Yosi Amram: How to Become More Spiritually Intelligent

Episode recap:

 Dr. Yosi Amram, CEO coach and author of Spiritually Intelligent Leadership, shares insights on how spiritual intelligence (SI) enhances leadership by fostering purpose, compassion, and presence. SI isn’t about religion but about harnessing inner resources for clarity and impact. He breaks down seven core SI dimensions—like gratitude and wisdom—showing how they drive engagement and performance. Simple shifts, like active listening and aligning work with purpose, transform leadership. 

Bio:

Dr. Yosi Amram is a pioneering researcher in the field of spiritual intelligence (SI), a CEO leadership coach, and a licensed clinical psychologist. He has coached over 100 CEOs, including leaders of multi-billion-dollar companies, and his groundbreaking research in SI has been cited over 1,000 times. He is the author of Spiritually Intelligent Leadership.

Quotes:

• Spiritual intelligence is the ability to draw on and embody spiritual resources and qualities to enhance daily functioning and well-being.
• When you have shared vision and purpose, and then you have joy, fun, appreciation, and gratitude among everyone, there's mutual caring, and that builds a sense of community.

 Takeaways:

• Cultivate a daily gratitude and appreciation practice - Recognize and verbalize the contributions and strengths of those around you to build a culture of positivity.
• Implement regular self-care rituals - Engage in activities like meditation, exercise, and time in nature to reduce stress, enhance presence, and recharge your inner resources.
• Identify your unique gifts and find ways to use them in service of others - Discover how you can leverage your talents to make a meaningful impact.

Timestamps:

[00:05] Introduction

[04:04] From military to Silicon Valley—Dr. Yosi Amram’s unexpected path

[08:07] How CEOs with spiritual intelligence build stronger teams

[10:10] The real meaning of spiritual intelligence (it’s not what you think)

[13:28] The 7 key traits of spiritually intelligent leaders

[17:29] How to bring spiritual intelligence into your daily life

[19:23] Simple practices to build spiritual intelligence (starting today)

[24:13] Why self-care is the foundation of great leadership

[29:50] The future of leadership: beyond ego to connection

[36:41] Final takeaways—practical steps to lead with spiritual intelligence

Conclusion:

Strengthening spiritual awareness allows leaders to move beyond self-interest and recognize their connection to a larger purpose. When decisions are guided by a sense of responsibility to others, success becomes more meaningful and sustainable. True leadership isn’t just about personal achievement but about creating a positive impact on communities and future generations. By shifting from a mindset of individual gain to one of collective well-being, leaders can foster lasting change.

Links/Resources:

Yosi Amram, PhD
https://yosiamram.net/

Spiritually Intelligent Leadership Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Spiritually-Intelligent-Leadership-Inspire-Inspired/dp/1960583697

For short fun videos to help awaken your SI subscribe to: https://www.youtube.com/@awakeningspiritualintelligence/shorts

Transcript

Marcel Schwantes 00:04

Hey gang, welcome back if you're a longtime listener, and a big, warm welcome if you're joining us for the first time, glad you are here. So I love our topic today. It's it's very much in line with the love in action message. So let me throw out a term at you right now. Okay, so if I say spiritual intelligence, what do you think that means? I mean what comes up for you? So let me take it up another notch. How about spiritual intelligent leadership. Okay, so maybe you're hearing that for the first time. I can tell you what. It's not spiritual intelligence, in the sense that we're gonna be talking about today, is not about religious beliefs. It's not some sort of, you know, ecstatic spiritual experience that kind of it's fleeting, right? It goes away after a little bit. Like, here's my example. I'm a big YouTube fan, right? So when I listen to some of their songs with the volume full blast, when nobody's home, of course, I don't want to scare the neighbors singing at the top of my my lungs, but there's a spiritual experience there for me, you know, listening to some of YouTube's music, okay, but it doesn't last, right? The music is gone and the moment goes away. So spiritual intelligence is something that comes from our inner beings. It's something so deep inside us that it's that point where we feel connected, not only to ourselves, but also to others on the much deeper level. Okay, so don't worry. I mean, this is still a business leadership podcast, but once you get the idea of what spiritual intelligence is as you listen further, based on scientific evidence, and how to draw that out of you, you're going to begin to experience more purpose and joy in your life. So to explain all that, because I'm not the expert, we're actually going to talk to a true expert, Dr Yosi Amram is going to be joining us shortly. Yosi is a true pioneer in this field, because he's done the research on spiritual intelligence or SI. He's also a CEO leadership coach, a licensed clinical psychologist. He's coached over 100 CEOs, including leaders of multi billion dollar companies, and his groundbreaking research on spiritual intelligence has been cited over 1000 times. By the way, he's also the best selling author who wrote the book. That's the whole reason why he's here, and that book is entitled, What else spiritually intelligent leadership, how to inspire by being inspired. And we're going to break that down and give you some really awesome tips and strategies to kind of elevate your spiritual intelligence. And Dr Yossi Amram now joins us. Welcome to the love in action podcast.

Yosi Amram 03:23

Thank you. Thank you. Marcel, Wow. What an introduction. I love I love it. I mean, I think you, you are on a roll. You're like, such a beautiful summary of of what we're going to talk about. So I am just honored and delighted to be here. 

