Power in Caring Leadership L.David Marquet - Turn The Ship Around!
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In this episode, I go solo to take a brief dip into the life of that extraordinary human Alexander The Great to pick out some lessons for leadership today.
In this episode, I share:
- How he won 23 battles without an org chart
- What Alexander learned from his tutor Aristotle on strategy
- What Lean Manufacturing and Alexander's leadership style have in common
Enjoy!
Best, Richard
Links: Arrian's "The Campaigns of Alexander" History Bro channel on Alexander the Great
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Ilya Bodner, was an immigrant to the US from Uzbekistan. Growing up around his farther's sewing company and his Uncle's cab firm, entrepreneurship was in Ilya's blood.
Ilya now runs Bold Penguin, a breakthrough start-up in the insurance industry, transforming the value chain with their digital platform.
In this episode, we talk:
- Lessons from start-up failures before his breakthrough
- The importance of wise counsel
- Why team trust is so important
Enjoy and have an awesome weekend.
Best, Richard
Links: boldpenguin.com
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What's going on? Who's in charge? Annual objectives? What? Hey?
For many of us in the daily grind, this can be the norm. "The Fog" is what our guest this week, Lindsay Uittenbogaard, calls it. The ambiguity, the differing assumptions, the miscommunication.
Lindsay has a path out of the pea soup, it's called MirrorMirror: a platform and process for achieving alignment in teams.
In this episode, we talk:
- Making the leap from a small company to the Big League
- The symptoms that your team is not aligned
- The factors that matter in achieving alignment
- Her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs
- How she nearly founded Uber!
Enjoy and have an awesome weekend.
Best, Richard
Links: MirrorMirror
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Our guest for this episode is John Perkins, famed author of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman: the shocking inside story of how America really took over the world."
John may be the world's only economic writer and practising shaman. His ability to link lessons from shamanism and a new approach to economic progress is fascinating.
We talk: - His early experiences of shamanic healing - How our perceptions shape our reality - His work as an 'economic hitman' and the fraud of GDP growth - How only by shifting our dreams, can we change our relationship with the earth - Why doing what you love is so important
Enjoy and here's to a magnificent 2020!
Links: John's newsletter John's books
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In this episode, I go solo for a short review of the highlights and major themes of 2019.
I talk: - What inspires from the Happiness at Work movement - The magic ingredient for super productive workplaces - Some highlights to come for 2020!
Enjoy!
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Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" is a bible for start-ups in how to get their wares out to the masses.
Geoffrey's latest book, "Zone to Win" advises how established players can successfully defend against disrupters and ultimately transform to survive and thrive.
We talk: - The four zones that companies must manage when facing disruption - Why an "Agile" culture isn't right for all parts of an organisation - The importance of making only one big bet for transformation - The characteristics of a great transformation leader - How he's still vibrant in his 70's
Enjoy!
Have an awesome weekend, Richard
Links: Zone to Win book Crossing the Chasm book Geoffrey's website Geoffrey's LinkedIn blog
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In late September this year, I read the extraordinary story of the Hungarian psychologist László Polgár. He was convinced that talent was made not born. To prove it, Polgár declared that his as-yet-born children would become chess grandmasters through his training. He found a willing woman to join him in this grand experiment. Their daughters - The Polgár Sisters - are now some of the most successful chess players of all time. It was my guest this week, Jeroen De Flander, who first told me of this spectacular tale. It forms the basis of his latest book 'The Art of Performance'.
In this week's episode, we talk: - How any kid can become Mozart-level pitch perfect - The myth of the 10,000 hours to mastery - The role that genes do play in talent - Why your interests matter more than your personality
Links: The Art of Performance book Holland Interests Test - FREE Holland Interests Test - PAID Jeroen's website The Institute of Strategy Execution website
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A conversation with multiple-author and thought leader Dave Gray on his book 'Liminal Thinking'.
We talk: - The power of popping our "bubbles of belief" - The ultimate culture hack in a Dallas district - Hacking fishmarkets in Mogadishu - The art of the pattern interrupt - What we can learn from the American Pragmatists
Enjoy!
Links: Liminal Thinking on Amazon The Wesbite Dave's personal website
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Marcel Schwantes is a speaker, executive coach, podcaster and syndicated columnist for Inc.com.
He joins me in this episode to talk: - His epiphany overcoming a narcissist boss - The core tenets of Servant Leadership - How Servant Leaders must still lead - When to start and when to wait - Love in the workplace
Enjoy!
Best, Richard
Links: http://www.leadershipfromthecore.com/
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We're back with Tom van der Lubbe, the radical CEO of Dutch financial advisors Viisi.
This month the Fawcett Society in the UK made a call for women to be able all see men's salaries in the cause of equality. The Business Insider has also recently reported on an ad-industry viral salary spreadsheet.
What if firms just made salaries public? Not only that, but set out the expected rises for years to come. This has been Viisi's approach.
In this episode, we talk:
- Why bonuses kill good culture
- The power of public 'salary curves'
- The self-organising approach to solving pay tensions
- Why he doesn't let staff set their own salaries
Enjoy!
Links:
Dan Pink TED Talk - The Puzzle of Motivation Corporate Rebels article about Viisi
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In 2006, our guest this week, Paul Rogers, got a paper published in the Harvard Business Review titled "Who Has the D?"
Over ten years later, the simple ideas in that paper continue to inspire. In a world of complex workflows and team dynamics, asking the question "Who Has the D?" can provide great clarity.
In this episode, recorded at the Umbrella Rooms in London, we talk:
- The RAPID method Paul developed for creating clarity in teams
- How Paul uses this in day-to-day life as a senior consulting partner
- The power of thinking of organisations in terms of 'Decision Architectures'
- The surprising (at least to me!) progressive management culture at Bain
- How he helps clients work through tensions in making decisions
Links
Original HBR paper Bain & Company
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Early in his career, Professor Edward Bullmore, Head of Psychiatry, suffered an infected tooth. During his recovery, Edward felt uncharacteristically depressed. Was he down just because he was dwelling on the misfortune of his sore tooth? Or perhaps - perhaps he was depressed as a direct result of his physical infection. Was his depression actually emerging in his body as it fought the contamination? His idea was heresy within his medical community. As Descartes taught us, the mind is the mind, and the body is the body.
