The Quest For Conscious Leadership With Ron Hill

28 Jul , 2025 podcasts

 

For a leader to become truly effective, they must learn how to quiet the external noise and do the inner work. Katherine Twells talks all about conscious leadership with Ron Hill, co-founder of the Conscious Leaders Quest. He shares how they guide leaders in a journey within themselves to fully understand their purpose, unlock collective wisdom, and achieve inner peace. Ron also explains why leaders at the intersection of mind, body, and business are the ones who can build flourishing teams and create thriving businesses amid today’s chaotic and highly competitive world.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

The Quest For Conscious Leadership With Ron Hill

The Courage To Lead From Within

Here in the lab, we talk a lot about resilience, connection, and compassion. It takes daily choices about how we show up for each other and ourselves. I truly believe that changing the world begins with changing ourselves. My guest shares this belief and the potential that we all have as leaders to create a ripple effect of positive change.

Ron Hill is an entrepreneur, conscious leadership guide, facilitator, and keynote speaker who transforms organizations through unlocking the full potential of leaders. As the foundation of Redemption Plus, he built and scaled a company that disrupted its industry for over 25 years before navigating its sale during the pandemic, which is a crazy time to do that. Ron transformed his organization from a traditional business into a purpose-driven powerhouse by first transforming himself.

His personal growth journey revealed a powerful truth.  When leaders do their inner work, teams flourish and business thrives. As Co-founder, Guide, and Managing Partner of Conscious Leaders Quest, he gets to live this by facilitating transformative experiences that challenge leaders to adventure within themselves, discover authentic purpose, tap into collective wisdom, and build businesses that the world needs.

Having experienced this program, I will share that it is truly magical. Ron knows that we never stop growing, so he continues his journey alongside the leaders he guides, embodying the philosophy that when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too. Please enjoy the conversation with the amazing Ron Hill.

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Ron, it is such a pleasure to be doing this. We’ve been talking about doing this for a while. Our crazy schedules have prevented it from happening until now. As we talked about before we hit record, this almost didn’t happen either because there’s a lot going on. You and I have decided to roll with the flow and have this conversation. I’m grateful. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity. I’m excited to have this conversation with you. I adore your energy and how you show up in the world. I’m super excited to chat about all things Katherine Twells, Compassion Lab, and making the world a better place.

Ron Hill Of The Conscious Leaders Quest

Thank you. I get the honor of meeting a lot of cool people in my work. It’s such a huge blessing. Every once in a while, you meet someone and it’s such an easy connection and a shared mission. I feel that with you on the things we care about and what we’re up to in the world. It’s such a total delight and pleasure. I know this conversation’s going to serve those who read. At least that is our intention as we start out. Let’s dig into you and more about you. Typically, I find that our stories are shaped when we’re young. They’re shaped by all the things that happen to us in our lives. They create who we are and the mission that we are all about. Can you share a little bit about the origin story of Ron?

Absolutely. It’s always interesting to me when somebody asks a question. There are a million different versions, almost. There are so many things. Being in my 50s, so many things have happened. It is interesting to think about the work that I do with leaders and the work that we’ve done together. Many of the things that we work on are the things that did or didn’t happen in the first ten years of our lives, so it’s super interesting.

My family is from Texas. When I think about growing up, there are some very specific things. Being from Texas is a very key thing. I was super young. My dad was working for a pharmacy. He was in pharmaceutical sales. He was moving up pretty fast, so we moved a lot. We very quickly moved from Texas to Southern California. We were there.

When I looked back, it seemed like we were in southern California my entire childhood because there were such memories of being there. That was only for 2 or 3 years, and then we moved very quickly to Rockford, Illinois. We ended up in Kansas City. I was nine years old when we ended up in Kansas City. Kansas City has become home to me.

One of the things about my childhood and upbringing is that since we moved a lot, I was a very shy kid. I was horribly shy. I had to go to all of these new schools. I see where all that served me, but it was painful in the process of trying to make friends and trying to fit in. When we were in Illinois, it was maybe six months that we were there, and then we got to Kansas City. Soon after that, my parents divorced.

What I’ve learned in my own journey as an adult was that moment when my dad left the house and said, “You’re the man of the house now.” With me trying to live into being an adult at a very young age, that was one of the things that formed the success that I had. It wasn’t necessarily all of the right formula for success in life as a whole, but we have these things, the Big T and little T traumas that happen to all of us as we grow up. That’s one of the things that shaped my ambition and my drive throughout most of my life.

One of the things about growing up in Kansas City is that we lived on. I lived with my dad and my mom back and forth, but my dad had land. I’m sharing this because I had an opportunity to be with some friends. We are in Montana. We were up in Big Sky. They live on a bunch of land there, and it reminded me of growing up on land with horses.

My dad had told me that I could have any animal that I wanted. I’ve always been very focused and persistent. Within two weeks, we had six dogs, ducks, and chickens. I had a horse and all of this stuff. I was talking about that. I wouldn’t normally talk about that in a show. There are many more, but those are some of the things that I believe make me the person that I am and the leader that I am.

First of all, I have horse envy because I adore horses. I have this memory. I used to go to a friend’s house. Her name was Lori, and she had this beautiful horse named Rosie. We would ride Rosie bareback. We were probably 10 or 11. We were young and free. I remember saying to my father, “Do you think we could get a horse?” We lived in more of a country place.

