Jerry Colonna & Tony Martignetti with Steven Morris

Radical Self-Inquiry & Campfire Lessons

In this profound and heart-opening episode of Beautiful Business, host Steven Morris welcomes two extraordinary thought leaders—Jerry Colonna, co-founder and CEO of Reboot, and Tony Martignetti, leadership advisor and author. Together, they explore the intersections of radical self-inquiry, spirituality, and leadership, weaving personal anecdotes and practical wisdom into a conversation that challenges conventional approaches to work and life.

The discussion ranges from the importance of remembering our ancestral roots to the role of empathy, compassion, and love in creating transformative and inclusive workplaces.

Key Themes:

Radical self-inquiry as a leadership tool
Reunion with ancestors and its impact on leadership
The value of slowing down in a fast-paced work culture
The integration of spiritual values in the workplace
Leadership as a moral and empathetic endeavor

Highlights:

Jerry Colonna shares insights from his book Reunion, emphasizing the power of re-membering and reconnecting with oneself and one’s past.
Tony Martignetti discusses the courage of following intuition and the significance of “divergent minds, convergent hearts” in organizational success.
Steven Morris explores the importance of embedding love and humanity into business culture and values.

Top Quotes: Jerry Colonna:

“We cannot know the experience of another person unless we’re willing to stand in our own experience.”
“Why cut yourself off from what your body and intuition are telling you?”
“Morality in business stems from spiritual wisdom traditions.”
“Compassion and empathy in the workplace are antidotes to systemic othering.”

Tony Martignetti:

“We must slow down enough to ask: Who are we and why are we here?”
“Divergent minds with convergent hearts create the most transformative teams.”
“True connection comes from understanding and respecting the stories of those around us.”
“Love in the workplace is about admiration and respect for others.”
“Follow what your heart is yearning for—it’s the path to meaningful transformation.”

Steven Morris:

“You cannot hate someone whose story you know.”
“The most powerful person in the room is often the one with the calmest nervous system.”
“Spiritual values serve as a universal compass guiding our actions and decisions.”
“Active imagination is the bridge between understanding and transformation.”
“Slowing down to align our somatic and emotional states is where leadership begins.”

Resources Mentioned:

Jerry Colonna’s books: Reunion & Reboot
Tony Martignetti’s books: Campfire Lessons for Leaders and Climbing the Right Mountain
Steven Morris’s book, “The Beautiful Business,” and blog: MatterCo.co

Connect with the Guests:

Jerry Colonna: Reboot.io | LinkedIn: Jerry Colonna
Tony Martignetti: Inspire Purpose Partners | LinkedIn: Tony Martignetti

Connect with Steven Morris:

Website: MatterCo.co
Blog: Insights Blog
LinkedIn: Steven Morris

Jerry Colonna

Leadership through radical self-inquiry. This is the driving idea behind the work of Jerry Colonna. For over two decades, he has been dedicated to the proposition that work should be non-violent to the self, non-violent to the community, and non-violent to the planet.

Jerry is a coach, writer, and speaker who focuses on leadership, business, and the practice of radical self-inquiry. He is the Co-founder and CEO of Reboot.io, a company born from the rallying cry that work does not have to destroy us. Work can be the way in which we achieve our fullest self.

Tony Martignetti

Tony Martignetti is a dynamic leadership advisor, best-selling author, podcast host, speaker, and entrepreneur known for his ability to inspire and elevate leaders. With over three decades of business and leadership experience, Tony combines deep expertise with an insatiable curiosity to help individuals navigate change and unlock their full potential.

As the founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of Inspired Purpose Partners, Tony brings a unique perspective shaped by his earlier career as a finance and strategy executive in some of the world’s leading life sciences companies. His journey also includes managing small businesses and running a financial consulting firm, experiences that enrich his approach to guiding leaders through complex challenges. Tony’s work is driven by a passion for connecting people, generating ideas, and fostering meaningful transformation.

Steven Morris

Steven Morris is an expert brand and culture builder, advisor, author, and speaker. He has worked with 300+ brands including Samsung, Sony, Habitat for Humanity, Amazon, International Trademark Association, NFL, and MLB. Over his 27 years as an entrepreneur, he’s served more than 3,000 global business leaders.

His new book is entitled The Beautiful Business: An Actionable Manifesto to Create an Unignorable Business with Love at the Core has been dubbed as “The artist’s way for business leaders.”

He reaches 25,000+ readers through his blog and writes about branding, culture, leadership, and the intersection between work and life as a contributing writer for Retail Observer, Wisdom Well, Business Week, Brand Week, Conscious Company Magazine, Communication Arts, HOW Magazine and MarketingProfs.

When he is not supporting leaders in building beautiful brands and businesses, Steven explores his wholehearted participation with life as a husband, father, artist, surfer, motorcyclist, and beekeeper.

