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Exploring how humans connect and get stuff done together, with Dan Hammond and Pia Lee from Squadify.
We need groups of humans to help navigate the world of opportunities and challenges, but we don't always work together effectively. This podcast tackles questions such as "What makes a rockstar team?" "How can we work from anywhere?" "What part does connection play in today's world?"
You'll also hear the thoughts and views of those who are running and leading teams across the world.
[00:00:00] Dan: The pressure is really on leaders right now, and that's not just because of a shortage of role models. Getting more done with less in a complex and changing world over the long term can drain your resources, and let's face it, lead to some unhelpful behaviors. So how do you keep your tanks full?
[00:00:16] Dan: Our guest on We Not Me this week, author and coach Yosi Amram has helped hundreds of Silicon Valley founders and others to tap into spiritual leadership to stay on their game for themselves, their teams, and their families. It may sound a bit woo woo, but it's just what's needed right now.
[00:00:32] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We Not Me, the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.
[00:00:43] Pia: And I am p Lee. You can hear something chirping, can't you?
[00:00:47] Dan: We can hear something chirping. It's the your go on. Tell us the story. What's chirping in the background today?
[00:00:53] Pia: This is our little duckling, this, it's two and a half weeks old. And, um, because of the storm that we had this cyclone, its potential sibling didn't make it 'cause we incubated the eggs so it's on its own. and now sees us as the family, which has probably got nothing, nothing to do with the fact that we cud it
[00:01:10] Dan: No. No, of course not. And, and it's worth saying from the podcast standpoint that if anyone was waiting, for this episode to drop last Friday, um, it's dropping a week late because the cyclone took your power out for a week,
[00:01:25] Pia: yes. Just got it back after eight days. So we didn't have any mobile or um. Power, um, for a substantial period of time. The winds weren't so bad, but they just, they, they did wreak quite, they just felled a lot of trees and that landed on the power lines. And then 300,000 people lost, lost power.
[00:01:46] Pia: And, and we were one of the last ones, you know, because I think it was just where you are, where you live and where you are on the list to get it back. So I am. I am marveling at the electricity now,
[00:01:57] Dan: Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, it's, it's when you, when you are deprived of it, you realize, you know, people laugh about first world problems, but when they hit, you've got, uh, you've got real issues. And, but, um, the other thing that's been going on in the last couple of weeks is utter craziness. And at the risk of sort of time stamping this episode,
[00:02:15] Pia: the thing is, it might keep happening, so there's probably no
[00:02:17] Dan: I know it could be anytime. I know. Yeah. I, I'm sure there's no end to this, but the chaos that is being wreaked by, uh, president Trump, um, and his entourage, the sort of perpetual domination, as they promised they would do, they're flooding the zone. So every day, um, we wake up to new sort of random news and, um, new things reversed. Decisions randomly made decisions. Siding, I, I, I almost wept with that, uh, that when I saw that meeting in the White House with, um, with Zelensky, it's just to see that level of
[00:02:56] Dan: just
[00:02:57] Dan: off.
[00:02:57] Pia: and it's interesting because to think about our guest today, who's going to talk, you know, completely at end of the spectrum, this is sort of, Yossi is gonna talk about inside out leadership. And this was outside in, um, there was an interesting article written by a journalist here in Australia likening that meeting to, um, called a struggle, A struggle meeting.
[00:03:18] Pia: And it's a tactic deployed in, in. Communist regimes to denounce, belittle and reduce the power of the person that you are speaking to. So that was actually quite interesting and, and he likened that, that the actual approaches that they did, um, to that and, um, perhaps Zelensky realized the trap that he was in, and that's why he pulled the exit cord.
[00:03:42] Dan: Yes, indeed, indeed. But as you say, our guest on the show today is approaching things in the other direction. I think it's, it's just a, it's a very deep topic, this actually, and, um, I've certainly, after I. Um, talking to him, have listened to his book. I've downloaded some of his materials.
[00:04:00] Dan: 'cause it, I think it's, it's really quite profound. So we'll revisit this at the end of the show, but Jossi Amra, um, is a spiritual leadership coach. And, um, we'll let's, let's go over and hear from him now because this is it's profound and I think it's really needed in our times.
[00:04:22] Pia: And a really warm welcome to Yosi Amram.
[00:04:25] Yosi: Thank you. Thank you. I'm, uh, enjoying your smiles and a little humor we've exchanged so far, just.
[00:04:31] Pia: That's fantastic. So you know
[00:04:33] Dan: It gets, it gets worse from here.
[00:04:34] Pia: I know exactly and, um, and Yosi, we are looking forward to having a conversation with you about spiritual intelligent leadership, and hearing about your book, of the same title. But there's a bit of a drill, you know, this. So before, before we get into your world, Dan takes you to the chambers and asks you, um, a, a question
[00:04:54] Dan: And I'm, I'm disappointed because I've been watching Yosi on, uh, LinkedIn a fair bit, and I thought this guy, uh, he is very centered, he's mindful, he's very smart, he's intelligent. I, I think he could take a red card. No problem. You've got a green card, Yosi of all and it's, and it is this. the job I will be, would be terrible at. What, what sort of job would you be terrible at? Yosi.
