← Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Oli Raison & Boris Maguire on Leadership Beyond the Boardroom | EP 703
00:55:14
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- [00:00]
John Miles
Coming up next on Passion Struck.
- [00:02]
Ollie Raisin
I think in the west, we are obsessed with time, right? And we're obsessed with who's first and who's the youngest. We can all name entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, who became billionaires at 19 or 20. There are many successful entrepreneurs who build multimillion dollar businesses, but they don't achieve it until they're 50 or 55. And that's just not interesting to us. It's not sexy. It's almost like we're over. We fetishize this idea that speed is the most important thing.
- [00:32]
Boris McGuire
But.
- [00:33]
Ollie Raisin
And I think it speaks to the fact that in the west, we are destination driven, whereas the Samburu, it's much more about the journey, it's the life's path. And how you get there is more important than where you end up.
- [00:48]
John Miles
Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with change makers, creators, scientists and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection and impact is choosing to live like you matter.
- [01:36]
Hey, friends.
- [01:37]
Welcome Back to episode 703 of Passion Struck. Today, instead of doing what we normally do with our guests, I want to transport you somewhere very different today, taking you with me to Africa, into the bush, into nature, into a kind of leadership experience most of us have never been invited into. Think of this episode as a virtual safari. But it's more than that. As leaders, we are being asked to navigate uncertainty on every front at once. Climate change, artificial intelligence, generational tension, mental health crisis, cultural fraction, moral exhaustion. And here's the uncomfortable. Can't meet challenges of this magnitude from inside a windowless hotel ballroom. You won't find the answers in webinars, motivational speeches, or surface level leadership training. And no amount of productivity optimization will give you the wisdom required for this moment. What these times demand is elevated leadership. And elevated leadership doesn't come from more information. It comes from immersion, from perspective, from relearning what it means to belong to each other, to nature, and to something larger than ourselves. That's why today's conversation matters so deeply to me. We're continuing our series the Season of Becoming. The fragile, disorienting, necessary stretch between the life we've known and the one that's calling us forward. A season where certainty dissolves, where old identities stop working, and where growth requires more than effort, it requires environment. Last week, Brent Gleason reminded us that comfort, when left unchallenged doesn't protect us. It slowly erodes our sense of purpose. And Hannah Pryor helped us to see that awkwardness isn't a flaw to eliminate it's the front line of growth. Together, those conversations point pointed to something uncomfortable but essential. That becoming requires friction, that growth rarely feels elegant, and that staying where we are can be far more dangerous than stepping into the unknown. Today's episode takes that idea one step further. I was introduced to today's guest by William Von Hippel, who many of you may remember from episode 665 and the moment he described what they were doing. I knew that this was a conversation you needed to hear during the Season of Becoming. My guests today are Ollie raisin and Boris McGuire, the co founders of Safarini Leadership. Their work is built on a powerful idea that cultural immersion and time in nature fundamentally change how we think, create and lead. Ali has spent more than a decade founding, leading and selling businesses in Kenya. He's fluent in Swahili, holds an MBA from Aston Business School and is trained as an Executive Coach through UC Berkeley. His work sits at the intersection of organizational culture, cross cultural leadership and human development. Boris has worked in more than two dozen countries and has lived in five. He's led teams across 10 African nations, served as a CEO and managing director in fast growth companies and now leads global operations for one of Africa's first, fastest growing HR fintech firms. He brings a systems level understanding of leadership shaped by real complexity. Together, they don't just teach leadership, they recontextualize it. They take leaders out of the environments that condition speed, ego and certainty and place them alongside Somboro elders where leadership is practiced as listening, patience, stewardship and responsibility to the whole. In today's conversation, we explore why immersion in nature increases creativity, focus and learning, why cultural humility is a prerequisite for modern leadership, and why becoming a better leader may require stepping far outside the world that made you successful in the first place. This episode is not about adding another tool to your leadership toolkit. It's about asking a deeper question. Who are you becoming and what kind of leader does the world actually need? Now take a breath, open your perspective and come with me. This is my conversation with Ollie raisin and Boris McGuire, thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now let that journey begin. Hey Passion Struck listeners. There are supplements and they're game changers. Mitrepura Gummies from Timeline are in a league of their own. They're the first longevity gummy with Urolithin a, a powerful ingredient shown to boost cellular energy and improve muscle strength by 12% in just 16 weeks. And I'm telling you, I feel the difference. More energy, faster recovery, sharper focus. All from just two gummies a day. If you want to stay strong and energized now and as you age, then you've got to try Mitopuric Gummies. My friends at timeline are offering 20% off just for my listeners. Head to timeline.compassionstruct to get started. 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- [08:51]
I am absolutely thrilled today to have Ollie raisin and Boris McGuire join me all the way from Kenya on Passion Struck. How are you, Ollie and Boris?
