Skeptical about how spiritual intelligence can really benefit business?
In this episode of Strong Leaders Serve, Teri Schmidt chats with Yosi Amram about the power of spiritual intelligence—an ability to embody virtues like gratitude, trust, and purpose—in leadership and community well-being.
Discover how higher spiritual intelligence in leaders correlates with better team morale, lower turnover, and improved financial results.
Yosi shares his transformational journey from high-stress corporate life to becoming a leader in spiritual intelligence, offering insights that can elevate your personal and professional life.
Resources:
About Yosi:
Yosi Amram, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, a CEO leadership coach, and an award-winning author. Previously the founder and CEO of two companies that he has led through successful IPOs, Yosi has coached over 100 CEOs many of whom have built companies with thousands of employees and revenues in the billions. With engineering degrees from MIT, an MBA from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Sofia University, he is a pioneering researcher in the field of spiritual intelligence, whose research has received over 1000 citations. As the author of Spiritually Intelligent Leadership: How to Inspire by Being Inspired, Yosi is committed awakening greater spiritual intelligence in himself and the world.
Transcript
While it's not perfect, we offer this transcription by Castmagic for those who prefer to read or who are hearing impaired.
Teri Schmidt [00:00:00]:
Welcome, Yosi, to the Strong Leaders Serve podcast. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.
Yosi Amram [00:00:06]:
Thank you, Teri. So am I. I'm enjoying being here with you and looking forward to what unfolds. It's to the adventure of this conversation.
Teri Schmidt [00:00:15]:
When you reached out about being on the podcast, it really piqued my interest because I have a love of spirituality and obviously a love of leadership and combining those 2, with what you talk about with regards to spiritual intelligence was really intriguing to me. So I wonder if we could just start with you, tell us a little of your story and the experiences that inspired you to focus on spiritual intelligence.
Yosi Amram [00:00:44]:
I was born and raised in Israel. And like all young men, I was drafted into the military despite my pacifistic leanings. I mean, it's terrible, heartbreaking what's going on in that part of the world now. Fortunately, I served in a time that was peaceful, and, so I didn't have to deal with with this kind of horror. But I was a shy, introverted kid, and I came into the military. And to my surprise, I rose through the ranks. I had the fastest promotion record in the history of my regimen. I won all these leadership awards.
Yosi Amram [00:01:21]:
But despite being successful in that context of command and control, it chafed at my soul. And I resolved to someday wanna build and lead an organization based on different values. And while command and control may be necessary in battle and the military, but it's not how we wanna build organizations and lead people, particularly in the modern economy and world where more of us are creative and knowledge workers, and our productivity and effectiveness requires initiative and, and, discernment and those kinds of things. You can't mechanize everything and tell everybody what to do. So, you know, I that was kind of my inspiration. I came to the US. I studied engineering and at MIT and then went to business school at Harvard. And my goal was to somehow combine technology and business, And that led to the formation of my first company.
Yosi Amram [00:02:18]:
And then I had a second company, unfortunately, but those were business ideas, but they were also sort of experiments in organizational culture and philosophy.
Yosi Amram [00:02:29]:
And, so I was very motivated, and a lot of my identity was tied to the business. I was fortunate enough that both companies went public. But I overworked myself, and I was working 70 hour 80 hours a week, and a lot of my self esteem and identity was tied to it. And when the Internet was coming online, our business model had to change. It was very threatening, and I got depressed, and somehow I persisted and pulled myself out. And we turned the business around. The company went public eventually. But, you know, through it all, I out of my dark night of the soul, as is referred to in the spiritual, tradition, I had a spiritual awakening that, dissolved my my concept of self for itself, and I felt into our oneness and our interconnectedness.
Yosi Amram [00:03:22]:
But that sort of blew the circuits of my mind, my egoic mind, the way I perceived and understood reality. And, that threw me into a manic episode. It was a euphoric experience, but it was very disorienting. And, my mind was racing. I was getting all these downloads of where the Internet was going in the future, and it, inspired me to do lots of things, which I saw where the internet was going, and I wanted the company to go really, be the leader in all of that. This is before companies like Facebook and Google, and this was all coming to me. And I was so impatient, I wanted to get it all done yesterday, and my board and team couldn't keep up. So eventually they saw that I was a bit unstable and so on, and they said, okay, Yosi, wait.
