WAYNE BROWN: Hello, I’m your host, Wayne Brown, and welcome to the ET project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world, whom we’re affectionately referring to as Team ET. Today, we’re flying into Palo Alto, California, home of Stanford University, as well as our guest, a licensed clinical psychologist, a CEO leadership coach, an author, and a pioneering researcher in the field of spiritual intelligence, Yosi Amram. Yosi holds a BS and MS in engineering from MIT, an MBA from Harvard, and became the founder and CEO of two technology companies that he led through successfully to IPOs. He went on to earn a PhD in clinical transpersonal psychology and initiated his academic research into spiritual intelligence. Through this research, Yosi developed a groundbreaking theory in spiritual intelligence with an associated model for spiritual intelligence leadership which has received over 1,000 citations to date. Today, as a therapist and leadership coach working with over 100 CEOs, Yosi has supported many of his clients in building organizations, recruiting and overseeing thousands of employees and annual revenues in the billions. With all his clients, he has seen the marked effect that developing their spiritual intelligence has on their happiness, power, and effectiveness as inspired and inspiring leaders. Yosi’s personal mission is to awaken greater spiritual intelligence in himself and in the world. Team, our guest has written an incredible book, and many notable people continue to sing his praises. For me, it ranks very high on my go-to list as a social science reference guide. So please have a listen to this conversation, and I’m confident you’re going to find plenty to take away that can be immediately put into practice.

INTRO: Welcome to the ET project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor, Wayne Brown, as we unpack an exciting future together.

WAYNE BROWN: Hello, team, and welcome to this week’s conversation. I’m guessing you want to inspire your team, right? You’ve probably tried things like vision statements, maybe off-sites, bonuses, even recognition programs, I’m guessing. But probably you’re finding something still missing. The villain, therefore, isn’t your laziness or your incompetence, but it may be the gap between what you’re saying and who you are. And your people, as you probably know already, don’t need better Powerpoints, they need you to be present, your purpose, your devotion. And my guest today, Dr. Yosi Amram, has spent more than two decades studying this whole topic. But one question in particular, how do you lead by being inspired first? So today we’re going to explore spiritual intelligence, we’re going to look at spiritual intelligence leadership, what that actually looks like, and whether it’s only for elite gurus or available to every single one of us. Yosi, welcome to the ET project, great to have you here.

YOSI AMRAM: Thank you, Wayne. It’s great to be with you and thanks for that introduction and framing our conversation and the topic. So, I think you kind of said it all, we can just wrap it up.

WAYNE BROWN: Well, it was nice to meet you, see you later. Let’s jump into a little bit of your background, it’s a really interesting background, it’s one I’m a little bit envious of in many cases. We’ll start with your military presence, you set promotion records in the Air Force, you’ve earned degrees from MIT, from Harvard, you took two companies public. By any external measure, you had already won everything. So, what was missing that your engineering degrees and your MBA just couldn’t give you? 

YOSI AMRAM: Well, that’s a great question. So, after all of that, after I took a company public, after I graduated from these top schools, like you said, and I made millions, et cetera, somehow, I hit a dark night of the soul. And there was some… I was burnt out, I was working 70, 80 hour weeks. I was originally motivated to start my company, Individual Inc, to create an environment that supports the growth of each individual in a team environment context and that grew out of my military experience where I excelled. 

[00:05:00] 

