A Minute to Arrive: Presence, Listening, and Conscious Leadership, with Craig Souza
Most meetings begin with urgency. People arrive distracted, carrying the residue of the last conversation and already thinking about the next one. But what if leadership started with something different, a moment to arrive, breathe, and truly listen?
In this episode of the Spirituality in Leadership podcast, Andrew Cohn sits down with Craig Souza to explore how mindfulness, presence, and deep listening can transform the way leaders show up at work. Craig is the president of the Conscious Leadership Guild, a former enterprise sales leader at HP, and a mindfulness teacher who has spent years helping leaders integrate awareness and emotional intelligence into everyday leadership.
Craig shares how his journey into spirituality began unexpectedly through recovery and later evolved into bringing mindfulness practices into corporate environments. What began as a side interest eventually became a powerful way to help teams connect more deeply, communicate more effectively, and create healthier workplace cultures.
Throughout the conversation, Craig introduces simple practices leaders can use immediately, from beginning meetings with a minute of presence to practicing mindful listening. These small shifts create space for deeper understanding, stronger relationships, and more thoughtful decision-making.
The discussion also explores Craig’s work with the Conscious Leadership Guild, a community of leaders committed to personal growth and responsible leadership. At its heart, conscious leadership begins with inner work. It involves recognizing how we show up in the world and taking responsibility for our impact.
This episode offers practical ways leaders can bring mindfulness and humanity into everyday interactions and discover how powerful true listening can be.
Key Takeaways
Start With Presence: Beginning meetings with a brief pause or breath helps people transition from busyness into focused attention.
Mindful Listening Builds Trust: When leaders truly listen without interrupting or solving, people feel seen and heard.
Small Practices Create Big Change: Simple habits like three mindful breaths can shift the tone of conversations and decisions.
Bring Your Whole Self to Work: Leadership becomes more authentic when we stop separating who we are at work from who we are in life.
Leadership Begins With Inner Work: Conscious leadership starts by taking responsibility for how we show up and how our presence affects others.
Listening Is a Leadership Skill: Structured listening practices reveal insights and emotions that often remain hidden in normal conversations.
In This Episode:
[00:00] Craig’s initial resistance to spirituality
[00:45] Introducing mindfulness in corporate settings
[02:57] Welcoming Craig Souza
[03:29] Starting meetings with a “minute to arrive”
[05:48] Reception of mindfulness practices at work
[06:03] Craig’s journey to mindfulness and HP experience
[08:13] Impact of mindfulness in conservative corporate cultures
[11:37] Personal integration of spirituality and authenticity
[16:57] Boundaries and authenticity in leadership
[18:22] Applying mindfulness practices at home and work
[19:28] How leaders can introduce mindfulness
[24:30] The power of mindful and whole-being listening
[25:14] The steps of mindful listening
[28:16] Empathetic listening
[31:46] Just practicing mindful listening
[32:38] Focused attention and leadership presence
[33:52] The story behind the Conscious Leadership Guild
[37:44] Principles and norms of the guild
[41:02] Defining conscious leadership
[43:31] Personal growth as the foundation of leadership
[44:49] Resources and how to connect with Craig
[45:25] Closing remarks and podcast outro
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
Craig Souza
Website: https://businessawakens.com
Medium: https://medium.com/@craigsouza
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/souzacraig/
Conscious Leadership Guild: consciousleadershipguild.org
Andrew Cohn
Music:
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Transcript
Craig Souza: I have always found that people, if you don't apologize for it, if you don't presuppose resistance, most folks love it, or at least they don't complain about it. The journey to spirituality really came through recovery. I was definitely someone who was highly resistant. Might even say allergic to anything that smacked of religion. And for a long time, religion and spirituality were synonyms for me.
Andrew Cohn: How do they test the waters and begin to bring these practices in, in the face of the concern that, okay, this isn't appropriate for business, or it's a little much? What works?
Craig Souza: And so we do these structured listening exercises. And then at the end of day 1, if I'm teaching SIY, Search Inside Yourself, I'll give people homework to do stealth mindful listening.
