A new paradigm for 21st-century Leadership. Dive into the transformative journey of leadership with ‘Leader as Healer,’ a groundbreaking book that redefines the essence of effective leadership with profound insights and actionable wisdom.

Embark on the path to becoming a visionary leader—discover the full review and summary of ‘Leader as Healer’ below.

Genres

Leadership, Business, Self-Help, Personal Development, Management, Spirituality, Organizational Development, Psychology, Coaching, Innovation

‘Leader as Healer’ by Nicholas Janni presents a new paradigm for 21st-century leadership, challenging traditional leadership models and advocating for a holistic approach. Janni argues that leaders should not only possess strong rational and strategic capabilities but also develop their emotional intelligence and relational skills. The book emphasizes the importance of integrating ‘Being’ with ‘Doing,’ combining right and left-brain functions, and fostering a culture of mutual connection and coherence within organizations.

Review

Nicholas Janni’s ‘Leader as Healer’ is a compelling read that offers a fresh perspective on leadership. The book has been recognized as the 2023 Business Book of the Year, highlighting its impact and relevance in today’s corporate landscape. It provides a practical guide for leaders seeking to navigate the complexities of the modern world with a more embodied approach, connecting mind, body, and spirit. Janni’s writing is engaging and accessible, making it a valuable resource for anyone looking to enhance their leadership skills and create a positive change in their organization.

Recommendation

You can learn a lot about spirituality, mental healing, mindfulness and wise leadership from Nicholas Janni, including how to meditate, listen deeply, and make sense of “BANI” (“brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible”) situations in business and life. Janni holds that leaders should also be healers – grounded, empathetic, intuitive and sensitive. A student of Zen meditation, spirituality, consciousness and peak performance, Janni has an unusual background for a business author, including teaching acting and heading his own theater company.

Take-Aways

• Innovative leaders should explore enlightened consciousness.
• Fixing today’s problems requires cultivating higher awareness.
• Leaders who practice elevated thinking, being and acting can become emotional and spiritual healers.
• The “Leader as executor” role is outmoded.
• To achieve heightened consciousness, practice self-care.
• Lead a life of purpose – the right purpose.
• Today’s world needs leaders to be healers.

Summary

Innovative leaders should explore enlightened consciousness.

Technology has transformed the world just as heightened consciousness can transform each person. CEOs and senior executives who seek an elevated state of consciousness can become more effective, particularly in these fractious times of the “new abnormal.”

You cannot deal with today’s troubles by applying yesterday’s management methods. Weak solutions only inspire additional problems. Leaders must invest their energy in an advanced form of innovative, mindful leadership.

Executives face huge challenges. Major disruption is rocking many industrial sectors. Companies that have already survived economic turbulence and the pandemic now find that humanity and their industries are in environmental peril.

“Some estimates suggest there has been more technological advance in the last five years than in the previous 500.”

Futurist, author and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has said he regrets that people remain prey to ancient, tribal, basic, thoughtless emotions, while now having access to heinous weapons of mass destruction. Cut-throat competition and over-consumption are running rampant while the concept of the common good seems to be languishing.

Climate scientists agree that humankind’s negative impact on the planet has reached crisis proportions. Reversing this trend means looking beyond technology and economics. Society must prioritize humanity’s communal, intuitive and metaphysical principles over greed, self-interest and competition. Dealing with today’s challenges calls for innovative leaders and a radical attitude adjustment.

Fixing today’s problems requires cultivating higher awareness.

Consider, as a starting point, a lesson from Buddhism. It teaches that every person lives in a separate spiritual reality made up of his or her unique experiences, an internal world of a deeper self with heightened awareness.

“This is the moment when what we need most is enough people with the skill, heart and wisdom to help us pull ourselves back from the edge of breakdown and onto a different path.” (Otto Scharmer, senior MIT lecturer)

Leaders who become more aware and more grounded in their inner strengths can offer themselves to their organizations and the external world as complete, fully developed individuals – peak performers and special healers. By their actions, effective CEOs, senior executives and other leaders take on the role of healers, even when they lack the vanity to regard themselves as such.

Leaders who practice elevated thinking, being and acting can become emotional and spiritual healers.

Growing into someone who can provide solid, wise leadership inevitably includes emotional and spiritual healing. Great leaders already use logic, reason and discernment to plan ahead. They listen to others with empathy and care. They are intuitive, insightful and empathetic.

Thanks to these qualities, great leaders inspire those around them. Because of who they are, how they carry themselves, how they think, how they act, what they do and how they energize others, they have the ability to transform fragmented organizations into “coherent wholes.” That in itself is an act of healing.

“There is almost nothing as beautiful or powerful as a human being whose every cell is alive with streaming energy and intelligence, as seen in truly great performances in music, dance or theater.”

Healers can reawaken a company’s dormant vitality, harness that force to build internal connections and imbue an organization with energy. As healers, these leaders can identify and remove counterproductive, risky flaws from their organization.

The “Leader as executor” role is outmoded.

“Leader-as-healer” is the advanced leadership construct that replaces the outdated leader-as-executor model which rose to prominence when getting bigger and quicker took center stage in the business world. Executors prioritized profits, compelled action and enforced discipline, but they didn’t lead. Such executives see commerce not as a platform for connection, healing and mutual success, but as a grim battlefield where attrition rules.