YOSI AMRAM: As you said, I had the fastest promotion record, I had these leadership awards, but the command-and-control model of the military really chafed at my soul. And well, that’s very effective and necessary in battle, you can’t go to a conference room and do whiteboard brainstorming, somebody calls the shots and that’s very effective. But I wanted to see if you can build an organization based on more humanistic principles and that became the overarching purpose of much of my life. And then I did that and I took my company public and all of that. But I burnt myself out and I wasn’t really living some of the values I espoused, I was like, actually, because I was so invested in the success of the company and my identity was so invested in it, I myself became kind of a micromanager in a way. And I wasn’t very good at delegating, even though I was speaking a good talk, but I wasn’t really embodying those very things I aspired to or that chafed at me when others didn’t. So, I burnt myself out because I wasn’t delegating and I was overextended. And then one day, as they say, I was lying on a massage table trying to relax and I had an awakening experience. All of a sudden, as I relaxed, my ego relaxed and dissolved and I experienced what people spend years meditating, to have a spiritual awakening where I experienced myself as part of an interdependent, interconnected oneness of all reality. And that kind of blew my mind, blew my circuit and also got me pushed out of the company I was the founder, chairman and CEO that was at the height of its success in the early internet with a rising stock price. And then that got me to go back in and ask these deeper questions about who and what am I and what’s important and what happened. And that changed ultimately my life where I went back to school, I became a psychologist, I discovered this term of spiritual intelligence. I was like, oh, wow, what is that? And is that parallel to emotional intelligence? So that became a lifelong mission and purpose and journey to research that and measure it and show that it indeed contributes to leadership. So that kind of brings me to my work these days. 

WAYNE BROWN: Right. I think you described the experience that many of us as leaders have had at some point with the burnout. Where we, for those who are passionate, devoted, dedicated to whatever we do, we tend to pour our heart and soul into it and for many of us it leads to burnout and I’m still waiting for that moment. 

YOSI AMRAM: Be careful what you wish for, because it can be destabilizing like it was for me. So, I had this beautiful, powerful awakening experience, but it really left me ungrounded. And that’s why my board said, hey, Yosi, take a three-week vacation, you need to chill out. And I was like, no way. And then they said, no, we’re going to put you on a three-month voluntary leave of absence, nothing voluntary about it. So anyway, my point is careful what you wish for. I mean, it was all in hindsight, a good blessing, but it was very painful to be pushed out of my company, it was my baby. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, it must have been hard. I can imagine that awakening, but also that experience and even the breakdown to some point. I guess, it must’ve revealed many things to you, not only about yourself, but about the whole premise around, you know, we talk about IQ and we talk about EQ in leadership, but it sounds like you found there was something else that was missing. 

YOSI AMRAM: Yeah. And that kind of got me to, first I heard the term spiritual intelligence and I had the spiritual awakening and I was like, oh, what is this? Is this real? Is it measurable? I wanted to study it scientifically. I knew all the work that was done on emotional intelligence that showed that people with higher emotional intelligence had better life, better relationships, more successful as human beings in general and as better leaders and that complimented IQ. And then when I heard this term, I was like, mm, what is this? 

[00:10:00] 

YOSI AMRAM: So, I ended up interviewing 71 leaders who were nominated by their peers as spiritually developed and evolved and identified five domains and 22 qualities that were universal across all of them. And then from there, I developed the first academically-validated measure of spiritual intelligence and studied 42 CEOs and 210 members of their staff and showed that leaders that had greater spiritual intelligence led teams that had greater commitment, higher morale, lower turnover. And then since then others have shown that they also produce better financial results for their business units and so on. I’m kind of dancing around it and I expect you to maybe ask me, well, what is spiritual intelligence after all? We’re kind of talking around it. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. Well, I want to lead into that if you don’t mind. 

YOSI AMRAM: Yeah, please. 

WAYNE BROWN: Because I read somewhere that what triggered all the massage table experience was when you started to do the research, you identified this word inspire and then you looked into it and found that it has a Latin root to the word spirit, maybe we can start there if you don’t mind. 

