Becoming a Radiant Leader with Nicholas Janni

Podcast
Written By Geneva Tolentino

Co-founder/Programme director Matrix Development - catalysing the future. Author of Business Book of the Year 2023, "Leader as Healer - a new paradigm for 21st century leadership"

SHOW NOTES | TRANSCRIPT

What if true leadership is more about presence, healing, and deep connection than endless action and strategy? Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Nicholas Janni, a transformational coach and leadership expert whose groundbreaking book "Leader as Healer" challenges the traditional leadership paradigm. 

Nicholas is the Co-founder and Programme Director of The Matrix Development, where he catalyzes the future by working with CEOs and senior teams globally. He also teaches at two of the world's leading business schools, pioneering a new vision and practice of leadership.

Today, Nicholas shares his insights on the importance of vulnerability, emotional intelligence, and true leadership's healing power. Whether you're a seasoned executive or aspiring to make a bigger impact, we invite you to listen in and learn more about the holistic, embodied, and soulful approach to guiding organizations and communities.



In this episode, we cover:

  • Background and Early Influences

  • Transition to Leadership Consultancy

  • The Concept of Real Presence and Flow State

  • Transformational Coaching and Vulnerability in Groups

  • Embodiment Practices and Daily Integration

  • The Role of Leaders in Creating a New Paradigm

  • The Impact of Isolation and Need for Connection

  • The Role of Men in Addressing the Feminine

  • Upcoming Programs and the Leader as an Institute  


Helpful links:

TRANSCRIPT

Nicholas Janni  0:00  

I mean, I used to be like this. We can all recognize that when we're in a so called dark place, we think we're the only one who has fear, right? We think we're the only one. So to discover that they're all carrying pain, fear, grief inside is also a revelation.


Christine Mason  0:19  

So hello everybody. It's Christine in today's fast paced world, leadership is often equated with action, strategy and results. But what if true leadership is more about presence, healing and deep connection? My guest today is Nicholas Johnny, transformational coach and leadership expert whose groundbreaking book, leader is healer challenges the traditional leadership paradigm, and he offers a new integrated approach that sort of weaves logic with intuition, action with presence and strategy with the deepest of human connections. So I'm glad you're here. We're going to explore this and many more questions today. Hi, Nicholas.


Nicholas Janni  0:58  

Hi Christine Murray, it's a joy to be here. And let me begin by just honoring your extraordinary work and presence, which is really an inspiration. So I'm truly joyful to be here. Thank you.


Christine Mason  1:13  

Thank you. And since you know that I'm working on receiving I'm just going to pause for a moment and let that sink in. Thank you. So it's been such a pleasure to get to know you over this last year. And I wanted to ask you before you sort of got into the content of the book. In your book, you describe growing up in a high energy yet volatile environment with parents who had quite a bit of unspoken or maybe unhealed trauma, and I was wondering if you could start by giving us a little bit of background on how your upbringing shaped this calling that you have, or how your own journey towards integrating healing and leadership sort of turned into this mission with others.


Nicholas Janni  1:56  

Thank you. Yeah, it was a celebrity household. All the film stars of the day were our dinner guests. My father was Jewish, and had had to flee Milan at the beginning of the War, Second World War. He was carrying huge trauma that he never, ever processed. And my mother was clinically bipolar. So it was high energy, volatile, crazy house. And I was an only child, so I've always had a lot of energy. I mean that I would say, is definitely a result of that environment and a high creative energy. And everything changed for me age 16. I was a, you know a school boy in London, sex, drugs and rock and roll were my religion highly committed, of course, like everything I've always done. And if a school friend of mine asked me if I'd like to go with him to visit his grandmother, who was living in a Tibetan monastery in Scotland, and honestly, it just sounded like, why not? I mean, sounds different, groovy, etc. So up we went, and it was challenging, you know, chanting, endless hours of meditation. But in the middle of our time, there I was sitting in our room reading the classical Buddhist text that someone had given me, and in a moment, the whole world opened. It was a life changing moment. I got shivers thinking of it literally. I just knew what this text was saying. I knew it in every cell of my being, which was that we're living in a tiny version of reality. And so that became my, you know, that became my kind of guiding compass ever after. And for 20 years, I worked in the theater, but I was researching what was the highest frequency actors could get into like when every cell of their body would open and they were on fire, and they would speak text and emotion would pour out of them in a really contained way. And it was amazing work. I mean, I loved it. The most extraordinary things would happen in the rehearsal room, and I had my own company. So I was, we were looking for the practices. How is this not accidental? This


