We Not Me

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...

Husband-and-wife team Kristy and James Thomas have both suffered profound and untimely loss in their lives. But from that grief, they have been able to create a charity that impacts the lives of children all around Australia who are dealing with grief. The Thomas’ charity Feel the Magic brings children to Disneyland and puts on regular Camp Magic events, providing much-needed respite from and supp...

Jackie Weaver became an Internet sensation in February 2022, when her handling of a parish council meeting – and the councillors’ reaction to it – went viral. But Jackie has decades of experience coaching teams of all sizes, which she shares with Dan and Pia. Takeaways It’s easy to overlook the amount of ground we share, when in disagreement. Sometimes it takes a third party to help us see the com...

Expertise can allow us to flourish in our comfort zones, but when thrust into a new environment, we have to rely on others. For Janet and Reid Boswell, what started as a parish-wide mission to bring aid to post-earthquake Haiti ended up as a mini industry, delivering medicine and dental care to the people of Haiti. Takeaways from Pia and Dan The collaborative mindset was transferred from Haiti bac...

Dan and Pia kick off season three with a look back at the previous season, with help from special guest Lucy Hovanec . The team discuss Episode 22 – Data from the heart , with Simon Shephard Episode 21 – Individual identity in teams , with James Prior Episode 24 – The Great Retention , with Suni Lobo Episode 18 – Building the right team culture , with Kevin Brownsey Episode 14 – The jazz ensemble...

For Chief HR Officer Suni Lobo , psychological safety is key to teams feeling like they belong. It was put to the test during the pandemic, but her company’s ability to create a space where people felt able to do their best work, produced incredible results. In her conversation with Dan and Pia, Suni discusses employee compensation and the minimal role it plays in job satisfaction when offset agai...

If one member of a team isn’t working towards the common goal, they won’t succeed. Social entrepreneur David Burns sees that in the work he does to help strengthen teams, viewed through the prism of sport. In his conversation with Pia and Dan, David highlights the importance of respecting and honouring people’s cultural values within teams, even at the risk of his work being misinterpreted r met w...

How do we create moments to reset? Just like a Formula 1 car pulling into a pitstop, slowing down and stopping completely in order to win a race – how can we create moments of mental and emotional rest during our working days? Simon Shepard is the CEO of Optima-life . He helps teams understand themselves better as individuals, and the role their physiologies play in their performance. Simon shares...

Amid various models of team management, it’s important to remember that each of us is an individual player. We bring our own unique perspectives to our teams, and that sense of personal identity can bring tension when offset against the goal of the team. James Prior, Global Head of Leadership Development at Gilead Pharmaceuticals, joins Dan and Pia to explore the symbiotic relationship between the...