15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership with Diana Chapman and Jim Dethmer
24 Jun 2023 · 45 min
This is a podcast episode (June 24, 2023) featuring Gay Hendricks and Mike Koenigs interviewing Diana Chapman and Jim Dethmer (co-founders of the Conscious Leadership Group) about their book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership and their work bringing conscious leadership practices into companies. Key topics: identifying and reducing organizational drama (drama tax, drama triangle), concrete tools (Teach Us the Class exercise, Facts vs Stories distinction, candor practices, vulnerability prompts), leader-first rollout and coaching (3–6 months), and measured payoffs (more energy, creativity/innovation, and connectivity). The guests describe how word-of-mouth and practical visual materials drive adoption and note the team size (~25). They also mention a forthcoming new book articulating the "rules" of conscious leadership.
Questions this episode answers
June 24, 2023
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership
Diana Chapman and Jim Dethmer
About 25
Chapters
How is drama showing up in your team?
Some people are playing some games and some people are playing others.
And then once we start to identify the pain points around drama, then we introduce them to these commitments that begin to change drama into real co creation and cooperation.
There's a whole other possibility for the innovation and the connectivity and the energy you can have. Those are the three payoffs that that organizations reliably say happen when they do our work.
No one would tell you the title of book, the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. Right.
Hi, Gay Hendricks here. And you guys are going to love this podcast today, I believe, because we're talking to two amazing people that are doing breakthrough work in the business world particularly. And one of my big takeaways is that basically you become unstoppable when you get your heart and your mind and your spirit lined up and you're really coming from a place of authenticity. That opens a big gateway for you. And our guest today, Diana and Jim, have really opened up an expertise in the area of bringing some pretty wild, radical.
Liberating concepts into the business world.
I was really, really moved today. One of the big takeaways I had was these two profound exercises. One's called ineffective training, at least that's the name I'm going to give it right now. And the other one is stories and facts. They're really, really good exercises to crack your consciousness. There's also a mention of victim, villain and hero, which really sounds like a fun exercise. And then this notion of creating word of mouth. What messages resonate best? Big, big lesson that I think you're going to be able to use yourself, but also have a massive aha experience for you. How about you, Diana?
Yeah, well, I like talking about what do you get when you let go of the drama? What are the big three payoffs? And I think that's always such a valuable thing. There are three things everybody wants and we'll talk about that in our time together here.
How about you, Jim?
Well, actually, the thing that hit me the most were Gay's words at the very end of what it is like to be lined up with your head, your heart, your gut, your soul, and your spirit. And that's really what our work is all about. What does it look like to be a fully aligned being in the world?
I promise you, this is one of our very, very best episodes. You're going to want to have a pad of paper or something to take notes with. There's so many great takeaways, things that you can use immediately in your business. In Your life, no matter where you are. So all that and more in this episode of the Big Leap.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Big Leap podcast. I'm Gay Hendricks, here with my cosmic buddy, Mike Koenigs. And today I'm really, really excited about what we've got going on because we're going to be talking today to a couple of my favorite people that I've known for a long time, and they have something they've really been doing in their genius zone, and we're going to hear all about it today. And, Mike, what's been happening in your world?
Well, just spent a fantastic weekend really close to you in beautiful Santa Barbara for the ATL event. I hung out with Jack Canfield. We had dinner last, actually the night before last.
Caught up with him. He's always a crazy, interesting, fascinated, curious man who just feels like he's such a combination of an old soul and a young soul. And of course, your good friend, Jim Selman.
Good. Yeah. That's one of many meetings I've skipped this year. I've been having myself on a homeopathic meeting diet for the last ten years or so. But I saw pictures of you guys over there. It was really fun to watch. Jack Canfield and I go so far back that I actually helped him get his first book published.
I got my little book, the Centering Book, published in the.
Early 70s. I became kind of a scout for that publishing company, Prentice hall, and they used to send me stacks of books. And one of them I came across was Jack's book. And so I always nudge him and say, you owe it all to me.
Oh, that's great. Well, you and he are such interesting guys because you've been in this business so long, the world of consciousness and.
Conscious leadership. It's always good just to reflect back. And I'm super excited for our guests today because they're all about conscious leadership.
