Reclaiming Business as a Force for Flourishing through Conscious Capitalism: A New Path to Purpose, Wellbeing, and Performance with Thomas Eckschmidt

Ashish Kothari: Thomas, it is so lovely to have you here with us to share your insights and life's work in the space of conscious capitalism with our listeners. Thank you for joining us.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Thank you. My pleasure. It's always special to meet people who are dedicated, believe in, and share the same passion and vision. So thank you for having me.

Ashish Kothari: Yeah, of course. Look, I was so inspired by the book you wrote with Raj and John. You've had an amazing career—engineering, entrepreneurship, leadership, and the conscious capitalism movement.

I'm curious, tell us about the origin story, Thomas, and how you came to not just be a conscious capitalist but a teacher guiding others on this path.

Thomas Eckschmidt: I grew up on a farm where we produced dairy. I was good at math and science, and my father was an engineer, so naturally, I became an engineer. After graduating, I spent ten years working in eight different companies—Procter & Gamble, Kodak, Accor, Accenture—gaining diverse experiences.

At some point, I realized it wasn’t aligning with my values. After ten years, I decided to become an executive, so I pursued an executive MBA. My HR professor, who mentored our class, once described me as a "job backpacker," which made me think I wouldn’t get many opportunities. But his partner ended up hiring me into a consulting firm in London.

That experience changed everything. I worked in 20 different countries, consulting, and that’s when I unconsciously discovered what mattered to me—being challenged, constantly learning, and having the freedom to do my job my way. We had four-day work weeks as consultants, and we covered for each other.

When my daughter was born, I realized I wanted something different. That’s when I reframed the question we often ask young people. Instead of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” we should ask, “What do you want to change in your world?” Not the whole planet—just your family, neighborhood, or community.

That question stayed with me. I started mentoring others and eventually joined people I admired. We built a new culture, led with inspiration and education, and created something meaningful.

One day, I reached out to Whole Foods’ CEO, John Mackey. The first thing I found was an article on Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey. I read it and thought, Oh my God, I’m an unconscious conscious capitalist.

I had a belief but no defined purpose. I had an extended value chain but not a stakeholder map. I cared about culture, but I wasn’t intentionally shaping it. I was leading to serve others, not just to make money.

ious Capitalism CEO Summit in: 2009

In 2014, I gave a TED Talk in Portuguese that reached 400,000 views. After that, people started asking me, “How do you teach this?”

With my corporate, consulting, and entrepreneurial experience, I wrote Fundamentals of Conscious Capitalism for the Brazilian market, and Raj Sisodia wrote and recorded the foreword. That book led to Fundamentals of Conscious Business in Spanish. Then, Raj invited me to co-author The Conscious Capitalism Field Guide.

We wanted to make the work accessible, so we created Conscious Business Activator, a Creative Commons book available in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, French, and Hebrew.

It's a simple tool that helps businesses align with the Field Guide. It asks essential questions: What’s your purpose? Are you only focused on money, or do you have a deeper mission? Then, it guides you through action steps.

When we launched it, all the Conscious Capitalism chapter leaders signed a special edition. That book, autographed by my community, is the best gift I’ve ever received.

That’s how I found Conscious Capitalism, and I’ve been passionate about it ever since.

Ashish Kothari: Now, I love that story, and I think it's interesting because I have a very parallel journey.

I actually just got back, Thomas. I spent the last three days in Ann Arbor with Jane Dutton, Monica Worline, Amy Young, and many others at the Center for Positive Organizations. Have you heard of it? It's been around for 20 years.

Jane was the one who connected me to Raj about a year and a half, two years ago when I first discovered them. It's amazing—our stories are so similar.

I started working on flourishing about seven years ago at McKinsey. A lot of it emerged from deeper wisdom and spiritual work I was doing. Like you, I was a consultant, and I had built this framework.

Then, completely by accident, the dean of Leeds Business School, where I was on the board, became the dean of Michigan Ross—Sharon Matusik. When she moved to Michigan, she knew what I was doing and told me, You need to talk to Jane. She connected me to Jane, and through Jane, I found the center.

The work they've been doing for over 20 years—the mind, the heart, the spirit of generosity—it was like finding my tribe. I spent three days with them, and now my mission is to help more companies and leaders discover this work.

