TrueLife - Chianti Huang PhD - Psychedelics for Performance Enhancement Leadership

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Chianti HuangAloha! I’m excited to introduce our guest today, Chianti Huang. Chianti is a pioneering leadership scholar and Ph.D. researcher at Pepperdine University, specializing in the performance use of psychedelics for leadership. She’s also the founder of The Psychedelic Way and an accomplished leadership coach based in the New York City Metropolitan Area.Chianti’s journey began with a thriving career in finance and consulting, where she worked with prestigious Big Four firms, including Deloitte. After her time at Deloitte, she founded LadyCan, a global organization dedicated to inspiring, engaging, and empowering women in leadership positions. Her entrepreneurial spirit then led her to the AI tech startup scene, working with the Dubai government on international AI projects under the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF).Chianti’s passion for leadership research has driven her to pursue a Ph.D. in Global Leadership at Pepperdine University, where she has pioneered new academic theories and frameworks for leadership performance. Her interdisciplinary research connects the fields of leadership and behavioral science, applying industry best practices to design and facilitate events that help leaders and teams build capacity, agility, and resilience.As a coach, Chianti works with agency leaders and teams to achieve optimal performance, using data to implement strategies that improve organizational structures and enhance business processes. Her groundbreaking research into the performance use of psychedelics has faced many challenges, but her dedication led to the creation of The Psychedelic Way, a venture supporting entrepreneurs and CEOs in integrating Eastern philosophy and research-based frameworks into their lives.Chianti plans to present her leadership research and preliminary findings at prominent global conferences next year, continually reshaping the field of leadership study with her groundbreaking theory of “Psychedelic Leadership.”Please join me in welcoming Chianti Huang!Thepsychedelicway.comhttp://linkedin.com/in/chianti-huang-mba-ph-d-candidate-63a4b090 One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearers through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope the sun is shining. I hope the birds are singing. And I hope you are ready to have your mind.

blown about the future of leadership because I have with me today the incredible Kianti Wang PhD leadership coach and I'm excited to introduce her today. She's really doing some pioneering work and the ideas that let me just introduce it like this. Kianti is a pioneering leadership scholar and PhD researcher at Pepperdine University specializing in the performance use of psychedelics for leadership. She's also the founder of the psychedelic way and an accomplished leadership coach based in New York metropolitan area. County's journey began with a thriving career in finance and consulting where she worked with prestigious big four firms, including Deloitte. After her time at Deloitte, she founded Lady Can, a global organization dedicated to inspiring, engaging, and

empowering women in leadership positions. Her entrepreneurial spirit then led her to the AI tech startup scene, working with the Dubai government on international AI projects under the Dubai Future Foundation. Kianti's passion for leadership research has driven her to pursue a PhD in global leadership at Pepperdine University, where she has pioneered new academic theories and frameworks for leadership performance. Her interdisinciplinary research connects the fields of leadership and behavioral science, applying industry best practices to design and facilitate events that help leaders and teams build capacity, agility, and resilience. As a coach, Kianti works with agency leaders and teams and teams to achieve optimal performance, using data to implement strategies that improve organizational

structures and enhance business processes. Her groundbreaking research into the performance use of psychedelics has faced many challenges, but her dedication led to the creation of the psychedelic way, a venture supporting entrepreneurs and CEOs and integrating Eastern philosophy and research-based frameworks into their lives. Kianti plans to present her leadership research and preliminary findings at prominent global conferences next year, continually reshaping the field of leadership study with her groundbreaking theory of psychedelic leadership. Please welcome me and joining, I'm sorry, please join me and welcoming Kianti. How are you today? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me today. It's going to be a very

fun conversation. So I'm looking forward to start it to explore all this topic that we're going to be covered today. Yeah, I agree. I'm so excited to see the world of psychics, beginning to move past the medical container. And I think you're pioneering that on some level. You're starting to dig into these ideas about psychedelics and leadership. And I just wanted to give you maybe some time to kind of give us a bit more background on that. Like how did that come to be?

Like what's going on there? Right. I think I went through a very interesting personal journey as a human, as a leader, and also, I guess as a scholar right now. I am finishing my PhD at Pepperdine University right now. This is my six years. It's been a long way here. My story, it's very,

my story is very interesting because I was born and raised in Beijing, China. I spent 18 years in my country and came here, did my undergrad, MBA, and now to my PhD. So it's been 16 years in this country observing a lot of very interesting things. And what really led me to where I am right now in terms of my career as a leadership, psychedelic leadership coach, and also a researcher and scholar leading, pioneering the performance use of psychedelic, especially psilocybin in the leadership capability, in the leadership context, is that, you know, just like yourself, I used to work for big company and cooperation. And in that process, I feel like part of the human aspect of me is getting squished.

And that's when I'm trying to really starting a new kind of direction into building a platform and community to inspire female leaders. So that was kind of always my heart even before this PhD started in the leadership, global leadership study. So therefore, I had my company called Lady Can for a couple years, not too long, but it was really dedicated to inspire, engage, empower female leader and female founders. And so after that, I started to work for an AI startup company and in which the experience taking me to run international project was due by government and such and such. But during that process, when I was living and working in Dubai for nearly five months, I realized the patriarchical culture

in the Middle East where I have never experienced myself as a female business woman. So that kind of experience then really facilitated in making the decision of getting a PhD in leadership. because I think that I saw a lot of problem that at the time I was unable to solve with the level that I'm in right now. And I was really inspired to really get into the subject of leadership study and the theory and everything to understand how can I cultivate a better leader for tomorrow. Because we are in a very, very interesting, and I would say even somehow strange,

situation right now in the world. And I think right now to be a great leader, to be able to navigate through a very, very complicated landscape, plus all the crisis that we're facing as a humanity together, it's requiring different part of the leadership skill, right? I would always say, you know, to my friends, you know, who is not in the field. Like, I feel like right now, The leadership itself, this concept, is facing a lot of challenges right now. Because before the internet and cell phone was invented, we have a lot of the world leader coming in. And they can be the person that they wanted to show, right? They can act like a certain person or the facade they wanted to show.