Yeah. Well, let me introduce them. I want to introduce first Diana Chapman, who's been a good friend of ours for many, many years. And, Diana, I'm going to let you introduce yourself a little bit in a moment. And I also want to introduce everybody to Jim Dethmer, who's also been a great friend of mine for many years and a fello, a golf buddy. We've known each other since I was a 22 handicap, and then I went down to a 12 handicap and then I had my knee replaced and I'm back to an 18 now. But throughout it all, I've been out on the golf course and often When I'm out there, Jim, I. I think of you because I remember our times together out here. So I'm going to just say that these two folks have created a remarkable vehicle called the Conscious Leadership Group. And what they're doing is. I'll have them explain it, but they're doing something really wonderful in also.
Systematizing some things like how to work with people in their genius zone and how to help people overcome their upper limit problems. And I'm always retweeting things they've done or forms they've created or I especially have loving. Lately Diana's sort of zen like quotes about conscious business and things like that. I've been retweeting those like mad. So let me have you introduce yourselves one at a time. Diana, tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came up with this wild idea of the Conscious Leadership Group. And then I'll flip over to Jim and have him do the same thing.
Well, I got one of the greatest gifts of my life in 1997, which was a check for $5,000. And my sister in law and brother in law, her husband said, you can do whatever you want to do with the money, but if I were you, I would fly over to California and get to a Hendrix training. So I said, why not? Let's do it. And I can remember it felt like somebody turned a switch on inside of me like a light switch. Everything came multicolor. And I remember thinking, this seems criminal, that all these ideas and models and concepts on how to be living a life free of drama are so secret. I didn't know about these things. And so I remember thinking at that first training, I'm going to spend the rest of my life figuring out how I can make these concepts more broadly available to the world at large. And that was the catalyst for me to co found the Conscious Leadership Group with Jim. And it's our purpose in life to take the material we learned from you gay and from a few other folks and turn it into digestible material that the business world can take in and create a lot less drama there.
I am so happy to see you guys doing that because you're doing all the things that I love to see somebody else do.
I spent many hours and days and months trotting corporate.
Halls back in the 80s and early 90s and boardrooms and things like that. And I'm really so glad to have another generation out there doing these things because they are incredibly valuable. Well, Jim, how about you, sir? Great.
So the story that's relevant here begins just 20 years ago or so when my wife Debbie said, hey, I'd like to go to a couple's weekend. And she holds up one of your books. Gay. And we end up going out to Ojai and. And going to a weekend. What was magical about the weekend, amongst many things, is one of the first people I met at the weekend before meeting you and Katie was Diana. She was already enrolled in your apprentice program and Debbie and I were just showing up and it was hilarious story because here we were, a couple of fairly traditional midwestern folks beginning to kind of voyage off into this world of consciousness. And the apprentice group was having what was called a Persona party, where you find one of your little selves that's active in your life and then you dress up as that self and you come to a party and you play it out. We've done dozens of them. Wildly fun, entertaining, incredibly.
Deep learning occurs. Well, I met Diana first when she was in Persona, dressed up. I think she had a pig nose on, but I'm not positive. And a fast friendship commenced that weekend. And then it was that weekend as well, Gay. That I met you and Katie and began what has been a lifelong devotion to being a conscious leader and bringing these things to the business world. One of our geniuses, Diana and mine, we believe is communicating these transformational principles in a way that business people get it. So we can kind of say it in words and with illustrations that they get. And that's really been the backbone of what we're up to. We say that our purpose is to support the expansion of conscious leadership in the world. Another way of saying that is we want to really end suffering on the planet. And our target is hard edged corporate leaders, business people. So that's what we're up to. That's how it all started for me.
I'm really so happy to see you all doing that. And one of the things I was mentioning I've most admired is how you've turned things into really simple, powerful, short learning materials that are really fun to look at visually and they have a tremendous amount of information on each area. And by the way, viewers and listeners get on the conscious leadership group's social media channels because they put out absolutely wonderful things, things that you can just take off the screen and use that day. And also I want to put in a big plug for the book and so tell us a little bit about how the book came to be and what that's doing for you and how you guys did that and the title.
Of it and all of that.
Yeah.