If leaders help their people be at their best, they create better outcomes. I love what you said—don’t ask yourself what you want to change out there; start with what you want to change within yourself.

There are so many parallels, and it’s amazing. That’s also how I discovered the Conscious Capitalism tribe. It’s a step toward asking, How can we be more?

More than just being here to make money. How can we be more? How can we create organizations that help people flourish? I love that story.

Thomas Eckschmidt: I’m in constant evolution when it comes to my purpose. One way we talk about purpose is through Frederic Laloux’s idea of an evolutionary purpose—you express it today, learn from how you apply it, and keep upgrading it. That way, it makes more sense over time and helps with decision-making and investments.

My purpose is to accelerate the upgrade of leaders and organizations so we can create better businesses for a better world. The acceleration part is important because I’ve already trained 1,200 consultants in 25 countries to carry this work forward. I can’t do it alone.

The interesting thing is, while I create competition, I also create a field for more creativity.

Ashish Kothari: I love that. You're helping create consultants and coaches who guide leaders to become their best and create better outcomes.

I also love the idea of evolutionary purpose. When I left McKinsey after 17 years, our purpose became democratizing happiness and flourishing. How can we help a billion people truly integrate these principles, the science of flourishing, into how they live, work, and lead?

There’s so much synergy between our missions. I think we’ll be working together for a long time. But before we go further, Thomas, for listeners who might not be familiar with Conscious Capitalism, how would you define it in the simplest terms?

Thomas Eckschmidt: It’s a natural expression of humankind. Think back to when humans lived in caves. There was so much work just to survive.

We gathered with a simple purpose: to stay alive. That was natural for humans—we gathered for a reason and followed a leader who could offer protection. Today, leaders must offer something different.

We recognize our interdependence with the entire ecosystem—our stakeholders, the forest, the animals, the rivers, the water, the rain—everything was part of what we understood. Over time, we started limiting ourselves to value chains instead of seeing the bigger picture.

But in early human societies, we had a strong culture of collaboration and sharing. If someone refused to collaborate or share, they were pushed out of the group. That was human nature.

As survival became easier, arts and crafts developed. The first entrepreneurs emerged—blacksmiths, bakers, shoemakers, weavers. They passed their craft down through generations.

Then came the Industrial Revolution, and we lost our way. Everything became a resource—even humans. We started measuring people like commodities. If the supply of corn increases, prices drop.

The same logic was applied to people—if unemployment rises, wages drop. But we are not resources. We are humans with resources. And now, we have the power to flourish again. We are not just stuck somewhere.

Conscious Capitalism rests on four principles:

1️⃣ Purpose – What is your cause? What is your deeper mission?

2️⃣ Leadership – Recognize a leader who inspires, educates, and helps you grow.

3️⃣ Interdependence – Everything is part of a larger system; you can’t isolate one piece.

4️⃣ Culture – The culture you create is built on these three elements and determines whether you flourish.

That’s the invitation I always make to people. If you’re starting a business, your purpose lies behind your intention to make something better.

Ashish Kothari: I love that. And how simply articulated, right? It’s about rediscovering the pure essence—uncorrupted. At its heart, this is the wisdom of most traditions. I love the word Ubuntu—"You are, so I am." Thich Nhat Hanh talks about interbeing.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yes.

Ashish Kothari: It’s really beautiful. Yeah, so I love this notion of reconnecting to interbeing—tuning into our why, our purpose, and how we want to make an impact. As you said, that’s how we started. And somewhere along the way, we lost our humanity. But we also lost something fundamental—the connection between us and others, and us and nature.

We talk about ecology and nature as if we are separate from it. But we are nature. That’s the shift we need to embrace.

So, Conscious Capitalism is built on four key tenets, as you and Raj often discuss. Walk us through them—how do they come to life in a conscious business?

Thomas Eckschmidt: As I was sharing earlier, purpose lies behind an entrepreneur’s intention to offer something better.

No one starts a business saying, I’m going to do more of the same. They believe they can do something better. The challenge is articulating that in a way that others understand—why we gather, why we work together, why we go to market, and why we offer something different.

For me, that’s the most important thing today—understanding the real purpose behind what we do. This also connects to ESG. ESG is an evolution of People, Profit, and Planet.

People is too vague—so we focus on Social.

