Alan Clayton, my guest for this episode, is a Roaming Mentor at SOSV. He’s spent the last decade coaching founders from across the world. As part of the SOSV team, Alan invested in over 800 startups globally, having met thousands of founders. To help them build businesses that make a real positive impact on the world, to challenge their thinking and become more than just managers to their teams, Alan developed the Wholebrain Metholody. Talking to Alan was a privilege and I hope you’ll listen to his words of wisdom with intent. Even if you’re not a startup founder, there’s just SO much to learn from him!
Alan mentioned the work of Howard Gardner, developmental psychologist, co-founder of The Good Project at Harvard, which encourages excellence, ethics, and engagement in education, and Senior Director of Project Zero, an educational research group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education dedicated to understanding and enhancing learning and thinking.
Howard Gardner is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences (extra details on Wikipedia and in this summary), which makes for a fascinating read.
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Another key concept Alan touched on is René Girard’s mimetic theory.
I found this Stanford Magazine article about Girard to be intriguing which made me want to read more about this theory and its implications:
History is a test. Mankind is failing it.
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Our conversation reminded me of James P. Carse’s book, Finite and Infinite Games, which I highly recommend you read.
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He also reminds us of this famous quote from cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
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Alan also talks about neurological levels in NLP and how they can help us constantly assess whether the destination we’re heading towards is what we want for our future selves, irrespective of our current job/role/situation.
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This was a delightful episode to record and I’m thankful to the current How To Web team for making it happen!
If you want to learn more from Alan Clayton and a bunch of other fantastic humans beings (and truly impactful leaders and specialists), join me at How To Web on October 30-31, 2019 in Bucharest!