Nia Thomas [00:00:00]:
Hello, and welcome to the Knowing Self Knowing Others podcast, where we talk about self aware leadership with thinkers from around the globe. Join me, your host, Nia Thomas, as we talk to today’s guest.
Nia Thomas [00:00:12]:
Today, we have a remarkable guest. From pioneering eco friendly products to mentoring regenerative thinkers, our guest has left quite a mark on the business world. Welcome to the podcast, Jannine Baron.
Jannine Barron [00:00:26]:
Thank you, doctor Nia. It’s great to be here.
Nia Thomas [00:00:29]:
Janine is a visionary entrepreneur driven by the belief that businesses can be a force for positive change. She has a background rooted in sustainability and human rights activism. Janine’s journey has taken her from remote Aboriginal communities to the United Nations. And she’s a founder of Nature’s Child and the co creator of the revolutionary Huggabub baby carrier. Janine has consistently challenged boundaries and inspired new possibilities. Her mission to minimize the separation between individuals and nature has guided her through decades of impactful work. About a year ago, Janine did a TEDx talk on intuition, and if you haven’t watched it yet, I will make sure that there is a link in the show notes for you. She talked about how we can use intuition as an internal guidance system, and we’ll definitely be talking more about that.
Nia Thomas [00:01:22]:
Join us as we talk to Janine today about her extraordinary story and explore insights and driving transformation in business and beyond. Janine, it is brilliant to have you here. Tell us about your interesting career journey and how sustainability, intuition, and business mentoring has come together for you.
Jannine Barron [00:01:42]:
Well, thank you for that very generous introduction. That was lovely to listen to. Look, it came together as many things do in my life, very accidentally. I just sold my 4th company, Nature’s Child. We’d had that for 18 years. And I had this very rare grateful year ahead of me where I knew I could have a year off to recover, to heal, to explore myself, to think about myself. You know, my youngest child had left home. It was a beautiful transition point, and this is 2018.
Jannine Barron [00:02:15]:
I had run 4 different companies as you’d mentioned, and they were all nature based companies. The first being the huggerbob, which was, you know, an incredible experience. Again, I fell into that by accident. It was just that I had a need as a new mother and it didn’t exist. So there’s this confluence of events and that happened in 2018, which led to 2019 being the year of me. And what happened was people started calling me for advice. This is how the regenerative business mentoring
Nia Thomas [00:02:45]:
Okay.
Jannine Barron [00:02:45]:
The word regenerative is there because the word regenerative is there because I was literally regenerating. You know? My health, every cell of my body, my relationship to nature, my relationship to my environment, my children, my husband, every relationship was about to go through a rebirth. And I took myself on a journey and I got myself a beautiful business coach, a life coach, a naturopath. I got a whole support team together. I planned started taking calls of people who wanted business advice, and I realized this mentor business was calling me and I answered the call.
Nia Thomas [00:03:28]:
Yeah. Okay. Isn’t it strange how sometimes these things can find you? Mhmm.
Jannine Barron [00:03:33]:
Our job is to listen to the whispers when life does call us. And I recognized an unexpected moment where people wanted support from my own unique journey, and I had a very unique offering. So I I listened to the whisper as the beautiful Oprah Winfrey says.
Nia Thomas [00:03:51]:
Amazing. In this podcast, we’re interested in self aware leadership, you know, and before I ask you to tell us more about your your thoughts on intuition, tell us how do you define self awareness?
Jannine Barron [00:04:09]:
Self awareness to me is when you are conscious of choices you have in life. You’re conscious of your thoughts. You know that they are thoughts that can change. They’re not necessarily real. You know that you can act on thoughts or not. You know your weak areas in life, but you’re not limited by them. So you have a growth mindset, which means you are constantly working on yourself. You also know your strengths, and you’re also not limited by your strengths.
Jannine Barron [00:04:38]:
I think the simplest way to explain it is rather than defining yourself by a thought or a feeling, you have the ability to observe it and decide if you want it or not.