Right now, the things are very different. You have cell phone everywhere, you know, to be a good leader, their eyes on you, you have to be authentic. You have to be yourself. So that's why I think the modern age of leadership is very different. So we need new ideas, new knowledgees, new theory, new framework to support not just the achievement for the leader, but also the development, the self-development, the leadership development. In my framework, I call them the capability development because as a leadership coach, I focus more on what I call the inner game of leadership, a.k.a. the mental game. I believe that today's leader, the biggest enemy and the biggest

limitation is themselves, is their own brain, is their own mind that is limiting them for making more achievement and performing better and making better decisions. So I look at what I call, called a iOS system, the internal operating system of the leader himself, and really trying to identify how this person work from the very deep mental model perspective. How do you make sense? How, what is your meaning making system? What is your value? You know, what is your problem solving style?

You know, what is your code of contact? and what is your moral? And I think all of these are very, very important in the integration of leaders' mindset. And that's what I'm trying to really achieve also with the research I'm doing. So as a leading scholar in the performance use of psychedelic, especially on psilocybin, I started this journey of inquiry about two years ago.

Actually, more than two years ago, almost two and a half years ago, when myself was situating myself in a very much like a tech bubble. You know, I used to live in LA, now I'm in New York. But there's a lot of people around me, the Silicon Valley founders and, you know, the tech leaders are already been utilizing psilocybin specifically to their performance.

So I do recognize that, right now there's a lot of attention, energy, and movement on proving the safety use and the legalization of the substance. But the reason why I choose to work with psilocybin specifically for my own research is because I believe the accessibility for psilocybin. We're talking about fungi. It's very low. You can't control. We're growing mushroom. And I think a lot of people here didn't know that in many, many culture, right, not just in the Aztec or in the Peruvian culture, they have psychedelic. In Chinese culture, we also have psychedelic. It's in an indigenous area, which largely is indigenous population in Yunnan. It's translating to the south of the cloud, which is very beautiful, because part of the province is sitting on a very high altitude, deep mountain.

Half of it is kind of sitting on a jungle-like environment. So mushroom is one of the most famous food locally, and people would go into the forest, going to the jungle, and just, you know, do edible mushroom. But right now, because we in China is, we don't understand, not even the therapeutic value of so it's still very much illegal in a sense that people perceive mushroom poisoning as what it is. You're sending to the hospital. Oh, you see the little smirms. You see a little spirit and stuff. Oh, it's because you're poisoned.

So we're very behind kind of in the psychedelic kind of movement here. But I would argue that in terms of mindfulness and maybe consciousness, the Eastern ideology and religion have a little stronger backbone than the Western science side. So that's, I think, is very, very interesting because the mushroom that we're talking about, it's everywhere, this fungi. And we really know nothing about them. Right now, I think we have nearly 3,000 type of mushroom discovered, and we probably edible, probably 200, 300 type that we discovered. And these 3,000 type of mushroom we so far discover only consists of very, very small amount, you know, from what I read is something like 0.03%, not even.

like with the entire fungi family. And the concept of neuroscience and a lot of the brain science, I think that kind of originated from the mushroom because they're all interconnected and that's how they communicate. So all this background that I have and the interest and my particular interest in, you know, getting into understand human and performance and leadership kind of let me to where I am right now.

Yeah, thanks for filling that in. I think it's important to understand someone's framework and the way in which they view themselves in the world in order to understand the work they're doing. I think you did a good job at defining that. I'm hearing a lot of ideas about dimensionality and awareness, you know, from being to Dubai to living in China to being in L.A. and New York, all these different cultures and subcultures that you're around. Are there some interesting three? through points or some threads that run through all these different communities and performance enhancing psychedelics that you're seeing. I think the landscape for each part of the world that I experience regarding the practice

and the use and the developments of psychedelic, it's wildly different. And I think about the Western world as a comeback because there's There is a deep history and linkage toward using psychedelic as exploration for mindfulness, consciousness, self-awareness on any level. But in my personal experience, where it's most talked about is in the Western culture. But what is mostly understood on a spiritual, religious, or ideological, or ideological, or a mental level, the understanding, I think is still rooted in the Eastern culture,

belief, practice, and knowledge is. Because I do think that when we do talk about substance use, right, it's very liberal, it's very liberal in America, right? And that's, in my opinion, very westernized approach to the problem because here people like to have something figure out already. You don't want to wait, you want to figure out. And therefore, I think a lot of the psychedelic practice in the Western society tend to be more, there's modality and there's also the formality of it. Right. So here, I think when you are talking about spirituality, the first

image I would think most people here think about is something like this. Meditation, a posture that you are in, you know, a certain practice that you have. But in Eastern ideology is more about, It's less about the formality of it, but more about the practice of it. And very simple and probably not a perfect example is that here, people are like, okay, I need to get into a certain state, and I'm going to use meditation to induce that state, to have that experience. And it's very much like I'm going to be sitting in an empty, quiet room and do my process. And that's all great, right?

But sometime I feel like I can meditate where I'm waiting in the line. For five, ten minutes, I can close my eyes and that's where I feel centered. That's my practice. So what I'm trying to say is the eastern is more focused on the actual practice. And the Western is a little bit more focused on like the environment, the formality, the meaning of everything behind it. Yeah, that makes sense. When I talk to a lot of people in the Western world, they're often talking about meaningful experiences and connection.

