Engaging People, Powering Companies - The Leadership Podcast

L. David Marquet, Author

Student of leadership and organizational design, former nuclear submarine Commander, and named one of the Top 100 Leadership Speakers by Inc. Magazine. David is the Author of the Amazon #1 Best Seller: Turn the Ship Around!, and The Turn the Ship Around Workbook. David’s recently released book, Leadership is Language, is a Wall Street Journal Bestseller. 

David imagines a workplace where everyone engages and contributes their full intellectual capacity, a place where people are healthier and happier because they have more control over their work–a place where everyone is a leader.

Times of extreme stress or change can impact upon our perspective, resulting in us often seeing threats that may or may not be present. We cannot always trust our senses  as the amygdala goes into overdrive causing us to emotionally react. Taking time to think allows us to challenge our beliefs and assumptions about what we thought might have happened versus what actually happened.  It can reduce our stress levels and allow us to take learning allowing us to make better decisions going forward. 

We are all driven by personal values. They dictate how we think and how we behave, but when asked, it's often challenging to articulate our values. We know they exist, and how influential they are, but trying to help others understand them, or more importantly, taking time to better understand them for ourselves can be a struggle. Whilst we don't often think about analysing our music collections, they could tell us a lot about what we value. Those pieces of music that emotionally resonate with us - that have the ability to bring us to tears, might hold a clue into our personal values. Amrit shares how a conversation sparked him to explore what his music was telling him about what he most values.

Stress is a very personal emotion. Leaders, managers and employees are likely to experience stress at some point in their careers, but with the world going through huge change, the chances are high that many people will be experiencing stress now. What is stress and how do leaders and managers help their teams, whilst trying to help themselves? Professor Daryl O'Connor shares his insights about steps we can all take to mitigate the impacts of stress on our lives.

Professor Daryl O'Connor

Daryl O'Connor is Professor of Psychology, University of Leeds. He completed his PhD at the Department of Psychology, University of Liverpool and then took up a World Health Organisation funded post-doctoral position at the Department of Endocrinology, Manchester Royal Infirmary (University of Manchester). In September 2000, he joined the School of Psychology, the University of Leeds as a Lecturer, later becoming Senior Lecturer and then Professor of Psychology. Daryl was Deputy Head of the School between 2006 and 2011. Daryl is the Convenor of the European Federation of Psychology Associations (EFPA) Board of Scientific Affairs, Chair of the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Research Board and is a Trustee of the BPS. He is also a past Chair of the BPS Division of Health Psychology and the BPS Psychobiology Section and, together with Mark Conner, he is currently joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal Psychology & Health. He is also on the editorial board of the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Journal of Behavioral Medicine and Stress and Health and is a member of the editorial committee for Annual Review of Psychology

We all have dreams that can compel us to react - to make them a reality. The emotions that accompany them can be so vivid, that it's hard to deny them. Across organisations and as individuals, how we can utilise the power of our beliefs, to re-frame the current situation, allowing us to create organisations that thrive? Amrit shares his thoughts on how beliefs can help provide clarity, and can be used to involve employees in helping shape a future that works for everyone.

Dr Thomas Rhys Evans is an Associate Professor in Occupational Psychology. Tom is a ambassador for Open Science, with expertise in preregistration, examining research quality, and questionable/transparent research practices. 

Tom is also passionate about the social and affective components of work, with particular focus on humour, emotional intelligence, and other such affect-related individual differences.

His papers include:

2020: ‘The Consistency and Value of Humour Style Clusters’. Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology.

2020: ‘Improving Evidence Quality for Organisational Change Management through Open Science’. Journal of Organizational Change Management.

2019: ‘Feedback-seeking culture moderates the relationship between positive feedback and task performance’. Current Psychology.

2019: ‘A conceptual replication of emotional intelligence as a second-stratum factor of intelligence’. Emotion.

Almost every large organisation will have a Diversity and Inclusion agenda, to help improve diverse thoughts and creativity, but what good is all this work, when outside of work, in our social lives, we are exposed to division? Social media has allowed us to entrench our views by finding like-minded people, instead of seeking to expand our views through discussion and dialogue. 

The Social Dilemma on Netflix shows the negative impacts social media is having on tolerance and our willingness to learn and listen to others. Are organisational activities created to improve diversity and inclusion really having an impact, or are we ticking boxes?

Whilst we are all familiar with the work of mindset and the impact it can have, being familiar isn't always enough to know how to apply it, and what we can do with it. What other research is available that might help organisations understand the steps they can take to be more mindful of mindset when communicating with employees? Ali Brown shares her insights on the latest findings in mindset, as well as steps leaders can take to understand their own organisation's mindset and how they can go about changing it.

Ali Brown

Ali Brown (BSc Hons, QTS, MSc, MBPsS) has a strong background in learning and training. She specialises in growth mindset and psychological safety, working as a consultant applying psychological research to management practice and organisational culture. Ali won the 2019 Excellence in Psychometrics Award for her work developing a psychometric test for the Fire Service. She is currently pursuing chartership and developing a project focusing on resilience at work.

Paul Zak

Paul is the founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and Professor of Economics, Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. He has degrees in mathematics and economics from San Diego State University, a Ph.D. in economics from University of Pennsylvania, and post-doctoral training in neuroimaging from Harvard.

Paul’s two decades of research have taken him from the Pentagon to Fortune 50 boardrooms to the rain forest of Papua New Guinea.  All this in a quest to understand the neuroscience of human connection, human happiness, and effective teamwork.  

His academic lab and companies he has started develop and deploy neuroscience technologies to solve real problems faced by real people.

His latest book, Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High Performance Companies, uses neuroscience to measure and manage organizational cultures to inspire teamwork and accelerate business outcomes.  His 2012 book, The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity, recounted his unlikely discovery of the neurochemical oxytocin as the key driver of trust, love, and morality that distinguish our humanity.   In another obsession, Paul’s group uses neuroscience to quantify the impact of movies, advertising, stories, and consumer experiences.  Along the way, he has helped start several transdisciplinary fields, including neuroeconomics, neuromanagement, and neuromarketing.

Did you know that we all have a natural 24 hour rhythm that dictates when we should sleep, when we should eat and when we are at our most alert? This changes with age and therefore has natural implications to work, where we are fixed to rigid working times. 

This concept of chronobiology has brought many insights organisations can learn from to improve engagement and productivity at work and Dr Kat (Dr Katharina Lederle) joins us as a guest to help us understand the topic in greater detail.

Dr Kat, a sleep and body clock specialist, is passionate about helping people sleep well and thrive. She sees taking care of your sleep and circadian health as an act of self-care.

Dr Kat provides one-to-one sleep therapy to those experiencing insomnia and works with organisations helping them realise the goodness of sleep. She runs sleep hacks and educational talks and workshops. These use a variety of methods, to help workforce teams get to understand more about their own sleep behaviour and then design personal sleep plans that help them make behavioural changes and sleep well.

In her work she combines a deep understanding of the biology of sleep and the body clock (she holds a PhD in Human Circadian Physiology & Behaviour and a MSc in Biosciences), with her practical experience in managing fatigue and insomnia, and learnings from Mindfulness, Acceptance Commitment Therapy and Compassion Focused Therapy.

Dr Kat has written a practical guide to getting good sleep called ‘Sleep Sense’ and has appeared in media coverage of sleep and circadian rhythms.