Marcel Schwantes 03:40

Well, the feeling is mutual. And, you know, I can't wait to dive into this to make sense of what it is and sometimes maybe even what it's not. I kind of alluded to it a little bit about what it's not, but All right, so we start the show like this. You ready? I'm ready. I'm here. What's your what's your story? 

Yosi Amram 03:59

My story. Okay? Oh, my God, just summarizing a year and a half of life in 15 seconds, longer than that. But, you know, I was born and raised in Israel, which is a war torn part of the world. Fortunately, as all Israelis, I was drafted. Fortunately, it was a peaceful time. But you know, I was a shy, introverted kid, and I never thought of myself as a leader, and certainly not one in the military command and control environment. Lo and behold, I had the fastest promotion record in the history of my regiment. So I excelled in that environment. But, you know, I was totally surprised by that, and despite my excelling at it, the command and control model of the military, while effective in battle, felt dehumanizing and and chafed at my soul. So I resolved to someday became one of my life dreams was to build an organization. That would be based on different, more humanistic principles than inspiring, brings out the best in people and each individuals. And I was a tech nerd kind of math and science thing, so I thought my path is going to be, you know, through innovation. And I came to Silicon Valley and so on, and I started a company. It was called individual, which meant both for the concept was delivering personal news, interactive newspapers. So you'd get Marcel's morning newspaper on your fax machine. This is well before the internet. You'd give us feedback on what was relevant or not. We had self learning, machine learning agents, and we would adjust that. And so the company was growing. I was working passionately. It was my lifelong dream. And then the Internet came, and, you know, it was clear that the thing we were selling, the subscriptions and so on, was all going to be ad supported, free on the internet. So it was kind of a crisis, and I was scared about the future of the business. We raised 10s of millions of dollars from the top venture capital firms, and it was a lot of pressure, and I just started freezing and getting burned out and depressed, and I went into a clinical depression. I couldn't show up in front of my employees, hundreds of employees, and tell them how we're going to take on the world, because I had lost my vision, my confidence, but I persisted, and somehow we turned the business around and became an Internet company and became a hot internet company. We're going public. We had a rising stock price. It was crazy times, or all these wide open opportunities with the internet, and I was running around, still working like mad, and one day I was trying to relax and get a massage, you know, which was one of my favorite ways. I was laying on a massage table, and as I was relaxing, relaxing, relaxing, you know, my ego sort of dissolved, and all of a sudden I felt like everything is made of consciousness. Everything is made of his oneness is interconnected. I was looking through the face cradle. The floor looked like it was inside me, and it just blew the circuits of my mind. It was kind of a Kundalini, if to use spiritual technology terminology was be kundalini awakening, and awakening experience, which is known, can throw you into manic episode. And can, you know, upset, you know the I wasn't integrated, I wasn't grounded, so I was trying to get everything done yesterday. I had these big visions of where the internet was going. I wanted individual, my company, to be the leader, and I wanted everything done yesterday. Well, my team couldn't keep up. My bro, my board freaked out. They put me on a leave of absence. They pushed me out of the company. So that was a major trauma crisis, because this was my baby, but that kind of changed the direction of my life. I started asking, Why did I get so passionate, committed and overworked around it? My identity was this awakening experience, real or delusional, and that led me to study psychology and become a therapist and and so on, both to understand myself. By then, I was also coaching other CEOs, and I wanted to work with them deeper. And I heard the term spiritual intelligence, and I knew about emotional intelligence, which we may want to explain the difference between the two, and I knew all the research that was done about emotional intelligence that showed it contributed to leadership and all kind of other things, but there wasn't a similar definition, an operational definition and a measurement of spiritual intelligence. So that's the path I set on. That was my doctoral research. And I studied 42 CEOs, and I developed this measure of spiritual intelligence that was academically validated, and I showed that CEOs that scored higher on spiritual intelligence led teams with greater commitment, higher morale, lower turnover, even when you control for emotional intelligence. So the two were complimentary, and together, they were synergistic. And since then, there's been other research by other researchers that use this measure of spiritual tone, that shown that leaders that score higher on spiritual intelligence lead organization with better financial performance. Yeah, that's fascinating to me. Let me stop right there for a second. So yeah, that is because I know the research on EQ and how that also leads to better financial performance and and good outcomes for relationships. You know, relationship management, motivation, empathy, things like that, but spiritual intelligence is, I think, I think perhaps we need to understand in your own words. How would you describe it? Is there like a succinct description for spiritual intelligence? Yeah, well, let's just start with emotional intelligence. Fundamentally emotional intelligence, the ability to be aware of and. On emotional information and resources to help manage your own and others emotions. Okay, that's kind of a basic, simplified definition. So what is spiritual intelligence? Is the ability to draw on and embody spiritual resources and qualities to help daily functioning and well being. So what are those? Yeah, these are the qualities that have been hailed by all the world's spiritual traditions across Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, shamanism, Hinduism, etc, Taoism. And these are qualities like purpose, service, compassion, gratitude, humility, presence, beauty, joy, Higher Self, intuition and so on. And these are the qualities that in my research, I discovered that regardless of what tradition you come on in from what your theology or cosmology, if you believe in in a deity like God, you believe in Buddha nature, you believe father sky, Mother Earth. Jesus is the Messiah. Muhammad was the final prophet. Whatever your belief is, it comes down to, do you embody compassion? Do you embody gratitude? Do you do you have a sense of purpose? Do you live in service? And so these are the qualities of spiritual intelligence. And as you said in the introduction, it's not a belief system. It's not a religion. So you can be an atheist and still embody egolessness. You could still have purpose. You could be a non spiritual person, so to speak. And I have no spiritual belief system. You don't believe in anything spiritual, but you embody presence, you embody gratitude, you embody compassion. And these are the qualities that the field of positive psychology. Marty Seligman did all these this research, and they have this thing called Values in Action, similar to love in action. We'll come back to that idea and character strengths. And they have identified 24 qualities, and over half of them map to these qualities of spiritual intelligence that I mentioned. So you know, there's a big convergence between ancient wisdom across spiritual traditions for 1000s of years that they've been saying, cultivate compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, etc, and positive psychology says same thing. And then there's this third thing that's coming in these days is leadership development. So a study by Bain and Company, one of the top management consulting companies in the world, did research to look at employee productivity, and they found that employees that are inspired are twice as productive as people are just going about doing their jobs. And then they looked at what gets people, employees inspired. So they identified 33 qualities, and again, over half of the spiritual intelligence qualities map into the thing that Bain and Company identified. So it had to do with presence and centeredness and servanthood and and so on. So yeah, now when you think about it, you know, my first Harvard Business School case was managers and leaders. Are they the same or different? And managers manage resources, make decisions, super important. But Leaders Inspire. Okay, we think that listen to the word inspire. What is the root of it? Is spirit? What is spirit? The animating breath of life. So what leaders do is, we, you know, light up the fire of the organization. We breathe life. How do we do that? We set a vision, we define the values, we define our mission, and then people that are aligned with it, you know, that enlivens the organization and creates cohesion, a sense of community. So, you know it actually, when you look at the etymology of the words and what leaders do, is inspiring. It just makes sense. It has to do with spirit, the breath of life, the life force, energy that that we bring into the organization. 