We wrote the 15 commitments of conscious Leadership. And the first few commitments we actually got because you and Katie wrote them. And we thought these are such great commitments. And we were working with some leaders who said, well, tell us more about what it looks like to really take radical responsibility and where can we read more about that? And so we thought, well, maybe we should map that territory a little bit. And so we. The 15 seemed like a lot, but we thought thorough and really covers all of what it means to live in a state of trust versus a state of threat. And we particularly put all of these concepts to illustration through business examples so people in the business world could see how they play out and. Yeah. Anything else you want to say about that, Jim?
Just that when we first wrote the book, unlike you, Gay, we hadn't set a life goal to write book after book after book. I'd written one book before that, but we kind of thought, we're going to write one book. So let's say everything we know about the subject of conscious leadership. Because if you go to anybody who knows anything, no one would tell you to title a book the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.
Right.
It's the seven habits of highly effective people or the five dysfunctions of a team. You want five, four, three, two, one. Not 15. But it was because we really thought this is everything we know about the subject. And it was when we wrote it.
Well, 15 actually probably works pretty well out in the business world because they want more. They don't want just seven habits.
That's right. They're always asking, what else you got? What else you got? So we gave them such a full meal that they don't ask for more.
Yeah. So I've got.
I've got a question. Oh, go ahead. Yay.
No, go ahead. I was just gonna.
Okay, well, here's. I always love case studies, use cases and.
And transformations. So I'm curious about two things, which is some strategies that create.
The conscious conversation in the first place and where you have found people get the greatest set of business results. So just like the results, outcomes, benefits, at the same time you see a dramatic shift in consciousness. So if you're going to crisscross between that XY and when you see a noticeable shift in a founder, owner, leader, and you meet them one day and then it could be a week or a month or a year later and you're like, what happened to you? I want some of whatever that is.
What comes to mind. And I'd be curious if each of you have a use case or A. A story, a little transformational story you could share.
Well, I'll tell you one of the tools that we use that gets some of the most traction, which is a tool we call Teach us the class. And it looks like this. The leader comes in and complains about something going on in their workplace. Maybe my COO is not as effective as I would like. So in fact, my COO has been specifically ineffective. So we say, teach us a course. We want our COO to be ineffective like your COO is. Ooh, what should we do to make sure we create exactly the same pattern that you're complaining about right now? And at first they go, wait, what? I, this, I didn't make this happen. We, and we just say, well, just entertain us for a minute. What have you done that's in your control to create this outcome? And very quickly, people who haven't even spent very much time at all with us can immediately jump in and say, well, you know, I can see I've done this and I didn't do this, and I said this and I didn't feel this. And suddenly they've got a whole set of, you know, top steps to take if you too want a dysfunctional coo.
Oh, that's genius. That's really genius. I love that.
Because everyone can complain and find fault and what a soul mirror. You know, I'd be like, oh, yeah.
And then we say, you know, you don't need a coach or a therapist. You've got a list here. Go do opposite of everything you just said and you're going to go create your functional coo. And so when they apply that right away there's something people say like, I can't see the world the same anymore. When I, when I see that I can teach a course on everything I.
Complain about, it's unbelievably genius and non obvious. And it takes the, almost takes the blame off of you so you don't feel responsible for that. And God, everything about that psychologically is brilliant. So thanks, that was a gift of gifts.
And Jim?
Yeah. I'm curious.