Yosi Amram [00:04:17]:
My board put me on a quote unquote voluntary leave of absence, which wasn't voluntary at all. So I was basically pushed out of my company. Our stock price collapsed, got cut in half, And it was devastating because the company was my baby. It was my sort of my purpose and and what I saw, my life's mission about.
Teri Schmidt [00:04:35]:
Right.
Yosi Amram [00:04:36]:
But somehow out of that terrible bad news, I had to reinvent my life and it got me to reflect on what was I so attached to in building the company? What was this experience of oneness and the solution of the ego? Was that real? Was that delusion? And that all led me to go back to school and, study to become a therapist. Along the way, I started coaching and mentoring other entrepreneurs and leaders, and I wanted also tools to work with them at a deeper level. So I went and got a PhD as a clinical psychologist and, was interested in spirituality and wanted to understand what happened to me. Now along the way, I was very aware of all the research and the work done around emotional intelligence and its contribution to, leadership and well-being and so on. And I heard the term spiritual intelligence, and I was like, wow, that's very interesting and be very parallel to emotional intelligence, but what is it? And can it be measured and so on? It was a concept put forth by this woman called Dana Zohar that wrote this book called Rewiring the Corporate Brain. But there wasn't really a measure, and if you want to study something scientifically, you have to know how to measure it to see how it contributes to a variety of outcome. So that was the research path I set myself on. So I started out by first interviewing 71 teachers across all the world's traditions, whether it's Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Shamanism, to see are there common qualities and virtues, that regardless of our cosmology and theology, whether we believe in a deity like God or the afterlife or Buddha nature or whatever it might be, we could say.
Yosi Amram [00:06:25]:
And fortunately, that was very exciting that purpose and service and compassion and integrity and trust and humility and, were all common qualities that were being cultivated and hailed as virtues across all these traditions. So that set up a certain framework. And from that, I worked with a statistician, someone that helped me on the psychometric side, and we developed the 1st academically validated measure of spiritual intelligence. Good. And with that, I was able to study its contribution on leadership. So I did a study with 42 CEOs and 210 members of their staff to see whether leaders that had greater spiritual intelligence were more effective leaders. And we also controlled for intelligence and personality. I wanted to see if it adds anything beyond those other academically validated and measured constructs.
Yosi Amram [00:07:22]:
And so what I found is that leaders that had greater spiritual intelligence led teams that had greater morale, greater commitment, and lower turnover. And that was so, I'm gonna get a little nerdy a little bit and it's all statistic. So in terms of the outcome of the quality of leadership as rated by their employees, spiritual intelligence explained 46% of the variance and emotional intelligence explained 41% of the variance. So they each had their unique contribution, but combined they explained 67% of the variance. So it shows that they're complementary and multiplicative, synergistic. And so that was very heartening. And then since then, the measure of spiritual intelligence I developed has been used in a variety of other application and has shown to contribute to quality of life, satisfaction with life, personal productivity, individual group productivity, resilience, experiences of awe, and so on. And in fact, one study showed that, leaders that have higher spiritual intelligence actually produce better financial results for their business units than those that don't.
Yosi Amram [00:08:44]:
And that was not found for emotional intelligence, not that emotional intelligence is not important. But I'm just saying that now there's a growing body of research that says spiritual intelligence is real, is measurable, and, is positively impactful. So I'll pause there. I could say a lot more about it, but that's kinda my what my life's work is about now.
Teri Schmidt [00:09:06]:
Yeah. No. You know, my my first question to you was gonna be, you know, why why should we care? You know, a lot of our listeners are are working in corporate. They might hear or see the title of spiritual intelligence and and say, oh, that's great, you know, for someone else or that's great for me outside of work. But you just answered that question Yeah. And now it's it's other research of others. In one study,
Yosi Amram [00:09:38]:
Yeah. And now it's it's other research of others. And one study actually was done by, again, other researcher. They found that banks where the average level of spiritual intelligence was higher compared to other banks, the team, the organization's productivity was higher, and they had a higher ROI, return on assets, compared to other banks. This is kind of the key measure of profitability and effectiveness of banks. So yeah, it pays off in terms of bottom line results. And, you know, in this environment, there's an epidemic of loneliness, people spend the bulk of their waking hours at work, and work is people's primary community. So, you know, people are craving and wanting a shared purpose, a shared vision, something everybody's excited about, shared values and mutuality of care so that we sense our belonging and alignment, and then people are rowing in the same direction, and it's much more rewarding, and the productivity goes up.