Planet is too broad—so we focus on Environment.

Profit is no longer about maximizing returns at any cost—it requires Governance.

And governance is not just about boardroom decisions. It’s in every choice we make—whether selecting a customer, supplier, or strategy.

Every decision should align with purpose. Does this take us closer to our purpose or away from it? Does it leverage our purpose?

That’s why purpose is the foundation. It’s not just about performance metrics—it’s about Key Purpose Indicators (KPIs) alongside Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Both must go hand in hand.

Healy Ruhan has had some amazing conversations on this topic.

Ashish Kothari: That’s powerful. Purpose is the reason something exists. I love this quote by Alex Osterwalder: "If you want to reach the land of profit, follow the road of purpose."

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yes.

Ashish Kothari: Tell me a story, Thomas, about a company you’ve worked with—or one served by someone you’ve trained. What did that journey from profit to purpose look like? And what became possible for them as a result?

Thomas Eckschmidt: There are so many stories—I don’t even know where to start because this is such a vast field of work.

Let me start with an entrepreneur in Guinea-Bissau, Africa. We were running a workshop called Purpose Campus for Business, which is also in a book about making clear why we are in business.

At the start, she said, I don’t believe in this. I’m only here because the Impact Hub told me to be here.

I told her, Okay, let’s go through the workshop.

By the end, she still wasn’t convinced. I asked if she’d be open to using her business as a case study for the group. She agreed.

We deconstructed her business using frameworks from Simon Sinek, Aristotle, and others.

I asked, What do you do?

She said, I produce tampons in a sustainable, reusable, organic way.

I told her, That’s just a product. Let’s go deeper.

We mapped her business using the Golden Circle:

What’s your product? Tampons.

How do you manufacture them? With sustainable, organic, and reusable materials.

That was still just a process—something anyone with more resources could do better.

So I asked, Why are you doing this?

She said, Because women lose a week of school every month due to their period. Many don’t get jobs because they lack access to personal care products.

That’s when it clicked. She wasn’t just in the business of making tampons. She was in the business of offering women freedom.

We then moved to vision. I asked, What’s the world you’re trying to create?

She said, To be number one in the market.

I told her, That’s ambition, not vision. Vision has no numbers.

After thinking, she said, The world I want to see is one where men and women have equal opportunities for employment.

That was it. Everyone understood her purpose—it was universal, inclusive, and clear.

A year later, I called the Impact Hub and asked, How’s she doing?

They told me, She doesn’t produce tampons anymore. Now, she introduces herself by saying, "I’m here to offer freedom for women."

That changed everything. Instead of leading with a product, she led with purpose. People responded with curiosity: Tell me more. This is the shift—from selling a product to inspiring a movement.

I even received a call from a police officer in the northeastern U.S. who had read my book. He said, This isn’t just for businesses—it applies to any organization. The police force needs to update its purpose.

I said, Okay, I will send you the other book as a tool. Do that and then let’s come back and talk about how your leadership will permeate the organization.

We are in a moment where purpose is being updated, clarified, and recovered. Businesses don’t start just to make money. When they truly live their purpose, they have a greater ability to make money.

That’s the invitation. I could share bigger cases, but sometimes the small ones illustrate the point best.

Ashish Kothari: What’s your ‘why?’ And how do you discover it?

Thomas Eckschmidt: Exactly.

Ashish Kothari: To our listeners—when people start businesses, they do it because they’re trying to solve an unmet need. They’re scratching an itch that traditional solutions haven’t addressed.

Starting a business is hard. It involves risk and a massive amount of work. People don’t do it just for money—there are far easier ways to make money and live comfortably.

But along the way—while raising capital and chasing growth—it becomes about the numbers. We lose track of why we started in the first place.

When a quarter isn’t good, we go into despair instead of reconnecting to that original why.

Whether you have $1 million, $300,000, $100 million, or $300 million in revenue—when you started, you had nothing except your purpose. That’s what got you through.

Even if you’re still at zero, you’ve gained experiences. Thomas Edison once said, I didn’t fail 1,000 times. I found 1,000 ways that didn’t work. Even if the numbers don’t reflect it yet, you’ve grown. You’ve changed along the way.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Exactly. That’s why every time I get paid for a talk, I donate my time to speak at a school or college.

