It was an absolute pleasure to spend time with Simon and Tracey West from Word Forest today. Word Forest are an environmental and education charity based in the UK that works to combat the devastating effects of global warming and climate change by planting fast growing trees in the tropics, predominantly food bearing. To assist the communities they also support women’s empowerment, build classrooms and facilitate education.

In this episode, we discussed why they chose to set their programme up in Kenya and their “Mothers of the Forest”. In addition, we discussed the 4 pillars of the Word Forest programme and how they facilitate education

Adrian Pagdin (Consultant, Advisor, Author and Project Manager) began his career in the Hotel industry before moving into project management and then on into the world of Learning & Development. Adrian has been a consultant and manager within some well known brand names, including Unilever, Holiday Inn and Hemsley Fraser. He is also the author of two books and the founder of Purpose Into Action, as well as being an ambassador and L&D Consultant for ADHD Aware.

In this podcast we uncover the benefits of hiring from the Neurodiverse community. Starting with a definition of neurodiversity and Adrian’s personal journey into neurodiversity?

In 2011, at just 12 years old, Alexa started a fashion blog; A Life in the Fashion Lane. It became a platform for Alexa to express her feelings around everything relating to teens, body image and mental health.

In 2018, Alexa founded the Be Fearless Summit, and also launched her own radio show on Radio Disney called BEFearless Every Day with Alexa Curtis, which was the first of its kind and broke new ground for the Radio Disney brand. Alexa interviewed various guests who shared their journey of overcoming obstacles/challenges and chasing after their dreams.

In this open and honest interview, Alexa gave us a little about her background and how she became interested in studying the impact of social media on mental health, including the fact that she was a victim of bullying. She was able to define the current relationship between social media usage and mental health and the specific effects that social media has on the mental health of teenagers and young adults.

The great news for parents, is that Alexa was able to offer some pointers as to how to stay in touch with your children’s social media activities and perhaps avoid them falling into the toxic well.

I was delighted to welcome David Callow to the Talent Smart podcast for this latest episode. Dave has been in technology for over 25 years and has been a senior leader for over 10 years. He is the Chief Information Officer for NHS Professionals who look after 60 NHS trusts and work with over 180,000 healthcare professionals to provide a flexible work force to support the NHS. 

During this podcast we explore why is it so important that technology departments are working in harmony with the rest of the organisation. Dave shared his approach to bridging the gap between the technology and business departments within an enterprise, including the best ways to ensure effective communication between technology and business stakeholders to align goals and priorities?

We also explored the most common barriers to collaboration between technology and business departments and how you can measure the effectiveness of output between departments. 

In this episode we discuss what are the key recurring components of a dysfunctional leadership team, together with exploring the true cost of a dysfunctional leadership team?

Paul also shares the quick ways to assess if a leadership team is working well together?

We discuss the topic of trust vs psychological safety how trust is the major contributor to how a team performs together? We uncover how do companies create a sense of purpose and shared vision and how do they start to assess if you have (or are in) a dysfunctional leadership team? 

Paul is an Author and global thought leader creating the conditions to reimagine, reinvent, and regenerate the future of leadership. Amongst a crowded space, Paul brings a unique, freshly disruptive, and bold, yet evidence-based, experiential, and experimental approach that is shifting the narrative within and beyond organisations about the future of leadership and work.

Follow this link for more information on Paul’s book - https://www.paulmacleadership.com/the-book

In this episode we talk through Paul’s book, The FIRED Leader and Paul breaks down the acronym F.I.R.E.D, together with why did he decide to write this book?

We discuss what are the new leadership requirements and what are the key mistakes that organisations make when defining their leadership (identification, recruitment, onboarding and developing).

We also discuss why disruption  curiosity are crucial attributes for a great leader.

Paul is an Author and global thought leader creating the conditions to reimagine, reinvent, and regenerate the future of leadership. Amongst a crowded space, Paul brings a unique, freshly disruptive, and bold, yet evidence-based, experiential, and experimental approach that is shifting the narrative within and beyond organizations about the future of leadership and work.

Follow this link for more information on Paul’s book - https://www.paulmacleadership.com/the-book

We were delighted to welcome Karen Poulter to our latest episode of the Talent Smart Podcast.

During this episode, we discussed the essential ingredients for a high performing culture, together uncovering what are “Employee networks” and how to build them. Karen also shared his insights into why is it so important that employees have a ‘voice’ and how does D,E&I contribute to high performance.

Karen Poulter  is a senior leader with over 15 years’ experience in delivering strategic and change programmes across both the private and public sectors with a passion for creating and maintaining high performing teams.  She has operated across a challenging and varied portfolios across varied countries and cultures.

Most recently, Karen was the CIO Hutchison Ports UK & Europe Division

We are delighted that Dimitrios agreed to share some time with us and discuss his thoughts and insights on how to create a building and maintaining a high performance culture within your Information Security Teams. Dimitrios is strong technology executive, specializing in business-driven security architectures and business risk control management. More than twenty years of extensive experience gained within financial services as well as telecom organisations and consultancy firms. The last twelve years the emphasis has been on offering enterprise security strategy services to C-Suite and their direct reports.

I was thrilled to welcome Brian Hanly, Co-Founder & CEO of Brightbeam and serial entrepreneur to the Talent Smart Podcast. Brian has a deep specialisation in the application of modern ways of working, product management and technology to help enterprises compete in the digital age and to help growth companies to gain commercial advantage with the help of AI.

In this episode, we explored the commercial advantages to companies from AI. We explored the adoption and deployment rate and what is stopping companies from progressing with their AI agenda.

In addition, Brian gives us some very helpful models and methodologies to follow when assessing the potential of AI for your business.

I am very excited that Jonathan Rivers spared some time to chat with me. Jonathan is a Visionary technology leader and “disrupter” with 20+ years of experience leading key growth initiatives in the technology, hosting, and media industries. Known as an expert in delivering innovative, high quality, cost-effective IT solutions and strategic initiatives that improve performance and reduce cost in a fast-paced environment.

In this episode, we uncover some of Jonathan’s secrets to building and fostering innovative teams, including his ‘Killer’ interview question that he asks every candidate at interview. He also gives us some great insights into how to handle critique in some of your decisions.

We also chatted about his experience of leading technology initiatives focused on innovation at Fortune and how to overcome some of the key challenges.

Jonathan also discussed 'how do you assess the potential impact of new technologies, such as AI, on the business’ objectives and strategy and how do you prioritise which technologies to invest in.