Andrew Cohn: Welcome to the Spirituality in Leadership podcast. I'm Andrew Cohn. Spirituality in Leadership is a platform for conversations with leaders at all levels about bringing our spiritual dimensions to our leadership, our teams, our workplaces, and all areas of our lives in order to achieve greater success and fulfillment and build and sustain healthier organizations. If you'd like to connect with me to talk further about these topics and/or about individual individual or team coaching, leadership workshops, or team alignment, please go to my website, lighthouseteams.com. Enjoy the podcast.
In this episode of the podcast, I'm very happy to welcome Craig Souza. Craig is Northern California-based, at least now. Throughout his earlier life, he did live in a number of different parts of the world. Craig is currently the president of the Conscious Leadership Guild, which he talks about later in our conversation, what that is, and what that actually means in his experience. He talks a bit about his corporate experience, mostly in HP, but in technical IT-related sales and how his work led him to the Search Inside Yourself mindfulness curriculum as a student and then as a teacher at HP, which has led him to some of his other work as well. The podcast begins with a story, an experience first, and then a story of corporate mindfulness exercise and the impact of that. And just a lovely conversation about the power of practicing listening and real, what he calls mindful listening, and the practicalities and invitations for leaders to try something, step into something, invite your teams to a deeper experience and connection, which is a very, very practical way of both connecting but also solving issues and growing leaders in a variety of ways. Just a terrific conversation. I appreciate it. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm super pleased to have with me Craig Souza, corporate survivor, mindfulness teacher, personal journey-er teacher, and Craig may also talk about his more recent work with the Conscious Leadership Guild. But for now, welcome, welcome to the podcast, Craig.
Craig Souza: Yeah, thank you. It's good to be here. Thanks for asking.
Andrew Cohn: Of course. No, it's really great to have you with me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Where should we begin?
Craig Souza: Why don't we begin with a practice?
Andrew Cohn: A practice. Okay.
Craig Souza: I took a solemn oath when I left corporate life that I was going to start all of my calls with a minute to arrive and actually used to start staff meetings at HP with this, just on my team where I could get away with it. So I would just like to invite our listeners or watchers to join us in this practice. And if you're driving, 'cause a lot of people listen to podcasts while they're driving, don't close your eyes. If you're jogging, you don't have to stop jogging. If you're out for a walk, you don't have to stop walking. Just give yourself permission to be fully present with whatever it is you're doing for the next minute. And so if you are like Andrew and I are, sitting in a chair, just feel the weight of your feet on the floor, your hands resting in your lap. If you're not driving or running or walking, you can close your eyes. Just take a long, slow, deep breath in through your nose. And out. Do that twice more at your own pace, and we'll just sit quietly until we hear a bell. Thank you. And that is how I like to start calls and meetings.
Andrew Cohn: Let me ask you, in your experience, Craig, is that something that is typically well received? Is it something that people push back against? Or certainly it's the first time we've done that on this podcast, and I'm curious to know whether my listeners are freaking out right now or perhaps they're relieved.
Craig Souza: I would hope most of them are relieved. So it's funny. I just, I remember when I first started, I'm kind of skipping way ahead in my story, but about 6 years ago, I was going for a walk with a mentor of mine and friend Tom Eddington, and he was saying, hey, you know, I know you're interested in mindfulness and meditation and conscious leadership and maybe bringing this into corporate. So maybe you should check out this thing called Search Inside Yourself, which was a mindfulness training that started at Google and then it spun off into a nonprofit and later became a B Corp. Long story, but essentially bringing mindfulness practices into corporate settings. And I remember talking to some learning and development people at HP and one of the folks said, hey, come to one of our management training classes. Just so you get a sense of, you know, what we do here. And so I went in Palo Alto and beginning of the second day, the trainer said, okay, we're gonna do something. You might think it's a little weird, but you'll be okay and we'll all get through this. And she sort of spent 3 minutes explaining, letting people know that she was going to make them sit quietly for 3 minutes.
Andrew Cohn: Now at this point, sorry to interrupt, but at this point you were internal corporate in a sales role in HP, making an appearance, making an appearance in this workshop.