Nia Thomas [00:04:49]:
Oh, that’s that’s an interesting one. So you have that ability to I watched your TED talk and I really, really enjoyed it. And you define 3 layers of intuition and and as as I do when people are talking about models and layers, I’m always wondering about how it can fit with my model. But tell us about those 3 layers for for people who haven’t watched your your TED talk yet. Tell us about it.
Jannine Barron [00:05:19]:
Yeah. Thank you. And I I have to I often say to people, if you just watch the first 60 seconds, it’s very entertaining. And I think that opening story is a quite an extraordinary intuitive moment, in itself. So I talk about the three levels of intuition. The first one everybody recognizes. It’s the one most of us use. We may not be calling it intuition, but it’s when you think of someone and they phone you or you have a feeling to go to a certain place one day and something extraordinary happens.
Jannine Barron [00:05:48]:
And this is a kind of level of, you know, I call it the feeling level, but it’s also a place where we actually build our self confidence because we have gut feelings. We follow them through, and they either save us as a survival instinct or, something joyful happens. So I think that first level of intuition is something most of us use, you know, to find a good parking spot or, you know, just remember to take your umbrella out when it doesn’t look like it’s gonna rain. And it just gives us a lot of self confidence. So I think a lot of people use that anyway. But I also like to call it acceptable intuition. Level 2 is what I call inspiration. This is where it starts to get very interesting, and not everyone’s willing to trust this level.
Jannine Barron [00:06:30]:
So you can be quite playful with it, but you start to notice it is perhaps occurring and you’re choosing to engage it. So in the same way that you talked about self awareness before, you can, oh, I’m having that feeling rather than being in the feeling. You notice, I’ve got a feeling I should do that. And then you observe yourself having that feeling. And this can lead to, you know, really extraordinary creative projects. You know, this is where a lot of artists and writers stay in this space. And I think I used the example in the TEDx talk of Paul McCartney, who famously wrote yesterday very quickly because he heard the tune in a dream. But what he did was he got up and he he went straight to the piano and he actually took that action to turn it into something beautiful.
Jannine Barron [00:07:13]:
So not everyone acts on that kind of intuition. They’ll have dreams. They’ll they’ll get a feeling they should do something. But if they speak it out loud, often people around them may not support them. And that can really sort of it can dull your confidence. So you’ve got to be careful of level 2. It can really open your heart and open your mind or it can sort of stop you in your tracks because if people your loved ones who well meaning may criticize your ideas. Level 3 is where it gets really quite extraordinary.
Jannine Barron [00:07:40]:
And this is where you actually start trusting and accepting intuition as a methodology, which is what I do in my own life and my own business and coaching practice. You don’t question when it turns up. You hear it. You sense it, and you express it. That may sound simple, but it actually requires a lot of trust to do that. So it’s a conscious or an unconscious thought that appears in a moment and then you express it out loud and this is where a lot of the magic happens and this is where people who are might maybe known for you know, fantastic design and innovation, those people are trusting, you know, thoughts that may not make sense coming to them. It can feel a little bit psychic or predictive to some people, but this kind of intuition I’m talking about is very different to psychic intuition. So we I wanted to clarify that.
Nia Thomas [00:08:29]:
So that’s really fascinating how, as you say, we all have this intuition, but we may not be tapped into it or may not realize that it’s there. Or if we do sense it, we sometimes try and shut it off or because it doesn’t fit with the process or doesn’t fit within norms, we go, arc that and move on and do something else.
Jannine Barron [00:08:51]:
I think a lot of people in jobs right now every day often sense that something should be different, but perhaps they’re trapped in a hierarchy of decision making so they don’t always have the power to express that intuition. Or they feel like, there’s something just wrong with that project or there’s something wrong with that that site that we’re working with, and they just can’t explain it by logic necessarily. But it is actually a filter of unconscious knowledge throughout their life that is inviting that intuition to turn up.
Nia Thomas [00:09:19]:
That’s interesting. When I spoke to Lynn Turner a couple of episodes ago, she was saying that within the NHS, the you will have managers and line managers who know what they need to do, but the organizational policies just prevent them doing it. And that feels very much like I’ve got the gut feeling morally, intuitively. I know what I need to do, but the paper says do something different.