[00:05:21] Yosi: Oh my God. I would be the, I gave myself this title for my new website. I'm the chief bottle washer for baby bottles, so pretty mad at it. I didn't get bored, but, um, what else?
[00:05:36] Dan: That's fine. The ba, the bottle washer. Well, I suspect we will find a little, a few things where you've at least specialized or maybe moved away from something that, uh, um, that you wouldn't be that great at.
[00:05:48] Yosi: As a painter, I wouldn't be so great. I paint like a 5-year-old, you know, still like with those, uh, crayon sticks, that's my level, my level of painting ability. Yeah.
[00:06:00] Dan: How do you know that Most adults don't even know how they paint.
[00:06:03] Yosi: Well, I, I once in a while still get inspired to do something, like I have an experience and I do a creative expression to capture the feeling, and it still has my feeling tone. It reminds me of it, but I would, I wouldn't wanna share it with anybody or give them the misery of trying to look at it.
[00:06:21] Pia: It, it does remind me actually, we, we went to a New Year's Eve party where, which had sort of equal amounts of adults and children and we were all given, a canvas and an easel. And oils and we were had to pick a name out of the hat of somebody else in the room that we had to paint.
[00:06:41] Pia: and there was no difference between the kids who were like. Nine and 10. And the adults, They were, they were about the same standard. We all realized we hadn't done any painting for a very long time, but it was great. Great. We all have photos taken with, with a, with a, you know, the person
[00:06:58] Dan: with the person you, your portrait. Perfect.
[00:07:01] Pia: was such a great thing. It was great.
[00:07:03] Yosi: yeah, you were playful and creative. That's awesome.
[00:07:06] Dan: That's brilliant and it sounds like you are as well, you'll see. So tell us a little bit more about you, your bio in a box. I, I've heard a little bit about this on, on my travels on LinkedIn, but, uh, tell me how you got to this place today.
[00:07:18] Yosi: Uh, I, uh, I started my journey in leadership in the Israeli Air Force, like all Israeli young men. I was drafted into mandatory service. I was a math and science nerd. Shy and pacifist, but still I had to do my duty.
[00:07:34] Yosi: I. Still, I, um, surprised myself and I had the fastest promotion record in the history of my regimen, won all these leadership awards, but despite excelling at it, uh, the military command and control model really chafed my soul. And that became a driving force to someday build an organization based on more humane values that help facilitate each individual's.
[00:07:58] Yosi: Growth in a community, in a team environment, and that led me to come to the US and study engineering and business, et cetera, and then became a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. I can go a lot more into that story. This was before the internet. The company was called Individual. You would get Dan or P's Morning newspaper on your fax machine.
[00:08:19] Yosi: It was custom tailored to you. We had self-learning, self-learning agents based on your feedback, et cetera. So the name individual was. Stood for the concept of personalized interactive media, but it also stood for organizational philosophy that facilitate, aim to facilitate the growth and self-actualization of each employee.
[00:08:40] Yosi: And I was very driven and passionate and worked 70, 80 hours a week at it. And then the internet came and it was clear that our business model is gonna have to be redone. Our everything we were offering on a paid basis was gonna be become free on the internet. I became terrified with fear. We had raised tens of millions of dollars from the top venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.
[00:09:04] Yosi: We had corporate partners. There was a lot of pressure and I just froze and, uh, went into depression. I had, I. Dark, knighted the soul. I persisted and turned the company into an internet company. We were high flying. We went public. Our stock price was rising, and I was trying to relax and one day I was getting a massage, and in the midst of it, I was so relaxed that my ego dissolved and I had what?
[00:09:29] Yosi: Spiritual circles called an awakening experience where my sense of separate self dissolved and I felt my interconnectedness with everything. And, um, but that threw me into a manic episode because it blew the circuits of my mind and it freaked, uh, everybody around me, including my wife, my team, my board, my board put me.
[00:09:51] Yosi: Put me on the leave of absence, which was a huge trauma because my, the company was my lifelong dream and baby. But you know, that was a blessing in disguise. I was pushed down. Our stock price got cut in half. It wasn't good for my pocketbook, but that led changed the direction of my life where I then became a clinical psychologist.
[00:10:10] Yosi: I wanted to understand myself. I wanted to know why was I so identified with the business, what was behind that? To have burnt myself out and get into a depression. And then was this experience of oneness or no, no ego, no self, everything, you know, made of consciousness, interconnected. Was that a delusion or was that a real thing?