YOSI AMRAM: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. That brings me back to one of my first Harvard Business School cases in my MBA program was managers and leaders; are they the same or different? And the point was that managers are important, they manage resources, they make decisions. But what do leaders do? Leaders inspire. And so, as you say, what is the root word of inspiring? It is spirit. And what spirit comes from Latin is spiritus, which is the animating breath of life. So basically, leaders inspire, meaning they breathe life into their organization by articulating a vision and a purpose that brings people together that resonate with that vision, with that mission and that purpose. And then they create cohesive teams that are aligned behind that mission and that vision. And then people are inspired and they’re aligned and they work together as a community. As we say with team spirit, we say team spirit, you know, do you have a team spirit? So yeah, so the root of that is spirit and it’s the animating breath of life and it’s the same root of spirituality. So, spirituality can kind of sound woo woo, but in essence what we’re talking about is connecting to our life force energy. And then when we’re connected to our life force energy, then we’re enlivened, we’re vibrant, we’re enthusiastic, we’re empowered, we’re connected to ourselves and then we’re connected to other people. And then we have a group of people that are aligned and have a shared intention and a shared mission as opposed to pulling in different directions. And you get a toxic political environment where it’s people driven by their egos and trying to elevate themselves above other people around the table. And when you go into a room, you could feel that toxicity where people’s egos are really getting in the way of, and they’re trying to prove themselves right rather than do what’s right. So, it actually makes sense, you think, oh, spirituality, it’s kind of woo woo, we’re here running businesses, they have to have bottom line and productivity and effectiveness and results, but it’s that inspiration, getting people online. A study by Bannon & Company, which is one of the top management consulting companies in the world, worked with 2000 companies and they found that inspired employees are twice as productive as people that are just going about their jobs to earn their paycheck. And then they look at what were the qualities that get employees inspired and they identified 33 qualities like servant leadership, like presence, like centeredness, like compassion, listening ability, which relates to presence, integrity, humility. And these qualities basically map one to one over half of them to this notion of the qualities of spiritual intelligence and spiritually intelligent leadership. So, you kind of get a convergence, you know, you’re thinking spirituality, it sounds woo woo and, you know, separation of church and state. And, you know, we’re not going to bring religion and spirituality into our business and of course not. 

[00:15:00]

YOSI AMRAM: But when you go under the surface, you discover that these qualities are universal qualities that human beings have been talking about as virtues for good life that are good for us individually and socially and collectively. And then you get the research from Bannon & Company, other leadership development, and the whole field of positive psychology also looks at what leads to good meaningful life that’s fulfilling, not just dealing with neuroses like Freud did or whatever. People think of psychology, I go to a therapist when I’ve got problems, I’m depressed, I’m anxious, I got addiction, I’m lonely, whatever. No, positive psychology says, no, we don’t want to just treat the disease, we want to look at what leads to a meaningful, fulfilling, happy life. And then the same set of qualities come up like gratitude and joy and beauty and trust and integrity and purpose. So, you get this convergence from the research I’ve done, other researchers, the spiritual traditions, people in business and leadership development, the field of positive psychology, all saying that this is good for us individually and collectively and organizationally. 

WAYNE BROWN: You mentioned religion, you mentioned meditation, mindfulness, or simply even just being a good person. How does spiritual intelligence differentiate from all those things or doesn’t it? Is it sort of woven together somehow? 

YOSI AMRAM: No, great, I’m glad you’re asking because that’s the obvious question and it’s a crucial question. So let me just say that I have worked with over a hundred CEOs and they have spanned the whole range of people that you might consider religious to people that are ‘spiritual’ but not religious, to people that are agnostic, to people that I would say are devout atheists or anti-religious. So, the qualities I’m talking about talk about purpose, you live a life of purpose. You know, the religious spiritual traditions talk about that, but you don’t have to be coming at life from a religious or a spiritual perspective to have a sense of purpose and people have a sense of purpose whatever it might be, to cure illness, to cure cancer, to make safe transportation, to whatever it is that resonates to the human being at some personal level because of their history, because of their values, et cetera. And so, you can have a sense of purpose, you can express gratitude. And we know from modern research that people that practice gratitude and the attitude of gratitude, it improves our immune system, our longevity, our mood and all of those things. So, you don’t have to be practicing any religion or spiritual tradition, it’s just these are the qualities that we’re talking about, integrity, I mean, you know we know that people look for leaders that have high integrity, that walk the talk, that’s how they earn people’s trust and are present. Nobody is going to be going to their one-on-one with their manager or a leader and the person is on their phone, email, looking left, right, distracted, then the quality of the conversation, if I’m an employee and my boss is not present in my one-on-one, which is trying to support me to do the most effective job, I’m like, he doesn’t really care about me. So, if he’s not devoting his attention to me, why should I devote my attention to him or my job? I’m going to look at social media during work and he’s doing it during our meeting. So, all I’m trying to say is that these qualities have nothing to do with being spiritual or religion, you don’t have to be spiritual or religious to be a spiritually intelligent leader, just like you don’t have to be emotional to be emotionally intelligent. If I said, Wayne, who are you people in your life? Do you know people in your life that are emotional? You might think of some people and they tend to be people that are very dramatic and maybe they get teary at a puppy commercial. But when I say, Wayne, do you know people that are emotionally intelligent? They’re not necessarily overly emotional or dramatic, they know how to draw on emotional information and resources. So being spiritual and being spiritually intelligent are not the same thing. 