Let me. You asked Mike, how do we get the conversation going? What's the entry point? And there are many ways in, but a common one for us is we'll be talking to a leader of an organization and we'll just ask them, you know, how is drama showing up in your team or in your organization? And that's a great one because you don't need to spend a lot of time defining drama. Everybody gets it like that. And then we Start talking to them about what drama is costing them. We call it a drama tax. We actually have a little assessment that an individual or a team can take where they start to look at the drama tax, the price they're paying for being in drama in their organization. And then once we start to identify the pain points around drama, then we introduce them to these commitments that begin to change drama into real co creation and cooperation. One of those commitments, the fourth one, is on candor. And this is a hot button in organizations because people will say that they want candor, but then when you look under the hood, you find out there's all kinds of gossip going on and people not being direct and people not being fully revealed. So we've created a whole suite of tools around how to bring candor in an organization. And one that gets incredible traction. That's very simple, is we ask teams to make a distinction between facts and, and stories. And one of the things we say, it's not new to us. It's been said many times, facts never cause drama. All of the drama in your team or your organization are caused by your stories, and you're the source of your stories. So we'll literally put a whiteboard in front of a room, we'll pick a hot issue in the team, and we'll say, okay, let's just get all the facts up on the whiteboard. And facts are just simply what a video camera would record. And, and we just list them one by one by one. Does everybody stipulate to the facts? Yep, those are the facts. And then we say, okay, now let's fill the other side of the board with all the stories we're all making up about the facts. And we tell teams that the more you get the stories out, you don't hold them in, you get them out. The more possibility you have to resolve the issues and to end the drama. So this great distinction between facts and stories, stories are made up by these little minds of ours. And then we teach teams how to hold their stories lightly. It's my story, but can I hold it lightly? Instead of like a dagger that I want to stab you with or that I need to be right about, Can I hold it lightly with curiosity and wonder even, can I see how the opposite of my story could be true? And when everybody starts doing that, the amount of space that opens up in the room and in the team to look at new possibilities or new ways to create different outcomes is profound and palpable. So the fact story distinction in the realm of candor is another Tool that clients really love.
I've got a commentary on that if it's okay. Gay. Just a distinction here. Okay again, genius. Brilliant. So I was watching a. I don't know if you've seen this. Bill Maher has a podcast now and it's.
It'S the random show, I believe is what he calls it or random podcast. And what he. On the latest episode, at least the one that I saw, was him with Deepak Chopra. And of course Bill is this staunch atheist and anti religion of all sorts. And Deepak and he are having a pretty fierce argument in Deepak's explaining to him how he's in his fourth quarter of life, he's 76 years old and preparing for his death. And.
Bill is appalled by that. And he is talking about his version of reality and he's just projecting all over Deepak and Deepak saying it's all a dream and every memory you have is just a dream. And.
The times when you're most awake and most conscious is when you wake up temporarily from the dream and realize you're. You're in a dream. And but the way he story tells you really get this very profound sense in as, as articulate as he is, as nuanced as he is, and really see how much that is true, how our stories define us. And, and Tony Robbins always says we're all meaning making machines. I love that, that frame and that phrase. So back to you, Gay.
Yeah. What does a typical engagement with you guys look like? Does it start with a one on one or do you do groups or how does that all unfold typically?
Well, if we have a company that wants to come and work with us, we always say the leader goes first. So we coach that CEO or founder or president first for a few months to make sure they really want to play this game of conscious leadership. And if so, then we'll drip it down first with the executive team and make sure they really have it anchored. And then we take it down into the organization more broadly. And we're very careful about that. We have learned that how you bring it and onboard it into an organization is really important. And we also do work with people who just want some one on one support and they're not interested in bringing into the organizations or they don't have the decision rights to do that. And we also lead forums in which we bring groups of leaders together and we come and practice together in like a dojo where we all get to be very experimental with these models and so people can build their skills in a Group setting.
Okay. We learned that lesson the hard way about making the leader go first and commit to usually three to six months of one on one coaching. Because we went into a couple of large organizations, 12, 15,000 team members, and we would start with the senior team and we'd get them going a little bit, they'd be so excited. Then we'd start to roll it down through the organization. And it wasn't very long before people one or two layers down in the organization would say, this stuff that we're learning is fantastic. Like this whole idea of ending blame and criticism and just really taking responsibility. The only problem is my boss doesn't do it. They're advocating it, but not doing it. And it just really created a massive split in the organization because the people on the team are seeing the efficacy of these things and wanting to do it. And their leaders weren't fully on board. So now we're very, very careful and systematic, quite frankly, about how we get people eating the food before they serve it to anybody else in the organization.
That's really a key distinction. I've also done it both ways myself. And it makes things so much easier if the person at the top and the top two or three people have a real sense of what you're up to. I also was impressed by how you've taken a concept into corporations that I've been teaching for years and years and years. But I've found it difficult to introduce to certain types of people. And that is the whole concept of the drama triangle. How people go for the victim position and cast the other person as a perpetrator. And I wonder, how have you guys finessed that? So you get that to be a palatable kind of thing that people can digest in the boardroom or the halls of the company.
