How to Flourish and Be More Productive By Leading From a Place of Wholeness with Mieke Jacobs

Ashish Kothari:

Hi, Mieke. It's so lovely to be here with you to record and share your beautiful poem from your latest book—and frankly, your rich body of work in the field of leadership and flourishing—with our listeners. So thank you for being here.

Mieke Jacobs:

Yeah, it's such a pleasure, and I can't wait to weave our fields of work together. That leads to unexpected exploration, so thank you for having me.

Ashish Kothari:

Absolutely. Art is such a beautiful vehicle as a way to awaken the soul, whether it's painting, poetry, or dance. You shared some of your poems from your new book, The Poet Assassin, and I can't wait for our listeners to experience that magic.

But before we go there, I just wanted to ask: what does the title Poet Assassin mean to you? Share with us the juxtaposition behind it, and the polarities you've navigated your whole life and now brought into your work.

Mieke Jacobs:

I think you caught that very well. Many people read something different into the title, and the interesting thing with poetry is that you don’t necessarily think upfront about what it’s going to be about.

I also described that in the prologue of the book—how poetry comes to me and comes through me. I can only talk about the title in hindsight, knowing that at that point in time, it was what had to be expressed.

A few things come to mind. First of all, yes—the juxtaposition, you captured that well. It comes back in the book two times, once in the poem Marauder. In that poem, I infuse more disruptive, aggressive archetypes like marauder, burglar, assassin with very healing qualities. I was exploring what that combination would be like.

Somehow, it feels like some healing qualities need these more intrusive archetypes to get things done and bring movement into the world. That’s exactly what I’m exploring in that poem.

But it means so much more. The photo on the cover of my book is quite determined and powerful, and I wanted to show up that way. It has to do with finding those polarities within myself. Am I allowed to do that? Am I allowed to show up with a strong voice? Am I allowed to speak up for what I stand for? That inner exploration is also part of the title.

Then there’s one haiku—I don’t remember whether I wrote the haiku first or the poem first; sometimes that gets blurry. But the haiku talks about the power of words and also the power of silence. It says:

“Poet assassin—she can kill you with words or silence you to death.”

There’s an aspect of playing with words, but also sometimes withholding them, and the impact that has. So, yes, there are many dimensions.

Ashish Kothari:

 Can you repeat that a bit slowly? I'm gonna write it, it's so beautiful.

Mieke Jacobs:

Yes. It says:

“Poet assassin—she can kill you with words or silence you to death.”

Ashish Kothari:

So beautiful. And it's so interesting—these polarities, these seemingly opposite qualities, ways of being, actors, characters.

I was on a walk yesterday—I'll tag you in the LinkedIn post I’m writing about, Mieke. I was walking through the woods, just 30 minutes from where we live, with Lizzie. And two polarities were so present, as they always are in nature: life and death.

In any forest, there are trees that are dying or are dead, and they’re feeding the life that’s emerging. They become food for others to grow.

I was keenly aware of this, especially since earlier that morning I had been reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s work. He talks about the nature of interbeing, how each has the other.

He tells a beautiful story—almost biblical—where God says, “Let there be light,” and the light says, “I can’t go without my twin brother, darkness.” And God says, “Darkness is already there. You need to go join it.” The light responds, “Well, if darkness is already there, then I’m already there too. Because how can I exist without the other? How can that exist without me?”

So as I reflect on what you’re saying, there’s so much of one in the other. Where one exists, the other does too—it’s just the other end of the same thing. But our ego labels them as opposites. We hold them apart and value one over the other. I’m curious how that lands with you, and your reflections on these polarities we hold—versus this third way, the middle way, that often leads to better answers.

Mieke Jacobs:

Yes, the non-dual way. A few things. When we started preparing for this, I was so intrigued by your whole body of work around happiness, wellbeing, and flourishing. My book, if you don’t fully get it, has a lot of heaviness in it. There’s quite a lot of death, actually.

For me, it’s just that cycle as you’re describing—the cycle of life. I explore that even through time. One of my poems is called Thanatos—I use a lot of Latin and Greek influences because I studied them. It starts with the line:

“How do you want to die? He asked—a question not to answer lightly.”

There’s also a poem about the Japanese forest where many people commit suicide. I almost converse with those who choose to go there. Another poem asks, What will I do when the dark descends and my living under disguise completes? And then how it starts again.