That's very important. Right. Very important because everything we do, we make sense of it through meaning making. Right. And it seems in Western leadership, there's an absence of meaningful communication from the people at the very top and the people that are actually working in the facilities. It's like this divide or disconnection. there on some level. Is that,

do you think the psychedelics, is that something you're investigating with psychedelics and Western leadership? Yes. My angle and my lengths toward getting into this kind of exploration and my research is really from a perspective of how psychedelic, especially psilocybin, enable leader to perform better.

So my framework, let me use an analogy to this. So in terms of capability, I believe that everybody has a plate. That's your ability to handle things, right? And life always throwing up things unexpectedly. And I describe the leadership capability as your leader, and when your plate, it's very strong and big and sturdy,

at that period of time that you can handle more. You can handle more stuff that is happening for you, right, throwing onto your plate. But sometime that when we're stressed or not centered or not synchronized with your true purpose of life and everything, we feel very misaligned and we feel overwhelmed. And this is when I use the analogy of the plate, the capability is becoming more fragile and more thin. So any extra piece of stuff that's throwing onto your plate suddenly feel very, very overwhelming. So I believe that for a leader in order to maintain that performance and efficiency, the ability to make the most effective and the best decision,

you have to try to maintain a bigger and sturdier plate because leadership is very lonely. It's a very, very long. I went through it myself. And that's why as an entrepreneur, I had a lot of understanding and sympathy. and empathy actually, to understand what it takes to be a leader and what they have to sacrifice or give up to do the work that they wanted to do right now. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What do you think is the relationship in a leadership framework between sacrifice and

surrender? I think sacrifice. It's a self, it's a very, it's a very, strong word, for example, right? And Sacrify is that you believe that you have done something that maybe is not necessarily, right? And that itself put you into a more negative pattern of thinking. And the second word that you mentioned is what? Surrender? Yeah. Surrender by the essence is acceptance. is the first thing you have to really accept who you are and the situation you are in.

And believe it or not, for a lot of leader, this is hard. Because in order to do what they have been doing, or in order to run or fly or race, let's say, in this world, for that speed, sometimes there's no mercy. Sometimes you can't stop. Sometimes there's not space for you, you know, to make reflection or think about that, you know, everything happens, make perfect sense. So I think that tied to ego, of course, tied to the leader's identity and how much that they are, how much they don't want to let go.

Because Eastern philosophy, especially Taoism, is really just focusing on the idea of shifting your mind. So it's not about the resolution of the problem. It's about the elimination of the problem. Right? So the problem disappear. That's really, I know that sounds like a really hard to achieve in practice. But that's in the essence.

That's what Taoism is. It's shift your mind because Taoism is all about nature. the Tao is the algorithm of the universe that nobody really supposed to know, right? I really believe that, you know, of course, I read a lot about all interesting stuff, religion, technology, you know, all sort of stuff. But I really believe that for a human being, we have two programs that we cannot run out of, no matter how our technology going to develop. First of all, we cannot avoid deaths because death is a program.

It's part of our program. That's make everything meaningful. If we all live forever, there's the meaning for that. Probably a new layer of meaning if everybody can reach 200 years old at some point. The second algorithm that we cannot run out of is this universe. with the human nature and how we're designed physiologically, psychologically, biologically. We cannot really hack.

Of course, we wanted to know the answer. We wanted to have the wisdom to understand the universe. But I think that we were designed not to be able to. If you look at quantum physics and physics and everything, it's just crazy. You understand how big the universe. universe is and the growth is exponential. And to get out of our solar system,

going to take like yesterday I watched this video, I believe it's about 40 million, so 40,000, yeah, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time, almost impossible. So that's why it makes it interesting, right? Because we have this life that we We are in right now collectively and we are all trying to figure out what is the meaning of this life, whatever the religion you choose to, you know, rely on to get your answer,

to get your truths, right? I'm more like Eastern, but I also study a little bit of the Christianity. I study a little bit Judaism. I study a little bit Islamic when I was in, that's another world. And it's very complicated. And I would like to spend another episode and talk about it. It blows my mind to see, particularly in the Western world, and maybe some multinational corporations.

But, you know, when I think of like Fortune 500 companies, I think of companies who have built a business model that's built on exponential growth. And you've spoken briefly about this idea of just conquering and growing and growing, but, you know, death makes everything meaningful. I'm hopeful that the psychedelics may introduce that into some of the leaderships, which will translate into a better understanding of how we work together with nature, sort of like the Eastern culture. I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on that?

And might psychedelics play a part in that, kind of catching up the Western ideas of leadership to the Eastern ideas? Yeah, that's a great question. So first of all, I think the essence about psychedelic that we're talking about plant, and it is plant medicine, right? So of course, the Eastern culture have a little bit more history and the root of the application and the utilization of that, right? The first book that we have in China

that really talk about confirming the benefit for herbs is one of the most famous book called Bencao Gang Mu. It's basically a person, a doctor, hundreds years ago. I'm not sure about the history. But very, very long time ago, even thousand years ago, he tasted a lot of the plant on the earth, of course, of course, in the Chinese area or in the region. And he write down this, and this is kind of the basic for a lot of the Chinese medicine right now that we're still practicing and utilizing. But I think in speaking of psychedelic itself, it's a medicine.

medicine or substance or whatever, however you want to call it. And the nature value of that, I think that's the reason why, you know, the five classic psychedelic academy, MDMA, DMT, psilocybin, ibogaine, I only choose to study and do research with psilocybin or DMT. I personally don't have experience with DMT yet. I heard wild you know, experience and personal subjective experience with that. But I really believe psilocybin, it's a little bit unique in the group of the whatever 5-10, you know, psychedelic that we're commonly talk about right now because it's from nature, because it's fungi, you know, I really believe, you know, the magical or the potential of mushroom.

because now we have already discovered the functional use of mushroom that is proven. So I really believe that psilocybin specifically have a lot of potential to be discovered, to be studied, to be uncovered, and to be reviewed. Because psychedelic existed for a very long time in human history, no matter as Aztec, Mayan, whoever utilizing it for spiritual purposes. I went to a Maya ruin before. And before I was standing in front of the ruin, I don't think I had that connection or that imagination or that understanding about how they do the human sacrifice. We have a lot of human sacrifice in Shang Dynasty.

