Leaders as Healers

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to Humans at Work. I'm your host, Michael Glaser. My life purpose is to make well being at work a globally accepted basic human right. And this podcast helps by giving you fresh perspectives and actionable ideas for making working with other humans better for everyone. Now get ready because this is not your typical leadership discussion. This one goes much, much deeper, even deeper than conversations about so called vertical development. In this episode, I talk with Nicholas Janney about the transformative power of leaders who embrace their roles as healers. Now don't worry if you don't know what that phrase means. I didn't either until I met Nicholas. You'll hear him explain how by integrating deep personal development, somatic work, emotional authenticity, leaders can truly revolutionize the workplace. And they can also create environments where people feel seen, heard and connected. This is a conversation about business benefits as much as it is about creating a more compassionate and resilient world through mindful leadership. Now, I do have to say, on a personal level, my conversation with Nicholas deeply moved me. In fact, I even felt the impact of a few of his comments in the back of my knees. And, and our, uh, talk reinforced for me my belief in the power of vulnerability and the power of connection. It reminded me that true leadership involves opening our hearts and guiding others to do the same, which can ultimately transform our workplaces into places where both businesses and the people who work in them can thrive together. And with that, let's listen. I want to ask you if you could explain this notion of leader as healer.

Speaker A: Yes, with pleasure. Um, so, you know, to go big picture for a moment. I think we're at a kind of catastrophic moment in the evolution of humanity. And I think one of the foundational reasons for that is that with all the huge technological development and um, the huge development of left brain rational capacity, we have become, um, profoundly disconnected. So the left brain has taken over thinking, thinking, thinking has taken over, uh, and we have become deeply disconnected from the body, the heart, the soul, and whatever we may call spirit. And we're going in a very dangerous direction. I think it's very clear, not just with climate change, um, but in every possible way. So leader as healer more than ever it was when I started, is very fundamentally a call for correction. Mhm. For reintegration of all the parts of ourselves that we've exiled. We're basically living in exile. Uh, and I think people on the whole are deeply unhappy because we're also, of course, utterly caught in the materialistic consumer world and in the scientific rational view of the world. Which is wrong. I mean everything in new science tells us it's wrong. But it's still the prevailing paradigm which also creates a, uh, completely individualistic society. So our normal, so called normal paradigm is I'm a separate entity. I don't feel connected to nature, I don't feel connected to other people. That's catastrophic. And so leader as healer, uh, is a call to correct that.

Speaker B: Can you say a little bit more about what, what comprises leader as healer in terms of practices or what separates a leader as healer from say, leader as leader as coach, Leader as visionary, leader as anything else?

Speaker A: You know, leader as healer is someone who has committed to, um, a very true internal development. And I believe internal development has two pillars. One use the word when we were chatting before vertical. So one is what I call a pillar of awakening. So it's the meditative practices, the body work, it's everything that opens, uh, our perceptual field to higher and higher levels. And that's lifelong because there are higher and higher levels of consciousness. However, that's only one pillar and that's very common or more and more common. This pillar, uh, which is unfortunately much less common, is what I call the pillar of healing. Because that's where we need to work with our personal, ancestral and collective levels of emotional contraction. And we need to work with them directly, not through intellectualizing or psychologizing. And that takes an experienced coach and it takes someone who's willing to be really uncomfortable. Because by definition as we develop, we put a whole lot of our emotional self in the cupboard. Often we need to do that, but it's sitting in us as major levels of contraction which affect our critical thinking, which affect our capacity to be visionary. So a leader as healer is someone who actually commits to a lifelong journey of awakening and healing so that she or he becomes a much more coherent presence. He or she is here and available, is able to relate. Because relate means I don't just hear your words, it means I feel you and I can't feel you with my thinking. Mhm. A leader as he loves a space that invites people to show up authentically and creates teams that have a deep level of presence and therefore openness to being visionary, openness to being creative. This is the work of leader as healer.

Speaker B: What is or what are the business benefits? I'm going to go back to left brain for a second here. I know we're drifting into right brain, but to come back and think of the balanced benefit of right brain benefits. Sort of what you talked about. What, what about the Business benefits. Where. Where do you make the links for. For that?