Executors have a limited bandwidth that encompasses primarily the rational and strategic side of business, but not its human side. They never address the emotional, spiritual or even physical self. They live for “doing,” not “being.” But being matters to human beings. Leaders-as-healers have practical wisdom and recognize the value of giving focused attention to those they lead. They provide a “coherent presence,” showing employees that they are always present and ready to help in any way.

If you ever faced a problem at work or found yourself in trouble with your company, and a leader offered his or her limited time to pay respectful attention and offer aid, you know the value and healing properties of that level of support and involvement.

“[Learn] to tolerate the ‘don’t know mind,’ or just being still, holding the whole in awareness, not having to know anything.” (“Leading from the Emerging Future” by MIT academics Otto Scharmer and Katrina Kaufer)

The logical, sequential thinking that superficially seems perfect for business leadership makes it sound as if everything is knowable, predictable and reliable. However, no one can cope effectively with today’s complex, disruptive world by using a purely rational, schematic approach.

The acronym VUCA – “volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity” – is used commonly to describe a prevailing condition of constant disruption. Now the term “BANI” – “brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible” – is replacing it. This signifies the increased difficulties people face in their daily life and work.

To achieve heightened consciousness, practice self-care.

Today’s leaders and their employees must be receptive to new ideas and nurture and maintain an open spirit. For most businesspeople, that calls for some level of personal transformation that includes getting back in touch with their inner selves. This begins with self-care. Leaders should pay close attention to their emotional, spiritual and physical needs, including their health.

“True leadership sometimes requires that one decisively excise moral and spiritual tumors from the bodies of organizations or nations.”

For example, to tune into your body and your emotions, consider following a “somatic mindfulness practice.” Sit in a chair and shut your eyes. Pinch your hand and hold the pinch. Feel it intensely. Does the feeling spread? Is it warm or cool? Does the feeling change depending on your breathing? Release the pinch. What’s your feeling now? A tingle? Numbness? Something else?

Refocus on your breathing. Does your body move with each breath? If so, which parts? Where do you feel your breathing? Does inhaling feel different from exhaling? How?

Shift your focus. Feel your body in the chair. How does it feel? Sense your legs and toes; feel how your feet contact the floor. Then go back to feeling how you breathe. Pay attention to the sounds around you. Don’t strain to hear everything, but listen carefully. Can you hear any noises now you missed earlier?

Open your eyes. Continue to pay close attention to your body’s inner and outer sensations, especially your breathing. Your goal is to get in complete touch with your body, because your body is your gateway to an advanced state of perception. Even simple awareness exercises can help you develop significant personal insights. These practices can rewire your neural pathways and deepen the scope of your leadership.

Think back to your childhood, when almost all significant events were physical and played out moment by moment. Adults can learn from how children revel in their physical beings. Failure to embrace your physicality and care for your body can lead to profound spiritual and psychological disconnection.

Enlightened leaders should practice mindfulness by focusing on their minds with contemplative exercises such as meditation, a venerable way to achieve interior quiet. Mindfulness and meditation techniques date back to pre-Colombian civilization, as well as their practice by early Hebrew mystics, Indian yogis and Native American shamans.

“Our operating model of indefatigable consumption and endless economic growth is leading us to the cliff’s edge. In the face of ever-increasing complexity, unpredictability and change, the need for individuals, organizations and societies to access higher evolutionary potentials is more important and more urgent than ever.”

Set aside 20 minutes daily for meditation. Early mornings usually work best. Sit quietly with your spine upright, but don’t try to not think. To be more mindful, take notes on your inner emotional, mental and physical state. Don’t analyze or try to change anything that passes through your mind. Note each thought and let it go.

Lead a life of purpose – the right purpose.

People without a strong sense of purpose end up navigating life like a ship in stormy waters without a compass or rudder. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung taught that living without purpose wounds the soul. Seek a purpose that feels deep and real to you.

A leader who operates unemotionally, based only on rationality, might translate purpose as increased profits and productivity, and those are necessary business goals. But your life’s purpose should be internally worthwhile. Define your values and consider the contributions you can make that will help improve the world.

“Emotions are the gateway to our deeper humanity, to a richer, more heartfelt and empathic relationship to life and to leadership.”

Making this internal connection can be a road to enormous changes that shape an executive’s humanity and maturity. Leaders who can’t embrace their emotional side cut themselves off, freezing their hearts and damaging their effectiveness.Instead, try to relinquish self-limiting ideas, open your mind and acknowledge the role of your feelings.

Today’s world needs leaders to be healers.

Leaders should abandon archaic thinking that has failed in the past, dropping tactics that focus on doing, not being, and evolving beyond hyperrationality. This degraded leadership approach does not lead to greater effectiveness, healthier organizations or healthier people.

“All too frequently…leaders…operate out of overt or covert self-interest, prioritizing and protecting their own positions.”

Leaders as healers combine the thinking and feeling facets of themselves to practice enlightened leadership that fortifies their organizations and their employees.

About the Author

Nicholas Janni, co-founder of the arts-based leadership consultancy Olivier Mythodrama, teaches at the IMD Business School in Switzerland and the University of Oxford Said Business School. An expert in peak performance and mind-body disciplines, he formerly headed his own theater company and taught acting at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

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