Craig Souza: Correct. Correct. Yeah. And so I was in corporate enterprise sales, managed print services at HP, and then mindfulness became a side hustle. And we can talk more about that, but I'm just giving a long-winded answer to your question that may or may not be good for a podcast format. But so we sit for 3 minutes and what I realized was she was apologizing for the meditation. And assuming that there would be resistance. And the first time I taught the SOI program at HP, it was in Boise, Idaho, which is sort of the, I keep saying our, it's now their, 'cause I left HP 3 years ago, but it was the kind of the mothership of print and where the hardware engineering was and the life testing lab. And so people who do real engineering, you know, like they make hardware. And so it's engineering culture, Boise is a fairly conservative place. And one wouldn't think of that as like a hotbed of mindfulness. And I go there and it's the first day and I've got 30 people. And the first thing I'd done was I had workplace services remove all the tables from the room. And I told them to do that. And then I came in the night before and there's all these tables neatly lined up and I put in a ticket and they said, you're sure? I said, yeah, I want no tables, big circle of chairs. So people walk in, the first thing they notice is, oh, there's no tables, just a circle of chairs. And then at the very beginning, I said, all right, we're going to just, and I did exactly what I just did with you and your listeners. I didn't set it up. We just did it. And I rang the bell and nobody ran out and nobody freaked out and it was fine. And people liked it. And I would notice this when we'd have guests come to our staff meetings. You know, my boss would say, oh, hey Craig, you know, let's do our minute to arrive. And I'd do what I just did. And the people who had joined us would be like, oh, that was great. Why don't we always start meetings like that? Because it's just giving us a chance to settle. To just let whatever the last meeting was go. I actually noticed when I was in your Zoom waiting room before you opened the room, there's even a little thing in there that says, give yourself a moment, take a few breaths, allow yourself to become present, and I'll open the room when I open the room. And so this nice little reminder. And so I have always found that people if you don't apologize for it, if you don't presuppose resistance, most folks love it, or at least they don't complain about it. So, yeah.
Andrew Cohn: In my experience, that's true too, right? I've got clients that I come in with my Tibetan bowl and they'll say, please come back. We want you to facilitate this meeting for us and bring the bowl. I said, you're paying me a lot of money to chime this bowl. They said, but it just is so practical. Just be able to settle, be present. So many of us are like running from the last meeting. And it takes a period of time to transition and get connected here. And this process is very, very practical in terms of addressing that. But alas, it's a new experience, and sometimes we rebel against new experiences. My hand is raised in that camp as well, for sure. But if you could go back a bit and how did you get to that point? Like, okay, so you started the movie with a scene in Boise 6 years ago. What leads up to that? And ultimately, Craig, I mean, we've talked about this. You've got a keen interest in this topic of the connection between spirituality, broadly defined, and leadership. And what does it mean for you and what's your journey and how did you get to Boise and then what are you doing now? That's what we'll cover in the next 25 minutes or so.
Craig Souza: Well, just in case we have any listeners in Idaho, I do have to say it's Boise with an S. So people in Boise are very patriotic about that pronunciation.
Andrew Cohn: Noted. Noted.
Craig Souza: Yeah. You learn that if you go to work for HP, there is no Z in Boise. I mean, the journey for me, I mean, it came through the journey to spirituality really came through recovery. I was definitely someone who was highly resistant, might even say allergic to anything that smacked of religion. And for a long time, religion and spirituality were synonyms for me. There was no separation. They were just the same thing. Of course, I'm now on a podcast called Spirituality and Leadership and volunteered to be here. So obviously I've softened on that.
Andrew Cohn: You've come a long way, baby.