He didn’t say no right away, and I was so excited. The answer ended up being no, because it is hard to keep a horse. It was always such a childhood dream. I’m living vicariously through your story. Let me ask you this question. Being the man of the house at that young age puts a lot of pressure. You are still developing. You’re trying to transition between being a child and the freedom and wonder of that into this responsibility. How does that live in you? You’ve touched on it, but go a little deeper there.

We’re jumping right into the deep end here. It was interesting. A couple of years ago, I went through a program called Save A Warrior, which was an amazing arc to my own leadership journey. That’s where I uncovered this thing. They talk about it like it’s the thing under the thing. That’s interesting because I haven’t had this conversation with my dad.

When my dad left our house that day, it was a very innocent thing. You’re the oldest boy, so you’re the man in the house. I’ve always been very literal. Maybe even on a daily basis, my wife will say something, and I’ll look for clarity. She’s like, “You’re so literal.” I’m like, “The spoken word is very important. When you say this, I internalize that.” I do think that I internalized that, and I tried to live into something that I could never live into.

We started having a conversation before we were recording about being a perfectionist. That’s a little bit of what we were talking about. For me, it’s this idea of being a discouraged perfectionist because there is no perfection. When we strive to do that, it does create some angst because we can’t quite get there. That moment was setting me up for something that I could never accomplish, but it did instill this drive in me to try to accomplish it. I probably spent a good 30-plus years with that pushing me and not realizing that that was the thing under the thing that was pushing me to do all the things that I was doing in my life.

The Right Way To Deal With Trauma

We all have the thing under the thing. Even as I’ve done some of my work and look back across my life, you can find those moments, like the one you’re talking about, that shaped something in you, whether it be a belief in you or a quest in you that always has both a darkness and a light. The tough part is what you said. Perfectionism isn’t real. If anything, it can restrict and close off our creativity as we try to be that. The gift in the wound is the ability to create a vision of what we aspire to be and aspire to do.

It’s interesting how these big T and little T traumas that we all have inform us. I was having a fascinating conversation at a customer dinner. It was with some CEOs who were at the table. Two of them had had a very difficult childhood with parental situations of being not present, not there, and even destructive. Here they were, sitting in very high positions of leadership. We launched into a whole conversation about how that shaped their gratitude for who they are versus someone who doesn’t have that happen. I’m sure you see that as you look at people doing their work on their lives.

I know enough about this to be dangerous, but we have a trauma or wounding as a child, and then our ego develops around that. We develop this persona of who we think that we should be, or all of the things that go with what we would call our ego. Those are things that are important. We have to develop that ego. I do think when you have challenged trauma in childhood like that, they can either go one way or the other. It can be like rocket fuel to launch you to be successful. There’s a point where you’ve got to go into the ego and let it go, or kill the ego. It’s so interesting, this cycle.

I have two boys. You and I have talked about this. I know you also have two boys. I went through a program called Save A Warrior. This is a program for Military veterans and first responders. They always have 1 or 2 civilians who go with them. We learned a lot about mythology. There’s this idea that the father always wounds the son, and then the son develops this ego and all of these good things from it. At some point, you have to come back and reckon with it.

In this conversation we’re having, there are these nuances to it. As a father, I don’t want to wound my children, but in trying not to wound them, you cause the wounding as well, if that makes sense. It’s a cycle, but it’s a beautiful cycle. You mentioned when you teed this up that we’ve got this darkness and this light. I’ve come to believe that when we can learn to sit with ourselves and be okay with the darkness and the light, then all of this stuff starts to pass.

It’s this formula for how we take all of the things from our childhood as we start to build our identity as a young adult. As we get older, how do we reckon with those things? How are we okay when we let those things process to ultimately find the best version of ourselves? You can’t skip any of it is an interesting thing. As parents, we tend to say, “I don’t want my kids to have to go through this hardship,” but it’s the hardship that builds the strength, character, and compassion for who we’re supposed to be as adults.

You cannot skip hardship as a child. It is the string that builds the character of who we are supposed to be as adults. Share on X

There’s no question. I know we’ve talked about that a little bit in the past, but it’s so interesting. We’ve already talked about perfectionism. Certainly, being a great parent, the last thing you want to do is wound your children. You’re showing up with the heart and the intention of giving them everything you can. The fact is, every child is living in their own reality and their own perceptions based on how they’re made, so you can’t not. It’s very innocent how it all happens. To your point, it is a cycle that is a part of our growth. When you know that, you can breathe a little bit more to say, “As long as I’m approaching this with love and care, I know that all will be well in the long run.”

The other piece that you said, which is important to bring forth, is that there is this idea of a choice point after the wounding. How did you choose to use it? I have carried this story with me forever. I don’t know where it came from. I can’t credit it. It was the story of two sons of a man who ended up having a very bad life with drugs, jail, crime, and everything you do not want, but he had two sons.

There was an interview with both of the sons. One followed in the path of the father. There was crime, drugs, and jail. The other was the opposite. He was very successful. The interviewer asked the question, “Why do you think you turned out this way?” They both answered the same, “With a father like mine, how could I be any different?”

That’s so powerful.