Jannine Barron [00:09:43]:
Yeah. And and it’s interesting because, you know, anyone listening might think, well, we have to have standards and we have to have procedures. And there’s a logic to that, and it’s difficult to argue that that doesn’t make sense. But we also know that people’s lives get saved in moments like this where someone just thinks, I’ve gotta do this now. And when they’re given permission to have that freedom or when they take the permission without the permission, extraordinary things happen. Extraordinary things happen. The thing is it’s not not based on logic for that person. So the all the research on intuition is showing us very much like self awareness, quantum theory or neuroscience that information actually gets filtered through us our whole lives.
Jannine Barron [00:10:27]:
And because we can’t hold everything we know in the present moment, it’s sitting in our brains like a library, like a database. And it comes out sometimes by you choosing for it to come out or searching for it going, it’s in there somewhere. Where is it? And other times it just appears. And that can feel a bit magical or psychic, but actually it’s just the information coming forward that the brain is storing saying in this moment, you can trust this feeling because that’s the right thing to do. That’s another definition of intuition.
Nia Thomas [00:11:00]:
So what is your opinion on self awareness and intuition? Do you see that there’s a connection there? Or and if so, what does that what does that connection look like?
Jannine Barron [00:11:09]:
Where sometimes you you can feel that thought coming forward. And if you understand self awareness, you would go, oh, there’s a thought. You’d look at that thought and go, that’s interesting. Does that fit this moment? And this all happens in milliseconds. I will act on that thought now. That self awareness is being able to be, like, almost like a character in your own story and to understand that there’s inputs, that come into that story that are not necessarily in your control, but you see them. I use the word see because, you know, it’s not not everyone’s visual, but it’s like you recognize it. It feels like it’s not in you.
Jannine Barron [00:11:46]:
It can sometimes feel like, where’s that coming from?
Nia Thomas [00:11:49]:
Yes.
Jannine Barron [00:11:50]:
You know? People might know it’s my, you know, it’s my auntie or it’s my friend coming to speak to me. And it and it might be that or it might be that information they gave you that’s coming forth in that moment. So in that way, it’s very similar to self awareness.
Nia Thomas [00:12:04]:
As you’re talking about that, it seems that it’s a a very deep level of introspection and reflection, and and listeners know my model of self awareness has got the 3 layers, reflection, recognition, and and regulation. And it feels like that the very center of that reflection that, I think often I talk about mindfulness as being one of the very, very fundamental layers of self awareness, but but it sounds like that when you talk about intuition, it’s it’s almost at that same level of being fundamental.
Jannine Barron [00:12:39]:
Well, you’ve just raised a very important point because in mindfulness practice, what you’re doing is often getting yourself into a present state where you’re uncluttered by thoughts. Some people will call this meditation. It might simply be called mindfulness. There’s various physical and thought based exercises with guided visualization where you are aided to get into a state of deep calm. Yeah? And this is fantastic, you know, for anxiety and all sorts of conditions. And there’s, a lot of empirical evidence to prove this is very, very effective. In fact, the NHS has adopted this in, of course, along with cognitive behavioral therapy as part of their practice now. So in getting in allowing your safe self to be in a state of calm, that what we’re calling intuition can come forward now.
Jannine Barron [00:13:33]:
Yeah. Because if you imagine you’re on a busy street and there’s just, you know, thousands of people, you can’t see the woman in the yellow jacket down the road. But if if there’s not many people on the street, it’s really easy to see the woman in the yellow jacket down the road. Yeah.
Nia Thomas [00:13:44]:
I’d rather
Jannine Barron [00:13:45]:
And your mind’s the same. So I think intuition is like the yellow jacket perhaps.
Nia Thomas [00:13:50]:
Well, that’s an intuition. There is definitely connection between that, and it almost feels like readying your your mind for intuition. I like that idea.
Jannine Barron [00:14:01]:
Yeah. Very much so.
Nia Thomas [00:14:02]:
Tell us more about your Nature’s Boardroom program. I I was checking out the, structure on your website, and it seems to me to be a way to really use nature to to guide introspection. And am I on the right track with that idea?