- [09:02]
Ollie Raisin
Fantastic, thanks.
- [09:03]
Boris McGuire
How you doing, John?
- [09:04]
John Miles
I'm doing fantastic. And I was so excited that our mutual friend Bill Von Hippel introduced us because your work really sits at the intersection of wilderness, indigenous bush wisdom and modern leadership. And for me, it's a combination that feels a little bit both ancient, but at the same time radically fresh. And I think we live in this world today that's just overwhelmed by webinars, boardrooms, things like that. And you take leaders on treks through Kenya to help them transform. I'd love to start with the story behind this. Maybe. Ali, I'll turn it to you first.
- [09:43]
Ollie Raisin
Sure. Thank you. I was always cautious of us talking over each other. Yeah, great. Safarini leadership was really born out of two passions that Boris and I both share. Boris and I have been both expatriates living and working in Kenya, leading cross cultural teams for about the last 10 or 12 years respectively. And we got to thinking, what would our perfect business, if we were going to start a business, what would it look like? And we knew that we were interested in leadership, and we also knew that we had this shared passion for the north of Kenya in particular, where over the past sort of eight or nine years, we've gone on many adventures together. We've done a lot of trekking and climbing mountains and really building relationships with warriors and elders from the nomadic Samburu tribe up in northern Kenya. And during those adventures, we really got to get a really interesting insight into how these people think their values, how their values show up in leadership, and how their definition of leadership is so starkly different to what you might consider to be more typical in a kind of conventional Western business setting. And then we got to asking ourselves, what if we were to bring Western executives over to Kenya and expose them to some of this way of life and immerse them in this culture? And so that's what we've been doing for the past two years or so. And the clients that we've brought over have given us really positive feedback. And so that's where we are, we hypothesis that we have benefit. There's a benefit to really being exposed to a radically different culture. Has been proven out.
- [11:34]
John Miles
And Boris Safarini means on a journey.
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Why is that concept so central to your leadership philosophy?
- [11:42]
Boris McGuire
Thanks, that's a good question. So people are typically familiar with the word safari, which does mean journey in Swahili, which is a lingua franca of this part of the world. And safarini just means to be on a journey that was important to us for, well, fundamentally leadership is a journey. So that was the initial thinking behind that name. Leadership is a journey. We're constantly growing, developing, learning, and that journey doesn't typically end, but oftentimes we can't see the journey for what it is. We're bogged down in the emails you mentioned, the webinars, the meetings, the calls, the day to day, and it's quite hard to disconnect from those things. And a big part of our philosophy is to disconnect, literally disconnect. We're traversing areas that have very little mobile network, we don't travel with devices, but also disconnecting with those day to day responsibilities to reflect on the bigger picture of belonging, values, purpose and mattering, as you like to say. The other reason is because, as Ali mentioned, the cultures and the communities that we're working with, they are semi nomadic. So their life experience is a sort of constant journey in and of itself. They are on the move and we wanted to move with them in a way that felt authentic to their life. And that really lined up with a lot of research that we've come to understand. Psychological neuroscientific research that suggests that to learn while walking, to be shoulder to shoulder rather than eye to eye, is to learn in a deeper, more focused and more impactful way. So all of that speaks to a literal and figurative leadership journey. And that's what we take people on.
- [13:17]
John Miles
And I want to take a step back because you brought up a whole bunch of things there. Connectivity and connection and mattering, of course, which I'm very concerned about. But I think what you guys are doing is almost a 180 from the way that most of Western civilization works today. Because as so many people know, despite high levels of global connectivity, we've never been more polarized or disconnected, I think, in the entire history of civilization. I call it the disease of disconnection. And we are so disconnected on so many levels that it is, I think, amounting to huge levels of mental illness playing out in younger generations that we're seeing now. But I think this is also playing out in leadership that we're seeing across various industries. So I wanted to focus this on leadership. What do you guys. And again, I'll turn this to Ollie. What do you see are some of the limitations in conventional leadership development methods that are going on today? Things like hotel conferences, your weekend seminars, online courses, motivational keynotes that have flaws. And what are you guys trying to do that's different?
