Today, I have a wonderful conversation with Dr. Yosi Amram, author of Spiritually Intelligent Leaders: How to Inspire by Being Inspired. We talk about what spiritual intelligence is and how it compares to emotional intelligence, how it is not limited to a religious doctrine or even a spiritual belief in God, and how it contributes to effective leadership and high-performing teams. We talk about why command and control leadership can work in battle but not so well elsewhere, the first step to develop and deepen your spiritual intelligence, and its role in an AI-powered world. You will love the insights shared and may look at your own leadership style in a whole new way.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- While emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence are complementary, they are two distinct things.
- Spiritual intelligence transcends specific religions, spiritual experiences, and spiritual beliefs.
- Empathy is crucial to build teams no matter the type of leader you are. In battle, you need a certain level of command and control, but when you’re not in battle you need that empathy and connection.
- Our bodies are energy. Because of that, we are connected to the sun. We are connected to life. We are connected to everything.
“Spiritual intelligence becomes more important for us as humans, as more and more of the things about our life and jobs could be mechanized or taken over by AI.”
— Dr. Yosi Amram
Episode References:
Atomic Habits by James Clear
How Leaders Inspire: Cracking the Code by Bain & Company: bain.com/insights/how-leaders-inspire-cracking-the-code
The Empathy Edge episodes:
Amer Kaissi: Humbitious Leadership Equals Success
Susan Hunt Stevens: The ROI of Psychological Safety
Michelle Sherman: Why The Most Successful Leaders Combine Resilience With Imagination
Dr. Michelle Zhou: Empathic AI is Real and It’s Here – But We Need Everyone Involved!
From Our Partner:
Download the 2024 Ninth Annual State of Workplace Empathy study from Businessolver: businessolver.com/edge
Discover more valuable content from Businessolver on The Benefits Pulse vodcast: businessolver.com/benefits-pulse
About Yosi Amram, Author, Psychologist, CEO Coach
Yosi Amram, Ph.D., is a distinguished psychologist, an executive coach catering to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and other influential leaders, and a pioneer researcher in the field of spiritual intelligence. Holding an MBA from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Sofia University in Clinical Transpersonal Psychology, Dr. Amram is committed to enabling individuals to unlock their potential through spiritual intelligence, which is a profound connection to the core of one’s existence that enriches their overall functioning, improves their effectiveness, and enhances their wellbeing.
Dr. Amram is the author of Spiritually Intelligent Leadership: How to Inspire by Being Inspired, which offers a compelling roadmap that equips leaders with the means to connect with the true source of their authentic power and presence deep within themselves. By utilizing Dr. Amram’s modern integrative methods and practical applications, readers will transform their leadership, and build, manage, and inspire high-performing teams.
Connect with Yosi Amram:
Website: YosiAmram.net
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yosiamram
Facebook: facebook.com/yosi.amram.7
Book: Spiritually Intelligent Leadership: How to Inspire by Being Inspired
amazon.com/Spiritually-Intelligent-Leadership-Inspire-Inspired/dp/1960583697
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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Imagine the CEO of a public company having a spiritual crisis going back to school to study psychology, and now coaching CEOs across industries on how to be more effective through spiritual intelligence, while you’re about to meet him today. I have a wonderful conversation with Yossi Amram, author of spiritually intelligent leaders, how to inspire by being inspired. Dr Amram is a distinguished psychologist and executive coach, catering to CEOs, entrepreneurs and other influential leaders, and a pioneer researcher in the field of spiritual intelligence, holding an MBA from Harvard University and a PhD from Sophia University in clinical transpersonal psychology, Dr Amram is committed to enabling individuals to unlock their potential through spiritual intelligence, which is a profound connection to the core of one’s existence, their spirit, where inspiration and their deepest interconnectedness reside that enriches their overall functioning, improves their effectiveness and enhances their well being. Dr Amram has coached more than 100 CEOs across a broad spectrum of businesses, with many of them building companies with 1000s of employees and revenues in the billions. Additionally, Dr Amram serves as a psychologist working with individuals, couples and groups. His book offers a compelling roadmap that equips leaders with the means to connect with the true source of their authentic power and presence deep within themselves by utilizing his modern integrative methods and practical applications readers will transform their leadership and build, manage and inspire high performing teams. We talk about what is spiritual intelligence and how it compares to emotional intelligence, how it’s not limited to a religious doctrine or even a spiritual belief in God, and how it contributes to effective leadership and high performing teams. We talk about why command and control leadership can work in battle, but not so well elsewhere, and he knows firsthand. We talk about the first step to develop and deepen your spiritual intelligence and the role of it in an AI powered world, you’ll love the insights shared, and may look at your own leadership style in a whole new way. Take a listen. Welcome Yossi, to the empathy edge podcast. I am so looking forward to this conversation about spiritual intelligence. Welcome.
