Episode 117: Leaders As Healers

In this episode, we're rethinking leadership with Nicholas Janni, author of “Leader As Healer” and teacher at IMD Business School in Switzerland and the University of Oxford Said Business School. Nicholas introduces the revolutionary concept of "Leaders as Healers," advocating for a shift from the hyper-rational, imbalanced corporate norms that prioritize doing over being. He shares how integrating emotional intelligence and deep personal connections can transform leadership effectiveness.

Join us as Nicholas shares how embracing our whole selves helps businesses and the people who work in them can thrive together.

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Episode Highlights

• The critical role of leaders in addressing global crises through deep personal and emotional connection.
• How fostering emotional openness and vulnerability can transform leadership effectiveness and workplace dynamics.
• Integrating meditative and somatic practices to elevate leaders' perceptual fields and empathy levels.
• The substantial business benefits of emotionally intelligent leadership, from engagement to profitability.
• The necessity of taking a leadership approach that prioritizes emotional authenticity for transformative change.
• How physical awareness and presence enhance leaders' decision-making capabilities and overall effectiveness.
• Creating organizational cultures that foster resilience and satisfaction.

Nicholas’ view on the greatest unmet wellbeing need at work today

“Emotional the cultivation and welcoming of emotional authenticity. People being allowed to say how they're really feeling and being unconditionally met. There's nothing wrong with feeling frightened, sad. I think without that you'll never have well pay.”

What "working with humans" means to Nicholas

“It means working with the full spectrum of who we are. And most workplaces in my great, extensive experience, function on a very small spectrum of who we really are.”

Resources

Follow: Nicholas on LinkedIn
Visit: Matrix Development website
Read: Leader as Healer: A new paradigm for 21st-century leadership

Full Transcript

Note: This is an unedited AI-generated transcription. Please excuse any errors or inconsistencies.

Michael Glazer 
I want to ask you if you could explain this notion of leader as healer.

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

Michael Glazer 
Can you say a little bit more about what comprises leader as healer in terms of practices, or what separates a leader as healer from say, leader, as either as coach, leader, as visionary, or as anything else?

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

Michael Glazer 
What is or what are the business benefits? I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna go back to left brain for a second here. I know we're drifting into right brain but to come to come back and think of the balanced benefit of right brain benefits, sort of what you talked about, what about the business benefits? Where are the links for?

Nicholas Janni
That's what I teach to two of the world's leading business school. So I use my left brain extensively. I'm a friend of my left brain. And I wrote a book so so the business benefits multiple I mean, first of all, people are people. There is something like 80%, worldwide disengagement. Okay. The last poll said that was costing $9 trillion of revenue. You cannot engage people unless you relate to them in a human way. Unless people feel genuinely motivated, genuinely listen to say you're going to create cultures with far higher levels of engagement. By doing this, this kind of work. colleague of mine wrote a book called powered by purpose. And she quoted a study which said that organizations where people feel connected to a real sense of purpose, the business can see an upturn and up to 42%. Okay, that's pretty persuasive. So there is really no business case for not doing this. That just isn't it's pure habit. And it's pure fear of change, which is very real. Because when we change, we start to feel more, and people are understandably very frightened of that. So it needs a lot of support. You don't change in a weekend or, or it's a real process. So I've been working for over a year with the world's largest law firm. Okay, you want to left brain. All right, Tyler rain, and we do retreats. And you know, after two days, the emotions start flowing. And these tough partners are crying, surprise, surprise, because everyone is storing huge amounts of grief and fear. So we operate in this tiny bandwidth, trying to persuade ourselves that it's really effective. That actually we should be like, as I do, no,

I mean, I mean, you know, the IMD. I teach groups of 40 or so, leaders from all over the world, Michael, people are really unhappy. And really isolated inside, and really struggling, really struggling. Because corporate culture, we talk about emotional intelligence, that most of it is actually rubbish. To be honest, because we don't make space for people to feel. It's not about managing or understanding your emotions. If people are frightened, which most people are, they just need to be allowed to feel it. It's so simple. And our left brain is so controlling. They want to control everything. They have some kind of fantasy of safety. Safety is when people can show up and feel mad when they're allowed to say hey, I feel really anxious. And the leader says, Yeah, me too. Let's just acknowledge that, then we're suddenly present. We're so distorted the way we think about emotion. And all this literature about emotional intelligence. It mostly reinforces kind of contraction inside, especially when we talk negative emotion. Fear is not negative emotion. Sadness is not negative emotion.

