The Pilgrim's Path: What 500 Miles with a Donkey Taught a Financial Controller About Leadership, with Jean-Christophe Normand
What happens when a meticulous financial controller leaves his comfortable corporate career to walk 500 miles across France with a donkey? And what could such a pilgrimage reveal about leadership, hope, and the sacred art of meeting another person without judgment?
In this episode of the Spirituality in Leadership podcast, Andrew Cohn sits down with Jean-Christophe Normand, an executive coach, professor at a Catholic university, and ordained deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. Jean-Christophe’s journey from corporate finance to spiritual leadership is anything but conventional.
Raised in a culture where religion and public life are carefully separated, Jean-Christophe describes himself as “culturally and emotionally 100 percent French.” Yet around age 40, after navigating difficult adoptions, personal loss, and a growing sense that his career lacked deeper meaning, something shifted. With the support of a coach, he began exploring theology and gradually stepped away from his corporate role. When a devastating car accident left his mother tetraplegic, his search for purpose deepened even further.
Seeking clarity, Jean-Christophe embarked on a 700-kilometer pilgrimage from Paris with a donkey, traveling with little planning and trusting the path to unfold. The journey became a turning point that opened the door to a life devoted to coaching, teaching, and spiritual service.
Today, Jean-Christophe’s work bridges three worlds: leadership coaching, academic teaching, and spiritual ministry. Rather than seeing these roles as separate, he experiences them as deeply interconnected expressions of the same calling.
At the heart of his philosophy is a simple yet powerful belief: hope is a gift. Even in times of darkness, leaders can hold space for the possibility that light will emerge. Through presence, listening, and deep respect for the humanity of others, leadership becomes less about authority and more about walking alongside others in their journeys.
This conversation explores how faith can quietly shape leadership practice without imposing beliefs on others and how humility, curiosity, and compassion create space for transformation in individuals and organizations alike. Let’s dive in!
Key Takeaways
Hope as a Leadership Resource: Faith can cultivate a deep sense of hope that helps leaders remain calm and grounded even in difficult situations.
Transformation Often Begins with Crisis: Personal challenges and moments of disruption can open the door to deeper reflection about purpose and direction.
Leadership Is Responsibility: True leadership requires aligning what we say, what we believe, and how we live.
Listening Creates Connection: Building meaningful relationships begins with suspending judgment and listening deeply to others.
Respect the Sacred in Others: Every person carries something unique and valuable. Leadership involves honoring that dignity.
Daily Practices Anchor Awareness: Beginning and ending the day with reflection, meditation, or prayer can help leaders stay grounded and intentional.
Leadership Is Walking Alongside Others: Rather than directing or controlling, effective leaders often simply accompany others on their path.
In This Episode:
[00:03] Opening reflections on faith and hope
[00:48] Podcast introduction and guest overview
[02:24] Jean-Christophe’s early life and French Catholicism
[10:10] Career beginnings and personal challenges
[11:15] Turning point: coaching, theology, and pilgrimage
[15:45] Integration of coaching, teaching, and deacon roles
[18:20] Faith as a source of hope and calm
[19:42] Daily rituals and respect for others
[21:45] Path of wisdom and individual growth
[23:01] Faith as the foundation (iceberg metaphor)
[23:49] Hope and redemption in coaching
[25:55] Navigating secular environments with faith
[26:44] Building relationships and avoiding judgment
[29:42] Connecting across social levels
[31:18] Leadership, responsibility, and spiritual alignment
[34:10] Daily commitment and self-awareness
[37:37] Coaching practice and spirituality
[40:32] Contact information and future projects
[43:16] Book recommendation and positive narratives
[44:58] Closing remarks and gratitude
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
Jean-Christophe Normand
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanchristophenormand/
Website: https://rhinc.fr/en/
Andrew Cohn
Book
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (2020)
Music:
Listen to the Podcast here
Watch the Podcast here
Transcript
Jean-Christophe Normand: I always have this inner feeling that at the end of the day, right will overcome evil in a certain sense. And I know that, that's a gift.
Andrew Cohn: Well, your faith is so important to you and you bring it forward. You bring forward your faith.
