Edgy Ideas

Show Notes
How do leaders respond when the familiar ways of understanding the world no longer hold? How do leaders work with anger, fear and uncertainty rather than being overwhelmed by them?
In this episode, Simon Western is joined by Steven Segal, psychologist, leadership coach and author of Mandela's Leadership Legacy: Emotional and Existential Wisdom. Drawing on Mandela's response to the assassination of a senior ANC leader in 1993, Steven considers how Mandela helped a nation on the brink of civil war move from anger and revenge towards reflection and the possibility of a different future.
They discuss leadership as a process of containment - turning difficult emotions into thinking rather than mobilising them for political ends. They consider the importance of existential wisdom, the capacity to remain with uncertainty when familiar ways of being no longer work, and how our moods and emotions shape what matters to us and how we respond to the world.
The conversation also questions the dominance of rationality in contemporary leadership. What might it mean to lead with a deeper sense of care, conscience and practical wisdom? And how might leaders create spaces for dialogue across differences, recognising our shared humanity even in those we regard as enemies?

Key Reflections
- Leadership is not mainly about inspiring people; it is about containing difficult emotions and creating space for reflection.
- Mandela's leadership shows how anger, grief and fear can become opportunities for thinking and collective transformation.
- Existential wisdom involves staying with uncertainty when familiar ways of understanding the world break down.
- Leadership is never an individual achievement; it emerges within a wider collective and cultural context.
- Moods and emotions are not opposed to reason; they shape how we understand what matters and how we engage with the world.
- There is a difference between mobilising emotions for power and working with emotions through care, conscience and practical wisdom.
- Dialogue across differences requires moving beyond fixed identities and recognising the humanity of others.

Keywords
Nelson Mandela; Leadership; Existential Wisdom; Emotional Intelligence; Containment; Organisational Leadership; Practical Wisdom; Uncertainty; Ubuntu; Dialogue Across Difference

Brief Bio
Dr Steven Segal is a psychologist, leadership coach and author whose work brings existential and phenomenological philosophy into conversation with psychotherapy, leadership and organisational life. He was formerly Associate Professor at Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney and has spent more than 25 years teaching, researching and working with leaders and organisations.
His latest book, Mandela’s Leadership Legacy: Emotional and Existential Wisdom (Routledge, 2026), explores Nelson Mandela’s leadership through an existential lens, asking how leaders respond when familiar ways of understanding and acting no longer provide a secure guide. His work is particularly concerned with moods of disruption, uncertainty, dialogue across difference, and the ways in which leadership can create a space in which people are able to recover a sense of belonging and possibility.
His current work extends these themes into psychotherapy, exploring philosophy not simply as a body of ideas but as a therapeutic practice emerging from lived disruption.
Explore more of his work:
Website
LinkedIn
Substack

Show Notes
What if the system isn't broken? What if it's doing exactly what it was designed to do? If that's true, tinkering with capitalism won't save us. We need to imagine a different civilization altogether.
In this episode of Edgy Ideas, Simon Western talks with Jeremy Lent, author of Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All. Jeremy's argument cuts deep: our ecological and social crises come from a worldview built on separation. Humans from nature. Mind from body. A civilization that prizes control, extraction and competition over connection. Simon brings his own work on Eco-Leadership into the conversation, wrestling with how hard it is to think outside a modernity mindset that shapes everything, how we lead, organise, even how we see ourselves.
So what does a life-affirming civilization actually look like? Less control, more collaboration with living systems. Less abstraction, more reconnection with embodied, animate intelligence. And crucially, Jeremy insists these alternatives aren't hypothetical. They're already happening in communities around the world.
This isn't a conversation that flinches from the scale of the crisis, but it doesn't collapse into despair either. Jeremy pushes for something harder: full honesty about ecological breakdown, paired with a real belief that transformation is possible. He points to how neoliberalism spread, starting at the margins, until it reshaped the entire world, and asks whether life-affirming ideas could do the same. His closing line says it best: the future isn't a spectator sport. We're all in it, shaping it, whether we notice or not.