Jannine Barron [00:14:17]:
Absolutely. Nature is, along with intuition, one of the most beautiful free gifts that are accessible to every single one of us. And when we spend time in nature, and I’m not talking about dog walking or chatting to friends, I mean, time alone or in a guided situation as I do in the boardroom. It’s a obviously, it’s a play on words, calling it a boardroom, because the idea is that, you know, normally in a boardroom you have a table and chairs and you have an agenda and you have people trying to work things out with their minds. Hopefully people with self awareness. But when we go into nature, we’re saying, what if nature was the boardroom? Which means what if nature had authority in this space? And then we we have, coaching conversations and do business strategies in that environment. And very much like mindfulness and intuition, what comes forward is beautiful, creative, innovative ideas. But often even on a deeper level, people’s personal journeys are often revealed and resolved or as I like to say dissolved.
Jannine Barron [00:15:17]:
Because when we resolve something that requires some planning, but when we dissolve something, it’s energetically letting it find its own place a little bit like mindfulness. So Nature’s Boardroom is an extraordinary experience. It’s an experience that intuitively came to me. I was guided and I followed the feeling to go to the Avebury Stone Circle in Wiltshire and I’ve been taking people there ever since. There’s something very magical about the stones in themselves that really ignite, a spirit in people. It’s also the very fact that people have put aside and made arrangements for children and work and they’re actually giving themselves a day out and so they’re feeling a sense of peace. It’s part mindfulness, part strategy, but it’s, allowing us us for nature to bring forward messages around what the world needs and how we can support nature better in our business and life decisions.
Nia Thomas [00:16:10]:
I spoke to Alison Smith at one of the very early podcasts, and Alison uses metaphors from nature. Maybe we need a three way podcast where we’re having a conversation about this. It’s so interesting.
Jannine Barron [00:16:22]:
Anything that challenges our mindset is a healthy thing, as you know, in the self awareness space. And nature that it’s been measured. You know? It’s it nature literally affects our nervous system. They’ve measured how calm we can become. Forest bathing, the practice that came out of Japan, is the most famous example where they turned a whole generation of executives around who were stressed out and highly suicidal. And just by being in nature, your entire nervous system resets. And and in terms of, an organization, if we were taking an organization to nature’s boardroom, we talk about the inner nature, but we also talk about the outer nature, which is how people engage with the public. But, what actually happens in the boardroom is this process of evolution for people, which is self awareness, you know, on steroids, basically.
Jannine Barron [00:17:13]:
Yes.
Nia Thomas [00:17:14]:
Absolutely. If you’re a CEO or senior leader in your organization, please do get in touch. I’m interested in hearing more from leaders who are on their self awareness journey and can come and share with us on the podcast the twists, turns, and learning that they’ve experienced on the way. Get in touch with me via LinkedIn or drop me an email. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
Nia Thomas [00:17:41]:
Your leadership development philosophy is is it built on this idea of of regeneration? How do you describe a regenerative lead
Jannine Barron [00:17:51]:
Yeah.
Nia Thomas [00:17:52]:
And you would point to if if you were giving an example of a regenerative leader?
Jannine Barron [00:17:56]:
Yeah. Thank you. Look. Regeneration, the the word is rooted in biology. So very much you can imagine a cell in your body regenerating. So from something that is unwell to something that is well. Okay? So that’s the basic fundamental, molecule to think of. We apply that to farming and we see soil that is sick, which is affecting our food.
Jannine Barron [00:18:17]:
So regenerative farmers, also called agroforesters or organic farmers, they stop using chemicals and they look after soil health and stop putting inputs in and as a result, we get this healthy, beautiful organic food that’s more nutritious. So we we have enough evidence in the world to understand the word regeneration. What happens when we apply that to business and organizations is that we’re inviting a shift in worldview. We are inviting a shift in values. We’re inviting an unlearning process so that we can relearn from a different paradigm. Both Albert Einstein and my one of my favorite philosophers, Buckminster Fuller, you know, they say you can’t solve existing problems with the same thinking that created them. And there’s a reality right now that climate change is the biggest issue of our time. Well, you might say along with AI and a few other major revolutions.