Speaker A: First of all, I teach at two of the world's leading business schools, so I, I use my left brain extensively. I'm a friend of my left brain. Um, and I wrote a book. So, uh, so the business benefits are multiple. I mean, first of all, people are people. There is something like 80% worldwide disengagement. Okay. The last poll said that was costing $9 trillion of revenue. You cannot engage people unless you relate to them in a human way, unless people feel genuinely motivated, genuinely listened to. So you're going to create cultures with far higher levels of engagement by doing this, this kind of work. Um, colleague of mine wrote a book called Powered by Purpose, and she quoted a study which said that organizations where people feel connected to a real sense of purpose, um, the business can see an upturn of up to 42%. Okay. That's pretty persuasive. So there is really no business case for not doing this. There just isn't. It's pure habit, and it's pure fear of change, which is very real, because when we change, we start to feel more. And people are, uh, understandably, very frightened of that. So it needs a lot of support. You don't change in a weekend or. Um, It's a real process. So I've been working for over a year with the world's largest law firm. Okay, you want left brain. Highly left brain. All right, I left brain. And we do retreats. And, you know, after two days, the emotions start flowing, and these tough, uh, partners are crying, surprise, surprise. Because everyone is storing huge amounts of grief and fear. So we, we operate in this tiny bandwidth, trying to persuade, uh, ourselves that it's really effective. But actually, we should be like this. I do not. I mean, I meet, you know, at the IMD. I teach groups of 40 or so leaders from all over the world. Michael. People are really unhappy and really isolated inside and really struggling, really struggling. Because corporate culture, we talk about emotional intelligence, but most of it is actually rubbish, to be honest, because we don't make space for people to feel. It's not about managing or understanding your emotions. If people are frightened, which most people are, uh, they just need to be allowed to feel it. It's so simple. And our left brain is so controlling. I want to control everything. They have some kind of fantasy of safety. Safety is when people can show up and feel met. When they're allowed to say, hey, I feel really anxious. And the leader says, yeah, me too. Let's just acknowledge that. Then we're suddenly present. We're so distorted the way we think about emotion. And all this literature about emotional intelligence, it mostly reinforces, um, kind of contraction inside, especially when we talk negative emotion. Fear is not negative emotion. Sadness is not negative emotion. It's human. It's human. You show me one person who doesn't feel anxious right now, and you're showing me a totally numb human being. M. And many, many senior leaders are numb. You know, I wrote a provocative LinkedIn post a while back, uh, which started with the words, any man who cannot easily cry should not be allowed anywhere near senior leadership. I totally believe that. Because any man who cannot cry has a frozen heart and will not be able to be empathic, will not be able to show real care. So what is he doing in senior leadership? We need a revolution, Michael. Not just a little bit of change. We need a revolution. And, um, I'm that revolution.

Speaker B: I want to get into that revolution and. And more the specifics of leaders. Healer, you mentioned a couple of points there about emotional intelligence and embodiment.

Speaker A: I didn't really answer you, but I'm happy to.

Speaker B: I will. I will come around on that in a second. This. So the notion of leader as healer, it's deep. And I can imagine that this isn't something that you dreamed up over a weekend or a year. This is something that's been in the works for a long time. So when you reflect on your journey.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: What personal experiences inspired this philosophy?

Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much for asking to me. For me, Michael, it all started when I was 16 in a totally unexpected way. I visited with a friend, a Tibetan mon. Tibetan Buddhist monastery, because his grandmother was living there. And it just sounded like fun. We were 16. And during my week there, um, someone gave me a very classic Buddhist text. And the whole world opened for me pretty much in one moment. It's like I suddenly knew. I knew in my bones, uh, what this was about. Yeah. And from then on, literally, albeit through many circuitous routes, from then on, that was my main focus. Exploring what is the real capacity of human consciousness and why are we living in such a small version of it. And then I, um. Because my father was a very famous filmmaker, I was always going to go into the arts. And I found my way into theater. And, um, I spent 20 years exploring with actors, teaching and directing. Uh, first of all, what were the highest performance stage they could go into what sports people call the zone, you know, this extraordinary open. I know everything that's happening. I have all the time in the world. I Am super connected. So it's the same in the arts. And I spent 20 years researching that with my own company, teaching at major trauma schools. Um, and then again, not in a planned way, particularly a small group of us started being invited to work in the corporate world. That was at the end of the 90s. And we developed an amazing methodology, actually, of using Shakespeare stories as kind of models of leadership case studies. And we got support from a business, um, school in England. And in 2001, we were getting so much work that we actually left the theater. And from then, since then, I've been working exclusively in the. Well, almost exclusively in the corporate. But yeah, and yeah, I mean, it's also. So in the theater, uh, everything was very felt and deeply embodied. So that also has always been a foundation for me opening the body. So when I work with senior leaders now, one of the things we always do is that we do a lot of semantic work, like bringing people home. Uh, you ask for practices, you know, into a totally new being in the body. Because we've left the body by and large, you know, we start as totally embodied. And most adults are like, living up here.