It's human. It's human. You show me one person who doesn't feel anxious right now. And you're showing me a totally normal human being. And many, many senior leaders and non You know, I wrote a provocative LinkedIn post a while back, which started with the words. Any man who cannot easily cry should not be allowed anywhere near senior leadership. I totally believe that because any man who cannot cry has a frozen heart and will not be able to be an empath it will not be able to show real care. So what is he doing in senior leadership?

We need a revolution, Michael, not just a little bit of change, we need a revolution. And I'm that revolution. I

Michael Glazer 
want to get into that revolution and and more the specifics of leaders healer, you mentioned a couple of points there about emotional intelligence and embodied.

Nicholas Janni
That didn't really answer you. But I'm happy to.

Michael Glazer 
I will I will come around on that in a second. Yeah. This, so the notion of leader as healer, it's deep. And I can imagine that this isn't something that you dreamed up over a weekend or a year, this is something that's been in the works for a long time. So when you reflect on your journey, yeah. What personal experiences inspired this philosophy? Yeah,

Nicholas Janni
Thank you so much for asking. To be me, Michael, it all started when I was 16. In a totally unexpected way. I visited with a friend and a Tibetan, Tibetan Buddhist monastery, because his grandmother was living there. And it just sounded like fun. We were 16. And during my week there, someone gave me a very classic Buddhist text.

And the whole world opened from him pretty much in one moment. It's like I suddenly knew, I knew in my bones what this was about. And from then on, literally, albeit through many circuitous routes, from then on, that was my main focus, exploring what is the real capacity of human consciousness? And why are we living in such a small version of it. And then I, because my father was a very famous filmmaker, I was always going to go into the arts. And I found my way into theater. And I spent 20 years exploring with actors teaching and directing. First of all, what were the highest performance steps, they could go into what sports people call the zone, Unitas extraordinary open, I know everything that's happening, I have all the time in the world, I am super connected. So it's the same in the arts. And I spent 20 years researching that with my own company teaching at major trauma schools. And then again, not in a planned way, particularly a small group of us started being invited to work in the corporate art. That was at the end of the 90s. And we developed an amazing methodology actually, of using Shakespeare stories, as kind of models of leadership case studies. And we got support from a distant school in England. And in 2001, we weren't getting so much work that we actually left the theater. And for them since then, I've been working exclusively in well, almost exclusively in the corporate.

Yeah. And, I mean, it's also so in the theater. Everything was very gut and deeply embodied. So that also has always been the foundation for me, opening the body. So when I work with senior leaders now, one of the things we always do is that we do a lot of somatic work, Cibrian people, you ask practices, you know, into a totally new beginning in the body, because we've left the audience. You know, we start as totally embodied, and most adults like living up here.

Michael Glazer 
Can you walk me through the process of helping people reintroduce themselves to the body that's the that's below the mid chest which is where you were pointing out before.

Nicholas Janni
I mean, And actually, we start often by laying on the ground.

Michael Glazer 
Why is that?

Because we start with a relaxation. Because if we're up here, it's because the body is like that. So we have to start with deep relaxation and breathing, because we breathe out here. So we breathe deeply, we relax the body, literally. We learn how to breathe the way we're supposed to breathe, which is down in the belly, all the martial arts and then we practice standing up what it means to be grounded, to let our legs take our weight. So it's actually a process of really dropping down. By the end of 2530 minutes of that, when people come back to sitting, they're usually in a totally different state. What

Michael Glazer 
What kinds of comments do you hear from people?

Nicholas Janni
“I feel so calm, so focused, so clear, I have far less thinking than normal.” That kind of thing. And so then we're like, Okay, well, let's think let's now let's analyze a what we did the value of it. And then I teach practices, how to maintain this. And that's, of course, where the practice the major practice in all development, the major tool is attention. Because the moment we start actually paying attention, not thinking our brainwaves change, like if you're wired up. You your brainwaves, we change brainwave frequency, it's really amazing, through the act of paying attention. Now sages luminous for 2000 years, the fact that we cannot prove it, it's amazing. So when people actually learn to go through the day, with a far higher level of attention, and when people learn to pay attention inwardly and outwardly, at the same time, this is a lost practice. Everything starts to change. People feel themselves in meetings showing up in a totally different way.

Michael Glazer 
In the book, you make a fascinating link between this kind of physical embodiment and decision making, can you explain the connection?

