NeuroConversant Leadership

Two engineers. Two brothers. Two very different ways of communicating. Jake and Steve Maxey, hosts of the Impactful Engineer podcast, join Jeremy Doran to talk about moving from engineering into leadership. They cover giving your team real ownership, explaining your decisions so people don’t invent their own story, and why “do what is required” beats “I shouldn’t have to.” Connect with Jake and St...

What happens when a founder's greatest strength, their ability to build something from nothing, becomes the very thing holding their company back? Jeremy Doran sits down with entrepreneur and management consultant Greg Cucino, who is building his fifth startup, to discuss what he has learned from years of launching businesses, developing products, and leading teams. Greg reflects on how his ap...

How do you stay grounded when the pressure is on and your next response could affect your team, your reputation, or your career? In this episode of NeuroConversant Leadership, Jeremy Doran talks with Scott Sadler, PCC, an executive coach, entrepreneur, and certified breath coach, about managing pressure, making better decisions, and showing up as your authentic self as a leader. Scott works with s...

It's not just what you say. It's how you say it. In this episode of NeuroConversant Leadership, Jeremy Doran talks with Jay Alexander Poulton, The Accent Coach, about how to speak with greater clarity, confidence, and authority, whether English is your first language or your second. Jay shares how his work helping international professionals communicate more effectively grew from his backg...

Your intentions may be good, but is your team experiencing the leadership you think you’re showing? Discover how self-awareness, curiosity, and better communication can transform the way you lead. In this episode of NeuroConversant Leadership, Jeremy Doran speaks with executive coach Nader Vasseghi about the gap between what leaders intend and the impact they actually have. Nader shares practical...

Most scope creep advice focuses on contracts and change orders. Jake Lewon says the real defense starts earlier than that, in the relationship you build before a problem ever shows up. Jake, VP of Construction for the Middlesex Corporation, and Jeremy talk about why Jake pushes for weekly face-to-face meetings with owners instead of letting them slide to monthly, why he frames every project as a s...

Conflict between a CEO and someone on their leadership team is uniquely hard to resolve, because there's almost no one to talk to about it. Not HR, not the board, often not even a spouse. Liz Crowley spent years in HR and employee relations before finding herself doing exactly that: stepping in as a neutral, confidential resource for CEOs and founders caught in conflict with the people they le...

"Stop hiring for culture fit" is popular advice right now. The logic: if everyone on the team thinks alike, nobody catches the bad ideas before they cause real damage. Jeremy agrees with the diagnosis but pushes back on the fix. In this episode, he argues that culture isn't the problem, the definition of culture is. Most hiring managers use "culture fit" to mean someone who...

Jeanna Malines built a 25-year career in executive recruitment before a late AuADHD diagnosis sent her in a new direction. She now runs Trajecta, working with neurodivergent and neurotypical professionals on career transitions, job searches, and workplace communication. She and Jeremy talk about why late diagnosis is so common, particularly in women during perimenopause, why so many parents are on...

Command, currency, credibility, culture. Those are the four ways a leader gets things done, and command is the one people reach for first even though it costs the most. Jeremy walks through all four, then spends most of the episode on culture specifically. Southwest Airlines used to be a case study in it: no assigned seats, funny pilots, a flight attendant rolling toilet paper down the aisle for a...

Scope creep and remote communication are two of the biggest challenges facing distributed teams, and this episode's guest deals with both daily. Sarah DeSimone made an unusual career jump from biology to book editing to IT support at a 33-office environmental consulting firm, and she's picked up a lot along the way about what makes cross-functional communication actually work. We talk abou...

Improv is more than a hobby, it's one of the best leadership training tools out there. In this solo episode, I break down how personality traits, specifically introversion and extroversion, shape both improv performance and business communication. I recently auditioned for a house improv team (I made it) and a musical improv team (still recovering from the nerves), and it got me thinking about...