Craig Souza: I've come a long way, baby. But I was certainly in that camp of wanting nothing to do with that and certainly sure that it had no place in business. Keep this out of work. That's, you want to go to church on Sunday, that's fine. But don't bring it here 'cause we have serious business to do. And I think maybe that's, I hadn't really thought of it, but so a big moment for me was I got sober when I was 26. You don't quit drinking unless it's a problem. I won't go beyond, color it more beyond that, but I got sober when I was 26 and then I wound up getting a job at a big company and put on the armor of the suit and the tie and you know, as a salesman. And so played that game, put on that mask, played that role. And then through a, just a series of events that are probably appropriate for a different podcast, I found myself at HP and found myself on a conference call about the HP's Pride employee group. And I wanted to join the Pride employee group 'cause I was a teleworker. I worked from home the whole 16 years I was at HP, never had a cubicle, never had an office. And I figured that would be a nice way to meet other people at HP. And that turned out to be a good strategy. But I found myself in Dallas, Texas, in a ballroom of some hotel at a conference called Out and Equal, which is a diversity and inclusion conference for LGBTQ folks. And there's this woman on stage talking about bring your whole self to work. You know, we should all bring our whole selves to work. And that to me, you know, circa 2008 sounded like a really bad idea. It did not seem like a safe thing to do, like at all. But I realized, huh, I, what would it look like? If the Craig who shows up to be in a play or direct a play, because I'm a theater kid and I'm still on the board of a theater and going to be directing a play next month, and the Craig that shows up for social occasion or a meditation group or a queer organization. What would it look like? And so that was really my journey was how to kind of get to a one Craig strategy, maybe a little less profanity at work, but basically getting to that point was pretty much the same guy who was showing up and folding in the spirituality was sort of accidental. It definitely came through that journey of bringing mindfulness and emotional intelligence training into that corporate setting and doing Search Inside Yourself keynotes at Out Equal. Actually, it was at that conference I wound up doing, you know, some keynotes and it felt like a real full circle moment. And then I'll never forget, I got a call one day from the head, the woman who was the global executive sponsor for our pride group. And she told me that one of our employees had been murdered in New Mexico. And she said, hey, we're going to do a gathering. It was one of the leaders in our pride group. She said, we're going to do a gathering and would you do a meditation? To kind of start it off. And I realized, huh, people are sort of acting like I'm kind of a quasi chaplain.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. That's a clergy task.
Craig Souza: Yeah. Yeah. And it felt good to be asked, but there was also a little bit of this weight of responsibility, but also this real realization that we need this kind of spiritual connection to just navigate our lives and we're bringing in our lives with us into the office. Our lives come with us into work. And so it's not always healthy or possible to create this separation between our professional lives and our spiritual lives.
Andrew Cohn: Oh, no, I think that's fair. And I think I know for me, when both in terms of executive coaching, but even topics around work-life balance and how will teams work better together and corporate cultures and, you know, do we want to be accessible at home? What does it mean to be on a very practical level? For example, that whole thing of, okay, are we just not going to are you, if you text me on a Sunday, I'm not responding to you unless it's really a once-in-a-career sort of emergency. And because that is my time, I was actually coaching a manager in a global consulting firm recently, and he said, it's just so important for me to set these expectations with my team members about what the boundaries are because I do have this personal life and it matters. And it's not that I want to keep it separate in terms of keep it secret, but I want to keep it separate in terms of accessibility and boundaries and being able to bring my best self to my family, whatever that family situation might be outside of work, and being able to bring my best self to my workplace community. And I can do those things better when there's boundaries between the two. Yeah. But I'm the same person. There may be some things that come out. I was just speaking about this with a colleague. Maybe some things that come out more fully and more authentically at home. I mean, the people at work don't get to see my playful side like my family does. That's okay. But it's not a conflict. It's just more about what gets dialed up in different, in different areas. Is that how you view it?
Craig Souza: Yeah, I had this story that I had to be serious at work. And when I softened that story, work became a lot more fun and people were attracted to that. So bringing that lightness in was pretty important. But I think one thing that really struck me was how many people would come back after the training and the feedback I would get pretty consistently was, hey, these things that you brought, I'm maybe not comfortable doing some of this stuff at work and on my team, but I'm trying it out with my kids. I'm trying it out with my spouse and it's really improved my home life. And they would even say, oh, I kind of feel guilty that, you know, we're paying to do this training, but it's, I'm really only applying it at home. And I went, if your home life is better. You're going to show up for work happier and more productive. So money well spent. And try this stuff at work.
Andrew Cohn: I'm often on this podcast asking the how question. How can leaders at all levels engage in practices, behaviors, culture creation, interactions that are positive, productive, practical interactions? So how would, like, have you seen either through yourself as a leader within HP or in coaching coaching and developing and training others. How have you seen leaders sort of help cross that bridge into places that either it's not welcome or they just perceive initially that it's not welcome? But how do they test the waters and begin to bring these practices in, in the face of the concern that this isn't appropriate for business or it's a little much? What works? Because I'm sure you've seen some things that work.