Jean-Christophe Normand: I will do that by seeking or trying to understand what is important to that person in the present context. And I will try to avoid making, forming any form of judgment, you know, on what he thinks, whether it's right or bad. But I will try to see if we can find a kind of common ground. I find that the lower you go, and I'm not putting any form of judgment on that, but the lower you go, the less barriers there seem to have.
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 or team coaching, leadership workshops, or team alignment, please go to my website, lighthouseteams.com. Enjoy the podcast.
Welcome back to the Spirituality and Leadership podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Cohn, and in this episode, I speak with a colleague of mine from across the pond in France, Jean-Christophe Normand. He is as French as his name suggests, and this episode is really a lot of his personal story, his personal evolution, and his personal experience with faith, his Catholic training in his early years. He reconnected with his religion later in midlife around 40, and It's been an important part of his work and his life since that time, including in his work supporting leaders as a coach, as well as a professor in a Catholic university and a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. He's in Paris and he refers to his experience that you may hear him talking about CFL, that's Companions for Leadership, a network of coaches and organizational consultants that he and I are a part of together. That's where we met some years ago, Companions for Leadership. So he talks first about his background, early background, and the relationship that the French have with religion, which is different than it is here in the US. He describes himself as culturally and emotionally 100% French, and then talks about his story in some length in a lovely personal way with his growing up and his getting married and how that was a religious event. But his career had really nothing whatsoever to do with religion. He was a controller in a metallurgy business in France, and then something changed for him when he was around 40 years old and he felt this impulse to leave his job. It was the first time he had worked with a coach to help him in some deeper reflection and to help make that decision. And he started to look back into theology that he had been exposed to as a younger person, but never really was part of his life until around 40.
He had a personal, what he described as a personal shock. His parents were involved in a serious car accident and that shifted his thinking and moved him into working in coaching, which included the need to step away from a well-paying job. So he describes, and this is a fascinating part of our conversation, he describes that one of the ways that he did that to help him make that transition from a traditional financial controller job into coaching and pursuing his faith personally was he did a long walk with a donkey, about 700 kilometers to be specific, walking out of Paris. He talks about donkeys as very biblical animals, which I suppose is true. And he thought it would be, as he said, a great way to leave my job and engage in a profoundly personal and spiritual experience. And he said it was very unlike anything he's ever done because he's a high-level planner, great detail, likes to know what's happening in advance, kind of like a financial controller often is. But this personal pilgrimage for him was very different in that he just didn't have a great sense of plans other than he was walking with this donkey. And he said this event started the pattern of helping him move forward in a different frame of mind.
So as I mentioned before, he works as an executive coach, a deacon in a Roman Catholic church, and a professor in a Catholic University. And as he says, these three areas are not particularly distinct. He said he does all of his roles in each of his roles. And specifically, when we began to talk about how does he bring his faith into his work, as we move closer to the theme of this podcast, or as some people have talked about faith in this podcast, others have not, but Jean-Christophe talked about his deep sense of faith. And because of that faith, he says he has a great hope, an underlying hope in people and events. There is still light at the end of the day. There is dawn after the darkness. And he says, I always have this inner feeling that right will overcome evil. And he talks about that as a gift and a real asset in his coaching work, even in the most professional settings. And he said that that attitude and that mindset and that framework enables him to walk with people on different paths. It gives him the ability to remain calm and to be able to reflect a certain deeper peace, if you will. He talks about his daily ritual of trying to connect with something above him, which could be called meditation or prayer. So he begins his day with a certain meditation or prayer and closes his day with a certain meditation or prayer. And he talks about how critically important that is for him personally. I described his faith as what's below the surface of the iceberg, if you will, of his life. That 90% below the surface is so infused with faith and that metaphor does fit for him. And when he talks about how he does his work and brings some of his gifts into his work, he said it starts with being receptive, being in listening mode. He said that's the only way to access the interior of the other person, to really take the space and the time to try to understand what's important to them. And of course, as he said, try to refrain from judgment and look for common ground wherever you can find it. So he talks about, for him, opening and closing the day, framing the day, and the absolute importance and critical importance of avoiding the trap of lack of awareness, which he discusses.
And finally, interestingly, he closes our conversation by discussing a new futuristic novel about positive changes in the world related to climate change, about people who can come together to change the world for the good. And he said he likes to think that he's one of those people that's contributing to make the world a better place. So there's a book recommendation near the end. Of our conversation. It's a fascinating, personal, practical conversation. I really appreciate the way Jean-Christophe simply and easily discusses the different dimensions of his life and how they flow together and his personal journey. So enjoy the podcast.