[00:10:34] Yosi: So that led me to study spirituality and psychology, and led me to develop spiritual intelligence. And then look at. How that contributes to leadership, and my research highlighted that leaders who have higher spiritual intelligence. Lead teams with greater morale, higher commitment, lower turnover, follow on research by others, showed that such leaders produce better financial results for their organizations and so on.
[00:10:59] Yosi: So since then, my research has been cited a thou over a thousand times, and there's a. Ever-growing body of research across cultures and languages that shows that spiritual intelligence contributes to lots of good positive outcomes, like satisfaction with life, quality of life, greater meaning resilience, mental health, and so on.
[00:11:19] Dan: I, I wonder if we could start with a little definition. When you talk about spiritual intelligence, what are you talking about?
[00:11:25] Yosi: Yeah. Okay. Well, spiritual intelligence kind of parallels emotional intelligence. So, what people ask, how is it different? What is it related? So you might have heard the term, what is emotional intelligence is the ability to draw on emotional resources and information to help manage emotions, yours and others.
[00:11:43] Yosi: What is spiritual intelligence? The ability to draw on. Spiritual resources and qualities and embody them in daily life in a way that enhances functioning and wellbeing. So you ask, what are those? These are things like purpose, service, trust, gratitude, humility, integrity, and and so on. These are. Qualities that have been hailed as virtues by all the world's traditions across millennia from Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, shamanism.
[00:12:16] Yosi: So my research highlighted these common. Qualities, which now have been actually identified in the field of positive psychology with people like Marty Seligman, and they developed this thing called character strengths or value in actions. They have 24 qualities that, um, they had discovered contribute to positive psychology in our wellbeing.
[00:12:38] Yosi: Well. In my research, spiritual intelligence and my scale academically validated measure, identify 22 qualities of spiritual intelligence that I named a few and over half of the two lists overlap. So, um, similarly in the field of leadership development, a study by Bain and Company, one of the top management consulting in the world looked at what leads.
[00:13:05] Yosi: To inspiring leadership and inspired employees. And inspired employees are twice as productive as just people that are going about doing their jobs, and they identify 33 qualities that lead to inspiring leadership. It has to do with servanthood and centeredness and presence and compassion and listening, all of which again, map very closely to these qualities of spiritual intelligence.
[00:13:31] Yosi: So what I'm trying to highlight is that ancient wisdom before modern science, thousands of years in these spiritual traditions, talked about these virtues of compassion, service, uh, forgiveness, gratitude, and so on. Modern psychology, positive psychology speaks of the same virtues, and then modern leadership theory also highlights them.
[00:13:53] Yosi: So there's a convergence across all of these. Uh, but so I've kind of gone beyond what is spiritual intelligence, but spiritual intelligence, the ability to draw on and embody these spiritual qualities and virtues that have been hailed by all the world's traditions.
[00:14:08] Pia: oh, okay. This is fascinating. We can go multiple directions here, but let, let me try and make it concrete. So imagine, I'm somebody that you're working with and I'm a leader in, you know, a, a typical enterprise, multinational. what might I be coming. To you with either a problem, a challenge, or not even being consciously aware of? And then how would you work with me to help build that spiritual intelligence and what benefit would it have?
[00:14:38] Yosi: oftentimes, you know, you're having a difficulty building a team without politics, with people all aligned, working together. I think your podcast is, is about We Not Me. The essence of this, you know, too often we identify as individuals, and it's me again, we're separate. I have my goals, you know, et cetera. So you get toxic work environments with lots of politics, difficulty retaining and motivating and inspiring employees. So how do I work with you? First of all, you know, we gotta find what is the purpose, whether it's of this unit, whether it's at the level of a company. Uh, you're the CEO, whether it's a level of a department.
[00:15:22] Yosi: So you could be a, a, a team of mechanics in an airline, and your mission is to service these airplanes to so they're reliable, safe, travel that flights leave on time, so you have a clear mission. You know, and, and so you have to identify that. And then you identi, so you have the purpose. So you have to articulate the purpose, and then you wanna find what is the purpose of you as the leader of this team and how those, those two line up. So your purpose as the mechanical lead. Person is your craft is through your hands and you like to fix things, et cetera.
[00:16:00] Yosi: So obviously those talents, those gifts that you have been given line up with the purpose of the organization. And if you can get everybody to find what are their unique gifts in a team, and then how those things harmonize. Uh, so everybody's playing their unique instrument, but we're creating a symphony together.
[00:16:21] Yosi: So that's a mechanic. It could be in the finance department and the person's talent is numbers and. Empowering the organizations with the right metrics and and so on. But if you get people to feel like they can actualize their unique gifts and talents in service of something bigger than them, in a way that's harmonizes with those around them, then the toxicity level goes down. There's shared intention, there's a sense of belonging. There's less politics, and people are working towards a common mission and vision. So morale goes up, you know, less, less politics. less division, and more energy, more creativity.