Craig Souza: Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite stories was actually the same woman who was the Pride executive sponsor was one of the, I mean, she ran a billion-plus-dollar business inside HP. She was a VP and general manager for one of our print divisions. And she said she was trying out this practice that I'd offered in the class, which was a 3-breath exercise. We can do it right now with your listeners. So it's just 3 breaths. And with the first breath, you just you pay full and gentle attention to the breath. And with the second breath, you notice if there's any tension in your body and you allow it to relax one small measure. And with the third breath, you ask the question, what's important right now? So just, we'll just do it. So first breath. Full and gentle attention to the breath. With the next breath, noticing if you're carrying any tension in your body and allowing it to relax. And with the third breath, gently holding the question, what's important right now? And so this woman who we'll call Annette, 'cause that's her name, didn't necessarily know that her team was ready for like a sitting for a minute at the start of the staff meetings, but she started doing this 3 breaths practice. And then she'd go around and ask people on her staff, what showed up is what's most important right now. There was this one woman on her team who I knew, 'cause I had interviewed with her. She actually didn't hire me. She referred me to another manager at HP who did hire me, but she was like a 30-year sales veteran, a woman in tech sales and a very senior management position. So kind of a tough woman. And Annette could tell that she was pretty resistant to this 3-breath nonsense and this kind of fluffy stuff. And she knew she'd had a breakthrough 'cause she started a meeting and she was in a hurry and distracted and she forgot. And this woman said, hey, Annette. I said, yeah. She said, we didn't do our 3 breaths thing. And I said, oh, you're right. Okay, let's do it. And so people will see the value. And so I think it definitely takes for leaders. If you're, if you lead a team and you're listening to this, it takes a little courage, but just try it. You can say, hey, I was listening to this podcast and this guy who used to work at HP used to do this with his team and I'm just going to try it because we're all super busy and I'm going to set a timer for a minute and we're just going to sit for a minute. I heard it on a podcast. Let's see if it works and just do it. Or, hey, I heard, I was listening to a podcast. I heard this thing with 3 breaths and let's give it a whirl. So you can just try it. And my experience has been people like it.
The other thing you can do is not tell people you're trying it. Just do it. I mean, an example of that, I think if there's one thing, I mean, I have taught these 2-day classes and these half-day workshops that have neuroscience and research and lots of great quotes and beautiful slides, and instructional design is great and But regardless of the content, whether it's adaptive resilience, search inside yourself, leading with love, leveraging our queerness for leadership is another workshop that I do for LGBTQ leaders. I do a lot of cool stuff. I think maybe that's my ego, but what people always come back with almost invariably when I say, what's the, what, what did you most enjoy or what did you most get out of it? They say, oh, it's the listening, the listening exercises. And you know, where we set it up for, you know, mindful listening. And in a workshop, you're doing it in a formal way. You know, there's person A, there's person B, person A shares, person B listens. Listening means not talking. You've got 3 minutes. If person A stops talking after 2 minutes, stay quiet till I ring the bell. Notice if that's uncomfortable. And so we do these structured listening exercises. And then at the end of day 1, if I'm teaching SIY, Search Inside Yourself, I'll give people homework to do stealth mindful listening.
Andrew Cohn: Well, actually, I want to hear about what they come back with on the next day, but I just, before we go past this, what are the steps of mindful listening for people who aren't familiar with that? What does it involve? What does it mean when I'm doing it?
Craig Souza: Yeah. Yeah. So I'll talk about mindful listening and then I'll talk about whole being listening, which is kind of a next level. But mindful listening, if you want to practice it with someone, is there's a person A and there's a person B. So person A is the person who is speaking. Person B is the one who is listening, and then you'll switch. So the way it's structured in the SAI program is we'll give people a topic. The topic might be, what are some of your greatest business challenges that you face? Or for our audience, it might be, where do you feel discomfort in talking about spirituality at work? You know, so there's a prompt that people talk on. And then you'll say, all right, so I'm going to ring a bell. Person A will speak for 3 minutes. Person B will listen for 3 minutes. And this is very important. The entire 3 minutes belong to the person who is speaking. So if that person after 90 seconds stops talking, that's not your opportunity to give feedback. That's not your opportunity to ask questions or solve their problem or give advice. Just sit quietly until I ring the bell. What might happen is person A might be quiet for 20 seconds and then go, oh, and then and that's the real gem that if you just started talking, you never would have gotten that gift. And then we switch and then it's person B is speaking, person A is listening, and then ring the bell. And then you give people 3 minutes just to talk about what that experience was like. And what I hear, one thing that I hear pretty frequently, and it's heartbreaking, is for the people who are being listened to, people will say, no one's ever done that. I've never had someone just give me that gift of their full attention for 3 minutes. And for the people who are talking, sometimes it's, they'll be uncomfortable because they're used to getting, you know, verbal feedback. And so to have someone who's, and another part, important part of the instruction is for the person who's listening, you don't sit there like a statue. You can nod and smile and, you know, it's not, you know, it's not a staring contest. You're just not speaking and it's really powerful. And then, you know, beyond that is, you know, then you'll work your way up to mindful conversation, which is there's still a person A, there's still a person B, but there's a feedback loop. Hey Andrew, what I heard you say is dot, dot, dot.Did I get that right?