Welcome back to the Spirituality and Leadership podcast. I'm Andrew Cohn. With me today, I'm so happy to have my friend Jean-Christophe Normand with us, in from Paris, although If anyone's watching the video, it looks like you're in an art museum somewhere. With that background, Jean-Christophe is a coach colleague of mine from the Companions for Leadership, formerly Oxford Leadership Academy, and he is based in France. We've had a chance to participate in several meetings together, and I've always respected his approach and his background and his wisdom, and that's what we'd like to talk about. So welcome to the podcast.
Jean-Christophe Normand: Thanks, Andrew.
Andrew Cohn: Your background is quite different than many other coaches in that you have been really formally trained in, could I say, traditional Catholic? How would you describe your education and maybe how it's a little different and alternative and wonderful?
Jean-Christophe Normand: Well, first of all, I'm a European and I'm French.
Andrew Cohn: Okay.Thank you.
Jean-Christophe Normand: That blends in some kind of specific characters, you know, that, or you may not know, but the French have a specific relationship to religion, which is sometimes a little bit paranoid or antagonistic in the sense that we have something that we call laicism. In France, which implies that we have a clear-cut separation between religion and social or any form of political activities. And that's something that I was brought up in, even though I spent half of, or most of my younger years abroad. So I wasn't specifically brought up in that, but I am culturally, emotionally 100% French. Therefore, the culture that I have is a culture which traditionally in France has been very much, I would say, engrossed in Catholicism. And I was baptized when I was a couple of weeks, and I followed what you would call catechism when I was a youngster. But if you had met me when I was like 20 years old, I would say that I was culturally speaking a Catholic, but I was by no way really somebody deeply religious. I was more intent at that age of fooling around and not really paying much attention to religious aspects. I think it came on the late, as regards myself, first of all, there was my marriage, which was a religious marriage, and that got me a little bit more in the saddle. And then progressively things sort of set themselves up in place because I think I was basically touched by my, a certain number of contexts or situations or events or people that I met that sort of spread into me, a deep religious feeling and the need to invest myself in that field.
Maybe if I go back a step in terms of, you said that I was a coach and I am, I've been doing this business for 15 years, but the beginning of my career, I was a financial controller in metallurgy in a large corporation in Kind of a twist happened when I think I ran around 40 years old. We'd gone, my wife and I, through a series of difficult situations. We weren't able to have children on our own, so we went into an adoption process. We adopted children from abroad. We went through 3 difficult adoption processes. We lost one of the 3 children that we adopted. And so I think that was a starting point for a deeper reflection in terms of, you know, where could I find sense or purpose in my life. We had invested ourselves in the local church, but we were still, I think, trying to seek our ways. And when I turned around 40, something snapped into me, that the urge to walk away from the existing job that I had, which was not providing me, I think, really what I needed. I wasn't quite sure how it was going to work out, but one thing that happened is that I engaged in a one-to-one coaching with somebody who immediately I had very good feelings for. And that got me into a kind of a deeper reflexive mode where I decided that if I was going to walk away from the job that I was been doing for the last, for the previous 20 years, I needed to engage myself in a kind of reflexive mode and I needed to look outside. And so basically I started disengaging myself from my company. I did that over a 3-year period. And I started looking a little bit what theology, you know, was all about.