[00:17:03] Pia: so what, what does spiritual intelligence have to do with that?
[00:17:07] Yosi: Well, the quality is a spiritual intelligence. I just talked about purpose. How does one, so that purpose has to do with the individual purpose and the. Purpose of the organization. The other thing we talked about is the quality of service. So whether we as individuals exist here to serve, contribute to others, or that team is working, to, uh, service the overall entity it's built in, I didn't get into all the 22 qualities of spiritual intelligence. How do they apply? But let's just take a few of them, like gratitude. So if I, as the leader, I'm going around and, and noticing. the things I can be grateful for. My mood goes up. If I share that appreciation, the motivation goes up if I am humble.
[00:17:55] Yosi: We talked about one other quality of spiritual intelligence is, is humility and being focused on truth as opposed to ego. Then I wanna do what's right as opposed to prove myself right. Part of the reason organizations get toxic is because people's egos and their insecurity, and then it's a competition, a zero sum game.
[00:18:15] Yosi: But if you under, if you understand our interconnectedness and that, uh, I'm not a separate being that we're in this together, I'm a cell in this. Organ, which is embedded in this bigger organism. That's spiritual intelligence. I'm not a separate entity. And then in take another quality integrity, a great important quality for leaders is walking the talk and, and living in integrity or presence.
[00:18:43] Yosi: If I show up to meetings and I'm looking at my phone and thinking about my next meeting, the previous meeting. My team is gonna feel that I'm not really there with them. They're not gonna be there with me. So it's not just putting a poster on the wall, it says this is our purpose. It's just like, it's like, you know, walking the talk in terms of appreciation, in terms of egolessness, in terms of presence, in terms of gratitude, and, and so on.
[00:19:11] Dan: As you talk about those, those elements, these, there's almost like the, I'm reminded of that adult development thinking, you know, Robert Keegan and all those things. These seem like they're very sort of a really developed human. Uh, these things also connect to those theories, sort of join up.
[00:19:29] Dan: It just seems like the person you're talking about is of quite a, a sophisticated, a more mature Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:19:38] Yosi: I'm.
[00:19:38] Dan: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah.
[00:19:41] Yosi: move, there's a seventh level, and then you're kind of more at the level of the magician, et cetera. Yeah. That's one way to look at it, uh, the, the, the evolutions. But you. know, to me it's like picking these. Qualities and working on them one at a time. You know, I, I, instead of thinking, Well, I'm gonna move from this level of
[00:20:02] Yosi: human development to that level, I was like, okay, let's practice gratitude.
[00:20:06] Yosi: As you go through your day, notice things that you appreciate that are happening, and in every moment you have, have an opportunity to just share that appreciation about the other person or, okay, let's do this exercise. What, what? Gifts and talents has life endowed you with, oh, okay, I'm this, I'm that, and that, and tell me a way you can use them to contribute.
[00:20:31] Yosi: You know, that's very practical. You can work with people on as you do that, you, you, you develop as a human being. You mature, you ripen, and it's a process. It's not a one, one day go to the gym, you exercise. No. You have many muscle groups. You gotta work your triceps and biceps and pecs and whatever.
[00:20:52] Yosi: So similarly with spiritual intelligence, you have these qualities, but you gotta develop practices and focus a period of time, a month or something on each of them. Build a habit just like you build a habit to brush your teeth. And, but you gotta, once you've built that habit, then you can work on your next
[00:21:10] Yosi: habit.
[00:21:10] Dan: Any, what, what, what, what do the cynics say?
[00:21:13] Yosi: Well, first spirituality sounds woo woo. People associate spirituality is like religion is this religion. We keep religion out of business. There's separation of church. State, uh, you know, what do I have to believe in? And then show me the money. I mean, what, what? Show me the money is this. Pay does this work.
[00:21:32] Yosi: We're a business. This is not a church. This is not a thing. So, so there's a level of skepticism about, you know, bringing in anything that has. Smell of spirituality, and then people don't differentiate between spirituality and religion. And there's so much trauma that has been done in the name of religion and people are scared of anything that has to do with that. So you have to differentiate between spirituality and religion, number one.
[00:21:59] Yosi: Number two, that spiritual intelligence has nothing to do or not. So much to do with spiritual belief system. Whether you believe in God or you believe in reincarnation or Buddha nature or whatever, it's, and it's not a spiritual experience. It's the embodiment of these qualities.
[00:22:16] Yosi: And even an atheist. I have clients who are atheists, but you can, as an atheist have a sense of purpose, practice gratitude. You can have integrity. You could be humble and be egoless and so on, so you can have, you know, many of the qualities of spiritual intelligence and be agnostic or atheist or whatever.
[00:22:36] Yosi: But you know, it's spiritual intelligence because these qualities I. Are common to all the world spiritual traditions, number one and two, they, naturally emerge when we are connected to our essence, our, uh, spirit, our life force energy. What is the root word, spirit, I mean, and what do leaders do? What's the difference between leaders and managers?
