Leadership 2.0

In this episode, I am interviewing Saskia Schepers about unleashing the power of neurodiversity in the workplace.

Saskia Schepers studied organizational science and works as a creative brain, consultant, project manager, speaker, trainer, and coach.

She recently wrote a book titled ‘Als alle breinen werken - Waarom ruimte voor neurodiversiteit op het werk goed is voor idereen'.  In English:  ‘If all brains are switched on - Why space for neurodiversity in the workplace benefits everyone’.  

The book almost immediately reached the number 1 position in the Dutch bestseller list of management books, was quickly sold out, and is now in its third printed edition.

An English translation is in the making and will be published in 2024.

During our interview, we discussed, amongst others, the following topics:

- What neurodiversity is

- Why neurodiversity is a leadership issue

- Why leaders find it hard to deal with neurodiversity

- Recommendations for leaders struggling with neurodiverse people in their teams

- How to start a conversation about neurodiversity as a leader

- Accepting Neurodiversity  versus adopting a ‘growth mindset’ 

- Why working in teams can pose challenges for neurodiverse people and how leaders can accommodate this

- To stimulate innovation, more and more businesses start to ‘encourage’ staff to return to the office. Is this necessary, and which special challenges does this pose for neurodiverse people

- The special challenges working in an agile manner can pose for neurodiverse people

- The application of ‘strength-based management’ beyond neurodiversity in organizations 

- The role Saskia's neurodiverse profile played in the way she wrote this book ('The creative process')

Link tot the website of Saskia Schepers: https://saskiaschepers.com/

Link to the book of Saskia Schepers: https://www.atlascontact.nl/boek/als-alle-breinen-werken/

Any questions or comments? Press this link and send me a message!

John Hollwitz is a University Professor of psychology and rhetoric. Before coming to Fordham, he was the A.F. Jacobson Professor of Communications at Creighton University and dean of arts and sciences at Loyola College in Maryland. He also has been the vice president of academic affairs at Fordham.

Professor Hollwitz's teaching interests include management; experimental/quasi-experimental design; statistics; item response theory; structural equation modeling; team-building, especially in high-pressure teams; life-span career development; religion, and work. His avocations include martial arts, especially classical Tai Chi sword; jazz and blues music. 

He is currently working on a book about blues music, and we also discussed this at the end of this interview.

Our interview was focused on the why and how of corporate ethics.

During this interview, we discussed the following topics:

- John's research into structured ethical integrity interview techniques

- The relationship between ethics and capitalism

- Engraining ethics in the mindset of business leaders

- The relationship between ethics and a sense of purpose

- The consequences of a lack of purpose for organizations and their employees

- How organizations can create a sense of purpose for their employees

- John's love for blues music, and a book he is preparing about this topic

- The soul of organizations

John can be reached on [email protected]

Any questions or comments? Press this link and send me a message!

Sophia Town, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Gabelli School of Business. As a qualitative researcher, Dr. Town explores how leaders can cultivate both knowledge and wisdom in service of individual, organizational, and societal flourishing. 

During our conversation, we discussed, amongst others, the following topics :

- Our changing expectations from leaders

- Leadership versus Management

- The blurring boundaries between our working lives and our private lives

- Managing paradoxes

- Value alignment between organizations and employees

- Knowledge versus Wisdom

- Mindfulness

- Time and decision making

- Stories we tell ourselves

- The power of questions and self-reflection

- Preparing students for leadership positions

- Emotional intelligence

- Profit as a ‘happy coincidence’ (CSR)

- The importance of curiosity in the context of motivation

More about Sophia Town:

Dr. Town’s research program reflects three primary streams of research: (1) wisdom-based leadership, (2) systemic change for human flourishing, and (3) transformative business pedagogy. 

In the classroom, Professor Town’s curriculum is guided by the question: “How can we develop compassionate leaders in service of a flourishing world?” Professor Town has designed and taught a number of reflective and experiential courses for the undergraduate, MBA, and Executive MBA levels covering topics such as leadership development, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, conflict management, and negotiation. Each course aims to humanize business education by fostering the ‘knowing,’ ‘doing,’ and ‘being’ of wisdom in the workplace. 

Regarding transformative pedagogy, Dr. Town leads Fordham’s Human Flourishing Project (FHFP), a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary research lab that explores behavioral, psychological, communicative, and spiritual development in business education. Related to this project, Dr. Town serves as a Research Affiliate and Advisory Board Member for the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. She currently oversees Fordham’s collaborative participation in a multi-year, grant-funded research study with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University to study the role of ‘Love’ in business education.

