Back in 2020, we released a two-part conversation (S1 Ep15 and 16) with neuroscientist Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett. We’re long-time admirers of Lisa’s work and were thrilled that she agreed to join co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender to discuss her work on The Evolving Leader podcast. It’s also clear that Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work is a big hit with our listeners as four years after release these two episodes continue to sit at the top of our listener chart, so here we’ve decided to pull them together into a special extended episode.

Lisa Feldman Barrett is profoundly changing our understanding of the brain and in particular, our emotions. Since the ancient philosophers, and into our last century of scientific endeavour, emotions have been seen as hard-wired responses to external stimuli, located in specific regions of the brain. Lisa’s work has over-turned this age-old model which shapes everything from our current beliefs about emotional intelligence to facial recognition software widely being deployed around the world.

Beyond this extended conversation, you’ll find more of Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work in her two books, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (2020) and How Emotions are Made (2017), as well as hundreds of peer reviewed scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)


Social:

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LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Bluesky           @evolvingleader.bsky.social
YouTube           @evolvingleader

 
The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on The Evolving Leader podcast, hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender spend an hour with Salim Ismail. In 2011, Salim Ismail co-wrote ‘Exponential Organizations’, a book that has since been widely read by CEOs who are looking for a new way to navigate uncertainty and embrace disruptive technologies and business models. In 2023 Salim and his co-authors updated the book and during this conversation he talks to Jean and Scott about ‘Exponential Organizations ExO 2.0’.

Salim is also the founder and chairman of OpenExO which helps companies implement the ExO playbook. He is a serial entrepreneur, the Founding Executive Director of Singularity University and serves on the board of the XPRIZE Foundation, and all of that is really just scratching the surface as to the work that Salim Ismail is part of.

Topics covered during this conversation include:

Core Principles of Exponential Organizations
The Exponential Mind Map and Hyper Scaling
Challenges and Successes in Adopting Exponential Organizations
The Role of Purpose in Exponential Organizations
The Impact of AI on Organizations
Navigating the Unknown and Embracing Technology
The Future of Leadership and Institutional Evolution


Referenced during this episode:

https://salimismail.com/

 
Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)


Social:

Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Bluesky           @evolvingleader.bsky.social
YouTube           @evolvingleader

 
The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

During this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with Dr Dacher Kelter. Dacher is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. His pioneering research focuses on the cultural and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, beauty, power, social class and social inequality. He has over 200 scientific publications and has written several books, the latest of which is Awe - The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life. In this book, Dr. Keltner investigates the elusive emotion of awe - and presents incredible research on how the emotion of Awe can transform our brains and bodies, and how we can cultivate more experiences of awe in our everyday lives.

Referenced during this episode:
Greater Good In Action - https://ggia.berkeley.edu/

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Social:

Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader
YouTube           @evolvingleader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, we’re delighted to welcome Susie Alegre back to The Evolving Leader. Susie is a leading human rights barrister at the internationally renowned Garden Court Chambers. She has been a legal pioneer in digital human rights, in particular the impact of artificial intelligence on the human rights of freedom of thought and opinion and she is also Senior Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton.

Artificial intelligence is starting to shape every aspect of our daily lives, from how we think to who we love, and in her latest book ‘Human Rights, Robot Wrongs, Being Human in the Age of AI’ Susie Alegre explores the ways in which artificial intelligence threatens our fundamental human rights – including the rights to life, liberty and fair trial; the right to private and family life; and the right to free expression – and how we protect those rights.

This is an important listen for us all.

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)


Social:
Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader
YouTube           @evolvingleader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Have you ever wanted to travel through time and see what your life will be like in the future? While we want the best possible future for ourselves, we often fail to make decisions that would make that a reality. So why are so many of us so disconnected from our future selves?

This week on The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to psychologist Professor Hal Hershfield. Hal is Professor of Marketing, Behavioural Decision Making, and Psychology at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and is committed to the work of helping people make better long-term decisions. In his 2023 book ‘Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today’ Hal explains that in our minds, our future selves often look like strangers. Many of us view the future as incredibly distant, making us more likely to opt for immediate gratification that disregards the health and wellbeing of ourselves in the years to come. He says that people who are able to connect with their future selves, however, are better able to balance living for today and planning for tomorrow.

This is a fascinating listen.


Referenced during this episode:
Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Social:

Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader
YouTube           @evolvingleader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Are you feeling stuck? Finding your purpose changes everything.

During this new episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-host Jean Gomes talks to self-confessed purpose nerd James Glover. James is the founder of The Excitable Soul, an organisation through which he and his team address the challenge that is helping people find their purpose. James is a World Champion athlete and a former Olympic performance coach, and after leaving elite sport he has worked all over the world with large organisations including Google, Microsoft and Sky helping them invest in their people and nurture a happier, stronger workforce. James is also the host of the Excitable Soul podcast (on which both Jean and Scott have been guests). 

Referenced during this episode:
The Excitable Soul - https://theexcitablesoul.com/ 

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Steve Rader is a leader in the thinking behind open innovation, open talent, and the future of work. In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, Steve joins Evolving Leader cohosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender to share how leaders can learn from his important work and use their learnings to solve complex problems. Steve tells us that open innovation and open talent are key strategies for organisations to stay competitive in a rapidly changing world.

References from this episode:
"Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI" by Ethan Mollick (April 2024)
RapidMiner (https://altair.com/altair-rapidminer)

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Social:

Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader
YouTube           @evolvingleader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

What happens when everything changes, when your core assumptions about your life and work seem no longer to hold true? A key responsibility of the leader is to be honest with themselves and others about anticipating, accepting and preparing for new realities while acknowledging that human beings often resist reality in ingenious and self deceiving ways.

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Sharath Jeevan O.B.E. about his work helping leaders confront inflection moments where the external environment poses a significant threat or opportunity to an organisation’s business model. Sharath has also written two books “Inflection: A Roadmap for Leaders at a Crossroads” (2024) and “Intrinsic: A Manifesto to Reignite our Inner Drive” (2021) and teaches leadership at both Oxford and Cambridge universities.

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Social:

Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader
YouTube           @evolvingleader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender welcome back former guest science writer David Robson. David is an award-winning science writer specialising in the extremes of the human brain, body and behaviour. He has worked as editor of New Scientist and BBC Future, and his writing has been published in The Guardian, the Observer, the Washington Post and Atlantic and in 2022 was a finalist for the Best British Science Journalist of the year award. He has written three books including The Intelligence Trap (2019), The Expectation Effect (2022) for which he won a British Psychological Society Book Award and his latest book The Laws of Connection (2024).

During this conversation David shares the importance of social connection for physical health and well-being. He explores the concept of the liking gap, where people underestimate how much others like them, and the physiological effects of loneliness. This highlights the need for prioritizing social connection and provides practical strategies for building and deepening relationships. 

Referenced during this episode:
The Laws of Connection: 13 Social Strategies That Will Transform Your Life
David Robson’s website

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Social:
Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader
YouTube           @evolvingleader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with Kim Scott. Kim is the author of the best selling ‘Radical Candor, How To Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean’ (2017), ‘Just Work: How to Confront Bias, Prejudice and Bullying to Build a Culture of Inclusivity’ (2021) and the more recently published ‘Radical Respect, How to Work Together Better’ (2024). Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrix and Twitter and she hosts the Radical Candor and Radical Respect podcast.

Referenced during this episode:
Radical Candor, How To Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean
Radical Respect, How to Work Together Better

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Social:
Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader
YouTube           @evolvingleader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.