[00:22:59] Yosi: That was one of my first Harvard Business School cases. Managers manage resources, make decisions, leader inspire. What does it inspire me? The root word in Latin is the animating breath of life. So leaders breathe life into their organizations through a vision, a sense of purpose, and so on. But back to why is the spiritual intelligence is when we connect to our spirit essence, our essence of who we are, which is the life force energy, these qualities of purpose and gratitude, and power and so on all naturally emerge.
[00:23:36] Pia: And something that sort of crosses my mind. I think if we were having this conversation 18 months ago, um, I. I wouldn't be feeling quite as conflicted as I am now. So with a change in administration in the US this doesn't quite epitomize spiritual intelligence.
[00:23:52] Pia: Um, and you talked about ego and insecurity, so, you know, from your perspective, when you're looking, at where leaders are gonna be influenced, you know, are, are they gonna be taken down a road to. Individual competitiveness winner, all costs. and ego driven to some degree, a power because that's a role set of role modeling they may be observing.
[00:24:15] Pia: And that, and let's take politics aside and just look just purely at leadership behaviors. So I'd love it, you know, from your. Psychologist perspective, you know, do we try and emulate that or do we find that we actually end up going the opposite way because we go, no, we really don't, many people don't want to be that?
[00:24:34] Yosi: Well, I think most people don't. Most people don't want to do that, and most people as see through that when someone has so much ego, and again, I'm staying away from politics like you suggested. Um. It's really has to do with covering up for insecurity. And so I'm trying to prove how great I am and how powerful I am because deep down inside I feel my insecurity, my lack of work.
[00:24:59] Yosi: And so I, I would say a few things. First of all, when we see someone like that. It's natural and it's easy to go into judgment because it's unpleasant to be around someone like that. But, you know, the, the antidote to that is to understand that underneath that there's a lot of suffering, a lot of pain. And the antidote for our difficulty with it is to practice compassion So that, that's the first thing I would say.
[00:25:25] Yosi: And then the second thing is to look at when are we motivated by de deficiency and lack and insecurity versus fullness and self-actualization and love. And it's so much, more enjoyable and powerful and inspiring for everybody else around us when we're coming from a place of, you know, a mission that's not, that's selfless that we, when you look at people like Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, you know, they really come from a place of caring about the world, and they, they're completely devoted. And in some, in many cases, they, they give their life up for it. And when you see that, then, then it inspires you.
[00:26:10] Yosi: Like, okay, I, I wanna sign up to support that. Uh, mission, that purpose, that goal in the name of a better world for all of us, versus just to make someone else ego be bigger,
[00:26:23] Yosi: Now again. When you look at anybody, they're a mixture. So even leaders that have a a lot of big egos, et cetera. And take an example, let's take staying out of the realm of politics, someone like Steve Jobs, okay? I think in many ways he had a lot of ego. He wasn't very kind to people, et cetera. When you look at certain aspects of his spiritual intelligence, he had incredible intuition. He knew how to quiet his mind. what, very few people know is that on his iPad, the only book he carried throughout his life is the Autobiography of a Yogi, and he was into meditation and so on.
[00:27:05] Yosi: You know, but he was a mixture of a lot of ego. and a bunch of spiritual intelligence. He was completely devoted to his vision, of, friendly, uh, computing devices and, and he had devotion. Then it's almost religious, you know, if I were to use that to, to build, uh, products that were easy and friendly to use, and beautiful.
[00:27:29] Yosi: So those were aspects of his spiritual intelligence and then how he related to his team and put them down and was a control freak, I would say was the opposite of spiritual intelligence. So when you look at someone like that, well, is he spiritual, intelligent or not? Well, as I said, there are, many muscles in our Bo body and some mu some people have strong muscles here, but very weak in other parts.
[00:27:53] Dan: And we're all unfinished. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Work to do. Um, it's, it's a really illuminating and os optimistic way of looking at it. I have to, yes. Like, like peer in this current environment, I've, you know, even looking at LinkedIn over the last few year, few days, I, I, I've been sort of stunned by some of the messages I've seen and, and I've become very judgmental and, and of course what I, I, I've realized in those situations it's very easy to sort of, in order to defend what you see is right or good, you somehow, I've been chucking out my spiritual, chucking out my compassion. My ego has risen. You know, it's very, it's, it, there's a, there's a paradox there isn't there?
[00:28:36] Dan: That I have
[00:28:37] Yosi: Well, it's beautiful because, you know, it's a great mirror. And then we see that and we say, how is that, you know, what, what we judge in others is, is, is what we don't accept about ourselves. So, Damn. But then, then they become great. teachers and we thank them. Bow down. Thank you. Thank you for highlighting this limitation in me, and then work on it.