Christine Mason  4:27  

is sort of what you're describing as flow state. Like, how do you get into the highest flow state?


Nicholas Janni  4:31  

Yeah, total flow state, or sports zone, zone state. And I had my own company who were really dedicated. So, you know, we when we would often work all night, and if seven or eight actors would enter that flow state together, we were in the realm of the miraculous. What would happen? So, you know, I never thought I'd leave the arts, but anyway, life took me in the direction and. Respectedly In a way, and over a three or four year period, a group of us started working more and more with senior leaders. And at that time, we developed a beautiful methodology. We used Shakespeare stories. This was in the late 90s, because we were involved in the opening of Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London. Anyway, it was very synchronistic, and we were shown that we could use these stories with leaders as mirrors, and these are great, archetypal stories. So we would tell the story, and then we would say, Okay, let's look at how this event is happening in you. And it took us two or three years, but we got really good and very much in demand. So a small group of us quit the theater and started a consult, a leadership consultancy, and my then colleague, best friend, was the son of Lawrence Olivier. So we had a kind of opened doors as well, and we got really good and really successful. We were working all over the world with top teams, five days, often five day retreats. And then at certain point, I left and started doing my own thing, which initially became focused around presence, but authentic presence, really, not no bullshit, but charisma, authentic presence, embodied heart, open presence. And then a few years ago, this thing dropped in, literally, like a kind of calling card leader as healer. And I was like, wow. Okay, I think this is interesting. And I started mentioning it to a few chief executive clients, wondering what on earth they would say. And they were like, yeah, yeah, you should really develop this. So I you know, it cooked. We creatives. Know, things come, and we have to let them cook. And it cooked inside me. And then one of my biggest supporters, who's very well known consultant in the business world, said, You have to write about this. You have to write a book.


Christine Mason  7:14  

What I really love about the even that approach is there's a fundamental optimism in that of calling people up like you see so much more in someone than the transactional management that is traditionally confused with leadership, you're really calling them into a higher purpose.


Nicholas Janni  7:30  

You know, I work now at the top business school. I work, I did a year long leader as healer program with the world's biggest law firm. And I'm not put too fine a point on it. I meet people who are in comatose consciousness, good people, but we have normalized such a level of disconnection, deadness, numbness, we don't do vulnerability. We're not in our bodies. Everything is thinking, thinking, thinking, so and I'm getting more more strong and radical in the work, and it's really I sometimes say we need to put up back online everything that's gone offline, the body, the heart, the intuition, the soul. So it's really a process of of connection, ultimately, of connection and correction. The first thing is to see what we've normalized. I mean, I read stuff on LinkedIn, and I'm like, what you really think this is about leadership or building trust, or even all the language of emotional intelligence? I find it very left brain. Let's


Christine Mason  8:40  

go back to the idea of what is real presence. Because I think, I think both the aspects of what is real presence and what are the tools you use to get into a flow state seem to mirror this idea of embodiment and vulnerability and feeling oneself. So let's, let's go back to that. Okay, well,


Nicholas Janni  8:58  

if I, let's say I have three days with a senior leadership group. So it's like, first of all, I have to get everyone on board cognitively. And that's actually quite easy. I'm very good at articulating. I talk about being and doing and how over obsessed with doing, everyone gets that. I start by saying, Do you realize you're living at only 20% of your actual capacity? And the reason for that, I love Einstein's question Is your mind your master or your servant? That's like a wake up question, and everyone realizes it's become the master. So then, you know, I explain, and we get agreement. But then there are a series of experiential thresholds. The first one is embodiment. And I take groups through actually very simple but deep reconnection with the body, after which people are like, sitting there in a kind of wow, wow. I am. Felt like this for ever. And then, you know, then I also say things like, you can all remember, right the last time you felt really alive in your body? And everyone says, Yes, I said, So how much of each day do you live in that five? 5% is the norm? So let's understand that's what we've normalized. I mean,