[00:20:00]

WAYNE BROWN: Right. There can be some parallels though, Yosi, with EQ and SI. If we look at EQ, I’m talking self-awareness is one of the pillars, self-regulation, social awareness or social regulation and motivation, there are all these correlations I can see, but I read somewhere you said that spiritual intelligence turbocharges emotional intelligence and I’m starting to be able to piece that together now listening to you. 

YOSI AMRAM: Yeah, no, as you pointed out, emotional intelligence involves self-awareness of your emotions. Spiritual intelligence involves self-knowledge of knowing and connecting to yourself to something deeper in your essence and knowing who and what you are. It basically has to do with the age-old dictum of know thyself and being connected to yourself. Because when you’re not connected to yourself, you can’t really authentically connect to anybody else. It’s like if you have a rope between two poles, it has to be hooked, anchored in one side before it has any meaningful… So, we have to be connected, know ourselves in spiritual intelligence, emotional intelligence, you have to be self-aware of your emotions. But my point is spiritual intelligence goes deeper than just your emotional surface. And then as you said, emotional intelligence has to do with self-regulation, when you’re angry, you’re aware you’re angry, but you don’t act it out by screaming, shouting, cursing, doing all the things that people that are out of control angry are. So, you could still be angry, but you know how to regulate your emotion. In spiritual intelligence, you could do that, but because you’re connected to something deeper, then you can have inner equanimity. So, it’s not you just regulating your behavior externally, in the midst of the anger storm, there’s a part of you that is rooted at something much deeper. And it’s like you are anchored in the bottom of the ocean and then there’s waves of a storm on the surface. So not only am I not dysregulated, but there’s some part of me that has deeper inner peace. But because of these things, there is a small to moderate correlation when you measure emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence but spiritual intelligence takes you to a deeper and much bigger, deeper, higher level. So yeah, you could say turbocharger emotional intelligence. 

WAYNE BROWN: Thanks for the clarification. How did you look for support as you started to get into this? Did you have a mentor? Did you study under anyone at any of the universities? I’m guessing you didn’t go on this journey of discovery about spiritual intelligence by yourself this whole way or have you? 

YOSI AMRAM: No, I mean, obviously not. I mean, I did a lot of research around what other people have done, around applied spirituality, you might say, and mindfulness and different practices that were getting visibility and showing that these principles of compassion and self-awareness and mindfulness had many benefits psychologically and health-wise and in business settings. So, there are other people coming at it from different things. And then, as I said, I interviewed the 71 leaders and teachers that come from all these world’s traditions, from Buddhism and Hinduism and Taoism and Christianity and Islam and Judaism and Shamanism and all the world’s tradition, but that were actually in leadership roles in working environments. Then I interviewed them about how they brought those principles and their values to their daily life and how that helped them function. So, I studied with many of them and I interviewed them and I also looked at the work that people did in defining emotional intelligence because before emotional intelligence came into the scene as a concept, it was actually a concept put forth by two academicians, Salovey and Mayer in 1990 and then popularized by Daniel Goleman in a book in ’95, we used to think that emotion and reason are in conflict or in contrast. And we have a similar thing, we think spiritual and practical are dichotomous. 

[00:25:00] 

YOSI AMRAM: So, I went back and looked at, okay, what did they do and how did they take this concept of emotional intelligence and start to unpack and define it and measure it so that then they could show that it actually is very practical and very applicable? So, I was kind of following in their footsteps and applying it in this new domain of spiritual intelligence and then leadership, I hope I’m making sense. 