Dr. Yosi Amram 03:16
Thank you. Thank you. I’m delighted to be here with you, and I’m enjoying your smile and welcoming presence, awesome.
Maria Ross 03:23
Well, we’re going to get into it because I know that people want to hear about you and your work and your book, spiritually intelligent leadership, how to inspire by being inspired, which is an amazing title, by the way. So just quickly, this is, this is a very unique field. You are a distinguished psychologist, as we heard in the bio, but tell us a little bit about how you got to this work, specifically around spiritual intelligence. Okay,
Dr. Yosi Amram 03:49
I’ll try and keep it brief, because it’s my entire life that led me here, but I’ll just say a few things. My first experiments with leadership was in we’re in the Israeli military, where had the fastest promotion record in the history of my regiment, won a number of awards, but the command control model of the military, while effective in battle, really chafed at my soul, and I resolved to someday try my hand at different models of leadership, which ultimately led me to be an entrepreneur and founder and CEO of two companies which I was blessed enough to take public. But along the way, despite my success and health and wealth, something wasn’t really working for me, and I experienced the burnout and dark night of a soul, which led ultimately to what’s called the spiritual emergency, which associated with it was some kind of a manic episode where I kind of experienced the interconnectedness of everything, and it was a mystical experience, but it blew my circuit, and being a CEO of a public company and trying to run it with this vision that I had about the internet and. How everything connected. I was very ungrounded and couldn’t really manage my relationships with my board and my team, which ultimately led to being forced out. I was put on quote, unquote, a voluntary leave of absence, which was far from voluntary, was very devastating and and really depressing and so but it led me to try and understand this experience and what, how much of that was real or not. And that ultimately changed the direction of my life, where I went back to school and became a clinical psychologist, both to understand myself better, and then as I was starting to coach and mentor other entrepreneurs how to work with them more deeply. And I was, well, I’ll just pause there. No, that’s great. I
Maria Ross 05:44
mean, keep going. Okay. So
Dr. Yosi Amram 05:45
I was gonna say I was very familiar with the notion of emotional intelligence and all the research that was done about how that contributes to leadership. And I was interested in this spiritual experience that I had, in an awakening and the relationship between spirituality and leadership, and was this real, or was this just some kind of a delusion? And so I started to really study this area of spirituality and leadership, and then I heard this term spiritual intelligence, which was coined by this woman called Dana Zohar and but there wasn’t an operational definition and a scientifically valid measure, measure of it. And so if you want to study something in science, you have to know, define it clearly, measure it so you could see how it correlates and how it results in other outcomes. And there was a lot of validated measures of emotional intelligence, but there wasn’t any for spiritual intelligence. I set on a path to define what spiritual intelligence is and then how to measure it. And so I created the first academically validated measure of spiritual intelligence. And then I studied 42 CEOs and 210 members of their staff to see how spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence and personality contribute to their effectiveness as leaders in building teams that were committed and unified and with lower turnover. And what I discovered was that spiritual intelligence made a great contribution, was complementary to emotional intelligence, but was distinct, and so that’s
Maria Ross 07:23
yeah, so let’s, let’s take a step back, because we’re kind of getting into some of the questions here. Let’s understand for a minute when you talk about spiritual intelligence, what is that exactly, and how does it compare to emotional intelligence? So I think before we get into all the great things that it indicates, yeah, what? Let’s make sure we’re all talking the same language. What does it actually mean? Yeah,
Dr. Yosi Amram 07:48
okay, great. So I’m glad you know it’s very analogous to emotional intelligence. So emotional intelligence, basically is the ability to draw on emotional resources to help and information to help regulate our own emotions and our interactions and emotions with others. So spiritual intelligence, by analogy, would be the ability to draw on and embody spiritual resources and qualities in daily life in a way that enhances functioning and well being. So what are those spiritual qualities you might say? So those could be purpose and service and gratitude and integrity and humility and higher self and presence and intention and so on. These are qualities that are hailed by all the world’s spiritual traditions, regardless of their cosmology of theology. So whether you’re a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or or Native American, I interviewed 71 teachers across all the world’s traditions to find out what spirituality meant in daily life and how it helped them. And these were the themes that and qualities that came up, like again, as I said, purpose, service, gratitude and so on.