in China. So that was very early. That was like, forgive me on this. I'm probably not very accurate on years, but probably 2,000 years, something like a thousand years ago. And I kept thinking about that. I kept thinking about the evolution of humanity. Why do we do this, right? Of course, it's usually the war, you know, whoever lost the war being sacrificed. But when I actually went to the Maya ruin, I realized not everybody can be satisfied. is usually the lead or the head or like a very spiritual person from your enemy and they lost war and they are eligible to do that. And the process of human sacrifice is also, of course, it's very bloody, it's very barbarian, but I also can sense that the spiritual implication of it,

Because they pretty much lay the person on the altar, which is on the top of this shape, and they skin the person. Whoa. I remember it right. They peel the skin. They take the heart out. And it's very methodical. I'm sure every procedure have an implication for it. And from what I remember sometime, they wear the skin of the deceased spirit and they dance with it.

of course this is all conducted by Shannon there. So the entire process after I study it, I think is very interesting. And I think this type of ceremonial interpretation or the use of psychedelic in conjunction with that, it's beyond what we are doing psychedelic recreationally right now. Yeah. Right? So that's what I feel like the really connection to the nature is that we're. when you are experiencing that, the life and the death and the medicine and the nature altogether.

I think that's a very different experience. Yeah. I think on some level it would be interesting if we brought back this sort of sacrifice. Like if one company takes over another company, they get to skin the CEO and they take. I know that's not so brutal, but in some ways, I feel like the CEOs are taking the heart out of the people that, They're sacrificing their workers on a lot of levels. But they don't respect us, right? Not at all.

Not at all. In front of us, we all appreciate. We all respect. We all hope it better. But what you're talking about is very interesting, which is, yeah, it's kind of realistic right now. We sacrifice a lot of employee. A lot. A lot of them.

You know, people never done before in my tech sector, everybody. is even nervous about, you know, we're meeting off. That's, I've never seen this before, you know. Yeah, it's interesting to see where we're at. And do you ever get the feeling that, you know, the same way that particularly psilocybin sort of comes in waves and it has a, you know, like a four to six hour period of elevation and then come down? Do you think that there's patterns like that for leaders in the West,

and East. Is there styles of leadership that come up and then come down the same as psychedelics? Is it seasonal? And are those two things related? That's a very interesting question. I'll try my best to answer. Sorry, for the peak time in synchronization with the rise and fall of the modern leadership. I would like to focus on the second part of this. I don't know too in detail about the peak time and the subjective experience here. But I really think that the modern age of leadership require so much understanding and awareness of self

and also so much understanding and awareness and more importantly, connectiveness, the sense of connection with other people. But the sense of connection start with self. If you can't even yourself, how can you connect with other people, right? So the question you're asking is really about three keywords, which is kind of in alignment with my ongoing research right now that I just finished collection of the first round of the data by survey. It's how important is empathy, and collaboration, right, teamworking, right?

I think these are the three kind of guiding principle, because I can't speak for my data right now before I don't have it. But these are the three anchor kind of for my research. I'm very, very curious to explore and to understand how ego and, you know, empathy play a role. Because I do believe as what you said before, you know, just. for example, the human sacrifice, which is kind of inappropriate to talk about. Totally, totally is. But we need a leader that recognize. Yeah.

We are doing their own version of compromising and hardworking in their own way. And they also deserve, you know, to treat as a human rather than a machine, rather than a number in your sheet, you know, when you have to report that. And I think that's the problem of the modern society and that's a problem of the modern leadership right now. Because you could have very conscious leader. You could have very servant type of leadership that they really care about people and human first. Right. But then the reality is that to be where they are right now, to sit in that the position, sometimes is very conflicting. because they will hear from the stakeholder.

They want to see that growth. They want to see that number. That's the single definition, the factor to define success of leadership. And if we can have more metrics to define who is a better leader, not just rely on the number. I think that's when things can start changing. Yeah, I agree 100%. It's a beautiful way to think about it.

And I'm curious about your research on the aspect of, are you investigating individual leaders with psilocybin? And on top of that, are you investigating the way leaders interact with their immediate team and their employees using psilocybin together? I mean, what does the study look like? So the study went through several versions of redesign. version of them because at the very beginning I think the truth that what I'm trying to get understand how psilocybin can impact on leadership performance on leadership capability

starting from the idea of go ahead and interviewing CEOs who have transformed the experience but because there's IRB which is the institutional review board in academia And they really exist in protection of the confidentiality and the safety of my study subject, which is my participant right now. They have a little bit more stringent kind of procedure in terms of evaluating the risk. So in their eye, if I'm going ahead and interview CEO, that'll be a higher risk. And it's going to take longer time for the study to approval, which, I do understand in this modern time because psychedelic is not fully legal yet.

And if you interview CEOs, and even though they self-willing to disclosure or they don't really care that much, it's still a risk. Because, you know, their stakeholder can't, don't like it. And they are like, well, you're talking about this. Therefore, I have to really think through the design of my methodology. And right now, instead of interview the leader themselves, I am now collecting data and what I call the secondary data, and hand data, access to knowledge through the lens and the perspective of practitioners, therapists, coaches, podcast, you know, you are a person that traditionally not an expert in this field, which I'm looking for in my participant expert,

but you have access to knowledge. So in this process, I also have to interview and really conjure a lot of the expert and thought leader in psychedelic industry to understand, as a researcher, come in to do this study, to do this research, what can I make, establish as my inclusion criteria, to define who are the expert in this industry. Because this is an emerging field and it's very new.