Jannine Barron [00:19:13]:
We are in a poly crisis. We’re in this confluence of, poverty and war and supply chains and, economy suffering and, you know, people having cost of living crisis, and we call it a poly crisis because they’re connected. So in short, we’re feeling like this is a really massive time in life to be alive and to be operating in the world. And if we keep operating in the old way, which is degenerative and takes from nature and, you know, accelerates climate change, we’re putting our heads in the sand. So by being a regenerative leader and taking a regenerative approach to business or your organization, you’re pausing self awareness once again. In fact, it’s a kind of self awareness business. I hadn’t thought about that before. You’re pausing and going, if we keep operating the way we are, we are contributing to a larger societal problem.
Jannine Barron [00:20:05]:
So, therefore, how can we be different? So the first thing we’ve got to do is tell a different story. Okay. We’ve got a learn from nature. Nature is resilient and responsive. What does that mean? Nature is life affirming. Nature is always solving problems. So how can we look to nature to solve problems? You asked me about who would be a great example, and there are many, but who’s coming to mind right now is a company called Vivo Barefoot. I heard Clark who, the founder.
Jannine Barron [00:20:33]:
And they, have embraced this entire regenerative leadership, and it’s quite an extraordinary example of how a business can embrace, what we call regenerative economies. So you’ve got circular economy in in their business. You’ve got the sharing economy in there. In fact, 10th share is a wonderful model of sharing economy. So you’ve got these incredible business people out there genuinely trying to solve the problem of inputs, outputs, supply chains so that we can all just go to a shop and buy something or not buy some maybe buy something that’s reusable. So, yeah, it’s it’s a lot. It’s not one thing as you might be getting a sense of. It’s about you embracing your unique journey, which is why I, you know, I do guide people on that.
Jannine Barron [00:21:19]:
There’s frameworks we use, but it’s always to create a unique journey.
Nia Thomas [00:21:23]:
I think that’s it might be difficult, and I think I’m thinking about what what I do so listeners will know that I’m a director of a children’s charity. And I’m thinking, what I do isn’t necessarily about sustainability or or eco sustainability. How can I bring that into what I do? And I wonder whether there are people who work in the banking industry or in the production industry, and they’re thinking, how do I translate that into what are you doing? Is that part of what you do within your work?
Jannine Barron [00:22:00]:
Yeah, exactly. In fact, you’ve brought up a beautiful point there, which is, you know, people and businesses and organizations can be labeled as environmental organizations as if the rest of us don’t have to think about the environment. But every single organization has to be thinking like this because together we can contribute to change. So in an organization like a charity, for example, it could be looking at the hierarchical structure. It could be looking at the culture. It could be looking about how we can support people and their well-being more. And there’s a whole supply chain in the service of the delivery of that charity. There could be the branding and the messaging in that charity.
Jannine Barron [00:22:37]:
So there’s, you know, you have a lot of inputs in that. So there is a lot. In fact, I know people who specialize in charities around this work. So it’s powerful. It’s about people and nature, but not seeing people as central to the world. It’s about saying we’re part of a a larger ecosystem.
Nia Thomas [00:22:57]:
Oh, now that’s helpful. Talking about what we do as an ecosystem. That definitely helps me place where we are in that ecosystem.
Jannine Barron [00:23:06]:
Yes. Ecosystem is a really helpful word, and there’s a fantastic example in Holland. Their name escapes me, but it’s a health organization, and they have a regenerative business model. And it’s extraordinary and it’s expansive and it’s abundant for everyone involved and there’s some fantastic examples out there in the world. And so I love getting into an organization and helping people identify their unique way of being regenerative. It’s not a model that you stamp across everyone.
Nia Thomas [00:23:33]:
Interesting. I was reading your blog and you talked about being on a a retreat in Scotland in September 23, and you talked about it being a concentric leadership retreat. Yes. What is concentric leadership?
Jannine Barron [00:23:48]:
Well, I can tell you
Nia Thomas [00:23:49]:
that definitions. I’m loving it. I’m I’m sharing these words. I love learning words.