Yeah, it's one of the very first things we introduce when we work with somebody is this idea of are you above or below the line? And if you're below the line, you're in a state of victimhood, which then puts you right smack in the drama triangle. And they get it. It's actually surprisingly obvious to them where they are in the drama triangle. And they see how they are in it, others are in it. And one of the things that we do is we really ham it up. We tell them, get in here and make it a soap opera and see if we can make this funny. Because it is a little funny. All this drama. It's tragic too, but funny. And so it's the humor, I think, that we bring to the model that makes it digestible for folks.
Yeah, that helps to get it into the system a little easier.
Yeah, yeah. We also say to the leader, make sure you bring a really juicy topic that is vulnerable for you. And when that leader, you know, people in the room go, whoa, they're going to talk about that. Then it helps everybody else open up and get more vulnerable.
And like, you're saying, Diane, you know, this, that the. The concept of the drama triangle, that there are people sitting in the victim vase base. Poor me. I'm at the effect of people in the villain base, trying to figure out who's going to get blamed. Myself, the other, the collective, and people who are trying to rescue or relieve the tension, they get it. You know, it's not a. It's not like a difficult concept to get. All you have to do is say, just, you know, watch your favorite nightly news and, you know, or. Or just get on your computer and get on social media. You' drama triangle becomes apparent instantly. So then they get the concept. Okay, that's great. And then we say, now pick a real problem. We always do this. Pick a real problem that's going on on your team. And sometimes you'll give them a gentle on ramp. Like, we have a very simple handout that says, here's what words are going on in your head and coming out of your mouth when you're in the victim space. Here are the words when you're in the villain space, here are the words when you're in the hero space. Before we invite them to embody it and stand up, we might just say, just take a piece of paper and just write down. Do you hear any of these words in your thinking or coming out of your mouth? Or are you hearing them in the team and now they're starting to go, oh, yeah. Oh, got it. Okay, got it, got it, got it. But the big shift occurs when they're willing to take the responsibility of locating themselves. And in the drama triangle, this is why we do it physically. We put the bases on the floor because there's something about standing up out of your chair, walking over around the issue. Let's say we missed our quarterly sales target walking over around the issue and stepping into the triangle on one of the bases and starting to speak from there. And then one of the ways we exaggerated make it fun with a team. We'll take an issue like that and then we'll take turns getting in the drama triangle. From my perspective around why this is the way it is, and that can be really edgy for some teams and then start to become really enlightening and ultimately really fun.
How do people usually get hold of you? Do they read your book first or how do they get in the door, so to speak?
Yeah, I think reading our book is one way. But honestly, in our work, word of mouth is probably one of the key ways we get business. And now that used to be from leader to leader, but now it is happening by being on podcasts like this. And something's starting to resonate for people inside, and they say, I don't know, I haven't heard this before, and I'm excited. But mostly, if you're going to bring a group in to work with your culture, you want to know who's done this and who could I trust that says this works? So word of mouth helps a lot.
Definitely. Yeah. Very good.
I've got two questions.
And the first is questions that create the fastest path to vulnerability. I want to precede this with a tiny story, which was I recently held a mastermind that was focused on longevity.
Marketing, and then money. And we got to money day and someone in my group who, if you'd meet him, your perception would be super successful. He's done remarkable things, lots of stage time affected tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of kids in particular and adults. And he began and opened up with him saying, I have a negative net worth and I'm old enough now. I don't feel as though I'm going to be able to catch up. And not only was it surprising, but it was so raw and real, it created absolute permission for everyone else to open up. So whoever is the most authentic and vulnerable first creates permission for everyone else to feel safe. So I'm curious from both of your perspectives, if there's an exercise or a question or a series of questions that open and invite that absolute, raw, unexpected vulnerability.
Well, I'll give you a couple of very kind of specific questions we'll use now. It depends on the setting, but we'll frame what vulnerability is. We'll talk about it a little bit, we'll will model it just like you're talking about. And then if it's, let's say, a group of six to 10 people, we're sitting around in a circle. This wouldn't be our first question, but soon in, we'll have everybody complete this sentence. If you were to really know me, you'd know blank.