WAYNE BROWN: You’ve certainly does some great work, I read somewhere that you have over a thousand academic citations for your work. I mean, that’s a huge acknowledgement that the things that you’re doing are on the right path and hopefully it’s having that impact. To that point though, I mean, the elephant in the room is the actual reaction I feel that you received when you mentioned the word ‘spiritual,’ people tend to roll their eyes, they start to think, oh, here we go again, we’re going to go down this woo woo path. And you’ve said it yourself. I mean, why do you think there is still such a stigma around this whole premise? 

YOSI AMRAM: Well, because we live in a modern secular world and science is our new, you might say religion. And I like science, I’m a big believer in science and I’m doing scientific work to show that this has many benefits beyond just woo woo, so, nobody has to take my word. But, yeah, I mean… And then there’s just culturally this whole notion of separation of church and state, which is very valid and very important, so, we want freedom and a personal freedom, we don’t want to live in a country that tells us we have to be Christian or Muslim or Jewish or whatever and if you’re not, you don’t fit that, then you don’t belong or you’re discriminated against. The same way, we don’t want to go into our work and business environment and be told, oh, we’re all going to be praying to Jesus today or Muhammad or whatever. Just going to be like, that’s an intrusion on our privacy. So, the same notion we have separation of church and state at the country level, at the political level, we want to have separation of ‘church and state’ in the business world, in the organizational world. So, it’s a natural, healthy skepticism. I’m coming to work, my relationship to my spiritual life, my essence, my spirit, my higher power, if I believe in it or whatever my customs and inner life is, I don’t want my boss, I don’t want my company to dictate that to me. So, it’s a natural, healthy thing that says… wants our personal freedom. And just to be clear, I think all of this is fine and is good and I’m not suggesting any company dictate any kind of spiritual belief system or dogma or religion, I’m just saying, help people find purpose and articulate a purpose and embody as a leader the qualities of trust and humility and integrity and presence and intention and attention and gratitude and all the things that are virtues that have been talked about for thousands of years by humanity that are now studied in the field of leadership development that say, yeah, these lead to effective leadership that is trusted, that’s effective, that’s inspired and inspiring. And the field of positive psychology is saying the same thing. So, you have convergence of multiple, like in any scientific theory, you don’t just do one experiment and say, okay, that’s good. You have multiple researchers from multiple disciplines, they’re all saying, oh, and then when the evidence converges from multiple researchers from different cultures, different contexts, and it’s all pointing in the same direction, they say, oh, then that’s more valid and what’s likely to be reasonable, it’s not just…

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. You just mentioned culture, there’s always two sides to every situation, is my belief, and there’s all the positive about spirituality and spiritual intelligence, et cetera. 

[00:30:00]

WAYNE BROWN: There’s also a dark side that may or may not come out of this and then there’s a question mark for me. How much is spiritually intelligent leadership relative to a culture? So, for instance, I live in Asia, I live in China and our culture, as you can well imagine, is very different to Europe, very different to the Americas. Does that play a part?

YOSI AMRAM: Well, I think you have to be attuned to the culture for sure. And it’s also true that the qualities I’m talking about are universal and the theory of spiritual intelligence that I developed that has been validated is ecumenical, meaning it’s cross-culture, it’s cross-traditions. So, I think in China, I still assume they believe in living a life of purpose and integrity and so on. But they might look a little different, but those qualities, and in fact, my measure of spiritual intelligence has been translated into more than half a dozen languages and it has been studied in different contexts, in Islamic context, like Malaysia, it’s been used in Turkey, it’s been used in Persia, it’s been used in Portugal. And so, it seems to be touching on universal human qualities and virtues that have been celebrated across traditions and across cultures. But you have to be sensitive to what that means. So, let’s just take an example, one of the qualities that has to do with spiritual intelligence being egoless and humble. Now, how that looks is very different, if you go to Japan, humility is like a lot of bowing down and the way they talk and they dress, et cetera, is very different. If you go to an American institution and humility is going to look very different. But there’s still an element of egolessness in the great leaders even in the US, it’s not about their ego, it’s about the mission that they’re devoted to. And so, there are cultural nuances, but the principles I think are universal. 