Marcel Schwantes 13:59

Yeah. So as you kept validating through your research and and, you know, and testing it out with different populations, you interviewed 40 CEOs, and then the employees were assessed and all that, what did you discover being, finally, your primary characteristics of SI.

Yosi Amram 14:23

Well, As I outline in the book, there are seven main dimensions of spiritually intelligent leadership. So it has to do with meaning, mobilizing meaning. So that has to do with purpose, service and reframing difficulties into opportunities. So, you know, in every organization, you have setbacks, you have crisis, and instead of despairing, you have to find the meaning in that, in how that access calls us to to become resilient, become stronger, etc. So it has to do with meaning, purpose, service. Why we here? Are we serving the world? The second domain is has to do with interacting with. Grace, and that basically means bringing the energy of positivity. So it starts with trust. You have to trust the future that things are going to work out, which then fuels your hope and your optimism, etc. And then you bring in gratitude and joy and beauty to your interactions. When people feel joy and fun and appreciation, they're more creative, they're more motivated, and so on. And so all of that then feeds into building a sense of community. When you have shared vision, shared purpose, and then you have joy and fun and and appreciation and gratitude among everybody, then there's mutuality of caring, and that's that builds a sense of community. At the same time as a leader, you need to be inner directed. You have to listen to your inner North Star, your inner compass. So it's a, it's a, it's a kind of a yin yang thing. You have to be inner directed, trust your judgment, trust your intuition, trust your your moral compass, and at the same time, be open to others. And so that's the that's the community. And so I'm open to you, but I'm also connected to myself. So I'm interconnected and interconnected, and that creates the inner directedness and the sense of community. And then to do that, I also need to be present. One of the main thing is to be presence. And we're so distracted in our world, we're looking at our phone, we have text messages, we have all kinds of distractions, emails, notifications, etcetera. But the biggest gift we can give people and is to be present. I'm here with you now, and you're listening to me. You're engaged. I'm tracking you. You're smiling. Hopefully you're tracking me. I get a sense that you want to say something, and maybe I should stop. But, you know, so but, but if I'm not present with you, I'm not paying attention. So being present with who I am is actually love and action. I'm giving you my full undivided attention in this moment. I'm devoted to our conversation. That's love and action. We'll bring it back to that. But it's presence. It's the quality of presence that you have as a leader, and you respect your employees, they engage with you, and then they increases their commitment. The other thing has to do with truth. It's, it's, it's not my ego that is here at stake. I'm not trying to prove myself, right? Self, anger, diamond, it's, I'm open. I'm interested in the truth, so I'm I'm looking to do what is right, rather than being right or proving myself right. And the last thing is with the dimension of wisdom, which has to do with tracking, attacking into the higher self that we all have. And we can ask ourselves, okay, my future self, 1015, years from now, what wisdom? What advice would I give myself now? So we do all the analysis, the spreadsheets, the Gantt charts, the decision trees, etc, the financial models. But sometimes we make decisions, and as leaders, we have to tap into something deeper, our gut feelings, you know, people, leaders like Steve Jobs. You know, all the creativity was all about doing all the analysis your homework, but at some point, quieting your mind and finding that voice inside that is deeper and that has to do with this wisdom that we all embody that's in us. We may be out of touch with it, because our mind is racing around, having 80,000 thoughts a minute, and 90% of them are repetitive. 