In addition to her professorial role, Dr. Town is a Fellow for the Center for Humanistic Management at Fordham University and a Research Consultant for the Center for Mindfulness, Compassion, and Resilience at Arizona State University. In 2018, Dr. Town was named the Jeanne Lind Herberger Fellow for transformative research on work and life. She has received several teaching awards, including the 2018 Teaching Excellence Award (ASU) and the 2021 Dean’s Award for Teaching Innovation (Fordham University). In 2023, Dr. Town won the Dean’s Award for Faculty Service (Fordham University). Dr. Town’s work has been supported by grants from the John Templeton Foundation, the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, and the International Association of Jesuit Universities.

To connect with Dr. Town or her work, you can find her on LinkedIn and Google Scholar.

A full list of her publications can be found here: https://www.fordham.edu/gabelli-school-of-business/faculty/full-time-faculty/sophia-town/

Any questions or comments? Press this link and send me a message!

I am a big proponent of the work of Carl Jung and the business world could benefit from his insights. Therefore, I was pleased to have the opportunity to talk to Murray Stein about applying Jungian Analytical Psychology in the workplace. 

Interestingly enough we met on labor day, something Jung would call undoubtedly label as synchronicity!   

Murray Stein is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. and M.Div.), the University of Chicago (Ph.D.), and the C.G. Jung Institut-Zurich (Diploma). He is a founding member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts. He has been the president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (2001-4), and the President of The International School of Analytical Psychology-Zurich (2008-2012).

He published tens of books about Carl Jung and analytical psychology, including for instance ‘Jung’s Treatment of Christianity’ and ‘Jung’s Map of the Soul’. The focus of our conversation was a book he edited with John Hollwitz called ‘The Psyche at work - Workplace Applications of Jungian Analytical Psychology’. 

We discussed a number of topics, including

- The essence of true leadership

- The identity of organization

- Business ethics

- The need for embracing the shadow to prevent shadow possession and corporate scandals

- The leadership style of different American presidents

- The relation between the need for self-reflection by leaders, executive coaching, and psychoanalysis

- The validity of MBTI

- The importance of having a personal North star

Any questions or comments? Press this link and send me a message!

Focusing on who we want to be, means opting for a position and choosing a course of action that brings us closer to the position we aspire to have. Focusing on doing means that we let our course of action be determined by what we consider to be intrinsically important. If we compare the differences between a position and a purpose, it becomes apparent that having a purpose is vastly preferable to having, or longing for, a position.

One of the big temptations we as leaders face is our urge to add value to the work of our staff.  Although this is tempting, it is a bad idea, both for our staff, as well as for ourselves. I use my personal 7-2-1 rule to combat my temptation. What do you use?

Leaders often tell their employees that they need to learn to deal with ambiguity. This is a polite way of saying that their behaviors need to compensate for shortcomings in the way decision-making processes in the organization are structured. This sounds great but comes at a cost...

Almost any sizeable company nowadays has a code of ethics. The main catalyst for this were the corporate scandals in the early 2000s (Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and others), and in the last couple of years having a sense of purpose has become pretty much en vogue.

As a result, every year millions of employees now dutifully complete e-learning modules and sign declarations (‘To the best of my knowledge…’).

The difficulty is that corporate codes of ethics are ‘duty-centered ethics’. Duty-centered ethics are ethics people need to formally adhere to, given their role or position in society. 

The real test for the way ethics are adhered to in organizations is therefore not the formal compliance with the code of ethics (for instance proving all employees completed their mandatory e-learning), but what happens in the daily reality of business life.

In this podcast, I talk about how organizations can achieve this. 

I hope you like this podcast. Let me know!

I always felt sorry for the many famous artists in the Renaissance, who needed to compromise the quality of their work and their artistic integrity, in order to make sure their art suited the requirements of their patrons.

This challenge is not uncommon to the one management consultants and other professionals in business face. How can we translate professional integrity into commercial reality?

For a variety of reasons, a number of line managers frequently want to do the work of their direct reports. However tempting this might be, doing the work of your team is rarely a good idea, neither for you as a line manager, nor for your team. 

In the world of professional soccer, you are either a coach, coaching your team from the side, or you are a player in the field.  As a soccer coach, you cannot occasionally enter the field during a match, start playing with your team, leave the field again, and, a little later, reenter the field to play again. 

And for good reasons...