Maria Ross 09:09
So it’s not necessarily attached to a religion or a belief in any specific god. So I guess my question power, yeah, yeah. So my question is, can an atheist be spiritually intelligent? Very
Dr. Yosi Amram 09:20
much so. And my clients are because, you know, you’re highlighting in a very important distinction, which is, spiritual intelligence is different than spiritual experience. It’s different than a spiritual belief. The spiritual experience is, I could be meditating, I can be walking in the woods, and all sudden, I have a sense of oneness with nature and whatever. No ego, I’m not separate. That’s a spiritual experience. A spiritual belief is in higher power or God or reincarnation of the soul or whatever it is. There are very many different spiritual beliefs, but spiritual intelligence, the ability to embody these qualities. In daily life. And, you know, practice compassion, practice forgiveness, practice humility. So you can be an atheist and be a humble person. You can be an atheist and have a sense of purpose and want to be of service in the world. And you know, and I could talk about clients that you know, some of whom, like one particular client in this moment is coming to mind, that was an atheist, had a very scientific background, and his company was running out of money, and the bank wanted to foreclose on his home. But you know, he had a tremendous sense of purpose in what he was doing, and he believed that it was really fundamental important to improving quality of life and the way companies work and so on. I won’t get into that, but the point was that his belief and his sense of purpose, and he kind of would remind himself, I’m living my destiny. Now, he didn’t really believe in destiny in a spiritual sense, but that was the phrase that said, I am on track to share my gifts in the world in the service of the greater whole. And that was his purpose. Now his company was out of money, and I continued to coach him for free, for essentially or for deferred pay for 18 months, because I believed in his purpose, and his team stayed with him when he wasn’t paying them. He wasn’t able to pay them because of his sense of purpose and the sense of community and alignment they created. So here’s a great example of someone who’s an atheist, who’s embodying a spiritual intelligence, quality of purpose vision then really helped him keep his company going. So, yeah, it wasn’t about belief in God or anything,
Maria Ross 11:48
right, right? So I guess that that kind of, that story, kind of illustrates the answer to my next question, which is, how does spiritual intelligence contribute to effective leadership? Can you, can you talk about some examples or stories there to illustrate that. I
Dr. Yosi Amram 12:02
mean, I’ll give you another example relates to maybe another quality, which is humility and egolessness. So I mean, first of all, I would just say that, you know, you might have heard of this, one of the top international management consulting companies called Bain and Company. They did a survey of 2000 employees and companies to see what we what contributed to inspired employees. And what they found is that inspired employees are twice as effective as people that are just doing their jobs. And then they looked at what are the qualities that contribute to leaders being inspiring, and they were basically service, orientation, humility, centeredness, empathy and so on, which are a lot of the same qualities that I’m talking about in spiritual intelligence. But this came out of their research with the companies and employees, not not coming out of any kind of spiritual orientation. But the point is, now there’s actually quite a bit of research that talks about the contribution of humility and servant leaders to effective and it may sound paradoxical, because we think the leader needs to be strong and confident. And yes, they do, but you know it confidence and sense and sense of security about oneself is not in conflict with ability you can have be egoless and be humble and still be confident, and it’s not kind of being weak or self effacing. So yeah,
Maria Ross 13:35
actually, we’ve had quite a few guests, and I’ll put links in the show notes, because we had America who wrote ambitious, which is the quality of being humble and ambitious at the same time. And I call it being strongly, strongly humble, you know, or being confidently empathetic. Those things are not mutually exclusive. And there’s also, there’s a few folks that I’ve interviewed around the the power of purpose in an organization. Susan hunt Stevens, the power of spirituality in unlocking creativity and innovation. Michelle Sherman, so I’m going to put a few of the links for listeners in the show notes, because if this episode is of interest to you, I think there’s all these other fun rabbit holes that folks can go down, and it’s wonderful to see that this is a, this is an area that people are focusing on, companies are actually doing research on, because that’s how we that’s how we get the skeptics right, is with the data. So if I can find a link to the Bain and Company Report, I’m going to put that in the show notes as well. Okay,
Dr. Yosi Amram 14:35