Key Reflections

Keywords
Ecocivilization, Modernity, Ecological Crisis, Life-Affirming Systems, Capitalism, Systems Thinking, Regeneration, Transformation, Collective Action, Eco-Leadership

Brief Bio
Jeremy Lent is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. His new book, Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All, lays out the potential for a fundamentally different world system based on life-affirming principles.
His previous books are The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning and The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe. He is the founder of the Deep Transformation Network, a global community exploring pathways toward a life-affirming future on a regenerated Earth.  
He has written extensively about the vision and specifics of an ecological civilization, is co-founder and executive director of the Ecocivilization Coalition, and president of its parent, the Institute for Ecological Civilization. 

Keywords
Leadership; Authority; Systems Psychodynamics; Primary Risk; Reversal Theory; Group Dynamics; Distributed Leadership; Organisational Politics; Strategy; Collective Life  

Brief Bio
Dr. Larry Hirschhorn is a founder and Principal Emeritus at CFAR, a management consulting firm specialising in organisational development, strategy, change implementation, collaboration and leadership transition. With over four decades of experience as an organisational consultant, scholar and thought leader, Larry has worked extensively with leaders and organisations on strategy formulation and execution, organisational diagnosis and organisational design.
He is the Director of CFAR’s Dynamics of Consulting Program, an advanced programme for experienced consultants and coaches that explores the intersections between business dynamics and psychodynamics.
Trained as an economist, with a PhD from MIT, and later as a psychoanalytically informed organisational consultant, Larry is widely recognised for his work on the psychodynamics of organisations and for connecting the deeper dynamics of groups, relationships and decision-making with the practical realities of strategy and organisational performance.
Larry is also a founding member and former President of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO). A prolific writer, he has received several awards for his work, including the Eliot Jaques Award from the Society of Consulting Psychology, as well as journal awards for his writing on organisational life, leadership and moral purpose. He has also held faculty and teaching roles at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton, Fielding Graduate University and the William Alanson White Institute.

Show Notes
In this episode of Edgy Ideas, Simon Western is joined by Maria Guerrero - social entrepreneur and leadership educator - to explore leadership, power and human development.
Starting from Maria's work in education, faith-based institutions and social transformation, the conversation asks what kind of leadership is needed when expertise and authority are no longer enough. Drawing on Adaptive Leadership, Maria asserts that many of today's challenges require collective learning, shared responsibility and the willingness to engage with uncertainty rather than seeking quick answers.
Simon and Maria examine how power operates in organisations, churches, universities and society, often shaping whose voices are heard and whose knowledge is valued. They discuss the importance of recognising lived experience alongside expertise and explore how leadership can emerge from unexpected places.
The conversation also moves into the embodied and spiritual dimensions of leadership. Through stories of facilitation, peacebuilding and contemplative practice, they reflect on silence, discernment, movement, fragility and interdependence. In a time marked by polarisation and rapid change, Maria offers a vision of leadership rooted in connection, purpose and our shared humanity.

Key Reflections

Keywords
Leadership Development, Adaptive Leadership, Power & Authority, Human Development, Embodiment, Interdependence, Spirituality, Social Change.  

Brief Bio
María Guerrero is a social entrepreneur, leadership educator, and facilitator working at the intersection of social change, collective learning, and human development. Trained as a lawyer and economist, she began her career in corporate law before leaving the profession to found Acción por la Música, a pioneering organization in Spain that uses collective music-making as a platform for inclusion, community building, and social transformation.
Over the past decade, María has combined her practical experience leading social innovation initiatives with a deep exploration of how people, organizations, and societies navigate complexity. Her work draws on Adaptive Leadership, collective sensemaking, adult development, conflict transformation, and traditions of spiritual discernment. She has designed and accompanied large-scale participatory processes in educational, social, and faith-based institutions, helping communities engage difficult questions, navigate polarization, and develop the capacity to learn their way forward together.
María teaches leadership at Comillas University and works internationally as a speaker, facilitator, and advisor. She is part of global leadership networks connected to Harvard Kennedy School and Acumen, and is currently pursuing doctoral research on leadership development and organizational transformation in complex systems.
At the heart of her work is a simple conviction: many of the challenges that matter most cannot be solved by expertise alone. They require people to learn, adapt, and discover new possibilities together.