Andrew Cohn: Also a form of active listening. Yes. We're still in the listening section.
Craig Souza: Yep. Yep. And then we kind of graduate to empathetic listening where there's a person A, there's a person B, there's a topic, and the feedback loop prompt is, what I heard you feel is. And so that's giving people a way to notice, A, that they actually have the capability to notice feelings coming across. So you're not listening for content at all. You're off the hook. And so you're just responding with, oh, what I heard you feel is dot, dot, dot. And what's amazing is, and this actually happened for me because I took the Search Inside Yourself course, and the person who was my listening partner said, oh, what I heard you feel was X. I don't even remember what it was, but I remember A, he was right. And B, I didn't know I felt that. I wasn't actually conscious of it.
Andrew Cohn: So his response to you helped clarify for you what you were feeling that you didn't even realize.
Craig Souza: Yeah.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful
Craig Souza: And then what I do in like the Leading with Love, which is my own content. And Leveraging Our Queerness for Leadership, which I developed with some other guild members. We'll talk about the Conscious Leadership Guild at some point. That's been a huge gift for me in the last 6 years. And it's something called Whole Being Listening, which we came up with actually out of a group that we've been meeting every Thursday now for 5, since COVID So like 5 years now. 5 or 6 years. And we came up with this concept of whole being listening. And so the way that is set up is, okay, Andrew, if you're listening, don't worry about what your partner is saying. You don't have to give them a witty retort. You don't have to solve their problem. You don't have to repeat it back word for word. I mean, you know, hear the words, but you don't have to hang on every word. Notice what emotions might arise as this person is talking. Notice what happens in your body as they're speaking. Are your shoulders getting tight because they're sharing something intense? Are you feeling really open and expansive because they're sharing something beautiful? And then same thing, you know, 3 minutes, 3 minutes, Meta, you know, and then switch and then meta conversation. And people will be in tears after that, just from the experience of being fully listened to. And so again, this is another, I think, long-winded, maybe long-winded answers is just my style, but to leaders, you don't have to say, hey, Andrew, I'm going to do whole being listening with you right now because I was on this podcast. And so I'm going to listen with my body and my heart and my mind, you can just decide in my next meeting or my next one-on-one or my next conversation with my kid or my spouse or the next person at a coffee shop who says, how are you? I'm actually going to A, tell them how I am. I'm not just going to give the same, fine, how are you? And then I'm going to listen to them. Because if I create the invitation by saying, oh, well, actually, I'm having kind of a rough day. How about you? Oh, yeah, I'm having a rough day too. Or, hey, I'm having a great day. You know, I just got my granddaughter just was born. I just recognized the dream of becoming a grandmother, whatever it is. But you making that conscious choice in my next interaction, I'm going to practice whole being listening. And so it doesn't, and just, I hate to use, it was in a lot of years in corporate sales, the lawyers kind of drum the word guarantee out of your mouth. But I will guarantee if you do that with your team, with the people you interact with, they will notice a difference and they will respond to you differently. And it'll shift how you are with others and how others are with you, and it'll open things up.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Thank you for that. And it's so consistent with some of what I've seen, what I've seen, including a lot of the research about a certain quality of focused attention that when a leader provides that kind of attention, like, I don't know, just, there was something about her, but when she, when I was with her, I was the only person in the world, even if I just had 30 seconds. People talk about certain successful politicians that have that quality or leaders that have that quality. Just they are fully there. And this is a great technique for doing just that. And I love the invitation to just do it. Just do it. And just do it. It's an experiment. And we can take a little bit of risk and the world is not going to fall apart. Although some of my attachments and identification might, but that's a separate topic. And I don't wanna get stuck there, but I'd love to just be sure we loop back to, for leading with love, if you wanna speak with that is one of the things that you have created and offered, but also back to the Conscious Leadership Guild, which you've spoken about. I know that's a very significant part of your life, especially as the president of the guild right now during the time this is being recorded anyway. So what would you like to share about that, how you came to be part of the guild, what it means for you, and what else you'd like to say about it? You're obviously an important spokesman for the guild.