Sometimes we just start. If it's a new group, we might start with, if you were to know me, you'd know blank. And then the Next one might be if you were to, to really know me, you'd know blank. Everybody goes around and you can just see it's like buddy breathing, you know, when we're below the surface of the water, we're just kind of seeing, okay, Gay said that, Mike said that I'll take a little more risk. Then the next round is what I don't want you to know about me is blank. And then the next round is what I really don't want you to know about me is blank. And again, we're very clear, Mike. At the beginning we say you get to, you know, we're, we're going to kind of gently get into the pool together. You can just take off one sock. You don't have to get totally naked and skinny dip right away. Just find your edge, is the way we say it, and just go maybe 10% more with one of those questions. And I want to tell you, like, we've done this dozens and dozens and dozens of times with groups of people. It's not uncommon that after our initial hour and a half, 90 minute session with people, they'll say, you know, I'm more known by this circle than I am by most of the people that are in my life. And I know these people better than I know most of the people. So those are four little sentence stem completions that we do. If we want to go into the deep end of the podcast pool and we don't do this unless it's a forum, we'll do a fact and story thing where we'll say we want you to write down the list of numbers. And the numbers can include things like your age, your weight, your number of sexual partners, your net worth, those kinds of things. Now, again, this is a fairly new group of people, all peers, and at first they just look like, you got to be kidding me. I've spent my entire life hiding what those numbers are. And then when they say them, a follow up exercise would be, what stories are you making up about the numbers? Because the numbers are just numbers. But again, at the end of that, people feel so.
Relieved to be witnessed in the truth of what they are, especially around stuff that they've made such a big, big deal for so long. So that'd be a starting point for some of these things we do with people.
That's amazing. The liberating power of authenticity. There was a famous study by a psychologist down at California Lutheran University, and he took a whole group of students and all he had them do was, was four days of journaling for 15 minutes about how their life was going and what was going on in their life. So one hour of journaling and then he followed the students throughout the year and he found that the ones who had journaled had less visits to the campus health center than the ones, the control group that hadn't done any journaling. And I mean, if an hour of just writing out the truths about your life can do that, imagine what something like you guys are talking about, because being able to share feelings and thoughts and things like that in real time is a really an acid test, I think, of your ability to have a successful life.
Yeah, that makes so much sense. Just I've spent the entire day working with CEOs who are dealing with the Silicon Valley bank collapse. And so people, every person has started up the call and they, each one looks like they've been through the wringer. And so one of the very first things we do is, how are you feeling? And can you let that move all the way through your body? And more feelings today than I've had been with in a long time with all these folks. And reliably, they all said the same thing at the end of the call, which was, I feel so much more alive now getting all of those feelings that I had no idea how scared I was, how sad I was, how angry I was. So I can imagine if those folks kept all that down, how that's going to affect them in their physical and emotional well being.
Really. Well, what's next for you folks at the Conscious Leadership Group and you all personally?
Yeah, we are, we're starting to articulate what does it take? We want to think about Conscious Leadership like a game. Like if you were learning to play softball, you know, there are rules of softball and nobody says like, oh, that's so controlling that you have to hit the ball this way or that this is a foul. Everybody just agrees like, okay, these are the rules of the game. And what we see in organizations is that some people are playing some games and some people are playing others. And so what we want to do is articulate what are the rules of the Conscious Leadership game. That if we all agreed upon these rules, we would have so much less drama and free up all that energy to be in our zones of genius and be highly creative and have a lot of play. And so we're focusing on our. What is the clear articulation of that? What would we have to all commit to? What were the agreements we would have to make so that we would all be playing on the same field together?
I'M sensing a new book maybe in your future.
It is. That is the new book we are writing.
All right, well, fantastic. Well, I know your first book, the 15 Commitments book, has had a huge impact out there in the world, and I'm so, so happy to see that. Anything else you'd like to add before we kind of fold up shop for the day?
I've got one question, if I can, and it will be a gift for both of you, if it's all right, and that is if you. You had mentioned earlier about how your best business comes from word of mouth. So if you were going to think about, and this is a question for both of you, what message resonates best with your perfect audience that has created the most word of mouth? And I'm asking you that because I selfishly am curious what the answer is, but also because it's your opportunity to create the most resonant message that might create the most action for you.
It's a great question.
Well, two things.
I think for leaders in organizations and teams, it would be something like this. We get that drama is natural and normal.
Second, drama is toxic. And third, drama is actually optional.
