Not Simple

"As women, when you carry a daughter, you're also carrying your grandchildren… so having a quality experience of pregnancy will impact two generations down the line." Kerry Arabena is the Managing Director of First 1000 Days Australia , which focuses on a child's first 1000 days, from preconception to age two, as a way of strengthening Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. She came to No...

"You don't always know exactly what to expect, but you know that everyone is bringing their best to that moment and so then what is created is something that is reflective of all of those bests coming together." Jewel Kinch-Thomas and Greg Thomas are the co-founders of the Jazz Leadership Project , which uses the principles and practices of jazz to help companies and individuals work better. They'...

"We are the largest incarcerator in the world. That is our response to everything. I think it is the place where we cannot afford to oversimplify anymore." Monica Hopkins is the executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, and she came to Not Simple to talk about the US criminal justice system. What unfolded was a conversation about culture clashes, unpacking our reactions to behavi...

"The more complex work that I've tried to do is to really dig into those unwanted identities… and say, 'Well, is it really true that I'm a burden to others?'" Rachel Simmons, coach and author, stopped by to explore our oversimplified binary of capable/needy and why it's so hard to ask for help.

"Even that simplifies the process; it's just a box and a name on a tree and then you pick up the phone and there's a voice on the other end of it and it alters the landscape just a hair." Tom Draffen is a retired Marine Corps air traffic controller and a coach/consultant. He joined Wendy to discuss the complexities of sealed records, discovered siblings, and what it means to have a both/and family...

"What we find is that there are three aspects of life that they are good at nurturing… performance or achievement, personal growth, and well-being."

 Nicolai Tillisch is a colleague at Cultivating Leadership and the co-author of the best-selling book Return On Ambition. Here he introduces us to the seven frenemies, tools for goal-setting, and the many ways we oversimplify ambition.

"The problem with strategic planning in a pandemic is there are so many different elements in there that impact our ability to have student achievement, but we can't lose sight of that goal."

 Six months after she first spoke to Wendy about the complexities of reopening school during Covid, elementary and middle school principal Aletha Snowberger returns to update us on how things are going.

"I'm trying to say yes to the things that bring me more joy." After a long hiatus, Not Simple is back with producer Rebecca Scott, a Leadership Coach and part of the Catalyst team at Cultivating Leadership, joining Wendy to unpack the complexities of setting boundaries.

"Public health is happening in communities, in neighborhoods, where you live, where you work, and there's not really enough appreciation for that." Epidemiologist April Carson joins Wendy to discuss public health and the complexity of getting people to listen to simple messages—especially during COVID.

"There's something very powerful about the fact that we see ourselves in stories." Ann Kowal Smith, CEO of Books@Work, returned to discuss Franz Kafka's very short story "Poseidon" with Wendy and a few colleagues. Together they discover the leadership lessons and complexities within what is, at first glance, a quite simple story.

"There's one race, the human race. There are cultural groups. There are differences in skin tones and facial features and body features, but these don't dictate who we are." Amiel Handelsman is an executive coach and writer, as well as a semi-retired podcaster. He joined Wendy to discuss the many ways we oversimplify racial identity in America. 

You can learn more about Amiel and his work on his...

"This could be the year that Americans find out that their simple assumption that we do elections well or right will be forever destroyed." Jerry Mayer is a professor of Political Science at George Mason University and a self-proclaimed obsessive about all things election-related. He joined Wendy ten days before Election Day in the US to discuss everything from the Electoral College to the overloo...

"The reality is that friendships are infinitely messier and nastier and deeper in all sorts of ways good and bad than just two people who like each other and get along and are nice to each other." Susan MacDougall, an anthropologist at Cambridge University, joins Wendy to discuss the complexities of friendship, its history, how it has changed in Covid times, and how its rules vary across cultures.

"We're also focused on your students' needs, their emotional needs and well being first, before we teach them algebra and physical science." On the eve of a new school year, elementary and middle school principal Aletha Snowberger talks to Wendy about reopening school in a pandemic. From the logistics of getting kindergarteners to the correct classrooms when parents aren't allowed in the building...

"Getting stuff done peacefully is what most people want most of the time, and so the challenge isn't to get them to do it but to remove the obstacles to them doing so." Adam Kahane, a Director of Reos Partners and author of several books, including Collaborating with the Enemy , joins Wendy to discuss the complexity of collaboration.

"I want the doing and the learning to happen simultaneously. I don't want you to say 'I don't know enough and therefore I can't do anything.'" Wendy Moomaw, an executive coach and founder of the Conscious Collaboratory, and our host begin their conversation exploring our experience in the collective as the world changes around us and end up discussing what it takes for us as individuals to fight r...

"What Books@Work has helped his team to do is separate the person from the idea." Ann Kowal Smith is the Founder and Executive Director of Books@Work. She talks to Wendy about how using the lens of narrative fiction and non-fiction can supercharge collaboration and inclusion in the workplace.

"People in poverty, people with addiction problems … there are assumptions that those people actually don't care for themselves and don't care for their life or their health." Stephanie Marrs is a nurse practitioner with a passion for public health. She joins Wendy to discuss how we oversimplify the choices people make about their health, which actually may not be choices at all.

"[It's] like the elephant has been named. And it's been claimed. And now we can do something with the elephant." Wendy is joined by her Cultivating Leadership colleague Akasha, whose work focuses on engaging across difference, to talk about race in America and the Caribbean--and the ways we do and don't talk about it.

"What we want to look for is those threads such as behavior that we can both use to forecast but also help seed--how do we help take that thing that we want to be true and help drive the market in that direction?" A year after she first appeared on the podcast, Elizabeth Mayo, Global Director of Solar Services at UL, returns to discuss how COVID-19 has changed risk in the energy industry and how t...

"I'm thinking about this whole space the way poets think about a sonnet. There are specific constraints. Those constraints mean that most things are impossible, but an artist can figure out how to make great things happen inside the constraints." Guest host Keith Johnston has an "in house chat" with our normal host Wendy Bittner and Jennifer Garvey Berger about the challenge of helping leaders to...

"When emotions are so big, the quick fix is to be violent, use drugs, be aggressive, escape . . . because those feelings are dangerous. And for most of the guys they never learned how to experience that." Wendy talks to Dr. Melissa Garber, a clinical psychologist helping violent offenders in a special treatment unit in New Zealand to prepare to re-enter society. They discuss noticing and reacting...

"The really hard challenge when you're talking about empowerment is it's a fundamentally different conversation around the way that power is then distributed, the way that power is shared, and the way that power is exercised." Dean Parkin is a part of the Quandamooka people, an investment analyst with Tanarra Capital, and an advocate for the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which addresses the righ...

"A reframing of what failure is, what it means, and the importance of it can completely transform the way a person understands themselves and the challenges in the middle of a complex situation." Denise VanEck is owner of Thought Design , author of Failure: Laboratory Workshops, a coach , and obsessed with failure. She and Wendy unpack this "juicy" topic and discuss how to better harness with this...

"If we really want to build a web of trust it has to be built on human relationships." Richard Whitt, a fellow at Georgetown University and the Mozilla Foundation and founder of the GLIAnet Project, talks to Wendy about human agency in the digital era, the impact of technology in our daily lives, and the uneasy compact we make when we blindly exchange our data for access to unlimited cat videos.