Podcast Transcript

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 00:02

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

self-awareness, radical self-inquiry, compassionate leadership, ancestral wisdom, empathy, somatic experiencing, spiritual values, transformative love, divergent minds, convergent hearts, intuitive decisions, organizational morality, human connection, leadership responsibility, spirituality at work

SPEAKERS

Jerry Colonna, Tony Martignetti, Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Steven, welcome to the beautiful Business Podcast. I’m Steven Morris, a brand and culture building expert, speaker and author of the beautiful business I’m here to lead you on a journey into the art of flourishing in both business and life. Each episode, I share insights and tap into the wisdom of intriguing minds to explore how creative thinking and vitality can transform the way that we work and live. If you’re ready to elevate your own business journey with a touch of soul and beauty, you’re in the right place. So today, I’m thrilled to host two extraordinary guests who are both deeply committed to helping leaders navigate the complexities of work and life with greater self awareness, courage and compassion. Jerry Colonna, co-founder and CEO of Reboot, is known as the CEO whisperer. His unique leadership approach focused on radical self-inquiry in his most recent book, Reunion; he explores how our memories shape leadership, emphasizing the need to understand our past and vulnerabilities to inspire better leaders and diminish othering. Joining him is Tony Martinetti, a leadership advisor podcast host and best-selling author of Campfire Lessons for Leaders and Climbing the Right Mountain. Tony helps leaders and teams connect, spark new ideas and navigate their paths with curiosity, purpose and passion. Welcome Jerry, welcome Tony.

Jerry Colonna

Thanks for having us. It’s a delight. I don’t know at what point I should tell you, but the name of the book is Reunion. I

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

should have gotten that right,

Jerry Colonna

yeah, but you couldn’t remember. Actually remembers a good name for a book. I may, I may steal that one. So it was interesting.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Jerry, as I read the book, I felt like I was re compartmentalizing myself, my past, my background, my history, and pulling the diff different and what I would call the disparate parts together. So thank you for that correction. But in my head, I was remembering myself both as a full human and my and certainly my past.

Jerry Colonna

I could not be more happy to hear that that was the experience for you. And you may recall that there’s one chapter that was titled a room called remember, which come from the Frederick Buechner quote in which he talks about a dream in which and so you’re not off. You know that Freudian slip was actually quite powerful. And to use the parlay into the book, what I hope it invoked in you was a reunion with the differing parts of yourself. And that that a core component of doing that is, in fact, of course, remembering as in RE, hyphen, remembering, yes,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

absolutely, yeah. And part of my studies is in parts work. There you go, of course, right? So, yeah, it felt like an experiential journey that included both a version of parts work, but much more so from an experiential standpoint, even though that that work is all about experience, but also bringing in the ancestral side of things. You know, it’s interesting. One of the workshop practices that I borrowed from a very dear friend of mine, Laurie back, and the practice is, is you stand in the middle of a room, and you could do this in a group environment. You and standing up is really important within this you you think back and you imagine seven generations behind you that are there, guiding your way through life. And literally, the idea is to picture their hands on their hands on their hands, on their hands on your shoulders, and to rekindle that relationship with them. And then there’s another practice within that that goes forward into seven generations, that your hands are on the hands of your children and all their offsprings and all the people that will come out of the work that you do in the world or the person that you are. So anyhow,

Jerry Colonna

I love that you connected those things, those two things, and I’m cognizant that I jumped in here and kind of, you know, hijacked the way we’re unfolding. But it feels important to say that if we in Reunion, what I was trying to start with, with, what was a core premise, a core question, which is, what is a leader’s responsibility in a world filled with divisive suffering, what is our what is our work to do? And yes, it means. Pushing up against what I referred to, barring the John A Powell term for it, systemic othering, but especially in a corporate environment. But more importantly, what is our work to do if we are to endeavor to create a world for our descendants that we’d like to see and that the two things that you’ve touched upon, Stephen, one is the reunion, remembering with the parts of ourselves. And, of course, the other is the reunite, reunification with our ancestors, which I know, based on the ethnicity that I identify with, tends to get lost in time. We tend not to think about their experiences as a source of elder wisdom for us to move forward. And I say that because the goal to overcoming the divisiveness, I believe the path is compassion and empathy. And of course, we cannot be empathetic unless we all know our own story. We cannot know the experience of the other person unless we’re willing to stand in our own experience. One of

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

the mindsets I talk about in the beautiful business where you cannot hate someone whose story you know. Yes, so, but in order to know that story, we have to pause long enough with enough presence and empathy to actually listen to that story and understand the humanity that exists behind that, and if we do so, then all of a sudden, this person who is considered either an other or even potentially an enemy, becomes humanized in our world, and we take them into our heart. And when we take them into our heart, hate is not an option. All of a sudden, active imagination comes into play, and we can see them. See the commonality, as you talk about in your book. See the commonality between our story and their story and their story and our story and all the other stories that we know around us. Yeah,

Jerry Colonna

right. Well said, well said. And Tony, I know that you agree with this. I I can feel your energy with with regard to that.