Show Notes
In this episode, Simon Western is joined by his long-time colleague, Leslie Brissett, to explore the history, purpose and enduring relevance of Group Relations Conferences. They trace the roots of this pioneering methodology from the early Leicester Conferences and the Tavistock Institute tradition to its contemporary applications in leadership, organisations and society. They discuss how Group Relations creates a temporary learning organisation where participants study authority, leadership, membership, and the unconscious in real time. They reflect on why these conferences can be deeply moving, often revealing hidden assumptions, internal constraints and patterns carried from our earliest relationships.
Simon and Leslie also discuss the changing nature of leadership, the growing prominence of identity and systems thinking and the need to reconnect questions of soul, embodiment and spirituality with organisational life. Along the way, Simon shares how a Group Relations Conference helped him discover a different path to leadership - one that emerged not from hierarchy, but from working at the edge.
This is a conversation about learning, freedom, authority and what it means to become more conscious participants in the systems we inhabit.

Key Reflections

Keywords
Group Relations, Leadership, Authority, Tavistock, Systems Thinking, Identity, Organisational Learning, Soul, Work

Brief Bio
Leslie has worked in organisational and community leadership for over 30 years. He is on the advisory board of the Eco-leadership Institute. He is the former Group Relations Programme Director at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, and is currently serving as the Board Secretary for the International Psychoanalytical Association. Leslie has studied human dynamics in experiential settings in many countries and acts as an adviser and consultant to boards, nations, groups and individuals seeking to improve the quality of life and deepen what it means to be human and humane. Leslie holds multiple degrees including master's degrees in Health Education from Kings College and Organisational Psychology, Social Policy and Non-Profit Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as a PhD in Unconscious Decision Making from Trinity College. 

Show Notes
In this episode, Simon Western speaks with seasoned psychoanalyst and organisational consultant Dr. Anton Obholzer about the hidden emotional and relational dynamics shaping leadership, organisations and society. Anton is a hugely respected organisational consultant from the Tavistock tradition, and it is a delight to hear his wisdom and insights on this podcast. 
Moving beyond technical models of management and mental health, the conversation explores organisations as living systems embedded within wider social and political realities. Anton reflects on the Tavistock tradition, the influence of Eric Miller and the importance of understanding organisations not simply as structures of efficiency, but as emotional containers carrying anxiety, projection, creativity and possibility. Simon and Anton discuss leadership as a protective and generative force, creating the conditions for growth, talent and human flourishing.
The dialogue explores the erosion of relational life in contemporary society, the dangers of organisations becoming spaces for unmanaged social anxiety, and the increasing dominance of technological and managerial rationality over human connection. They examine the importance of experiential learning, vulnerability, observation and creative practice in sustaining healthy organisations and societies.
At the heart of the episode is a deeper question about how we live together in increasingly uncertain times. Rather than retreating into expertise, certainty or control, Anton calls for greater relational awareness, collective responsibility and societal imagination.

Key Reflections

Keywords
Psychoanalysis, Leadership, Organisational Dynamics, Tavistock, Anton Obholzer, Simon Western, Eco-Leadership, Relational Intelligence, Systems Thinking, Emotional Containment, Group Relations, Society, Human Connection, Organisational Culture, Creativity, Vulnerability, Interdependence.

Brief Bio
Dr. Anton Obholzer is a psychiatrist, Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and both a child and adult psychoanalyst, trained at the Tavistock Clinic and the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London. Alongside his clinical work, he trained as an organisational consultant under Eric Miller at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, helping pioneer the application of psychoanalytic thinking to organisations, leadership, and institutional life.
Until 2002, he served as Chief Executive of the Tavistock & Portman Clinics in London and continues as Chairman of the Consulting to Institutions Workshop and Senior Consultant in the Tavistock Consultancy Service. He has designed and directed group relations and management conferences internationally, and lectures widely on organisational change, leadership, and resistance under conditions of stress and turbulence.
A Visiting Professor at the Universities of Vienna, Graz, and Innsbruck, faculty member at INSEAD’s Advanced Management Programme, and teacher across Europe, Dr. Obholzer has spent decades exploring the unconscious dynamics that shape organisations - especially when systems are under pressure.
He is also the co-editor of the influential book The Unconscious at Work, a seminal text that examines how unconscious anxieties and emotional dynamics operate within organisations and institutions. His writings and publications have profoundly shaped the fields of systems psychodynamics, organisational consultancy, and leadership studies.