A lot of my classmates in the PhD program, when they look for participant, they can just put a number. In this vertical, we're looking for a person, 20 years of experience. And I realize that if I put that in, I get nobody, but probably feel of the generational shaman, if I'm lucky. So I have to really go ahead and understand who is expert in this industry and how do I define them? How can I include them? How can I collect those insight for these studies?

So I'm very lucky and very comforting at this moment, finishing just my first round of data collection. I'm going to do two to three round, eventually reach to an expert consensus for all the thought leader and industry expert. So what I'm doing is quiet, straightforward in this particular sense. So I did a really in-depth literature review all the way from 1955 at the very beginning of the psychedelic journey until now, present. And you can imagine there are not a lot of data available there during those period of time, especially when I started the study almost two and a half three years ago. because neuroscience developed in the 70s, basically, with technology and everything, we're able to see the bring activity and the neuroplasticity and everything like that.

And these are the 50 years that psychedelic science has been basically stagnated because of the legal hurdle, because the stigmatization. And part of the journey I'm in right now as a scholar, as a research, as a coach, it's really helped to establish a new term, really for the first time in academia, outside of the therapeutic framework and investigation. You know this largely when we now talk about psychedelic, it's all about therapy. And I personally see the psychedelic renaissance or movement or a new, new era for this. It's really, really starting from a different perspective. You know, I really believe that the psychedelic industry is kind of going through an interesting period of time, kind of similar to how marijuana industry started,

because I also did a lot of research in CBD and the marijuana industry prior to this. And I see that the marijuana industry started with the medicinal use, with a lot of validation and prove from the veterans early on, and now look at the Blue Ocean. This is all about the recreational use. As a researcher, I would be very careful to use the recreational word in terms of psychedelic.

Because we all know psychedelic itself, especially the naturally occurring psychedelic, the M.T. and psilocybin, is not supposed to be approached from a mindset that this is for fun, entertainment or recreation. Therefore, I'm trying to establish in academia, I call this the performance use. because it's anything other than therapeutic.

So the therapeutic in my framework means to deal with anything that is in the past or probably present, right? But most past, it's any function that needs to be restored or to repair. But coaching and psychedelic and all this personal development leadership capability building is what I call present and the future. So I wanted to establish this kind of use case in academia, in science, because we're not looking at people only approaching psychedelic, especially psilocybin, for trauma or OCD or PTSD or tobacco dependence or alcohol cessation, right? A lot of the people already has been through the healing process of it. Maybe they're still in, maybe they're halfway in, maybe they're nearly done.

We don't know. But I think the performance market will be the blue ocean in the future. Especially we talked about the accessibility of psilocybin. It's so low. Like al-Awaska, you will have to acquire it unless you inhale pure DMT that can be acquired through laboratory. But I believe most people who are experiencing DMT in the format. of ayahuasca ceremony, they actually highly value the meaning and the surrounding, the set and setting, the ceremony, because I think for ayahuasca specifically, the connection,

the telepathy happens between, you know, those circle, those journey are one of the key experience, one of the key factor for the transformative experience. Bacillocybin is different. It is a different substance. Right. Right now, we talk about psychedelic as they're all like, right. The definition is mind altering, right? But we are so new in the exploration of our mind right now because we're a baby in terms of neuroscience and brain science in our humanity right now. And we just started to understand the very surface of those things. And that's why through this journey of learning, investigation, exploring or confirming you would say, I went back to the Eastern science. I went back to the Eastern ideology. I already explored Western practice, the Western religion, a lot of the Western world, and I cannot get my answer fulfilled. I cannot get to the layer of the truth, the ultimate truth. I think all the scientists and all the

scholar was trying to chase is we wanted to understand the truth. So in school of truths and back to our point about my research, because I cannot really talk to the, with my design of the methodology right now, I can't talk to the CEO themselves. But I have designed in the, the first round of the data collection allow those experts by my definition or my inclusion criteria, the participant, to contribute those anecdotal data that are traditionally not associating with academic research, right? Because we know, particularly for psychedelic, the insight, the truth, and the wisdom, it's in the collective mind, it's in people's experience. This is not in the research.

It's not in a literature view that I spent so much time, you know, trying to going through and combing through and digging the rabbit hole. So that's where I hope the data for my particular research can, can, can, there's a word for when you're like shooting a gun, like you calculate to the center. like the not the trajectory but you're the um the anchor of all of that yes yeah yeah it makes i think it's i'm really excited to read it and i'm excited that you have taken the responsibility and the the courageousness and the curiosity to do it and it seems interesting to me instead of going you know for for reasons we've spoken about you can't exactly talk to the top person but maybe that's where the actual reality and truth lies is not in the top person. That's just a very narrow idea of what performance is.

And you're going out and you are tapping in to the real veins of what is performance. Like you're getting a holistic view of performance, which most people would just get a narrow perspective of. I think it's going to be really rich. And I'm really excited for you to get to do it and share it with people. We got one question from the audience that came in right here. and I'll throw it your way. This one's from Clint Kyle's Psychedelic Christian Podcast. Have you noticed any correlation between your participants, religious, spiritual perspectives, and their thoughts or responses to psychedelics?

That's a wildly interesting question. Thank you for asking. And unfortunately, I did not collect those data points. I did not ask for their spiritual background or their religion or their belief. If I do have those data point, I may be able to make a speculation or correlation about that, but it's very interesting. Maybe the next research, if I'm writing, I should ask that. Yeah, that's a great one. Thanks, Clint, for chiming in there.

You know, another area that I think is fascinating to embark on is the, is the, is the, have you found, anything that you can talk about that you weren't expecting to find? Oh, that's a good question. My data set in front of me right now. What I didn't, that is a little bit surprised so far, just finished the first round of data collection, is a lot of the people focusing on elaborating or contributing those evidence in relating to the sense of connection more than I anticipated. You know, I can't, again, I can't speak from my data yet, but I thought more of the responses

will validate or having supporting evidence more in the department of the three things I mentioned, which is ego, empathy, and teamwork. And I think teamwork require a lot of empathy, you know, there's communication, a lot of factor, compassion, for example, openness. Yeah. Connectiveness to self and to others and to nature are the three things that I see in my study. That is kind of not what I'm expecting for so much. And I think that itself can form a new theory or framework. So I'm excited to look at my data later tonight.