Tony Martignetti

Yeah, yeah, no doubt. And one of the things I just wanted to to connect with this on is just this feeling of like, you know, when we look at the business world, sometimes, oftentimes, we’re moving so fast that it doesn’t seem like there’s a place to pause and really look at our own story. What it is that, you know, we’re bringing into the room, that it’s only about like, what’s next, what’s next, what’s next. And if we’re only in that place, we’re not connecting. We’re not creating that sense of of who is this person in front of me? How am I, you know, creating that, that spark of connection with the other person. And I think that’s what oftentimes gets missed. And I’d love to hear what you know, both of you have seen in your experience with the people you’ve worked with, that when they show up, they’re like, what’s the bottom line?

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Yeah, and by bottom line, what do you mean, like, the bottom line of why we’re doing the work, or the bottom line of the work at hand, both two very different questions, potential, yeah,

Tony Martignetti

yeah. I mean, really, it’s both, and it’s, you know, one of those things that I often hear is that they they’re just quickly in a rush to get to a result. But the reality is, the result is not the answer. The answer is to slow down and get an understanding of where are we starting from. You know, who are we and who are you? And those questions are more important than the the feeling of, you know, trying to rush to the to the answer.

Jerry Colonna

You know, Tony, I think you’re, making a really powerful connection in this moment. And part of what my response is, you asked us to to respond with, what have we seen? What have we experienced? And I couldn’t help maybe because of the previous conversation we’re having about empathy, I couldn’t help but step into my own body. And what is it like when I feel myself wanting to rush, when I feel myself wanting to be this is the powerful word, productive. Oh, my god, yeah, this is right. I want to be and and I as as you were both speaking, what I tried to do was just recall for a moment the amount of work self worth I would derive out. Of kicking items off a to do list, and and there is something beautiful about that I’m not, you know, God bless David Allen, right, getting things done. And if we go behind that self worth that I derive from ticking off items on my to do list, I very quickly bump up against the opposite feeling, which is, if I slow down, if I do less, if I take the time to know my own story, then I’m somehow being less worthy. And if we want to spin this all the way out, we can see corporations. I have a client company, for example, with, let’s just put his with more than 50,000 employees. And every time I’m there with the senior leaders, I’m scratching to get more than 30 minutes with them, yeah, and there’s a piece of me this is like, what do you want? Why do you want me here? Yeah, because what we really need to do is slow down, talk as a group. Figure out, in this case, this is language I’ve been using with them. What is the charter, what is the mission of the senior leadership team here? Is it to move from crisis to crisis to crisis to crisis? Which is what the experience is? Or is it to take a step back, use the same tools that we’re talking about for what I would call radical self inquiry, but a kind of introspective stance, and then plot a path forward, together with an implicit layer of empathy. Because I think if you do the latter, not only will you make better decisions, but you’ll actually have more joy in making those decisions. So that was a long winded response to your question. But,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

and I think what you’re talking about there, Jerry operates on at least two levels, you know, this magical process of slowing down, you know, so part of my work is in somatic experiencing. I’m trained in that and getting trained in that. I’m well steeped into the world polyvagal theory and things of that nature. And one of the magical elements of really dealing with let’s call it, well, work of Peter Levine and somatic experiences all around trauma based therapy. But it works in the world of work, too, and we might not call it trauma in the world of work. In fact, it’s probably not even safe to use the word trauma in the world of work, but you can call it stress and anxiety. You can call it pressure, but the act of slowing down is to first to pay attention to what’s actually happening in the body where, somatically, how am I showing up to who I am, and am I noticing what’s actually triggering me, or am I noticing even where I’m at from a somatics perspective, where’s my biology, where’s my psychology, where’s my physiology, and when you begin to self regulate in An environment that is not made for slowing down and not particularly regulated from an environmental standpoint, in group environments, then all of a sudden you can become the most quote, unquote, powerful person in the room. The most powerful person in the room, quite often, is the one with the most calm nervous system. And in order to get to that place in that calm nervous system, you have to slow down long enough to recognize what’s actually going on. And then, if you are trained in whatever modality you’re trained in, be it SC or meditation chair, you and I are both Buddhists and have a long meditative, contemplative path. That process allows us to show up with a greater sense of not just humanity but empathy and compassion for all of what’s going on. And then the act of noticing begins to go through the roof, and noticing not only our nervous system, but the nervous system of the people around us. And then we can show up in a very, very different way to the challenges that as a team we’re confronted with. But it really does take men going from that self regulation to co regulation and regulating the team so that we’re all energetically, if you will, on the same page around all of that. Tony, I wonder what your thoughts are there. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti

I mean, I was just as you’re describing this. I was thinking myself that in a very simplistic terms that like it’s not about what you think, it’s about what you feel. And you know, this has been coming up a lot in what I’ve been doing is this sense of everyone wants to, you know, express their thinking, but it’s not about the thinking. It’s slowing down enough to be able to really understand. How are we feeling about the situations we’re in? And that only happens when we do give it space and and allow ourselves to not just be on the surface.

