The Plant Yourself Podcast

Rhys Paddick is a Noongar/Scots-Irish Australian who walks two worlds — and who has built a business teaching people how to get off scripts and speak from somewhere truer. We talk about the strange afterlife of Australia's "acknowledgment of country" ritual, what "country" means when you capitalize the C, and why every performative ritual eventually collapses unless authenticity is at the center o...

Leadership coach Keith J. Corbin and I talk about what's missing from mainstream leadership advice — and why the inspirational messages we see on LinkedIn and in bestselling business books often obscure the structural realities of work. And that’s putting it way too nicely. What We Discuss The Simon Sinek problem Keith tells the story of working for a CEO who was a devoted Simon Sinek fan — who qu...

I thought this conversation was going to be about meetings. And it was. But it turned out to be about something much larger: a fundamental redesign of power in organizations. Sheella Mierson, PhD is a scientist-turned-organizational-consultant whose whole practice is built on a simple, subversive premise: meetings are a window into culture, and if you can fix the meeting, you can fix the culture....

Ohio therapist, EMDR trainer, and consultant Tom Zimmerman is doing something I find genuinely thrilling: taking one of the most promising trauma treatment approaches in recent memory — the Flash technique — and grounding it in a rigorous neuroscience framework called predictive processing. The result is a model of healing that is both deeply humane and almost startlingly elegant. What if you coul...

Today’s conversation explores one of the most urgent questions of our time: What would our world look like if our economic system prioritized human and ecological wellbeing instead of endless growth? I’m joined by Omer Tayyab, researcher and collaborator with economist and author Jason Hickel ( Less Is More ). Omer works at the intersection of economic theory, political ecology, and democratic ref...

In this episode, Matthew Nagler and I discuss a bunch of things, after intending to focus on cognitive flexibility. That's pretty meta... We meander through various behavioral science "greatest hits," including the endowment effect, loss aversion, and altruism. We explore how these phenomena affect human behavior and social dynamics, specifically by looking at a "prisoners' dilemma" type game show...

Are empathy and humanity compatible with great leadership, or do they just get in the way? That's the topic of today's conversation with executive coach Jennifer Nash about her book, "Be Human, Lead Human: How to Connect People and Performance." Jennifer's got great war stories (or more accurately, Peace Stories). Like how Alan Mulally turned things around at Ford by NOT being the smartest guy in...

Remember Donna the Deer Lady, and her call to a radio talk show that electrified the nation? To refresh your memory, she was wondering why the highway department place the "Deer Crossing" signs at the busiest sections, where the deer were most likely to get hit by a moving vehicle. “Why are we encouraging deer to cross at the interstate? I don’t get it. That’s a high- traffic area,” she said. That...

Five short years from now, 2030 will be here—and the world of work (and life) is shapeshifting at warp speed. We're all going to have to do some serious surfing to stay afloat, let alone to participate in creating the world we want. Executive coach Anna Glynn helps sales leaders, which isn't me and probably isn't you either. But what she teaches them can help us all stay effective, engaged, and sa...

Beth Green has lived many lives: activist, Marxist, spiritual channeler, intuitive counselor, and founder of the Healing Arts Network. In this moving and provocative conversation, she shares stories from her remarkable life—beginning with her expulsion from Smith College for protesting nuclear weapons at age 16—and the wisdom she’s gained through decades of navigating political and spiritual contr...

Zach Stone’s life arc runs from teenage “knucklehead” to crisis negotiator, trauma-informed facilitator, and head-of-product for thirty health-ed dev teams. In this rich, funny, and occasionally hair-raising conversation we drill down into the how of navigating chaos — on a subway platform, in a corporate boardroom, and inside your own nervous system. Trigger warning: there's a conversation about...

Garry Ridge is the former CEO of WD-40 and the co-author of Any Dumb-Ass Can Do It , a book about building high-performance cultures through servant leadership, emotional safety, and consistent values. In this conversation, Garry shares not just what he learned during his 25+ years at WD-40, but how he lived it—and how other leaders can too. We talked about what it means to lead with a heart of go...