Where is the choice point?

It makes you think, doesn’t it?

What Makes A Conscious Leader

Yeah. It’s not what happens. It’s what we do with what happens. That bridges us into the other arc of the conversation we’re going to have, which is at the heart of the work you do in the world, which is around being a conscious leader and the ripple effect of conscious leadership. We’re starting to get into how this awareness and work drive that. I’ve talked about this on the show, and people may have read that, but what’s your definition of conscious leadership? What does that look like?

The easy thing when we think about conscious is awake. It is a leader who is awake and is paying attention.

It doesn’t seem hard, right? It is.

Yet, it is. Somebody told me, “If you’re not confused, then you’re not paying attention.” We live in a world where the world says that you should be paying attention to more things than you can possibly pay attention to. Conscious leadership is more important now than ever. I believe that a conscious leader is somebody who is paying attention, is looking outside themselves, and is a servant leader. At the same time that they’re looking outside, they’re working on the inside.

Going back to all of the things that we’ve talked about, I believe a lot of people lead from a place where they think they should be. This was my experience for a very long time. I led from a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet would always lead me to what I thought was the right answer, but ultimately, there was something uncomfortable when I would make decisions with the spreadsheet. There’s also this internal wisdom.

Conscious leaders are in this pursuit to become the best version of themselves. To me, that is a lifelong pursuit. We’re leading others. Those others are in our care. If we don’t do our own work and we don’t go through the eye of the needle ourselves, then our organizations will reflect that. I believe that a conscious leader is constantly looking inward as they are looking outward. Conscious leaders create organizations that help the world solve the problems that we’re facing and not create problems. Sometimes, you may be creating problems that you don’t know about. This idea of being conscious is that you’re awake and you’re paying attention.

There’s a book by Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia called Everybody Matters. I read this book years ago. Raj Sisodia, who’s the Cofounder of Conscious Capitalism, ultimately wrote The Healing Organization. It’s this idea that when you’re leading an organization, everybody who works for you is somebody’s precious son or daughter. It is thinking about what you want for your precious son or daughter out there when they’re working. How do we create these organizations where we’re able to heal people on their own journey, allowing them to be whole? It’s not just about what they’re doing at work, but how does that reflect when they go home as a spouse, a parent, a child, or a community member?

The term conscious leadership is very deep and robust, but at its essence, we are working on ourselves as leaders. We’re able to listen in, and we’re also gaining the skills to unlock the collective wisdom of an organization around us. It’s complicated. I know for me, I’ve needed help on that journey. That’s part of what motivated me to start Conscious Leaders Quest on how we help leaders discover the best version of themselves so they can truly be the conscious leaders that I believe that we need in the world. Every day, we need this. We need it more and more.

We do need it more and more. It is an unbelievable environment that we’re navigating. We had a presentation in this meeting that I referenced. I got back from it. There was a speaker on stage talking about how they measure uncertainty. They measure the level of dis-ease within the general populace. When COVID hit, it was at an all-time high. It is almost 2X post-COVID.

Geopolitically, with everything that’s happening in the world, people don’t know quite how to process, not to mention the level of division. The greater the chaos in our external environment, the greater the need to find that internal grounding. The deeper the roots, the taller the tree that we can withstand what’s happening.

Different Rituals To Stay Centered

We’re going to talk about CLQ in a minute, but let’s stay on this leadership piece. You don’t have to be a direct leader. You can be an influential leader within your organization, friend circle, family, or anywhere. As a human, you create impact with how you show up. We started this conversation talking about childhood wounds and what that creates in us.

If we are asleep at the wheel, we can run over a lot of people as a leader because we are not aware of what we’re projecting, the energy we’re bringing in, and the belief systems that we might have. You mentioned it’s a lifelong journey. That inner work, how do you approach it? How would you guide other people? That’s a big question, but what are some of the things you use to stay centered?

I love that question because you’re talking about our world. It feels hostile in many ways. I haven’t thought about that, but as you were talking, I was thinking, “Our world feels hostile right now.” Maybe it’s all of the geopolitical things that are happening among the other things. I believe that many companies that may not necessarily be conscious are creating technologies and things that are coming at us and saying, “We have to do this. We have to be this.” The formula, for me, is how do I resource myself so my resources exceed the demands on me as a human being?

When we do talk about leaders, I do feel that it’s very important to say that leadership is not a role. It is a way of being. When I think about leadership, in many ways, the work that I do helps people be better human beings. Whether we’re leading ourselves or our families, everybody’s leading something. We typically look at the top leaders because there’s more of a ripple from there. I know we’ll get into that with CLQ in a minute. We have that focus on CEOs or C-suite as opposed to the fact that we’re all leaders. I went down that path, and then I forgot the question that you asked. I’m going to be vulnerable and honest. I said vulnerable, and that’s part of my secret on how I stay grounded. That was the question.

Leadership is not a role. It is a way of being. Share on X

There you go. It flopped right back in.

I went off on a little path there. For me, it is what matters in the moment when we might lose it. We might become frustrated. We might show up in a way that’s not helpful to those around us. It is all of the moments that we’ve spent prior to that moment in preparation. With Conscious Leaders Quest, connection, ritual, adventure, and wisdom are our four pillars. They’re the things that we believe strengthen conscious leaders.