Jerry Colonna

Can I build on this just a little bit? Sure? Yeah, I you know, my son is a martial artist. He does Muay Thai, but I’m he’s done a Keto he’s done Jiu Jitsu, and one of the things I’m so admiring of that is to is the way in which practitioners will use the energy to change the dynamic. So I think what we’re both, what we’re all talking about, the three of us are talking about, is this experience that leads people to use Tony’s terminology to answer the question, what do I think? And if we take a step back compassionately, and we say, what’s really driving that, what’s driving that, in my experience, is a socialization that begins with a very profound belief in our ability to think our way out of any problem. In fact,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

it’s a very useful belief system,

Jerry Colonna

as I often say, that kind of belief system builds bridges and tunnels and creates magical technology, like I’m logging in using a satellite network from this remote location. I mean, God bless that kind of thinking, right? The challenge is not that that thinking needs to be overturned by the feeling sense. I’m going to flip this around a little bit when we only focus on that side of our experience, we’re actually cutting ourselves off from a massive amount of wisdom called intuition, just like when we Forget our ancestors, we cut ourselves off from millennia of wisdom, and even the most productive person amongst us should be really compelled by the notion of using whatever tools are available to them to make The best decisions possible, to build the best bridges possible. Yeah, so what? Why cut yourself off from what your body is telling you?

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Yeah, great. Let’s personalize this a little bit. So the question for both of you, curiosity for both of you, and you go wherever you want with this. So if you look back at the your most poignant, important decisions in your life. Were they made from the things that you knew, the things that you were taught, learned and informed by, or were they made from your intuition and and how did you know from where to make those decisions? Great question.

Jerry Colonna

Well, I’ll jump in, because I’ve got such high energy today, I can barely contain myself anyway. I mean, for me, the answer is so crystal clear and obvious. And in fact, I don’t know that I would label it intuition solely. But Steven, from your experience, I think you’ll relate to this. It came from my body. It didn’t come from my head. I’ll give you a good example, the title of the new book, reunion. I don’t know where that came from. I really don’t. But as I was writing that book, I I came across because she had just passed away, this brilliant poem by bell hooks. And in the poem, she says the first lines of which are when angels speak of love, they tell us all things are union and reunion. I was like, Holy fuck, where did I hear that? Or somewhere in the middle of that process. You’ve read the book. So spoiler alert, there’s this like scene at the end of the book where I’m reuniting with my father’s biological mother by visiting her grave site. I had no intention of doing that, but I allowed the experience, which was hard to experience, to sweep me away and find myself walking on a grave site in muy car, key County, Tipperary, Ireland.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Yeah. Like, what the hell? And I’m curious, as I listened to that particular story in the book, and actually several others, I was very curious about what were your bodily sensations informing you in that graveyard scene? Right where you were telling your grandmother about what you were remembering and what your relationship with your father and you know, all the journey that you’ve been through, like, what, how did that feel in the body?

Jerry Colonna

Well, I’m remembering it now. So I’m feeling it, and actually so to give some context, my father found out on his wedding day that he had been adopted and that the woman he’d known all of his life up until that point, as his mother, wasn’t, in fact, his mother, and in fact, that woman had used that knowledge as a weapon against him because she did not like the fact that he was marrying my mother. So okay, so that happened, which helped explain my father’s depression. So this notion of visiting the grave site of his biological mother was a kind of haunted experience for me. And when you brought me back to what was it like, bodily the first experience I recalled Stephen is I remember sitting in what they would call a car park. We might call a parking lot next to the cemetery, which is an old country, you know, old country church cemetery, and unable to get out of the car, literally, like my legs would not work. And my friend joy today. Kangari is a Zimbabwean immigrant to Ireland who who took me to the cemetery, saying to me, you know, our ancestors are telling us we must do this.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Yeah,

Jerry Colonna

so. And then walking around the grave site, not really being able to find the site, and then all of a sudden, I remember joy today, finding the gravestone, and then my knees literally buckled. So you asked, the bodily feeling, a sense of overwhelm, a sense of relief, a sense of terror,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

yeah, and

Jerry Colonna

a long held sense of anger, yeah, at this woman who had given up her child that when he was 18 months old, yeah, but the ability to speak with her felt like it was overcoming that paralysis that I felt in the car. Yeah, yeah.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