That cycle of life—whatever your belief system—is very present. That polarity, and one movement flowing into the next, is very present in the book. For me, that is happiness. That is being in the fullness of the experience, not just on the upper side of it. So yes, what you’re saying speaks a lot to me. It’s very present in my quest.

Ashish Kothari:

And it shows up everywhere.

My journey into this field, as you know, Mieke—I spent 20 years doing large-scale transformations, operations, pricing, etc.—but then I started diving into this field. I became a student again, in a really big way—across spirituality, psychology, and neuroscience.

I read a book a week. I’ve done that for almost 10 years. I’m on my 695th book now.

Mieke Jacobs:

Still counting?

Ashish Kothari:

I count them. I keep them right here in front of me. I keep adding to it. Everyone has added something. They’re from all these different fields. Now it’s just become a game of: when do I get to 1,000? Who are the 1,000? What are the 1,000?

I love the notion of another polarity that we hold as separate: form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.

Mieke Jacobs:

 Mm-hmm.

Ashish Kothari:

It’s a core Buddhist belief, but it’s also a core concept in quantum mechanics. When you really look into any atom, 99% of it is empty space. Inside that is the nucleus. At the subatomic level, the same reality shows up. So these forms we hold—this body is me, that’s you—but we know, from quantum particles and rays, everything is a particle and a wave.

And the act of noticing makes it one versus the other. That’s what I loved about your book. Poetry has always unlocked something deeply within me. Every time I read something, whether it’s The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran or Rumi, by some of my favorite poets, something opens.

Talk to me about a moment, Mieke, as you do some of the work you do around leadership development strategy with teams. Talk to me about a moment when poetry unlocked something in a team you were working with—something that strategy never could have.

Mieke Jacobs:

What an amazing question. And actually, it stimulates me to do that even more because it was quite a journey for me to understand that the poet in me is not different from the team facilitator. It's not different from the coach. It's not different from the mother. It's actually very integrated.

First of all, I'm very fascinated by what you just said about form and emptiness. Because in essence, for me, poetry and strategy reside in the same field—namely, visionary strategy. Not necessarily the tactical plan, but visionary strategy about where a company—or by extension, an industry—needs to go in the future.

A lot of the industries I work with need to do some deep soul-searching. And to find that path forward, they almost need to tap into the same field where poetry resides. For me, that’s a field of inspiration. It’s a field of emergence. A field of creation.

That’s why it’s so beautiful when something from that field—where all possibilities still exist—is pulled into form. Opening up a leadership team to that field, and offering them a bridge to reach it, is essential. It helps them step out of their thinking minds and become present to an emergent future. As Otto Scharmer would say, it’s the same gateway.

And it’s interesting that you mentioned Kahlil Gibran. I’m going to refer to one of his poems—not one of mine. Last week, this actually happened. One of the things I’m very aware of is how leaders are one element in a lineage. I often work with leaders to take their place in that lineage of leaders, so they understand it’s not about them. It’s not about putting your stamp on the organization.

It’s not an ego thing. It’s about taking over the baton from often long-standing institutions that will, hopefully, live on well beyond your time—if they’re in alignment. And I used a poem from Gibran to illustrate this. It’s my favorite poem—On Children. Someone asks him to talk about children, and he begins with, “Your children are not your children.” I’m not quoting it exactly, but he says, “They are the manifestation of life’s longing for itself. They come through you, but they are not from you.”

For me, that poem speaks about the future. At one point, we hand it over again. We can’t influence what comes after. He speaks to that so beautifully—you do not reside there. Your children are the future.

He compares the parent to the bow and the children to the arrow—and God as the archer. I used that metaphor to illustrate how life flows forward, and how, in essence, we each have our role in this moment, with full responsibility. But ultimately, it’s about life moving forward.

Again, it’s a different paradigm. Parenting, yes—but it resonated because it’s also about taking your place in the lineage and doing the right thing for future generations to come. That’s the example I wanted to share.

At the same time, I very often use the healing arts or poetry to build that bridge to the field of creation—where all possibilities are still available. And leaders do have the power to bring those possibilities into form. That’s why I think it’s essential to work with leaders in these industries.

Sometimes I wonder: should I work in this industry or not? Because many industries have massive, existential questions to answer. But they’re also the ones that carry the solution. They have the impact, the investment, the technology, and the capacity to call in the solution. So yes.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah. I have an offsite I’m facilitating later today with three founders of a startup. And I’m going to start with a poem—one from John O’Donohue, one of my favorite poets.