Your question takes me to ritual. Ritual is different from a habit in that a ritual allows us to be changed by something that we do with repetition. It’s very different than, like, “I have this habit. I do this thing and I don’t think about it.” We’re conscious leaders. We’re aware. We’re thinking. We’re seeing what’s happening. Ritual, to me, is the place where I build resourcefulness, and I help to create more resources for myself than demands.

It evolves for me, but it’s often meditation. It’s physical movement. It’s being in nature. I’m in the process of becoming a certified Nordic flow breath work instructor. Through that, we are teaching a hormetic breath. Hormesis is the idea that we intentionally subject ourselves to something super challenging in small doses on a regular basis, like sitting in cold water. The cold was something that created stress and anxiety for me. To be honest, it might still be, but I’ve spent the last couple of months, five days a week, doing a cold plunge every day.

That’s not one of my rituals.

Those change. There are so many different things. To me, it’s not necessarily just meditation. Breathwork, of all of the rituals, is why I’m becoming a certified guy. I feel like, as leaders and as human beings, we don’t tap into our breath. Many of us breathe the wrong. There are so many different things that we can do to create our own rituals.

You mentioned the rituals that you might have. I find that I’ll go for a period of time and I’ll do the exact same thing. I do have some movements that I do in the morning pretty much all the time. I might meditate. I might do different types of meditation. It might be breathwork. It might be heart math. There are so many different things. That was a long answer because it’s a big, open-ended question.

It is a big question. I love your answer because there’s a lot to it. What is beautiful about the path is that there are a lot of tools. You don’t have to take a cold plunge. That’s my position on that. I’ve tried it. There are other things. Everyone can find their doorway into a more conscious space, a space where there is greater awareness of watching what’s happening around you versus getting lost in what’s happening around you.

Origins Of The Conscious Leaders Quest

The more we’re lost, the more our wounds take the wheel. We act in ways that maybe a younger, more traumatized self would act versus an older, more mature, and more conscious being that says, “I see what’s happening, and I’m able to address what’s happening,” which is great. I do want to dig into CLQ. We’ve referenced it a few times.

I know it is your passion and mission in the world. I got a chance to experience this amazing journey with you and loved all of it. It was a real transformational time for me and all of the cohort that was there. Before you get into the elements of it, how did it start and emerge? What was the origin of Conscious Leaders Quest for you?

I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was very young. I’ve sold greeting cards. I sold different types of seeds. From grade school, I was always going door-to-door or selling something, or starting a business. I went to school in Texas. We mentioned Texas was part of my origin story. I always thought I’d go back to Texas. I lived my whole life there. I did go to school there. I went to Baylor University. I have a degree in finance. I was going to be a stockbroker. There were all of these things that I was going to do, and very quickly, I realized that wasn’t my thing. As I started searching for my thing, I went into sales.

Ultimately, from one thing to another led me to start a company called Redemption Plus. It was a company that I founded. I grew that company. We became a purpose-driven organization. We were a conscious organization, so we followed the four tenets of Conscious Capitalism. Conscious leadership is one of those. With that journey of Redemption Plus, I was learning who I was. I was learning the difference that I wanted to make in the world.

I was guided by many mentors who told me, “This is how you do business.” In my heart, it never quite felt right. Through this 25-year journey, I found what was congruent, and that you could do good and be profitable at the same time. In fact, the more you did good and the more you centered around purpose, the more profitable you were.  That wasn’t necessarily through sales growth, but it was through reduced turnover, waste, and rework. It’s all of these things that I would learn in on-the-job training.

The more you do good and center yourself around your purpose, the more profitable you become. Share on X

During COVID, Redemption Plus sold toys, novelties, and prize strategy design to family entertainment centers like Dave & Buster’s. It was any place where, if you were a kid or you took your kids and they played games, they got, at one time, tickets, tokens, or points. Now, it’s all debit cards. That was our industry. We were in 2019, going into 2020. That was the time I was taking a bit of a step back from daily leadership. I was going to do a podcast and write a book because everything had come together for us.

COVID came along and shut down our entire industry. We went from several million dollars in sales a month to zero. Prior to that, I had been introduced to a group called xchange Approach. Somebody from xchange came in, and they led my fall 2019 meeting at Redemption Plus. What happened at that meeting is they came in and said, “We want you to introduce us, sit in a seat, participate with your team, and then close at the end of the day.”

At the end of the day, it was all of the things that I have been trying to get us to do as an organization that most people were rolling their eyes and saying, “We have real work to do. We don’t have time to change the world. We don’t have time to make more eco-friendly toys and prizes. We don’t have time to disrupt an industry.” At the end of that day, my entire company came to me and said, “This is where we’re going. Are you going with us?”

Suddenly, I was being pulled on the journey I wanted to create. I signed up to go to xchange and take my leadership team. April 15th, 2020, was the date we were set to do that training. The world shifted, and our industry shut down. I had an opportunity to sell my company. It was purpose-driven. It was my baby, and I knew nobody would treat the company like I did. We had such an impact on the people that worked for us, so that was a hard decision. Ultimately, I sold that company.