Marcel Schwantes 18:49

Well, that's, that's what I wanted to get at, because I can, I can already tell this. Some of my listeners are going, Yeah, that sounds great. But in real life, where I work, where I'm putting out fires all day and and, you know, I'm getting notifications every five minutes. This is sort of idealistic, but it's not, it's not pragmatic. I don't know how to make it happen. So I mean, you coach CEOs now that have actually gotten over that hump. So what would you say is a good approach to experiencing some of these, these, these things like meaning and understanding how you know what obstacles are in the way from you building more community or or being more present? 

Yosi Amram 19:38

Yeah. Well, you know, we often deal with fires, we all have crises, etc, so, and that's fine, and we have to be in that mode, but sometime, the underlying point is sometime, but we don't want to get addicted to that and then run on adrenaline and, you know, stress. Hormones all the time, because that burns our our nervous system, and we get exhausted, and we're in that mode all the time. So you have to, you know, in our brains have this thing that neuroscientists call negativity bias, which, you know, helped to survive in the jungle. We're focused on danger and problems, right? And that helps you avoid the danger and you survive. But you know that was an environment where you'd have short bursts of stress anxiety. You're running away from a lion or a snake or whatever. But then you have to discharge and and if you look at animals in the wild, they they go through these traumatic moments, and then they shake and whatever, and they discharge those hormones from the their bloodstream. But what happens in our modern world is, you know, we don't have real life threatening thing, but our nervous system is programmed around these dangers. You know, a customer cancels a contract and, oh, I'm going to miss my monthly quota. I'm going to miss my quarterly guidance, whatever. All of a sudden it's like I'm totally stressed, and I can't I shake that off, and then my mind contracts. I'm less creative. I am less resourceful in figuring out how to what to do and how to make my plan even though there's that cancelation or whatever. So we go into a panic mode. So how do you overcome that? And this is what you have to do, is you have to cultivate the positive feelings. So you know a negative news takes you in a negative state, mind, mind state. But you need 2030, seconds of positivity to calm your nervous system. So you have to cultivate consciously, to take in the good, as neuroscientist Rick Hansen talks about. So you have to cultivate a gratitude practice and appreciation practice. So you know, you're going through your day and a customer cancels a contract, we find a new bug in the software, whatever it is. But you know, are you going through your meetings and paying attention to what people are doing well? And so and so did a beautiful analysis. So and so did a beautiful presentation. There was a great meeting here, and we feel connected as a team. And so do I recognize that? Do I pause to appreciate it? Appreciate that with people, which builds their morale, builds their resources, and then where is that? Positivity as the foundation people are more creative, more resourceful to deal with the crisis. So the crisis are going to happen. I'm not talking about an ideal, idyllic life, that everything is walking through a rose garden. No, it's rough out there sometimes, but you have to cultivate these qualities. And it's like you're going to the gym. You don't just read my book and is I'm spiritually intelligent now. You don't just read a yoga manual, and your body is agile and strong. You go to the gym and you have different muscle groups. You have exercises for your triceps and biceps and your legs, and then this and then that. They're different muscle groups. So same with spiritual intelligence, they're all these qualities I mentioned very quickly, and you have to focus on each of them for a period of time, a month or whatever, and build a habit about a habit of gratitude and appreciation. You you develop a mindfulness meditation practice that helps you focus your mind so you're more present in meetings, yeah, and things like that. So you're you're rewiring your brain. You know, you have all the we all have, our pathways that you know through years of growing up, traumas, problems in our childhood, family of origin, you know, issues we've dealt with. And you know, we have our issues, and we're not going to heal him overnight, but we have to get on a path to to do that work. 

Marcel Schwantes 23:59

I love the understanding that to create new neural pathways in the brain, you have to create new habits, and new habits are going to form the pathways that you want to go if you want to build up your SI, you mentioned negativity bias. I mean, my goodness, the world that we live in when we allow politics to kind of permeate how we color our worldview through those lenses, right? And it's perhaps pulling away from that, and yeah, and spending more time with those things that serve you well, right? So that you have more gratitude, that you're more present around people and not and less being less judgmental and more accepting of others. So I love the fact that you are calling us to step away from sort of the madness and the destruction that we have seen in the last, you know, six to eight years.

Yosi Amram 24:58

Yeah, yeah. Well. And I'm dealing with the same stuff I could tell you. I mean, I'm working on my spiritual intelligence. It hasn't been easy the last year with the political polarization and having family in Israel and the war of post October 7 that's going down there, and and Gaza and Lebanon and whatever. I mean, it's been very stressful and hard to unplug from the news and calling my family there and they're stressed and, you know, and their anxiety kind of and trauma just, I hear it on the phone, and affects my nervous system. So, you know, it's, it's a it's a challenge. But what I've tried to do is, you know, stick to my meditation practice. Stick to my exercise routine. Every day I try and take in a bit of nature. I'm fortunate to live by by, you know, nature, whether I go on the forest for some forest, bathing and hiking or walk on the beach at dawn and, you know, exercise and so on. So we have to do all these things, you know, to to discharge the anxiety, the stress from the nervous system, from the body, so that when I am here with you now, I can be more present, and I'm not thinking about those things. And because I've I've today, I've done some exercise, I've done some meditation, I had to get up early and and, yeah, that's just the reality of it. 