You deployed what you would call active imagination and that processing. Yeah, I’m not going to go there with you, but there’s an invitation that my hardest saying to make, which is, if you haven’t or if you ever want to do some somatic processing around that particular experience, know that I’d be very happy to walk you through that. I don’t want to do it here on this conversation. It’s not the time and place for that, but I float that out there. I

Jerry Colonna

really appreciate that. Yeah, as in all the podcasts and interviews I’ve ever done, that’s the first time someone has offered something like that.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Thank you. You’re welcome. Yeah, Tony, yeah, I know you’ve shared with me a couple of some transitions you’re going through currently, and you don’t have to get into that if you don’t want to here, but I wonder, you know, the same question to you, like you know, from where do you make your best decisions, and how would you talk about that?

Tony Martignetti

It’s a it’s a great I mean, I it’s going to be very different lens than what Jerry shared. I won’t go into some of the the darker moments that I’ve experienced, but I will say that right now, I find myself in a moment of of following intuition. You know you sometimes you have things all figured out. You think you have it all figured out, but you want to challenge the status quo. You want to think, well, what’s what else is possible? And and I’m not thinking my way out. I’m feeling my way out. I’m thinking about, where do I feel is next for me based on what my heart is yearning for me. And what I mean by that is that I’m in this process of, you know, I’ve built a business that I’m proud of, I’m proud of what I’ve done, but I’m also feeling like, you know, I want to be part of something beyond just me. And I’m feeling this. Connection, to explore opportunities, to to be part of an organization, to go inside and to experience transformation of an organization from the inside out, which is a very, you know, humbling experience to say that I’m doing that, but I think it’s not because, hey, you know, it’s just a different thing. It’s a different chapter, but it’s more because something inside me says that that’s going to open a different way of looking at the world.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

And so what it’s worth I would offer that, while humbling might be certainly an adjective that you would you would ascribe to that I would also say it’s courageous anytime we go through a meaningful transition in our own world, to face that with a level of heart openness and maybe even soul guidance, which I didn’t hear you Say, but I kind of felt you infer that I think it’s a very courageous thing to do.

Tony Martignetti

Yeah, I appreciate that, and it is something that a lot of people look at and say, like, wow. Like, you know, this is just seems odd. Why are you doing that? And you know, they don’t understand. No one fully understands your story quite like you do. And I’m not thinking my way out, that’s for sure. I’m really following what it is that I’m being called to

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

do. Yeah, yeah, very good. So a little bit of pivot here. So I recently co wrote an article with a very dear friend of mine, Denise Leon, and it was published in a lot of publications passed on it because you’ll get this in the title for fairly obvious reasons, but it was published in Rotman magazine at University of Toronto. It’s their business school up there, and the title of the article was, or is, does spirituality belong at work? And kind of, there was two core intentions behind why we posted this article, why we wrote this article, actually, I’ll call it three, and I’ll go through them very high level. First and foremost, both Denise and I have very different but strong spiritual foundations to what we do. And we found ourselves in a conversation one day over dinner, talking about how our spiritual life informs everything that we’re doing, relationally, vocationally, everything. It’s no area of my life that is not included within that. So then, of course, I bring it to work, but what, to what extent I bring it to the work that I do? It’s, it’s either there is a covert operator, or I’m there as a covert operator in it, which is really the safest way to do that, or it’s over for those people that safely want to talk about those things. The other part of the article really talks about, you know, where dei and be programs are failing right now, and where inclusivity is really not living up to its sort of promise for various reasons which the article covers. And then the third really has to do with, you know, we’re in a society where people are looking for meaning much more than anything, especially those that are on anything close to what we might call a secret path, or looking for more meaningful things, and especially in the world of work. And so, you know, I wonder, as I offer the title of the article to both of you, does spirituality belong at work? Where would you land on that? And you know, it’s totally unfair question in certain ways, because you haven’t read the article. But the question itself has, you know, imposed implications within it. But I suspect both of you have perspectives on do

Jerry Colonna

you want to go first? Tony,

Tony Martignetti

sure. Now I’ll start with just there. There is a place for the right in the right organizations. Not every organization is ready to embrace what it means to to see spirituality as something that is part of the everyday experience of life and the work. And I think ultimately it comes down to the right leaders seeing that by embracing the whole person for who they are and bringing that aspect of of what it means to be holistically a human means bringing their spirituality into that place. And those are the people we want to speak to. We want to make sure that those organizations understand that. You know, by embracing this, you’re going to have a much better and much much more fruitful organization that’s not just going to impact the employees, but ultimately the customer. Dollars and and society at large. Now this is not something that just happens, you know, just by of a decision, you know, quickly saying, hey, let’s bring it all make it all happen. But it is by all the things we’ve talked about already. Is embracing these the nature of slowing things down, getting to know who the people are around you, being connected and having that sense of civility, to respect and honor the people around you, by opening the aperture and allowing other people in and understanding what it is that they care about, what do they believe? What is the thing that really is at the core of what makes them who they are? Then you’re letting that spirituality in to the workplace. Very good.