Friends, if you're listening to this, my invitation to you is this: so often our workplaces are all about doing, action, fear, and execution. And the soul—our own soul or that of the team—doesn’t get any space.

You don’t have to be creative. I actually believe everyone is creative, but you don’t have to feel creative. Just try this: every week, when you open a meeting, a strategy session, or a problem-solving discussion, try beginning with a poem.

If you don’t want to spend time finding one yourself, go to ChatGPT and say: “I’m facilitating this type of session—try finding a poem or four lines that will open the heart and create a beautiful environment for the conversation.” You’ll find something.

Read it. Then go around and ask people what it brings up. Let it open the heart before the mind. Notice how different the session feels—how the energy shifts. It will feel different from others you’ve led.

Mieke Jacobs:

Yes. I was with a bank last week—two engagements, one in London and one in France. I asked everyone to bring a song. The CFO shared a very moving story and said, “I’ve now started my team meetings with a song.”

Music is its own language. I was so moved by that. He said he starts the song three minutes before the call starts. People now come three minutes early because they want to be there for the song. They really connect over it.

I thought that was so beautiful. Any language that brings us into that different reality—that brings us there—is beautiful.

Ashish Kothari:

A more generative, more creative space—rather than the reactive space we live in most of the time. And then we wonder why we’re creating outcomes that put our planet, our children, and each other at risk. We’re constantly running on stress because we’re operating not from generative fields, but from reactive ones.

We’ve cut ourselves off from nature. We’ve cut ourselves off from life and live inside these boxes of dead buildings, amplifying human suffering instead of creating flourishing spaces. Spaces where each of us can tap into the aliveness within and create generative outcomes.

Mieke, your work is so much about wholeness. Poet Assassin is about the wholeness of two different aspects in union. All the work you do on energy systems—it's always been about wholeness. You have this unique ability to see whole systems, rather than the compartmentalized pieces so many focus on.

Talk to me about why you've always believed—and were one of the early leaders to advocate—that wholeness, not productivity, is the real path to leadership.

Mieke Jacobs:

Let me first talk about being one of the early ones in this space. Sometimes, transformation is ignited from suffering. And sometimes, it's ignited from already feeling a calling from the future.

I would say that my real, relentless quest to understand what life is about started more from suffering. I don’t want to over-dramatize that, but I had an unease with life for a long time—an unease with things that were happening. For a long time, trying to understand and find meaning was a way to cope with that.

I'm very grateful for that now. It’s made me a lifelong wisdom seeker—and I will be for all the rest of my days, which is also a sentence from one of my poems. But now, it's less of a coping mechanism. It's more about hearing the whispers. I can’t imagine a life without seeking wisdom, without integration, without processing, and seeking wholeness.

When we talked about this earlier, I started to realize that for me, the path of leadership is not separate from the path of life. I do a lot of team facilitation, and I also do individual coaching. In both, it feels like they're not separate. Leadership is life.

One of the chapters in my book is called Odyssey, with strong mythological influences from my early years. It's always about the journey. Ithaca is very far away—Odysseus only reaches it late. The journey is full of challenges, allies, nuggets of wisdom, strange creatures, and gods who interfere.

I love the gods. I’m fascinated by their interference. So all my coaching journeys are journeys. My team facilitation work is a journey. We work with what’s happening in the moment—what is disruptive, what is disturbing, or what is exciting. We work with that material, just as we do in life.

Whether it's traumatic stories or beautiful highlights, whether it’s teachers and wisdom that resonate, the goal is to apply it and build a bridge to organizational systems. That’s how I see it—it’s all connected.

In light of that, productivity—while sometimes useful—is relatively small. I work with the whole leader. That includes their personal stories. That includes the systemic dynamics in the organization. And how, magically, both attract each other.

Sometimes you attract exactly the right challenge or even the right challenging boss—for you to grow and see things differently. For me, it's not even a question.

That said, I can be very productive. But it’s a combination: productivity from a place of being. I spend a lot of time—not doing anything—but taking in the system, letting the system move through me, sitting with contradictions, sitting with fragmentation. I dream about it. And then, suddenly, I become very productive. I might have a plan ready in thirty minutes.

