We Not Me

Teams need clarity in order to function. Without clear leadership or a shared goal, people can feel unheard and undervalued. This is all the more critical in a hospital setting where patients also need to be heard and valued. Dr Tim Arnold is a family medicine physician in Northern Minnesota, with 22 years of experience delivering babies, providing care in the ICU, emergency room, clinic, and hosp...

We too often prioritise work over our own needs. This is compounded if you have a disability that might take you away from work for a time, if a new baby has entered your life, or if you’re grieving. Serena Savini lives with a chronic illness and had an accident at work that shed light on this realisation. Serena is an HR expert, coach, and podcaster who believes that those re-entering work need t...

Real transformation comes from more than just money. Jim Goddard believes that investing time, talent, and treasure into community movements is the key to success. His leadership style reflects this philosophy and encourages volunteers to take an active role in making a difference. Jim Goddard has dedicated two decades to leading volunteers, transitioning from engineering to purposeful living. He...

When you don’t have a good work/life balance, you can begin to lose your identity outside of work. Joe Ryle discovered this during his work with the Labour Party, and it was partly this realisation that fuels his work today. Joe Ryle is the Director of the 4 Day Week Campaign. He believes that a four-day working week provides positive benefits to society, wellbeing, and people’s mental health. And...

Is the balance of power shifting from employee to employer? Is AI in danger of reducing our willingness to connect as humans, or could it give us more opportunities for expression? Dan and Pia are joined by previous guests Amy Riley and Stephan Wiedner to share their predictions for 2023, and what we can all do to create spaces where people come together to get stuff done. Predictions from 2023 Fr...

The workplace needs a rebrand. Design lead Doug Shapiro asked himself “If we didn’t feel like we had to drag ourselves to an office, would we feel differently about it?” Just like those pieces of broccoli our parents made us eat as kids – that most of us later realise is not only good for us, but tasty – a work space can be prepared or presented badly Takeaways from Pia and Dan A place can shape h...

Communities need a common goal to work towards. And even with that goal in place, how can we galvanise people together to help them achieve it? These are some of the questions this week’s guest, Nick Hudson has had to face while building the phenomenally successful Push-up Challenge. After challenging some friends to workout regularly, former engineer Nick setup a simple app and website that would...

When we’re buried in our todo lists, we can lack the courage to take bolder choices. Amy Riley discovered this first-hand through her work helping leaders become more courageous. Amy is an international best-selling author and keynote speaker who helps leaders fully step into their purpose. Her framework for courageous leaders is based on four pillars: The courage to be authentically you The coura...

When Dr Beki Hooper began to study rhesus macaques, she found less-than-flattering similarities between monkey behaviour and human team structure. In this fascinating discussion, Dr Beki takes us into the habitat of the rhesus macaque, giving us a first-hand glimpse into a hierarchy based on gender and tenure. Takeaways from Pia and Dan Many of us have experience in organisations that feel like th...

For mountain guide Tania Noakes, leadership isn’t about giving commands, but is about collaborating. Tania is an adventurer and climber who works with teams to help them tackle some of nature’s biggest challenges. As a group guide, Tania has had to be something of a chameleon, adapting herself to what the team dynamic needs to reach their goal safely. Takeaways from Dan and Pia A good leader adapt...

We all believe diversity, equity and inclusion to be important, but bridging the gap between the intent and the positive outcomes it brings is no easy task. For Marsha Ramroop, that bridge is cultural intelligence, and she joins Pia and Dan to pose vital questions about inclusion that have surprising answers. After a career in broadcasting spanning 30 years, Marsha discovered the notion of cultura...

What happens when you grow a company from the ground up, and are then asked to leave? For entrepreneur Bart Foster, it meant reassessing his identity, and ultimately redefining himself. After years spent as an intrapreneur within the corporate world, Bart founded his own health and wellness company and became an entrepreneur. Now he leads a company that helps teams think differently, get out of th...