let me know. I’m happy to send it to you. Yeah, yeah. But the point is, actually, and this reminds me of a quote by Gandhi, which he says, when you reduce yourself to zero, you become unstoppable. Now it may sound really weird, but the point is, if you’re devoted to your purpose and there’s no ego about it, then you’re unstoppable, like in in martial arts. The most fierce spider is someone who’s willing to die. And so you act essentially with a certain level of courage and fearlessness, and you’re just doing everything for the cause, not about your ego, not about personal advancement, and that’s inspiring to other and makes you wholehearted in your action. And yeah, so it’s not me. You are actually focused on on the goal, on the vision, on the purpose. It’s not about me. And so all your energy is put behind that. So it’s very powerful, actually, well, and
Maria Ross 15:37
it’s also powerful because, from it, from an empathy point of view. It’s similar. It’s this idea that when you allow yourself to not be the smartest person in the room, but have a clear sense of purpose, you’re open to new ideas. You’re open to other perspectives, other ways of solving a problem, and that gets you to success faster and you can you’re not so committed to one way of doing something, or I don’t want to listen to anyone else’s idea, because I’m the leader, and I’m supposed to know the direction we’re going. It’s those humble leaders that involve their team in the purpose, that are able to move forward
Dr. Yosi Amram 16:15
exactly and they can learn. So I if I think I am the smartest person in the room, and my ego is fixated in that and I’m trying to prove that I am the smartest person in the room, then I’m not going to be open to listening and learning. So I the more humble I am, the more open I am, the more I can learn and grow and benefit. And as you point out, it creates the culture and the atmosphere where what can emerge is, you know, beehive intelligence, with the intelligence of the collective, you know arises. It’s not just my intelligence, not about me, you know, so to speak, which is egoic. Now, let me give you an example where this comes into, you know, an expression. So one of my clients, who was a successful entrepreneur who sold his first company, made, you know, gazillion dollars, etc. And he was like, Hey, I’m a great designer. I know how to design these software, apps and and, you know, I’ve made it before. And he started a second company, and they launched a product, and they weren’t getting any traction in the thing, and he was struggling to figure out how to adapt the product to get to a better consumer experience, better engagement. But, you know, he was really struggling because he had this idea and an image that he was a good designer, and that was really confusing him, like, how can I reconcile my identity as a guy who’s got it figured out with the fact that then I’m not? I’ve been working at this for a while, and I’m not. So I basically did this exercise when I asked him to put in his hands all these identities that he had, that he’s he’s a good designer, and he’s a father, and he’s a husband and whatever. And so we all carry all these identities. And how does it feel when you hold them? It’s like it feels good. I’m strong. I know who I am and so but how is it energetically in your body, it’s actually tight and and that’s how I feel, my strength. I said, Okay, now, toss them all behind your back. Now. How do you feel now? And now, he’s like also, and he’s like, he got loosened up, and he’s free, and he feels light, and that’s when his creativity came in. And so as long as you hold on to this identity, I’m a I’m a good, effective designer, and it’s not, then all your mental energy is trying to reconcile with your egoic identity, with with the facts of reality, which are not supporting of that. So you’re more fixated on maintaining your ego than on solving the problem. But when you are humble and you empty yourself of all these identities, that’s when you can be creative. So that’s why you talked about that people. That’s why in design firms or whatever, they create play environments and humor and all of that, to relax us out of this ego, which then brings up the creativity. And the creativity is like, usually feels like I am an open channel, and things are coming down to me is not like I am thinking and figuring it out. It’s like we become a channel and an inspiration comes through us, and then we feel creative when we express that creativity.
Maria Ross 19:33
Well, we get, we get in flow. We get, we get in that where it almost doesn’t feel like work anymore. You just you’re sort of in flow, and you lose track of time. And I just want to go back to something you said when you were talking about your story, because given everything that you just described, I don’t know that we’re gonna like answer this in this brief podcast interview, but this idea of command and control leadership, I’ve talked for a few. Years about the fact that that model is dying, at least in the business workplace, but it was interesting because you said that model works when you’re at war, right? And I’ve spoken to I’ve spoken to several former military leaders who even even in the military, empathy is actually a very strong leadership trait, because, you know, leaders are getting to know their people and those people’s strengths and what motivates them. And so I find it interesting in this arena where command and control was kind of born, you know, in the military, and even in the military, it doesn’t always work well, but the fact that we tried to bring it to corporate life, where, you know, lives are not on the line, and you know the stakes are a little bit lower. It doesn’t feel like it all the time, but the stakes are lower. Why do you think that there’s so many leaders, even with all the research around play and humor and creativity and unlocking innovation, in your opinion, why do you think some leaders still can’t let go of command and control?