My colleagues know this about me. They trust the process. I often give enough productivity upfront so nobody panics, but the productivity itself comes from attuning—not from forcing or pushing myself through and getting a lot of work done.

That’s how I’ve learned to work with productivity. I see more and more that when leaders can let solutions or help come to them—rather than pushing through—it’s magical. That’s also energy mastery, which we’ve talked about.

One of the things I do is I use a lot of energetic skills because they increase productivity so much. It’s not about pushing your will through.

My energy teacher referred me to a beautiful book I haven’t read yet, but maybe you’d like to: Hiring the Heavens. It talks about calling in solutions, help, and movement in stuck situations—not just pushing through with will and strength and effort alone.

That’s the interplay between wholeness and productivity for me.

Ashish Kothari:

I love that about your work. I lived in a different world, Mieke, as you know. I was at McKinsey for 17 years, and in consulting for 25—constantly in motion. Every waking moment was filled—with work, dinners, celebrations, or something else, but you’re constantly "on.”

That’s the reality for so many leaders. Even if you're not working in a corporate setting, you're working on home responsibilities or other things.

Even in this world, we’ve eliminated space—for silence, for stillness, for listening. I love the title Hiring the Heavens. Listening to the heavens. Listening to the universe. Listening to the whispers.

About seven years ago, I shifted. Even within McKinsey, I went part-time. I went down to 70%, giving myself two and a half to three days a week of emptiness—reading, sitting under a tree, sensing what needed to emerge.

That’s how I wrote Hardwired for Happiness. To this day, I maintain that practice. Even on the busiest of days, I need space to step back, to sense, to just be. Because sometimes, when we do that, we realize we’re doing things we shouldn’t be doing at all. The wisdom isn’t about changing how we do them. It’s about stopping altogether.

That kind of wisdom doesn’t exist in the blind rush for productivity. Productivity today is measured in keystrokes, number of calls, emails, memos, PowerPoint slides.

I just gave a TEDx talk two weeks ago, and I said: Flourishing can’t exist in days filled with back-to-back meetings with no space. Even fire needs oxygen. You can take a pile of wood that could burn brilliantly, but if you suffocate it of oxygen—of space—there will be no fire.

This notion of spaciousness, of wholeness—I love that you integrate that in your work.

But speaking of fire...

Mieke Jacobs:

Even before you go there—it’s intriguing. I think we must’ve followed a similar path. For me, it was eight years ago. I was super busy, in a global role, and they wanted to add another global role on top of that.

All of a sudden, I said, “I want to break free.” My boss asked, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “I don’t want to go to another company. I just want space. I want to see what happens when life comes to me, instead of me chasing life.”

Ashish Kothari:

 Yes.

Mieke Jacobs:

That’s exactly what you’re describing. I feel very privileged. Maybe at some point, we’ll talk about privilege—because of course, not everyone has that.

But I’m grateful every day since that I have the space to let life come to me. And I do recognize that not everyone has that possibility, depending on their personal and professional circumstances. But yes, I think we might have shared that same moment of breaking free—and really understanding it.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah. And my life changed. It’s funny—it’s not either/or. That’s another polarity we talk about all the time.

Dear friends, what I’ll say is that when I created space, when I slowed down, I actually achieved more. I became more productive in every way—from 9 to 6—than I ever did from 6 to 9.

Mieke Jacobs:

I believe that so much.

Ashish Kothari:

My client utilization, my impact, my experience for colleagues, my innovation, my productivity, my creativity—it all increased when I was working less. At the same level, it’s not even relative. In absolute numbers, I was higher and I think that’s possible for you too—and for your organizations.

But you have to learn to stop and create space. We don’t like creating space. We don’t like silence. If someone’s just sitting there, staring at the sky, we ridicule them. We think they’re wasting time. But it’s real.

To find wholeness, we have to be still.

Mieke Jacobs:

 You have an absolute ally here.

Ashish Kothari:

To reach that space, we need to be curious about our energy. Because some people might ask—why do you need energy to be still?

But you do. You need to honor your energy. Because stillness, if you're extremely tired and don’t manage your energy, becomes lethargy. And that’s not what we’re talking about.

Talk to me a little bit, Mieke, about energy mastery. What do you think about it—in organizations, in teams, and for yourself?

Mieke Jacobs:

Yeah. So energy—if I were to describe my work—I would say there are a few foundational streams or rivers that always flow through it. And energy mastery is one of them.