Education is the best hack in the world. It’s the only thing you never lose. No one can take away what you’ve learned. Once you understand something, it’s impossible to unlearn it. So, if you want to challenge the system—learn.

Ashish Kothari: I love that. Thomas, I want to explore two or three more dimensions of this. But before we do, I have a big question for you. I’ll give you a heads-up now, and we’ll come back to it after diving into some of the other tenets.

Here’s my question:

Conscious Capitalism makes intuitive sense. It’s been around for 25 years. But adoption isn’t where it should be. Companies have purpose statements, but they don’t live them. That’s not Conscious Capitalism.

If I look at the past four weeks—or even the past four years—many companies that were once considered model conscious businesses have strayed.

Look at Southwest Airlines. It was all about love under Herb Kelleher. Now, they’ve made a bunch of profit-driven changes. Will that work? I don’t know.

But it feels like many companies are drifting off course.

That’s my question for you, but let’s hold off for now. Before we get there, I want to talk about the second tenet of Conscious Capitalism: Stakeholder Orientation.

Rather than just focusing on shareholders, it’s about stakeholders.

Tell us about that.

Thomas Eckschmidt: When we talk about stakeholders, we started with stakeholder orientation, evolved to stakeholder integration, and now we’re moving toward stakeholder interdependence.

That’s biomimicry—it’s not just a value chain, it’s an ecosystem. Even competition is part of the value you create.

Community, relationships—stakeholders are more than just those with whom you have financial transactions. That may be the first layer, but think about employees. One of the biggest leverage points is actually the employee’s family.

If their families are doing well, employees will be okay. If their families are taken care of, employees will be fully dedicated. Yet, almost no one lists family as a stakeholder. Isn’t that crazy?

As we work on different projects, we’re seeing family emerge more and more as a critical stakeholder. It’s a powerful lever that can move the entire system toward a more profitable and sustainable space.

This is where we need to mimic nature. Nature is the most successful organization in the world. Yet, when we try to simplify everything into a value chain, we miss the vast potential of the entire ecosystem around us.

You mentioned earlier that as businesses grow and take on investors, they change. We have to remember—when a business starts, investors are the first ones to put in money.

Once the business is running, revenue pays taxes, suppliers, employee salaries, executive bonuses—and only after all of that do shareholders get paid.

We must understand what each stakeholder values in both the short and long term.

If you overpay one stakeholder for a month, you create an expectation that it will continue. It’s about balance—even shareholders need to be educated.

One leader who did this well was Paul Polman when he became CEO of Unilever. He told shareholders, I’m not going to manage this business on a quarterly cycle—it doesn’t make sense.

You have to educate your shareholders so you attract the right ones—the ones who align with your purpose.

As John Mackey says, Every company has the shareholders they deserve.

Ashish Kothari: Absolutely. And that takes courage.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yes.

Ashish Kothari: So let’s talk about that—how this ties into conscious leadership.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Leadership is about having the courage to inspire, educate, and let go.

There’s only one president, maybe one or two owners, a few VPs, and a handful of directors. It’s a pyramid.

Are we developing people to help them succeed—or are we limiting them to fit our success?

That’s the real battle leaders face. It’s not between good and evil—it’s between ego and ecosystem.

Is it all for me?

Is it all for others?

It’s not one or the other. Again, it’s interdependence—it’s both.

The challenge is shifting from a trade-off mindset to a balance mindset.

Some people call this ambidextrous leadership—the ability to manage both sides. Raj Sisodia writes about this beautifully in Shakti Leadership. It’s all part of the same idea.

If you, as a leader, only focus on ego, it won’t work.

If you, as a leader, only focus on ecosystem, that won’t work either.

You have to find the balance.

That’s why, just like in an airplane, we must put the oxygen mask on ourselves first—then help others.

Ashish Kothari: Yes. And it’s so hard, right? For those listening, I love this ego vs. eco challenge. These are polarities. If we only have a strong sense of self, it creates tension.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yeah.

Ashish Kothari: Then it is a polarity. But if we realize that the self is a myth—if we recognize interdependence—then ego vs. eco stops being a battle.

I was reading this beautiful book called I Contain Multitudes. Here’s a stat for you. If I ask, Where do you start and where do you end?—most people would say, What do you mean?