It would be fascinating to, it's probably not possible to do this, but it would be fascinating to see like a Briggs-Myers or a personality test somebody takes before and then after a year of use and see if there's any major changes that you could correlate to their leadership style, their personality style. What kind of interesting to think about? Well, I'm not sure about whether psychedelic have correlation or can have impact on personality,

But the problem that a lot of people are facing right now is, you know, I am a social scientist. So I approach my investing social science by the essence is that we study phenomena. Okay. Right? We're not the laboratory wearing the white, you know. So I think from a social science perspective, of course there's limitation. And we talk about it in our research, right, the limitation for everything. Also, my researcher's disposition, which is very important.

Because some people, you know, they have a lot of disposition or experience, right? And you wanted to disclose that in your research because your perspective as a researcher is very important, dictating the process and the direction of the study and the steps of the study. This is kind of out there this question, and it's subjective in a way. But on some level, I think that it's almost contagious. Like the use of psilocybin is contagious in that when a leader begins transforming the way they lead, so too do they change the people that work underneath them. You know, it's not maybe the formal sense of contagion, but it is kind of contagious in a weird sort of way.

Like those ripple effect of changes, right? Is that too far out there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right about it. But first of all, we need to come to the same sense about what leadership is. Right. Let me ask you a question here. Oh, okay. What do you think leadership is? What makes a leader? A good, strong leader. I think a leader does the right thing. Now, I heard a quote once that said, managers do things right in a leader does the right thing. When you're in charge, you have to do the right thing regardless. And that's for each leader decides what that right thing is. But I think the right thing is for

the relationship and the environment versus the profit model. Now, I don't, I haven't, I'm not a CEO and I haven't written down or signed off a waiver that says I'm, I'm strictly beholden to the shareholders. Maybe that's why they do their idea of the right thing. But I would say a leader does the right thing. that's a good definition. And my definition of leader, it's the most generic. I define leader as whether to have followers. So unfortunately, this is very sad because unfortunately, it does make the social influencer that we saw on the internet.

these are leaders in our time, you know. And that's why I do believe the area of leadership, of course, it sounds very timidding. It sounds like, oh, only like I need to have this title to be a leader. I invite everybody to think about the impact that you can make. As a leader, individually, there are eyes on you. You have followers. Every one of us have a follower, more or less.

right? And how can you use your voice and your identity and your thought to really put the impact on people? I think that's everybody's question, not just the people who are wearing the hats in the corporation or the startup or on the internet. So that's why I think leadership is very important because we are going into a very interesting time. in this earth right now where technology took away our ability to discern. The discernment is I think is very, very important right now. As a leader, you have to be able to discern what is good or bad. As a leader, you really have to, more than ever before, understand yourself and be able

to connect to yourself and be open enough. to accept whatever may be outside of your pattern, your traditional, your comfort, your sense making. We need to be open about it. And at the same time, I think a good leader is the one who really make other people's life and impact them and make them want it to be a better person. that's what I think the true leadership is coming into this very siloed and independent, right? Because any one of us can become a leader on social media if we have followers. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.

That's a great definition, by the way. I think it's an interesting way. On some level, I think it helps people understand that they have a responsibility to become the best version of themselves. Yes. Yes. Yes. That brings a very interesting point, and I can't really elaborate on this because I don't have my data out yet. But I'm very, very interested to see the correlation between intuition and the experience of psychedelic.

Yeah. Because intuition is something that is dedicating every single one of us, right? at the top leader, they still have to make a lot of choices on a daily basis. You know, we may think about leaders' role as this strong, you know, leading always know what's right, as you mentioned, right? But in the real practice of leaders, what I see in my leadership coaching practice, you know, basically specifically working with CEOs and founders and Silicon Valley founders, tech founders, creative founders, creative leader.

What I see is at the very initial entrepreneurship, right, the first couple years of the company, while everything is stable and running itself, every single day, their job is more of a firefighter. They put up fire. It just, whoever, the problem cannot be solved, exhuminated to the CEO, you know, for a smaller medium-sized organization.

So a lot of the time, the leadership is not as fancy as important decision all the time. You know, sometimes they're just really trying to make things running. And that's where I kind of bring in the framework and the concept of the leadership capability as an analogy of a plate. Yeah. Because when you have to perform, because leader, you don't have to perform. Because leader, you don't have, you know, as an employee, you can be like, today I don't feel good. I don't have to do this.

Leader often don't have choice. It's very stressful. They feel like they've been putting on a pedestal, you know, but a lot of people, especially female leaders, more than 75 of the female leaders suffer imposter syndrome. And that number for a guy is for male leader is a lot lower in the 50, 60% range. So, you know, that's interesting because as a women, we always try to, we were told that we're not enough. More likely, right? And we try to look at our own problem when things happen.

And of course, that's, again, ego, empathy, collaboration, compassion. This is everything that this, my research is. really evolving and focusing on. Yeah, those are great points. The idea of intuition and awareness and relationships, I think psychedelics are something that changes the way you relate to yourself on some levels. Is that some of the, what kind of information are you seeing in your data set about

relationships? I think you're asking about the connectiveness. That's kind of the language in this research. I think if people cannot feel very connected with themselves, they can't really connect with other people. And if they can't feel the connection with nature, they can't really connect with other people. So go back to the intuition topic,

we're making lots of decision on a daily basis, and leader makes more decisions, big or small, on daily basis. And I really believe that we are logical creatures. So every time we make decision, our brain, our left brain is trying to make sense of it. And it's going to tell you, I wanted to choose option one, two, three, number three, because one, two, three point. Right? But I do believe that in the moment of the decision making, that is our intuition, that making the majority and the bigger impact of the actual decision.