- [14:41]
Ollie Raisin
Yeah, I think the first thing is we put a really heavy emphasis on almost going back to basics and encouraging people to really consider what are their values and how do their values show up in the way they lead others. And I think that seems obvious, but it's not something that gets a lot of focus these days. And we're able to do that, we're able to go back to basics because it's quite a long period of time that we're out in the bush. Our experience is 10 days and the core of that 10 days is a six day camel trekking or camel supported trek through the deserts and mountains of northern Kenya. So we really slow everything down and like Boris says, we, we don't have any technology. We really get off of technology. We provide people with a pretty substantial amount of time for deep reflection that I think most of us just don't get a chance for in our day to day lives. The other thing is, like we talked about technology, the technology is actually causing our brains to operate on a frequency that is not really conducive with creative thought. And so being out in the bush, slowing everything down, our brains actually operate on a frequency that enables us to be more creative. And I think it gives, it creates an opportunity for people to really have revelations that they wouldn't normally get if they were just trying to achieve something in two days in a conference or in a boardroom whilst simultaneously conscious of the fact that their email inbox is filling up. So I think it's a number of different things that really create the impact that our experience delivers.
- [16:28]
Boris McGuire
Could I add to that, John? One of the ways we like to think about our approach is like a three way Venn diagram and those three boxes. One of them is, as you mentioned, wilderness immersion, where there's a lot of science to support that. Getting out of the familiar and getting into nature does change your brain frequency. It changes how we focus, how we learn. The other is indigenous immersion. So like we said, immersing ourselves within a culture and a community that's radically different from where most of our clients are coming from has radically different perspectives, views and approaches and confronting those and through that, confronting your own assumptions or preconceptions or perspectives. And then the third is our unique coaching methodology. Methodology. So there are lots of outdoor adventure leadership experiences that one might do over the course of a couple days. There are, of course, different coaching opportunities out there, but we think the real special sauce is the combination of those two things with this indigenous immersion.
- [17:26]
John Miles
Yeah. And I was hoping you've talked a little bit about this, but can you walk us through the structure of a Safarini journey? Like what happens before, during and after the trek?
- [17:38]
Boris McGuire
Sure. We've been talking to, I don't know if you're familiar with Joe Pine, who wrote the Experience Economy and is now coming up with the Transformation economy. And transformation is a word that we probably weren't super comfortable using early on in the sort of rollout of Safarini leadership, but we've had sufficient feedback that this is a transformational experience to be comfortable using that word. And talking to Joe, we've come to understand why, and it's because we've structured this experience in actually three parts. Ali mentioned the core of it is 10 days in Kenya. But prior to that, we actually have a lot of lead up and discovery work. So we have a group kickoff call. If this is a mixed cohort group or a team, we have a kickoff call where we come to understand everyone's intentions. We give a lot of briefings, we answer a lot of questions, and we also then introduce a couple of leadership assessments. So people do these assessments. We work with the Intercultural Development Inventory. We work with the Aparian Globe smart, depending on the nature of the group. And we have people take these assessments which really begins this process of self reflection, self awareness, understand where they are, how they show up as leaders. And we introduce them to a kind of unique activity that we've come up with called the Journey Line. And the journey line is an opportunity to visualize one's life as a journey. It could be a river or a mountain or a path or a graph, whatever metaphor people want to come up with. And we ask people to reflect on why their leadership values are what they are, what do they think their leadership values are, how do they show up and where do they come from? What experiences or cultural programming has led them to follow those values as leaders? And also why do they show up on these different assessments in the way that they do? So before they even show up in Kenya, people are really going deep. And when they arrive in Kenya, before we get out into the bush, they have the opportunity to Meet our team of Samburu elders, and together all of us present our journey lines. So even before we're walking, we're in the bush and we're doing our kind of formal leadership programming, as it were. People are being quite reflective, we're getting quite vulnerable. We're coming to know people's background and life experiences. So there's a lot of preparation and discovery that goes into this experience before it really, even truly begins. Then we have our six day experience, and that typically looks like we wake up with the sun. We have coffee and biscuits around the