Craig Souza: Yeah. And you are a member of the Conscious Leadership Guild, which is how we met. And yeah, let me talk a little bit about the guild. We can put a link, I'm assuming, in your podcast notes.
Andrew Cohn: Yep, we'll put a link in the show notes.
Craig Souza: Yeah, consciousleadershipguild.org for folks who want to learn more about it. Essentially, I had a very important mentor in my life. John Renish was his name. He passed away in September of 2022. And he has been accused of coining the term conscious leadership. He actually said he and someone else on the other side of the world both started using that term around the same time. So his contention was that it came from source, not from him. And he started a Google alert for the term conscious leadership just to see, you know, if people were starting to talk about it. And this had sort of come out of some interest he had had in spirituality in the workplace. And he had worked with others on workplace spirituality, which was kind of a big field in the '80s and '90s. And so eventually it got to the point where, you know, from every few months people would Google conscious leadership. It got to the point where he shut off the Google alert because it was just constant. So he had this sense that, all right, this is more than, this is a movement. And this is a movement that is ready for an organization to support it. And he had, before he got into the consciousness stuff, had been a corporate real estate broker. And he said, you know, he'd go to these conferences where, you know, these people who were pretty cutthroat, it's pretty cutthroat business like corporate real estate. And so these people who would just slit each other's throats over an apartment building on Monday, would spend the previous weekend helping each other get better at the craft of slitting each other's throats over a, you know, office building on Monday. And he went, you know, if real estate brokers could do that, conscious leaders certainly can. And the model of a guild made sense. And so the guild was founded in 2019, so it's fairly new. A lot of people hear, you know, Guild and they think, you know, it's this old thing that's been around forever, but it was founded in 2019 and we had our first retreat in 1440, which is a retreat center in Scotts Valley. So Bay Area people probably know that. And it was a remarkable gathering and there was a kind of precursor event to that was, so there was a Conscious Leadership Congress and John at that realized he really wanted people in the guild who were really walking the walk. They were not there to promote their book or sell their workshop or advance and professionally network, but really people who wanted to show up fully. And so we had about 40 people in a circle and when we did our check-ins, maybe three-quarters of the people, when they were asked, why am I here? Said, I have no idea.I just felt like I was called to be here
Andrew Cohn:. And so at the same time, there's this, what feels like a looseness and, you know, being led sort of thing. There also are some, I know that there are some delineated principles of the, of the Guild. Could you highlight a few of those that you think kind of help make the Guild the Guild?
Craig Souza: Yeah. I mean, I think one is something I'm really proud of, and I will consistently hear this from people at Guild gatherings, is I feel like I can kind of let my shoulders drop and I can relax here. And it's about, don't tell me who you are. Show me who you are. Show me who you are. We don't, you know, if I think about just norms, it's like, it's a norm in, you know, a lot of, you know, an academic setting or, you know, if you go to a conference that I'm going to spend 5 minutes talking about, you know, Andrew Cohen studied here and did this and accomplished this and accomplished that while you sit there next to me with this kind of smile on your face. And then we'll turn to you. And I'm sure you'll probably insert something like that at the beginning of the podcast to talk about me a little bit, because that's just a norm. It's like a social norm. And in the Guild, we don't do that. It was funny. We left that first retreat and some people were kind of frustrated because they're like, wow, I just spent 3 days with these people who I know are amazing people.And I don't even know what they do
Andrew Cohn:. Yes, of course. But of course, you know who they are though.
