You describe conscious leadership as an imperative for leaders. Why is this
book so relevant for leaders now?
Business challenges continue to get bigger and harder to solve. The world has changed. There’s so much complexity that leaders face every day. In this complex, fast moving environment it’s easy to repeat actions of the past than create new ideas and actions from the future. As a result, innovation gets stifled and companies get stuck with incremental change that fails to deliver transformative outcomes. So the pace of change inside organizations does not match the external environment. Leaders must recognize that the leadership that has gotten us to where we are today, no longer suffices. The context is vastly different. We need new leadership to meet the challenges and opportunities of this century, and that relies upon changing how we think. To do that, we must understand our consciousness. We must gain clarity about how our consciousness determines the world we perceive and act upon.
Why should leaders pay attention to conscious leadership?
That’s exactly it. We need to get better at how we pay attention. It’s the most precious resource that we have, and we can’t make more of it. Leaders either get distracted or unknowingly give their attention away. And that creates the conditions to fall prone to a faulty mind, and make a lot of mental errors. That leads to mistakes and opening up risks that come to fruition. The other problem is not understanding reality as it’s happening. Leaders can jeopardize their decisions and actions. These mistakes can be small or very costly. Leaders also end up with poorer performance that affects not only them, but everything that they touch.
The best thing for leaders to do is to get out of their heads and use other parts of themselves to understand reality, and focus their attention. Doing so will help them perceive more of what’s happening around them, improve their thinking, and decision-making. How the day-to-day is handled, creating results, and aspirations of the future, all depend on what’s perceived and brought to attention. Without that clarity, habitual thought patterns repeat to create more of what exists today – which we all know, isn’t working.
How do you describe consciousness in this book?
Consciousness is a complex topic. If you ask a philosopher, psychologist, neurologist, metaphysicist, or a spiritual teacher, “What’s consciousness?” They’ll give you different answers. I observe this as various perspectives attempting to unravel the full scope of consciousness. Can we say one is right or wrong? I don’t think so. One view in particular that I would like to call out is the spiritual view mixed with physics. This view defines consciousness as energy and frequency with its ability to permeate within us and beyond into the universe. Therefore, thoughts and emotions carry a vibrational frequency that impacts the collective consciousness of the planet. I’m aware of these concepts. Yet, I made it a point to keep the scope of consciousness at the personal level of self.
Many business leaders don’t use emotions and intuition in decision-making. When there’s an important decision to make, they might rely upon data and ignore the feeling coming from their gut. But then there’s leaders that listen to their gut and trust what they feel, and they use those insights along with other information to make decisions. That will help them make better and faster decisions because that’s how the brain works with the rest of the body. So many leaders might not even understand their own consciousness. My intent is to create a starting point, a foundation so we can talk about consciousness with respect to leadership. Once we have a starting point, we can evolve the conversation together. I do not want to lose people, hence why I didn’t even mention the word spirit.
Is conscious leadership a new concept? Does it exist out there? What does
your book address that others do not?
Conscious leadership is not a well-defined concept. The word conscious gets used in various contexts, such as conscious habits, conscious eating, and conscious shopping. So there’s confusion around what conscious leadership is and no clear definition. I’ve seen it used in the wrong context. For example, practicing environmental sustainability was called conscious leadership. Indeed, those are conscious practices and good things to do, but that doesn’t mean you’re leading as a conscious leader.
Conscious business practices have also been around since the 1970s in North America. These businesses want to do more for the world than turn a profit. They want to use their business for a purpose, and respond to the challenges faced by society, communities, and the world. Once again great things. But how do you become that leader? There’s a gaping hole of what constitutes conscious leadership, and how one leads that way.
The misuse of calling things conscious leadership is a key issue. But the other is that business schools or organizations don’t teach it. So generally, there’s a significant lack of awareness. I created this book to establish the foundation and define what conscious leadership is, and the path to get there.
How does conscious leadership compare to other leadership modalities such
as Transformational Leadership, Servant Leadership, and Situational Leadership?
Are you saying leaders need to replace their existing practices with conscious
leadership?
There’s lots of leadership approaches and styles. Leaders tend to adopt the ones most suited to their organization to develop people and shepherd performance. They might choose transformational leadership, since it seeks to inspire employees around a common purpose that comes from the organization’s vision and mission. Leaders galvanize people around shared goals and teamwork. Servant leadership focuses on serving others, so that encourages leaders to help others grow and care about their well-being. Situational leadership enables leaders to tailor their approach depending on the situation and circumstances at hand. No doubt these are all great management
practices that help leaders to sharpen their core skills and do their job. But conscious leadership is different. It sits at a completely different paradigm. Leaders need to continue with basic and good management practices. But by practicing conscious leadership, they will elevate their way of being and thus their way of leading . Leaders will understand their thoughts, their emotions, and insights that comes from the body. They will know how they view reality to make more conscious choices with greater awareness and focused attention to make better decisions that lead to better outcomes.