Thomas, if I ask you, Where do you start and where do you end?—what would you say?

Thomas Eckschmidt: Well, life begins when we’re born. But here, right now?

Ashish Kothari: Yes—where is “you?” What is the dimension of “you?” Most people would say, I start here—this is my body. This is my limit. This is me, and that is you. That’s how we experience the world. But here’s the reality—what percentage of our DNA do you think is actually human DNA?

Thomas Eckschmidt: Well, it should be very low, based on the question you just asked.

Ashish Kothari: Yeah, it’s 7%.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yeah.

Ashish Kothari: That means 93% of what’s in us is not human DNA. You might be thinking, Wait, what? What is the rest? It’s all the microbes—the microorganisms that live on us, in us, in our gut, and throughout our body.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yeah.

Ashish Kothari: Even when we say “me”—the reality is, there’s so much more to us than we acknowledge. Why do we get sick? Why do antibiotics sometimes weaken us? Because they kill not just the harmful bacteria, but also the essential microbes in our gut.

Our health isn’t just about fats, carbs, or calories—it’s about the entire flora and fauna inside us. The mind and body are deeply connected. Neuroscience is now showing that the quality of our microbiome fundamentally affects our mental health, physical health, and how we experience the world.

So this tension between ego vs. eco—the polarity we feel—is a result of losing touch with what was natural to us 20,000 years ago. Back then, we lived in nature, we were nature.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yes.

Ashish Kothari: We were reminded of that every single day. But today, we’re disconnected. Sitting in offices, isolated from nature, separated from each other, constantly focused on:

What do I want?

Am I okay?

Is my family okay?

We’ve forgotten that we are part of something bigger. That’s what I love about conscious leadership. It’s an evolution in how we make sense of the world.

Einstein said, We can’t solve problems from the same level of consciousness that created them. We have to evolve.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yeah.

Ashish Kothari: For those listening, if all of this sounds a little too abstract, here’s something to ground it. At Harvard, researchers studied adult development. They found that only 20% of leaders—this was about ten years ago—were at a developmental stage where they could thrive in complexity.

That means only 1 in 5 leaders operated from a place of self-authorship—where they truly understood who they were, how they interacted, and how to lead in uncertainty.

The other 80%? They were just trying to fit in and survive. Given how much volatility and uncertainty we’ve experienced in the last 4 to 8 weeks, I’d bet that number is now closer to 5%.

We have to evolve. Conscious Capitalism is one path. So is the work at Harvard—Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s research on Immunity to Change, or Bob Anderson’s Leadership Circle Profile. These are all doorways into deeper leadership.

Because at the end of the day, we only have 100% control over one thing—ourselves. We don’t control the outside world. That’s why we must focus on our own development—otherwise, we’re just trying to survive.

That’s what came up for me as I listened to you talk about ego vs. eco. So many leaders feel stretched by this tension.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yes. And if we look back to the source—to our early human ancestors—we see something important. Even though uncertainty existed outside, groups created certainty inside their communities.

A group with clarity of purpose and a shared way of working together could be productive, engaged, and generate value—even in an uncertain world.

So when businesses say, Oh, it’s tough out there, that’s like saying, It’s raining outside. Yes, it’s raining—but we’re covered.

Leadership is about creating that shelter. The earliest leaders were strong because they protected their group. Today, leadership requires a different kind of protection—one that fosters safety, belonging, and purpose.

And when people feel that belonging, they perform better. Now, this isn’t just feel-good leadership talk—this drives efficiency. And suddenly, efficiency isn’t just about cutting costs or boosting profits.

When we connect Key Purpose Indicators (KPIs) with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), we create sustainable success.

Ashish Kothari: Absolutely. For those leading organizations today—think about how we were trained as leaders. Most of us learned that leadership was about top-down control.

Information filtered up the hierarchy.

Decisions were made at the top.

The biggest decisions were often made with the least amount of information—because by the time data reached senior leadership, it was outdated or softened.

Nobody likes to be the bearer of bad news, so issues get diluted. A fire starts at the ground level, but by the time leadership hears about it, they’re told, It’s just a little warm.

Then suddenly, the entire barn is gone. And leadership finally responds, Call the fire brigade!—but it’s already too late.