[00:29:00] Pia: And I think I've all, I've, I've been helped by understanding that we are not some kind of whole. As in a whole being, we're a, we're a sum of parts, so parts of us. You know, may have this spiritual intelligence and parts of us, which protect us from other things. Our ego mainly may not, may not be as developed, but sort of seeing ourselves as like, okay, almost like a being the adult parent over these parts go, come on shape up.
[00:29:32] Pia: I can see that one's running away, running away with a show or gets triggered or, you know, it gets irritate. It's a, it's a really. Um, certainly in my life, it's been a way to be able to go, okay, how, how, how, how do you manage just like a bit of a zoo? How do you manage all of these different components
[00:29:48] Yosi: Yeah, but those parts are often, if you've done this work, like, um, I don't know if you're talking about parts, there's internal family systems in, in the world of therapy, there's psychosynthesis in, you know, sli, et cetera. Yeah.
[00:30:02] Yosi: So I think it's a great way to look at parts, but often. Those parts actually need our compassion and love.
[00:30:08] Yosi: And the more we disown them, the more they act out. but the minute you see it as a part, then you just identify from it. And then there's parts of us that are broken, but our wholeness.
[00:30:22] Yosi: Can hold our brokenness.
[00:30:24] Dan: Uh, the, the united,
[00:30:28] Yosi: Is the unbroken and can hold the parts that are broken and are wounded.
[00:30:35] Yosi: Give them compassion, and when it does, it starts to heal 'em. And they transform and then they're like, okay. They're sitting in the, in the backseat of the car, in the seatbelt, in their child's seat. Every once in a while they scream, but you don't let 'em in the driver's seat of the car.
[00:30:54] Dan: And Yosi,, if you don't mind, I feel like we're on the couch here, which, and it's a very good session, but what, can I rewind to something you said in your, um, intro when you're introducing yourself from your own past, you, you, you realized that you'd identified yourself with the business.
[00:31:11] Yosi: Yeah, and that's why I, because it, uh, because it became my over driving and. that's why I, worked 70, 80 hours a week and when I was afraid.
[00:31:20] Dan: that makes sense. And I think as founders, even I, and any business people, I think that probably a lot of listeners will relate to that, that you can find yourself becoming your job. Um.
[00:31:32] Yosi: Yeah, overly identified with your job. And I think especially a lot of men, I, we identify with our capacity to, to have jobs and earn money, et cetera. And, uh, that's why men that are laid off or lose their source of
[00:31:47] Yosi: income oftentimes. And lose their identity and self-esteem and
[00:31:51] Yosi: so on. So Yeah.
[00:31:52] Dan: And how do you, what steps can someone take? I don't want to oversimplify things, which I am by, by saying it. I am doing it. Um, but, um, how, how can you start to move away from that?
[00:32:04] Yosi: Well, you, you start to understand your conditioning of how you've built your self esteem and your self value, and the part of you. It felt unworthy and thought, oh, if I make a million dollars or $10 million if I make vp, then I'll feel unworthy and i'll, my life will have meaning. So then you, you, you try to find the parts of you that feel un whole and broken and lacking that you're trying to compensate for.
[00:32:33] Yosi: And then when you understand the roots of where those, that conditioning and that. It's a strategy to try and feel good about ourselves. We need a sense of worth, but when, for whatever reason, you know, we've all had. Trauma, pain growing up in different environments, our beauty, our wasn't mirrored to us.
[00:32:54] Yosi: We weren't receiving the the love we wanted or needed, and we took it upon ourselves to feel like we're deficient, we're lacking, and that's why we need to make up for it. But if we understand who and what we are in our essence. And that then that starts to fill up, that lack that, um, thing. But that this is a process.
[00:33:15] Yosi: I'm talking about something that could take a long time. I won't say whether it's
[00:33:19] Yosi: whatever. It's,
[00:33:20] Yosi: uh, to do that kind of inner healing work.
[00:33:23] Dan: No, for sure. Um, so you'll see you've covered so much in your book. Um, I. I, it sounds like there's a, there's, there is a lot of practice and, uh, some real complexity to it, the 22 elements and so on.
[00:33:36] Dan: But if, if a listener, I'm sure our, our listener will be thinking, well, that's just so powerful. I'd, I'd love to do something to make a move in the right direction. Um, what's, where, where's a good place for someone to start on their own?
[00:33:51] Yosi: Well, you gave me the invitation. I can't refuse it. So my book is, and certainly a good place to start. and the point is, spiritual intelligence is not just understanding the framework, the theory, the science, all of which is in the book, but really reading the case studies and for each of these qualities that are clustered around these domains of meaning and.
[00:34:13] Yosi: And, and presence and truths and community, et cetera. You know, under each of those, there's case studies where one of my client comes into a session and describes a real world problem. Like p asked me, well, what's in a thing? And then how I work with them, you know, to uncover that quality that's needed in order to get 'em out of the, out of the box they found themselves.
