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Scott J. Allen, Ph.D., is an award-winning educator passionate about working with people at all levels and across industries. He serves as an instructor in SMU’s Cox School of Business Executive Education and spent more than 18 years as a professor of management. Allen’s areas of expertise include leader development, the future of work, and executive communication.

Scott has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He’s the co-author of several books and hosts Practical Wisdom for Leaders, ranked among the world's top 2.5% of podcasts. Along with the podcast, he publishes a weekly newsletter.

Scott frequently serves as a keynote speaker. In addition, he consults, facilitates workshops, and leads retreats across industries. Recent engagements include Catholic Charities, Cleveland Leadership Center, Key Bank, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Progressive, Nestle, EY, Siegfried Group, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Sherwin Williams, Whiting-Turner, Builder’s FirstSource, Vocon, CID Design Group, Toyota Motor North America, Lexus, Crestron, NASA-Glenn, Sam’s Club, Elbit America, Oatey, Lubrizol, Enbridge (Dominion), Endeavor Energy Resources, Scout Energy Partners, First Energy, TransAlta, FedEx Custom Critical, Thompson Hine LLP, Nordson, Beacon Oral Specialists, and Cleveland Clinic.

Scott served on the board of the International Leadership Association, Association of Leadership Educators, and Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society. He was named an ILA Fellow by the International Leadership Association in 2021.

Thanks to Martin Gutmann for interviewing!

A Few Quotes From This Episode

• “If you’d asked me in 2020, I would’ve said I knew a lot about leadership. But now I see just how much I didn’t—and still don’t—know."
• "This podcast has systematized my learning. Every week, I’m talking with someone who knows more than I do."
• "Maybe I’ve reached base camp, but Everest is still ahead."

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!

About Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders
• Blog

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your

♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!
⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.
➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.
📜 Subscribe to my weekly newsletter featuring four hand-picked articles.
🌎 You can learn more about my work on my Website.

Send us a text

Dr. Amy Climer is a thought leader in innovation, team development, and experiential learning. She teaches research-based practices, tools, and techniques to forward-thinking organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the University of Wisconsin.

Amy holds a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University. Her research led to the Deliberate Creative Team Scale, designed to measure the three critical dimensions of team creativity. Her TEDx talk, The Power of Deliberate Creative Teams, explains her research and philosophies on innovation, and she is the author of Deliberate Creative Teams: How to Lead for Innovative Results.

Amy is the host of The Deliberate Creative™ Podcast. She is the designer of Climer Cards, a creativity and teambuilding tool used by thousands to deepen conversations and generate ideas. In 2016 she won the Karl Rhonke Creativity Award from the Association for Experiential Education. Amy lives in Asheville, North Carolina in the U.S.

A Few (Awesome) Quotes From This Episode

• “We’ve known actually since the 1970s that creativity training works. The problem is we rarely bring it into our day-to-day work.”
• “It’s about being deliberate. You can’t just hope for creativity to happen—you have to follow a clear process and cultivate the right environment.”
• “If you want your team to be more creative, spend time clarifying the real problem before jumping into ideation. Even five minutes can change everything.”
• “Creative abrasion is when we can disagree around ideas and still respect each other personally. It’s healthy conflict that leads to better solutions.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Documentary: Where There Once Was Water
• Book: Your Creative Power by Alex Osborn
• Book: Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!

About Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders
• Blog

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your

♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!
⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.
➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.
📜 Subscribe to my weekly newsletter featuring four hand-picked articles.
🌎 You can learn more about my work on my Website.

Send us a text

Jon Acuff is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including his most recent, All It Takes Is a Goal: The 3-Step Plan to Ditch Regret and Tap Into Your Massive Potential.

Published in more than twenty languages, his work is both critically acclaimed and adored by readers. When he’s not writing, Acuff can be found on a stage, as one of INC’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers. He’s spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences, colleges and companies around the world including FedEx, Nissan, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Chick-fil-A, Nokia and Comedy Central. Known for his insights wrapped in humor, Acuff shared the stage with an American Icon when he opened up for Dolly Parton at the Ryman Auditorium.

For over 20 years he’s also helped some of the biggest brands tell their story, including The Home Depot, Bose, and Staples. His fresh perspective on life has given him the opportunity to write for Reader’s Digest, Fast Company, The Harvard Business Review and Time Magazine.

He lives outside of Nashville, TN with his wife Jenny and two teenage daughters.

A Few Quotes From This Episode

• “If you want a kind 16-year-old, give a six-year-old kindness and then 10 years to practice.”
• “Another thing I’m thinking about is how do I be interruptible for a small number of people. I’m highly interruptible for three people: my wife, and my two daughters.”
• “I’m learning to hold two opposite thoughts at once: one is that you’re doing better than you think, and the other is that you’re more capable than you realize.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• All It Takes Is a Goal by Jon Acuff
• Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done by Jon Acuff
• Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking by Jon Acuff
• The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!

About Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders
• Blog

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!
⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.
➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.
📜 Subscribe to my weekly newsletter featuring four hand-picked articles.
🌎 You can learn more about my work on my Website.

Send us a text

Cecily Sommers helps leaders anticipate and steward transformational change. Named one of the world’s "50 Leading Female Futurists" by Forbes, Cecily embeds foresight in leadership development programs, training clients to become their own best futurists.

As the strategist that Google, Salesforce, Purina, and JP Morgan Chase turn to make sense of their future, Cecily guides organizations through critical questions such as "Which opportunities give us the most advantage?” and “How do we develop change-ready leaders?”

A two-time TEDx speaker and frequent keynote presenter at conferences, Cecily has been described as “catalytic and brilliant” for making complex issues simple and relatable. Dedicated to advancing change literacy in organizations, she created the “Lead Like a Futurist” program and is a certified Transformational Coach.

