Healing Leaders - by Raj Sisodia & Nilima Bhat (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In a world where businesses often create more harm than healing, this transformative guide shows leaders how to heal themselves first--because only whole leaders can build truly healthy organizations.

Leadership shouldn't cost us our souls, yet too many leaders find themselves spiritually and emotionally exhausted, leading organizations that drain rather than nurture human potential. This book offers a different path--one where personal transformation becomes the foundation for positive organizational change.

Written by conscious business pioneer Raj Sisodia and transformational expert Nilima Bhat, this book guides readers through seven essential steps of inner healing that ripple out to create healthier organizations:

• Know your self--Strip away the masks you wear as a leader to discover who you truly are.
• Love your self--Learn to embrace all parts of yourself, even the shadows you try to hide.
• Be your self--Find the courage to lead authentically, not just effectively.
• Choose your self--Take back authorship of your leadership story.
• Express your self--Channel your unique gifts into meaningful impact.
• Complete your self--Bring together all parts of yourself into wholeness.
• Heal your self--Transform your wounds into wisdom that serves others.

Through vulnerable personal stories, practical exercises, and real-world applications, this book provides a road map for leaders who are ready to begin their healing journey--not just for their own sake but also for the healing of the organizations and communities they serve.

Review Quotes

"In my work with executives at Harvard Business School and throughout my own leadership journey, I've seen how essential it is for leaders to take care of themselves to effectively lead others. In Healing Leaders, Raj and Nilima offer a powerful guide to this inner work that enables purposeful, human leadership."
--Hubert Joly, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; former CEO, Best Buy; and bestselling author of The Heart of Business

"Healing Leaders is an inspiring invitation to see leadership as an act of healing. Raj Sisodia and Nilima Bhat share seven transformative steps to help us lead with authenticity and love, showing how healing ourselves can heal the world. This book is an essential guide for leaders who long to make work a place of wholeness and profound human flourishing."
--Chip Conley, New York Times bestselling author and founder of the Modern Elder Academy

"Healing Leaders is a rare and beautiful gift -- a book that reminds us that the path to great leadership begins with knowing, loving, and healing ourselves. The seven steps heartfully offered by Raj and Nilima are useful, practical, and deeply spiritual."
--Chade-Meng Tan, bestselling author of Search Inside Yourself and Buddhism for All

"Healing Leaders is a timely and inspiring guide for anyone seeking to lead with greater wholeness. Raj and Nilima offer a powerful, action-driven framework for transformation. Grounded in seven essential steps, this book is more than a read; it's a healing journey and blueprint for a much-needed leadership upgrade."
--Karen Guggenheim, Founder and CEO, World Happiness Summit

"With wisdom, wit, and just the right amount of tough love, Raj and Nilima show that the only thing riskier than ignoring your wounds is letting them pick your next team-building exercise. Heal yourself, lead better, and maybe even stop yelling at your printer. Healing Leaders is your seven-step program to not just outward success, but to something far more important: inward sanity."
--Raj Raghunathan, Zale Centennial Professor of Business, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin

"Healing Leaders is not just a book. It is a powerful manual for personal growth that also propels others around you on their own journeys. We are all wounded. We are all bleeding from a thousand psychological cuts. It is only when you begin to heal yourself that you can truly help others. Sisodia and Bhat offer you a blueprint for curing yourself. What happened to you is important. The stories you tell yourself about what happened to you is much more important. Sisodia and Bhat help you tell better stories. Stories with immense curative powers."
--Srikumar Rao, executive coach, TED speaker, and creator of the course "Creativity and Personal Mastery"

"Healing Leaders beautifully illustrates the truth that effective leadership starts with inner work. What I love about this book is that it is practical. Laced with timeless wisdom, Raj Sisodia and Nilima Bhat's inspired seven steps provide a practical and inspiring framework for developing the consciousness and capacity leaders need to heal themselves and their organizations. This is a vital guide for any leader seeking to create lasting impact and foster a culture of wholeness."
--Bob Anderson, Founder and Chief Knowledge Officer, The Leadership Circle

"Leadership is not dominance--it is a certain sacrifice. Leadership is not about ruling someone--it is about making someone's life. Any leader who does not feel a sense of oneness and inclusiveness with the people around him cannot be a genuine leader. Today, thanks to technology, human beings are empowered like never before. So it is most important for everyone, particularly leaders whose decisions affect millions of lives, to embrace conscious and inclusive leadership. I am sure this book will go a long way in helping to create a conscious planet. Let us make it happen."
--Sadhguru

"There has never been a more urgent need for leaders to commit to their own development if they are to be truly of service to others and to society. Raj Sisodia and Nilima Bhat have written a masterful, comprehensive, and engaging guide to the many dimensions of genuine inner development. Combining years of experience with deeply authentic descriptions of navigating their own challenges and inspiring stories from many senior leaders, this book is sure to become an outstandingly valuable resource for any leader in these troubled times."
--Nicholas Janni, Cofounder, Matrix Development, and author of Leader as Healer, UK Business Book Awards Business Book of the Year 2023

"Leaders of all types, first and foremost of oneself, are at a pivotal point. A new modality is desperately required if we are to create a viable future. I believe Nilima and Raj have identified such a path that when implemented can lead oneself, one's organization, and the world at large into a new paradigm."
--Stephen Badger, former Chairman, Mars, Incorporated

"Luminous...life-altering. Healing Leaders: Seven Steps to Recovery of Self is the best book on leadership development I have ever read in the field of management. Evolving holistically and growing in alignment with the most profound truths and positive powers of who you are is not just a box to check. It's a lifelong task. The world-renowned Raj Sisodia and Nilima Bhat have gifted each of us--and the entire field of leadership development and continuous betterment--with powerful pathways and profound practices to help leaders turn hard setbacks, unhealed wounds, and chaotic turbulence into fertile forces for not only healing and resilience, but also for propelling one's intrinsic gifts to lead. For me, reading this book was a wake-up call for depth. Everything else in leadership coaching and development now looks so superficial. This is a masterful volume for every leader, whether young or old, who wishes to be fully alive, building better businesses and better worlds."
--David Cooperrider, Distinguished University Professor, Case Western Reserve University, and author of The Business of Building a Better World and Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change

About the Author

Raj Sisodia is a founder and chairman emeritus of Conscious Capitalism, president of Awaken Inc., and professor and chairman of the Conscious Enterprise Center at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. He earned a PhD in marketing and business policy from Columbia University. He is the author of sixteen books, including the New York Times bestseller Conscious Capitalism. He resides in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Nilima Bhat is a former distinguished professor, faculty of excellence at Tecnológico de Monterrey, as well as a former executive with senior roles at ESPN, ITC Hotels, and Philips. She currently divides her time between her consultancy Roots and Wings (clients include Etsy, Tata, Microsoft, and YPO), her wellness center set in the Indian highlands, and her advocacy of Shakti Leadership through her international course. She resides in Pondicherry, India.