It's such a vast field, so let me see if I can give a short version. First of all, you’re absolutely right. For me, personal energy is directly connected to life force. And for a long time, I carried a very deep imprint that life force was limited—something to protect, something that could be taken away from you. There was quite a lot of fear around it, and I absolutely know where that comes from. But knowing it isn’t always enough to shift it.

Everything began to shift for me around eight years ago when I started realizing the body had something to do with it. Despite being on a wisdom journey for a long time, the somatic aspect was relatively new to me. People may have told me before, but I wasn’t ready to hear it.

Then I participated in a week-long program with Jen Cohen on somatic coaching. It was the first time I realized, “Oh my God.” As they say in The Body Keeps the Score—that book by Bessel van der Kolk—so many events that hadn’t been integrated were actually stored in my body. That realization completely shifted my exploration.

That was when my somatic journey began. I started releasing some of the contractions in my body, which opened up my capacity to hold energy—also in groups.

So for me, the field of energy mastery stretches from the self-regulation capacity. On the self side, it includes understanding polyvagal theory: how does my nervous system work? How do I self-regulate when I’m overwhelmed? What’s my survival mechanism when I’m in that state?

That’s a whole field of work to the whole area of co-regulation, which is very relevant in teamwork. Strong coherence in a team allows it to handle much more disruption. So if a team is fragmented, anything disruptive will fragment them even more or play them apart, where strong coherence can really hold a lot of disruption. I've seen this to be extremely powerful.

So, there's the co-regulation capacity of a team—and of course, the individual self-regulation that feeds into that.

Two, and that’s a whole additional field of work that often stays in the background of my work, is that I’m also working with a lot of ancient wisdom around inviting a larger field. As a facilitator, you don’t need to do all the work on your own. You can be largely supported by the lands, for example.

Whenever I’m facilitating an offsite—like the one I recently led in Romania—I attune myself to the land and ask, “What happened here?” I connect to the grounding force of the earth, the trees, and the natural surroundings. Nature itself can become a resource for teams.

That’s not always in the forefront, because for some teams, it’s already quite “out there.” For others, it’s not. Some organizations, like mining organizations because they have so many relationships with the original owners of the land, have a much deeper understanding of the larger holding field. For them, it makes immediate sense.

So again, for some it’s in the forefront, for some it’s in the background. But I would say it’s that whole range of self-regulation, defense mechanisms, what’s happening in the body, coherence as a team, and then using larger coherent fields to also truly support the organization in what they want to bring forth.

If an organization has a purpose that is aligned with the right thing, you have support there. In principle, life wants to support a healing movement. So it’s that whole range that I’m now summarizing in a few sentences.

It’s been a really deep field of study for me in the last seven years, and it’s one of those—you might have some of those as well—where you wonder, “How did I do this work before knowing this?” Because a team facilitator holds a lot of energy.

One of the energetic practices I’m using a lot—I’m curious if you have it—is “Me, Not Me.” I’m quite sensitive to what’s happening in the team. Where is everyone? What are the tensions? What is the collective that is also still held here?

So I need a regular practice to separate myself again from that so that I’m not carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. That’s an energetic practice that’s important for me, and now I think, “How did I do this work before understanding some of that energetically?”

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah. That’s exactly where I want to go next, Mieke. For those who might not be as deep into this field as you are—for leaders listening who are thinking, “Okay, there’s something here”—what would you say?

There’s my own energy, then there’s tuning into the energy of the team, then there’s the energy of the organization, and beyond that, the energy of the communities and spaces where we live.

Mieke Jacobs:

Totally.

Ashish Kothari:

When we’re doing offsites or working in a particular location, what are two or three practices—even for those just starting—that they could lean into to begin tapping into a little of that magic?

Mieke Jacobs:

 Yeah, and again, you can take this as far as you want. There are essential practices that anyone can do. The first one I would suggest is to set an intention in what we call a charged field. I’ll explain what that means in a moment, but for me, intention-setting at the beginning of a team journey or offsite is critical.

This isn’t productivity-based—it’s more about presence. One intention I always include, and this is something I learned from my energy teacher, is: May everyone receive what they need, in the amount they need, from whom they need it.

That simple intention helps me meet people and the team where they are. I may have a strong intention for the group, but it might not be ripe. Very often, as a systemic facilitator, you often see much more than the team is ready to look at. You notice other dynamics starting to surface, but I try to be very respectful about not interfering with a system before it’s ready.