Because your intuition is the inner compass running in the back radar. And our brain feel like this is the best after factor in all the possible data. Right? It's a very complicated system because you need experience. right? The brain need experience. The brain also need knowledge, right? So you're combining the future risk, the task positive brain and the default mode brain, which is more focusing on the presence. And the other one is present and future. The other one is more focusing on worrying and the past to protect us. If a tiger here, we got to run. We need to worry. So these are our protecting mechanism.

And I think the intuition lies in the middle. Flash, it's a feeling. You can't explain it. But you know what you're going to choose, one, two, or three. You already made a decision at the moment, at a short moment, but then your left brain later on trying to make logical analysis to convince your right brain that, look, this is good because of one, two, three. So, but again, understanding intuition, most more importantly, measure the intuition.

That's very difficult, right? That's, you need neuroscience. You need all the environment allow you to really understand that. But that's fascinating to me because I really believe that the right brain is really that dedicated to our decision making to the, the overall, you know, to our life. And the left brain is what I called a little inferior side. You know, the right brain understand the concept and abstract and the creativity and everything.

Yeah. Tell from the both side of the brain is, I highly recommend that book, very interesting, written by neuroscience, very famous. and, you know, if the audience have interested in understanding the neuroscience in conjunction with the psychedelic, I highly recommend that book. What was the name of the book again? Tells from both sides of the brain. Oh, I like that. It's very interesting.

A lot of the research, experimentation that can, you know, understand how our brain works. Yeah. Ian McGillcrest has a really cool book that's similar. It's the master in his emissary. He talks about the right brain, left brain. And in your opinion or in maybe some of the research you're doing or something you've read, do you think that maybe that's what is making a better leader is someone who is, you know, maybe outside the default mode network who is using both sides of the brain?

You know, when you see these scans, you see the brain kind of lit up and making these new connections. Is there something to be said about using more of your brain or having more synaptic activity and being a leader versus using the default mode network? I don't really know about that part. But personally, I think the ability to be present is very important in today's leadership. Because there are so many factor, so many uncertainty than before. you know, in order to make that best decision, you know, sometimes you can't just look at factors right now

because factors are not enough for people to make decisions. And you really have to have that inner compass as a leader. And what is the inner compass? It's everything I said in the iOS system that I'm working with. Your sense making, meanings making, your value, your belief, your identity, your code of conduct, your moral and ethical belief, right, conduct. A lot of the leader don't think about it. Right now, I go to a company no matter selling furniture or anything, right, or services,

or drinks or garment. I go and I click on their mission vision page and I see if they have a statement for code of conduct or, you know, ethical. Because that's what I think is sustainable as a company. You know, you need to have, you need to build a sustainable business model to make the business last. Yeah, you have to have a solid foundation. Once you steer off that foundation, everything comes off the rails, it seems like. Right, right.

That's the inner compass and the inner radar. And I think a lot of the leader, first of all, thinking about prioritizing more on the monetary, on the return, on the actual metrics. Yeah. Right. And they did not hold strongly on their personal boundary in terms of ethical, moral, and the code of conduct in that department. And that is when I see a lot of the people started to get frustrated or lost, you know, because their code of conduct or their ethical moral is coming from another company. It's whatever other people say.

Yeah. You know, it's like, oh, I put this in and like this word is the key words. But I really think these needs to be from a person's authentic belief. leave an authentic self-expression. What is really important, that boundary, I think, is helping people to navigate through a more complicated landscape in terms of leadership and development. Yeah. Yeah, I'm thankful and I'm really looking forward to not only reading the research, but hopeful

that people are able to take it and implement it in their lives. Because I think that so many people are searching for connection. They're searching for leadership. They're searching for their own inner compass and stuff. So I think there's going to be some really cool results on there about. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to elaborate a little. Right, please.

Connection part is what I see. If anything, it's going to a different point in the Western. Right. culture or society, it's because of the sense of connectiveness. The Western world, the capitalist, the pure capitalist society's structure that you've been building here does not allow that. It's not built to, for example, taking care of the elders. Yeah.

When we talk about the desire or the chase or the investigation about knowledge and wisdom that a lot of younger generation of people seems to want it a shortcut, right? It's like, I want it. I expect I'm going to go for a retreat. I'm going to take this. And I have an expectation that my life will change in whatever the way. And that's why I feel like we can't call psychedelic recreation. because you can't have expectation.

Things happen for you, not to. That's what I believe. Things will happen for you at the right time that you needed it. And that's the trust, right? When we're talking about, oh, you're trusting the universe, trust, all the terms. And like, what are we really talking about? Right? And I think the ability to be present, as I mentioned, in the leadership practice,

in the leadership practice, ability to connect with yourself, ability to really trust your intuition. It's very, very important. But again, these things are hard to put into measurement, to put into practice. Because when you're actually in the leadership role and dealing with all the put down the fire, every day you wake up and you put out fire for a couple of years, your brain is not in that space. your brain is constantly in a problem solving space. And that's why as a leadership coach, I kind of provide a safe and consistent space

for the leader to come in and to really get clarity about their life right now in a very bigger sense. Are they aligned with their purpose, collective purposes, business, personal purpose, individual, I believe a lot of people feel the software or living in pain or feeling like burnout or their capability is not enough to handle the food on the plate per se in this analogy is because they don't feel the connection. As you mentioned, that is the source.