Overcoming imposter syndrome is one of the biggest hidden challenges in leadership. In this episode, executive coach and speaker Mark Pittman joins Jeremy Doran to talk about why almost every leader deals with imposter syndrome, and why that feeling might actually mean you're growing instead of failing. Mark shares a line that stuck with him: it's only imposters who don't get imposter...

On October 1st, 2013, healthcare.gov launched and crashed within hours. It wasn't a coding problem. It was a coordination problem. A dozen different people all claimed to be in charge of the project. CMS believed one contractor was the lead integrator. That contractor didn't agree. Everyone shared the same goal, launch on time, but nobody had agreed on what success actually looked like or...

The book is out. And I'm both relieved and completely in my head about it. In this solo episode, I get honest about launch week. The marketing company sent more messages than I ever would have, and it made me feel icky watching people opt out. I hit the Amazon bestseller list, which felt great. And I got the kind of compliment on the book I never expected, from someone who's turned down th...

Sixty two percent of managers say they struggle to work with Gen Z. Forty five percent of Gen Z say they don't know how to make themselves visible to their managers. Something is getting lost in translation. In this episode I talk with Anjan Kasi, CEO of Vision X, about what's actually happening in that gap. Anjan works with IT managers and supervisors to turn early career talent into self...

Jonathan Lautermilch runs a book publishing company with his wife (the editor), a launch director, and a sound engineer, and none of them think the same way he does. He built it that way on purpose. We start with how he manages a team whose brains work completely differently from his and from each other. He talks about hiring people who are willing to say no to him, and why that's saved the bu...

Welcome back to Season Two of NeuroConversant Leadership. I took a month off. Here's why, and here's what's different now. I hit a wall. I was writing my book, building a college curriculum, writing a blog, sending a newsletter, and putting out this podcast every week. I actually thought about quitting one or two of them, maybe all three. It stopped being fun. It felt like a chore. So...

Over 80% of autistic adults with college degrees are unemployed. That's not a pipeline problem — it's a workplace design problem. In this fireside chat recorded at an inclusion conference, I'm joined by Arianna DeAngelis, Training Manager at The Autism Project, for a candid conversation about what neuro-inclusive workplaces actually look like — and why the companies getting it right ha...

What if the key to financial success isn't picking the right stocks — it's understanding how your clients think? Julina Ogilvie joins Jeremy Doran to share her journey from finance to wealth management and why communication, personality, and emotional intelligence matter more than most advisors realize. In this episode: Why fear and greed drive every market decision — and how to work with...

Most people have strong opinions about DEI. Jeremy has a different take: drop the E for equity and replace it with a dollar sign. In this solo episode, Jeremy reframes the DEI conversation around what actually drives business results — cognitive diversity and genuine inclusion. He makes the case that neurodivergent professionals represent an underutilized talent pool of 67 million Americans, and t...

What if the way your brain works isn't a problem to fix — but a strength to unlock? In this episode, Jeremy is joined by Lisa Richer, founder of Journey to Bloom and a neurodivergent success partner, who helps professionals move from stuck to success through her three-stage journey map: Clarity, Confidence, and Courage. Lisa brings a deeply personal perspective — diagnosed with multiple neurod...

Show Notes: What if the first 90 days in a new leadership role matter more than the next 90 months? That's the core belief driving today's guests — and the stories they share will stick with you. Neil Marshall, Chairman of Health Search Partners, and Kurt Mosley, Association Practice Leader at Health Search Partners, have spent a combined 65+ years placing and coaching healthcare executive...

Most people are terrified of public speaking — but the core skills are ones you already use every day. In this solo episode, drawn directly from his upcoming book, Jeremy breaks down why effective communication follows the same principles whether your audience is one person or a thousand. What you'll learn: Why the mirror/window framework from Good to Great applies directly to communication Th...

ADHD is the most commonly cited form of neurodivergence — but it's widely misunderstood. In this episode, Jeremy Doran explains what ADHD actually is: not a deficit of attention, but a challenge in regulating it. He covers the science behind dopamine dysregulation, why diagnosis rates vary so widely (especially between men and women), and the remarkable strengths ADHD brings to the workplace —...