In this episode with Professor Bullmore, now Head of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, we talk: - The mechanics of how inflammation can cause depression - Why the drugs industry has stalled on new mental drugs - The exciting potential for a new class of mental health drugs - Losing the distinction of 'mental' health. Is it just health?
Links: The Inflamed Mind
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We're at the forefront of three societal waves: environmental degradation, rising inequality and human isolation.
Kim Polman is out to make a change.
At a fringe meeting at Davos in 2016, she launched a book of essays. On a snowy hill of hard-headed global capitalists, she spoke of heart-based connection, caring for the environment, and yes, spirituality. It caused a sensation. It started a movement. Kim's message is simple. Jesus, the Buddha and the great sages shared the same idea. The Golden Rule: treat others as you would wish to be treated.
In this episode, we talk:
- How to apply the Golden Rule in practice
- The metaphor of the caterpillar's imaginal cells
- How her playing the cello helped her parent her sons
- The tale of a 40-hour-week success story in Silicon Valley
- Why connecting to ourselves is at the core of global transformation
Enjoy!
Links: https://www.rebootthefuture.org/
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In this episode, I talk to HR Director-turned-investor Devyani Vaishampayan. Devyani has created a role for herself at the forefront of AI innovation in the HR sector. Her investment arm funds HR tech start-ups while she helps corporations test new ideas with her incubator programme.
In this illuminating conversation, we talk:
- The five ways in which AI is impacting businesses
- How AI can help organisations become more human-friendly
- The new leadership required in the Age of Transformation
- How AI is improving the hiring process
- What she looks for in start-ups
Enjoy!
Links: https://hrtechpartnership.com/
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In this episode, I speak with ex-McKinsey consultant-turned business revolutionary Dev Tandon.
How would the Buddha run a business? What if the workplace was organised purely around human connection?
These are some of the questions Dev seeks to explore with the 'Obo' movement. With no money, he has already inspired a team to help him build a brand, write a book and design the movement's first products.
We talk: - His moment of inspiration while meditating on a flight to Mexico - Starting meetings with silence - The broader human project to build 'awakened' systems for business - His radical approach for hiring - Why putting money to one side has it chasing us
Enjoy!
Links: Join Obo: https://obomovement.org/
References: Reinventing Organisations, Frederick Laloux: https://amzn.to/2BiZJRL
These are some of the questions Dev seeks to explore with the 'Obo' movement. With no money, he has already inspired a team to help him build a brand, write a book and design Obo’s first products.
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In this episode, I talk with Harvard Leadership Professor Amy C. Edmondson. She's the author of The Fearless Organisation and world-renowned for her pioneering work on the link between psychological safety and team performance.
I’m delighted that I got to speak with Amy. She is, undoubtedly, one of the management thinkers today having the greatest impact on the workplace culture conversation.
We talk:
- How she first discovered the link between performance and psychological safety
- The parallels between psychological safety and free speech
- Why psychological safety doesn't happen easily and must be cultivated
- The recent furore of Google firing James Damore for sharing his views
- Where to start with building psychological safety in your teams
Links:
The Fearless Organization: https://amzn.to/2nxF3lO
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Free climber, tango marathon dancer, Davos regular, Dr. Thomas Juli is also an author and a Human Business Architect. Previous guest, Peter Stevens introduced me to Dr. Juli as someone shaking up business thinking. I'm delighted that he did! We talk:
- How the 'Human Business Paradigm' is upending our workplace sacred cows
- His move from being a Programme Manager to rejecting traditional planning
- Why delighting each other may become the new mission for Business
- Why our planning questions matter
- How mindfulness doesn't have to involve cushions
Enjoy!
Links: Dr. Juli's consulting business: motivate2b.com Dr. Juli's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-thomas-juli-799338/
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In this episode, I talk with Peter Morville. I first got to know Peter's work through his 2014 book Intertwingled, which beautifully illustrated the complexity of our world and how we shape the information around us as it shapes us. In this episode, we explore his latest book 'Planning for Everything' in which he makes the case that we should be consciously designing how we plan depending on our context.
We talk:
- His STARFINDER framework for planning
- His dream for Sentient Sanctuary, a place for healing for animals and people
- How his voluntary work has shaped in thinking
- His plan for Part 3 of his life
- How he was inspired General McChrystal's approach for defeating the Taliban
Enjoy!
Links:
https://intertwingled.org/ https://semanticstudios.com/
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In this episode, I talk with Peter Stevens. In 2016, in experimenting with his wife, Peter created the Personal Agility system for applying Agile principles to manage his personal life. It worked. He since taking his concept around the world with workshops, Meet Ups and a forthcoming book.
We talk: - The genesis of the Personal Agility system - His wife's role as Celebration Coach - The powerful questions that help him achieve what's important - How the system has changed people's lives - Why this approach should be at the heart of all Agile Transformations
We're delighted to have secured a discount for BeingHuman listeners. For a 25% discount on any of Peter's books, enter promo code 'beinghuman' for any of the following products:
Personal Agility book Ten Contracts book Personal Agility starter kit
Enjoy!
Links: https://saat-network.ch/ https://personalagilityinstitute.org/
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In this episode, I speak with fellow podcaster and writer on the future of work, Neil Miller. In a broad-ranging and provocative discussion, we talk: - The new skills and attitude of a human leader - How to get a grip of our work lives to make time to be creative - Neil's take on a legacy of white supremacy in the workplace - How AI and automation will and will not take our jobs
Enjoy!
Links: https://workminus.com/
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In this episode of Being Human, I talk with Devin Halliday, perhaps the world's first Chief Belonging Architect. Devin was an award-winning sales leader at a major tech firm before founding Rudiment Solutions, a company dedicated to helping organisations to build belonging. Devin has some powerful messages for those looking to develop culture and get the most from their people.