Through xchange, I met Michael Diettrich-Chastain and Peter Katz. xchange was a tool on how we unlock collective wisdom and our internal wisdom. It’s using appreciative inquiry. It was such a beautiful group of facilitators doing their own internal work and how we bring people together. It was so many of the tools that I was thinking, “If I had only been able to lead like this at Redemption Plus.” After I sold the company, it was apparent to me that the universe was saying, “We weren’t giving you this new skill to go back to Redemption Plus. We were giving you this new skill for the next chapter and the next evolution of your purpose.”

When I sold the company, somebody immediately asked me if I would help them with the purpose. I went in and we did what I call organizational clarity work. I helped them with purpose, mission, vision, values, and behaviors, and then how they integrate that work, using the xchange approach, where we had all voices heard. It’s a beautiful process to unlock values that are already present with an organization and the purpose that’s already there. I love that process.

I did that 3 or 4 times. What I found is that it always failed. It failed because the leader didn’t want to do their work. They wanted to outsource it. They wanted other people to go through the eye of the needle and be the best version of themselves. The leaders that I worked with would often either have nothing to do with this new organizational clarity, or they might act in a way that was the opposite of the work that we had done.

I felt that if we want to create change and create ripples in the world, we have to change the hearts of leaders. We have to help leaders be more conscious. We have to help them discover the best version of themselves. That was my own journey. The best version of me today is not the best version of me 6 months or 1 year from now. When I leaned into that process of continually searching and doing my own work, it allowed people to approach you, and it allowed them to be inspired to do the work themselves. That’s what I believe creates the ripple.

That’s a long answer to the origin story of Conscious Leaders Quest. I was in Kansas City. My kids were both in college. I was no longer tied to Kansas City. We were in Costa Rica in Nosara, a beautiful town that you’ve been to. We were there as a family. We had spent a lot of time there. I was in a hammock in the jungle, thinking about my future. I thought, “There’s this beautiful healing energy in this place. I want to bring the work here. This is where I want to bring leaders, at least at this point in time.”

I went back. I was in an xchange event. It was January of ‘22. I put it out there in the world. I was like, “I’m going to do this thing.” It wasn’t called Conscious Leaders Quest at that point. I was like, “I’m going to bring leaders together. This is the work that I want to do.” Michael showed up after that. About four months later, Peter showed up after that and said, “I don’t just want to participate. I want to be a partner. I want to be a part of developing this whole thing.” That was how we all came together, and Conscious Leaders Quest got its founding.

It was born. I love the way life works because I found out about Conscious Leaders Quest from Peter, as Peter has come to the Compassion Lab. He has been an amazing contributor to what we’re doing within Coke. In our interview, he mentions CLQ, and I’m like, “What is this?” The next thing you know, I have this beautiful honor of meeting you and going through the experience.

Things feel so different when the passion of the people who have created that is so there. There’s a different energy when someone creates a business model from, “I have this widget or this thing to sell. There’s a market for it. Now, I’m going to sell it,” versus the mission is for change. It’s for helping people navigate the world. We’ve already talked about the chaos, the challenges, and the ripple effect of that across organizations.

I have all these random pieces of data that I can’t credit to anyone or to which book. I don’t know where it came from. I have heard multiple times that an organization can only go as far as the consciousness of the leader. You’re right. Everybody Matters is the book you referenced. Everybody matters. The leader is setting a tone and opening a space. Without that, there’s a limitation that occurs.

Breaking Down The Four Pillars Of CLQ

The work that you’re doing and the three of you together, so unique in your gifts, creates a powerful experience for everyone who’s there. I’m speaking from my own knowledge there. You mentioned the four pillars. If you could go back to those again and how you put them together. We won’t go super deep because of my invitation for anyone reading this and who feels called into this work to learn more about that. I’ll have you share the website and the information to find it. What are some of the frameworks that you bring into CLQ?

I want to answer your question, but before I answer your question, I want to comment that the work that we do, when I look at setting up the ultimate attraction marketing, is that we’re asking leaders to take time out of their schedule. That has to match up. It’s not inexpensive. That’s not lost on me. The big thing is that we have to ask people to quiet down, listen to what’s going on inside, and do their own internal work.

I preface that before we talk about connection, ritual, adventure, and wisdom because we are looking for leaders like you. We’re looking for leaders who already understand the importance of this work. When we talk about who this work is for and how we market it, I like to think I’m not in the business of convincing people this is a good idea. I want to be able to attract the people who already feel like this is a good idea.

In many ways, when you and I talked and I did what we don’t call an interview, but we want to make sure that everybody is aligned, I was like, “Katherine is so far along on this work. I hope that we can exceed her expectations of being there.” Ultimately, what we create with CLQ is the unlocking of collective wisdom. Who’s in the room matters. It is having leaders who understand the importance of this journey.

I wanted to acknowledge that and preface that as we talk about connection, ritual, adventure, and wisdom. We call them the four pillars. The flow of the work that we do follows all four of these. Connection is at the beginning, because if we cannot connect with ourselves, we cannot connect with others. If we cannot connect with others, we can’t lead a business. We believe in connection over content.

Time and time again, when I lead meetings and people are like, “We got to get on with this. We got all this stuff to do,” we take time to do maybe five minutes of breathwork, this connection to allow us to get into coherence. We may not understand this, but energetically, when everybody syncs up together, we can accomplish a lot more. Sometimes, I’m in a room where people are like, “We don’t have time for this. We’re too busy,” but everybody always comes back and says, “That was the most powerful part of the meeting, that five minutes.” Connecting to self is connecting to others.