Christine Mason  10:24  

if you're listening even right now, where is your attention? Can you feel your most of the time, it's in my eyeballs, my ears, something above the neck. But if I pause and actually think about my feet, my shins, my knees, my sensations, it's, you know, all of a sudden the locus drops from my mind way down into my belly or into my heart. It's a totally different experience,


Nicholas Janni  10:45  

absolutely, and I teach a key practice around that, which I call the backward circle, so that at all times we're keeping our attention in and down while we engage with the world. And that's game changing, because otherwise we're out there, thinking, thinking, thinking, we're out there and we're not here, we're not at home and being I mean, you know, in your amazing work, coming home to the body is a lifelong journey of coming home to the pelvis. Yes,


Christine Mason  11:19  

I would like to say, I know you, you have been deep in with Thomas Hubel, and when I, when I first sat with Thomas and did my first triad, where you are supposed to hold your awareness inside of yourself, while at the same time by locating your awareness to the other person. And not like leaning out to fix them or contracting away from something that they said, but like, really hold those those I couldn't do it. I could barely keep eye contact with the other person. Or, like, look at their body. And allowing myself to be seen and perceived was difficult. So the you know, moving into the place where you can feel your whole body while engaging with someone else, it's quite masterful. Actually. It's,


Nicholas Janni  12:00  

I call it a master practice, and it's game changing. And also I run transformational coaching, training. I'm right in the middle of an amazing six month program. It's only when we do that that I actually our perceptual field opens, because living in a very small perceptual field most of the time. And I'm training coaches to be so deeply embodied that you perceive the whole interior of the person you're working with, not with your thinking, but as your natural perception. So


Christine Mason  12:36  

you're getting so much more information through the body, so


Nicholas Janni  12:40  

much more about the body, the heart, I mean, everything other than thinking. And it's a huge challenge, because in the normal world of coaching, we think about everything, and we want to give you clever ideas and reframes and strategies. And I'm proposing what I call transformational coaching. Because when you work at the much deeper level, you're in an energetic, vibrational realm. You're not in a cognitive realm. But the biggest threshold Christine Marie, is always the emotional because every corporate group starts with, we don't do vulnerability. We don't do vulnerability, so we have to go very gently towards that, and we do. And the big breakthrough often comes when I give people a writing exercise. I won't say too much about it, because it's supposed to be a surprise, but I ask people, basically, people write something very personal, and then they come together in small groups and they share, and that's usually on the second day, and by that time, there's enough, and I'm very strong in my transmission to the group. So there's a safety, there's a kind of enough willingness that when people start reading what they've written in small groups, the floodgates tend to open, and that's a huge threshold cross. People are crying and sharing from their heart, and then we come back together, and it's beautiful. The whole frequency in the room has changed. You're


Christine Mason  14:19  

moving them from seeing vulnerability as a weakness into recognizing it as a source of connection and strength


Nicholas Janni  14:26  

and power and amazement. First of all, people are amazed at how connected they feel with each other. They're also as I think, I mean, I used to be like this. We can all recognize that when we're in a so called dark place, we think we're the only one who has fear, right? We think we're the only one. So to discover that they're all carrying pain, fear, grief, inside is also a revelation. But the power of the energy, and you know, what's interesting is that then, first of all, you can see. People's bodies. It's so interesting. People are sitting differently, and then somewhere, it's very often someone will because I use quite a lot of silence naturally, I naturally go silent, and by the second day, people will say things like, wow. Yesterday, I would have hated this silence. Now I really enjoy it so people are like soaking in their presence.