We talk:
- His early struggles in making the shift from salesman to sales leader
- The critical importance of self-analysis for managers
- How to really build values alignment and it has nothing to do with posters
- Why he believes that cognitive diversity is the most important form of diversity
- The 5 factors for belonging
Enjoy!
Links:
http://belongingfactor.com http://beinghuman.belongingfactor.com - for your free signed copy of the book
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with former US Army paratrooper and Afghanistan veteran Louis Fernandez.
The son of Cuban refugees, Louis was determined to fight for his country and signed up to the elite Army Rangers straight after college. His 'big mouth' got him in some trouble at Ranger School, but he came through to ultimately become part of the force fighting the Taliban in Eastern Afghanistan.
Louis' passion for excellent leadership oozes through every minute of this interview and the story of a fire-fight within a year of his first deployment had me gripped.
We talk:
- How empowered leadership helped a unit of 100 men win against 300 Taliban
- The importance of 1-2-1 conversations for leaders
- What he means by servant leadership
- How leadership training must transform
- How to deal with toxic employees
Enjoy!
Links:
https://louisjfernandez.com/
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In this episode of Being Human, I speak with Catherine B Roy. Catherine is a Top 20 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on the Future of Work. She's the author of "Live from Your Heart and Mind".
We talk:
- Surviving war and disease in the former Yugoslavia
- Healing from a dysfunctional family
- The power of gratitude for achieving your goals
- Her method for intellectual development
- The importance of laughter
Links:
https://catherinebroy.com/
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In this week's episode, I talk with Dan Ward, a former military technologist, author and expert on innovation. With Dan, I explore:
- How applying his principles, teams can deliver at a tenth or even a one hundredth of the price
- Why spending 10 years in planning could actually be Agile
- The brain mechanisms that make trust a winning leadership strategy
- Why restraint should be your overarching principle for product delivery
- Why his principles don't scale and yet deliver mega-projects
Enjoy!
Dan's website: https://www.thedanward.com/ Mitre Innovator's Development Toolkit developed by Dan and this colleagues: https://itk.mitre.org/ Dan's first book F.I.R.E.: https://tinyurl.com/y5oxf4lk Dan's latest book The Simplicity Cycle: https://tinyurl.com/yxknty79
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In this week's episode, I talk with Roman Pichler, a leading expert in Product Management. With Roman, I explore:
- His preference for the term 'Product People' over getting hung up on role descriptions
- Why caring for others is at the heart of product management
- The importance of adapting leadership style for different contexts
- The lessons he learnt failing with an e-learning product
- Why mindfulness and meditation are at the core of his approach
Enjoy!
https://www.romanpichler.com/
Roman's book 'Strategize': http://tiny.cc/bcvw9y
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In this week's episode, I speak with an internationally renowned authority in the field of Programme Evaluation, Michael Quinn Patton. We explore his latest book 'Principles-Focused Evaluation'. We talk:
- Michael's lessons for others from evaluating high-profile initiatives for billionaire philanthropists and major NGO's across the globe
- Why knowing the difference between rules and principles matters
- The problem with SMART goals and what to focus on instead
- Campbell's Law and the issue with high-stakes indicators
- The 'go slow to go fast principle' and the importance of trust
Enjoy!
Links:
An introduction to complexity by John H Holland: http://tiny.cc/a21e9y Michael's book 'Principles-Focused Evaluation': http://tiny.cc/33ejaz
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This week, I talk with Sam Conniff, a man on a mission to build a modern pirate movement, kick-started by his hugely successful book 'Be More Pirate'. We explore:
- How pirates give us a template for diverse, progressive and agile organisations
- How Lady Liberty is almost certainly a pirate
- How one man's love of kimchi sparked the transformation of his workplace
- Why business leaders should encourage rule-breaking
- Sam's own pirate shenanigans
Enjoy!
Links:
www.bemorepirate.com
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This week, I talk with a man of many callings, Bruce Daisley. Best-selling author, #1 podcaster and in his spare time, VP EMEA of Twitter. At the Twitter HQ in Soho, London, we talk:
- The crisis at Twitter London that started Bruce's quest to build a better workplace
- Why to start taking your lunchbreak, and that table size really does matter
- Why the location of your coffee machine might mean more than your org chart
- Why you should always take sweets to your doctor
- How Twitter does hack-a-thons that actually make an impact
Enjoy!
Links:
Bruce's book The Joy of Work: http://tiny.cc/emhy9y Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast: http://tiny.cc/emhy9y
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In this week's episode, I talk with Christina Wodtke, the world's number one evangelist for Objectives and Key Results - the powerful goal-setting technique loved by Google. With Christina, I explore her breakthrough book on OKRs, 'Radical Focus' and her forthcoming title 'The Team That Managed Itself' on supercharging team performance. We talk:
- The power of having "one objective per business model"
- Her radical approach for team feedback
- Why explicitly agreeing on team norms upfront accelerates team cohesion
- The difference between low-context and high-context cultures and why it matters
- The importance of using language that touches people's hearts and gives meaning to their work
Links:
Christina's blog: http://eleganthack.com/ 'Radical Focus': http://tiny.cc/cvy88y
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In this week's episode of Being Human, I talk with co-founder of The Happy Startups School, Laurence McCahill. In discovering that it's not really a school, and it's not necessarily about startups, we talk:
- The magic of their Happy Startup Canvas that has people face the tough questions
- How to avoid swapping a corporate boss you don't like for a VC you don't like
- How he steps back to allow the power of community to solve people's problems
- The flaw in a typical accelerator’s A-to-B process
Website: http://www.thehappystartupschool.com/
Summer camp event: https://www.happystartupsummer.camp/
The Happy Startup Canvas: http://tiny.cc/n2vu8y
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In this week's episode of Being Human, I talk with Lean icons, husband-and-wife authors and teachers, Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Mary and Tom travel the world helping people to create and deliver stunning products and services through the power of the Lean approach. We talk:
- The origins of Lean as fundamentally about people working at their best
- The metaphor of double-entry bookkeeping for building in software quality
- Why business should focus on flow efficiency, not resource efficiency
- Why you should not be automating your business processes
- The first questions to ask yourself in starting a Lean journey
Enjoy!