Psychological safety is made up of a number of tiny interactions. Whether they be Slack messages, meetings, or emails, these forms of communication – and their responses – determine how likely someone is to speak up and share their ideas. Stephan Wiedner is a psychological safety trainer, CEO, and volunteer firefighter. Stephan trains coaches to help create spaces where people feel free to speak u...

For the first time in over a thousand days of Squadify and forty episodes of the podcast, Dan and Pia are in the same room, and are joined by Juliet Owen, to discuss findings from a recent analysis on Squadify data. Squadify works by asking team members to fill in a survey at the start and end of a particular period. Participants rate the importance of a series of conditions for team success, and...

Effective dialogue is the one thing getting in the way of senior teams. Listening is a fundamental part of team communication, and it begins with curiosity. Without it, leadership can be a lonely pursuit with less diversity of thought. Before heading up design and research at LIW, Andy Chevis was an HR director and a salesperson, and has taken his curiosity in how we communicate effectively throug...

Community policing runs on trust, no matter the location. That trust flows both ways, and can have its basis in something as simple as a common interest. New Jersey police officer Adam Verducci and his squad are so well-connected that he knows when a situation is in progress just from the sound of a fellow officer’s voice on the radio. In his conversation with Dan and Pia, Adam walks us through a...

Leadership is equal parts head, heart, and guts. Joining Dan and Pia to look back on an inspirational third season of We Not Me is CEO of LIW, Dan Meek . Episodes highlighted Breaking out of the box – neurodiversity and connection , with Ross Fraser The brain science of teams , with Sue Langley Teams at the frontline of medicine , with Andy Bocock Connecting to heal , with James & Kristy Thoma...

Undiagnosed autism can feel like a constant struggle to understand, and to be understood. For autism campaigner Ross Fraser, this led to him hiding away for decades to avoid continuing to feel like he was doing or saying the wrong thing, without ever being given rules that made sense. The autism community in the UK includes approximately five million people, and yet in Ross’s experience, most peop...

Human beings are designed to connect. Lockdowns showed us how much we valued connection, but also how vital our habits were to helping us stabilise. But while habits include routine behaviours, they can also include thought patterns that lead to judgements of others. Sue Langley equips people to be the best they can be. She does this by applying positive psychology, emotional intelligence, and neu...

When Becky Malby discovered that her local water provider was dumping raw sewage into the nearby river on a regular basis, she was outraged. So she helped setup a citizen science project to test the local water and found that it was full of dangerous pollutants, contradicting the study the water company had conducted which labeled the river water safe enough to drink. Becky helps GPs within the NH...

Accident and emergency nursing involves managing and working with ever-shifting teams, with people joining temporarily who bring skill and knowledge, but aren’t familiar with the team’s inner workings. This is one of the challenges facing NHS nurse Andy Boocock. Andy describes working, not only with his team in A&E, but when teams dovetail in emergency situations. This conversation involves a...

Where do you go to half a fast-tracked career and make some quick cash? For Stephen Hunt, the answer turned out to be Internet advertising. But it was only ever a limited-time plan to create enough space for him to explore his real passion: music. Steve is the co-founder and COO of Music Health, a company improving mental health through music. Inspired by a 2014 film about music’s impact on people...

We all carry our psychological histories on our backs, and the weight of those feelings can affect how we work within a team. We Not Me producer Mark Steadman began to understand this as he learned more about how his neurodivergence contributed to team dynamics. Mark is a podcast producer, consultant, and coach. He works with individuals and small teams to help them access their potential to creat...

There is a void of leadership following the pandemic, and everything feels uncertain. That uncertainty – precarity – is an area of study for generative leadership specialist Kathleen Curran. Kathleen defines herself as an “explorer with purpose”, and helps people not only bring their whole self to work, but fully inhabit it. She is a co-author on a book about precarity, with her contribution focus...

If you look after your employees, your customers will be happier, and you’ll make more money. That’s the hypothesis Matt Phelan took, inspired by Richard Branson. But with that hypothesis in place, where’s the data to back it up? Before founding the Happiness Index, Matt began working with animals, then studied marketing, starting his own digital marketing agency just before the 2008 financial cra...