Nicholas Janni
Well, we think that intellectual knowing is the only way of knowing that's part of the catastrophe. I tell you, you know, the famous quote by Einstein, where he said, the rational mind is a faithful servant, the intuitive mind is a sacred gift. And we have created a culture that honors the servant, and has forgotten the gift. So now, the intuitive mind, interestingly, is anchored in the body. It's anchored in the body, so the more open and body becomes the movie nerve thing. And when everyone knows this, Michael, you ask people to do your best thinking when you're working out? Oh, yeah, of course. People know this, but we don't get the implication of it. I go by chin states by to Ciccone every day, I can serve clear insights when I'm doing chicken.

Or when I'm out on my bike, I suddenly get solutions to things I'm thinking. So, our body is a fundamental source of wisdom and knowledge. And everyone knows this. It's just that we're in such a left brain culture. The people then are gonna have to prove that I have to get all the data. Yeah, okay. But how about trusting what you really know.

That would radicalize how we operate. I'm not dismissing data. But if that is regarded as the only way you can know something, we're living in a very small reality and not an effective one because that takes so much time. Whenever I talk, and I say how often have you known something that then took months to prove out on Whatsapp? Now, seriously, stupid is that?

Michael Glazer 
I've been there myself, I would put my hand up also. Yeah.

Nicholas Janni
This is our natural being leaders healer is a restoration of who we really are. And who we really are so much bigger than the normal so called normal way we function.

Michael Glazer 
How can people integrate embodied the practices of embodiment when they're working as opposed to when they're, they're biking or they're doing something else?

Nicholas Janni
Yeah, great question by paying attention to the body. In a meeting, I, this is one of the core practices have some of your attention in your breathing in the sensation of sitting. It doesn't take anything away on the country, you will notice you have a wider perception field. You're listening more suddenly, you speaking more clearly. It's it can be as simple as that. But it takes a huge commitment. So I teach people how you're going to remember that people figure it out. Because one plan domain bought a new pair. And every meeting whether zoom or in person, he puts the pen on the table. And it reminds him how much am I really here? Because if we're just like this, we're not really here. We're 20% here. Yeah,

Michael Glazer 
this and for listeners who can't see you, you're, you're framing your head?

Nicholas Janni
Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Yeah, we're literally functioning at about 20% of our full capacity. And we need a lot more than now. It's a crisis we're in at the moment, we need our full state.

Michael Glazer 
And so the idea to build this up is initial work to be able to reintroduce, or get back in touch with our bodies and our sensations.

Nicholas Janni
That's a big part of it. An equal thought is we have to do our emotional work. Or it's all the emotions within us that we turn away from. So that we need support, we can, it's very difficult to do that. We need a mentor or, coach, we need groups that support that we need cultures that support that. To give you a very concrete example, Michael, a practice I used to speak about there was quite rare that I actually had some more now is when a team begin a meeting. And everyone is invited, just to say exactly how they're feeling. And the leader has created a culture where everyone knows that she or he wants authenticity, not I'm fine.

Meaning you're allowed to say, I'm stressed today, you're allowed to say actually, something's happening outside that's upsetting me quite. And that's all each and each person is heard. thanked, and then it takes like one or two minutes. One person may or may say actually I really didn't want to be here. I'm irritated.

So at the end of that, there was a very high level of presence in in the meeting. And miraculously for our left brain that can't really understand this. Suddenly, even the person who said I didn't want to be here feels quite good.

Just consider the implication of that. No emotion is negative or positive. That's a myth. We just need to be allowed to acknowledge how we're feeling. Now. In our deeper work. We need to explore our emotional clarity. We need to explore what am I carrying that I'm not aware of? What sadness is inside me What fear what anger? And then because then I start to become much more whole. My lifeforce gets much stronger, much, much stronger. We want more vitality, a lot of our vitality is locked away in unfelt emotion, and we have to feel safe with that. We have to be guided. And that's a lot of what we offer in our consultancy

Michael Glazer 
Is the goal with getting back in touch with those deeply buried emotions to resolve them or do something with them or just know that they're there?

Nicholas Janni
None of that none of those. Because if we just feel learn, they change, they're resolved automatically.

There’s nothing to resolve. There is only to let the energy flow. And the only way the energy flows is by feeling like you find work with someone. And they and they recognize, which already takes a lot because the majority of adults don't know what they're feeling. The majority of adults don't know the difference between the thinking and the feeling the thoughts and the feelings. But let's say someone has practiced, and they are able to say, yeah, no, I, I am feeling anxious today. And they say, Okay, let's slow down. Let's allow that to feel it in your party. And they say, okay, because they trust me. And we track. So tell me how it's feeling them. And they just feel it, Michael, within five minutes, they feel fantastic. They feel open, their body feels open.

So the idea that fear blocks us is totally wrong. The problem is we block fear.