Links:
New writing: www.leanessays.com
Books: "Lean Software Development": https://amzn.to/2XenqYP "Implementing-Lean-Software-Development": https://amzn.to/2JfWqyB “The Lean Mindset”: https://amzn.to/2FAMBdd “Leading Lean Software Development”: https://amzn.to/2XbrXeJ
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In this week's episode of Being Human, I explore the "Music Paradigm" with its creator, the distinguished conductor Roger Nierenberg. Roger takes business people into his orchestra, sitting them next to his musicians to learn how to listen and how to lead. We talk:
- What he means by "leading as listening"
- How to achieve 'flow' in an orchestra and how that translates in business
- Why being pitch perfect shouldn't be the primary goal in music or at work
- The art of the leadership intervention
- His vision for a fusion of the music and business worlds
Enjoy!
Links:
http://www.musicparadigm.com/ https://www.facebook.com/themusicparadigm/
https://vimeo.com/331485040
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In this week's episode of Being Human, I talk with Jan Åke Johnsson, a man with an amazing story and a fellow adherent of Primal Therapy and Rolfing practices. We explore how his journey to "go within" to the source of his epilepsy has given him complete control over his condition and reduced it to a virtual non-issue. We talk:
- The two years he spent entirely out of action to fully face his demons
- His direct experience of working with therapist-to-John Lennon and author of 'Primal Scream', Arthur Janov
- What he means by 'having a Primal' when healing his difficult birth
- How his mother's religious views impacted his entry to life
- His message for fellow epileptics
Enjoy!
Jan's book 'Evolution in Reverse': http://bit.do/janjohnssonbook
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In this week's episode of Being Human I interview Tom van der Lubbe, Lead Link (CEO) of Dutch Mortgage Advisor Viisi and pioneer of Holacracy, the radical business operating system. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk:
- How so-called 'radical' approaches for business have been employed in state structures for centuries
- What businesses can learn from the success of the Scandinavian countries
- How our approach to managing businesses has a knock-on impact on society
- The impact of Christian traditions on early capitalism
- Tom's take on Elon Musk
Enjoy!
https://www.viisi.nl/over-viisi/team/tom-van-der-lubbe/ https://www.holacracy.org/what-is-holacracy https://www.sociocracy.info/ Corporate Rebels article about Viisi
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In this week's episode of Being Human I interview Joshua Kerievsky, the originator of Modern Agile and CEO of leading agile training and coaching group Industrial Logic. With occassional contributions from his dogs, we talk:
- The difference between a principle-oriented vs a practice-oriented approach to Agile
- How Paul O'Neill's turnaround of aluminium giant Alcoa led him to make safety a prerequisite in his philosophy
- The true essence of agility
- How the wiki creator Ward Cunningham still inspires him today
Enjoy!
http://modernagile.org/ https://www.industriallogic.com/
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In this episode, I take a journey through the philosophy of Agile luminary Michael Sahota. We talk:
- The source and remedy for the high failure rate of Agile implementations
- Toyota's "kaizen" vs "kaikaku" and why the idea of transformation is flawed
- Why all culture change starts with the individual
- The moment that Michael first got 'in front of the mirror'
- His 4 A's Leadership Model and the prospect of radically fast mindset shifts
Enjoy!
Links: http://agilitrix.com/
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In this episode, I delve into the world of renowned Agile thought-leader Lyssa Adkins, President Emeritus of the Agile Coaching Institute, Agile Coach and Facilitator of Difficult Problems. We talk:
- How she's dealing with her current transitionary phase
- Her leadership role within the Ten Women Strong movement
- Her personal agility practice and how that's becoming central to her coaching
- Her work with an Integral coach
- Her moving from the centre of the fire circle to the edge
Enjoy!
Links: https://www.tenwomenstrong.net/programs/agile/ https://www.lyssaadkins.com/ https://agilecoachinginstitute.com/ https://amzn.to/2fAMy2w
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In this episode, I take a deep dive into the culture of the radically decentralised Handelsbanken, with its Global Head of External Affairs, Richard Winder. We talk:
- The story of their radical transformation in the early 1970s under the incoming CEO Jan Wallander
- How local branches both compete and co-operate
- How a leftist mindset has contributed to their success at capitalism
- Their winning formula of high trust and high transparency
- Why Richard's doing OK without a 'banker bonus'
Enjoy!
Links: https://www.handelsbanken.com/
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In this episode, I explore the evolution of the modern workplace with Yann Toutant, the Netherlands CEO of the €6bn digital services company Econocom. We talk:
- Why he likes his people out of the office, but not working from home
- How his shareholders said they'd fire him if he didn't go sailing during year-end
- How we forget that we manage for outcomes all the time
- The key ingredients of a great place to work
- How to know when you've lost control and how to get it back
Enjoy!
Links: https://www.econocom.com
How to know when you've lost control and how to get it back
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In this episode, I explore the enterprise perspective on Agile with Scott Ambler, Chief Scientist at Disciplined Agile. We talk:
- Guided Continuous Improvement and the Kaizen Loop
- Why it's best to think in terms of options and not best practices
- The need for "rolling wave" budgeting
- The role of the Architecture Owner
- The danger of Lean = job cuts and why safety is key to transformation
Enjoy!