[00:34:38] Yosi: So you start to see how these qualities actually map into. You know, problems that we face as the antidote, so, so reading the case studies and then doing the exercise. The other thing, each quality, each chapter has exercises for people to work on these things so you're not just reading the theory because it's like you're not reading about becoming healthy.
[00:35:01] Yosi: You have to go to the gym and lift some weights. You know, and you gotta get on the treadmill or whatever on your path and do some jogging. So the book has all these exercises, but you know, there's a website called Intelligence. If people go to my, my main website, Yosi amro.net, just my name spelled up, y-O-S-I-A-M-R-A m.net. It connects to another website called Intelligence Seed that offers free assessment. So that's another thing people can do, is they can get a free assessment profile of their spiritual intelligence that highlights their relative strengths and opportunities. So for someone maybe purpose is a big strength, but gratitude is an opportunity. Vice versa, someone else may be really good at practicing gratitude, but they haven't found their purpose or someone else. their presence is not very strong. They're good in, in integrity. They're strong in presence. They're, they have a lot of joy.
[00:36:03] Yosi: They bring a lot of beauty. They have trust, you know, some of the important qualities, but so it, it's a good diagnostic tool. And then they're also on that side, uh, tips for developing each of these qualities.
[00:36:18] Pia: And I, and I think there'll be a lot of people who are listening to this who have been caught up in restructures finding their jobs, maybe replaced by ai. disappointed by the way organizations, um, are valuing them. Um, they're leaders are valuing them, the decisions being made. And then I think there's that moment where. you are in a, you asking yourself, gosh, po what, what do I need to do now? And doing the old stuff isn't necessarily gonna get that breakthrough. So I think this is where. This is such an important conversation because I think then if you go back to basics, what am I actually here to do and what's really important and valuable, is so, so key rather than thinking another company will dig me out and make me feel good in the next role because that might
[00:37:05] Dan: can become attached to that next. Yeah. Become identified
[00:37:09] Yosi: Well, and it's good you bring in the whole thing about ai because if you look at the history of, of humanity, I mean, lots of things as we've moved from, you know, agriculture to industrial, to, you know, information, age to knowledge, age to ai, things that, you know, uh, we used to do and give us meaning and, and, jobs and work, et cetera has gotten mechanized.
[00:37:33] Yosi: So we have to move to the next thing. So in a world of ai, I think our spiritual intelligence becomes that much more important
[00:37:40] Dan: the, but the final, final thing we'd like from you Yosi, if that's okay, is a media recommendation. Of course, people, people have your book. First of all, in mind, what else would you recommend for learning entertainment education?
[00:37:54] Yosi: Well, I mean, I like this book called Atomic Habits, Um, which, which speaks to, you know, relates to what I was talking about, which is building habits and you gotta do them in small bite-sized chunks. And you know, so you set an intention, you work on it, whether it's a gratitude practice and you make that a habit, and then you can work on the next thing. But how, how we develop, how, how we have an intention. Uh, and build a new habit in small incremental steps. I think it's a good adjunct to what I'm talking about.
[00:38:26] Dan: Nice little pair on your anyone's bookshelf. Spiritually, spiritually, intelligent leadership and, uh, atomic habits. Perfect. Um, thank you Jossi. It's j truly inspirational to hear you and, uh, so, so timely. I think for many, many reasons. What's going on in the, uh, in the business world at the moment. This is, this is a sort of like a, a life ring think that, um, many people will feel has been thrown to them at the right moment. So thank you.
[00:38:53] Yosi: Thank you, thank you. for the opportunity and, and we gotta address this together. It's, we, it's not me. so I'll just kind of throw it back at you.
[00:39:03] Dan: Thank you. Thank you. Yosi Thank you.
[00:39:06]
[00:39:09] Pia: I really liked how when he unpacked spiritual intelligence, it's this level of emotional intelligence, this awareness, but it's all linked. To purpose and both your individual purpose and it then it's alignment with the organization or the context that you're in. And it reminded me sort of in my very first few months I think of, of being a consultant.
[00:39:34] Pia: Many years ago I was watching the, watching my, my boss Rob, run an extraordinary session with this team and he was talking about that alignment and the next day. One of those executives actually resigned, and that was based on, they had internally been struggling being in that organization, and that was the day in light moment of light, this is not what I want to be doing and who I want to be.
[00:40:02] Pia: Nothing wrong with the company or the role, but that alignment isn't there, and I'm not drawing any energy or any source from that. and recently, you know, number of our. Clients that we're working with are going through restructures and changes, and some of them are, are, are difficult and individuals are really holding their gr they're, they're really grounded by the purpose that they have in themselves and the checking of whether the new organization, their new boss, is in alignment with their values and their purpose.