Yosi Amram [00:10:46]:
There was a study by Bain and Company, that's one of the top management consulting companies in the world. And they did a study with like 1500 or 2000 companies, and they found that employees that were inspired were twice as productive as those that are just doing their job. And then when they looked at what leadership qualities produced inspired employees, what they found is that it was servant leadership, people that were not selfish, that were present, that were centered, that were good listeners. And their list of 33 qualities maps about half of it directly to the spiritual intelligence qualities that came out of my research. And this is just a management consulting company trying to working with Global 2,000 Companies about their profitability. So
Teri Schmidt [00:11:36]:
Sure. Sure. Yeah. That that's amazing to to have that match. And and I'd love to then dig into, you know, what it did match to so we can kind of get a grounding in what spiritual intelligence is and how that is different from and similar to emotional intelligence.
Yosi Amram [00:11:56]:
Yeah. Great. So what is emotional intelligence? I mean, it first of all, it was a concept that was introduced by 2 academicians, Salovey and Myers, in in 1990 in an essay article that developed the measure, and then it was popularized by Daniel Goleman. And now there's many measures of it, and there's a lot of studies of how it contributes. But essentially what it is, the ability to be aware of and draw on emotional resources to help manage our own and others' emotions. Now spiritual intelligence by analogy would be awareness of and the ability to draw on and embody spiritual qualities and and virtues that have been held by all the world's traditions. So what are those? These are things like purpose, passionate purpose, compassionate service, trust, gratitude, humility, integrity, higher self, and and so on. So these are the qualities.
Yosi Amram [00:12:55]:
So again, spiritual intelligence is not a belief. Like you might have a belief in God or a deity or Buddha nature or whatever it might be, the afterlife, those would be spiritual beliefs. Or you can have spiritual experiences. You meditate and your ego dissolves, you experience oneness, or you go in the forest and you feel the one with nature. These are spiritual experiences, they're not spiritual intelligence. They are important, they could be important, but spiritual intelligence is about how you then embody these qualities in your life, at your work, in your work team meetings, in the supermarket, when you're in the checkout line, when you're driving on the freeway, when you're relating with your family and your friends and your and so it's about these qualities that now also in the field of positive psychology has been shown, to contribute to, to quality of life and success and so on, things like hope and beauty and curiosity and openness. I mean, you know, Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology, developed this, strengths based character strengths based inventory of 24 strengths they called values in action. So again, it's about inaction.
Yosi Amram [00:14:18]:
It's not what you believe in an idea, it's like how you bring it into expression in your daily life. And again, there's a lot of overlap between the spiritual intelligence qualities and these values in action and character traits Right. That have been researched in the field of positive psychology. Sis. That
Teri Schmidt [00:14:38]:
is so interesting. You know? And and talking about putting it into action, I'm curious if someone if this is the first time someone has heard of spiritual intelligence, obviously, they should first go get your book. But, beyond that, you know, how would you suggest a leader get started with spiritual intelligence?
Yosi Amram [00:14:56]:
Well, let's let's first of all think about what is the term spiritual intelligence spiritual intelligence? What's the root word is spiritual, right? And what's the what's the core root of that word is spirit. What is spirit? It's the animating breath of life. Now when you think about your role as a leader, what's the I remember one of my first Harvard Business School places was managers and leaders, same or different? And what that was about was managers make decisions, allocate scarce resources, but leaders inspire. So what is to inspire is basically to breathe life into the organization. That's kind of your life force of the organization. So spirit is really basically our life force, our animating life force. So how do we start? So it sounds mystical, spirit, but we all feel our life force. So how do we feel our life force right now? We can connect biologically.
Yosi Amram [00:15:56]:
We could start there and we experience our aliveness biologically through our breath. So we could take a couple of breaths right now and feel our breath, you know, inhaling through the nose, exhaling. And then the other place we feel our life force is through our heartbeat and the pulse. So we can also, if we can, tune inward and connect to our heartbeat while also following our breath and feeling our feet and legs grounded, centered on the earth, and our spine is kind of a channel of energy. So as we include our breath, our heartbeat, our feet, legs, connection, and resting on mother earth, and our spine, what happens now? Can you feel your alignments? Can you feel some kind of an alive presence that's including the body and the biology, but there's an expanded awareness. We feel more centered, more expanded. I mean, you tell me, what do you I don't know if you were able to follow any of this. Yeah.