WAYNE BROWN: Now, you have a book, and I haven’t mentioned it, we can see it in your background there, it’s ‘Spiritual Intelligent Leadership.’ It covers a lot of what we’re talking about and much more, it has been highly acknowledged as well. You’ve wrapped a lot of your research into the book. If somebody’s reading the book, what would you hope that they take away? If there was just one key element that they took from the book, what would you hope that to be?

YOSI AMRAM: Well, I’d say a couple of things. First and foremost, leadership is an inside job, like you would expect and you can’t inspire anybody else until when you’ve inspired yourself and then you can’t get inspired without connecting to your inner spark and discovering that inner flame that resides in your soul, in your essence, in your heart. So, you have to find that inner spark and then light it up, fan it, and then you get inspired. But that requires going inward and unless you go inward and you look for the answers in your source of power externally, then you’re disempowering yourself. If I think that my source of power is outside myself, then I’m always dependent on these external things, I’m always chasing those external things, and I’m not recognizing the hidden treasures that are in me. So, I have to turn inward and connect to myself before I can connect to anybody else. I have to find my inner flame and light it up, light that inner spark, and then other resonant souls can get lit up when they line up with that vision and that purpose. So, I think that would be the two essential things, yeah.

[00:35:00]

WAYNE BROWN: Okay. I was thinking while you were talking there, because I mentioned the dark side and if we bring this conversation back to the leadership context, there’s a possibility that somebody who is very spiritually intelligent as a leader may use that capability to influence their people for their own purpose. How do you react to that type of suggestion?

YOSI AMRAM: Well, there’s always people are ‘narcissistic’ or ‘psychopaths,’ and some of them can be very emotionally intelligent. If we go back to just the body analogy, they’re very attuned to other people’s emotions, and they know how to manipulate and control the room, they can be very charismatic. So, in a way, they appear very emotionally intelligent, and they’re emotionally intelligent, but they’re using that intelligence in a not very benevolent way, and that’s always a danger. But I think if you’re truly spiritually intelligent, then you understand our interconnectedness and interdependence. And one of the qualities of spiritual intelligence is egolessness. Now, that’s a very tricky thing, I will admit, because I’ve seen ‘evolved’ spiritual teachers, I also see it in myself, where sometimes I have an egoless state, and my ego dissolves like I had and whatever. And then paradoxically, the ego comes back and says, oh, look at me and how evolved I am, I’m more spiritually involved than other people and I see that in many teachers that claim enlightenment and whatever. So that’s something we have to be in integrity and honest with ourselves and always be looking out how our ego is coming in and we could find all kinds of rationalizations, our egos are excellent at finding rationalizations to justify whatever we’re doing. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yes.

YOSI AMRAM: But some part of us, when we do that, it is out of alignment, out of integrity, because consciously or unconsciously, some part of us knows that we’re out of alignment and integrity with our essence, which connects us to other people. So, at that point, we start to treat other people as objects then it actually results in a sense of loneliness and isolation. If I treat you as an object and I discard your humanity, then I can try and manipulate you and maybe I’ll outsmart you in a business deal and out-negotiate you and all of that. But there’s some part of me that’s going to feel yucky, for lack of a more scientific word, it just feels yucky that I’m doing that because I’ve disconnected from you Wayne, I’ve disconnected from our shared humanity. And now life is a constant battle and at the end of the day, it just doesn’t feel very good to live like that, even if I attain all the fame and fortune and whatever. 

WAYNE BROWN: Is spiritual intelligence something everyone can possess? Is it a practice we can all learn? 

YOSI AMRAM: It’s a practice and it’s something that we all have. It’s just a question, everybody has these inherent qualities at some measure, it is just developing them. Can everybody develop physical fitness? Well, we have the muscles, so everybody can lift some weight, maybe you can lift 10 grams, maybe you can lift 10 kilos, maybe you can lift 100 pounds. Everybody got the muscles and they’re just working on it and you can’t build all your muscles at once and it’s not a once and done thing. If you want to be physically fit and healthy and a strong and a healthy body, you work on different muscle groups and you don’t just do it once, you keep going to the gym or you go and you’re jogging or whatever you do in nature or however you keep yourself fit. 