[00:40:36] Dan: Yeah, it's, it's really worth checking in. And the, the thing that it makes me think about as well, and I think you both, you and I have been using this with, uh, various teams and team leaders this week actually quite a bit, is this idea of be, do, have, um, which we come back to very often, you know, to, to have.
[00:40:54] Dan: A result, um, you need to do certain things and to do so that you'll need to be in a certain way. Now we tend to flip that. Um, and um, as Sean AOR says, on a fantastic TED video, we sort of push happiness over the cognitive horizon by doing that. But we basically say, when I have this, then I'll do these things, then I'll be happy.
[00:41:17] Dan: but, uh, but that is a flipped version of it. So what you, things really start with the B and the do and then the have will, will, will follow. And I know you were working with a team in Japan on this, um, this week.
[00:41:31] Pia: yeah. I, I, I've, the, the, there, there are multiple teams where, um, because of the nature of the environment that you're in, you will be task centric. That's the way that, you know, we know that we can see. A lot of the teams we work, we're all institutionalized. That's how we become really good.
[00:41:48] Pia: But it's, what happens is it fails to to deliver sometimes in a different context, and that's when you have to go back to the B and go, how do I need to what? What do I need to be here? If I'm actually trying to create something that's substantial change, big picture thinking, you know, transforming product or an organization or something.
[00:42:11] Pia: I can't do that from. My old mindset, I have to change something about me and, and religiously focus on it, which is, is the hard bit,
[00:42:21] Dan: And then my doing will change and I have the, the, the outcome will change. And I think it, it really makes me, made me realize actually since some, as I say, since since hearing your CI have, um, I've, I've listened to his book and I've. Downloaded some of his materials, and I think this is right next to therapy, you know, in that, in that it's, it's right in there.
[00:42:43] Dan: And I think you'll see actually, um, you know, he's qualified in the, in, uh, in counseling and because actually it's quite easy. To sort of say, oh, I need to be better at public speaking, or I need to be better at Excel, or My PowerPoints need to be better, or whatever it is, you know, or my strategic planning.
[00:43:01] Dan: These are actually quite comforting things that you need to challenge about yourself for that new direction. But what's totally different is. the B is really challenging. I'm not grateful. I, I have, I need to boost my humility. Um, you know, my sense of service is lacking my inner peace, my, you know, all of these things that are on Josie's, um, list of qualities.
[00:43:26] Dan: They're, they're almost like you, you, you know, they are your. Personality or character, and you have to look in the mirror and say, that's not good enough. And so shifting these things is very hard, I think, because you first of all have to realize there's a, there's a lack.
[00:43:44] Pia: and you are accountable. we, and particularly how we, how we started this episode. we've gotta be careful because there is a layer of sort of covert marketing telling us that our external, we can blame our external world or blame other people for, for, for things that happen to us.
[00:44:00] Pia: And that's really dangerous 'cause that just causes a lot of division, that lose responsibility. Um, and we lose our connectivity, which I think was another key point that Yossi raised. You know, that we, We are interconnected. We are not a separate energy, so our individual behavior has a, has a, has an impact.
[00:44:20] Pia: So we have to take accountability and God, it's not easy. It's not easy because the older you get, you think, well, I've sort of been here before. I know this, and you shortcut it
[00:44:29] Dan: yeah, and thinking I, I'm whole, but I'm just not very good at doing that thing. That's okay. It's different from, actually, I'm not whole. I need to, to do something about this. the thing that I've also, just a very specific thing that I've found really useful from what Yossi said, he talks about joy I that think that's been a, a really an, you know, if you listen to him or you read his book, he talks about this sort of shining light coming from you. I think there's a, there's something, he's something more attainable around joy versus happiness and entering a day focusing on joy. For some reason that works for me.
[00:45:03] Dan: I don't know whether it will for our listener, but I've found that to be a, a sort of more attainable objective to say, I'm gonna be joyful today,
[00:45:12] Pia: and looking for where the joy, where the joy appears. 'cause it could be in the meeting, a stranger going on a walk. It could be the way that, um, shopkeeper gives you, you know, gives, talks to you. it. It could be a phone call, it could be something that one of your kids says that that's funny. And I think it's a very different, I think happiness is something that we've sort of, that that's a, that's a state, that's a long term. But joy is, is, is every
[00:45:37] Dan: It, yeah, it's something you can grasp each day, and I think that's, um, that's been, that's been really helpful for me actually over the last few weeks since we recorded the Ossie. I think that's, um, that's been great. But, uh, wonderful, wonderful conversation. Loads of resources in the show notes and, uh, this is an important episode for our times.
[00:45:55] Dan: But that is it for these episodes. We not meet as supported by Squadify. Squadify helps any team. To build engagement and drive performance. You can find show notes as I just mentioned, where you are listening, but also at squadify.net. If you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends.
[00:46:12] Dan: We Not Me, is produced by Mark Tedman. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.
[00:46:18] Pia: And it is goodbye from me.