Marcel Schwantes 26:26

What I think, what I get from this so far, is that to really build up your spiritual intelligence, you have to create more more self care practices. It also create more interconnectedness. I mean, really connecting with yourself first. And I think a lot of the self care practices, mindfulness and meditation, will actually help in that regard, right? Are there any other techniques that will help us to connect with ourselves, to, you know, kind of remove all of the all of the distractions and feedback and noise in the world. 

Yosi Amram 27:03

Well, you're mentioning some of them. I mean, for each of us, it's a little different. I mean, some people, it's, it's mindfulness meditation. Other people, it's prayer. Other people, it's walking in the in nature, in the forest, and feeling part of a larger web of life. Yeah. Other people, it's, it's jogging. Of the people it's taken a bath. So we all have our way that we can just kind of quiet our mind down and take care of ourselves. And so key piece of it is intentionality and being intentional. And so when our intention is the rudder that keeps our boat, you know, aimed at where we're we're going, and we're navigating the sea and their big waves, and the wind changes, but you need your rudder, and you get off the direction. You get thrown off by a wave, and your boat, all of a sudden, is going this way, and the wind changes direction, and you're going this way, but then you say, no, no, no, this is where I'm aiming. And then you get back on track. And it's a time and time again, coming back to your intention. And it's not a resolution, you know, we just went through the New Year. People have their new year resolution. I say, Oh, I'm never going to eat pizza or ice cream after 10 o'clock at night and but then you open the freezer, you take your first bite of ice cream. And I was like, Well, I broke my resolution. I might as well finish the point. But, you know, but if you say this is my intention, then you get off course. But then you get back on the horse, you fall off the wagon, you get back on and with that, and you practice self good, forgiveness and self compassion. I'm not perfect, right? 

Marcel Schwantes 28:51

There's grace in that, yeah? 

Yosi Amram 28:53

There's grace in that. And then then that cultivates self care and self love and kindness towards ourselves, yeah, but it starts with that intentionality and and kind of getting off track and back on track. So again, it's not an idealistic world that I'm talking about. This is the reality that we all live. 

Marcel Schwantes 29:15

Yeah, absolutely, 100% I want to pull one of the seven and drove a little deeper. Okay, and it's, it's the first one. It's finding our sense of meaning for ourselves. But also, if you're a leader, it's finding, finding that for those we lead. So and then that, obviously, I mean, I think, if I have this right, the sequence is you, have to find meaning in order to bring more purpose into our work and our lives. Is that correct? And if so, how do we create that meaning? 

Yosi Amram 29:47

Well, to me, they're kind of part part and parcel, the same. The purpose gives us meaning, okay? And the meaning, you know, goes along with purpose and service. So, you know, in. It, as you point out, it's both happens at the individual and at the organizational level, and ideally you find an alignment. So what gives us, what gives people meaning and purpose, I'll cite a little research, is like, actually, when we share our gifts and contribute to others, that seems to be the most deepest fulfillment that we we have gifts, where each have our gifts, talents and superpowers. You know, some people are great athletes, some people are great musicians, some people have a great sense of humor. Some people are great mathematicians or programmers, whatever, whatever it is God or life endowed each of us with, with our unique gifts, talents and superpowers, but then we want to actualize them, and we want to use them to contribute to others. And when we do that, there's the deepest fulfillment. So there, there have been studies. For example, you take a group of people and and you, you, you know, go through a lottery, and half the people win $20 okay? And so the people win $20 they have a boost in mood. They feel happy, versus the people didn't. There's just randomly, right? Then you take the people that were that one to $20 and randomly, you divide them into two some people, you say, hey, take that $20 and go do something nice for yourself. Buy yourself a gift, a nice lunch, whatever it is. And then the other people, they say, take that $20 and spend it on on someone else. You know, help use it to contribute to someone else. And then they look at the end of the day, when at the mood okay? So everybody who won the $20 had a boost, right? But the people who spend it on themselves, there was no lasting effect at the end of the day, they didn't feel better about their day or themselves. They had that moment. It came and went. But the people who use that $20 to connect and contribute to others. Felt better at the end of the day, and there was a lasting effect. Point being is when we use our gifts and we share them, we we have a lasting sense of meaning, purpose and contribution. So as leaders, we want to ask ourselves, What is my gifts in life? And then, how can I use it to contribute to the world? And then, then at the individual level and in the organizational level, so as an organization, you do strengths analysis and so on, what is our competitive differentiation as a company, and how, how are we different than other companies in this marketplace. And then, how can we use that to contribute to customers and be of service? After all, why do businesses exist to serve customers, to serve human needs, and each company tries to find its differentiated position based on its DNA and its strength, just like us as individual. One person, I said, is a musician, one person is a programmer, mathematician. Well, one company competes on cost, one company competes on quality. One company, you know, competes on electric vehicles for people that are environmentally conscious and and there's, you know, built Ferraris, if you want to be a performance, you know, so our niches and each organization serves, you know, needs based on its strengths. So you have your purpose, your service, and that gives you meaning. And then you want to find your personal purpose and align it with the organization, and then, and then people are aligned, and you have a community of people with a shared vision, mission and purpose, 

Marcel Schwantes 33:47

yeah, yeah, well, yeah. So much of it is it reminds me of servant leadership as as that dimension is very it's very similar, yeah, yeah.