So I went basically to a Catholic university and started to follow some classes and try to understand a little bit what we meant, what were the words or however we could describe what is a religious feeling, especially a Catholic religious feeling, you know, in the 21st century. 2 years after engaging in that, I had another personal shock. My parents had a very serious car accident and my mother was left in a state of tetraplegy. So, um, she was deeply in hospital. That led me to think that somehow I had to get some sense in this world because there was a lot of suffering linked to that. There was anger also linked to my father who was a driver and who had been in a certain way reckless. And so I had to come to terms with that. And I did that by engaging on I like to say the story because it's really an experiential chapter of my life. I decided to walk away at that time from my company, start a business in coaching, but I had to cut off from 20 years of being a very handsomely well-paid financial corporate executive. And I did that by engaging on a walk. I walked from Paris to a town 700 kilometers away, probably 500 miles away from Paris. I did that with a donkey. Why a donkey? Because at the time I had back problems and I couldn't carry stuff. But there was also another reason for that is donkeys are very biblical animals. When you open the Bible, you see there are donkeys all over the place and they have a character of their own. And I'd done a lot of family walks with donkeys over the last 3, 4 years. And I told myself this would be a great way to sort of walk away from the job that I had and try to engage in an experience that was both profoundly human and spiritual in the sense that I'm the kind of guy, you know, who whenever he engages himself in a project will label out very clearly what he wants to do. He makes reservations, he has nailed down precisely how he's going to do it. And this was a situation where I was walking off from Paris, not knowing, I knew roughly the paths I was going to follow, but I had no idea where I would stay in the evenings. I had just laid out 4 or 5 monasteries on the way where I knew that I could stop over for one day and rest, and that was it. And before leaving, Andrew, I was absolutely terrified at the idea of walking away with this donkey that I hardly knew. And the moment I left Paris, a kind of a deep sense of calm settled in myself, and I knew immediately that I had done the right thing. And what I experienced with that donkey was a combination sometimes of a lot of frustration, sometimes anger because she wasn't walking the way I wanted her to do. And she, you we all know that the donkeys are great animals, but they can be very, very stubborn. And also at the same time, some profoundly human experiences. The people I met on the way, some incredible people. This walk, this trek to a certain extent went on for a month and it was very, very inspirational. It was the thing that I needed to walk away from my previous job and to settle into a new context. It was difficult afterwards. It took me a couple of years to turn around, but it's still really the pattern to get me moving forward in a very, very different frame of mind.
Now, coming back to your original question of, so who should I consider I am now? I'm close to 60 years old, so this was 20 years away. I like to say today that I have a life with 3 distinctive areas. As you said, I'm a coach and a consultant. I facilitate programs. Within CFL. I'm also now a professor in a Catholic university teaching to a wide audience that can be either Catholic priests or also people who are employed as laypeople for the church, running programs for educational programs for the church. There's a third area is I'm also a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. I was ordained. So, in that sense, I have a specific mission as a deacon, which is to assist a local Christian community to baptize, to marry, to preach at church. So I like this idea of having a life which is invested in what one could think really distinct areas, but actually they're not so distinct. When I'm operating as a deacon, there's a part of me which is a coach. When I'm acting as a professor at a university, there's also a part of me that is a deacon. And so the interesting thing is how all these three areas sort of intertwine or are linked with one another, and they've basically brought out in me a character which I find to some extent surprising, but that have enabled me, I would say, to embed in either of these practices a little bit of these cultural backgrounds that I have.
So if I consider, for instance, the coaching and consulting business that I do, how do I operate? Because I don't see myself as fundamentally different from the other colleagues that I have at CFL with maybe one slight difference. I notice it very often in discussions that we have that I have a very deep feeling linked to hope. In the world that, you know, that we live in right now, there's a lot of darkness to be, if we really want to be very blunt, there is a lot of darkness. I believe that because of my faith, this underlying hope, it's hope in human beings, it's hope in events, it's hope that globally, even though there are dark times around us, there is still light at the end of the day. Hope means that there is a dawn, after the darkness. And so whatever I do, however difficult it can be, I always have this inner feeling that at the end of the day, right will overcome evil in a certain sense. And I know that that's a gift. It's a gift because it's not something that's called for. It's not something that you order like you order a lunch or that you order whatever. It's something which is, yeah, it's a gift and hence the gratitude that I express whatever I do for the life that's been given to me, but the gratitude that I have this gift and which enables me to walk through sometimes difficult paths. And I get feedback from people who say, you know, the surprising thing we see about you is how you're able to stay calm in sometimes difficult context or when there's a lot of urgency. We notice that it doesn't mean that internally, you know, I'm not boiling also, but I can reflect a kind of peace, I would say, and I'm sure that it comes from that. Comes also, I think, from the fact that as a deacon, I follow ritual of prayers, providing within my day these sequences where I try to connect myself with something that is above me. We can call it meditation, we can call it personal prayer. It's something which I think also contributes to root me deeply into, in terms of what I do or what I say. And then one of the very, very important things that I've learned, and I think this is not just the fact that I've been brought up as a Catholic, it's also due to the fact that very young, I was able to travel. I was fortunate enough to learn English when I was young, hence the fact that I speak quite fluently. And so I have a kind of feel for diversity. It's more than a feeling, it's a profound respect for each individual as he stands. And I try to offset any form of judgment on anybody that I meet because judging is categorizing and it implies immediately putting a sort of boundary between me and the other person. There's a philosopher, French philosopher that I like very much, which is called Emmanuel Levinas. He's a 20th century philosopher and he was Jewish from origin. A lot of his work was on alterity, on the difference that you can see in others. And he would say that anybody that I meet is like, you know, walking on sacred territory. It's something, you know, that I have to respect because there is a sacred part, you know, in any one person that I meet that I will never be able to grab totally but that I'm asked to respect. To some point, Andrew, that is the kind of philosophy that I try to follow whenever I'm with a client or whenever I'm with somebody, a student. I always try to think, you know, who is this person in front of me and how can I honor this person regardless, you know, what he's requesting or what his story is? How can I be, you know, the person to adjust myself at the right level in the conversation that we need to have? So that I do my part as best as I can. And that's the kind of pathway that I try.