campfire and Ollie and I will often offer prompts or open questions that kind of emerge from the day prior on the assumption that people have had a chance to sleep on it, literally reflect in their journals and might want to dig into those topics with a little bit more depth along the morning's walk. And then we'll usually walk for anywhere from three to five hours through the morning. We have breakfast on the way and we set up camp around lunchtime. And after everyone's been fed and had a little chance to rest up, we have a leadership circle in the afternoon. And these are never more than 90 minutes. They involve games, different activities, they're quite interactive. And this is the chance to hear from the elders about a specific topic. So we'll look at what is resilience to the Samburu, how is it defined and what does it mean and where does it come from? And we'll hear from the elders on that topic. And then Ollie and I facilitate an opportunity to explore applications in the participant's life. And that cycle kind of repeats itself for the next six days, where in the morning we offer a prompt, we have walk and talks. We then have leadership circles in the afternoon. And on the final day we ask everyone to make a commitment to action. So what are the insights, the aha moments, the revelations they've had about themselves or the culture or the team in which they lead, and what fundamentally do they want to change and do differently? We don't expect that everyone is going to come here and go back and try to create a Samburu leadership structure within a sort of corporate office. But there are elements that can be very powerful to people. And so then we hold them accountable, we hold ourselves all accountable to what those commitments are through a group coaching process that then takes place after the experience. And this is what Joe Pine would call integration. We're keen that this isn't a distant memory, a fun story you talk about at parties or in meetings, but actually something that shows up in your day to day leadership, has true practical application to your work and to your leadership, and therefore has a lot of value that lasts. And so this through the group coaching, we ask people, how are you doing? Your commitment to action was X. How is that going? And the group format is really powerful, we find, because sometimes people might struggle to find application or they might actually find a new application. And by hearing how other people are applying their experience in Kenya, they can try different things, they can experiment, and they can maximize the value that they achieve. So it's really three parts, but the core is obviously the Kenya experience.
- [22:24]
John Miles
Before we continue, I want to pause on something important.
- [22:27]
Listening to a podcast is one thing. Becoming the person you're listening for is another. Every single week, people tell me, john, I love these conversations, but how do.
- [22:37]
I actually do this in my life?
- [22:39]
That's exactly why I create companion workbooks for every episode. They're simple, powerful tools to help you apply what you discover here. Because becoming isn't passive, it's a choice you repeat. You can download all our free workbooks in the substack posts that go along with every episode. Just head to theignitedlife.net and join the community. Now a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.
- [23:04]
Boris McGuire
Foreign.
- [23:11]
John Miles
You're listening to Passion Struck on the passionstruck Network. Now back to my conversation with Ollie raisin and Boris McGuire.
- [23:18]
Yeah, so if I had to encapsulate that, it sounds like the three phases are you go through a diagnosis phase, then an experience phase, and then a follow through phase that you take them through and then is there. I know you've been doing this a couple years now, but on that follow through, are there repeat things down the line that you reconnect with leaders on so that some of the things that they're learning don't fade away as time goes on?
- [23:49]
Ollie Raisin
Yeah, some of our cohorts actually continue to want to meet. If I can just take a step back. The Sambura Society is very collectivist. They have a philosophy called Nabooisho, which is essentially a kind of we are because they are. It's this concept of interdependence, interconnectedness, and that we are all necessary to society. And so that whole kind of philosophy gets continued on. And some of our groups, after the initial coaching, naturally just want to stay together. They want to connect on a monthly basis and continue to support each other, which obviously has the added benefit of creating a kind of a really special sort of alumni network that we hope we can really build on.
- [24:32]
Boris McGuire
Yeah.
- [24:32]
John Miles
Can you talk a little bit more Ali about that interconnectedness? Because I think this is one of the most striking things about the Samburu lifestyle. Like when they see each other's worth in the community. Like, how is that different from what's happening in other parts of the world?
- [24:51]
Like what?
- [24:52]
Because I think this is in many ways the community that we are losing today and one of the biggest causes why so many people feel so detached. What's different about it?
- [25:05]
Ollie Raisin
I think if I could summarize it, high level, I would say very strong sense of shared values. Okay. The values in the Samburu community are very much around sharing of resources.
- [25:19]
Boris McGuire
So.