Show Notes
In this episode, Simon Western speaks with political theorist and author Professor Brad Evans about the collapse of traditional working-class politics and the growing sense of abandonment across post-industrial communities. Drawing on Brad’s experiences growing up in the South Wales Valleys, the conversation explores how solidarity, class identity and community structures have been eroded by deindustrialisation, neoliberalism and the rise of precarious labour. They reflect on why many working-class communities no longer feel represented by progressive politics and why populist movements are gaining traction.
Simon and Brad discuss the emotional and political consequences of precarity - from Brexit and nationalism to homelessness, resentment and the rise of the “precariat.” Rather than dismissing people drawn toward nationalist or populist politics, they ask what happens when communities lose dignity, voice and recognition. The conversation challenges simplistic binaries of left and right, arguing instead for deeper listening, political humility, and a renewed understanding of interdependence.
The episode also turns toward possibility. Simon introduces ideas from his work on “precarious interdependence,” asking how we might learn to live creatively within uncertainty rather than retreat into fear, certainty, and division. They discuss the role of art, culture, dialogue, and political imagination in creating more humane futures - futures grounded not in nostalgia for the past, but in new forms of solidarity and shared becoming.

Key Reflections

Keywords
Precarity, Working Class, Nationalism, Populism, Brexit, South Wales, Political Violence, Class Identity, Labour Party,Identity Politics, Mutuality, Interdependence, Neoliberalism, Community, Deindustrialisation, Arts & Politics, Political Agency, Democracy, Social Change

Brief Bio
Brad Evans is a Professor of Political Violence & Aesthetics at the University of Bath, United Kingdom. He is the author of 20 books and edited volumes, along with over 150 academic and international media articles. Brad has written extensively on the state of international affairs, while making major theoretical contributions to the understanding of violence. He has previously held positions at the Universities of Bristol and Leeds, and has also taught at Columbia University in New York.
Brad is widely known for bringing critical theory into public conversation through projects with The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and American Book Review. His recent work explores the politics of disappearance, bridging art, academia, and policy through exhibitions, public events, and global collaborations. He is also the founder of the internationally recognised Histories of Violence project, which connects critical research and public dialogue across more than 140 countries.
A frequent speaker at institutions including Harvard, NYU, Columbia, UCLA, and the Guggenheim, Brad’s work moves between philosophy, politics, art, and lived experience. He is also the author of the acclaimed semi-biographical book How Black Was My Valley, reflecting on growing up in poverty in South Wales. His work and commentary have featured across major global media including the BBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Newsweek.

Show Notes
In this episode of Edgy Ideas, Simon Western speaks with Gareth Owen OBE, former Humanitarian Director of Save the Children UK, about what it means to practice humanitarianism in a world where the global order is shifting rapidly. Drawing on more than three decades working in conflict zones - from Somalia and Angola to leadership roles shaping global humanitarian response - Gareth reflects on how humanitarian work has evolved. He describes how the aid sector grew alongside the post-Second World War liberal order, and how today that system is fragmenting under geopolitical tensions, rising authoritarianism and declining global cooperation.
A key theme in the conversation is the growing bureaucratisation of humanitarian institutions. Gareth and Simon explore two key issues. Firstly the widening gap between frontline human suffering and the managerial systems that increasingly govern aid delivery.  Secondly the breakdown of the liberal international order and what it means for humanitarian work. The discussion turns to what Gareth calls the potential “loss of the humanitarian soul” - the relational depth, moral courage and human connection that once anchored the sector.  Rather than turn to nostalgia for the past, Gareth argues for a renewal grounded in solidarity, human-centred leadership, and new alliances that emerge beyond traditional institutions.
Ultimately, the conversation asks a simple but demanding question: in an uncertain and fractured world, what are we each willing to stand up for?