Dr. Yosi Amram 21:13
Well, it’s basically it comes down to our ego. And you know, we try and establish our sense of worth, which is inherently lacking and deficient by by our status and our power over people. And it’s like comparing mine. I feel good about myself as if I’m richer than others, I’m smarter than others, and so the ego is trying to hold on to something to establish our inherent worth, which is, you know, that’s conditional worth, and it puts us in competition and in in conflict with everybody else. Our worth is, is our birthright, just our very fact that we’re born as human beings suggest that we’re worthy of love and and meaningful life and and respect and dignity and actualization of our unique potential. So yeah, but just to to highlight what you’re saying, I think it particularly doesn’t work in a knowledge based, knowledge worker based economy, I mean, on an assembly line when you’re just routinely assembling things, and you can do that very well with robots. Until you had robots, you could manage people like they were robots and but when you’re managing people that are essentially knowledge workers, and it’s their creativity and judgment that you need to make them productive and effective, then that command and control doesn’t work. Now, the reason what you’re saying, just to rewind a little bit about the military and empathy. Empathy is crucial to build teams and in the military, when you are in battle, you need a sense of camaraderie and team and that our shared destiny and we’re going to help each other. It’s not just about me. You can’t you can’t face, quote, unquote, whatever the enemy is. Individually, you have to help your fellow humans in the battle. But in the the reason the command and control is still the dominant paradigm, not in the training, not when you’re building that team cohesion and spirit, but in the moment when, whatever, you don’t have the time to build consensus and go into a conference room and say, Okay, let’s be creative, huh? No, people are shooting,
Maria Ross 23:34
let’s use the whiteboard. Yeah, exactly, yeah. You’ve got to make quicker decisions. To say,
Dr. Yosi Amram 23:38
you run here, you do this, you do that, yeah, that’s why in battle you need a certain level of command control, but when you’re not in the moment of battle, you need to foster that empathy and that connection, so that people, when you go into battle, you know, are supporting each other, and you hear heroic Stories of, yeah, soldiers jumping in front or jumping on a hand grenade to and blowing themselves, but to save the people that on on the vehicle with them. I mean, you hear such stories so but it is built on that sense of shared destiny. It’s built on empathy. I hope I’m making some sense,
Maria Ross 24:21
you are absolutely and I just want to, you know, because we’re getting close to wrapping up, so I wanted to give people some ideas for habits or practices that could help them develop or deepen their spiritual intelligence. Do you have a few you can share with us? I know there’s probably plenty more in the book, and we’re going to encourage folks to check that out, but give us a little appetizer. Sure,
Dr. Yosi Amram 24:41
sure. Well, I’ll just say this, though, it is an appetizer, and spiritual intelligence a lifelong journey, if for me, and I think, to embody these qualities not you have a momentary awakening, and you’re like enlightened, I don’t believe it’s a practice. It’s a practice, and it’s ongoing, and you’ve been. Building muscles just like you build muscle going to the gym, and you have different muscles. You have the purpose muscle and the intuition muscle and the higher self muscle and the humility muscle and these, each of these qualities you need to work on. Build AB in and I recommend people pick one one quality for a month or something, and put set of practices and monitor just like you would in any habit. I mean, there’s best seller atomic habits, and it talks about, you know, taking the small, small steps that are capable and and so on. Anyway. That’s a kind of a preface. But to me, it starts with connecting with our life force. What you call it, I’m calling spiritual intelligence comes from the word spirit. What is spirit? It’s the animating life force. And when you think about its relationship to leadership, it actually makes sense. What do leaders do? They inspire. That’s the difference between leaders who inspire and managers who manage. And so what leaders breathe? Basically, life, purpose, passion, cohesion into the organization. So we can’t inspire others until when we’re inspired. And how do we start by getting inspired is first we have to find and connect to our life force. And our life force is is readily available, first through our breath, because that is our what gives us oxygen gives us life. That’s why we call it the breath of life. And then we connect to our pulse. We feel our our, you know, pulse, our blood. And that’s, again, our life force. So when we can connect to that, connect to the rooted in the ground, through the feet into the earth, then we feel our solidness. We feel our