Rethinking Leadership

S2E10 | Christopher O.H. Williams | Reflections on purpose, meaning, and courage

In this episode of Rethinking Leadership, Roemer Visser speaks with Christopher O.H. Williams, former Fortune 500 executive, advisor, speaker, and author of C.O.U.R.A.G.E.: Seven Choices for Living a Life Without Regret. Williams held senior roles at Nike, Adidas, and VF Corporation, after earlier working at Gap, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers. By most conventional standards, he had built an exceptionally successful career. And yet, in 2018, he stepped away from the corporate world. That decision becomes the starting point for a thoughtful and personal conversation between Roemer and Christopher about success, freedom, purpose, and courage.

S2E9 | Barry Johnson | Implications of polarity thinking for performance and change

In this episode of Rethinking Leadership, Roemer Visser speaks with Barry Johnson, author and co-founder of Polarity Partnerships. For more than fifty years, Johnson has explored a simple but far-reaching idea: not every leadership challenge is a problem to solve. Some are ongoing tensions to manage well.

S2E8 | ‘Funmi Olonisakin | Ubuntu: Leadership lessons from Africa

In this episode of Rethinking Leadership, Roemer Visser speaks with ‘Funmi Olonisakin. Her work, shaped by experiences in Nigeria, academia, and the United Nations, offers a perspective on leadership that challenges many familiar assumptions. Rather than focusing on individual traits or positions, Olonisakin approaches leadership as something relational, contextual, and deeply connected to the communities leaders serve.

S2E7 | Dirk van Dierendonck | Exploring the meaning of servant leadership

In this episode of Rethinking Leadership, Roemer Visser speaks with Dirk van Dierendonck, Professor of Leadership and Management at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Van Dierendonck has spent much of his academic career studying servant leadership, a perspective that challenges conventional assumptions about what leadership is and what it is for.

S2E6 | Anil Seth | Perception as an interpretive act: implications for leadership

In this episode of Rethinking Leadership, Roemer Visser speaks with Anil Seth, professor of neuroscience and one of today’s leading thinkers on consciousness. Known for his TED Talk Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality, Seth brings a neuroscientific perspective to a question that quietly determines leadership success: why do leaders with similar intelligence, experience, and intent achieve very different outcomes?