Key Reflections

Show Notes
What happens when anthropology turns its gaze on psychology and coaching?
In this episode, Simon Western is joined by social anthropologist Dr Mikkel Kenni Bruun and social scientist Dr Rebecca Hutten to explore what sits beneath contemporary mental health, therapy, and coaching practices. Together, they discuss culture, power, and the often-invisible assumptions shaping therapeutic work.
Rather than treating psychology as universal or value-neutral, Mikkel and Rebecca show how it is culturally produced, shaped by specific histories, institutions, and ways of making meaning. From this perspective, therapy and coaching are never neutral; they are embedded in social, political, and moral worlds.
Ethnography is central to this conversation, not just as a research method, but as a way of listening and staying with complexity. Instead of forcing distress, healing, and care into predefined psychological categories, ethnography attends to how these experiences are actually lived across contexts.
The discussion also challenges dominant Western ideas of the self. While psychology and coaching often centre the autonomous individual, anthropological perspectives highlight relational and socially embedded selves. This raises urgent questions about what happens when Western therapeutic models travel globally - and what they may erase or misunderstand.
Cultural competence comes under scrutiny too. Often presented as a solution, it can risk flattening culture into tidy checklists rather than engaging with lived complexity and power. As psychological language increasingly shapes public policy, workplaces, and everyday life, anthropology helps reveal the cultural and political work happening beneath the surface.

Key Takeaways

Keywords
Anthropology, psychology, coaching, mental health, therapeutic culture, ethnography, cultural competence, relationality, self, good life

Brief Bios
Dr Mikkel Kenni Bruun is a social anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, Research Associate at the Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute, and Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. His ethnographic research includes NHS Talking Therapies (IAPT) services and community mental health initiatives in the UK. He is co-editor of Towards an Anthropology of Psychology (2025) and Rhythm and Vigilance (2025).

Dr Rebecca Hutten is an independent researcher, social scientist, and Associate Lecturer at The Open University. Trained as an anthropologist, she has worked in government policy research and Public Health at the University of Sheffield, and brings extensive fieldwork and clinical experience within NHS psychological services. She is co-editor of Towards an Anthropology of Psychology (2025).

Show Notes
In this episode Simon and Dr. Jack Black, Associate Professor at Sheffield Hallam University, think dangerously about AI through the unsettling lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis. This is a conversation about desire, discourse, power and the fantasies we project onto machines.
Drawing on Lacan, Jack reframes AI not as a neutral tool or intelligent object, but as a relational phenomenon - one that speaks into us, structures us, and increasingly stands in for authority itself. Together, Simon and Jack interrogate how AI comes to occupy the place of the Big Other: the supposed holder of knowledge, truth, and certainty in a fragmented world.
They explore Lacan’s four discourses, particularly the discourse of the hysteric, as a way of resisting AI’s creeping authority and the ideological narratives that present it as omniscient, objective, or inevitable. AI, they argue, does not know in any human sense - it recombines, repeats, and reflects back our own symbolic order, including its exclusions, biases and violences.
The conversation moves into education, where AI is rapidly being positioned as a new master signifier. What happens when learning is outsourced to algorithmic systems? What kinds of subjects are being produced? And whose knowledge is being legitimised - or erased - in the process?
Throughout the episode, AI is revealed as a site where cultural anxiety, political power, and unconscious desire collide. Rather than rejecting technology, Simon and Jack argue for a more critical, psycho-social engagement - one that keeps the human, the relational, and the ethical firmly in view.
This is a conversation about AI, but it is also about us: our longing for certainty, our fear of lack, and our temptation to hand over authority to machines. Lacan, unexpectedly, offers not despair but hope - a way to stay with complexity and resist the fantasy that technology can save us from being human.

Key Takeaways

Keywords
AI, Lacan, psychoanalysis, discourse, education, culture, technology, relationality, society, human experience

Brief Bio
Dr. Jack Black is Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. An interdisciplinary researcher, working across the disciplines of psychoanalysis, media and communications, cultural studies, and sport, his research focuses on topics related to race/racism, digital media, and political ecology. He is the author of The Psychosis of Race: A Lacanian Approach to Racism and Racialization (Routledge, 2023) and co-editor of Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears (Lexington Books, 2024). He is also Senior Editor for the Journal, Sport and Psychoanalysis (Cogent Social Sciences).