life force. And then we are interconnected, and we’re connected to that life force. Then we feel interconnected because you share in a similar life force. So now, as I’m connected to my life force, right now, I feel your life force, your aliveness. And now we are interconnected and interconnected, and there, you know, my power, my vitality, my connection, is multiplied. So that’s kind of, that’s a beginning sort of thing. And so it’s to connect with our life force, to feel the support of the earth and the ground, Mother Earth is always underneath us, always supporting us. Gravity is kind of pulling us in like an embrace. Mother Earth is pulling us as an embrace into her center. And so when you kind of connect to that and feel the space around us that’s always holding us, then then we find our center, we find our our life force. And then through that, we connect, and then you have to translate into these qualities. From here, I can feel my passion, I can feel my purpose, I can feel my my strength, you know? And so on what
Maria Ross 27:54
I’m hearing, you know, it’s very it’s like with everything else. It always starts with you, right? It’s doing the inner work before you can influence others. So I love that. But what I’m hearing is it’s really about becoming more aware like at its very core, it’s becoming more aware to your your spiritual presence, your core. It’s becoming more aware to what inspires and and motivates others. It’s almost like with so many of these things, whether it’s emotional intelligence or spiritual intelligence or empathy, so much as of it is about just waking people up out of whatever trance like way they walk through the world and and I think that’s why we talk about this idea of like an awakening or a you know, I finally, I finally saw what it meant. It’s all very much language around waking up and paying attention for
Dr. Yosi Amram 28:56
sure, for sure, and waking up to our nature, to our essence, which is so much of us. We we believe we identify with our body, and we look at our body, we think we’re all separate objects moving through space. But the new science says that actually this body is really energy. E equals MC squared, right? Is the most famous physics equation that says that mass and energy are the same thing. That’s how nuclear energy works. That’s how the sun works, which is really nothing that condensed light. So light is energy. When it’s congealed, it becomes mass. So, you know. And then the new science of quantum physics talks about the field and the field of possibility, and how these things so right now, you know, I may feel I’m disconnected from the sun, but in reality, even as far as physics, the sun is exerting a gravitational field because it has mass, and my body has mass, and it exerts gravitational field. So I’m actually connected to the sun. Through gravity, I’m not separate. So the science is also highlighting that, you know, the way we normally experience things as a separate object is actually not true. And so when we realize that, and you can call it an awakening, we become aware to that reality, that truth, and then how do we live that truth of that connectedness, well, and
Maria Ross 30:23
from a very you know, and I know there might be some people, hopefully they’re still listening, even if they’re a little doubtful, you know, like this is a little too woo, woo for me, for leadership and whatever. But it’s we know it when we see it, you know. We know it when we meet a person we’re attracted to and we feel that energy. We know it when we walk into a room and something really uncomfortable has just happened, you can tell and so to deny that there’s an energy that connects us all, I feel like is very naive. It’s not Woo, woo, because we’ve all experienced it in some way, shape or form, our intuition, our gut, our you know, ooh, why did I know not to walk down that street tonight? Or, you know, we experiencing, we experience it on a daily basis, and yet there are still people that want to say, No, that’s, that’s a bunch of science
Dr. Yosi Amram 31:15
now there’s understanding of this thing called mirror neurons. Yes, supports empathy and whatever. And we don’t really know. How does mirror neurons work? How is it when I’m experienced, or even a monkey experiences, you know, something, looking at a banana, other monkeys around, same neural pathways in their brain are activated. It’s like, whoa. How is that going? We don’t know, but we do know that mirror neurons are working. We also now know that the heart produces an electromagnetic field, and through the research done at the Heart Math Institute, we understand that that field extends six, eight feet out, and we’re in the presence of someone else. The electromagnetic fields of our hearts start interacting, and we influence each other, so that sometimes we don’t know the full mechanisms. But as you point out, we feel it when you love someone you know and or you feel the energy of love coming at you you know. You walk into a room like you said, not even seeing the person, if the person is angry, the energy of the room feels dense, right?
