Join us now at Integrity Leaders: Community membership and learning, for new leaders, learner-managers, or first-time founders seeking clarity on their leadership style, and who have a healthy love of sci-fi (more info at the bottom!)

Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.214: Conscious Leadership and What Spirituality Can Teach Us About Managing Teams, with Joanna Zhang, using the player below, or click here.

Leadership conversations often circle around tools, frameworks, and performance metrics. What gets less airtime is the inner work that shapes how those tools are used, and what happens when leaders stop reacting on autopilot and instead pay attention to what is driving their decisions.

In this week’s episode of Leading with Integrity, I was joined by Joanna Zhang, entrepreneur, founder and speaker, for a conversation that sits in the overlap of leadership, spirituality, and real-world management. Not in a vague or abstract sense, but grounded in lived experience, hard lessons, and the practical realities of running teams and businesses.

What made this discussion stand out was the way Joanna traced her leadership approach back to her own inner development. The result is a refreshingly honest look at conscious leadership, what it actually asks of us, and why many leadership problems start long before they show up in a meeting room or quarterly report.

Conscious leadership is often misunderstood as being about calmness, kindness, or always having a measured response. In reality, as Joanna explained, it is far more demanding than that. It starts with awareness of your patterns, your triggers, and the internal stories that shape how you interpret situations at work.

Joanna shared how her entrepreneurial journey forced her to confront parts of herself that were easy to ignore when things were going well. Moments of pressure, uncertainty, or conflict have a way of revealing what is really running the show. In those moments, leadership stops being about what you say and becomes about what you notice.

From a spiritual perspective, this awareness is the foundation too. It’s the ability to pause and observe rather than immediately defend, fix, or control. In leadership, that pause creates space to respond with intention instead of habit. Space to choose how you show up, even when the stakes feel high. Conscious leadership demands responsibility for your inner state because that state inevitably spills into how you manage people, make decisions, and set the tone for a team.

One of the strongest threads in the conversation was the way Joanna described spirituality as a practice. Reflection, presence, and self-inquiry were not framed as separate from business life, but as skills that directly affect her leadership effectiveness.

Joanna spoke about how early in her career, success was measured largely through external validation: Growth, recognition, and momentum were the markers. Over time, that approach began to show cracks as stress increased, decisions felt reactive and relationships became harder to navigate.

Her spiritual work offered a different lens where, instead of asking only what needs to happen next, the focus shifted to how decisions were being made and from where. Was a choice driven by fear, approval-seeking, or the need to prove something? Or was it aligned with values, clarity, and long-term responsibility?

For leaders, this distinction matters. Teams often experience the emotional undercurrent of leadership long before they hear the rationale behind decisions. A leader who is internally scattered creates confusion, no matter how polished the strategy sounds.

A recurring theme throughout the episode was that leadership challenges with others often mirror unresolved challenges within ourselves. Conflict, misalignment, and frustration are rarely just about the surface issue.

Joanna reflected on how her spiritual journey helped her see where control was being used as a substitute for trust, and where urgency masked deeper discomfort with uncertainty. These insights did not remove difficulty from leadership, but they did change how that difficulty can be handled.

For managers and founders, this has practical implications, because when feedback is avoided, boundaries become unclear, or decisions are delayed, it’s worth asking what is being protected internally. Discomfort with disappointing others? Fear of being judged? A belief that value comes from being indispensable? Imposter feelings or low confidence?

Conscious leadership does not eliminate these challenges, but it does bring them into view. That visibility allows leaders to make different choices, more consistently. Which, over time, builds credibility and trust in ways that no performance management system can replicate.

One of the more sobering points in the conversation was the reminder that teams absorb what leaders have not worked through. Unspoken tension, inconsistent standards, and emotional volatility are rarely random.

Joanna discussed how teams often mirror the internal state of their leaders. When leaders are clear, grounded, and aligned, teams tend to operate with more confidence and autonomy. When leaders are reactive or conflicted, (or the dreaded ‘micromanagement’ practice) teams become cautious, fragmented, or overly dependent.

This is where the spiritual and leadership threads fully converge, that inner work is not a private exercise with no organisational impact. It shapes culture, pace, and psychological safety. Leaders who invest in their own awareness are not being self-indulgent, they’re reducing noise and friction for everyone else.

There is a misconception that conscious, thoughtful leadership avoids hard decisions or difficult conversations. Joanna was clear that this is not the case: conscious leadership still requires firmness, boundaries, and accountability.

The difference lies in intent, decisions are made with awareness of impact rather than impulse or avoidance. Feedback is given to support growth rather than release frustration.

In business settings, this approach can feel unfamiliar, especially in environments that reward speed and certainty. Yet Joanna’s experience shows that leaders who slow down their internal reactions often move faster where it counts.

This conversation served as a reminder that leadership is not something we switch on at work and switch off at home; much like our emotions aren’t things we turn off at 9am and back on again at the end of work. It’s shaped by who we are, how we relate to ourselves, and what we are willing to examine when things feel uncomfortable.

Joanna Zhang’s journey highlights that spirituality and leadership need not be competing domains. When approached thoughtfully, they inform each other, self-reflective, spiritual practice sharpens awareness while leadership practice tests it.

For leaders who feel stuck, reactive, or drained, the answer may not be another framework or productivity tool. It may start with paying closer attention to the inner patterns that influence every interaction. And you don’t have to be a spiritual or religious person (I’m certainly not) in order to benefit from the lessons here.

-

Catch the full episode with Joanna here: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-214-conscious-leadership-and-what-spirituality-can-teach-us-about-managing-teams-with-joanna-zhang-leadership

Or, if you prefer video, then watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/DxO0-S6gPv4

Tune in next week for a conversation about power, masculinity, mindset, social constructs, and their influences on leadership, with my next guest: Christian de la Huerta.

Until next time: Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help new managers and first-time founders with their leadership skills, so they can become leaders not bosses, lead with integrity, and build happier, higher performing teams, more effective organisations, and, ultimately: successful businesses.

If you’re a new manager or first-time leader and you’re feeling lonely, stuck, overwhelmed, or simply ready for your next chapter in leadership, the Integrity Leaders Community offers conversations, courses, resources and support to help you grow one step at a time. If you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you! Solopreneurs also welcome. 😉

Here’s the link: Integrity Leaders: Community membership and learning, for new leaders or first-time founders.