Jannine Barron [00:23:54]:
Thank you so much. Look. This is an emerging word, but everyone knows the word kin. Yeah? So we know what kin is, and we know that when you have kin, you are connected. So in indigenous wisdom, indigenous cultures, it’s you know, anthropologists have shown us that there is a kinship system. But the very fact that we look at, oh, that’s what indigenous people do as if it’s not what we do, that kind of thinking keeps us separate. So in concentrism, we say we are all interconnected, all species. It’s not human centric.
Jannine Barron [00:24:25]:
We all have equal value. So what voice do we give nature? What voice do we give animals and rivers? And, you know, at this point, you start losing people, but there’s actually legal precedence for this exact city. In fact, New Zealand was the very first country in the world that gave the Wanganooi River rights. So in a court of law, you could not pollute that river. So, Contenderism has really important ramifications, for helping us move through this crisis. It’s part of what I call the 13 wisdoms that I work with. And the the leadership retreat I went to in Findhorn was a world first. It was very exciting to be selected.
Jannine Barron [00:25:00]:
It was an application process and to be with people. And there was 4 retreats around the world. There’s 80 people. And we are currently in conversation about how to communicate concentrism as one of the ways to help heal the world. And it’s a very powerful work. I hope I’ve explained it well.
Nia Thomas [00:25:19]:
Yeah. Definitely.
Jannine Barron [00:25:20]:
That’s right. If you think of concentrism as humans are part of life. We are not all of life, but we’ve been going around acting like we are. We’ve had a very human centric, not just all humans though but, you know, like non Indigenous. We’ve seen ourselves as separate to other cultures. But if you think of weaving our humanity back into the web of life so that we’re all interconnected, that’s a powerful paradigm shift, and it’s a powerful restory of how the world needs to change, how our organizations need to change. And when I bring that thinking into business and marketing strategy, it’s it’s quite revolutionary. But it’s not new.
Jannine Barron [00:25:56]:
It’s an ancient world view. We’ve just called it indigenous or Celtic or, you know, ancient or this is how people used to be. It’s like, yeah, more connected.
Nia Thomas [00:26:06]:
And it’s definitely in alignment with that ecosystem idea with con concentrism, if I can say it properly. Mhmm. I recently read a book. It is Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie, and it talks about sustainability in a very different way to what we usually hear in the media. Interesting that that book has found its way to me, you have found your way to me, and these things are starting to come my direction, and there there’s something in that, isn’t it? Whether I’m looking for it or whether it’s finding me, it’s definitely there.
Jannine Barron [00:26:38]:
Love it. And I think this is the in the interconnection piece where we have to and you’re listening to the whispers. Things are put in your part. Beautiful. Yeah.
Nia Thomas [00:26:47]:
In your work, you are guided by the Centene United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which I haven’t heard of until I saw them on your website. But what I found really interesting, they are supported by 5 inner development goals of being, thinking, relating, collaborating, and acting. Now for me, self awareness it it’s self awareness is actually listed as an element of the being part of those 5 goals. How do you use the development goals in your work?
Jannine Barron [00:27:20]:
Right. So the sustainable development goals were produced from the United Nations, and they were designed as a framework to look at the international links globally and applying them locally with everything from poverty to wealth to education to diversity and inclusion. They really tried to cover all the issues, but all those issues were external issues. And as you being a lover of self awareness knows, so some very clever people came along. It was driven by the coaching profession actually. They said, well, what about the inner development goals? Because you cannot create external change in the world out first going on that inner journey. And if you don’t choose to go on the journey, you’ll be forced to because once you start trying to change anything, you are challenged on an inner level as you know so well. Yeah.
Jannine Barron [00:28:05]:
How do I use them in my work? So I think frameworks are really useful when we’re going through periods in change, whether it’s our organization or the entire world. Frameworks are a way, without being too prescriptive, providing us with a place to think and discuss things. So frameworks are very, very useful in that way. So the fact that you’re bringing this up as a as being being important and self awareness being as part of that, it gives someone who is new to this information a place to go. You give them a context. You say there’s the sustainable development goals externally, and now we have the internal goals. And this has been a growing movement. It’s really only been going for 2 or 3 years.