Jerry Colonna

I can build on what Tony has shared, at first, agreeing completely, and I’ll tell a very quick story a few weeks ago I I was in Spain. I was in Barcelona. I regularly work with IEC, which is the Business School, which is part of the University of Navarre, and we had an evening event with about 50 of the coaches who are in a coaching cohort. The school’s commitment to coaching is such that they make coaches available to the MBA students. And we’re talking about my style of coaching were, it was a kind of free flowing Fireside Chat kind of experience. And the founder of their executive coach training program, and the founder of this coaching cohort program, who is a former psychiatrist, was in the audience, and at one point, as I want to do, I jumped up and was at the chalkboard and I drew a Venn diagram, and I talked about psychology business understanding, organizational development, leadership development, and then the third overlapping circle was spirituality. And I wrote the word spirituality, and the founder was incredibly happy because, and to be clear, this is a Catholic University, okay, and, and I was baptized in the Catholic Church, but I am, I am not a practicing Catholic, nor do I follow that tradition? As you mentioned, I’m a Buddhist, but you know me down in the center of that you know that faculty, that classroom kind of thing. He up at the top. We found common ground. I looked at him and I said, Thomas Merton. And he said, Thomas Merton. And then I said, the Desert Fathers. And he said, the Desert Fathers, right? And, and what we found was this commonality, that that there is a third leg of the stool, if you will, which is part not of religious beliefs, but of the human experience. Yes, and, you know, I understand the hesitancy, the hesitancy, again, I’m always going to try to see the other side of it. The hesitancy is not, I think about the inclusion of spirituality. I think the hesitancy is the imposition of religious belief, yes, which is a very different issue, but gets conflated, partially because of the language that we tend to use, right? And so as a Buddhist down in the well of that classroom, I didn’t say the Buddha, I said Thomas Merton, right? I someone. I knew that we could find common ground on it, right? So I wasn’t going to impose a Tibetan Buddhist translation of the world in that situation. It wasn’t necessary, right? The Buddha once said, There are 84,000 doorways to the Dharma. Who cares? Just walk through the door right now, I want to say one other thing. I haven’t read the article, obviously, but I can. I can feel a connection, because there’s an implicit question, which is, why are dei programs not working in making people feel that they belong, yes, right now the attack on dei programs, which comes from an unempathetic, aggressive imposition of belief system. I’m not a fan of that attack. Okay, I think that. Attack undermines, let’s call compassion and empathy in the workplace. But I understand the criticism, and I think that when we deny a part of the human experience and we pretend that it’s not there, we’re working against inclusivity, yes, yes, right? And so again, the fear is an imposition of a belief system, okay, but we’re much more likely to impose no belief system than we are likely to impose a singular belief system, yeah. And lastly, with for good or for ill. And there is a relation. There is a relationship between what we have termed spirituality and morality. So let me, let me change the words a little bit. Is there a place for morality in business? Yeah. I mean, come on, it kind of gets in the way. And then when I press and press on that, I said, Well, why does your company not sell fentanyl on the streets? It’s very, very profitable. Oh, you’ve determined not to kill people. Yeah, right. All right, now we’ve got some common ground on morality. Yeah, there is a place for morality, and in part of the human experience, part of the human experience is that some of the greatest sources of morality are spiritual wisdom traditions.

Tony Martignetti

Yeah, I love that. Can I just add to that? Because I just love where Jerry went with this. And, you know, there’s something about this idea that, like when you get into morality, and the whole idea of treating people like human beings with civility, which is another word that was used earlier, but I’ll connect back to is this, you know, all of this is all you know comes down to, how are we treating people. You don’t have to believe everything that everyone else believes in. Nor do we have to prescribe that. The religion here is Buddhism, and therefore, if you don’t believe in Buddhism, you have to leave. You know, that’s not what we’re trying to do here. What we’re trying to look at is, how can we respect and honor everyone’s differences and also make this a place where we’re bringing in the different views of everyone’s what they bring to the world? And the morality piece, which is to say, hey, the one thing we will say is that we don’t want to kill anybody. We don’t, you know, we’re not about, you know, doing things that are going to destroy the environment. I mean, what are the things that we believe in that we’re going to stand by? And if this is something that you as a human or as a as a part of our ecosystem does not align with, that’s your choice. Is to choose to not be part of that, part of who we are. One