- [25:20]
Ollie Raisin
So just to give a little bit of context here, the communities that we work with are very marginalized, very poor, actually. They are very. They're a long way from Nairobi. They're underrepresented in Kenyan politics. They are living in a very harsh environment. We're talking about a semi arid kind of desert. We're talking about a livestock economy where their wealth is, is really dependent on the health of their livestock and that can be wiped out in a drought. So life is very fragile and they can only really survive and thrive by depending on one another. And in terms of their values, their values, people are grounded in the society's values from a very young age. So if we can just focus on the life's path of a young boy in the Samburu culture, once he gets to about the age of about 10 or 11, he will be assigned a mentor. And a mentor is another man, typically from the generation above. And that man will be responsible for schooling that boy on how to be a warrior. And around the age of 13 or 14, that boy goes through a circumcision ceremony where he becomes a warrior. And then for the next 15 years of his life, his sole purpose is to be of service to the community. Okay. So his job is to protect the tribe and do all of the kind of heavy lifting and really be at the disposal of anybody elder. So if an older woman who he may never have met before in his life gives him an order, it's disrespectful to deny it or to refuse it. So they are really of service to the community. And then after that 15 year period, they then collectively, en masse, graduate to become junior elders. And the junior elder period is a really, it's a real shift in the way of life. They settle down, they build a house, they accrue their own livestock, they get married, they have Children and they are really educated on how to be an elder. And then after that 15 years, they become senior elders. And at that point they have collective responsibility for the welfare of the whole tribe. And they make decisions collectively, en masse. And so from a young boy, he knows what his destiny is going to be. His destiny is ultimately to be a leader for the welfare and the collective flourishing of the tribe. And I think that shared sense of purpose gives everybody a very strong sense of belonging that I feel that we're lacking in Western society these days. And as a result of that, one of our clients who came away with us is a psychologist and she noticed that she was talking to some of our Samburu colleagues and she realized just from asking them, what is the word for anxiety in ma, which is the language of the science? Samburu, they don't have a word for anxiety, they don't have a word for depression. And you won't meet a single Samburu who has ever known or heard of anybody who's committed suicide. These things just don't exist in their society. And so that's when we got in touch with Bill Von Hippel and we realized that this is a society that despite their challenges, despite their marginalization and their apparent poverty, are really very kind of content and happy and thriving in life. And their leadership shows up in, in that.
- [29:00]
John Miles
Yeah, for them, what is their average lifespan?
- [29:06]
Ollie Raisin
Yeah, I don't think it's much shorter than ours. We've met people who are in their 80s in the Samburu society. Yeah, I wouldn't have a question.
- [29:14]
Boris McGuire
I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure what it is. From the data I've seen, you have, you have a higher level of childhood mortality, infant mortality with a lot of indigenous tribes. And I believe Bill Von Hippel talks about this in regards to the Hudson as well, high levels of infant mortality. And that is largely driven by nutritional challenges. Right. This is a. Not a farming community. It's in a very, it's a very arid, beautiful, but challenging area, subject to droughts and floods and the rest. So nutritional challenges often affect maternal and infant mortality levels. But after childhood, average lifespan likelihood of a 18 year old to get to 80 is actually pretty similar to any other society. But it is a much more. Yeah, there are higher rates of mortality in those younger years.
- [30:02]
John Miles
So I understand that one of the things that you do while you're on the excursion itself is that you incorporate daily walking tracks with Samburu elders, using movement as a vehicle for learning and reflection. But Also having the elders paired up with the. With those who are on the journey. How do these walks and talks differ from sitting in a typical classroom or conference room that so many of these leaders are accustomed to doing? Ollie, maybe you can take that.
- [30:36]
Ollie Raisin
I think one thing I would talk about is just the challenge. We're in an area of the world where there's a lot of uncertainty. We can be traveling, we can be trekking up a mountain. We don't know how long it's going to take. One journey that we recently took people on, there had been a lot of rainfall. That meant there was a lot of growth. These are forested mountains surrounded by desert. It's really quite a remarkable part of the world. But we got to the top of the mountain and we had to really bushwhack our way through with pangas or machetes, as you would probably know them. And that slows everything down. We don't know when we're going to get into camp. There's a lot of uncertainty and that creates an opportunity for a lot of coaching moments because I think that in the west we, we are over scheduled. We expect that. Okay, well, by this time I'm going to be in camp and by this time I'm going to have my dinner and by this time and etc, etc. And that's just not how things roll necessarily in these rural parts of Africa. So I think that's an aspect of it. But also I think that just, it's really remarkable seeing the strength of the relationships and the friendships that grow out of bringing radically different people from completely different cultures together and seeing them connect on a really human level. I think that's. That inspires people and causes them to reflect on what are they doing to foster human connection in their teams. What are they doing to create work teams or workforces that are really flourishing. That's the most satisfying thing of what we do, in my opinion.
