Jeremy Dean | How emotional culture drives transformational change

In this episode of Let Go & Lead, Jeremy Dean, Founder and Master Gamemaker at riders&elephants, talks with Maril about the elephant in the room of corporate culture: emotion.

Emotion is core to belief, which is core to motivating people. Yet often, when undertaking a culture change or business transformation, leaders will start by thinking about the values and behaviors they desire; not how they want people to feel.  Why is this? Because emotions are hard to talk about. Jeremy’s organization has found success making it easier through an unusual method: “gamifying” the conversation through a card game for organizations. 

Learn about:

3:58 What is emotional culture?

6:01 How emotions govern beliefs and behaviors

7:34 The importance of discussing unpleasant emotions

11:45 How to “gamify” the emotion discussion

21:56 Understanding emotional sub-cultures in an organization

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Jeremy is the Founder and Master Gamemaker at riders&elephants. R&E design games to help people express themselves through simple, powerful words. Jeremy is on a mission to humanize the workplace. R&E games are used by people in some of the biggest and most inspiring organizations on the planet.

ABOUT LET GO & LEAD

Let Go & Lead is a leadership community created by Maril MacDonald, founder and CEO of Gagen MacDonald. Maril brings together provocateurs, pioneers, thought leaders and those leading the conversation around culture, transformation and change. 

Over the course of the past 12 years, Let Go & Lead has existed in many forms, from video interviews to resource guides to its current iteration as a podcast. At its core, it remains a place where people can access a diversity of perspectives on interdisciplinary approaches to leadership. Maril is also working on a book incorporating these insights gathered over the past several years from global leaders and change makers.  

Maril has interviewed over 120 leaders — from business to academia and nonprofits to the arts — through the years. In each conversation, from personal anecdotes to ground-breaking scientific analysis, she has probed the lessons learned in leadership. From these conversations, the Let Go & Lead framework has emerged. It is both a personal and organizational resource that aims to serve the individual leader or leadership at scale. 

ABOUT GAGEN MACDONALD

At Gagen MacDonald, we are dedicated to helping organizations navigate the human struggle of change. We are a people-focused consulting firm and our passion is improving the employee experience — for everyone. For almost 25 years, we have been working with companies to create clarity from chaos by uniting employees across all levels around a single vision so they can achieve results and realize their future.

We have been a pioneer in bringing humanity to strategy execution, leading in areas such as organizational communication, culture, leadership, and employee engagement. Our Vision is to lift all humanity by transforming the companies that transform the world.

Full episodes also available on:  

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/let-go-lead-with-maril-macdonald/id1454869525  

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Gaf7JXOckZMtkpsMtnjAj?si=WZjZkvfLTX2T4eaeB1PO2A  

Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9sZXRnb2xlYWQubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M  

Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/let-go-lead  

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Gagen MacDonald is a strategy execution consulting firm that specializes in employee engagement, culture change and leadership development. Learn more at http://www.gagenmacdonald.com.