Yosi Amram 34:01

Well, say one thing about No, it's different, right? I'm sorry. Robert Greenleaf, who developed servant leadership, the focus on serving the people under you and flipping the org chart on its head, which is a beautiful idea. When I'm talking about service, that's only part of it. So I'm not just in service to my employees. I'm in service to the purpose, which includes multiple stakeholders, which is my customers and my shareholders and my employees, so and my mission. So I'm servant to this idea, this vision of the world. And it's not just to make the people under me feel good, although that that is part of that, part of their growth, commitment to their growth, their coaching, their self actualization. But that's also there's a bigger notion of what service is. I'm in service to this purpose, vision, mission. That we have, 

Marcel Schwantes 35:01

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So as we wind down here, is anybody capable of awakening and and bring now their their spiritual intelligence? 

Yosi Amram 35:15

Yeah, anybody can be. You don't have to be religious. You don't have to be spiritual like you. We said in the beginning, you don't have to believe in spiritual belief system, whether there's God or reincarnation of the soul or whatever, it's not a momentary experience. You like you said, you love you too, and you get into this ecstatic spiritual state. Or some people go in the forest and they feel oneness with nature. Or you meditate and you dissolve your ego, and those are spiritual moments and states, whatever. But you can be an atheist. You could be a non spiritual person and have a purpose. Have a sense of service. Embody gratitude, have presence, you know, have intuition. Be humble, Be compassionate. And in that regard, you you cultivate these spiritual intelligence qualities, and they pay off research shows in positive psychology and leadership development, like I mentioned, and my own research, and now there's an ever growing body of research across different cultures languages that has shown that spiritual intelligence contributes to, you know, satisfaction, quality of life, resilience, mental health, individual productivity. It was even shown that banks where the average level of spiritual intelligence among employees is higher than other banks produce better ROI return on their assets financially. So again, this, this pays off, but you don't have to be spiritual. You can be anybody if you want to cultivate gratitude, joy, beauty, compassion, presence, mindfulness, that's natural. 

Marcel Schwantes 36:53

Yeah, all right, so I'm sitting in the ceasely right now listening. I'm going, I'm all in, Yoshi, what's the strategy? What's the starting point? How do I shape an environment to encourage these, these practices?

Yosi Amram 37:09

Well, you know, this sounds self promotional, but, but you can. You can read my book. You know that would be a good place to start. You can give it to some of your team members and executive but it's not about reading the book. The book each quality starts with case studies that highlights how these things are tangible and practical in address real world problems. And then for each quality, there are exercises, and you focus, you build a habit for a month. I think it takes about a month. They say 21 days to so you say, Okay, for the next month, I'm going to work on gratitude and appreciation. So I go through my day, I look for things that I'm appreciating during the day, and I make a habit to let people know as soon as possible that I appreciate something about them in the meeting, or if I forgot at the end of the day, I email them. And so, you know, for a month I build a habit of gratitude and appreciation. It's like I learned to brush my teeth. And once I brush my teeth, I brush my teeth every day. I go through my days looking for moments to appreciate people. And then I say, Okay, next month I'm going to work on purpose. And I ask myself, what are my gifts? What are my talents? How do I want to actualize them? How do I want to use them to contribute? And I kind of find my my purpose, and I remind myself that this is my purpose. And then next month, I'm going to work on compassion, and you know, their practices for cultivating compassion. Or the next month, I'm going to build a habit of of meditation, and I'm going to work it into my my schedule every day, whether it's five minutes, two minutes, 12 minutes, 22 minutes, you know, I'm going to meditate, and that helps me calm my mind, calm my nervous system, brings me into presence. And then when I'm in meaning. And there are exercises in the book that you could learn to become present. In I have this protocol that in 30 seconds to a minute, you can become present and clear the cash of your mind, so to speak, if you want. We could try it right now, but you know, so anyway, but you build habits, you build practices, and it takes time, and it's a lifelong journey, but you start to see the payoff, and you learn and you grow, and that's very fulfilling. 

Marcel Schwantes 39:37

Okay, you left you left. Us hanging on a limb here. So let's do it. Walk through it. 

Yosi Amram  39:43

Okay, well, I hope you you're not driving as you're listening. Yeah, that might be, might be, but, but right now here with me, can you feel and wiggle the big toe on your left foot?

Marcel Schwantes 39:59

Yes.

Yosi Amram 39:59

And then feel and wiggle the pinky in your right hand.

Marcel Schwantes 40:04

Yep. 

Yosi Amram 40:05

And then feel and wiggle the pinky in your left hand.

Marcel Schwantes 40:09

It's there, yeah. 

Yosi Amram  40:10

And feeling wiggled the big toy in your right foot.

Marcel Schwantes 40:14

Yep. 

Yosi Amram 40:15

And now wiggle all your toes.

Marcel Schwantes  40:19

Yep. 

Yosi Amram  40:19

And wiggle your fingers and fingers and toes and now feel the verticality and sense your spine and your breath, sense your breath, inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth, and sense your heartbeat, and just see what's here now, as you're connected with yourself, connected with me, hearing these words.

Marcel Schwantes 40:55

My feet are more planted to the to the carpet, because I'm barefoot on my shaggy carpet, and I feel, I feel the carpet more more now, okay, what? 