We talk a lot about wisdom. It's a difficult word I find to define. I would say that the wisdom that I try to apply is in this profound respect for the individual that I meet and the intensity of the relationship that we can build together. And I believe that as a Christian, as a Catholic Christian, I'm given some kind of inner energy that enables me to do that. I would be unable to do that just by myself if I had not benefited originally from these kinds of inner gifts. And today I have no idea as to why I've had the benefit of that. The grace of the faith doesn't have any form of explanation. I meet every day very, very bright people and some who have outstanding attitudes and behaviors to others, but who do not have the faith. And so there's a kind of a mystery there, which we're all confronted to. Why does one believe and then another one? We don't know. We only know one thing is that each and every one of us have to follow a path to sort of elevate ourselves in what we do and bring some form of good to this world.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you. And what I hear you saying is that your faith has if we were going to invoke the ubiquitous iceberg metaphor, if you will, your faith is that below the surface, deeper depths, and that equips you to operate above the surface the way you do with the optimism, with the energy or hope, excuse me, is what you said. I hear optimism. Yeah. Hope. And with the energy that you bring. And so, and so I just, just your reflection is that it's that type of integration is so I experienced it is so grounded and beautiful and practical. It's very practical. You're not in a cave in saffron robes. Oh, the saffron robes would be a different tradition, forgive me. But anyway, you're not off in a cave, but in the world supporting, assisting, helping to heal and balance and bring some light to this world where there is darkness.
Jean-Christophe Normand: Especially to the one-to-one relationship, you know, it's really believing that no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the story is, the person in front of me has a part of, there's some form of hope for him in his story, not mine, but in his. And sometimes in coaching, and you know that just as well as I do, we meet some pretty damaged people or we hear stories that are quite sad. Sometimes also I've witnessed in corporations or in companies, attitudes of reject and sometimes violence made to other people. Whatever the circumstances, I always try to show some kind of light on the situation and always bring each individual to believe that the future can be better for him. And that even if you're at the last stage of your life, that's something I often have in my predications. I say to people, even at the last moment, you never know. There's still an opportunity, you know, to sort of breathe in this light of love that we are, I believe, made for. And that up until your very last breath, there is hope for redemption. And that is something that drives me in everything I try to do.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, it reminds me a bit of a person very important in the founding of this country over here across the pond, a fellow named Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin, who was born in Boston but is known for his life in Philadelphia, when he was on his deathbed and a friend of his said, Benjamin, are you afraid of death? Are you afraid of what's going to happen to you when you die? And he said in his very practical, I think very spiritually founded belief system, he said, God has always taken very good care of me. Why would I expect that to change now? So there's always that if we look at it in a certain way, and I agree with you that to have that system of beliefs is a gift, is a gift. And I'm curious to know, particularly because your faith is so strong for you, it looks like I have a little visitor here. How do you navigate through a world that might be labeled secular, for lack of a better term, where your faith is so important to you and you bring it forward, you bring forward your faith. I don't think you proselytize, you don't evangelize, or I haven't experienced you that way. That doesn't seem important, but you do bring it forward. How do you bring it forward, recognizing that other people may come from very different traditions or maybe very anti-tradition? You know, it's very trendy to not be at all interested in religion, although I think traditional religions are making a comeback, I think with good reason. But how do you navigate in the world that way sensitive to and respecting the differences that people have in that regard?