Jannine Barron [00:28:47]:
It’s quite young, and I’d really encourage you to get connected. And it’s open source, so they welcome inputs from everyone. It’s fantastic. So in my work, if I’m doing work with an organization or a leader, I’m doing private coaching and challenges arise, it’s I call it like one of my it’s something in my toolkit. So I liken myself to, professor Snape in Harry Potter. I feel like I’m not as grumpy as him, but I have a cupboard like him and it has hundreds and hundreds of jars. And in every jar, there’s a toolkit or piece of information that I can draw upon. So the inner development goal sit in what I call my toolkit.
Jannine Barron [00:29:28]:
And when I’m with someone, I’ll know intuitively if this is the right framework to bring forward.
Nia Thomas [00:29:34]:
Listeners, if you want to have a look at those, they are open and available to you. In one of your blog posts, you talk about mentoring. Given your extensive experience in, mentoring and coaching, along with a a pretty impressive track record of launching successful businesses and products, how do you describe your role, that that a mentor plays in in guiding people in in self awareness?
Jannine Barron [00:30:01]:
Yeah. Beautiful. So a mentor traditionally is someone who has knowledge and someone who doesn’t have the knowledge comes to the mentor to get the knowledge. That’s very different to coaching where you are a trained facilitator to ask good questions to help bring out the best in people. Yeah? So I combine the 2. So people will typically come to me saying, I wanna launch a brand or I want my company to be better for whatever reason. And you’ve done this before so, you know, you’ll you can be a mentor for us. So that’s often people’s starting point.
Jannine Barron [00:30:33]:
What most people don’t realize is that once they begin that journey, there’ll be challenges. There’ll be thought processes that need to be, digested and worked through. And this is where I draw upon one of my 100 jars. Actually, I call it the 13 wisdoms. I is what I work with. And so I just know when to bring something in. So one minute, we can be talking about product development and branding and what size print needs to go legally on a label and how to make sure you re make the guidelines legally for different, products. We can be talking about supply chains, how to move money around, successfully, how to bank in a a conscious way with pensions.
Jannine Barron [00:31:15]:
And so we can we can be doing all of that, and then I will notice a thought process. And then that’s when I bring the coaching in and I blend it. And so people get the best of both worlds with me.
Nia Thomas [00:31:28]:
What are 3 key things that leaders need to be, mindful of or aware of to be effective in the future? Because a lot of what we talked about today has is new. It’s burgeoning. So you you’re clearly interested in what’s coming over the horizon. What do people need to be looking out for?
Jannine Barron [00:31:47]:
Yeah. This is one question that you actually warned me you were gonna ask me, and I went around going, I can’t narrow this down to 3 things. And then I had a little talking to myself. So I went to my 13 wisdoms and I thought, okay. What are the 3 most important? Number 1, I do believe is concentrism. This is this less human centric view of the world. It’s regenerative by nature. Mindfulness is naturally a part of it.
Jannine Barron [00:32:14]:
Indigenous wisdom is central to it because that’s what we draw upon and nature’s wisdom is just inherent in the whole process of concentrism. So I’d say that’s the most powerful, except that we’ve kind of got it wrong. The world’s not really in a good place, and we need to think differently. So we start with understanding that everything we do is connected. So every decision we make is going to affect something or someone. So that’s a powerful, like, in one moment in itself to accept. Second is intuition. And I believe that’s the second one because it’s it’s a positive use of unconscious information as we’ve talked about.
Jannine Barron [00:32:53]:
You know, it allows us to make better decisions and take better actions from a place of calm, and then that bring we can bring neuroscience in there because neuroscience is about how the nervous system responds and so we need mindfulness again to settle our nervous systems. But when we understand that, when we’re in a stress state that our brain is and our nerves lead to bad decisions, then, you know, we have the science now to explain why we need to use calm and self awareness to have better behavior, better cognition, better physical and mental health. So there’s quantum theory in there as well, which is that relationship between energy and matter. So intuition is the number to it’s you see I’ve cheated a little bit and grouped them.