Yosi Amram 41:08

How is this affecting you, that you feel your feet on the ground and the carpet? 

Marcel Schwantes 41:13

Oh, it's, it's, it's, brings more presence to other parts of my body.

Yosi Amram 41:18

And how about did, how about your mind. Did it clear your mind? Are you? 

Marcel Schwantes 41:23

Yeah, it cleared a little bit. I might need a little more time, yeah, to feel the effects, because of the distraction of trying to keep the conversation going right.

Yosi Amram 41:39

We're the close to the end of the show, and you're already like, I need to, I need to bring this home and and so on. 

Marcel Schwantes 41:46

Yeah, but the fact that I have the awareness of of feeling parts of my body now, and because there, there are days when I don't even do that, so I don't have full, I'm not fully present with myself. So this is really a good starting point for me. 

Yosi Amram 42:03

Yeah, okay, well, that took a minute, you know, I don't know how long it took us, but you know, and we're close to the end and, and this is whatever, but you know, people, I have clients who do this in meetings, they notice they're starting to tune out, and their mind is going elsewhere, and someone else is rambling on and on in the meeting, and, you know, and they feel the impulse to look for to the to reach to the phone and text their check their email, and they're like, oh, they do this. And they notice that they become more present. And then they ask themselves, what, what is needed right now? Maybe I need to interrupt this person that's going on and on. I have a skillful a skillful intervention to redirect the discussion. But, you know, I need to become present. Remind myself, what is the intention for the meeting? How do I want to show up? And I could be that much more skillful in the moment. 

Marcel Schwantes 42:59

Yeah, gosh, you bring us such an interesting point with the world that kids are growing up in. What kind of leaders are we actually building when their attention span is so short, with faces buried in devices? I have an 11 year old, so I speak from experience, it is hard for him to break away from that, and for me to sit down with them and just have a conversation, and then his mind starts to trail off and and so, you know, I'm hopeful that these practices Will will become more the norm in society where we can be more present with each other. I mean, how many times have I have I walked into a restaurant, sat down with my wife, and we're having conversation? We can do it. We know we're capable of actually being, you know, engaging with each other, but looking at the table next to me, and there's a couple, and both of them have their devices, and they have their heads down, and now a word is exchanged during their meal. And I'm not trying to be critical or judgmental. I'm stating sadness in seeing this in this generation, you know, and these are people that are not that much younger than me. So what is your hope for the future of spiritual intelligence as we, you know, get to understand our limitations and how what's your hope moving forward for this research and for your work?

Yosi Amram 44:40

Yeah, well, I think this is the critical piece. I mean, you know, humanity with our cognitive intelligence, IQ, we've split the atom, we deciphered the genome, we developed AI that now rivals our own. And we have emotional intelligence that taught us to monitor our emotions and regulate them, and we get angry, hope. We don't start yelling and punching and throwing shoes and plates at each other, but yet we have all these problems. There's loneliness, epidemic depression, anxiety, suicide rates are skyrocketing, and we feel disconnected, alienated from each other, and you're talking about love and action, so you know, people are going on their week night, date night, right? These couples that you're seeing in the restaurant, this is supposed to be their quality time date night, and they're on their phone and and not paying attention to each other. So our presence is part of love and action and and being connected to myself and to you is what connects us. If I'm not connected to myself and I'm all out there, then I'm not really connect. We're not connected. This is the piece of rope that's hanging over there, but it's not tied over here. So I have to be connected to myself and be open to you right now. So I feel my feet, I feel my presence, I feel my chest, my heart open, but I'm also seeing you. I'm reading your body language. So that's a real connection. Otherwise, you know, and when we don't have connection, you know, we're social animals and people that feel lonely, isolated, don't you know that affects our mood, our well being, our physical health. And the reason is, you know, when you think about it, the worst prison punishment is solitary confinement. Now, right? People go crazy, but without we have put ourselves in solitary confinement because we believe I'm separate from you. I'm a skin encapsulated ego. There's me, and then there's you, there's me, and then there's this plant on my desk, and there's the trees outside. They're all objects, etc, but the reality every inhale I take, I'm breathing in oxygen, which is the output exhale of the plant. And every time I excel, carbon dioxide, CO two, it's the inhale of the plant. So I'm I'm embedded in this web of life and and unless I understand that interconnectedness with even the plants, the environment, you know, other people in my team and I, you know, I'm looking at it as a dog eat dog world, as opposed to interdependence, interconnectedness, you know, or in romantic relationships, you know, it's like my needs, your needs well, but You can't be happy in a relationship unless both partners are fulfilled and connected and present with each other. So yeah, so that's why you know now is now beginning research that shows that couples that have greater spiritual intelligence have better satisfaction and relationship quality. So this is, it is important in the business world, but it's important in our personal lives. Yeah. And you know, your presence with your 11 year old, he feels it. And if you not present with him, then he's going to be not present, right, right with you. And,

Marcel Schwantes 48:20

Yeah, well, gosh, Yosi, you know, we barely scratched the surface on this. So folks get the book spiritually intelligent leadership, because it is chock full of case studies, practices, tips and habits that you need to employ and and like to the answer to the question you said it best, like, how do we create more more of this in our workplaces, in our communities? It's all in the book, all right. So we bring it home with two questions, as we do with every guest. The first one is the love question. So here we go, sticking with maybe something we've already talked about, or maybe you want to bring something out. How do we lead with more actionable, practical love, knowing that people that listen to the show know that it's not a squishy emotion or a feeling this is this is backed by action. So how do we do it? 