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

of the things that Denise and I talk about in the article is the idea of of values inside of organizations, and what role might things like spiritual values play within that and you know, spiritual values from my perspective. And I think, you know, loosely defined. I think the way we define it in the article is that it’s the universal compass that guides all of our actions, decisions and behaviors, right? So, you know, in organizations, we see sometimes values lived very coherently from what is written in the values that are described within the organization, and then you actually do see it show up within how people treat one another, how we communicate, how we treat customers, et cetera. But there’s obviously alternative versions of that, where you have a value set that lives on a wall, and they tend to be much more. Let’s call them superficial values, or values that are quite predictable, but you don’t see them live within the organization. And you know, spiritual values, this universal compass could include simply things like love, compassion, belonging, connection, humanity. Don’t kill people, right? Yeah, and it’s very easy to see how if we put language to that inside of an organization, that could start from a deep spiritual well, but turn to secular inside the organization, because maybe it deserves to be and see those as lived behaviors and call them simply values that come from this deeper well of what drives humans to begin with, and especially in our outside world. You know, a lot of people who have a very, very strong spiritual foundation in their life or even a flirt. Conversation with one. They still their value systems still derived quite often from the spiritual values, which are also moral values. So, you know, here again, we’re making the argument for, you know, not just do they, but potentially, how do they? Or how could they? How could spirituality and the values associated with that live within the world of

Jerry Colonna

war. You know, here again, I’m doing that thing where I’m trying to see things from another side, and we’re sitting here in the summer of 2024 and a few months ago, a few weeks ago, one of the state legislatures in the United States pass legislation, or is attempting to pass legislation that the 10 Commandments should be posted in every classroom. And seeing from a particular vantage point, I can understand that that is an expression of what we’re talking about. I believe that spiritual traditions should be allowed even in a secular environment, and the danger is the imposition of a belief system. So I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m holding the tension between two states that exist within me, because I am and and I’m finding my way through by using additional language, wisdom traditions, yes, and I would have no problem with an organization, a business, an organization, a political entity, a community, a town, saying these stated values, which are universal and derived from wisdom traditions that are either monotheistic or not, because there are values like love and compassion should be part of the value system of our community. Yeah, but it is where we run into trouble. Is when the expression of those value systems becomes exclusionary,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

yes,

Jerry Colonna

and that’s and threading that needle takes nuance and skill and the willingness to be corrected, which are not mindsets that we see a lot of leaders holding,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

exactly, yeah, yeah. You know, I want to bring bell hooks back into this in your book, you, I think you quote her pretty extensively, if I’m remembering properly. And you know, one of the one of the one of the quotes that I was remembering, I have it written down over here, is love as is about love as a transformative force, both personally and socially. And one of the things I appreciate Jerry about the book is that you, you don’t, you don’t segregate the difference between the social environments in the world of work and what’s actually happening in the world, right? So, you know, a lot of organizations, they don’t want to touch what happens outside the walls of the organization, and this sometimes also plays into dei and B program, but it’s also, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a slippery slope, but it’s a tricky thing for business leaders to think about. Well, how do how do we then embrace what’s actually happening in the world, or embrace conversations that are actually happening the world, that have to do with the complexities that are coloring how people are showing up. And this idea of, you know, love is a Transformers fourth, both personally, socially and it might even add vocationally, you know, it might the subtitle to my most recent book is, you know this well, that the mantra that I live within my business is that there’s nothing more powerful than a united group of souls ignited in a common cause with love at the core. And so really, at the end of the day, and I’m just going to be very transparent about this, all the middle stuff is, is kind of gibberish for the world of business, right? You could accordion that sentence and simply say, there’s really nothing more powerful than love, right So, and if we simply ascribe to that as Bell Hooks encourages us, I wonder how that would change, how many people would approach the world of work, and I wonder how both of you might think about. Of the attribute of this transformative force of love and the work that you do.

Jerry Colonna

Well, I really like the way you frame the question, Stephen, one of the first things you did was you noticed, at least in my book, what I was doing was kind of obliterating the false boundaries and compartmentalization. And I know we’re all in agreement that those compartmentals, those compartments, which can be necessary, again, to build bridges to make things happen, actually can, if overused, create less than whole, complete people in the workplace, and so this, this experience of what is happening outside, is always happening inside. It’s just whether we deny it or not. And I’ll tell a story of two different companies with whom