Links: http://www.disciplined-agile.com/
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In this episode, I explore 'The Heart of Agile' approach with Agile Manifesto co-author and methodology theorist Alistair Cockburn. We talk:
- How methodologies are like tissues
- The paradox of needing methods to both increase and reduce communication
- Why collaboration is at the heart of the Agile approach
- The three emerging modes of leadership in complex work
- The story of creating the Agile Manifesto
Enjoy!
https://heartofagile.com/
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This week on Being Human, I interview Sydney Finklestein, Professor of Leadership at Dartmouth College and author of the highly-acclaimed 'Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent'. We talk:
- The three types of 'Superbosses'
- How to know a ‘Glorious Bastard’ from a plain old bastard
- Why great leaders build teams around talents not a template
- How superbosses embrace transparency
- Why passion is at the heart of being an extraordinary leader
Links:
The Sydcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sydcast/id1453232081?mt=2
Superbosses: http://tiny.cc/cpy34y
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This week on Being Human, I interview Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon, Harvard academics and co-authors with Clayton Christensen of The Prosperity Paradox. We talk:
- How some noodle entrepreneurs transformed the retail supply chain in Nigeria
- The huge business opportunities represented by non-consumers
- How providing cover just from a phone number made a British insurance entrepreneur a fortune while transforming lives in Africa
- Why thinking about customers in terms of 'Jobs To Be Done' expands your thinking
- Why corruption is a solution!
Links:
https://www.christenseninstitute.org/ https://www.amazon.com/Prosperity-Paradox-Innovation-Nations-Poverty/dp/0062851829
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This week on Being Human, I take a deep dive into the cultural revolution led by Luke Kyte, Head of Operations at UK marketing firm Reddico. Luke is building a manager-less culture with stunning results. We talk:
- Dramatically elevating Reddico's employee Net Promoter Score to a world-class 94
- Why you shouldn't make your best performers managers
- How boss-free staff pick their own coach
- Their evolving manifesto that drives their transformation
- How to fire someone in a flat structure
Enjoy!
Links:
https://reddico.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Reddico-Culture-Management-Manifesto-Part-2.pdf https://reddico.co.uk/category/culture/
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This week on Being Human I interview the extraordinary matriarch of our FirstHuman team, Phillida Fleming. Phillida coaches some of the most talented CEOs in the UK as well as providing counsel to a number of UK public figures. Around the fire of her cottage in the Isle of Wight, we explore:
- Her definition of what it means to be a leader
- Her seminal childhood encounter with her teacher Sister Mary Joseph
- The importance of the foundational question "Am I being who I say I am?"
- How the results we're producing show us who we are
- How senior leaders underestimate how who they are being impacts their organisations
Enjoy!
Links: http://www.firsthuman.com/meet-the-team/#phillida-fleming
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This week on Being Human, I interview the fantastic Mark Lines, co-creator of Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD). Using DAD helps companies to evolve the whole enterprise around agile software delivery. We talk:
- The origins of DAD
- How to avoid 'Method Prison'
- Why there are no 'best practices'
- Why joy is at the heart of the approach
- The sham of many Agile certifications
Links:
http://www.disciplined-agile.com/
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This week on Being Human, I interview Jamie Catto, a founding member UK electronica band Faithless. He left to form the double-Grammy nominated, music and film collective 1 Giant Leap. Alongside his artistic pursuits, Jamie now works as a creativity catalyst. We talk:
- How we must reclaim the parts of us that we closed off as children
- The importance of allowing ourselves to flush out our 'edgy feelings'
- How trauma release work can be as beautiful as it is painful
- The idea of a 'curriculum for the soul' that we all must work through
- The importance of being embodied and noticing where we place our energy
Links:
https://www.jamiecatto.com/
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In this episode of Being Human, I interview Glenda Eoyang, the co-founder of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, an organisation dedicated to applying learnings from complexity science to human issues. We talk:
- How she used her understanding of complexity to turn around her IT training business
- The three simple questions to ask when addressing situations from a complexity viewpoint
- Why the move to complexity thinking is a fundamental paradigm shift
- The 'tension and release' metaphor for understanding complex systems
- The positivist and constructivist perspectives on complexity
This is an in-depth exploration and well worth the investment.
Enjoy!
Links:
https://www.hsdinstitute.org/
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This week on Being Human, I interview Professor Ruth Ann Atchley from the University of South Florida. Ruth Ann is the author of the much-cited paper "Creativity in the Wild":
- the first scientific study to find a link between creativity and exposure to nature,
- discovering a 50% increase in creative reasoning after four days of hiking and no tech.
We also explore:
- The importance of "softly fascinating" stimuli to replenish our attentional resources
- The imperative to get away from the 'hijacking' effect of modern tech
- Why it's not just about being in nature
Enjoy!
Links: Creativity in the Wild - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051474 Cowboys and Cawe Dwellers - https://www.amazon.com/Cowboys-Cave-Dwellers-Basketmaker-Archaeology/dp/0933452470 The Restorative Benefits of Nature - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0272494495900012 Directed Attention as a Common Resource for Executive Functioning and Self-Regulation - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691609356784 The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19121124 Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494405801847
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This week on Being Human, in an at times highly emotive interview, I sit down with Liz Keogh. The conversation has two major themes.
First, we talk complexity and how Liz interprets and finds use for the Cynefin complexity framework, including:
- How to understand Cyenfin to make better decisions around difficult problems
- The difference between 'probes' and 'experiments' and why we should learn to let go of outcomes
- Her simple method for gauging the level the complexity facing you
In the second half, Liz courageously shares her experiences of sexual harassment and her take on the MeToo movement. I make my own confession of past poor behaviour and we discuss what we should all be doing to confront these issues.
This has been my most exposing interview to date and I was seriously moved by the power of Liz's testimony. I hope you will get as much from this conversation as I did.
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In this episode, I interview Chief Happiness Officer (CHO) of Happy Ltd and the author of The Happy Manifesto, Henry Stewart.
We discuss: - The evidence that a happy workforce does drive financial performance and not vice versa - What Henry has had to give up to lead a happiness-first organisation - How the joy metric is one of Happy's top KPIs - How making fewer decisions and asking more questions is a more effective way to lead - Why transparency is key to a happy workplace
Enjoy!
Links:
https://happymanifesto.com/ https://www.happy.co.uk/
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In this episode, I interview IMD Professor Michael Wade co-author of the highly praised Digital Vortex and the just-released Orchestrating Transformation.
