NeuroConversant Leadership

Jeremy Doran
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  • Updated Weekly

The people who seem hardest to connect with at first can become your greatest allies in creating solutions and solving problems. Small shifts in how you listen and speak can have dramatic results. Whether you're an executive, project leader or salesperson, the ability to communicate well with everyone is what sets you apart. This podcast explores those challenges and offers fresh insights along with actionable steps to transform how you lead people. Jeremy is a speaker, leadership coach and author who focuses on leadership and effective communication for diverse teams.

  1. 5h ago

    The Four Cs of Leadership: Why Culture Outlasts Command

    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 free drink. Then outside investors came in, the focus shifted to cost cutting, and the culture went with it. Same story shows up in healthcare. Hospitals build everything around the patient. Disney builds everything around the employee, and the guest experience follows from that. The episode ends on project leaders specifically, since most of them don't have real authority over anyone. Command's off the table, so culture, credibility, and currency are the tools that are left. Leave a review and Jeremy will send you the Feedback Trap guide and workbook, free.

  2. Aug 27

    Scope Creep and Remote Team Communication with Sarah DeSimone

    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 about the gap between how IT gets looped into projects (usually last) versus how it should work, why writing everything down is the single most effective scope creep prevention tool her team uses, and how tools like Teams and AI-generated meeting transcripts help teams stay aligned across offices spread from New England to New Mexico. Sarah also shares how her company held onto culture through COVID and the "great resignation," why face time still matters even in a highly virtual company, and her take on the third-place spaces kids and communities have lost, and why that connects to how we build trust and rapport as adults. Her closing communication advice ties directly back to the core idea of this show: the way you understand a message is not the same as the way the person next to you understands it, and building that awareness into how you communicate changes everything. Have ideas for a show topic? Drop me a line and make a suggestion. I'd love to explore the topic and whether or not you would like to be the guest to discuss it!

  3. Aug 20

    How Improv Builds Leadership Skills: Introverts and Extraverts

    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 the Myers-Briggs dimensions and how directly they map onto what happens on stage, and in meetings. Introverts tend to want a complete thought before they speak, both in improv and at work. That's a strength, it means better listening and closer observation. But it can also mean missing the moment to contribute before the conversation moves on. Extroverts think out loud, which helps them stay engaged and responsive, but can mean talking over others or jumping in before a scene, or an idea, has had time to develop. I share the improv saying "follow your feet," a practical meeting tip that helps introverts and extroverts prepare differently for the same conversation, and why I think everyone in business, yes, even the terrified ones, should try an improv class at least once. Next week: an interview on leading cross-functional teams. Coming up in future solo episodes: the rest of the Myers-Briggs dimensions and their connection to improv, plus an interview with a neurodivergent improv coach. Got a personality trait you want me to dig into next? Email me: JDoran@neuroconversantleadership.com Chapters 00:00Introduction to improv and business connection 02:10Understanding Myers-Briggs introversion and extroversion 03:42How personality traits influence improv performance 05:08Benefits of introversion in improv and business 06:51Challenges faced by extroverts in improv 08:48Practical applications of improv for leadership and meetings 10:56Encouragement to try improv for business growth 12:10Upcoming topics and future episodes

  4. Aug 13

    Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Leadership: with Marc Pitman

    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 syndrome. We break down what "fake it till you make it" really means once you strip away the hustle culture baggage, and why Mark reframes it as strategic vulnerability instead. We also dig into one of the hardest shifts in leadership: moving from being the person who does the work to being the person who builds a team that does the work. Mark tells the story of a former boss who made his team's growth the real product, and never made it about himself. Other topics we cover: how psychological safety gets built through small, low-stakes mistakes, why the person who asks the questions controls the conversation, and why debriefing after wins matters as much as debriefing after failures. If you've ever felt like the only one without it figured out, this conversation on leadership, imposter syndrome, and psychological safety is for you. Connect with Mark Pittman at https://concordleadershipgroup.com/ or https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcapitman/ Got a question about imposter syndrome or leadership coaching you want covered on a future episode? Email ⁠JDoran@neuroconversantleadership.com⁠