Christine Mason  15:24  

Yeah, the silence in a world that's mind oriented is anxiety producing. Somebody has to fill it. But then if you give permission to be silent and be still, wow,


Nicholas Janni  15:36  

exactly. I recently at the business school where I work, I had a Saudi man. He was lovely. He came up to me at the end of the second day, and he said, I'm going to be very honest with you. Nicholas, I hated you yesterday. I just couldn't stand the way you were presenting today. I've loved it. I've loved it. It was such a lovely community.


Christine Mason  15:58  

But I think this transformational leadership. Coaching within one day is pretty great. I mean, you know what these people's lives are like? How do you advocate for them to find stillness in their daily schedule, to find the embodiment practices they come to the workshop. How do they get that into their daily life? It


Nicholas Janni  16:15  

has to be a 24/7 practice. I'm quite against the idea that you just have moments where you sit and meditate. I mean, that's important. That's why things like the backward circle, how am I paying attention, moment to moment in every Zoom meeting I'm in. How am I paying attention? How present am I? So if that starts to become a real kind of question throughout the day that's already game changing. And I teach very simple practices to people, and they use them because it has to be we're trying to correct a huge habit of none of absence. So it has to be very consistent. I say to people, remind yourself, you know, people buy a pen and they put it on the table in every meeting or at their computer, and they look at it, and it reminds them to ask, How present am I? Am I breathing? Is my breathing up here? Am I breathing down in my belly? To Am I feeling my pelvis? Am I feeling my legs, the out breath, as you know, is the biggest opener. We hold the out breath all the time. So you know, these things need to be instilled. And then we have follow up, and we have coaching. I have a great team of coaches, and we have these amazing I created this thing called matrix sessions, 30 minutes online, and people come and they know beforehand they're only going to have two minutes to talk about their issue. And we time it Okay, stop, and then we're all about Okay. Let's look at what's happening inside you now. Radical inclusion. Radical inclusion. We embrace everything that is arising in you now, and the most incredible things happen in 30 minutes. So you know all of this has to be sustained, as we know and as our beloved teacher tells us, the main statement of the unconscious is no so we have to, we have to, we have to work with that. And we have to keep looking at how we say, yes. I'm


Christine Mason  18:29  

imagining this. You walk into an environment where there are a lot of people in what you called comatose consciousness, and you talk a lot about the importance of leaders doing their own inner work. And I can imagine that there's both some sort of skepticism or resistance to the idea of integrating emotional intelligence or presence into their leadership, but at the same time, there's got to be like a deeper soul hunger to come awake.


Nicholas Janni  18:54  

I think the fact that everything is getting crazier and crazier by the week means that people are in so much stress that they're hungry, more deeply hungry for someone who is coherently saying there is another possibility, and not only are you going to feel much better, actually everything you crave, which is your performance, is going to rock it even something as simple as starting every business meeting with two minutes silence and then seeing that you have a much higher quality conversation. Tell me the business case for not doing that. Why would you not do that? Well, there is a reason why you wouldn't do that, because in those two minutes silence, a lot of anxiety arises. Now, if we create a culture where we understand that and we welcome that and we breathe with that, that's the only reason not to start a meeting with two minutes silence. There's no business case. For saying we're wasting time. No, you're not. Because if you have a much better conversation, it's obvious. It's so obvious.


Christine Mason  20:07  

Yeah, I mean, most of the times those first two minutes are like discussions about the weather, the donuts, the Red Sox or something like that, right? So it's useless. Anyway, I've


Nicholas Janni  20:16  

been business meetings, and I'm totally shocked. And even the research is that people say most meetings, they end up feeling were a waste of time, and they come out depleted. So I'm always saying to people, if you come out for meeting depleted, something was very wrong with that meeting, and it's got nothing to do with the content. It's to do with were you listening? Were you present? Were you connecting with people?