We talk: - How change approaches must embrace the increasing complexity of modern companies - How effective digital transformation is more like conducting an orchestrator than executing a plan - Why Humility, Adaptability, Vision and Engagement (HAVE) are the most important attributes of a transformation leader - What we mean by 'network transformation' - The personal transformation many leaders must go through to become effective orchestrators of change
Enjoy!
Links:
https://orchestratingtransformation.com/ http://digitalvortex.imd.org/
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This week on Being Human, we interview Nikki Gatenby author of Superengaged - nominee for Business Book of the Year. At her offices in Brighton, UK, we talk:
- Using your people's side hustles as fuel for business innovation
- Creating a culture that takes people from engaged to superengaged
- How putting people before profit led to a partnership with a Namibian safari outfit
- The waste associated with a disengaged workforce
- Their famed "dreamball machine" for making the lives of their people better
Enjoy!
Links:
https://superengaged.co.uk/ https://www.propellernet.co.uk/
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This week's guest on Being Human is David Anderson - a pioneer in applying kanban-style visual working to IT teams and ultimately across the enterprise. He's been a major influence on me in helping clients transition to flow-based working. In this in-depth conversation, we cover:
- The importance of understanding customer purpose
- How to apply evolutionary thinking to product development
- The battle between grey squirrels & red squirrels and what is means for change
- How Bruce Lee inspires him in leading transformation
- Why it's ultimately our identity that matters most
Links:
https://edu.leankanban.com/
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In this episode, I talk with Luke Hohmann, the founder and CEO of Coneneo and co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation. We discuss:
- Managing our inner two-year-old
- The foundational aspects of business agility
- How we don't have crappy code in our systems, we have crappy collaboration
- How collaborative budgeting can actually speed up decision making
- The future world of The Chief Gaming Officer - The CGO
Enjoy!
Links:
https://conteneo.co/
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In this very open conversation, I sit down with the founder of the radical business operating system Holacracy, Brian Robertson. We cover:
- How many of the critics misunderstand the nature of Holacracy
- Why a transformation to this style of working is a multi-year journey
- The story of why Medium’s Holacracy implementation
- How depersonalising our work frees us for more love in the workplace
- Brian's take on Zappos' Holacracy experience
Links: http://www.holacracyone.org
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In this episode, I talk with author, founder and productivity guru Jim Benson. We get into: - Why to-do lists suck and why to use a ‘Personal Kanban’ instead - The story of Jim’s very first personal kanban - ‘The Crapban’ - Why making your own kanban public can be a radical act - The importance of depersonalising our work - Why plans fail and what to do about it
Links:
http://personalkanban.com/
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In this episode I speak with a major thinker and pioneer in the field of trauma and recovery and author of the seminal "Waking The Tiger", Dr. Peter Levine.
We talk: - The concept of re-enactment and why it's so important to understand for personal and business relationships - How memory formation works and what we mean by implicit and explicit memory - Why trauma is still so taboo - How Dr.Levine first discovered the natural mechanisms we can use to recover from trauma - What we can do within businesses to acknowledge and benefit from understanding trauma
Enjoy!
Links: www.traumahealing.com - home of The Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute
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In this episode, we talk with Kanban pioneer and Lean-Agile thought leader Mike Burrows. We cover: - the critical ingredients in Mike’s early successes with Kanban in Budapest - the importance of always starting with the end in mind - techniques for uncovering outcomes and obstacles with teams - why he’s so driven to develop humane systems within organisations - how being human is recognising our frailty
Enjoy!
Links:
https://www.agendashift.com/ - Mike's Agendashift home https://cleanlearning.co.uk - resources on Clean Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model - Viable System Model
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We talk with Sally McCutchion, UK pioneer of the revolutionary 'business operating system' Holacracy. We go deep on: - what adopting 'a business without bosses' takes for you as an individual - what it means to have a living job role - how to run meetings that get through 33 agenda items in 55 minutes! - how it can so hard to give up 'permission seeking' - what we mean by 'Red', 'Orange' and 'Teal' organisations
Enjoy!
Links:
http://www.sallymccutchion.com/ https://www.holacracy.org/ http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/
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In Alan's stunning riverside cottage, we talk:
- How he climbed out of a corporate-induced nervous breakdown
- Why we should look at business decision-making "through the lens of beauty"
- Why work without meaning is so destructive
- Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson's lunchtime ritual for beautiful business
- The need for companies to help us reconnect to our human nature
- The real story of the inventor of the mouse Doug Engelbart
- Why being successful doesn't necessarily mean being an asshole
Enjoy a beautiful conversation!
Links: http://beautiful.business/
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After the popularity our episode #30 with Fin Goulding, we invite Flow co-author Haydn Shaughnessy into the conversation. We talk:
- Why flow in organisations is all about the quality of interactions
- How the Asian business culture differs and how it helps them compete
- The power of (don't' say it!) nationalism in building a business
- The importance of visualisation to bring light to our shadows
- How to avoid periodic 'slash-and-burn' headcount culls
- The folly of 'core competency' thinking and why 'ecosystems' matter
- How being human is all about the conversation
Links
- The Flow Academy - https://www.flow-academy.org/
- The Flow book: https://amzn.to/2RM1cqZ
- The 12 Steps to Flow book: https://amzn.to/2qaBZK8
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In this week's episode, we interview Nick Corston, Dad and co-founder of STEAM Co. On a canal boat moored in North London, we talk: - How losing his job and watching the world's most popular TED Talk changed his life - The festival experience that sparked his mission to transform creativity in schools - Why so many teachers see his message as toxic - Why all of this matters for the business world - Oh yeah, and the rockets!
Enjoy!