That particular intention is about meeting people and teams at their growth edge. You don’t want them to stay comfortable, but you also don’t want to throw them into terror. I hold myself to a high standard of respecting where they are, what shows up, and working with that.

There’s more. I also ask for things to be light and easy. I ask that our work support the transformation they’re already embarking on—especially when it’s aligned and necessary. For example, take the energy sector—there’s so much transformation needed toward sustainable energy. When a company is on that journey, I’ll ask that our work supports that movement.

That’s where the charged field comes in. It can take many forms. Depending on your belief system, it might be a simple prayer—for things to go well or for tensions to dissolve into coherence. You don’t need a specific faith system to do that.

Some people use practices like the four directions. That connects directly to the cycle of life—spring as the opening, summer as the maturation, autumn as the closing or letting go, and winter as stillness and rest.

Even in projects, that cycle shows up. You begin, you hit the high-energy middle, and then you reach the closure where you need to say goodbye, let go, and capture lessons learned. And hopefully, there’s a bit of breathing space between the end of the previous one and the opening of the next one. If you allow it, that’s winter.

For me, that’s such a natural rhythm of things. You can imagine: “Oh, we really need the west here. We need this team to say goodbye. We need this team to mourn that it’s over. We need them to capture the lessons so that the next opening is a wiser one.” It’s a very natural thing to do. And that is a charged field—using the four directions or the cycle of life or even the day: morning, midday, evening, and night. The night, where you rest—that’s a charged field.

Then that intention, in that charged field—for me that is a critical practice, and I will never start something without doing that. And then I feel very held, very supported. It’s not only about me. I’m not the star of the show. It’s often coming through me, but it’s for the benefit of the system.

is was many years ago, around: 2011

Then breathing in three times again, “All parts that you have left somewhere—call them back, because that is part of you.” Then just trust that everything is okay. It was that simple as a practice to discern what is really yours and what you’ve picked up from other people or from the systemic field.

In the meantime, my “me, not me” practice is a bit more elaborate, but in essence, it’s still the same. It’s a moment of awareness, of resonance: what is resonating with me, and what can I return? Because it’s also the right thing to do—to leave things with other people, to leave things with the team. I love it. It’s the right thing to do.

Ashish Kothari:

Love it. Because what you're introducing and inviting listeners to think about is: give away what’s not you. That’s somebody else’s monkey, somebody else’s problem, somebody else’s perceptions. That’s the “not me.” But what you’re also inviting in—again, in wholeness—is the essence of you that you might not feel comfortable bringing in.

What are those pieces that you yourself have put out there, that you do want right here, right now? And again, it’s about leaving behind what burdens us unnecessarily but also resourcing ourselves with our deepest wisdom, our strengths—things that can help us that, in the moment, we might not be using.

Mieke Jacobs:

Absolutely, yes. It’s truly two parts. It’s letting go of what’s not yours. And when you do that, energetically, you have space. Then fill it up with you. Because if you don’t fill it up with you, then there’s plenty of things to worry about everywhere else.

I’m very sensitive to that. I’m unlearning to carry everyone’s burden—because it’s actually not unburdening the other person. That’s the interesting thing. It’s really not that it’s taking it away from them or resolving it. It’s now double. So for me, to fill it up with me again is a very essential step of the “me, not me.”

Ashish Kothari:

100%. Energy shows up in all the flourishing work I do, Mieke, at so many different levels. We have the Rewire program, which becomes part of our flourishing transformations that focus on the individual. We have a set of practices around body, mind, and spirit that we invite people to build habits around—whether it’s movement, sleep, nutrition, time in nature, reading, or spiritual texts.

There’s a whole range—about nine or ten interventions—that we invite people to do. First, to take an inventory of their own inner energy from day to day, and how resourced they feel. Because to do any of this work, you have to first make sure you’re at your best.

Second, we have a practice that shows up in our PEARL model for organizational and team levels, where we ask leaders to collect data—but also tune in. Do our workplaces energize people? Do people feel excited to show up on Mondays and leave with more energy on Fridays? Or are these workplaces that drain them?

If our workplaces are energy-creating versus draining, that directly affects not just how individuals feel, but what they achieve.

Mieke Jacobs:

And it’s so fascinating. There’s more and more research showing how many of our workplaces still put people in a survival state.

