Today’s guest has done the research to show that bringing humanity and spirituality into business is actually incredibly beneficial for a company’s bottom line and overall success.
Show notes
People and companies are continually exploring new ways to improve leadership — to create more effective methods for managing people and making profits. These days, it’s becoming clearer that separating humanity from work creates suffering for most people.
As our knowledge of leadership increases, we can see that motivation, loyalty, and creativity increase most when there is inspiration, rather than demand or force. Today’s Man Alive podcast guest, Yosi Amram, PhD, is a therapist, executive coach, researcher, and author. He developed the first research-grounded theory and validated measure of spiritual intelligence (SI) and created a model he calls Spiritually Intelligent Leadership (SILeadership). His new book: Spiritually Intelligent Leadership: How to Inspire By Being Inspired, shows that bringing humanity and spirituality into business is actually great for a company’s bottom line.
Yosi describes developing spiritual intelligence as learning to cultivate and embody qualities hailed by all the world’s wisdom traditions — virtues such as purpose, compassion, integrity, presence, humility, and joy. Modern research and most leadership experts agree, he says, that actualizing these traits can set off a ripple effect of inspiration that reverberates across an entire organization.
In our rich and soulful conversation we discussed…
- The shift from command and control leadership to humane leadership
- The impact of bringing the common virtues across spiritual traditions into business
- Research showing that inspired employees are twice as productive and higher morale leads to lower turnover
- Spiritual intelligence as a bridge for the dichotomy between the spiritual and practical
- Yosi’s journey of leading two tech start-ups through successful IPOs, including his dark night of the soul
This is an important episode if you’re a leader in your career, or want to become one. Yosi and I also talked about how leadership pervades all areas of our lives, and how to step into more humane leadership in every area of life. When you’re done with this one, check out this episode on how to find your leadership blind spots before they compromise your effectiveness!
Links:
Connect with Yosi
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Website: shanajamescoaching.com/3ways
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Bio:
Yosi began his leadership journey in the military where he received numerous awards and garnered the fastest promotion record in his regiment’s history. Despite these accomplishments, the military chafed at his soul, eventually inspiring his lifelong quest for more humane approaches to leadership.
After leaving the military, Yosi studied engineering at MIT and earned an MBA from Harvard. He took the leap into leadership experiments of his own as the founder and CEO of two tech start-ups, both of which he led through successful IPOs. Then, as CEO of a public company with a rising stock price, he experienced a psychospiritual breakdown, a “dark night of the soul,” which catapulted him into a spiritual awakening. The epiphany and the manic episode that went with it were both excruciating and exalting, enabling him to see through the illusion of separation to the truth of our interconnectedness. This put his life and value system on a fresh trajectory.
He went back to school for a PhD in clinical psychology, ultimately developing the first research-grounded theory and validated measure of spiritual intelligence (SI) with an associated model he created and named Spiritually Intelligent Leadership (SILeadership). This research has received over a thousand citations to date. Yosi is devoted to awakening greater spiritual intelligence in himself (a lifelong journey) and in the world. Working as a therapist and leadership coach, he has supported over 100 CEOs as they built organizations, led thousands of employees, and reached annual revenues in the billions, all while increasing their happiness, power, and effectiveness as leaders in their work and personal lives.
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