[00:40:00] 

YOSI AMRAM: So, it’s a lifelong journey and it’s not a once and done type of thing. But you don’t say, I don’t have time, just give me a pill, I don’t want to be doing these practices of gratitude every day. Well, okay, I don’t know, I mean, I like doing my practices because I enjoy them. And if you’re into physical fitness or whatever, you’re healthy, you enjoy exercising your body and your muscles and whatever. For me, it’s like doing my brisk walks on the beach every morning, it’s hiking, climbing up mountains in nature and getting the vistas. So, it’s a journey, it’s a cliche, but it’s true, the journey is the reward and there’s always an opportunity to grow and deepen in our capacity. And it’s a joy to be actualizing more of our potential. And that’s what we’re here for. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yosi, I can imagine many of our listeners who are primarily leaders, by the way, many of them will be sitting there thinking, that all sounds absolutely fantastic. And I’m on board with the concept, I don’t have that time, I don’t have the luxury, I’m in that burnout phase, I’m doing my 70, 80 hours a week, where do you think I’m going to have the time to go home and spend 10, 20, 30 minutes journaling, whatever it might be. How do you create in their minds or how do you help them identify in their minds the genuine value that can come through the practice?

YOSI AMRAM: Well, it’s experimentation, it’s experimentation, with everything, start out small, with modest thing and see the payoff. So, start out with a gratitude practice, you’re burned out, okay, how long does it take you at the end of the day to spend three minutes, one minute to think of three things today you’re grateful for and see how it affects you. And then the next week, see what happens when you in real time or near real time, express appreciation to people as you feel gratitude. Oh, they just did a beautiful job at this presentation, or they closed this deal, or they did an awesome job negotiating this contract. And you just say, oh, I feel so grateful, so appreciated. And you see how those people light up and are motivated to work harder and deliver more. And you’re like, oh, see what happens to the quality of your relationship. So, it’s you measure the ROI on that investment, I mean, you know, you’re a shrewd business person, you’re like, oh, I’m already working 80 hours a week, okay, what’s the ROI of going from 70, 80 hours a week to 80 hours a week? All the research shows that past 50, 55 hours of work, you actually, it’s self-defeating and you’re getting less output and it’s a sign of lack of delegation and empowerment and what have you. But you have to experiment, try it. And if it’s working for you and you like working 70, 80 hours a week and you want to be more productive and go up to a 90, be my guest. But sometimes, like for me, we have to head a crisis and people have a wake-up call because they work so hard, and I see that with some of my clients, they work so hard, they come home, the only way they can relax is by having three, four beers or two, three, four glasses of wine. And before you know it, you’re addicted to alcohol or something that helps you unwind. Or you’re going through so much stress. And I’ve had several clients, I’m like, they’re not… oh, I got to worry about all these things, and then they get a heart attack and then they’re like, okay, you’re not caring for your heart and your heart is screaming out at you. So, unfortunately, sometimes we have to get these wake-up calls where our soul, our spirit, nature, I don’t know what it is, the universe says, hey, you know, the path you’re on is not working, you got to step back and reassess. 

[00:45:00]

WAYNE BROWN: If we bring this into a practical context at the moment for leaders, we all go through those moments of high stakes, whether it’s a deadline, whether we’re working with an angry client, change and conflict. How does spiritual intelligent leadership show up physically in that environment? What would we see?