Yosi Amram 49:16

Well, we mentioned two of them already. One is gratitude and appreciation. So finding opportunities to celebrate and appreciate people around us, whether it's at home, on our team, that's love in action, because we're reinforcing them. We're giving them a gift. We're mirroring their success, their goodness, and when our goodness is mirrored, it it grows. It's like putting water and sunlight on a plant that's sprouts, and it grows. And then we talked about presence. You know, the gift of our presence, our time and attention, is the most scarce, unrenewable resource. I can give you $1 $100 I can go get another $100 but if. I give you my attention and my presence for a moment, that moment is gone. I can't get it back. I'm going to get another moment. So the greatest gift, the greatest resource we can give someone, is our full attention and presence. And that's love in action. That's generosity, you know? And then if I bring in joy and beauty, and imbue and find help people uncover the beauty in their work, or bring in the energy of joy. It makes people more creative, and they just enjoy and then they love it. So these qualities of spiritual intelligence really create that sense of shared connection and mutuality of care, which is what community and belonging. And to me, that's love and action, when you can do that, and people feel that belonging and that inspiration and that connection,

Marcel Schwantes 50:53

Bring us home, you close us out. What's that one thing you'd like us to walk away with?

Yosi Amram 50:58

Boy, uh, well, I think, I think we're, you know, up until Copernicus and Galileo, we believe that, you know, the Earth is in the center of the universe, and the Sun and the planets revolve around it, because that's how it looks when you look at the sky and just moves. The sun moves. But then we discovered, no, it's the other way around. You know, the Earth's going around the sun and and so we need to move from an ego centered world view to an eco centered world view. And that's our kind of awakening moment to understand our interconnectedness. And, you know, in opening our hearts, in in opening our mind to understand our interdependence and that we feel best and most actualized when we're sharing our gifts and and using them to contribute to others. So we are a cell in this organ, our company, our community, our family, like a cell in the human body is part of the thyroid, the kidney, the liver, and it has a role. It has a function. It has to take care of itself. There's a cell member membrane. So I'm not denying our individuality. We are individuals, but we are part of something bigger than us, and we feel most fulfilled and and do best when, you know, we bring our gifts. And so the cell in the liver does its job to contribute to the liver that contributes to the overall organism. If it just took care of itself, and the organism got sick, then eventually it's going to get sick and die too. So it's this understanding is kind of our Galileo Copernican revolution, moving from an ego centered worldview to an eco centered worldview, whether it's being our company, our organization, our family and our interdependence and mutuality of care. And that's love. 

Marcel Schwantes 52:59

Yeah, the book, again, is called spiritually intelligent leadership, how to inspire by being inspired. And there is, if you're watching on YouTube, and folks, there are so many elements in this book that are lined with the love in action message that we've been sharing with the world for the last six, seven years. So check it out. Um, well, if people want to connect with you, find out more about you, get your resources. Where can they go? 

Yosi Amram 53:30

Well, I have a website like you would expect. yosiamram.net just my my name, one word.net, and it connects to some of my other resources, my YouTube channel, awakening spiritual intelligence, there's a free assessment website where you can get a profile of your strengths and opportunities to grow along these dimensions of spiritual intelligence and spiritual intelligent leadership. So there are many, many resources you mentioned the book, but go to my website, yosiamram.net, and yeah, happy to connect and support people. This is my calling. This is my purpose, awakening spiritual intelligence in myself. In the world, there's also a website called awakening spiritual intelligence.org, one word. It's a nonprofit that I started which is trying to promote this idea in the world. 

Marcel Schwantes 54:28

Well, you have your calling. I have my calling, but really I mean our callings overlap so much we are kindred spirits.

Yosi Amram  54:36

Yeah, and that's delightful. That's delightful to when we feel that kindred spirit, and were you talking about spirits, right? That that, that life force, energy that you know, which is what, what, what motivates and enlivens us and and these qualities of spiritual intelligence naturally emerge. We are rooted in our life force energy, our spirit essence. And when you connect to that sacred spark of life that we each contain, you know, we naturally have a sense of purpose, we naturally enliven. We're naturally connected to ourselves and other. 

Marcel Schwantes 55:19

So, yeah, yep. And there, there is your evolution right there, towards spiritual intelligence. Yosi, you're a gift, and it's been wonderful chatting with you. Keep up the great work. Keep that research going, and let's continue to build this movement towards becoming more spiritually intelligent. Thank you for joining us today. 

Yosi Amram 55:40

Thank you. Thank you. I'm honored and delighted and appreciative.

Marcel Schwantes 55:46

Well, gang, you can keep the conversation going. So go to social media, hit LinkedIn and Instagram or wherever you you you reside, and use hashtag love in action podcast, and look for my show notes on my website. Marcelschwantes.com you're going to find links to Yosi's website there. You're going to find a link to this, this YouTube video for you to watch us if you prefer. And all of that is on marcelschwantes.com

Yosi Amram  56:19

For Yosi. On Marcel, remember in the end, love wins, we'll see you next time.