Jean-Christophe Normand: First of all, I try to adapt as much as possible to the individuals or to the groups that I meet. And adapting means starting by putting myself in the listening mode more than a proactive, or I would say receptive versus proactive, because that's the only way that I can find, yeah, the pattern or the, in other words, it's the only way to access the interior of this person and to try to establish a relationship. You know just as well as I can that I can say hello to somebody and listen politely, and from a relationship point of view, we realize nothing is happening. Well, I like, and I must confess that sometimes, you know, it's more difficult than others because we all have our fears. For instance, I have a strong issue with people who have a drinking problem because my son had a drinking problem and that's left a lot of wounds personally. But I try as much as possible to be on the adaptive mode, so to enter into this person's frame of mind and to establish a relationship. And how do I do that? I will do that by seeking or trying to understand what is important to that person in the present context. And I will try to avoid making, forming any form of judgment, you know, on what he thinks, whether it's right or bad, but I will try to see if we can find a kind of common ground, you know, where we If I take the metaphor of a fire, you know, maybe just being able, finding the place where we can both sit down side by side and share something of our core humanity and our core. What is our core humanity? It's the human condition. It's the fact that we both have our limitations. We both have weaknesses and strengths. We both have a frame of mind with souvenirs, with stories, and I think that if I succeed in establishing a form of relationship, then I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. In other words, adapting to the person and trying to establish some form of communication or wavelength where I'm not gonna say we understand one another, but we are able, okay, to walk side by side for a little bit of time.
Andrew Cohn: And beautiful. And when I hear you describe that, it sounds to me that that relationship formation and what you need to do in order to foster that and facilitate that, that relationship formation is so fundamental in any functioning, healthy working relationship, particularly perhaps in a coaching relationship. Would that be fair?
Jean-Christophe Normand: Yeah, definitely. And it has to do with the body language, with behaviors, with above all suspending judgment because we are very, very powerful at, you know, putting, categorizing things and people. And the moment we do that, there's generally a momentum symptom of fear or of not necessarily positive emotions that rise up. And so that's something that I've been trying to work upon and to set up whatever the circumstances. It's funny, Andrew, but I find it the lower the person from a social point of view, the easier it is for me to do that. It's much easier for me to settle, to reach these level of relationships with someone who's doing a very, very basic job, very, very simple, like a house cleaner or stuff like that, than with somebody who would be very, very socially high up with a lot of responsibilities and things like that. Why is that? Well, because simply I find that the lower you go, and I'm not putting any form of judgment on that, but the lower you go, the less barriers there seem to have, because we have less frames of mind. We're not framing as much. And I've had really, really intense joy in meeting people in really strange situations, people who are very, very culturally different from me, but who've brought me a lot of joy because I found that we could connect with one another very quickly.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, I hear what you're saying about the lower, however we might describe the word lower isn't the best word, but I understand what you mean. But perhaps I think like as people go higher into more positions of more responsibility and et cetera, I think maybe there's more to protect. So perhaps there's less openness. That's why sometimes I think the more complicated and sophisticated, quote unquote, ones, you know, my life might get, the more I have to work to stay open. Exactly. So tell me about this podcast is about spirituality and leadership. Tell me about leadership from your point of view and the impact of well, your faith or how you've seen it work with other leaders to make that connection, however you might connect it, which I'm sure it is. I'd love to hear how.