Nia Thomas [00:33:34]:
They are 2 big things so far.
Jannine Barron [00:33:36]:
And the 3rd by far is a coaching practice.
Nia Thomas [00:33:39]:
Okay.
Jannine Barron [00:33:40]:
Yeah. I’m very passionate about this because of this reason. For everything we’ve talked about today, we’ve talked about the importance of self awareness and a growth mindset. This is exactly what coaching cultivates. It empowers a leader. It always you should always ask a coach about their training, by the way, so I should probably qualify that. Coaches can be trained from different modalities. My personal training is based on biomimicry and systems thinking and design thinking, so which is that using nature to solve complex human problems.
Jannine Barron [00:34:09]:
So and design thinking challenges our assumptions and helps us redefine problems. So, you know, you would come to me if you wanted that, but you would come to someone else if you wanted a a different background. So what a coach has in common is, though, is the self awareness, promoting a growth mindset, and empowering people. And this is this is needed more than ever in our times.
Nia Thomas [00:34:31]:
That’s amazing. Thank you. That’s that’s that’s really a lot to think about. But before we go, I’m going to ask you a a bonus question. In your regenerative business mentor newsletter that came out today, one of your questions, what pleasure can you schedule for yourself this week? And I’m gonna ask you to answer that.
Jannine Barron [00:34:52]:
Thank you. Oh, I have 3 lots of wonderful pleasure scheduled. Okay. I have 2 dinner parties, which is unheard of. I know. But I’m in a I’m in London for a week catching up with people. But thirdly, on Thursday night, I’m booked in to go to it’s called People Planet Pint. And it has been this Wow.
Jannine Barron [00:35:10]:
Absolutely revolutionary electric movement where pubs all over the country, once a month, people with an interest in regeneration and sustainability come together. It’s sponsored by Small 99 and crystal, and they give you the 1st drink for free. That’s why they sponsor it. So I’ll give them a shout out. And most areas so I’m gonna go and try my first one. I’m not much of a drinker though. So we’ve been, nudging them to do a people planet pastry.
Nia Thomas [00:35:39]:
Love it. Brilliant.
Jannine Barron [00:35:40]:
Thank you for asking that. Appreciate it.
Nia Thomas [00:35:43]:
Janine, how can people get in touch with you? Because I think people will be very interested in finding
Jannine Barron [00:35:49]:
Oh, wow.
Nia Thomas [00:35:49]:
What you do.
Jannine Barron [00:35:50]:
I think the simplest way is I have a I have one link that leads you to everything. So this will take you to a menu of how to find me on social, how to join my newsletter, how to book a chat, some free videos, how to learn about nature’s boardroom to see the TED talk and also this powerful program I run called the Growth Experience. So it’s literally just one page with all the links, but it is Linktree. So it’s linktrdot double e. That’s where it gets tricky. Forward slash Yep. E, baron. So it’s link tr.double e, forward slash, j a nninebarr0n.
Nia Thomas [00:36:36]:
Wonderful. And we will make sure that there’s a a link to your Linktree in the show notes too. Janine, it’s been really, really interesting. I’ve learned loads, through our conversation today, and, I’m looking forward to having more of your newsletters. And so thank you so much for joining me.
Jannine Barron [00:36:50]:
Thank you so much. You’re providing, a wonderful space here to have conversations that I don’t get to normally have as well. And you’ve really been a pleasure to talk to. So thanks, Doctor. Meyer.
Nia Thomas [00:37:00]:
Oh, thank you so much.
Nia Thomas [00:37:03]:
Thank you for joining me in this episode as we look to develop self aware leaders around the globe to generate kinder, more respectful, and creative working relationships through reflection, recognition, and regulation. Join me next week as I talk to my next guest. Looking forward to having you on my learning journey.
Looking forward to having you on my learning journey!
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Nia is an expert leader who talks the talk and walks the walk. She is an academically awarded thought leader in self-aware leadership and practices self-aware leadership every single day in her role as a Director in a Children’s Charity.
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Transcript of The Knowing Self Knowing Others Podcast. Discussing self-aware leadership with thinkers around the globe