  5. Aug 6

    The Best Code Won't Work If the Priorities Are Unclear

    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 who got to make the call when priorities collided. In this episode I break down what went wrong at healthcare.gov and how an engineer on loan from Google turned it around in about two months, not by touching the code, but by fixing how people talked to each other. Two daily standups. No finger pointing. Knowledge determines who talks, not rank. I also touch briefly on the UK's National Savings and Investment Project as another example of the same pattern, then get into the three things every team needs when multiple people or organizations have to work together: a clear decision making process, upfront and ongoing agreement on success criteria, and the ability for anyone to speak up without fear of recrimination.If your team shares a goal but keeps hitting friction underneath it, this episode is for you. Links to this week's article on stakeholder alignment: https://neuroconversantleadership.com/stakeholder-alignment-takes-more-than-just-common-goals/ More on the healthcare.gov turnaround: https://www.4sighthealth.com/healthcare-govs-death-defying-2013-launch-implications-govt-led-payment-reform/

  6. Jul 30

    Launch Week, Imposter Syndrome, Learning to Say Thank You

    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 thirty other requests for the same thing. None of that fully quieted the voice asking if the book is actually any good. So I looked into the research on imposter syndrome, and it turns out it shows up in two very different ways. One is the fear of looking unqualified, which stops people from asking questions. The other is not being able to accept it when you've actually succeeded. I don't have the first one. I ask questions all the time. I've got the second one, bad. I share what I found, including a Stanford-based systematic review covering 14,000 people and a separate MIT study on how imposter thoughts actually show up at work, and what it means for how I'm handling compliments (badly) and asking for business (also badly, but for a different reason). Email me at JDoran@neuroconversantleadership.com and tell me: which version do you carry? Link to the study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31848865/

  7. Jul 23

    62% of Managers Struggle with Gen Z: Here's the Real Problem

    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 led performers who don't need constant handholding. We get into why Gen Z needs to understand the why behind a project before they'll fully commit to the what. Why managers who convey purpose and impact get far more from their teams than managers who just hand out tasks. And why Gen Z should stop waiting for an invitation and start making their thinking visible instead of just their output. Anjan also shares the one habit managers can change starting today if they want better results from their early career talent. Connect with Anjan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjan-kasi-sampath/ Check out his TEDx talk, nearing 270,000 views, on making wise choices when emotions run high at work.

  8. Jul 16

    Do you want to be Right....or do you want to Win?

    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 business more than once. From there we get into delegation. Jonathan hands off the parts of the business he's not good at (by his own account, most of the tech side) and holds onto two things he won't budge on: the end goal and the team's core values. We also talk about boundaries. Jonathan doesn't take texts at midnight, and he tells authors that up front instead of hoping it works itself out. Along the way: psychological safety, why "do I want to be right or do I want to win" changed how he runs meetings, and the two questions he asks every author before they write a single word. Jonathan is also the guy helping me publish my own book, so consider this an unfiltered look at what that's actually been like. 00:00 Introduction to Smart Publishing02:49 The Power of Diverse Perspectives05:32 Creating a Culture of Psychological Safety08:37 Defining Goals and Priorities11:22 The Spectrum of Author Engagement14:01 Navigating the Writing Process16:55 Building Trust and Communication19:49 Consistency in Writing22:52 Advice for Aspiring Authors26:31 Final Thoughts and Resources Find Jonathan at smartpublishingservices.com or on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathanlautermilch

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The people who seem hardest to connect with at first can become your greatest allies in creating solutions and solving problems. Small shifts in how you listen and speak can have dramatic results. Whether you're an executive, project leader or salesperson, the ability to communicate well with everyone is what sets you apart. This podcast explores those challenges and offers fresh insights along with actionable steps to transform how you lead people. Jeremy is a speaker, leadership coach and author who focuses on leadership and effective communication for diverse teams.

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