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

I worked

Jerry Colonna

over the last couple of years, one company, and this is following the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, the head of HR called me not knowing what to do, because everyone seemed to be fighting on Slack. Everyone was taking a position that was righteous and even had a logic, but it was the lack of tolerance, the lack of discernment, the lack of wisdom, was so bad that HR was spending its entire day shutting Down conversations on Slack. So there’s that one story, then there’s a counter story, which is a software company run by a good friend of mine named Rob Castaneda. I had him recently on my podcast, and we talked about how his company dealt with it, and I’m going to get the numbers incorrect, but the general direction is right? I think he has employees in something like 12 companies countries around the world. And several years ago, following the ME TOO movement, there were a lot of cultural reactions to sexual or gender discrimination and sexual harassment. And in answer to that, he started a tradition where which was, which seemed simple at first, but actually grew quite complex and helpful, which was anyone in in the country could apply to take days off to celebrate their local traditions on the condition that they tell a story on the company’s version of slack about what that tradition means to them and their family. So beautiful. Now I say this because when the divisiveness hit hard around the world, the team, 180 people, or something like that, already united, as to use your term, a group of souls. They were united in their splendid differences, another Bell Hooks term, right? They were united in Oh, wait, you do it this way. We do it this way. Isn’t that interesting? What kind of food do you eat?

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Right? Yeah, to

Jerry Colonna

your earlier point, it’s kind of hard to see that other person as the enemy when you know what meal they’re having for their harvest festival, right? So you contrast the two organizations, one very controlling with a very robust, you know, kind of training program where we teach people how to be nice to one another, and the other where they’re just nice to each other, yeah, and which was able to ride out the divisiveness moment.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Fantastic. You’re talking about, you know, Tale of Two Cities. Tale of Two Cities of times, the worst of times. And it all depends on what’s at the core there.

Jerry Colonna

Well, to your to your point, I would say, Rob runs this company with love,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

yeah, exactly, you know, at the core love, yeah, beautiful Tony,

Tony Martignetti

I’d like to, I mean, I love this, what you shared, Jerry. And I just wanted to add something to this where, you know, I think about my book, and. And this concept I bring at the very end around divergent minds, convergent hearts, you know, this idea that, like, we don’t have to always agree on things, and I hope we don’t always agree, because agreement does, you know, doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes, right? We have to sometimes have some friction along the way, so we have better ideas come to the table, but this convergent of hearts is about exactly what Jerry was was alluding to. Is this the sense that, like when you get to know people, their stories, the things that make them up, the things that the traditions, the the things that you know bring the the love into their life, and all the things that make them who they are, ultimately, you can’t not have a sense of respect and honor for them, and I think that’s where this convergent of heart means. It’s like we get to know each other, and we become part of our world together. And I don’t have to have the same political views in that view, in that, in that, in that place, but I can honor, respect you. Yeah, I can love you, which is ultimately, when we say love. It’s always so hard to say that at work, because we always think of the romantic love, but we have to be thinking, What does love really mean? Yeah, it means, in essence, that we have this admiration and, you know, Respect for others.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

I think there is a space for Eros in the world of work, which is really the core Entomology of Eros, that form of love, Greek definition of love, has to do with ultimate creation, and it can mean romantic love and things like that. But really, what you’re talking about is agape, which is more the divine love, the unconditional Divine Love, which is also by according to Greeks, considered the highest form of love. What else, anything else we want to cover touch on? I mean, we’ve just traversed some beautiful ground here and had what I would consider an enlightening conversation.

Jerry Colonna

I mean, you know, in a bit of vulnerability, I will say to the two of you how much I loved this conversation and how much I appreciate the stance that you both take in the world. And Steven, our relationship is new, but that doesn’t I mean the kinship feels real.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Yeah, thank you. I see that too. I feel that, and I appreciate that in both of you. Yeah, likewise,

Tony Martignetti

Steven, thank you so much for making this happen. I think it’s just a wonderful thing that you’ve created. And you know, it’s great. It gives it fills me with hope when I see that there’s people out there in the world who are making a difference, one person at a time, one company at a time, one book at a time. And I think that’s what we can do. We do we do what we can from where we are, and I think that’s important.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

Very good. Amen. Amen. Tony, how can folks find out about more of your work in the world?

Tony Martignetti

Yeah, the best place is on my website. I purpose partners.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Pretty active there. Yeah,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co

very good. And Jerry, how about you?

Jerry Colonna

The website is reboot.io reboot.io and I, too, am on LinkedIn. And Tony, I think that’s how we met. So, yeah,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co gentlemen, thank you for the wonderful conversation here today. That’s a wrap for this episode of beautiful business. If you’re hungry from moral wisdom and insights, be sure to visit matter consulting@matterco.co that’s matter co.co, there you can sign up for my widely read insights blog. It’s a weekly dose of business inspiration delivered straight to your inbox. And remember, there’s nothing more powerful than a united group of souls ignited in a common cause with love at the core. Until next time, keep building beautifully.

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