You can really live a drama free life. And when you do, the game is so damn much fun. So that would be for teams and organizations, something like that. And then for me, I'm, you know, I'm in that fourth stage of life that gets talked about, that retirement to the forest, you know, that forest dweller. Forest dweller. And so when it comes to individuals, the individuals that I coach now are. It would be this. You've done everything you thought you needed to do to be happy and free, and you're not.
Then I'd say, let's have a conversation.
Oh, those are the men and women that I want. I'm up here in my cabin in the northern part of Michigan, and it's snowy out and cold, and right out that door is the forest. And I would just say to all those men and women, just come walk in the forest with me.
Damn. How about you, Diana?
I think similar to Jim, but I like to say, imagine if you freed up all of the energy that you put into the drama that you have in your life.
If you were to free up all of that energy, what would you do with it? And especially in an organization, what would you as a group want to do with all that freed up energy and give them a little time to think about that, and they start going, wow, we could do this. We could do this. And they get so lit up that that vision starts to get them motivated to say, wow, we'll have some discomfort learning about conscious leadership to be able to create this. That. Because that, to Jim's point, that's more fun. So we like to say there's a whole other possibility for the innovation and the connectivity and the energy you can have. Those are the three payoffs that organizations reliably say happen when they do our work. We have more energy, we think more creatively, and we're more connected to one another. And I think almost everybody wants that.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for sharing these things. As I've said, I really appreciate what you're doing and love to see it proliferate and how many folks work for you guys now and then in the larger space of your organization?
I think we're about 25 folks now. Maybe a few more than that. Yeah.
All right.
Unlike you, Gay, you know, I heard you say you want to simplify your life down to as few people as possible because of all the lessons you learned. We haven't quite learned it yet. We're still. But I would say this. This is really important. From the very beginning, when Diana and I started, it's all about what supports our aliveness, our fun, and our playfulness. So our team are all highly curated. They're all playing the same game. So it's fun, it's enlivening. There's zero drama in the space, so we're able to leverage, I believe, the cooperation of some highly gifted people.
Well, may it continue. So, Diana Chapman and Jim Dethmer, founders of the Conscious Leadership Group Group, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your big leaps and your willingness to talk from the heart about what you're up to. And there's so much material. We could have you guys on for another two or three hours. So let's. Let's put a pin in it for when the new book comes out. How's that?
Yeah, we would love that. Thank you so much for having us.
What a treat. So I want to double everything Gay said. This was an unexpected delight. I didn't know what to expect when I was researching you and looking at your materials going, wonder what, where this is going to go. But I. I felt like we were playing a game together. And I can see how you make this.
Deep consciousness and leadership fun when we live in a world of landmines right now. There are. There are so many of them. And I know I would love to.
Have this in your work, in my life. And I can see how it fits into any organization right now. Just navigating the complexities that any leader has to deal with. So thank you. Thank you very much. And anything else before we wrap up and I'll close out the podcast.
Yeah. I just wanted to, as individuals, Diana and Jim, I just wanted to celebrate you for your integration of mind, body and spirit. It's really comes through that you're in touch with your hearts and your minds and the big why of what you're up to here on this planet. So blessings to you for getting that lined up.
Okay.
And I will. Oh, go ahead. Anything you wanted to say? I'm sorry.
Just want to say thank you and thank you for all the ways you had a part to play in that game.
My pleasure.
Very good. Well, I know that your website is Conscious is, which is a fantastic domain name by the way. I love that. And I'll make sure that links to your book are in the podcast notes and of course, links to your site. So. And of course, there are plenty of notes that I took on the show that'll be in the description copy as well. So it'll make it easy to look at and be able to use the tools that you shared today. So with that, what I'd encourage you as our listener, as our viewer today, make sure you head on over, invest in Diana and Jim's book. Of course. And the second thing is, if you've enjoyed this, please share it with someone because the best thing for this podcast is word of mouth and sharing it with people you love, you care about, you know, need the support and help. And of course, we always appreciate your comments and your 5 star reviews on Apple podcasts or if you're watching this on podcast or on YouTube. God, I am having a day with my mouth today.
Give us a thumbs up. It'll help the algorithm and help great people find this show. And on behalf of Gay and me, thank you so much for listening and watching and thank you so much today. Diana and Jim.
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