Craig Souza: Yeah. And then I, well, and then I Googled some of these people and I'm like, you know, Joseph Jaworski was, is, you know, he's, he's still around. He is in his nineties and still, still going at it. But he was one of the inaugural members of the guild and he was just this nice guy that, you know, is like, who's, who just has this amazing presence. And I'm like, oh, you know, and I found out later I was here's, oh wow, he's like this really super famous guy. But in guild contexts, we get to use the guild as a sandbox, if you will, to really play with what does it look like to show up fully in a way that feels in integrity with how I want and giving ourselves permission to do that, giving ourselves permission to if we're offering a workshop or a class to say, hey, you know, I really wish I could do this, that, or the other thing, but, you know, my university would be resistant or my corporation would be resistant. Well, in the guild, bring it, bring it, bring the thing that you think might be weird or unwelcome and let's try it here. So these are just sort of norms that we try to bring in. And at the same time, people are coming in saying, hey, it's a guild, so I would like to actually get better at the craft of conscious leadership. And so things like the practices that we're doing, guild calls are always started with you know, a minute or two or five. You know, my Thursday calls, we sit for 5 minutes.
Andrew Cohn: So can I ask you, forgive me, this could be my lawyer, my lawyer brain is creeping in and wanting to grab the microphone here, but how do you define conscious leadership or if you do?
Craig Souza: This is important. So we did have a working, we do have a working definition that it's taking responsibility for how we show up in the world and our impact. So there is sort of a working definition and responsibility was a word that John felt was pretty important. It showed up a lot. His book, the last book that he wrote was, I've got it right here actually. I'll plug John's book because it's a good one. The Great Growing Up. And he writes, being responsible for humanity's future. That's the tagline. Being responsible for humanity's future. So I think there's a responsibility component to conscious leadership. Being responsible for ourselves. How are we showing up? Not you. It's their fault. If they were different, if the system was different, if this was different, if that was different. But really being conscious of how am I being and how I personally define it as how am I being in this present moment and am I responding in a way that's skillful? And that's the Buddhist studies creeping in, you know, because Buddhism talks a lot about skillful means because I'm also a Zen student. That's been another part of my path, my spiritual journey. But we don't try to nail down a definition of conscious leadership. And I think that's really important because it leaves room. It leaves room for people and it frustrates people. So, you know, we've got some people who have said, you know, okay, I finally relaxed and you're not going to give me a definition of conscious leadership and that's okay. 'Cause I do think it's important for people to have the freedom to decide what that means for them.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. I mean, I think that there are some things that we do need to define, especially if we're building on top of something. For example, if I would kick in my engineering brain, it would be, no, we need to level set, for example, before we start building on this thing. But other things we don't. Perhaps it's a bit of a cultural obsession to have definitions of things.
Craig Souza: I'll say one more thing, which is, because I thought it was pretty good. So there's a guy, Christian DeQuincy, who's editing John's articles and compiling them into a book that's going to be published. And someone had asked him in an email what he thought John's definition of conscious leadership was. And I can't remember what exactly he wrote, but it was something to the effect of, if you think you're going to affect change out there, without first affecting change in here, good luck. And so leadership that really comes from doing your own work first and that being, and leading from that place. So I really think that is pretty key if you're going to be a conscious leader, there's gotta be some component of commitment to doing your own work.
Andrew Cohn: And that, my friend, sounds like perhaps a nice place to tie off this conversation. Yeah. We will put some of these links into the show notes. Yeah. But let me ask you, if people want to learn more, let me hear you describe where they should go.Where they could look
Craig Souza:. For information about me, I have a Medium site, so you can just type Craig Souza into Medium and articles will show up there. I do have a website, businessawakens.com, that I am still in the process of building. So depending on how far after February of 2026 you're listening to this podcast, it may be more than just a couple of pages. And Conscious Leadership Guild is at consciousleadershipguild.org. And of course, I'm on LinkedIn and the usual places.
Andrew Cohn: Wonderful. Well, I have a feeling, if not a distinct hope, that you'll be seeing some things popping up on some of those fields with people reaching out to you. I know that I have enjoyed reaching out to you and will continue to do so. No, thank you so much for your perspective, for your honesty, for your lightness and the invitation to play in these spaces. My sense in conversation with you is that there's a real invitation and it's a very genuine and authentic and inviting invitation. So I appreciate that.I thank you for that.
Craig Souza: Oh, thank you. Thank you for the invitation to be on your podcast.
Andrew Cohn: Very good, Craig. All right. Good to see you. And thank you again for all your contributions here.
Craig Souza: Oh, thank you, my friend.
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