YOSI AMRAM: Well, I mean, I’m not sure I fully understand your question, but in high stakes situation, we all get to crisis points or high stakes things or an important conversation, that’s a difficult conversation, you have to give someone feedback that’s very problematic, whatever it is. So, the first thing is you, I’ll name some of the qualities of spiritually intelligent leadership that would come into play; one is being centered and getting to clarity. So, if I’m coming into a meeting that’s high stakes, negotiation, feedback, whatever it might be, client presentation, if I’m not centered and I’m nervous and I’m anxious and my mind is not clear and I’m not present, I’m not going to bring my best resources. So, being centered, being grounded, being clear-minded, and then having an open heart and an open mind so I can read the moment, I can read the situation and respond. If I’m just coming in and like, okay, I’m not paying attention to who and what is in front of me. And, you know, like some novice salespeople do is they come in and they are strong with their pitch and if the client doesn’t hear or doesn’t like you just repeat it stronger and louder and you lose the connection and the deal goes south. So, you have to be present and grounded and centered and clear-minded and then read the cues in the moment. I have to have my intention clear. What is my intention in this interaction? I need to build rapport, I need to do this, that, and the other. But that’s where practices like mindfulness or presence or meditation helps us become present, regulate our nervous system and be in the moment so we’re attuned and responsive. So, it’s not just a high-pressure thing that makes us less effective. 

WAYNE BROWN: If our listener wants to start doing something, one thing at least tomorrow after the conversation, what would have the most impact in your mind?

YOSI AMRAM: Well, I think the easiest thing to start with is to do a gratitude practice at the end of each day, just reflect on your day and come up with three things that happened to you today in general or in your work environment that you’re grateful for, that you’re happy about. It could be a nice conversation you had at the coffee machine with someone or a nice email you got or a deal you won or someone did a great job on the project that stayed late the previous night and finished it. So, feel the gratitude for that, the appreciation, it will connect you, you’ll feel less isolated, less lonely, like you’re supported, like the universe, life, reality has some rewards. And that will be the first step. And then when you get that down, start expressing that appreciation to those people and you’ll see the benefit in terms of the quality of relationships. And then the other thing is reflect on… each of us have come to this life with unique blessings, unique gifts, unique superpowers, figure out how can we use those in service of the organization, in service of the mission and how can I apply and actualize my potential to not only just my benefit, but the benefit of others with me in the organization. And that gives a lot of life more meaning and a sense of connection, a sense of contribution, a sense of importance. I matter, because otherwise we all feel like we’re just cogs in the machine and we’re just a number versus like, no, I’m a unique human being that has unique talents. And it could be anywhere in the organization, whether it’s, I’m a mechanic in the airline that knows the craft of working with my hands and solving problems, but that supports on-time departure and safe air travel, and so I’m using my craft to further the mission of the airline. 

[00:50:00] 

YOSI AMRAM: Or I’m in the finance department in that airline and what I’m good at is spreadsheets and metrics and forecasts and pricing algorithms and how to get the best optimal routing and pricing for our airline. So, each person has unique talents, I mean, the mechanic is good with their hands and the finance person is good with their numbers, but they all can use that to contribute. 

WAYNE BROWN: Where can people connect with you that want to find out more about the great work you’re doing and they want to learn more about how to become a spiritual leader?

YOSI AMRAM: I have a website, yosiamram.net, it is kind of an umbrella website, if you can remember how to spell my name, which is not so easy. But they could also type up the full longer thing called just spiritually intelligent leadership .com or si-leadership .com. Or you can go on Amazon or any place there are bookstores and you can get the book, ‘Spiritually Intelligent Leadership: How to Inspire by Being Inspired.’ And yeah, I mean, the thing I would just say, if you’re going to look into the book and use it, this is like I was hinting at before, it’s not just something you read theoretically and you’re done, just like you wouldn’t read a book about physical fitness and say, oh, yeah, that’s important, but you got to go do the work. And so, the book has case studies, vignettes that bring this down to earth and then exercises for each of the qualities. So, I hope people will use the exercises and use the experiential learning. It’s done well, it has been a bestseller, it got a lot of great reviews, it got some gold book awards on leadership and so on, so. But enough patting myself on the back. 

WAYNE BROWN: Well, a great conversation Yosi, and all the best for everything that’s lying ahead. 

YOSI AMRAM: Thank you, Wayne, likewise, it has been delightful.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us on the ET project, a show for executive talent development, until next time, check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars, and blogs at ‘coaching4companies.com.’

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