- [32:12]
John Miles
Okay. And Boris, I'm going to turn this to you. We talked a lot about the Samburu concept of community and identity and core values. But in their worldview, what does it mean for them to live a good or successful life? Because in the Western world, if we had to wait on that track to become an elder and then a senior elder, it's counterculture. So many, and I am living proof of this, we strive for success as quickly as we can possibly get it. We push the limits to get to things much quicker than we often should. I know for me, getting to those places so quickly, I sometimes wish in retrospect I had a longer time to wait because there were critical skill sets and learnings that I wish I would have made that happened after the fact. I'm really curious about this. What does it mean for them to live a good life or a successful life?
- [33:11]
Boris McGuire
It's a great question. I think it's one of the like fundamental points of differentiation maybe. And I guess if I could summarize it, a good life is a life of a Samburu. That sounds like a non answer, but it begs the question, what is it to be a Samburu? And we've often said, would you rather, or people have asked our elders, would you rather die or would you rather no longer be a Samburu? And like to a man, to a woman, the answer has always been, and I know that sounds quite morbid, but it speaks to the importance of identifying with the collective right. It is not about. Bill Von Hippel had spoke about this balance of autonomy and connection. And there are elements of autonomy, but connection to the tribe and being of service to the tribe and to the community rise above almost any other, any other thing short perhaps of the family unit, of having a family. So to be a Samburu is to have a family, to create more Samburu, but also to fulfill your role and purpose, to serve your community. And in almost everything that people do, it is never. One can never see someone doing something solely in service of themselves. Even parenting is collective and we always say it takes a village. But in the Samburu communities, this is true. And children are literally considered the children of all. And likewise, leadership, to become an elder comes with no material reward. There's no bigger salary, car off, corner office, watch. There's the title, I suppose, of being an elder. But that's not seen as a reward in and of itself. It's seen as a responsibility, a cultural responsibility to serve the community and make good decisions for others. And through those good decisions, the collective, the group, the tribe flourishes and continues. So yeah, I think that's the answer. And our insight on that is really comes to resilience. What is it? To be strong is to be resilient. Is it to be gritty, to power through, to wear the heavy crown, so to speak, to blaze your own trail, or whichever metaphor you want to pick that you might be familiar with, none of them really apply. To be resilient is to be supportive, to be served by others and to serve others. And it's only in my observation, and I think Bill Von Hippel's research would support this that the society flourishes and the society is inherently resilient because they are so supportive of one another. Yeah, yeah. So we could talk for days about that.
- [35:39]
Ollie Raisin
Can I just add one thing, because you mentioned about time. And I think in the west we are obsessed with time, right? And we're obsessed with who's first and who's the youngest. We can all name entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg who became billionaires at 19 or 20. There are many successful entrepreneurs who build multimillion dollar businesses, but they don't achieve it until they're 50 or 55. And that's just not interesting to us. It's not sexy. It's almost like we're over. We fetishize this idea that speed is the most important thing. And I think it speaks to the fact that in the west we are destination driven, whereas the Samburu, it's much more about the journey, it's the life's path. And how you get there is more important than where you end up.
- [36:29]
John Miles
I've had the opportunity of spending some time with Native American tribes. And as I'm hearing you talk about a lot of the Sambur culture, a lot of this really reflects also on what Native American tribe tribal life was like for centuries and in some reservations what it's like today, especially as they're going through the rites of passage. The role that elders play, how they hold their elders in such high esteem. One of the things I was wondering though about is spiritual beliefs and connections to nature because those two things play a huge role and Native American life. I'm wondering what type of role they play in Samburu life.
- [37:18]
Ollie Raisin
I think that with spirituality they have a belief in God. And Kai, they call, is their God, but Nkai is represented in nature and it, and he's also represented in the past and in the future. And they think on a much longer term basis. They believe if they don't live a good, wholesome and respectable life, the ramifications of that are not going to be visited on them as individuals, but rather possibly their descendants. They want to live a good life because they want to set their descendants up for success. And so they take a much longer term view. And I think that again is something that we can learn from in the West. I think that again, it goes back to time, it goes back to everything being in a hurry. A CEO is judged on the next quarter's profitability. A president or a prime minister is really judged on what they can achieve in the next four or five years. And that's not necessarily conducive with making the smartest long term decisions. And so I don't know whether that answers your question, John, but I think that they think much longer term than we typically do in the West.