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In this episode with theatre director-turned-executive development consultant Andy Harmon, we look at how ideas from the theatre world can apply at work, including: - How to be present with a group - The issue with 'pyschologically fleeing' situations - The importance of managing energy - His work coaching everyone from bingo callers to McKinsey consultants - How to think of organisational change transformations as a form of Hero's Journey
Links:
http://www.actorsmind.com/ - Andy's main website https://amzn.to/2O5rrFB - Anita Harmon's book: "Stage Fright" https://amzn.to/2O5Es26 - Andy Harmon's book: "Change Journey: Voices of the Creative Quest"
Supplementary material and selected excerpts:
https://app.box.com/s/z1y5ly4j2eo8kbkx3xb8796deecj3pfj
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In this chat with "coachultant" Philippe Guenet, we talk:
- "Coachultants"; it's a thing
- The importance of coaching the "system" over the individual
- The meaning of "Kaizen"
- The issue with corporate coaches
- How the Agile industry is getting corrupted
For more links:
https://www.henko.co.uk/ - Philippe's company https://amzn.to/2yayEz3 - Kaizen Forever https://bit.ly/2A0SC0B - Pioneers, Settlers and Town Planners https://www.crrglobal.com/ - Home of ORSC
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A talk with leading complexity researcher Professor Chris Mowles. We explore:
- 'Complex responsive processes' and how they can help us comprehend organisations
- Why understanding deep-seated fears and anxieties are so important when working with groups
- The absurdity of the Blair's government's Head of Deliverology
- How the practice of free-flowing conversation between nurses dramatically cut patient falls in the NHS
- What annoys him about "learning take-aways"
- How Systems Thinking can be so unhelpful
- Chris' critique of Dave Snowden's Cynefin complexity framework
Links:
Chris' blog: https://complexityandmanagement.wordpress.com/
Hertforshire Business School: https://www.herts.ac.uk/study/schools-of-study/business
Complexity and IST Study (pre-print version): https://bit.ly/2PYN7VB
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
A conversation with Aviva's International CIO and author Fin Goulding. We talk:
- Taking Agile out of technology teams and into the wider business
- The genesis of his book Flow whilst working at the major European bookmaker Paddy Power
- Having his suit "surgically removed" when moving from banking to tech culture
- The hardcore economic benefits of visualising work
- Why physical architecture matters
- How to make Agile work with remote teams
- How leaders have to change to enable Flow
Links - Fin's personal site: https://goulding.io/ - The Flow Academy - https://www.flow-academy.org/ - The Flow book: https://amzn.to/2RM1cqZ
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
In this Alpine chat with CEO, rapper, poet and snowboarder Jack Hubbard, we talk: - His life in the French Alps as the ultimate remote-working CEO - His "try all of them" strategy of starting a business whilst working as a chef - The turning point of the death of his brother in India - His radical approach of encouraging his employees to follow their inside or outside the company - How he "gets out of the way" as a CEO For more on Jack's work check out: https://www.propellernet.co.uk/ - Jack's company http://www.dreamvalleyprojects.co.uk/ - Join Jack in Dream Valley https://coveragebook.com/ - The start-up he sponsored
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
A conversation with social psychologist and author Roy Baumeister, where we discuss:
- How self-control is one the best predictors of performance in many areas of life
- How you glucose level might account for far more than you think
- The importance of "precommitments" for self control
- Why you should never have difficult conversations in the evening
- The differences between "Eastern" and "Western" styles of thinking
- How unresolved trauma may prevent us from maintaining self-control
For more on Roy's work check out : http://www.roybaumeister.com/
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
A conversation with Agile Thought Leader Luis Gonçalves, where we discuss:
- How he got started writing his first book on retrospectives
- How not to facilitate a retrospective
- Why people ignore the executive leadership in Agile transformations at their peril
- His forthcoming book Organisational Mastery aimed at the whole enterprise
- Luis' issue with the "fluffy side" on Agile
- His take on working in Germany
- The importance of giving back
Links and references:
- Organisational Mastery: https://www.organisationalmastery.com/
- Luis' blog: https://luis-goncalves.com/blog/
- Luis' book on Agile Retrospectives: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1304789624/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
- Jeff Pattern on product management: https://jpattonassociates.com/
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
A conversation with author and speaker Gib Bulloch, where we discuss:
-
His journey creating a ground-breaking "not-for-loss" arm within consulting giant Accenture
-
His burnout, breakdown and ultimate recovery
-
The challenges of being purpose-led within a traditional corporate culture
-
What it means to be an Intrapeneur
-
Leaving Accenture and reflections on The Hero’s Journey
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
A conversation with with author and Agile luminary, Johanna Rothman. We discuss:
- Her latest nonfiction work
- The problem with our old ideas of 'resource efficiency' - and why 'flow efficiency' is more useful
- The issue with the idea of 'performance' for knowledge workers
- 'Swarming and mobbing'
- Her first-hand experience of gender pay disparity
- Why timely feedback matters
- Her issue with the title "ScrumMaster"
- Her take on leadership Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
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A conversation with OnePoint Consulting CEO Shashin Shah. In this wide ranging and rich dialogue, we explore:
-
His company's "Traffic Control" meditation practice for the office
-
"Eyes open" Raja yoga on which it is based
-
The importance of (very) early morning practice
-
His journey from being forced out of Uganda at gunpoint to founding his company sought out by one of the largest tech companies
-
Dealing with bullies
-
The transition from a corporate life to one with tuned with his inner objectives
-
The importance of * NOT * having a pension
-
His advice for a meaningful life
-
His unashamed belief in past lives and the importance of being the same on the outside and the inside
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
A conversation with programmer Kent Beck, where we talk about:
-
The framework he's developed for understanding the product lifecylce: 3X
-
His take on the current state of the 'Agile' industry and why he didn't get rich from Extreme Programming
-
His story of leaving Facebook and how the Facebook culture might be improved.
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.firsthuman.com/being-human-newsletter/
A conversation with author of "Selling Boldly", Alex Goldfayn. We discuss: - How an understanding of positive psychology is so important for anyone involved in sales - The issue with personal affirmations - The fact our culture hates a braggard and how to handle that - And finally.. the importance of the old-fashioned phone call If you're in any way involved in the sales process, you're going to love this episode. Enjoy!
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with Robin Hanson. In an interview of two halves, we explore the science of our hidden motives, or "ugly motives", that drive our day-to-day interactions. The drivers we won't admit to - even to ourselves. We also delve into the mind-blowing world Ems, or digital human emulations. How does a society of a select group of 'uploaded' humans operate? How's life as a perpetual digital retiree? How would it be in to live in a clan of copies of you? Prepare for a head explosion.
