Hey there, leader. Welcome back. Happy you are here. I'm happy I'm here. So glad we've made it for another incredible week together. I want to thank you for taking time for yourself. I want to thank you for being mindful of your leadership approach. I want to thank you for seeing that leadership can be different and that you can lead differently. And showing up every single week here with me tells me that you are very open and very ready for this new approach, this new style of leadership. And I'm just happy to be serving you. I'm a contemplative. I have embodied these spiritual principles. I am the model of contemplative leadership and I do the best I can every single day to uphold these principles because it's hard out here. It's tough to lead. There's so many distractions on the surface of the ocean. There are violent, angry waves that are trying to take us out, take us out of leadership. I mean, just picture the waves, picture a storm system coming through in the middle of the ocean and you are, and your team are the only things alive out there on the surface. you are trying to navigate these external circumstances. You are trying to keep everybody afloat and everybody alive and hopefully going in the right direction despite the fierce winds, despite mother nature trying to do her job. I want for you to picture yourself on the surface, right now, in chaos, in crisis, all around you. And that's life. That's life. You will have seasons of this. And I know some of us are thinking, wow, there's so much going on in the world. When will this stop? When will the pain, when will the suffering stop? There's so much I can't control, and there's so much that's causing me so much pain. And I just want to tell you that if there's a beginning, there's certainly a middle and an end. And sometimes it feels like it's vicious and continuous and it's never ending. And I promise you it is. I promise you it is. And I'm here to help you navigate your way through. And how to do that is through this new approach to leadership. And it's the contemplative leader approach. It's a new, refreshing, peaceful way to anchor yourself in something bigger than your ego, something bigger than what's outside of your mind, body, spirit, nervous system. It's to anchor yourself in the truth. And we just happen to anchor ourselves in five very truthful spiritual principles. And although we're not talking about performance measurements here, we're not talking about KPIs or OKRs. And I do that every single day with my clients. I want us to talk about contemplative leadership approach as a remedy. as a solution, as the answer to our prayers of bad abuse, abusive leadership, these old antiquated models of leadership that generations have been programmed to behave. I'm part of that generation that was taught that power meant abuse. Power meant coercion, manipulation. It meant that I would treat my employees as disposable assets. They were soulless. And if they didn't do what I told them to do, then all hell would break loose and I would make their lives miserable. This is the leadership approach that I was trained in. And guess what? I did the same thing to many of my other emerging leaders. I trained them to be abusive, coercive, manipulative, and selfish, and egotistical, and narcissistic. I believed that because that was the era that I was raised in. And the beauty of being in this field of study for so long and loving it so much, I have seen the trends come and go. I've seen seasons of abuse of power in politics, in global affairs, in the top fortune top companies. I've seen so much and I've studied so much. And the beauty of this approach is that because of what I have experienced firsthand as a practitioner like you, with my hands in the clay with my team, I'm in the trenches with my team just like you, but also as a researcher, as a teacher, as a public academic, as an executive coach to some of the most conscientious, incredible leaders on the planet. I have my institute where I teach leaders. I've served so many people at different levels of leadership for over thirty years now. And what the beauty of seeing these trends and these patterns and these historical waves of abuse and then compassion and then coercion and then more love... I see that what goes up must come down. I see that if there's a beginning, there's a middle, and there's an end. And sometimes the next cycle begins very quickly after this last ending. But nonetheless, there are seasons and cycles in leadership. And I... In building out this leadership style, I took all that into consideration because I wanted for us to be anchored in the truth and not in historical record, in trends, in seasons, in cycles and patterns. No, I wanted for us to develop a leadership approach that Now that's timeless because this approach is built on timeless principles, timeless principles. These principles, just by the nature of the word principle, right? The word principle, just by the nature of it means it's timeless. These are principles that can be used no matter the context, no matter the season, no matter the era, no matter the generation. These are timeless principles and they're spiritual. And what does that mean to you? It means, for me at least, that I get to ground myself, anchor myself in something bigger, more powerful. more reliable than my own tiny ego that has narcissistic tendencies. Listen, I do. Again, I was trained in that way. So I have to check my ego every day. And I have to put my mission front and center. It has to be conscious to me every single day, because if not the selfishness that I was programmed to believe that I had the power of being every day as a leader, I have to put that in check. I have to offset. I have to offset years of trauma. I have to offset years of abuse, not only as a follower, but also as a leader. But I wouldn't change that for the world. I wouldn't change it for the world. What I have experienced throughout my career as a leader, researcher, now, you know, guide for many of us out here is that, again, there are seasons. And there are moments of realization that there is something bigger