#207 Under Pressure - Neurosurgeons and Leadership - Mark Mclaughlin

04/06/22 • 60 min

Today I am talking to Mark McLaughlin. Mark's a neurosurgeon, and at the same time, also a youth wrestling coach. Can imagine that? How do you explain what you do to the youth? And at the same time, inspire them to be their best selves, Give them self-confidence. And how do you learn from that again? And bring that back into a neuro-psychological surgical team in hospital, we've got to lead brain surgery in essence. I mean, we'll even use that as reference, “It's not as bad as brain surgery”. Now, Mark does that on a daily basis. So what can we learn from mark? And from the way that he leads and the way that he coaches and the way that he talks to west point about what leadership is.

He wrote a book about cognitive dominance. That sounds really dominating, or as he calls it almost like Darth Vader, but in this case, it is about how we act in a crisis. I think no more relevant than it is today. So I hope just like me, you look forward to this talk today with Mark McLaughlin.

When I reflect on what I just talked to mark about, one of the things that he said in one of his talks that actually came to mind. Casual and casualty. If we treat leadership casually, we don't use this as a learning process to become a little bit better every single day, then our people are the casualties and in a world dominated by violence at the moment and by war, why should we still accept leadership that causes casualties. Can we take ownership duty? Take that little bit of care with people's lives to make sure that we can actually make a difference, make it better and leave no casualties behind. Let's all not treat our people casually, our leadership casually and let's learn, grow and become the best leaders.

Previous Episode

#205 Reality of Leadership | Patrick Flood

Today we’re in Ireland to speak to Professor Patrick Flood of Dublin University. He’s been publishing work since 1989. He specialises in working out how CEOs and Human Resources affect organisations. Cumulatively, his research work has attracted €2m in research grant support.
We talk all about remote working, and how it’s going to affect us in the future. We start with noting that there’s actually been an increase in workplace performance since it was introduced. One of the problems he brings up is trust, and how we can bond as teams in the virtual world. We try and work out how to solve problems in fairness and networking. A dilemma we really try and tackle is fun in the workplace vs vulnerability of leaders. We end by discussing the effects of bad management and how to deal with stress in the team.
You’d be amazed how much quality collective thought can be captured using two simple tools: a voice connection and a shared screen.” ― Jason Fried.
00:00 Introduction
14:12 Working Together
24:55 Fairness
35:51 Networking
43:02 Fun
49:00 Networking
54:26 Team Stress
1:11:38 Conclusion

Next Episode

#208 From Consciousness to Conscious Leadership - Lynda Shaw

Our guest today is a neuroscientist, business psychologist and recalibrating your brain expert. She has owned three businesses, she is an international professional speaker (in fact she is the current National President of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I) mentor to senior business people, founder of the Neuroscience Professional Development Programme and the Learning Lab, and is often in international newspapers and magazines and a regular guest on national radio.
I think what really stuck with me today is that for starters, when you start getting to the metaverse, we're not quite sure yet what would form in and outgroups, I personally think it is the way that we can represent ourselves within the metaverse. If we look at gaming, for instance, who has the best gear, who looks the spiciest, who has the most knowledge of the environment, each one of those creates its own little group. You also have things like formalised structures like gills , will those kinds of things happen in the metaverse as well, we have these VR worlds that we've been around for awhile, but the full immersion of it, now looking at at the metaverse, what will that mean for team engagement and for a biological need to be able to see people's facial expressions and how much of that would already happen.
I Mean, one of the things that zoom and other platforms are adding is the ability to change your face into an avatar that picks up on your lip movement and your eyebrows, but not full facial expression yet, but we're getting close. So how long would it be for somebody that is as overweight as me can look slim and svelte and buff on a metaverse and would I want to?
The other thing that I enjoyed today in the session with Linda was about leadership and the impact that leaders can have on returning to the office. We tend to think that things may go back the way it was, but what if it doesn't, what if hybrid is here to stay? When should people be in the office? I think Linda makes a very good point in that we need to find a day where everybody's together. And not cram it just full of meetings and activities for people to do, but get people to bond, find ways in which people can connect. Even if it's during a meeting, make sure that those interpersonal relationships are built , which gives us loyalty, which gives us connection with gives us binding to the company and organizational citizenship behavior. Instead of it just being a bunch of people that get together every so often and do stuff together. Well, I hope you enjoyed learning as much as I did today.
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