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with former fighter pilot and business leader Gary Borland. Gary left school at 18 to become a flight engineer. He rose through the ranks of the RAF to ultimately become the Chief Test Pilot at UK Ministry of Defence. Gary's second act was to become a senior business leader in the aviation sector. Gary shares his journey to the pinnacle of a flying career, plus the shifts he had to make in himself to become an effective business leader. One the most fascinating interviews we've done so far on Being Human.
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with John Craig on the profound impact of being grounded to the earth. He shares the tale of his barefoot walk across Iceland and how companies are now seriously exploring the importance of being grounded at work.
For more information on John’s walk across Iceland, please check out www.earthling.is.
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with Tom Druitt, founder of the Big Lemon. Big Lemon aims to be the first operator to run the only fully-electric bus fleet in the UK and is well on the way to fulfilling that mission. Check out this post on the inception of his inspiring Happy Bus concept: https://druitt.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/the-happy-bus/.
For the chart referenced in the episode, please check out: http://firsthuman.com/downloads/Solo-EV-LEBS-Certificate.pdf.
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation about empathy with Gene Hsu, cross-cultural performance instructor on the ways in which Chinese culture is different to Western culture and what should a westerner know before starting a business venture in China.
For more of Gene’s work, check out www.emechina.us.
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with Sarah Weiler, founder of Power of Uke and Rye Laughs Comedy Nights, where we talk (and sing!) about the way music can help us break through communication problems.
For more of Sarah's work, please check out www.powerofuke.com and www.facebook.com/ryelaughs.
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to http://www.firsthuman.com.
A conversation with Carrie Bedingfield, author, TEDx speaker, elite cyclist and PhD student at Cambridge University about how regular meetings create more problems than they solve and how we can fix that. For more on Carrie's work, please visit www.lomo-meetings.co.uk.
Exterior links discussed on the episode:
- Wicked problems: www.ask-force.org/web/Discourse/Rittel-Dilemmas-General-Theory-Planning-1973.pdf
- 33 meeting types: www.liberatingstructures.com
Being Human is brought to you by coaching and consulting practice FirstHuman. For more FirstHuman's offerings, head to firsrthuman.com
A conversation with Agile coach Dan North about his pioneering work with Behaviour Driven Development, the Agile certification racket and how Agile breaks everything.
For more on Dan North's work, head to www.dannorth.net.
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to http://www.firsthuman.com.
A conversation with Prof. Theo Compernolle, coach and author of Brain Chains, about how to boost our intellectual productivity in the face of today's constant distractions.
For more on Prof. Compernolle's work, head to compernolle.com.
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to http://www.firsthuman.com.
An interview with Prof. Dave Snowden, creator of the Cynefin Framework, founder and CSO of Cognitive Edge. An extremely interesting episode for people who want to learn more about managing complexities in their lives.
For more information about Prof. Snowden's work, please visit cognitive-edge.com.
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with author and leading Agile voice Tobias Mayer where we talk about his recent illness, addiction recovery, oppression in the workplace and why "soft" skills really aren't so soft. Well worth the listen if you want to get to the heart of the Agile movement.
For more on Tobias and his work check out http://tobiasmayer.uk/.
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with bestselling author John Williams on breaking free from corporate life and how companies can foster in-house entrepreneurs. John also shares his personal losses and the importance of talking to customers.
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with remote working champion Lisette Sutherland. We discuss how remote working can be effective for any team, how to convince your boss to let you work from anywhere and how the band The Legendary Pink Dots changed Lisette’s life forever. Oh, and Skype for Business sucks!
For more of Lisette’s work, go to: https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/
For the products described in the episode, go to: https://www.chatlight.com and https://fullfocusplanner.com.
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with master coach Oddi Aasheim of FirstHuman. Oddi describes how "getting the listening" of others, watching who you are being and why commitment matters for breakthrough leadership.
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
Richard delves into David Allen's renowned productivity system 'Getting Things Done'. We talk about the importance of 'emptying our buckets', addiction to the stress of overwhelm and how creatives such as Howard Stern have adopted David's system.
To learn more about the Getting Things Done method, head to www.gettingthingsdone.com
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with Dr France Janov, Clinical Director of Primal Center, Venice, California on how Primal Therapy can cure us of our pain, her own recovery from suicidal tendencies and the importance of our birth experience.
For those wanting to get started learning about Primal Therapy, Dr Janov recommends the following books:
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The Primal Scream: https://amzn.to/2HTVH4a
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The Feeling Child: https://amzn.to/2HOpYVS
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with Judy Rees, we take a dive into the realm of Clean Language and how it can help you understand yourself and those around you.
For more on Judy's work, checkout:
https://judyrees.co.uk/
https://twitter.com/judyrees
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
A conversation with expert Rolfer and yogi Lizzie Reumont, including
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her battles with a life-threatening condition from infancy
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the extraodinary power of the fascia-releasing technique, Rolfing
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what it's like to live with a transplanted liver
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
Conversation with Dr Ingeborg Bosch, author and founder of Past Reality Integration, a technique for resolving the issues of our past to enjoy a healthier and more fulfilling future.
Links
Website: http://www.pastrealityintegration.com/en/
Defenses test: http://www.pastrealityintegration.com/en/tools-for-qpri-and-the-art-of-conscious-livingq/test-to-recognise-defenses
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
Interview with Jason Little, author of Lean Change Management.
We talk Pond Hockey, the main message of his book, his band Clever Weapon, future projects and the importance of self revelation.
Links:
http://www.leanchange.org
http://timelessleadership.ca/
Clever Weapon: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt6G2k3S_XdZQh3fWcwTiiA
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.
An introduction to 'who', 'why' and 'what' of the Being Human podcast.
Being Human is a FirstHuman production. For more on FirstHuman's coaching and leadership programmes, head to firsthuman.com.