Jean-Christophe Normand: Well, for me, leadership is very much related to individual responsibility. If I want to lead my life, it means that I've reflected to a certain extent on what was important for myself, not just in terms of values, but in the usual aspect, vision, purpose, meaning, and I know where I'm going. But this feel of responsibility, you can apply that to the spiritual area. When I was younger, I had this sort of image that anything in the religious area was just overly complicated and that it was complex to understand, even more complex to live. I could see the distortion there were between what I could read in the Bible and the attitudes of a lot of Catholics around myself. So I wasn't very much impressed. Applying a form of leadership in spirituality is a very demanding topic because nobody's perfect, and I will certainly not say that I'm on that line. But there is a sense of responsibility. As a deacon, I've committed myself to following and respecting what the Roman Catholic Church says. And to be honest, sometimes, you know, I'm confronted with difficult situations which requires from me a specific form of leadership in the way that I'm able to respond or the way that I'm able to handle some conversations that will challenge the way that the church is being run. And then there's the individual aspect, and that's probably the most important. It's just making sure that there's an adequate alignment between what I profess or what I want, what I say, and what effectively I do. It's as simple as, you know, simply not cheating with yourself or not cheating with others, if I can put it in very simple terms. It means trying as much as possible to apply to yourself what you're preaching to others or what you're saying. And we know that all the time we're giving out advices or we're giving out how we should do this or how we should do that. And I think from a spiritual point of view, what I try to do, how I try to do that is by being as careful as possible in the way that I align my personal and professional life to what I profess. And I can only, I believe, do that by having an inner life where each morning when I wake up, I sort of offer once again the day to God because that's home to God and to his son Jesus. And I offer my day by saying precisely, I have rituals and specific prayer rituals, but these prayers are kind of an offering where I'm putting at stake once again, and I'm doing that every day, the capacity to honor this level of alignment between what I profess and what I do. Because you never know what the day is gonna come up with. And there are weaknesses, there are moments when you fail to do that. But by doing that each day, it's like signing like a blank check every morning.
Andrew Cohn: It's recommitting every day. It's stepping forward every day in a very deliberate conscious way. It's not automatic. You're doing this every day, very consciously. Every day. That's what I hear.
Jean-Christophe Normand: Every day. And at the end of the day, I try to also close the day by expressing a word of thanks for the good things, but also for the unpleasant things, whereby I will try to see behind the unpleasant things how effectively I've moved or I've been working effectively upon my growth situation, being in the areas, you know, where like any other individual, you know, I need to pay attention because those are, generally speaking, are very often weak points that we have. So there's this opening of the day and the closing, and it's like, you know, the breathing, you open and you close. It sort of frames the day. And I personally, I find it's absolutely essential for me to follow that pattern to avoid this kind of the trap that we can easily fall into, which is a kind of a lack of awareness of what's going on. And in today's world, it's so easy to fall over, to be engrossed in things that are kind of forms of alienation of our true self. And it's this question of how are we monitoring both the life and the self? Is the life overtaking us and leading us, or are we paying enough consciousness to ourself so that effectively we are receiving life, but we are effectively working with life to draw the lines and build something that's consequential over the time. And we know that as we grow older, you know, that becomes often an issue because we don't have the energy that we, that we had in the past, but we have something else that feeds us. And at 60, I can see the difference compared to when I was 40, but doesn't mean I'm not happier for the, says a lot.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. No, beautiful. And, you know, yes. And as we age, our priorities change somewhat, but what am I craving today? Or what would be a rich experience today? Or what's rewarding for me today? Yes. And I appreciate that. And that, and that notion of the, our, the life out there. I hear you talk about that again, sort of like that outer life and inner life and the challenge to go out in the world and do what we do while staying at home. Is the way I think about it. And this world, as a teacher of mine liked to say, the world is designed to make us forget. So hence the need for the type of practices you're talking about, which are lovely. And I'm curious to know whether they are religious oriented or not. Do you coach people to undertake these daily reflections to start the day a certain way and end the day a certain way? Is that something that your clients do, whether it's a religious practice or not? It could still be?