Speaker B: Can you walk me through the process of helping people reintroduce themselves to the body? That's the, that's, that's below the. The mid chest, which is where you were pointing out before.

Speaker A: I mean, actually we start often by lying on the ground.

Speaker B: M. Why is that?

Speaker A: Because we start with the relaxation. Because if we're up here, it's because the body is like that. M. So we have to start with deep relaxation and breathing. Because we breathe up here most of the time. Yeah. So we breathe deeply, we relax the body, literally. We learn how to breathe the way we're supposed to breathe, which is down in the belly. All the martial arts. Then we practice standing up. What it means to be grounded, to let our legs take our weight. So it's actually a process of really dropping down. Um, by the end of 25, 30 minutes of that, when people come back to sitting, they're usually in a totally different state.

Speaker B: What kinds of comments do you hear from people?

Speaker A: I feel so calm, so focused, so clear. I have far less thinking than normal, um, that kind of thing. And so, well, then we're like, okay, well, let's think, let's. Now let's analyze a. What we did, the value of it. Um, and then I teach practices. How do you maintain this? And, and that's of course where the practice, the major practice in all development, the major tool is attention. Because the m. Moment we start actually paying attention, not thinking, our brain waves change. Like if you're wired up, uh, you, your brain wave, we change brainwave frequency. It's really amazing through the act of paying attention. Now, sages have known this for 2000 years. The fact that we can now prove it is amazing. So when people actually learn to go through the day with a far higher level of attention, and when people learn to pay attention inwardly and outwardly at the same time, this is a master practice. Everything starts to change. People feel themselves in meetings, showing up in a totally different way.

Speaker B: In the book, you make a fascinating link between this kind of physical embodiment and decision making. Can you explain the connection?

Speaker A: Well, we think that intellectual knowing is the only way of knowing. That's part of the catastrophe. Um, I think you know the famous quote by Einstein where he said, the rational mind is a faithful servant. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift. And we have created a culture that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. So now the intuitive mind, interestingly, is anchored in the body. It's anchored in the body. So the more open our body becomes, um, the more we know, uh, things. And everyone knows this. Michael, you ask people, do you do your best thinking when you're working out? Oh, yeah, of course people know this, but we don't get the implication of it. I go biking those days. Why do qigong every day I get such clear insights. When I'm doing qigong or when I'm out on my bike, I suddenly get solutions to things I'm thinking about. So our, uh, body is a fundamental source of wisdom and knowledge and everyone knows this. It's just that we're in such a left brain culture that people then, oh God, I have to prove that. I have to get all the data. Uh, yeah, okay, but how about trusting what you really know? That would radicalize how we operate. I'm not dismissing data. Uh, but if that is regarded as the only way you can know something, we're living in a very small reality and not an effective one because that takes so much time.

Speaker B: The data.

Speaker A: And I say, how often have you known something that then took months to prove? Everyone puts their, uh, hammer. Seriously. Okay, stupid. Is that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've been there myself. I, I would put my hand up also.

Speaker A: Yeah, of course. This is our natural being. Leader's healer is a restoration of who we really are and who we really are. So much bigger, uh, than the normal, so called normal way we function.

Speaker B: How can people integrate, embody the practices of embodiment when they're working as opposed to when they're. They're biking or they're doing something else.