In a lot of Eastern culture, our connection, a very simple example, to our elders, to our family, it's a little bit more tight than the Western culture. Here, you say it like it's a pride thing to do that I kick my children out of the house. I get it. I get it that you're adult, independent, Western independent. But, you know, it tells me the ideology here, you know, the older people in general speaking. is not as respected as at least in Chinese, and I know certainly Korean-Japan culture,

very focused on the, is that filia petty, there's a word for that, the seniority, respecting the elder. And because we believe and we respect that the knowledge and the wisdom that they're having is because they live longer time, so they understand. And here, families are, in a different structure. You have nuclear family.

And often in Eastern culture, we multi-generation. Yeah. Right, in a lot of Spanish culture too, multi-generation family. Here it's very siloed. So you're definitely right on when you mentioned the connectiveness. I think this is the problem with a lot of, again, drug use and mental.

mental health crisis. It's all because people feel less connected than before. You know, when I grew up, I was born in the late 80. And when I was young, I remember going to, you know, my parents are busy. Mom is a professional working women finance executive. So I remember my childhood. It's like, families are busy, but I go to my neighbors, home. My neighbors, my classmates, you know, mom cook. So I eat at this house and eat at that

house. And right now, everything is so siloed here. You know, people have to pay for the daycare. You know, our community again, right? Talking about that, the connection, the support system. It's very different right now. Yeah. I feel like it's coming full circle in the West. You know, So many of like the baby boomer generation, they live their own lives. And now we see this epidemic of loneliness. You know, like they kicked out their kids so early and we're like, go get to be independent. And they were probably taught that way.

And now they're like, how come you never come around? Like, well, you kicked everybody out early. Like you didn't want them, it seemed like. It seems like it's that cycle, though. Like if you treat your kid one way, they're going to come back and treat you one way. So we need leadership in the family as well as in the corporate world. That's very interesting, yes. Yeah.

You know, there's something to be said about psychedelics and language as well. When you spoke about being a leader, you know, often leaders will have team meetings or meetings, and a lot of people hang on the words they use and they have different vocabularies and different understandings of those words. And it seems to me in the psychedelic state, new linguistic pathways are sort of revealed to you. I know it's kind of a large question, but is there, is there, is there, a through line there? I think the root of this question is sitting, again, in the word of connectiveness. Psychedelic allow us, in my own interpretation, open up this people call portal, whatever, right, right, that intuitive path that allow you to make connection with what I

called collective wisdom, collective consciousness, collective unconsciousness based on kary or God or whatever. You call it, right? So I really believe that psychedelic experience help people to communicate in how can I say this less semantic, less linguistic way, but more through the collective wisdom, more through the collective consciousness. I try not to. I try not to. to use the word like telepathy or, you know, vibration or frequency, right? I really do believe that the world that we're living in right now and the odor I get, the more strongly I feel, it feels like a simulation right now. Well, every single day and I don't watch news and stuff, but sometime I hear them on the TV.

I'm like, oh my God, this type of news, even 10 years ago, would be like explosive. It would be so much more attention. We're talking about Lori, like all this crazy things happening right now that people feel very uncertain about right now at this moment in history, humanity collectively. But we can't navigate through this.

And I think in this type of time, in the modern time with the technology, technology is forcing us to use the life, left brain more. Why is all about analytical. And our right brain maybe is not as stimulated and used as much. Because a lot of people don't trust anymore. You know, there's a, you know, people used to be more open to things, more trusting to things.

And that goes to our first topic, a first keyword is discernment. If you can't even discern, if you can't even discern, if you can't even. understand like what is real and what is not with AI with everything right now. I know a lot of the platform, social media platform, especially Facebook, you know, Matt and Instagram are now highly suggesting or recommending people. Of course, they can't really enforce it to label the content that they post on social media as made with AI, right? But how they're going to enforce it?

You know, I've seen every interesting video sometime that I see online. The first couple comments, there's going to be one in the top 10 or top five, saying something like, this is AI, this is not real. Why would you guys even trying to make a discussion under a piece of content that is not realistic? Right? So again, that's another topic. We're talking about the tech and their responsibility in privacy. Do we own our data?

What is our privacy right now? Like, you know, Google knows more than Google knows about you. Before you even know what to buy and what to take action on next. So that's, again, I think it's a bigger problem that exists right now. creating a lot of the problem that we talked about before in terms of discernment, connectivity with other people, trust, you know, the self-part, the self-development part, the leadership part of this. Yeah, it makes total sense. I'm really excited to see you in particular.

I think you're pioneering this work. I haven't talked to anybody else who's really doing the research on leadership and psychedelic. So thank you for that. And, you know, this is a fascinating conversation. I can't wait to dig in deeper as more things come out. I hope you'll come back and definitely get into it deeper, discuss the results, and maybe bring more people in and have a bigger conversation. But before I let you go, where can people find you?

Can they, if they want to reach out to you, if they have something to add, or they're interested in what you're doing, is there a particular place they can find you? And what do you got coming up? Yes. So first of all, I am determined to publish this research. within this year or probably next. There's a long process to get that. And the good news is right now we have a journal.

I don't know if you know this. Since 2023, we have a psychedelic journal for the first time. We have our own field and journal that we can publish on. So that's very happy about, very excited about that. Where can find me, the psychedelic way.com, the-th-e-secadelicway.com. So that's where you can book a call with me on personal or if you wanted, you know, leadership coach with the background and the evidence-based kind of methodology and framework

like myself. That's where you can find a lot of the information. Fantastic. I would encourage everybody who's listening to this, whether you're watching it live or whether you're listening to a podcast in the next few days or the next few years, go down to the show notes and reach out to Kian. She's an incredible background. She speaks multiple languages.

and seeing the world from different lenses, from Dubai to China to New York to L.A. and an incredible source of knowledge. I would encourage everyone to reach out to if you're curious. And hang on briefly afterwards. I can't ask you one to talk to you briefly. But to everybody else, I hope we have a beautiful day

and think about the ideas that we put out here today between psychedelics and leadership. That's all we got, ladies and gentlemen. Have a beautiful day. Thank you, everyone. Bye.