and greater orchestrating this whole show. Here I was thinking I was the director of the play, of the department, of the region, of the company. No, actually I was in collaboration. I was in collaboration with something bigger and greater than myself. And I was collaborating through that orchestration. And the divine assignment that I have, which is our first principle in contemplative leadership, that sets the foundation for what we do moving forward. And this foundation is rock steady. Ooh, it's cemented. Ooh, it's formed. Ooh, and this structure that we're going to build upon this foundation will have integrity, structural integrity. So that when we build the next layer, the next level, The house doesn't collapse. We're going to keep building. This is how skyscrapers are built. My goodness, they have to go all the way down deep below the surface to then have a, you know, a, a, a thirty, thirty level skyscraper. But we've got to anchor into something bigger than ourselves or we're not going to make it through these seasons. We're not going to make it through these industries. We're not going to make it through these economies. We're not going to make it through the administration or the presidency or whatever's happening around the world. We won't make it because we're not steady. Because we built our leadership practice on very unstable principles. Not principles, beliefs. But I want to show you principles that are timeless. and that are bigger and greater than your ego, my ego, our ego. And contemplative leadership style allows us to do that. We get to look at leadership in a whole other way. And I'm happy to bring it to you. And I'm happy to have experienced everything I have. So I can stand here today sharing with you what I believe is the answer to our prayers. contemplative leadership approach will single-handedly change this field of study. It will change leadership forevermore, just like emotional intelligence has, just like servant leadership has, just like transformational leadership has, just like authentic leadership has, and dozens more tools and strategies. Contemplative leadership style will be the timeless leadership style that'll help us get through any economy, any election, any administration, any board of directors, any fill in the blank. Because we're not at the effect of those variables that are out of control, out of our control and out of control. No. Through this approach, we get to navigate these storms. Like I'm not the storm. I'm the anchor in this scenario. The storm's out here and it's raging. But I can't manipulate it, coerce it. I can't force it to change. But I can change how I see the situation because I don't like to feel powerless. I don't like to feel hopeless. And as a contemplative, oh, I'm a deep thinker, my friend. You're a deep thinker. We're not on the surface. That's not who we are. We don't take things at face value. We go ten layers deep with our thinking, with our leading. We put meaning behind our leadership. And that's what we get to do every single day as we practice this approach. So drop down below with me. get under the surface. Ooh, let's dive deeper. Let's talk about how this approach can change your leadership practice. It'll transform the way you lead. But we have to start with you, you first and foremost. And so I bring this friendly reminder to you in this podcast episode that It's more than knowing this information, right? Because there's awareness that we find, that we receive as we are learning new things, as we are approaching things differently. We're looking at things differently. We're looking for solutions to things, to problems. And so here we are now asking ourselves, okay, so what? So what? There's this new approach. Okay, maybe you're right, Denise. Maybe this is true. Maybe this is something I should explore. Now what? Now what? Now I want for you to join me inside the sanctuary. That's what's next for us so that we can dive deeper into these five spiritual principles away from social media, away from algorithms, away from the raging storms. This is a select, private group that I am inviting into this space because I know how sacred it is. And guess what? My job is to keep it sacred. That's my responsibility in creating the space for you. And so I ask you to trust this invitation. And you'll know if this is right for you. If you're tired of raging, you're tired of the BS, you're tired of being at the effect of the world, at the effect of your leader, at the effect of your employees, this is the place you're going to want to anchor into. So if that feels right for you and it feels good in your body and it's a hell yes, get me in there as fast as you can, Denise, then you have to join me. You have to join me. It's a brand new space. And leaders like us who have been around the block, have seen a lot of things, who know that we do not have control of these circumstances and that the only thing we have control over is how we perceive the situation because I'm the anchor, because you're the anchor. And we anchor ourselves into something bigger, stronger, more stable than our egos. And what is that for you? For me, it's God. For you, it's source. For you, it's Jesus. For you, it's Allah. For you, it's Buddha. For you, it's whatever you want it to be. I don't want to keep leading in that old paradigm, that antiquated, toxic paradigm. leadership models that have caused so much pain and damage and trauma. I'm sick of it. I'm done with it. And this is why this new approach is all I can talk about today. This is it. And I want to invite you into the space so that we can talk about it together. And so I invite you inside the sanctuary. You're going to want to check the show notes wherever you're watching or listening to this and join me inside as soon as you can so that we can begin this journey together. Leader, what a pleasure it was to just stop by really quickly to share this with you. And I cannot wait to greet you inside the sanctuary. So hurry up, get in there so I can serve you right away. In the meantime, take very good care of yourself and I'll see you very soon. Bye for now.