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. By paying attention to the body in a meeting, this is one of the core practices. Have some of your attention in your breathing, in the sensation of sitting. It doesn't, uh, take anything away. On the contrary, you'll notice you have a wider perceptual field. You're listening more subtly, you're speaking more clearly. It's as it can be, as simple as that. Uh, but it takes a huge commitment. So I teach people how. You're going to remember that. People figure out. One client of mine bought a new pen. And every meeting, whether Zoom or in person, uh, he puts the pen on the table and it reminds him how much am I really here? Because if we're just like this, we're not really here, but I'm 20% here.

Speaker B: Yeah, this. And for listeners who can't see you, you're. You're framing your head.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Thank you. We're literally functioning at about, uh, 20% of our full capacity. And we need a lot more than that. Uh, with the crises we're in at the moment, we need our full capacity.

Speaker B: And so the. The idea to build this up is initial work, to be able to reintroduce or get back in touch with our bodies and, uh, our sensations.

Speaker A: That's a big part of it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: An equally big part is we have to do our emotional work.

Speaker B: M. Yeah.

Speaker A: It's all the emotions within us that we turn away from. For that, we need support. It's very difficult to do that alone. We need a mentor, we need a coach. We need groups that support that. We need cultures that support that. To give you a very concrete example, Michael, a practice I used to speak about that was quite rare, but I actually hear it's done more now is when a team begin a meeting and everyone is invited just to say exactly how they're feeling. And the leader has created a culture where everyone knows that she or he wants authenticity. Not, I'm fine. Meaning you're allowed to say, I'm stressed today. You're allowed to say, actually, something's happening, uh, outside that's upsetting me quite a lot. And that's all. And each person is heard thanked. And it takes like, one or two minutes. One person may. May say, actually, I really didn't m. Want to be here. I'm irritated. Thank you. So at the end of that, there's a very high level, uh, of presence in the. In the meeting. And miraculously, for our left brain that can't really understand this, suddenly even the person who said, I didn't want to be here feels quite good. Just consider the implication of that. No emotion is negative or positive. That's a myth. We just need to be allowed to acknowledge how we're feeling now in our deeper work. Uh, we need to explore more our emotional territory. We need to explore what am I carrying that I'm not aware of, what sadness is inside me, what fear, what anger? Uh, and then, because then I start to become, um, much more whole. My life force gets much stronger. Much, much stronger. We want more vitality. A lot of our vitality is locked away in unfelt emotion. And we have to feel safe for that. We have to be guided. And that's a lot of what we offer for, you know, in our consultancy.

Speaker B: And is the, the goal with getting back in touch with those deeply buried emotions, to resolve them or do something with them, or just know that they're there and they're a part of us. What, what is the.

Speaker A: None of that.

Speaker B: None of those. Okay?

Speaker A: Because if we just feel them, uh, they change. They're resolved automatically. There's nothing to resolve. There is only to let the energy flow. And the only way the energy flows is by feeling. Look, if I work with someone and they, and, and they recognize, which already takes a lot because the majority of adults don't know what they're feeling. The majority of adults don't know the difference between the thinking and the feeling. The thought and the feeling. But let's say someone has practiced and they are able to say, yeah, no, I, I am feeling anxious today. And I say, okay, let's slow down. Um, let's allow that. Feel it in your body. And they say, okay, because they trust me. And we track. So tell me how it's feeling. And they just feel it, Michael. Within five minutes, they feel fantastic. They feel open. Uh, their body feels open. So the idea that fear blocks us is totally wrong. The problem is we block fear. If someone is sad and they allow themselves to feel it, and maybe tears from, or suddenly they feel so empathic. Their, their heart is open, they feel good. Nothing needs to be resolved. It just needs to be felt. It's so simple, but we're so far away from that. And then we understand that there are layers of that, that some of my emotional composition, first of all goes back to when I was five years old. Some of it is inherited ancestrally. We know that now. Uh, and some of it is collective. You know, we started with being Jewish Most Jewish people carry inside them a collective layer, uh, of terror and a fundamental sense that the world is unsafe, that needs to be excavated and felt and then it naturally reduces. I honestly believe, I'm um, quite sure actually that a number of boardrooms decisions are made by five year olds. Really? And I can quote examples. Yeah, from direct.

Speaker B: Would you?

Speaker A: I can't because it would be preach confidentiality.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: I know boardrooms are full of people with unintegrated 5 year old parent and crazy just behaviors take place. You know that crazy baby rivalries and arguments and 5 year olds.