- [38:32]
John Miles
Well, another thing that you guys were talking about earlier is how the Samburu make choices. And you were saying that it really comes down to community decisions are made amongst the tribe. As you've seen this, compared to how hierarchical Western systems are, how do they differ? And why have you found the Samburu community decision making to be successful compared to some of the hierarchical systems that exist in other parts of the world? And maybe Boris, you can take that?
- [39:12]
Boris McGuire
Yeah, sure. Well, I feel to some extent, yeah. This theme of time comes back and you mentioned the walk and Ali just mentioned the role of time in kind of spiritual thinking. One of the things that our elders always say and they often tell the clients, particularly when clients are bit worried that the walk might be taking long and do we have time for this? And one of them, Stephen, always says in Samburu there's always enough time and people laugh. But that does reflect a philosophy that there isn't a rush. There is not a rush to reach camp, to get through our program today, to have dinner or to have any kind of conversation along the way. So your questions about what do we get out of the walk and spirituality and living a good life as a Sembru, I think does in many ways come back to this fundamentally different perspective on time. And again, we never expect that people are going to just fully adopt this philosophy towards time and in their Q3 reporting say, oh, there's always going to be enough time. But it does enable a mindset shift. When you start to see this, you start to see this kind of applied and you see it in decision making as well. So the elders do not have either kind of a pure authoritarian structure nor a purely democratic one. I would describe it as consensus driven. So the idea is really like a decision can be made and can become final when no one is really dissenting to it. And so there isn't a clear kind of you got to reach a 70% threshold or anything like that. But it requires a real super majority of the elders. And the elders can convene in different kind of sizes. But typically at a village level this might be a dozen men or a few dozen. And fundamentally if someone is not happy with the direction that the decision is taking, even if it is two of the 12, then the meeting is adjourned and there is a chance for private conversations. To take place and for the group to readjourn later down the road and see if either everyone is now bought in or whether a different decision needs to be made or of more time needs to be taken. And I think, you know, again, that doesn't work perfectly in a business context, but if you can extract a theme from it. For me, it's prioritizing harmony over dissent. I recall in school, or at least in college, being graded on participation, and so feeling like at the end of a class, I had to raise my hand and disagree with someone just to have the teacher check a box. And there's great. And that reflects our focus on autonomy. And there's great value in that, for sure. But one is more judicious in their dissent when you can be the lone outlier, and that can delay the decision from being made. So I think it's a slower process, for sure, but it's one that prioritizes harmony. And again, when you have a society living in really facing real, constant challenges, harmony is really important. And I think there's something to be said in a business context for that as well.
- [42:04]
John Miles
Well, Ollie, I've got an interesting question for you. If you did the reverse and you took a group of Samburu elders to visit London, what aspects of Western life do you think they would find most confusing or surprising to them?
- [42:22]
Ollie Raisin
I think probably the hierarchical nature of things. Just having one person who ultimately is accountable and gets to make the first final decision would be the most alien thing to them that they could possibly imagine. I also just think. And maybe we're repeating ourselves here, but the obsession with getting everything done quickly, I think speed is overvalued over making the right decision. And maybe that's because we live in such a competitive context, but I think they would struggle with that.
- [42:57]
John Miles
Okay. And I did want to ask just one more thing.
- [42:59]
Boris McGuire
Homelessness as well.
- [43:01]
John Miles
Oh, homelessness. Yeah.
- [43:03]
Ollie Raisin
Yeah, for sure.
- [43:06]
Boris McGuire
So obviously a bit of a delay.
- [43:08]
John Miles
Yeah. Obviously their life is dependent on the terrain that they occupy. How sacred did they hold the land and tending to it as part of their culture? Like, how does that play?