What were your motivations behind the way the book was written?
Language is very powerful. By the words we use, we can either include people or exclude them. Jargon and technical terms can easily make people feel like an insider or outsider. We can also write in ways that sound elitist and pretentious. I didn’t want to come across that way because that’s not authentic to who I am. I felt strongly about making this book accessible for aspiring, new, or seasoned leaders – also those just interested in the topic. I want the reader to feel empowered and know that they have it within themselves to become a conscious leader. The five steps are simple to implement. All they have to do is just try and be open to the experience. I’m equipping them with what they need to know to get started right away. Consciousness also comes across as mysterious, with various definitions from those from science, philosophy, and academics. I’ve simplified it so that the reader can grasp what it is and how it relates to leadership. And that’s why this book was so difficult to write, to simplify the language and speak in a compelling way to connect with the reader.
What are the five pillars of conscious leadership? Can you describe them, and
what makes them so critical?
The five steps of conscious leadership help you to increase your awareness and understanding of reality. You establish a deeper understanding of your inner state and the outer world. You have greater knowledge about how you perceive what’s around you. And you know that determines the reality you believe is happening. So when you lead consciously, you know that you have a direct influence on outcomes. As a result, you can lead more positively to drive better and more meaningful results. The five steps include:
1. Be Present – You’re present in the moment with your attention focused. Your mind is free of mental clutter and not distracted by trying to do too many things at once. Your mind is not wandering, and you’re also not attached to your ideas. So that lets insights emerge from seeing more of what’s happening in reality.
2.Become Heart-Centred – You hear and listen to your inner voice, not getting trapped by the pitfalls of your mind. Instead you hear your heart and intuition, and align your thoughts. You learn how to read and interpret the signals from your heart and gut, and hone in on this intelligence. It allows you to see new perspectives, ideas, and opportunities that you would otherwise miss.
3. Stay Interconnected – You can spot the illusion of separateness. You recognize the disconnect between ourselves and others, and the external environment. You understand that distorts reality and leaves you to only see a fraction of it. Interconnectedness helps you to see the relationship between yourself and the world. You can identify the beliefs and assumptions that need to be checked that hinder your thinking. Considering relationships, connections, and stakeholders, helps you to notice where you need to place your attention and improve your decision-making.
4. Feel the Future – The brain constantly predicts what’s going to happen next based on the information stored in long-term memory. That means the past is always influencing how we understand the present, resulting in bias, fear of change, and desire to keep the status quo. But when you learn to envision the future like it’s happening now, you will get better at predicting and thinking about the future. You will feel it, and consciously set intention about what you will experience through actions. Goals are about doing and intentions are about being. We need to do both to successfully achieve actions of the future.
5. Think with Abundance – Thinking with abundance helps you to think with limitless potential, despite the resources that you have. So you find new ways to do things by not getting bogged down by what you perceive as not enough. You innovate better and can imagine new ways to create value than just the financial dimension. You’re willing to accept risk because you don’t fear what you have to lose, but focus on what you will gain. You free yourself from the scarcity mindset that about not enough and survival of the fittest. You learn to see beyond what already exists.
Why are you the one to write this book?
My purpose is being the steward of conscious leadership and helping leaders and organizations achieve a brighter future. Inspiring, enabling, and teaching it as the way of being and leading will be my life’s work. There isn’t a certificate or degree for it. All that I know, I’ve learnt through my experiences. I have rich and deep experience in designing and executing organizational transformation. And I’ve always known, it’s not about the plan, tools, and frameworks– the mechanics – rather it’s deeper and goes down to our consciousness, the way we evoke and experience moment-to-moment reality.
I spent many years at a financial institution that was innovative in creating social impact without any blueprint of how to do it. That’s the environment I was in, and learned the hard way about how to create business models beyond transactions and solely financial-focused, to one that creates greater forms of value. At the same time, I had my journey and dedication to learning about consciousness, which I’ve practiced for years. Bringing my experience together with further research led to the definition and development of conscious leadership. I believe it will become a predominant way of leading. There’s no better way to the future than a new kind of consciousness