Ashish Kothari:

Constantly. 70 to 80 percent of our workplaces are like that, Mieke. And it’s not just about the work. That’s why we focus on both. Energy mastery is just as much about the system as it is about the individual.

Kim Cameron’s work at Michigan on heliotropic systems and individuals shows how energizers—even in draining environments—can become a source of light. Darkness and light—if you’re in a dark cave and you light a single candle, darkness dissolves. So again, we have so much agency if we learn this skill.

You don’t have to be a leader to know it. Even as an individual, you can have a heliotropic effect on any team you’re a part of.

Mieke Jacobs:

And very often, that includes being with what hurts.

It’s not like we come in and we’re all bringing energy. Someone once told me—and I’m trying to remember who it was—she compared the system to a patient. I sometimes do that: I ask, “If this system were a patient, how would you diagnose it?”

If a system is depressed, she brought in the wisdom of how to deal with a depressed patient. You need to be with them in the pain for a while, and then ignite moments of life force. It’s not about coming in with a party when someone is depressed.

There’s something about meeting—this is what we do with systemic work. If there’s a trauma that hasn’t been integrated, or if there’s a restructuring that hasn’t been mourned, then we do that work. And by doing it, there’s a healing movement. Then you ignite.

So these energizers—it’s really the interplay between both that can truly shift the system.

Ashish Kothari:

 Yeah, which is where I want to go next, Mieke. I have one final question, and then I’d love for us to end with a poem from your book—an invitation to our listeners.

Whether we’re talking about flourishing work or strategy, systemic intelligence is so critical. We’ve touched on it throughout this conversation, and you’ve been one of the original leaders in this field. Break it down for our listeners. What do you mean by systemic intelligence?

In today’s world—filled with volatility, uncertainty, and complexity—if you're not on a path to master this intelligence, I don’t think you survive. Talk to me a little bit about what systemic intelligence means.

Mieke Jacobs:

Ah, my whole life's work in a few sentences. It’s not my only life's work, but it's certainly part of it.

When I discovered this field of work, I immediately thought, “This makes so much sense.” Before that, I worked for 20 years at DuPont—an amazing global company with so many opportunities. But I often found myself amazed by certain dynamics. And only when I encountered the field of systemic intelligence did I realize, “Oh, that’s what’s going on.”

For me, systemic intelligence means truly seeing organizations, teams, communities, and schools as living systems. We are all deeply shaped by systems—we're born into them. Our family system is the first one we get to know, and the dynamics there often imprint how we show up in later systems.

It’s about recognizing that an organization is a living system with its own intelligence. That may sound a bit strange, but in a way, the system was founded at one point in time. There was a founding spark and all of a sudden there’s this small, large system. And then, people come and go.

The system in itself is an intelligence that has roots, has a collective memory, and is often still living the impact of past decisions.

So very often, the dynamics that we see now, what we call symptoms, are a reflection of something either deeper on deeper levels or something that has its roots much earlier on. So why is it essential to not just fight the symptoms? Because when you just fight the symptoms, at best, they will repeat itself. Like, “Oh, this happened two years ago, we’re doing this again?”

At its worst, it’s making it worse because you’re really not understanding what is really going on. Does that mean I always have a full picture of what is really going on? Of course not. This is complex material.

Maybe in hindsight, you might see more than you see now, but we have in systemic intelligence a few lenses that really help you to start becoming curious about what is really going on on a deeper level.

One of the biggest ones—and one of my favorites, because it was very interesting in my family of origin—is order. Any natural living system has a certain order of things. There's no such thing as an order-less system.

Because I had quite a lot of dynamics around order and place in my family system, I became very attuned to understanding what the criteria are for order and whether those criteria are still supporting the system in reaching its purpose. Very often, there are criteria for order that are informal or unwritten, and they end up working against achieving the purpose.

You can have your perfect org chart, but the actual order of things may be based on totally different criteria. There may be subsystems, or old criteria for order that are now dysfunctional. So order is one of those things, and a lot of the dynamics in organizations have to do with order and place.

For example, we see a lot of micromanaging happening in organizations we’re called in to support. Middle managers aren’t getting it, and we start to become curious about what the order of things is at the executive team level. Who’s taking their place? Who might be stepping out of their place and into someone else’s? Those dynamics often lead to the symptoms we see in middle management.