Speaker B: You also write about cultivating emotional intelligence can create a more resilient and adaptive organizational culture. You hinted at that with a few comments. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I. Thank you. It's a natural consequence of what we're talking about because if I'm walking around and I do not feel what's inside me, I'm brittle, I'm not resilient. The more I can have a safe and appropriate, um, environment in which I can, when, when I need to, I can feel I'm sad or I'm anxious. I feel much stronger after. Cultures that do that, uh, have a far higher level of resilience where people are allowed to be authentic appropriately. We're not talking about uh, therapy and you know, hours of emotional processing. Uh, no, it's much simpler than that. But there's authentic relating. That's resilience. When cultures meet each other and people can really relate. How are you today? Oh, I'm a bit down. Uh, okay. And that's all that's needed. We see each other, we feel each other. This is so basic and in, you know, in indigenous culture, it's, it's, it's deeply embedded in African culture. Ubuntu, I see you. We, every, every human being carries a, uh, literally fundamental need to be seen. Literally fundamental. And most of us didn't have nearly enough of that. So a leader who shows up also, Michael, you talk to anyone and they will tell you about the leaders who they felt, um, related to them and listened to them, even in one minute meeting. And they will tell you about how few those people were, uh, and how impactful it was. That's resilience. When you felt listened to and a culture feels we're authentically relating to each other, that builds enormous resilience.

Speaker B: How, how do leaders go about beginning to cultivate this in teams where it doesn't yet exist or it exists only in, in pockets?

Speaker A: Well, first, I mean, it always has to start with oneself always, and that's forever. This is not like I do a bit of development. No, this is a lifelong commitment because the more leader radiates authentic presence and is also willing to be what I call robustly vulnerable. Meaning I will, when appropriate, tell you what I'm feeling, but you feel, I can manage it. I'm not going to fall apart. So I legitimize that. You, you're also allowed to feel. But it has to go in very little steps. But you have to know that everyone wants to be listened to. So if you are a leader transmitting, yes, I really can listen to you. You don't even have to say, you know, that's already a big relational energy field. Let's call it ecosystem. And then you find the little steps that, you know, invite people to be more authentic. If someone says, I don't want to tell you how I'm feeling, you respect that. So I understand. That's fine. Whoa. Uh, so I can be listened to even in that it's little steps. But I do know that cultures change dramatically when this starts to happen.

Speaker B: What changes do you see most often?

Speaker A: I see a totally different level of presence, energy, uh, motivation, purpose and fundamental satisfaction. Fundamental satisfaction. And we spend. People spend the majority of their lives at work. We deserve to have workplaces that otherwise, what is life? Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, when we get to the end of our. We know. We know more than enough about end of life data, uh, and research to know that the end of life, when we look back, we don't care how much money we make. We don't care how many deals we made. We care about how true we've been and the quality of relatedness in our life. There's massive data about that. And you know, a, uh, client of minor CEO client where we did an amazing 18 months of work and we're now, uh, good friends. She said something to me in where we talk quite often. And she said something that made us both stop. It was so powerful. She said, you know, Nicholas, I used to spend so much time and effort to get somewhere I didn't really want to be. I thought that was an extraordinary statement.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How many people are doing that? But that's. We know we're not talking about it being easy, but we're talking about it being meaningful, connected, energized and so on.

Speaker B: We're flirting a little bit with workplace well being. And I'd like to close with a couple of questions. Two questions I ask, uh, all of my guests, and the first one is what do you see as the greatest unmet well being need in the workplace today?

Speaker A: Emotional. The cultivation, uh, and welcoming of emotional authenticity. People being allowed to say how they're really feeling and being unconditionally met in that there is nothing wrong with feeling fear, frightened, sad. Yeah, I think without that you'll never have well being.

Speaker B: And last Nicholas, what does the phrase working with humans mean to you?

Speaker A: It means working with the full spectrum of who we are, and most workplaces in my quite extensive experience function on a very small spectrum of who we really are.

Speaker B: Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and subscribe to the show. It takes only a few seconds to do. And remember, there's a lot more insightful content waiting for you at en.peoplefocusedconsulting.com Happy listening.