The Enlightened Executive

This week's guest Lisa Holmes, Chief Business Strategist for Strategic Performance of Los Angeles, discusses how leaders can improve their wellness. Many leaders are extremely organized and plan each aspect of their day, but don't consider planning time to devote to their health.

You have probably heard that "you are what you eat," but many leaders do not prioritize their nutrition. Busy schedules don't leave time to cook nutritious meals and sometimes you don't have access to healthy foods while traveling. However, in order to become the best version of yourself, you must put yourself first.

In 2019, Lisa lost 96 lb and decided to take audiences along her health and wellness journey. Every week, she engages viewers on her cooking show, Be Well + Live Well with Lisa, on Roku TV and the Taste On TV channel. In this episode, Lisa and Susan discuss how to bring up wellness topics in a team setting to inspire your employees.

If you're not embodying your authentic self, your team will sense that and begin to lose trust in you as a leader. The solution? Accessing your original thoughts and getting quiet through meditation.

In this week's episode of The Enlightened Executive, Dina Kaplan joins Susan to discuss how meditation helps you become a more authentic leader. Dina is founder/CEO of The Path and a certified meditation teacher who leads teacher training programs, retreats and meditations for brands, festivals, companies and conferences around the world. She has studied and practiced dozens of techniques including mindfulness, compassion, mantra, Vipassana and more.

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They also discuss...

• How attending a meditation retreat (such as the one by The Path, called Mela) can help you get in touch with your most honest self
• The insight she experienced at her first meditation retreat, which propelled her to change how she was showing up in the world
• How you can practice meditation for profound shifts without quitting your job and moving to a cave for a year

For more information about The Path and their meditation retreat, Mela, visit www.thepath.com.

Often the best companies to do business with are also likely the best companies to work for.

We discuss the link between employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) with Shep Hyken, customer service and experience expert, bestselling author and the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations, who has helped hundreds of major companies create an inspiring and engaging team culture.

"If you don't give the people you work with the tools they need to get their job done most effectively, how can they properly engage with your customers?" Shep asks.

Around 46% of job seekers apply to a position because of a company's culture (JobVite, 2018). Creating an environment that attracts and maintains top performers in your industry is crucial—and easier said than done.

So, what do CEOs and entrepreneurs need to do to improve their company culture? Listen to the full interview with Shep Hyken to learn the six strategies to improve company culture.

If you've ever been told to "just relax!" during a high-stress situation, you know exactly how unhelpful that advice is.

This week's guest, Dr. Rollin McCraty, Ph.D. is the Director of Research of the HeartMath Research Center at the HeartMath Institute. According to Rollin, what leaders should be practicing is not "relaxation," it's coherence.

So what is coherence? Dr. McCraty and Susan learn more now. Listen in...

Underlying emotions are inseparable from our everyday lives. What kind of impact do your emotions have on your leadership capabilities? Of course emotions have their role in the workplace— but dragging our emotional baggage into the office is detrimental to the both our health and the health of our organization.

Today, Dr. Bradley Nelson, a holistic physician and one of the world's foremost experts on natural methods of achieving wellness, joins us to talk about trapped emotions and how they impact our health and leadership. Dr. Nelson's book, The Emotion Code, provides a step by step instruction on how to do just that.

The Emotion Code has helped countless people deal with physical ailments that come from long term emotional turmoil. Through his experience in holistic healing, Nelson found that regardless of the physical ailment, they all had one thing in common: emotional baggage.

Keep watching to find out why this is especially important for leaders to master, and how to release emotional baggage. To learn even more, go to discoverhealing.com or look for Dr. Nelson's book The Emotion Code wherever you buy books or audible to listen.

Take your leadership skills to the next level and download "How to Free up 8+ Hours a Week: The Ultimate Guide to Delegation" here: https://EnlightenedExec.com/delegate

Is artificial intelligence really going to change everything in business?

If we look to recent implementations of AI in the workplace, the answer is yes.

Computational social science is a groundbreaking new field that allows AI technology to discover human behavior and help leaders improve their performance. In this episode of The Enlightened Executive, we dive into this topic with David Shrier, a globally recognized thought leader in technology and innovation.

"[Through AI] we can decode human behavior and understand mindset shift mathematically, and take actions that cause people to change behavior." David says that AI may one day take over jobs like executive coaching as well. Is AI something to be afraid of?

How do your past wounds impact your leadership?

Many leaders are carrying core wounds from childhood into their professional experiences, and one modality to unwind those wounds is through Ayahuasca; go to The Enlightened Executive blog post [link here] to hear more about it.

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew from two vines found in the rainforest. A shaman who is experienced in working with this psychedelic guides you through your "journey," which lasts around 10-12 hours. Many say that ayahuasca allows you to take a journey of self-awareness and enlightenment: it especially enables you to deal with trauma.

Ayahuasca is a tool that anyone could benefit from, and executives are no exception. These types of retreats provide the opportunity for leaders to heal their childhood wounds so they don't continue to play them out in the workplace..

Don't forget to subscribe to The Enlightened Executive for more videos on how your personal evolution can spark your leadership (r)evolution!

Are you spending your precious time as wisely as you could? Take your leadership skills to the next level and download. "How to Free up 8+ Hours a Week: The Ultimate Guide to Delegation" here: https://EnlightenedExec.com/delegate

http://EnlightenedExec.com/ep007

Executives are sometimes faced with overbearing amounts of stress. Not only is stress an inevitable aspect of being a leader, at times past trauma can also impact the way executives deal with conflict. Enter Havening: a groundbreaking neuroscientific tool to help heal triggers from trauma, anxiety, and phobias. The process helps people process feelings of unresolved anger, fear, or inadequacy, and builds emotional resilience. We are delighted to have Stephen Travers with us to discuss Havening and its application to personal and business life. Stephen is the Director of U.K. and International Havening and is passionate about teaching others how to use Havening in their lives. If you want to learn more, go to https://EnlightenedExec.com/ep006

A "face reader," someone skilled in dissecting the details of our expressions, can help decipher people's true motivations and intentions. To some degree, we all use face reading every day in our interactions with people. We call it reading body language. But the face can tell us so much about what a person is thinking, feeling, and wanting, and this can be useful in hiring, identifying problems with team dynamics, and negotiations. Want to find out more about the ancient skill of face reading? Check out the latest episode of The Enlightened Executive: http://EnlightenedExec.com/ep005

Did you know that every company is an extension of its leader?

Many parts of your personality and past experiences show up in your organization in ways you cannot even imagine. This manifestation can lead to different problems, but the most surprising aspect of this mechanism is that you may not even realize that you are the cause of it.

The EQ Profile is designed to help you bring light to those blind spots. It is an instrument that provides a snapshot of your internal experience, especially when you are under stress.

This method is different from all the other personality tests you may know. It does not simply ask you to share your emotional strengths and weaknesses and use them to elaborate generic feedback; instead, it presents you with mock emotional situations, and your responses to those stimuli will be the key to unravel your blind spots.

Learn more about the EQ Profile in this episode of The Enlightened Executive:

http://EnlightenedExec.com/ep004