Yosi Amram [00:17:03]:
Yeah. No. I mean, exactly what you
Teri Schmidt [00:17:06]:
said. I think I mean, obviously, doing a podcast interview, I'm gonna be a lot in my head, you know, and, you know, just taking those, those couple minutes to feel that grounding. It, it does connect me with it's bigger than just what I'm thinking.
Yosi Amram [00:17:27]:
Uh-huh. Yeah. So you are bigger than your head, your thought. You are something much bigger and more mysterious. You have emotions. You have a heart. You have life force pulsating through you and, you know, this is where we want to connect to that life force and channel its power. And that's just kind of one way to start.
Yosi Amram [00:17:52]:
So it's not so woo hoo. You know? I mean, you don't have to believe in anything. You just tune in and and sense your aliveness and your presence and your awareness in this moment.
Teri Schmidt [00:18:02]:
Yeah. Yeah. And then how do you carry that forward then? How does that flow into the the elements of spiritual intelligence that you were talking about that you did the research on that that ties to, you know, improve well-being and team results and business results? How do you use that as almost a jumping off point at how many
Yosi Amram [00:18:25]:
people are there? We understand that that, we feel our aliveness, our life force, and we understand that, first of all, life is a gift. We've all been gifted with life. I mean, it's not something I did or worked for or earned. You know, life's a gift, and each of us are unique. There's 8,000,000,000 of us on this planet, and each of us are unique. There's never was and never be someone like Teri exactly. And life endowed you and me and each of us with unique gifts, talents, and superpowers. So that's another gift.
Yosi Amram [00:18:58]:
We have the gift of life, and then we have the gift of all our talents, capacities, and superpowers. Now, when someone gives you a gift or you give someone a gift, do you want them to use it? Or don't you want them to use it? Otherwise, it's like, if you know, oh, I gave so and so a gift and they left it wrapped, they never even opened it, and maybe they opened it, but they barely tried using it or anything, then you're kind of disappointed. What's the point? So life gave us a gift. Life wants us to use our gift. And when we use our gifts, we express our talents and we use it to contribute to others, then we're actualizing our potential, which is really fulfilling. And then we know we're contributing, so our life has meaning, has purpose, and we have a role to play in the greater web of life. So we just connect ourselves into the greater web of life as a cell in this broader organism of the organization that we're a part of. So, you know, every person in every organization has a role to play, whether we're an accountant and or finance and producing the metrics that enable people to make decisions, or when software engineering or in engineering we're designing the product or in marketing, we're getting to our customer.
Yosi Amram [00:20:17]:
We have a role to play and we have different skills and talents, and we want to bring those to bear to contribute to the totality. And then we're Then we feel like we're a member in this, And then we feel like we're a member in this bigger organ or organism, our department, our team, and the overall organization. And, and so that gives us fulfillment. It makes us feel alive. We have a sense of purpose. So they're just but, you know, you can work down these different things on service or gratitude or beauty or joy, and you have to cultivate them. It's not something you read once about spiritual intelligence. It's a lifelong journey.
Yosi Amram [00:21:00]:
You have to create new neural pathways and develop these muscles. You don't just go to the gym once and you're in good shape. You practice and you exercise to develop the muscles. So, I think yeah. I'll pause there.
Teri Schmidt [00:21:17]:
I was going to say, I loved in your book that you stated that, you know, you're you're not gonna become more spiritually intelligent by reading this book necessarily. It is it is about experiencing and practicing and and building that up. And I had to laugh when you were when you were talking about, you know, when someone gives you a gift, do you want them to use it? Because I actually have a a post it note here that says, how did you use your privilege today?
Yosi Amram [00:21:40]:
Mhmm.
Teri Schmidt [00:21:41]:
Because, you know, we are all privileged in different ways no matter our circumstances. And that's just a reminder of how did you use that today.
Yosi Amram [00:21:51]:
Yeah. How do you use your privilege, your gifts, and yeah. And, so, yeah, beautiful.