We must enable the system to respond differently. And this ties back to nature. In nature, no one has to tell the trees when to shed their leaves or when spring has arrived. It just happens. The system evolves naturally. We need to lean into that same principle in business.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Exactly. And there are amazing examples of this in nature. For instance, trees talk to each other through their root system.

Ashish Kothari: Yes.

Thomas Eckschmidt: They don’t fight. They don’t compete. They cooperate. One of my favorite studies is from Yellowstone National Park. When they reintroduced wolves into the ecosystem, everything returned to balance.

Erosion decreased.

Small plants started growing again.

Trees came back to life.

Wildlife flourished.

By removing a key element from the ecosystem, we had unknowingly caused destruction.

The same thing happens in business—when we create imbalances in our organizational ecosystem, the whole system suffers. We get sick as an organization when we don’t respect the natural interdependence of our people, processes, and purpose.

Ashish Kothari: Thomas, have you read this book? I know you love nature—we’ve been talking a lot about it. There’s a beautiful book called The Secret Lives of Trees.

Thomas Eckschmidt: No.

Ashish Kothari: It’s all about how trees communicate and protect each other. It reminds me of The Lord of the Rings—remember the walking trees? It seemed like fantasy, but in reality, trees have been around forever, deeply interwoven with each other.

That book dives into the magic and intelligence of trees—things we often overlook. We tend to think of humans as the only sentient beings, but trees are sentient too. Their pace is just different—and maybe that slower pace is what allows them to outlast humans.

Now, let’s bring this back to leadership. You talked about employees and their families being the most important stakeholders in a conscious business. If I asked our listeners, What’s most important to you?—most would say, my family.

So, as leaders try to balance profits and purpose, employees are caught in the middle. From the businesses you’ve worked with—those that have successfully transitioned from profit to purpose—what are three or four concrete actions they’ve taken to ensure that employees flourish?

Because you can’t go from profit to purpose without going through the employees.

What have you seen companies do that our listeners can try?

Thomas Eckschmidt: First, if you're ready to bring your purpose to life, clarify it internally before making it public.

Sometimes, leaders rush to announce their purpose before they’ve made enough decisions aligned with it.

If you publish your purpose before you have enough proof points, it will feel like another corporate PR campaign.

Instead, start managing based on purpose, and after six to twelve months, when employees see real changes, then make it public.

That way, when you announce it, people will say, Aha, that’s why we made these decisions.

This builds trust—because trust isn’t built through words, but through actions.

For example, if a company has two cafeterias—one for executives and one for employees—integrating them sends a clear signal.

I’ve seen this happen multiple times. Employees notice, Wait, we all eat together now? That’s different.

Simple things—like how parking spaces are assigned—can either separate or unite people.

Look for these symbolic divisions in your business. Removing them reinforces that you are now a purpose-driven organization.

Ashish Kothari: Beautiful. So that’s step one—activate your purpose and use it to rebuild trust through visible, meaningful changes.

What’s step two?

Thomas Eckschmidt: Second, we need to adapt our language when talking about Conscious Capitalism.

The word capitalism itself triggers polarity in many people.

It took me five years to get college students to engage with this topic because I kept using the word capitalism.

The moment I switched to talking about entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, students listened.

Capitalism and socialism have been framed as a binary choice, and since capitalism isn’t working for many, and socialism remains unknown or controversial, there’s no common ground.

We need to elevate the conversation to a higher ground.

Everyone—regardless of political views—agrees that entrepreneurship is the best tool to lift people out of poverty.

Ashish Kothari: Absolutely.

Thomas Eckschmidt: It doesn’t matter if you lean left or right—entrepreneurship is the common ground.

But it’s not just about finding common ground—it’s about higher ground.

As leaders, we must choose words that unite, not divide.

If our language separates people, we weaken our movement.

So, my second invitation is this:

✅ Identify the higher ground in your conversations.

✅ Use language that creates convergence, not division.

This makes your message inclusive and much more powerful.

Ashish Kothari: I love that.

In our work on flourishing, we encourage leaders not to avoid conflict, but to lean into it and understand what truly divides us.

Instead of debating what needs to be done, we should explore why we believe what we believe—our fears, perspectives, and deeper motivations.

That’s what you’re inviting leaders to do:

✔️ Don’t avoid tough conversations.

✔️ Help people navigate their own biases to find shared ground.