Christine Mason  20:42  

This as a sidebar, David Lynch, who just passed, he had the David Lynch Foundation teaching TM in schools, and he the schools in which they started the school day with five minutes of silence and after lunch and anytime they came in from a collective social experience, reading levels within those schools went up two full grades within a year, and things like teacher absenteeism and teacher illness went down. So giving yourself permission to fully arrive, to clear the pallet is very, very exciting for an organization. People


Nicholas Janni  21:15  

rush from one meeting to the next. It's in a constant forward circle, the opposite of the backward circle. I mean,


Christine Mason  21:23  

you're I hear you saying that leaders can bring more love, care, genuine connection, and the natural outcome of that will be better business performance, of course.


Nicholas Janni  21:32  

I mean, there are many case studies of that as well. It's obvious, but there is so much fear inside that it has to become safe enough to allow the fear, and that's huge topic, because otherwise, everything will move forward in order not to feel


Christine Mason  21:53  

I come up with an inner objection that is like a doubt that arises Probably from my own training in a traditional MBA program, and that's around this capitalist demand for constant growth and expansion, and that leaders are so and entire incentive systems are so tied to growth and expansion, and often like go slow to go fast. Presence, healing, sustainability. Is there a new paradigm of growth that has to accompany this approach?


Nicholas Janni  22:24  

Well, that's a huge topic, and I think the answer is obviously yes. We're in serious, serious crisis. We know that we're kind of heading towards an abyss. And I loved what you said about go slow to go fast. That's such a deep principle. I mean, there has to be a new model where we're in very, very dangerous times, and if everyone is still operating on, how much can I get? Then we're heading for more and more trouble. So yes, and there are, you know, there are a lot more enlightened leaders now who are bringing in a quite new paradigm.


Christine Mason  23:04  

Have you seen in your client base some new ways of structuring incentives that aren't so much quarterly numbers or things like that?


Nicholas Janni  23:12  

Oh yeah, yeah, it's happening. But it's, you know, it's, it's happening for sure, but some of the big dinosaur organizations and not changing that much in my perception.


Christine Mason  23:24  

Well, that kind of gets me to a question I have for you, which is, I have the sense that there's a cadre of people who are really interested and changing, but then, like, how do we reach the oligarchy? You know? Like, you know the these elite decision makers who hold disproportionate influence over economies and societies, like, what would motivate them to change? Is it legacy or something deeper?


Nicholas Janni  23:51  

I don't know. I'm not sure that that's even I don't even really take too much time thinking about that. I'm more. I'm more in the belief and flow of just generating enough people with enough higher frequency and trusting that that is the best we can do. I mean, I do work some very senior people, but by the time they come to me, they're already ready to change so and it's a privilege some of the I work with one man who's in charge of 150,000 people, and we went on an incredible journey of healing and awakening. You know, it's a question of, How much is it a numbers game, and how much is it that enough people arrive at a kind of frequency of love and unity.


Christine Mason  24:43  

Very curious about so what happens when a person like that with sort of the Karen feeding of 150,000 souls under his purview, what happens in the rollout as his frequency changes, as he heals, how that transits or transmits? To the organization


Nicholas Janni  25:01  

beautifully, in my experience, because I know him very well. He's He's now a friend. He was a client for nearly two years. It's incredible, actually, what their organization is doing. I mean, the whole thing is so based on serving the community, he's actually his organization has transformed whole parts of a city in North Carolina, really, really, really bringing medical care to places where it was zero. It's a healthcare system. It's absolutely incredible what his organization are doing, and he generates a culture of such connection and love and surface. It's really moving.


Christine Mason  25:43  

So if you're explaining leader as healer to someone who's never heard it before, what are the core principles for you that,