Order is a big lens that’s always on for me, and very often in systemic work, it’s about bringing that to the surface. What’s the real order of things here, and is it serving what we’re trying to achieve? I’m not saying there’s one right answer. There are many different criteria for order, and they may have been right at an earlier stage in the organization, but they may not be right anymore.

That’s what I love about systemic intelligence—it’s a nonjudgmental way of looking at organizations. It’s not about right or wrong, but rather understanding, “Oh, we’re still applying criteria for order from a different era.” For instance, when the company wasn’t yet global, nationality or closeness to the CEO might have been a relevant criterion for order. But now it’s dysfunctional. Maybe the weight should be with the person managing the biggest P&L, or the person responsible for the most employees—if we’re making an employee-related decision. But if an informal order is working against that, we may not be making the right decision.

By bringing that to the surface, there’s often a sigh of relief—“Oh, we’re finally naming what’s really going on.” It’s a nonjudgmental way of seeing things.

Sometimes you have strong conflicts—between the CEO and CFO, or between regional leaders like the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. When we trace it back through the organization’s history, we may find a conflict in the very early days. For example, during the founder’s handover to their children, a big conflict may have occurred that split the company. I worked with an example where two brothers founded their own companies, and that rivalry keeps repeating itself.

These are the things we become curious about. You’re zooming out in time, vertically and systemically. It’s fascinating to suddenly see things in the light of a much larger system at play. That’s systemic intelligence.

What I also love is that once you start integrating this awareness, the system itself has intelligence. Often, the solution is already in the system. So it’s not about intervention—it’s more about holding space so the system can bring forward its own intelligence.

That’s systemic intelligence in a nutshell.

Ashish Kothari:

It’s beautiful. And we should do a whole second podcast just on that field together. It’s a deal.

The way we weave that in—we call it systems and team intelligence. One of the big things I’m pushing leaders to do, and that we integrate into our system transformation around flourishing, is: don’t run top-down programs. Give the data on flourishing—collected every month—to teams, rather than doing engagement once a year.

Let the teams tune in monthly to what’s needed for them to flourish and deliver the performance being asked of them—not at the cost of burnout, but by making sure, individually and collectively, they’re able to operate at their best. They have the intelligence. They know what’s needed. They need autonomy, agency, and space to create solutions, experiment, and try. Then you scale what works.

The current state is still: somebody comes up with a program top-down, and every team in every country and function runs it as if that’s going to solve such a complex system. That’s at the heart of some of the issues.

So, my friend, we’re almost at an hour. We could talk for hours.

Mieke Jacobs:

I think so too.

Ashish Kothari:

I’d love to end with a poem or a mantra. We started with the notion of polarities, of “either-or.” I want to invite you to leave us with one poem that touches on any of those themes: polarity, coming back to whole systems, energy. What would be your gift to our listeners?

Mieke Jacobs:

It’s always a difficult question, and I typically change my mind throughout a conversation because we touch on so many different things. I think I want to end with one last essential stance that I think I also recognize in you.

There’s a deep bow to not knowing—to always have a beginner’s mind, to not get stuck in our fields of wisdom and frameworks, to have all of that in the background and show up present and attuned every time. I love looking at people and teams with new eyes—every time.

So I chose one, in the end, that talks about not knowing.

For the rest of all days

Will I know that I don’t know?

Will I bow to the mysteries of the multiverse?

Will I cry the tears of mankind?

For the rest of all days

Will I seek redemption,

Search all lands for their narratives,

Attend to the trees that have seen it all?

For the rest of all days

Will I take a single step, and then one more,

Treading in the mud,

Micro marks in linear time,

Yet striding through the ages,

Passover child between the worlds.

For the rest of all days,

Will I concede that I was blind to the beauty of the form?

For the rest of all days,

Is this my overriding task—

To abide by the sacred law,

Correspond with the book of life?

I call upon the Keepers.

Ashish Kothari:

Wow. Mieke, thank you—for your presence, for your wisdom, for the incredible work you do.

There’s so much I’m taking away, and I know our listeners are too. We’ll share all the links so people can connect with you and access your books. But deep gratitude, from me to you—for being a friend, a fellow wisdom-walker, an energy master, someone who’s truly bringing wholeness into our increasingly fragmented and busy world.

Thank you for all that you do.

Mieke Jacobs:

Thank you so much for having me. Such a joy.