Teri Schmidt [00:21:59]:
And, you know, I'm I'm curious because I'm I'm guessing maybe you might have gotten some objections, to the concept, the idea of spiritual intelligence, particularly in the business world. What are what are some of the business biggest objections or resistance that you get to your work and how do you deal with them?
Yosi Amram [00:22:20]:
Well, I mean, the first thing is I think you're alluded to, I mean, spirituality is like, we have this idea and it's important that we have separation of church and state. So, you know, people are coming to work. They don't want to be indoctrinated into any religion or spiritual belief system. And and that's fair and it's important, you know. So when I'm talking about spiritual intelligence, I'm not talking about any kind of religion or any kind of spiritual belief system specific. I'm talking about qualities that are considered virtues, in in positive psychology and in a variety of things. So we you know, and my client base have ranged all over from people who've been devout practitioners of a religion to people that were spiritual but not religious, people that were agnostic, to people that were atheists. So, you know, but we all know, whether you're an atheist or not, that integrity is super important.
Yosi Amram [00:23:25]:
Nobody wants to follow a leader that's out of integrity, that's not walking the talk. We all know that, when we're working in a team, if people express gratitude and appreciation for our work, it energizes us and motivates us. We all know that when people are experiencing joy and fun, they're more creative. So you don't have to believe in any kind of, spiritual belief or religious belief or dogma or any kind of woo woo, we're talking about, you know, finding your purpose. And when your purpose and you have passion, your life force has direction and clarity and you live passionately. You have a reason to wake up in the morning and you're full with vitality and zest. And then other people feel that enthusiasm and are drawn to you. So, so we have to distinguish, and that's why it's important, it's spiritual intelligence.
Yosi Amram [00:24:29]:
You don't have to be, quote, unquote, believe in any kind of spiritual belief system to wanna work on these virtues and these qualities. Yes.
Teri Schmidt [00:24:40]:
Yeah. You know, one part of the book that I was particularly really drawn to was the chapter about cultivating community because at strong leaders serve, that really is kind of the end goal, that connection. So our leadership development model is ground, grow, and then give. And and the outcome of the ground phase is clarity, and the outcome of the grow phase is, confidence, and the outcome of begin phase is connection. So I I saw some parallels there with the the cultivating community, because I I feel that you could do all this for yourself. But if you're not using your gift, if you're not giving your gift, you really become quite stagnant and are not gonna realize the benefits of all that self development. So I'd love to talk more about that chapter in particular, and you talked about, you know, it being a practice and that there were 3 related pillars to call the bank community. Wonder if you might speak to what those pillars are and why they are important for leaders, particularly in our current times.
Yosi Amram [00:25:48]:
Yeah. Well, as I said, particularly community is super important because there's more and more single adult households. There's a lot of disconnection. There's mental health issues, greater anxiety, depression among people, and all of that relates to loneliness and lack of connection. So yeah, so in terms of, you know, just another piece, like why it's so important to give and to contribute and serve, I mentioned the Bain study, and they found that servant oriented leaders inspire people the most. But in terms of also just our well-being, they're classical studies. Like you take people and divide them into 2 and kind of in a lottery. Some people win $20, other people don't.
Yosi Amram [00:26:38]:
And everybody when they win $20 of course they have a momentary happiness. But then they divide people randomly with those who won the money and they say either you go spend it on yourself, treat yourself to something, or take that $20 and spend it to help someone else. And then they look at their mood at the end of the day. And the people that won the money and spent it on themselves, they had a blip of of well-being when they won it, but there was no elastic effect at the end of the day. Well, the people that were instructed to go and spend it on others felt better about themselves and about life and about their day, that lasted throughout the day. So when we use our gifts to contribute to others, then we connect ourselves into the web of life and we feel we belong and we feel we have a contribution and our life has meaning and value. So and that's part of this care and part of mutuality of care. And, you know, key part of it is compassion and opening our hearts to care about others in our team.
Yosi Amram [00:27:47]:
So that's part of it. And then the other part of it is the alignment around our shared purpose and and, mission. And then the other pillar was the synthesis, because oftentimes, you have conflicting demands in an organization. We want to develop products quickly, race to market, there's competition, but we also want quality. And, you know, if you think in either or mindset, like there's a winner and loser in the team or in the organization. Some part of the engineering team is going to advocate, oh, let's slow down, let's develop the best product. The sales and marketing team was like, we need it yesterday. Customers are clamoring.