Jean-Christophe Normand: Oh, because I don't have, really requests for that, for that specific, I mean, as a professional coach, I stick to, the goals that are, that I'm, that I'm given to, like most coaches, you know, I, I'm, I'm careful about, the balance between, um, in terms of, holistic, from a holistic point of view. So of course, I sometimes will dive into things like, do you get enough sleep? You know, what's your eating habits and stuff like that., and we may go over subjects of purpose, of meaning, but I do not go into the spiritual dimension because it's not the area. I don't have to be explicit. I can be implicit about it. People who often ask me as a coach, they know that I have my activities as a deacon on the side, but I don't think they're asking to talk to a deacon. They're asking to talk to a coach., but a coach who's working with a kind of a frame of mind that they're interested in. They know that they will get from me potentially, yeah, I'm speaking for them, but what I believe that they're probably seeking behind them, a kind of kindness, benevolence, maybe some form of full respect for the human nature there or for whatever materials that they bring forward. But I've never had really any requests for that, and I've not specialized in that. On the other hand, if you were to see me in my Catholic university, that's a totally different ballgame because I'm in the context where I have people who are expecting from me some words of wisdom along those lines. So I'm in a different context and I move very easily from one another. Maybe the only thing that really brings, that I bring into coaching are possibly a bracelet that I will have on my wrist showing that I'm with a small cross or sometimes this cross that I'm of a deacon, this symbol of the deacon that I carry on my heart. That'll be the most of it. And I think that's enough as it is. It brings what is needed. In the space that I've created. No more, no less.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. Yeah. And just, you were talking about some of the qualities that you bring and why people would come to see you, benevolence and otherwise. And one of them to me that's just jumping out is acceptance, is acceptance of where people are, acceptance of others' journeys, respect for others' paths. Really, really appreciate that. And I appreciate your sharing about your story. We have two donkeys here at our ranch in Santa Fe that because of their stripes are called Jerusalem donkeys, and please come to see them when you can. I love that. And I really look forward to continuing this conversation. Two things I would like to ask. First is, if people want to learn more about you or your work, where do they go? Where could they look?
Jean-Christophe Normand:Well, there's my LinkedIn profile, of course. There's, we have, a website, which is both in French and English, so people can see a little bit what kind of activities we run into. There's nothing really, you know, new or innovative. We were in the process of thinking to run a new program because my wife has just finished a naturopathic training program. And because we did for something like 15 years, we ran fasting seminars. We are thinking of starting up a new program which would bring in natural healing as a process, not just from the food or exercise, but also from a spiritual point of view. And that's still work in progress, but it's something, it's one of the projects that we have in the future. But by all means, LinkedIn and my website are open to grabs.
Andrew Cohn: And what is that website?
Jean-Christophe Normand: It's www.rhinc.fr for France. In French, it means human relationship in collective energy, or in, I had a difficulty in finding the appropriate name, and so I said to myself, it has to be words that relate to, first of all, human relationships, because that's what it is about. And the other thing also was collective intelligence. That's the word I was thinking I was looking for. Collective intelligence was also the second factor because I believe there is a wealth of collective intelligence surrounding us. And the difficulty most of the time is we're unaware of it or we do not see it. And my purpose is to try to bring that out, that collective intelligence, to show that it is available. And that it's available for good, okay? For good in the sense of bringing out the best of ourselves. That's what I'm intent on doing.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, beautiful. Anything else you might want to add? I don't know if I cut off any response or if there's something else you might want to share about what you've been.
Jean-Christophe Normand: Well, first of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity of sharing a little bit the view that I have on on spirituality and leadership. I think it's clearly a very, very important factor in the context that we are of global warming. I'm convinced that we're all engaged in writing new narratives. I recently read a very, very interesting novel by an American writer called Kim Robinson called The Ministry of the Future. It's the first example I see. He's based in California and it's the first example I see of, he's a science fiction writer, of somebody writing a story, a narrative, okay, which is a positive narrative of where we're going. You know, most of the time science fiction writers, they write literally horror stories, you know, of a world going to pieces and stuff like that. And I really encourage everybody who's listening to read that novel because it's the first time I think we have a real positive narrative, you know, of where we are going in this global warming climate issue. And the fact that we have collectively the resources to potentially overcome this. And it's not just about technology. When you read his novel, you find out that it's also bringing together dedicated people who believe that they can effectively change the world. And I like to see myself as being one of those, of course, not on a global stage, but in a way, in the interactions that I have and the people that I meet, I like to think that I'm actually, and I'm in a mysterious but real way contributing to make this world a better place and coping with all the other human beings on this world to cross this threshold, that's global climate.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for the recommendation.
Jean-Christophe Normand: Good.
Andrew Cohn: I so much appreciate your time and look forward to continuing the conversation. Merci bien.
Jean-Christophe Normand: Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you for listening to Spirituality in Leadership. If you want to access this wealth of knowledge and insight on a regular basis, please subscribe to the show. Join the network of leaders who want to do and be better. You can go to the site spiritualityinleadership.com or your preferred podcast platform to catch all the episodes and learn more. Until next time, take good care of yourself.