Nicholas Janni  25:52  

first of all, every leader needs to commit to their inner development as primary because they're transmitting all the time. If I write another book, it's going to be called to be a blessing, the highest calling of leadership. Their first commitment needs to be their internal development, and that needs to be a process of radical inclusion, of deep embodiment, and of visiting the most wounded hurt parts of ourselves in a safe and really loving way, so that all of our energy comes back into coherent alignment, and at the same time, we're having meditative practices everything that brings us more and more into a coherent embodiment of love and unity, because then a leader is a blessing. They transmit a blessing. So it's a very it's really about bringing all parts of ourself to the table unconditionally. There's nothing dark that should not be included some of the deepest work, as we know when someone is allowed, and this is for a team, because then a leader holds a culture where not only is everyone allowed say I'm scared today or I'm upset today, teams are allowed to sit in being lost, because many, many, many people feel lost right now, and what typically happens is we don't even say we're lost. We're just trying to scramble our way to clarity that the moment a leader is big enough in herself or himself to say, no, let's, let's sit with the fact that we're lost. Let's breathe into that. You know, the most extraordinary new ideas start to come in by being with, what is one with what is it's such a radically simple, game changing, profound principle.


Christine Mason  28:00  

There's been so many changes in the world of work. We've had gig economy. We've got contract based work. Now we have we've had decades of automation that have all accrued at the top. Now we have AI and there's an overall sense in the places that I drop into is deep confusion, and also a sense that you're in the dying embers of a work based culture at all that there will be for many white collar workers now, the same kind of technological obsolescence there was for blue collar workers. And as you sit in that, not knowing you're not just reinventing work, you're sort of reinventing a world. Yes,


Nicholas Janni  28:39  

completely. It also brings to the table the notion that I think particularly for men, including myself, at times we identify ourselves by our role and our job. So that's really under threat. The whole identity is under threat, and that is scary, therefore, all the more need for an inner process where we're rooted in an identity from the interior, not from the exterior. I mean, that could not be more urgently needed than ever.


Christine Mason  29:12  

This is actually a very deep place. I just want to double down on this place that and you saw a lot of the rise in of in cell culture. And loneliness and men that then was weaponized by by certain political movements that came deeply out of this, no identity, no meaning, no purpose, and how people don't have that it can so quickly go sideways to do damage to others. And so yes, for each individual person, but the vital nature of finding out who you are from the inside pervades everything and makes you sound like what you're saying resilient in times of great chaos,


Nicholas Janni  29:52  

I really deeply agree. I think we're in the, no, I don't think, actually I know, because I see it all the time. We're in a, truly a. Pandemic of isolation, truly so what's needed is everything you just beautifully articulated and communities of connection with each other, heart connection with each other, where we share our inspiration, our creativity and our hurt and fear and lostness and confusion and the two together are just so much what's needed that's so


Christine Mason  30:27  

beautiful. And you think that, I know you think this, it's kind of a rhetorical question, that you can create that community in a work environment? Yeah, for sure. So if you imagine a world where leaders are fully embracing leader as healer, or the upcoming blessing field paradigm, you know what? What will it look like? What will this organization, social structure of the future look and feel like? It will


Nicholas Janni  30:51  

look like a place where where work is a place of connection and inspiration and meaning, and meaning comes both through connection, but also that we're doing something that is part of creating a bigger ecosystem that's healthy and meaningful. I mean, in essence, that's what it will look like work as a place of meaning, connection and contribution, which, anyway, we know, we know from all the psychological research into happiness that we gain much more long, lasting satisfaction by giving them by taking, which is the heart of Kabbalah. I mean, all of these things known, but we've got into this, a chronic, catastrophic disconnection. I mean, it's extraordinary time to be alive. And it's getting more and more extreme. You know,


Christine Mason  31:44  

I think I told you, we have a farm, a sort of an eco village farm on the Big Island where people come and, you know, I watch people who come from the city. They work for Google. They work for a big health care operation, big money, very unhappy. They come to this little place. They start doing a small job, fixing the spa, working in the garden, helping set up flower mandalas on a Sunday morning. And it is what might traditionally be called peasant work, right? No status involved, but they become so embodied and connected and happy. And I'm wondering in this over technologized world, if there is a mandate for the return to embodied work that's


Nicholas Janni  32:30  

so beautiful, so touching to hear how you describe that. I mean, in a way, wouldn't it be wonderful if that was also embedded in every organization I love what you're saying, because being physical in that very simple way, even I know people who just love gardening, they love tending their garden, and they speak of it as being so restorative, yeah. I mean, I say in my book, you know, we speak all the time about connectivity, when actually we've never been more disconnected, and that's in every way. It's emotional, it's physical. So I love what you're saying, Christina, this