If someone is sad, and they allow themselves to feel it, and maybe T has fun, or somebody they feel so empathic, their heart is up, they feel good. Nothing needs to be resolved. It just needs to be felt. It's so simple. But we're so far away from that. And then we understand that there are layers of that to some of my emotional composition. First of all goes back to when I was five years old. Some of it is inherited

ancestrally, we know that. And some of it is collective. You know, we started with being Jewish, most Jewish people carry inside them a collective layer of terror, and a fundamental sense that the world is unsafe. That needs to be excavated themselves.

And then it could naturally reduces. I honestly believe I'm quite sure, actually, that a number of boardrooms decisions are made by five year olds. Really? And I can quote examples from dire would you? I can't because it would be breach confidential. boardrooms are full of people with unintegrated, five year old and crazy just behaviors take they you know, that crazy behavior is important. rivalries and arguments.

Michael Glazer 
You also write about cultivating emotional intelligence can create a more resilient and adaptive organizational culture. You did that with a few comments. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Nicholas Janni
Yeah, I mean, I thank you, it's a natural consequence of what we're talking about. Because if I'm walking around, and I do not feel what's inside me, I'm brittle and not resilient. The more I can have a safe and appropriate environment in which I can win when I need to, I can feel I'm sad or anxious, I feel much stronger afterwards. cultures that do that have a far higher level of resilience. When people are allowed to be authentic appropriately. We're not talking about therapy and you know, powers of emotional processing. No, it's much simpler than that. But authentic relating, that's resilience. When cultures meet each other, and people can really relate how are you today? I'm a bit down, okay. And that's all there is needed. We see each other. We feel each other.

This is so basic and in You know, in indigenous culture it's it's, it's deeply embedded in African culture, Ubuntu, I see you. We every every human being carries, literally fundamental need to be seen, literally fundamental. Most of us didn't have nearly enough of that. So leader who shows up also like that you talk to anyone, and they will tell you about the leaders who they felt related to them and listen to them, even in one minute meeting. And they will tell you about how few those people were, and how impactful it was. That's resilience, when you felt listened to and a culture fields were authentically relating to each other, that builds illumines resilience.

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

Nicholas Janni
Well, first, I mean, it always has to start with oneself, always on, and that's forever, that this is not like I do a bit of development nervous, it's a lifelong commitment. Because the more the leader radiates, authentic presence, and is also willing to be what I call robustly vulnerable. Meaning I will when appropriate, tell you what I'm feeling and but you'll feel I can manage it, and I'm going to fall apart. So I'll address analyze that you you're also allowed to feel, but it has to go and very little steps. But you have to know that everyone wants to be listened to. So if you are a leader transmitting, yes, I really can listen to you. You don't even have to say, you know, that's already a big relational energy field, let's call it ecosystem. And then you find the little steps that, you know, invite people to be more authentic. If someone says, I don't want to tell you how I'm feeling you respect that certain standards. So they can be listened to even that. It's little steps. But I do know that culture has changed dramatically when this starts.

Michael Glazer 
What changes do you see most often?

Nicholas Janni
Thanks, see a totally different level of presence, energy, motivation, purpose, and fundamental satisfaction, fundamental satisfaction, and we spend people spend the majority of their lives of work. We deserve that workplace. Otherwise, what is life? Yeah, you know, when we get to the end of our we know, we know more than enough about end of life data, and research to know that the end of life when we look back, we don't care how much money we made. We don't care how many deals we made. We care about how true we've been, and the quality of relatedness in this massive data about that. And, you know, client to minor SEO client, well, we did a amazing 18 months of work, and when our good friends she said something to me in a meeting where we talk quite often. And she said something that made us both stop. It was so powerful. She said you learned Nikolas. I used to spend so much time and effort to get somewhere I didn't really want to be.

I thought that was an extraordinary statement. Yeah, wait, how many people are doing that? But as we know, we're not talking about a PVC but we're talking about being really connected, energized.

Michael Glazer 
And so, we're flirting a little bit with workplace well being and I'd like to close with a couple of questions. Two questions I asked all of my guests and the first one is what do you see as the greatest unmet well being need in the workplace today?

Nicholas Janni
Emotional the cultivation and welcoming of emotional authenticity. People being allowed to say how they're really feeling and being unconditionally met. There's nothing wrong with feeling frightened, sad. I think without that you'll never have well pay.

Michael Glazer 
And last Nicholas, what does the phrase working with humans mean to you?

Nicholas Janni
It means working with the full spectrum of who we are. And most workplaces in my great, extensive experience, function on a very small spectrum of who we really are.

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