Yosi Amram [00:28:31]:
And unless you can move into a holistic yes, beyond yes, no to a both and, and synthesize something, and through that creative tension between these two, there's new innovative solutions that come up. So we got to care about each other and we're all on the same team. We have a shared sense of purpose and we're integrating those disparate views and synthesizing them. I mean, as Hegel said, you know, the philosopher, there's thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. And that's kind of a different level of thinking, that helps everybody feel like they're contributing and we synthesize something more intelligent out of those either or the different perspectives, the different individuals and departments, bring bring together.
Teri Schmidt [00:29:33]:
Yeah. You know, there there are 2 objections that I've I've heard particularly to serving as a leader or or servant leadership, that I'm I'm thinking might be in some of our listeners' head as they're listening to this conversation. One being that, you know, servant leadership is just a a path to burnout because you're always giving everyone else's needs are more important than your own. I definitely have my thoughts on that and how that's an inaccurate picture of what it means to serve as a leader. But I'd love
Yosi Amram [00:30:07]:
to
Teri Schmidt [00:30:07]:
hear your perspective, you know, particularly as as you're considering those being some of the elements of spiritual intelligence.
Yosi Amram [00:30:17]:
Yeah. No. I mean, I think you're touching on something important. First of all, when I talk about service and servant, I mean, I know Robert Greenliff introduced this idea of servant leadership, and the focus is on serving the people you lead. I look at it a little more holistically, which is serving the people you lead, serving the customer, serving the shareholders. So in companies where they have multiple stakeholder approach, actually produce the best financial results. So, you know, being a servant leader is you're serving your mission, you're serving your calling, you're serving your team, you're serving your customers. All of that has to be balanced, and you have to take care of yourself.
Yosi Amram [00:31:01]:
I mean, if I am serving people, let's say, by driving a car and volunteering to drive the elderly to their medical appointments when they don't have anybody, let's just take an example. Anybody. Let's just take an example. Far from the corporate. Well, I have to take care of my car. I mean, I can't drive them and just take them to their medical appointment and it's going to, you know, break down on the road and they're going to be frustrated of not serving. So, you know, we we have to take care of ourselves. We're not gonna become doormats.
Yosi Amram [00:31:34]:
We have to be centered. We have to be grounded. I mean, I think that's one of your, pillars. But, you know, in doing the service, we feel most fulfilled and nourished and energized and and enlightened, and our life has greater meaning. So if you look at it from a human body standpoint, okay, each of us are a cell in the human body. The cell has its own integrity. The cell has its own immune system and has all these mechanisms that it takes care of itself, but it's doing it, even though it's coming from the same stem cell or DNA, it's doing it in the context of an organ. So it's trying to serve the organ.
Yosi Amram [00:32:18]:
It can't a cell can't take care of itself and the organ gets sick and the whole organism gets sick. Eventually that cell is going to get sick and die, too. Yeah. So you have a balance between taking care of the individual self, the individual cell that each of us are, and then also taking care of the organ we're embedded in, which might be a department or a team, and then thinking globally about the overall organism. And when all of those are aligned, then we're happy, we're healthy. Our organism is healthy. We're we're in a good environment, which reverberates through all the cells, all the individuals.
Teri Schmidt [00:32:59]:
Right. Right. Yeah. I I love both of those analogies. That that makes it, you know, very clear and I I'd love to talk about it for hours because I think it has implications. You know? I'm even thinking, like, in our remote work environment. You know? I think there's a tendency to kinda wanna be your own cell and kind of forget about the organ that you live in. The other objection that I I'd love to get your thoughts on just quickly is, people talk about what if I don't want to give my gift or exercise my gift in my company, in my in my current role because they can just, you know, not they don't care about me.
Teri Schmidt [00:33:41]:
They're they if there are layoffs, I could be gone in a second. You know? Why do I have to be a part of that whole
Yosi Amram [00:33:51]:
Boy, you don't have to.