Christine Mason  33:09  

connectivity that I feel when, when I sit and face you and we turn our full attention toward one another, it's almost like a giant data stream begins to flow. Jesh talks about this. Jeshrock talks about this, how attunement produces an infinite data stream between people. And you can be in the same room and completely not paying attention and have no information going back and forth


Nicholas Janni  33:33  

Exactly. And I find also that being online like this is not an obstacle in any way


Christine Mason  33:41  

whatsoever. Well, that's new for me. I have to tell you, I'm a zoom with the I'm a zoom person with the screen off so that I can multitask. You're giving me a new standard by which to live. Look, look


Nicholas Janni  33:53  

at. We feel our connection now. No, it's so important because, you know, I'm running a training program now, and I have people from Australia to Canada, and we meet, and we go through deep process, and I work with one person, and they contact very deep layers of whatever shame or hurt. And the whole field of the group is opening. It's so beautiful. Everyone feels it, and people are writing afterwards, wow, this is so important that we can do this online. Of course, being in presence will always be more powerful, but we shouldn't even compare them. They're different. And the fact that people from all over the world can gather online and be really present with each other, embodied and heart open, is a big, big deal.


Christine Mason  34:44  

So I find you know the entire paradigm, if you're out there and you lead anything, a family, an organization, a company, even some sort of mission driven theory that you're advancing in the world, what if you could be. Come an instrument of inspiration, connection and meaning, and give everybody in your organization permission to do that. That's such a powerful idea. I don't care what you're doing, even if you're like, you know, I don't know. I always go to accountant, because that's a very honorable profession. But no matter what you're doing, right, what an invitation you've


Nicholas Janni  35:20  

created, and if, and if you're not, what are you doing? What are you doing? Because you are not deeply fulfilled or happy, and also you're not really taking responsibility for your role, because any leader is impacting anything from 10 to 100,000 people. Wow. So it's a win, win. What you just said is a win, win. It's not a it's not against performance on the country. It's at the core of good performance and happiness and joy. Most leaders I meet not leading a joyful life, and they're really good people I meet wonderful people, such good intention, but they're eaten up by the results producing system. Tell us a little


Christine Mason  36:08  

bit more about your about your new project, your new website, your new project where you're going to see her, and how people can, you know, engage with this? Yeah,


Nicholas Janni  36:16  

I mean, it's a huge topic to bring in, but I'd love to just touch it as well, because I speak most of the corporate groups I work with, at least three quarters men, and I speak very openly about the desecration of the feminine, because I believe that's also what's happening now and what's been happening For a long time. And I believe as a man, it's my duty to speak about that. It's okay when women speak about that, but men hear it differently when a man speaks about it.


Christine Mason  36:53  

Nicholas, I've been having such a sad time with that topic in the last six months, and if I can be candid, I've noticed, you know, I was always that woman who had a lot of male friends, and in the last six months, I've quiet, quit about 70% of them


Nicholas Janni  37:14  

because, because of


Christine Mason  37:15  

their inability to feel what this new movement and culture is doing to me or other women, particularly in the United States, the inability to feel into the reproductive rights question and bodily autonomy, to feel into what it's like to have convicted sexual predators elected as head of the nation and then some of the General willing ignorance of not wanting to be educated about those subjects, because it's totally unnecessary for them to know. And these sort of sideways comments, you know, I think there was one man, for example, he said I told him that women were dying from the new abortion laws in America, and please don't vote for anything that would make that more widespread? And his response was, Well, more people have died in Gaza. That's more important to me. You know, there's just, there's just a sense of being unmet, and I just don't have the bandwidth or the energy to continue. So I think a lot of the women I know are in that space right now? Nicholas, they run companies, they run families. They're very active people, but I've just noticed this general exhaustion and a turning toward the sisterhood in a way that's creating a two track culture. And the women are like you even saw it in the retreat we're in the minute the women were given the chance to greet and thank one another. It was embracing and snuggles and deeply holding, and that's what's happening. The women are creating deep cross connections, and the men are still relatively isolated. And I do see a two tiered way of engaging emerging.


