Leading from the Heart. Short bites. Episode #13: Introduction of the group.

Before we start our conversation, let's begin as we always do with what I call a tour de table and have each of you tell us your name, what you do, and why you're interested in this topic. Try to be brief and keep it about under a minute. So why don't we begin with Runa? Yes, my name is Runa Báujess. I'm a former CEO and entrepreneur from Iceland. In Switzerland. Since I have been in the US, I have focused on leadership development and wellness, particularly growing conscious leaders, and also introducing new business models like the conscious capitalism model. And presently I'm involved in a project as a trustee council for a project called Coventina Foundation, It's a foundation that is going to be supporting and nurturing an ecosystem of startups that are creating the apps for our new economy on an open-source platform called Holochain, which is actually an alternative to blockchain. Holochain, very interesting. Thank you so much for being here. Mark?

Good morning. I think, you know, we're going to dig into this topic deeply, so I think my principal message is that I wrote a book called Lead from the Heart: Transformational Leadership for the 21st Century 9 years ago. And, you know, the interesting response to it was that education embraced it immediately and business resisted it immediately. And that traditionally is because we think that we need the smartest, the brainiest people for leadership, and we never bring the heart into leadership. And so never the twain shall meet. And the idea of leading from the heart has been so resistant because of our traditional values and beliefs about how we're supposed to get the best productivity out of people, that it's now, in my belief, the greatest gift that we've had, that I feel I've had, is the pandemic. Because as Chef Andres has said recently, you know, if this whole experience hasn't given you empathy, nothing will. And so it's opening up hearts. I mean that literally and figuratively. And so my argument is that we need to have this balance between the mind and heart. And historically, it's always been all mind and no heart. And so it's not lead all with the heart because that'll bring us just as much difficulty as where we're at today. But if we balance it out and we genuinely care about people, the incredible balance of that is that organizations and human beings end up thriving together. And this is the piece that, you know, I've been the Pied Piper for, for, you know, almost a decade now. And I'm feeling like we're at this moment where I'm looking forward to exploring this with you guys. But I really truly believe that this is the moment. This is the tipping point that I've been waiting for and hoping for for a really long time.

Well, super excited for you to be here. I can't believe you wrote this book 10 years ago. I can't wait to dive into this conversation.

Lisa, Yeah, so I guess where I'm coming from with this topic is I, first of all, I have my own podcast called Leadamorphosis, which feels kind of apt for this conversation. And so I'm having lots of conversations with people all around the world about how leadership needs to shift. You know, what's the paradigm shift that's needed in leadership and organizations? And how can we do that inner work as well as the work that needs to happen in our structures and systems and processes. So, so that's kind of a big thread of my learning. And other than that, I am an organizational self-management coach. So I spend my time working with teams and organizations that want to work without managers. And so that's an interesting notion as well. Like, what does leadership look like when there are no bosses? How do we create cultures that are leaderful and a different kind of leadership, which is kind of dynamic hierarchies and, you know, much more— yeah, a lot of it is about wholeness and leading from the heart, which is, you know, this topic that we're starting with as well. So, and then finally, I spend my time leading trainings, leadership trainings with people around the world with tough leadership training, which again is like, what are the mindset and skill set and ways of being pieces that we need to develop and practice together in a safe space in order to really level up in terms of our leadership for what's needed in the world now.

Thank you so much for being here. Excited to have you here. And finally, Patrick, if you want to introduce yourself.

Sure, Virginie. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to join you guys. Amazing group here. So I'm the founder of Trident Strategies. We are a leadership firm based out of Virginia, primarily serving Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. We do business development, executive leadership consulting, and tactical advisory. I am absolutely beyond fascinated with the lack of leadership in our modern corporations. Everything about it has a dramatic impact on how they operate, how effective they are, and it's, it's, it's mind-boggling how something like a pandemic was the tipping point, like everyone's saying, for that realization to kind of come into place. So I'm really looking forward to exploring what I've seen in DC out of companies here and learning from you guys in terms of how you are helping to fix it in your different pods and with your different clients. So it's an honor to be here, and I thank you very much, Virginie, for putting it together.

Great. Well, thank you so much, Patrick, for being here. So early January, I remember that we hosted an episode on ethical leadership. And artificial intelligence with Jonathan Cook. And I remember how excited I was to start 2020 with this topic. And because being originally from France, I grew up with this idea, which I still believe to this day, that Americans or true business leaders, really gifted with leadership skills from the ability to gather people around a mission to launching and executing project with brilliance. I also pointed out an interview from Yuval Noah Harari and Max Tegmark from the Future of Life Institute discussing artificial intelligence. And I took away from their conversation that morality and ethics have to be grounded in subjective experience, but more importantly, require consciousness. And consciousness as in the sense of our ability to feel. So today's topic might not be that far from ethics and consciousness since we're going to discuss how leaders can lead from their heart while navigating uncertainty. And as we— some of you have mentioned it— we are witnessing the devastating impact that the coronavirus has on people. We are also seeing it literally killing businesses. And yet it exposes the weakness of our system. And we're seeing new values emerging, which I call solidarity through corporate responsibility. But today we do have the data that shows that companies that look beyond shareholders' interest and aim to do well and do good at the same time, and integrate that specific purpose into their corporate culture, outperform their peers, grow faster, and deliver higher results. So Mark, why don't you lead us into this conversation? And perhaps you could start by just sharing your own understanding of what does it mean to lead from our heart?