Ritual, we already touched upon. What are the ongoing commitments that you’re going to make, to do something on a daily basis, through repetition, that allows you to be changed? They’re little rituals, whether it be maybe I’m burning palo santo or I’m going to sit for five minutes. You don’t have to sit for an entire day. You don’t have to go to a seven-day silent Vipassana retreat. You can take 3 minutes, or you can take 5. What are the commitments that we’re going to make? There are so many. At CLQ, we talk about a lot of them. We crowdsource them, and then we curate them.

We get to the adventure piece. I love adventure. I love doing adventure trips and doing all kinds of things that push me. Adventure is about risk. As leaders, it’s about what the risks are and what our relationship with risk is. An important part of becoming a leader is understanding where you are risk-averse, or if you are too risky. What is that relationship? It’s the adventure and the ability to push yourself to do new things, to try things, and to be a beginner in taking this risk. That’s an important component.

Wisdom is the last piece. Sometimes, these are more concentric circles than they are pillars because they all build on each other. They are about creating us as leaders inside, but then those also come back outside to how we build those around us. The wisdom piece is how we unlock our own internal wisdom. I mentioned this idea of leading with a spreadsheet. I still use spreadsheets for things, but I try to make decisions by sitting and understanding how I am feeling in my body. Somatically, what’s coming up when I’m about to make a decision? It is how we unlock that internal wisdom, and then how we unlock the collective wisdom, which I fully believe is a superpower for leaders.

 

The world is moving so fast. We cannot keep up. I believe that there is a new way to lead compared to how I was taught to lead, which was much more command and control, and much more like, “You don’t want to get to know these people too much.” How do we genuinely unlock the wisdom of an entire organization, whether it’s 10 people or 100,000 people? We have ways to do that. We take leaders through that process and teach them those skills to take back into their organizations.

Breaking Down The Four Pillars Of CLQ

This idea of unlocking wisdom, I want to punctuate it because this distinction of knowledge and wisdom is different. You’re right. We can look and see how the world has been evolving from a command and control mindset. Certainly, in the business world, it’s like, “There is no crying in baseball. You put on your mask. You put on your suit. You walk in, and whatever’s going on in your life has no place.” We are learning how to bridge the whole human in the work environment. What is the unlock? It’s an unlock in that curated wisdom of the collective.

When you and I spoke, because we have this shared passion about this new leadership narrative, you had me at hello. It was like, “This is so my jam.” As you are inviting people into this, I have found that you’ve got that old paradigm, the business narrative, and then you might have some people go, “This feels a little squishy and a little woo-woo. I don’t know what this is.” There’s a new language we’re having to find that bridges worlds. How are you doing that when you talk with people? You touched on it, but I want to go a bit deeper.

It’s interesting. I was facilitating an event in Kansas City for a group of entrepreneurs. We had a team. We had worked on the design. I was the lead facilitator on this. In the morning of the event, one of my co-facilitators said, “We need to dial the woo down today.” I was like, “What? This is science.” You can go to Claude.ai. You can go to ChatGPT. You can find all of the science behind the work that we do. Things that might have been woo because we couldn’t explain them, we have explanations for almost all of this stuff and why it works.

To me, most of this is about energy management and energy movement. As leaders, we want to help leaders resonate at a higher energy and a higher frequency. That was something, to me, that had always been very woo growing up. We help leaders move from where they are up to this frequency of love. Love isn’t thinking about Woodstock, running around, and hugging everybody. Although most people don’t mind a hug here or there. It’s not about what we think about love. It’s genuinely this idea that, as leaders, we can love ourselves. We have to genuinely love ourselves, and then we have compassion for others. When we genuinely lead with love, we’re also tough.

 

There’s so much science and data around when we unlock the collective wisdom, when we figure out who we are, and when we show up authentically, we create psychological safety. When we try to be somebody that we’re not, we’re not trusted. You’re not going to be able to build an organization that’s going to be able to be as innovative and creative without creating psychological safety. Although some companies do it. Some companies figure out something that is so needed in the marketplace. It doesn’t matter what they do inside the organization. Yet, there’s all of this cost to how people are treated.

Ultimately, I do believe that when you create psychological safety and help people show up as the best version of themselves, you will be far more profitable because you will reduce turnover. You will have more champions for the work. You will have people who are able to uncover insights and be more innovative than they would be if it were in a more restrictive environment.

This idea, to directly answer your question, of things that might be more woo, how do we have great care and compassion for our people, and we’re tough at the same time? I can say what I need to say to you. Ultimately, if it’s not received well by you, then that may be the work that you need to do, or maybe I need to be better at delivering that.

In my experience, in the workplace, people made up stories, and they acted out on them. These were things that caused waste, rework, and drama. They caused us to move far away from the actual work that needed to be done. If we can genuinely have confidence in ourselves, which, to me, is leading with love, we can say what needs to be said, and we can all be accountable for what we do with that information, whether you want to call it woo or or not, it is the only way to go forward and create real change in the world.