Nicholas Janni  38:57  

Well, Christine, please receive how deeply I feel your pain, really. It touches me so deeply. And I think, well, I don't think I try part of my work to educate men see and feel that pain. Thank you. Understand what we how we contribute to it as well, and that has to be spoken. It has to be spoken very openly. I hear rented stories from women in corporate life, and I see many women who have only got to the position they're in by sacrificing their deep, deep wisdom and power. And it makes me angry and it makes me very sad. The other


Christine Mason  39:45  

thing that I want to say, like, if I'm not in that defensive place or that exhausted place around this subject, you know what, I have a lot of magic, a lot of joy, a lot of like, wow, come play with me. Let's make something. Beautiful, and you're missing out on all of that. Y'all like you could, we could have so much fun together, you


Nicholas Janni  40:05  

know, absolutely and deep, deep wisdom.


Christine Mason  40:08  

Well, thank you for bringing that in. I probably wouldn't have gone there, but you definitely tapped into this place so that I'm, like, eye rolling these days. I'm, I'm, I'm gonna try to create a world that is in the highest possible outcome and continue to hold that vision. And when I have these moments to just do what you're saying, include it and let it roll. A


Nicholas Janni  40:32  

few years back, I ran a program with a female colleague called women and men healing and awakening together, and I think we're going to bring that back later this year. It's very beautiful work, and part of that, only one part is, is first of all, creating separate spaces and then coming together, and women being allowed to really rage, and men witnessing it, and also women witnessing men in deep grief, it's I've seen in those workshops, women saying, I had no idea that men were in such grief, in


Christine Mason  41:09  

such grief. And also to see men in their authentic rage, which often their rate, often their rage is like going sideways and weird, instead of just saying, I'm so furious that X, Y or Z.


Nicholas Janni  41:21  

A lot of our, a lot of our anchor as men, just covers our fear and hurt, to be honest, really. Now I'm sure about that, speaking for myself as well.


Christine Mason  41:32  

Yeah, thank you. So let's, let's, I'd love to have you let people know about the current work and where it's going. I saw a preview of your new website, which is even got an online meditation room where you enter beautiful, wooden doors, gorgeous, but, but say where it's evolving to, let's, let's hear about that. So


Nicholas Janni  41:51  

what's what's coming this in the next, let's say six months, there's actually a women's retreat in June called liberating the feminine leader, which is going to be run by two super amazing, powerful women in here in Puglia, in a stunning location. So we'll be putting that out soon. I'm going to be leading, I think it'll be a large group, online program, six month program called the return from exile, becoming a light bearer, beautiful, which will be six or seven, two day modules online, everything about embodiment, heart opening, integration of all our Emotions, awakening. It's going to be a wonderful process. It's, in a way, the summation of all my years of work. Later this year, we're going to run a global program for young leaders aged 18 to 30. So we're starting to put plans together for that. And as always, I will offer another transformational coaching program in the autumn, which is for 30 people, usually very experienced coaches, but who never experienced working at the kinds of levels that we we open in this training. So that's that's all coming. We're also in the birthing of the leader as healer Institute as a new platform. So matrix development is the current platform. We were also matrix sessions, as I mentioned, can be booked directly from the platform. So there's a lot of movement and a whole new frequency coming in. That's really a blessing. I'm just so for joy and in awe of the work actually that's coming through.


Christine Mason  43:48  

Well, your own commitment to your inner growth and development is obvious. Thank you. Thank you so much for this. We will point everyone in the direction of finding you, and I bow deeply to the impact you're having on all of these wonderful leaders, bringing them more into their potency, for their sake and for everyone they touch. Thank you. Thank


Nicholas Janni  44:11  

you, and I power deep to you, as I said at the beginning, for your courage and your depth and your fun and joy and everything you radiate. Thank you.




Geneva Tolentino
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