Teri Schmidt [00:33:53]:
Or
Yosi Amram [00:33:53]:
I'm making the you don't have to. But while you're there, are you happier? Are you more fulfilled, shutting down? I mean, does that help you in any way? Or you might as well exercise your gifts, develop and grow professionally, and if at some point you're laid off or you're recruited or you decide to go and look for a better job, you at least develop as a human being. You can point to your growth, you can point to the success, you can point to the contribution, you feel good about yourself. Otherwise, you shut down and you didn't. It's like, okay, I don't care. And they don't appreciate me. And we become victims. And just as I was saying that, I don't know if you could feel, but the energy gets sucked out, and our sense of aliveness is deadened, versus like, no, I'm going to give my gifts passionately, and I hope they'll recognize it, but if nothing else, I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm contributing, and I'm positioning myself for a promotion or another company to call on me or go elsewhere.
Yosi Amram [00:35:06]:
Why would I wanna stay in a job where I feel half dead?
Teri Schmidt [00:35:10]:
Yeah. That's you know, it's it's a great answer. It's it's a it's a choice. Like you said, I mean, you you can choose to to deaden your spirit and, you know, maybe circumstances are that you can't go somewhere else right now for whatever reason. But like you said, what can you do to still give your gifts and and develop yourself, in that situation?
Yosi Amram [00:35:35]:
Yeah. And see that's what is the situation calling forth in you? Mhmm. And what what capacities and skills might it help you cultivate, which is persistence or, you know, resilience or, a bunch of other things, or joy or beauty? Can you find beauty in what you do regardless? And that nourishes you. So, you know, there's always an opportunity to work to cultivate these qualities in ourselves regardless. Otherwise, we're we're victims of the environment. It's disempowering.
Teri Schmidt [00:36:16]:
Right. Right. Very true. Well, we have one question that we ask all of our guests, and I'd love to hear your perspective on it. What does strong leaders serve mean to you?
Yosi Amram [00:36:30]:
Well, strong leaders serve to me, first of all, let's start with the word strong. I think we feel grounded. We feel expanded. We we feel our power, and we naturally wanna use that power to contribute, to contribute to ourself, to contribute to our environment, to to contribute to to the the greater whole, and to contribute that to that which we love. I mean, we naturally wanna serve that which we love, and as we love, whether, you know, we we're we're we can be leaders in our family, in our community. We love our family members. We wanna naturally serve them. And then when we do that, our sense of selves enlarge.
Yosi Amram [00:37:17]:
So we become stronger and bigger, and we have more power and more energy. So to me, strong leaders serve is start with the premise that we're full, that we're strong, that we're big, and we have a sense of abundance and we serve others, which nurtures us. We put out more kindness, more love into the world and that enlarges our heart. And as we share kindness and gratitude and love, whether it comes back to us with a promotion or whatever is not the issue, it may, and hopefully it does, but if not, we feel better. We feel more loving, more enlightened. And so, yeah, it's taking responsibility and using our gifts and our privileges, you can call it, to contribute, which gives our life meaning and value.
Teri Schmidt [00:38:15]:
Yeah. Beautifully said. Well, thank you, UFC. And of of course, we'll put links to your book and to your website and the show notes. Good. Is there anywhere else that you would like to direct people if they would like to get in touch with you or learn more about your work?
Yosi Amram [00:38:31]:
Well, as you mentioned, my website is yosieamram.net, and it it connects to some resources. I host monthly free events on different qualities. This next one is on compassion, and and so critical in this environment because there's so much suffering and polarization, wars and political stuff. So, each month, we we work on one quality. These are free events. I have a YouTube channel that has many meditations and long meditations people can go to. There's, awakening SI as a domain name website that people can go to. There's free assessments of spiritual intelligence to give people a profile of their strengths.
Yosi Amram [00:39:17]:
Maybe for some people joy and beauty are strengths, other people mindfulness or purpose or something else, and then how you can leverage your strengths to work on things that are opportunities. So there are many resources, and I'm just honored and delighted to be able to share that. And, yeah.
Teri Schmidt [00:39:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's excellent. I, I am a data person. So anytime someone's talking about assessments, particularly, you know, research backed, valid, and reliable assessments, definitely, piques my interest. I'm gonna I'm gonna check those out as well. And and thank you for letting us know about the other resources that are available on those monthly events. Sound wonderful as well.
Teri Schmidt [00:39:59]:
So thank you again for taking the time to talk with us today and for the work that you do each day.
Yosi Amram [00:40:06]:
Thank you, Teri. It's been a delight and, privilege and, honor to be here with you.
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