When you look at Firms of Endearment, also written by Raj Sisodia, companies are more profitable when they’re purpose-driven and when they generally care. The thing that sometimes people push back on me is that caring doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want to do. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to get your work done. We still have this very tough line to draw, like, “This is the job. You’ve got to be able to do your job.” When you’re doing that in a safe environment, then you’re much more likely to be successful.

I may have rambled in a complete circle around this idea of how you create this narrative to lead, and you’ve got some things that people may think are woo, or there’s no crying in baseball. Somebody, early in my career, brought some Kleenex to a meeting and set it on my desk. They said, “When someone cries, hand them the box. That’s all you have to do. It’s okay if people cry in your office.”

This is a real story. This was years ago. There was an associate. I’m leaving all the names out of this to protect the innocent. They were in an office and had a traumatic customer experience. They were very upset and had some tears. The manager was a little OCD. They had to turn the Kleenex box so that it was straight. The associate was like, “Are you straightening the Kleenex box while I am crying right now?” Handing them the Kleenex and not straightening the box would be my guidance to anyone in that situation.

I love the way you answered that question with so much rich wisdom. It is the only way forward. The science is there. As a matter of fact, as I’ve been involved in this work, the amount of study. I was shocked when I dug into the research and the study around human flourishing. Harvard does a lot of work around human flourishing. This is not a new narrative. It’s an expanding narrative that needs to happen.

How To Not Resist Change And Transformation

The other thing that struck me as you were speaking is, isn’t it difficult and unfortunate, but true, that things have to break down typically in our personal life for us to wake up, pay attention, and do the work? When everything is cool and sailing along, we don’t tend to want to go deep. It’s only when things start to crumble that we are on our knees and have to say, “What do I need to change?” The same thing is true of the world. We’ve had chaos for a long time. This is not new, but COVID brought forth the mental health challenges, anxiety, and inability to navigate the increasing pace. It is forcing the narrative to expand in the business world. We can no longer separate that.

I love the way you said that. It also reminds me of the important part here. We understand and know the science of transformation. You are on this journey along with me. You’ve seen the arc of transformation. It’s this idea that we all go through transformation. We go through cycles in our lives. I forget whether it’s an 8-year or 15-year cycle, but we all have a breakdown and renewal. It is part of our DNA. From the time we’re born to the time we die, we are nothing but change. Yet, many people want to resist that change. That causes a great deal of suffering in life.

When you think about the work that we do at Conscious Leaders Quest, sometimes, I’m like, “You have to be available. You have to have the budget for it. You’ve got to be willing to go inside and do the work. Here’s the reality. It’s going to happen to you anyway. Transformation is coming for you.” I was at the Modern Elder Academy program with Chip Conley. I don’t know whether this is Chip’s quote or if he pulled it from somebody else. He said, “Here’s the thing with transformation. You may walk eloquently into it, or you may be dragged kicking and screaming like a wild hog.”

We may think that we’re going to get out of this pain. We may get out of this idea that we have to transform, but it is part of who we are. There are many different ways to do this, but if we choose to go on a leadership adventure with Conscious Leaders Quest, we’re walking eloquently into it and not waiting until we’re going to be pulled, kicking and screaming like a wild hog. It’s such a vivid picture in my mind.

I’d choose eloquent over wild hog. That would be my personal choice.

If you put it that way, you’re like, “Let me choose how this is going to happen,” as opposed to, “All of a sudden, one day, I’m in the middle of this thing, and I didn’t know what was going to happen.” A big part of the work that we do when we think about transformation is integration. You and I will be on a call with everybody else in the cohort and the other leaders. It will be session four of integration. What we’ve found is that when you have a transformational experience, in order to create true transformation and resonate at a higher energy level as a leader, you have to fully integrate the work.

At Conscious Leaders Quest, that integration happens over nine months. When somebody’s like, “You lead a retreat,” I’m like, “Kind of.” It’s a leadership adventure, which is the transformational experience, followed by nine months of integrating the work and figuring out our rituals, how we are showing up, and the resistance that we’re having to the work. Why are we resistant to becoming better versions of ourselves? It happens, but we work through that together. To me, those are all very important elements, ultimately choosing to walk into the transformation that we want to see in our lives.

Even though we might use the term eloquent, it can get messy and disorienting, but that’s okay, too, because that’s part of the process of something new being born. I do appreciate the model. If there’s one thing that we’ve been trying to understand and work within the Compassion Lab within our program at Coke is it’s great to have a motivational speaker come one day. It’s lovely. It’s great. People get inspired, and they might take something away.

Get In Touch With Ron

The reality is you have to be in a discourse with yourself. That’s where the ritual comes in. You need to return to the story, narrative, and work again and again because you were always something new. You are not stagnant. Things are changing within you and around you constantly. If you’re not in the conversation, you’ll have a lovely week, maybe, and then you’ll lose a lot of that because we tend to snap back into our habits. The asleep part being the habits, and the awake being the ritual. I have one more question. I could chat with you for a very long time. If people are interested in CLQ, how do they find out about it? We’ll then close out with one more question.

The easiest way is CLQuest.com. You can Google Conscious Leaders Quest or CLQuest.com. My contact information is on there. I’m also on LinkedIn. It’s easy to search for Conscious Leaders Quest or Ron Hill on LinkedIn. There’s a Start Your Journey form if somebody is interested. That doesn’t obligate anybody to have a journey, but it’s the opening of a conversation. I’m more than happy to have a dialogue with anyone about any part of this.