Maria Ross 32:24
And you might not be able to put your finger on it, but you’re just like, something, what did you know? We say it all the time. You walk into that meeting and you’re, you know, you’re coming into the middle of a conversation, and you’re like, ooh, something feels a little crunchy in here, like, what? What just happened. So some, some of us, are more attuned to that than others, and I think that’s part of it again, like kind of going back to what you were saying, is building that awareness and building that link paying attention to those signals, yeah, oh,
Dr. Yosi Amram 32:54
I think of it as opening the aperture. Yes, those things are already there, but the more aware we are then, then we open our aperture, and we could take a lot more. We our radar becomes a lot more sensitive. Wouldn’t you want to have a sensitive radar?
Maria Ross 33:10
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So in our, in our last couple minutes here, I just want to close with this question, and it’s probably not fair, I’m pulling an NPR. Move on you with like, 30 seconds left, just tell me what? No, but what is the role of spiritual intelligence in the AI world?
Dr. Yosi Amram 33:26
Well, I think it’s a good question. It’s a question that I have discussed so some of my clients have been involved as leaders in the AI world. I have a podcast, or one of my YouTube videos is about digs into this, and I’m interacting with Emmett, who was the acting CEO of OpenAI, but for a while, one of the leading companies. So I think spiritual intelligence becomes more and more important for us as humans, as more and more of the things about our life and jobs could be mechanized or taken over by by AI agents, and so having the sermon and ethics and purpose and empathy, empathy and all those things, yeah, that much more important for us, for humans and the people that are on the leading edge of AI actually talk about a point where AI can have emotional intelligence and intelligence, I don’t know exactly about that yet, but, but you know, it is true that there are AI now that can have certain levels of emotional intelligence where it can Read emotions, return of voice. And yes,
Maria Ross 34:41
yeah, we actually had someone on the show, a founder of Juji, Michelle Zhao, who spoke about their development of empathic AI. And it’s, it’s, instead of trying to predict what patterns are there, it’s more about reading. It’s more about awareness. It’s more about. Reading what’s in front of it, and discerning word choice or tone or the type of question asked, and then figuring out what the most appropriate counsel would be. They’re using it a lot in higher ed and healthcare because of shortages of people available to give some of that guidance, and so they’re, they’re working on it, and it’s, it’s a very different mindset and mission for those founders of how to use AI appropriately. But what I took away from my conversation with her is this is the reason why our human skills are going to be so important, because we’re the ones building our future. We’re the ones building these, these machines, these these, these language models, all of the things. And so if a lot, like, just like you said, if a lot of those tasks are going to be automated, the things that sort of anyone can do, quote, unquote, I’m using air quotes right now, then our human skills are going to be even more important and
Dr. Yosi Amram 36:01
what’s distinctly human. It’s not just because those machines will compute much faster and will be able to write a lot more and research a lot more, and scan the web and do all these things. So we can’t rely on the traditional IQ, because the traditional IQ measures the machines are going to be have higher IQ than us, yeah, will make us distinctly human and avoid our obsolescence is these things of empathy and love and spiritual intelligence and the you know, and hopefully, then the machines will automate the menial tasks and what can be, and then our lives can have more meaning and creativity and love and connection, so
Maria Ross 36:46
we can, we can spend more time on those things. Yeah, I love it. Well, that is a great positive note to leave this off on. Thank you so much, Yossi for sharing your insights with us. Today, we will have all of your links in the show notes, and especially a link to your book, spiritually intelligent leadership, how to inspire by being inspired. But for folks on the go, can you just share a place where they can go and check out more about you and more about your work? Sure,
Dr. Yosi Amram 37:13
I have a website called Yossi amram.net y, O, S, I, a m, R, A m.net, and it’s kind of an umbrella site that links to my coaching website. It links to a site of research and assessment around spiritual intelligence. So there’s people can get a free assessment of spiritual intelligence on that website called intelligencey. I also host monthly free events for awakening spiritual intelligence. And each third Friday of a month we do one. We did one on love the week of Valentine’s Day, and then we did one on purpose, and the next one beyond beauty. And each month there’s going to be so they could check out that page and see what the next month’s event is, and just come and people do exercises in small group, and it’s a community, and people feel the transformative effect. And again, you could be an atheist, you could be spiritual, but not religious. You could be whatever. And so there’s resources. There’s a
Maria Ross 38:22
lot on there, so we will have that link as well in the show notes. Yossi, thank you so much for your time today.
Dr. Yosi Amram 38:27
Thank you. It’s been a delight, Maria. I’m so happy to be here with you and have this opportunity to share and exchange with you. And
Maria Ross 38:36
thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do, rate, review and share it with a friend or colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well and be kind.
For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