Because from common ground, we can build together.

And if anyone feels like there’s no common ground, remember this:

At the heart of everything humans do—good or bad—is the desire for happiness and the avoidance of suffering.

If you ask a robber and a nun why they do what they do—and keep asking why—they will ultimately give you the same answer:

Because they believe it will lead to happiness.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Exactly. That’s how we deconstruct our differences and create a shared future.

We once worked with an organization in Colombia that had been owned by BP (British Petroleum) for 25 years. Then, overnight, BP sold the company, and employees had to give up their uniforms, logos, and identity. They felt orphaned.

After one month of working with them, we asked, What do we want? The answer was simple: We want to be happy here. If you don’t agree with that, you don’t have to stay—but we are going to build from this foundation.

From there, we created:

✔️ A purpose statement

✔️ A stakeholder map

✔️ A new culture based on inclusion

Even the surrounding communities became part of the mission: We want to be happy here. And mind you, this was an oil and gas company—a tough, traditional business.

Ashish Kothari: I love that. Thomas, just keeping an eye on the clock, I want to come back to the question I left hanging earlier.

Everything we’ve discussed—

✅ Start with your why

✅ Focus on all stakeholders, not just shareholders

✅ Use business as a platform for evolution

✅ Create a culture of care and kindness

It all makes intuitive sense.

And yet, despite 25 years of Conscious Capitalism and countless company examples, purpose-driven business and ESG have never faced a bigger onslaught.

More companies are explicitly or implicitly backing away from these principles.

Why do you think this is happening?

And for leaders feeling pressure to conform to the herd mentality, what advice would you give them?

Thomas Eckschmidt: I think language plays a huge role in this.

Confucius said, If the words don’t say what you want them to say, people won’t understand what you mean.

Clarifying purpose means using the right words for the right audience.

When speaking with executives, capitalism might be an easy conversation. But inside an organization, employees might not see capitalism as a good thing—they might resonate more with conscious business.

And in surrounding communities, entrepreneurial spirit or social impact may be the language that inspires action.

The key is adjusting the message without compromising the behavior.

Even though ESG is fading from mainstream discourse, many companies are still actively hiring VPs of Sustainability, ESG Directors, and Sustainability Officers.

They may have taken ESG off the billboards, but they’re still integrating these principles into their business.

Why? Because leaders know that conscious business practices deliver extraordinary results.

Many executives are choosing to avoid unnecessary conflict by shifting how they communicate. Instead of fighting external perceptions, they focus on building internal certainty.

At the end of the day, we cannot control the uncertainty outside—we can only create clarity inside our organizations.

Ashish Kothari: I love that—control the controllables. As a leader, you create your own reality through the environment you build. The certainty, the trust you cultivate. And transparency is key. Leaders often believe they can’t be fully open. But trust me—people understand more than you think.

If you communicate honestly and with the right intent, you’ll see different results. The real enemy is uncertainty. At an individual level, think about this: People fear the unknown more than a harsh reality.

For example, the anxiety before a cancer diagnosis is often worse than the diagnosis itself. Even people told they have six months to live often find peace—because now, they know. I’ve met people in their final months who enjoy life more than those who have six decades ahead of them.

Why? Because they stop rushing. They finally realize—this moment is precious. They stop living for others’ expectations and start making every second count.

Thomas Eckschmidt: That reminds me of a question I always ask at the start of a talk: Why are you here? Who are you here for? Because if you’re not here for someone or something bigger than yourself, then why are you here at all? That’s the human connection. We exist for something.

Ashish Kothari: Beautiful. So, dear listeners—What are you here for? What’s your why?

And if you don’t know, don’t ask others—ask yourself. Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, said it best: We don’t ask life for our purpose—life asks us. We must find the answer.

Thomas, thank you. Not just for being a conscious capitalist, but for inspiring and training so many others to make a positive impact. You are helping change-makers come alive, be a force for good, and heal the world.

Thomas Eckschmidt: Thank you so much for having me. And I’d like to extend an invitation—if anyone has questions, doubts, or curiosity, drop them in the comments when this episode is published.

Ashish Kothari: That would be amazing! Friends, we’ll post this on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram—add your questions there, and Thomas and I will do a special follow-up episode to answer them!

Thomas Eckschmidt: Yes!