What we want to do is find leaders who want to go on a leadership adventure at some point. Our next cohort will be next February 15th through 21st, 2026, back in Nosara, Costa Rica. It doesn’t have to be then. Maybe it’s the year after that. Maybe it’s in five years. We want to have people who are curious, and then we want to help start to provide resources to those leaders.

Finding Your Inner Peace

That’s beautiful. I love it. One last question as we close out our time together. We have been on a journey in this conversation from your own origin and your own understanding of who you are and what your mission is in this world to how that is materializing within the world. You’ve had so many nuggets of wisdom that you’ve already dropped, but if you were to try to put a bow on it and you think about this journey within your life, what piece of wisdom, maybe a couple of things, that you think have been the most impactful for you that you can leave people with?

On my own journey in thinking about purpose, I know this isn’t a video, but I have this peace and love tattooed on my arm. What I have found is that from my own journey of childhood, part of my purpose is to help leaders to be able to cultivate their inner peace and love in order for them to be able to lead, create ripples, make a difference, and think about how we’re making a difference in the life of others.

That’s probably my parting wisdom. It is whatever way you can figure out how to find inner peace, which sometimes is complicated. You mentioned messiness. This is a messy process. We can say it’s eloquently messy, but it’s messy and confusing. There are detours and signals. To be able to find inner peace allows you to show up energetically in a place where you can create safety, and you can inspire those to curate the same thing that you have around you. I’m going to leave that right there. I was going to add more to that, but I want to leave this idea of developing our own inner peace. What we develop inside will resonate outside of us.

Finding your inner peace allows you to show up energetically in a place where you can create safety. Share on X

Episode Wrap-Up And Closing Words

You mentioned moments ago that this level of energy and care comes with accountability and power. Often, the most powerful person in the room is the one with the calmest nervous system and an inside that is at peace within whatever is happening externally. May we all cultivate that so that we can add more light into a world that can sometimes feel a little bit dark and strange. I want to thank you. Thank you for giving me such a rich experience and for adding to my journey of discovery. I want to thank you for caring about bringing a mission into being that does have such a ripple effect and such a powerful effect on others. You’re doing beautiful work. I appreciate it so much.

Thank you. We can’t do this beautiful work without beautiful leaders like yourself. I think about what the world would look like if all the leaders had the characteristics and we’re eloquently walking into the work. You don’t just walk into the work yourself. You share it with others. That’s the ripple. When we think about how we affect one person, what happens when they go home if we give them that positive ripple? When you start to think about it, it’s huge. I appreciate you. I acknowledge the ripples that you’re creating in the world by who you are, how you show up, the work that you’re doing, and the human that you are. Thank you for the conversation and for making space for these types of conversations.

Thank you. It is an absolute honor to be on the journey with you. Have a wonderful rest of the day. Onward and upward for all of us in this conversation. Thank you again.

Thanks.

 

Important Links

• Conscious Leaders Quest
• Redemption Plus
• Conscious Leaders Quest on LinkedIn
• Ron Hill on LinkedIn
• Everybody Matters
• The Healing Organization
• Firms of Endearment
• Claude

 

About Ron Hill

Heart-based conscious leader. Empowering enriched lives of meaning & purpose. Conscious Business Catalyst.

I believe in the power of people, planet & profit. I believe in the understanding that if we are not the problem then there is no solution. If we focus on solving our own problems then collectively we can thrive.

For 24+ years, I have been fortunate enough to be a founder, entrepreneur, and student of life – working with the finest group of human beings I could ever imagine. Together we got messy, had fun, made mistakes, & disrupted an industry through innovation, teamwork, caring & helping our stakeholders thrive. We grew as leaders and human beings. #Grateful

Reflecting on my experience as the founder and Chief Enrichment Officer of Redemption Plus, I discovered my purpose and inspired others to find theirs. The bottom line is helping others lead enriched lives of meaning & purpose was baked into the DNA from the start. It also became crystal clear that business can elevate humanity while being profitable. You can do both, you must do both, and you should never compromise on navigating the polarity of each. This is the future of business.

My true Redemption Story began as I learned to heal myself through my oldest son’s journey of addiction & recovery. When you heal yourself, you also heal your family and your company – it is all entwined.

These lifelong gifts I intend to share with the world by:

– practicing, coaching, and nurturing conscious business practices which begins with conscious leadership;
– leaning into the power of plant-based foods to help heal disease & our planet; and
– advocating for the power of the heart (aka love) being baked into business, community, and connection to others.

We each have the power to heal, create, and thrive in a way that allows space for our world to be more just, fair, and inclusive. Peace & Love.

If you want to feel happy, do something for yourself. If you want to feel fulfilled, do something for someone else. – Simon Sinek

Connect with Ron: ron@intrepicjourney.com​ / LinkedIn: ​ www.linkedin.com/in/ronlhill​ / Twitter: ​ @rlhill​ / Instagram: ​ PurposeSherpa​

 

 

Collective Wisdom, Higher Frequency, Inner Peace, Internal Work, Personal Transformation, Psychological Safety

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