DEI is under serious threat in a "post-Woke" world. Is it still relevant? Does it have to lead to shame? Can we promote diversity without creating zero-sum dynamics of winners and losers? Today's guest, Winitha Bonney, takes on DEI challenges with a clear and compassionate worldview grounded in empathy. Which, in her telling, is what DEI is all about. Ms Bonney helps me understand the importance o...

Stephen Baxter lives in Tasmania, which has Tasmanian devils which sadly are nothing like the one that gave me nightmares as a little kid watching Looney Tunes cartoons on Saturday mornings. He’s a leadership mentor who promotes a style of leadership very different from the stereotypical command-and-control style of celebrated CEOs and generals: a humble, relational, and community-centered style o...

How can we create workplaces that not only support employees and leaders but also contribute positively to the world? Jess Stuart, a former high-achieving burned-out executive turned speaker and leadership coach, shares her journey from corporate burnout to studying with Buddhist monks and nuns around the world. Spoiler: she discovered, and brought back to her clients, a more sustainable and human...

Tough times for justice, equality, inclusion, and hope these days. With the "anti-woke" attack on DEI, I was wondering how my friend Keith Edwards was doing these days. His practice is one of "aspiring allyship" — how we can all come together to learn and grow, and work for our collective liberation from all forms of tyranny and discrimination. Are businesses, cowering before the Trump/Musk onslau...

John Seed was a 3-piece suit tech worker, then a meditating hippie farmer, before stumbling into his lifelong calling as an environmental activist. He participated in the world's first direct action to preserve a rain forest in the 1970s. He co-founded the Rainforest Information Center and raised money and awareness to save the "lungs of the planet." John soon realized that raising awareness wasn'...

https://youtu.be/lqbkngcx5Qo Let's talk about persuasion! Whether in the form of sales, or a helpful coaching conversation, or "street epistemology" for a cause you care about, it's very useful to understand how human beings make decisions. Today's guest is Ian Ross, a sales trainer specializing in understanding human psychology and communication. In our conversation, Ian debunks the common miscon...

Join me on a morning walk as I provide a stream of consciousness introduction to my latest book project while dodging traffic and pitying looks from people noticing me talking to myself with two mics attached to my jacket. The book is about triggers — what causes us to behave in ways we don't like, out of alignment with our goals and values. Like breaking our food rules or buying sh-stuff we don't...

Michael Gelb returns to the podcast to talk about his latest book, Walking Well, co-written with Bruce Fertman. In our conversation, we cover a wide range of topics: the biomechanics of walking how we can powerfully improve the experience of walking through simple mindfulness and imagination exercises why walking is the quintessential human activity the benefits of walking (physical, cognitive, em...

I've been on a memory reconsolidation mission since I was first introduced to it a couple of years ago. Two missions, in fact. One, to learn as much as I can and incorporate it into my coaching and mentoring. Two, to share it far and wide. Today, we're going to talk about memory reconsolidation and some of the techniques that you can use to help bring it about for yourself and for others. My guest...

Well, it's getting to be that time of life when I begin to realize that I'm mortal. Next year I turn 60, which, according to the Jewish blessing "May you live to a hundred and twenty," puts me smack dab in middle age. I've been whole food plant-based for decades, and I'm pretty athletic. I meditate, and I keep a journal just in case I ever get the urge to write in it. I drink water, avoid tobacco...

One of the things I love about being an executive coach and organizational consultant is how creative I get to be and how many different things I get to try. Every year, at least 10 or 20 pretty significant books on related topics get published. They talk about personal performance, about how to get people to change, how to get teams to become more effective, and how to get organizational culture...

According to climate activist Joanna Macy, there are three stories that explain the world we're living in. The first is Business as Usual. That is, "Don't worry. Everything's fine." For example: "Global warming? No sweat — we're going to figure out how to suck carbon out of the air. No worries. The capitalist system will figure things out and the people who come up with the best, most valuable ide...

Doctors Ayesha and Dean Sherzai founded the Healthy Minds Initiative (HMI) to scale their impact on the tragic epidemic of dementia plaguing the world today.  The first thing that we have to understand is that the majority of dementias are preventable through diet and lifestyle. The Sherzai's acronym NEURO—nutrition, exercise, unwinding, restorative sleep, and optimization—encapsulates the pi...