How to Find Hidden Potential with Gil Winch

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with psychologist, TED speaker, author and social entrepreneur Gil Winch. Described by Adam Grant (author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife) as ‘a pioneer in creating opportunities for people who have been underestimated and overlooked’, Gil has developed a managerial model that enables people with severe disabilities to achieve regular productivity in free-market businesses for regular market wages. In 2008, he founded CY, an outsourcing services call centre for-profit social business that was staffed and managed primarily by previously unemployed, severely disabled people and other marginalized populations, demonstrating how a managerial model and corporate culture focused on finding and nurturing potential can benefit companies everywhere.

“Winning With Underdogs: How Hiring the Least Likely Candidates Can Spark Creativity, Improve Service, and Boost Profits for Your Business”.  (2022 McGraw Hill)

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
 Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 5:11 Could we start by hearing a bit about your background and what led you to found the company?
• 12:59 What was it about hearing your medical news and stats that unlocked this sense of purpose and mission for rectifying this problem?
• 15:49 How did this way of thinking about yourself change you?
• 18:57 So take us to the launch of CY. You found your mission and you were going to go after it and came up with a model but it failed. Can we start there?
• 21:28 So what did you do then?
• 25:05 Can we go back to the first step and the three underlying reasons?
• 32:32 Can you expand on that a little bit? As you’re talking with people who have gone through deep social rejection, how do you help mitigate that shift in them?
• 37:12 I love this reverse screening process that helps you to identify potential and overcome some of the natural biases towards others. Could you talk us through how you do that?
• 41:11 What are some other things that organisations should do, particularly to surface and acknowledge biases they have in this process, whether conscious or unconscious?
• 44:37 Can we zoom out for a moment and look at what you have achieved in terms of proving out the model in terms of productivity against other call centres for example?
• 47:47 There’s a lot in your work that other organisations can learn from. What are you doing to help other companies learn from you?
• 51:09 Can you tell us about your new strategy?