A Few Quotes From This Episode

• “Leaders and futurists occupy the same position—if you’re leading, you’re already at the edge, looking into the foggy distance to see which direction to go.”
• “The future is not figureoutable—it’s only followable. And what futurists do is study change, its forces, and its patterns.”
• “We zoom out to see what matters and how things work so that, when we zoom back in, we know how to materialize what truly matters.”
• “Sometimes leaders think they need more time, but often what they really need is more space—space to reflect, sense, and align with what’s unfolding.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Think Like a Futurist by Cecily Sommers
• The Fourth Turning Is Here by Neil Howe
• Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!

About Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders
• Blog

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!
⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.
➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.
📜 Subscribe to my weekly newsletter featuring four hand-picked articles.
🌎 You can learn more about my work on my Website.

Send us a text

On his journey from a Parking Lot Attendant to CEO, Brian Cunningham has studied the leadership/followership dynamic at every level within a complex organization. As a life-long student of leadership and an explorer of numerous paths of expanded awareness, Brian has sought to uncover the larger possibilities of our service as a leader. Most importantly, we need to integrate these discoveries into the day-to-day practice of leading in our increasing complexity.

As a reflection of these many years of ongoing study, research, and real-life application, Brian has written three groundbreaking books that illuminate the keys to our developmental progression into the highest levels of leadership service. His most recent book, Leadership: The Universal Principles, details the two universal principles that are foundational to our growth in leadership and in life. This book provides a practical framework that can be used to create your unique path of leadership mastery.

A Few (Awesome) Quotes From This Episode

• “Leaders and followers are just two sides of the same coin, and we cannot move through significant complexity without each other."
• “Whatever I think or read pales in comparison to what reality teaches you.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: Leadership: The Universal Principles
• Book: Mastering Leadership by Bob Anderson and Bill Adams
• Book: Scaling Leadership by Bob Anderson and Bill Adams
• Book: The Cosmic Hologram by Dr. Jude Currivan

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!

About Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders
• Blog

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!
⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.
➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.
📜 Subscribe to my weekly newsletter featuring four hand-picked articles.
🌎 You can learn more about my work on my Website.

Send us a text

Dr. Joanne Murphy is Chair of Inclusive Leadership at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham. Her research explores leadership, change and organisational development in political volatility, including environments affected by ethno-political conflict. Her latest book is Management and War: How Organisations Navigate Conflict and Build Peace.

A Few Quotes From This Episode

• “I grew up in Northern Ireland and was part of this ‘troubles generation.’ That has defined, to a very large extent, the work that I do, because conflict and violence became a big part of my reality.”
• “What I’m really interested in—and I suppose the connective tissue through my work—is leadership. How do we get people to understand conflict and then lead them out of it?”
• “When we talk about things like war or these intractable, wicked problems, they seem to be more prevalent rather than less. And that’s why understanding conflict—and how leaders can help resolve it—matters so much.”

A Quote From Hume's Nobel Speech

• "All conflict is about difference, whether the difference is race, religion or nationality...Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace – respect for diversity."

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Article: Leadership, liminality, and ‘wicked’ conflicts: John Hume and the untangling of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ by Murphy
• Book: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Book: John Hume: A Biography by Paul Routledge
• Documentary: John Hume - Ireland's Greatest
• Book: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!

About Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders
• Blog

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, rese

♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!
⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.
➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.
📜 Subscribe to my weekly newsletter featuring four hand-picked articles.
🌎 You can learn more about my work on my Website.

Send us a text

Bob Kulhan is a professor at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business and an elite improv and sketch comedian. Bob is the Founder & CEO of Business Improv® – a 25-yr-old consultancy linking improvisation to business through behavioral sciences. His focus: People Skills. Human Connection.

His clients include a who’s who of businesses (from pharma to manufacturing to aerospace), universities, organizations, and government institutions. He has also worked extensively with entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, as well as small and medium size businesses.

He is the best-selling author of Getting to Yes And: The Art of Business Improv (Stanford University Press). Kulhan also created the dynamic online (asynchronous) program, Improvisational Communication in 2019, for those who want to study Business Improv in the comfort of their own homes, at their own pace.

A Few (AWESOME) Quotes From This Episode

• ‘Yes, And’ does not mean I agree with you—it means I’m here, I’m listening, and I’m building thoughtfully on what you’ve said.”
• “Follow the follower: Great leaders pay close attention to those they lead, because those people are actively teaching you how to lead them.”
• “As a leader, my job isn’t to have the right answer; it’s to find the right answer by fostering real collaboration.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Improvised Dialogues: Emergence and Creativity in Conversation by R. Keith Sawyer
• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!

About Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders
• Blog

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!
⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.
➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.
📜 Subscribe to my weekly newsletter featuring four hand-picked articles.
🌎 You can learn more about my work on my Website.

Send us a text

Anthony Amunategui is the founder of CDO Group, a national commercial construction firm he started almost 25 years ago with a small group in his basement. Today CDO Group has worked with some of the world’s largest brands to build an estimated one million square feet of retail space per year.

Anthony has a true passion for discovering what makes people successful in business and in life. He loves having conversations about what the future holds for us personally and professionally and the adventures that shape that journey.

A Quote From This Episode

• "The entrepreneur of the future will be tasked with finding those still spaces to do the mental exercises - to find that mental fitness that's going to drive their success."

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Anthony's Podcast - Future Factory
• Book - AA Big Book

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for Prague - October 15-18, 2025!

About Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders
• Blog

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!
⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.
➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.
📜 Subscribe to my weekly newsletter featuring four hand-picked articles.
🌎 You can learn more about my work on my Website.