- [43:25]
Ollie Raisin
They're not agriculturalists, so it's not necessarily the land that is their way of life. It's very much their livestock that is everything. And it's not just a source of wealth. It is a source of wealth, but it's not just that their livestock and sacrificing livestock is a key part of their ceremonies. They give livestock when somebody gets married, but they share it openly, like one of the things that we Maybe I'm deviating a little bit from your question here, but one of the things that we found most surprising is the Samburu are incredibly resilient people. We've already talked about the environment that they live in is very harsh, they're very marginalized, they're very poor, and yet they're incredibly resilient and incredibly happy. And the source of that resilience is a dependence on one another, this interdependence on one another. And I think in the west when we talk about resilience, that word is quite often considered to be synonymous with toughness, mental grit, broad shoulders pushing on through. And actually in the Samburu culture, it's really quite the opposite. They have this kind of quiet confidence that if they were facing hard times, if there was a drought, then their neighbour would step in and their neighbor wouldn't resent them for it. You know, we've even had stories of one of our team, actually, a guy called Stephen, his brother in law, had a really difficult time and lost a lot of his camels and was told that another family who he'd never met was actually gifted 13 camels by his great grandfather. And so he went off and said to this family, I've heard that my great grandfather gave you some camels. Would you return them to me, to my family? And they said, yes, no problem. Because they had been told in turn this story that when they were having, when their family was facing hard times four generations ago, they were gifted some camels and so they, they returned the favor. So it's very reciprocal. I can't imagine that happening in the West. This idea that somebody that you've never met before would just turn up on your doorstep and say, hey, my great grandfather gave your great grandfather some camels. Would you return the favor? But that's how these people operate. They take it on face value and they support one another.
- [45:49]
John Miles
Boris, I'm going to switch directions here. You both run workshops and everything from harmony and dissent to resilience and cross cultural communication. Can you share a story or a moment in one of these workshops where one of the leaders perspective shifted dramatically and how that unfolded.
- [46:11]
Sure.
- [46:12]
Boris McGuire
Really put me on the spot. Let's see, like in, in the moment, during the trek had this kind of.
- [46:18]
John Miles
Revelation, like a powerful transformation that you saw happen. Maybe someone talked to an elder, you did a workshop and they had just like a light bulb moment where how they'd been operating changed.
- [46:32]
Boris McGuire
Yeah, sure.
- [46:34]
Ollie Raisin
You can talk about the cow game that we play.
- [46:36]
Boris McGuire
Boris, let me let you talk about that, I'm going to give two examples of an individual. So as much as this is principally we talk about leadership, it's leadership development, who we are personally and what we're going through outside of work directly impacts how we show up at work. Right. I don't really believe you bring your whole self to work, but you try to bring your best self to work. And to be your best self depends on your whole self. And so people often get very deep and vulnerable into their personal situations, not just what they're experiencing in the office. And there was a woman on one of our trips who during her journey line had spoken to having been in what she described as an emotionally abusive relationship. And that didn't seem to us initially connected to her work, which we had learned a lot about during the discovery process. So I wasn't necessarily sure how that was going to show up during the experiences. During the experience. And at one point she's told us this and talked a lot about in a testimonial, I believe as well, she was walking and she enjoyed walking alone and used that as a chance to reflect. But one of our elders approached her and said, you're always looking down. Why are you looking down? There's so much beauty around you. And this kind of ties into your prior question about nature. There is great reverence for nature in the Semburu culture. And to kill and eat a wild animal under any circumstances is to bring a curse upon your family. So there are like cultural tenets and spiritual beliefs that necessitate protecting the resources around you because while they don't farm there, they do depend on the land for their livestock. And our elder said, look around you. There's mountains, there's desert, there's trees. Why are you looking down? And it sounds like a very simple thing, but what she had said to us is she felt that she was inclined to look down for different reasons connected to the relationship that she'd been in and that this showed up and how she showed up as a leader at work. She was in a very male dominated industry and she tended to, as she's described, absorb negative energy from others and just carry on the classic, like, woman working in a very like, masculine field, not wanting to rock the boat or disrupt things, but actually and like, therefore taking a lot of crap maybe. And this was something she talked about every day in the rest of the trip and every day since. And I think and has had this. She has described total transformational impact on how she shows up with her family, with her friends, and at the office and that she seeks connection not to absorb negative energy, but to deliver positive energy and to see the purpose in others and find the good and connect and keep her head up and look for beauty, not to look down to avoid kind of negativity. So that's always struck me because it's so simple and one might think that you could get that insight anywhere and anyone could give you that keep your chin up kind of insight. But I think the Samburu, this lack of obsession of time and rushing and goal orientation, this feeling of connection to others, to nature, to the past, to the present and to the future, allows for that kind of perspective to be there always, whether in a time of challenge or emergency or what have you. And it's had a truly life changing effect on this woman. I have another example, but I feel like I've talked too much. I'll stop there. Yeah.
- [49:54]
John Miles
Ollie, did you want to give the other example that you were thinking of?
- [49:58]
Ollie Raisin
Sure. I'm cautious of going into too much detail just in case somebody listens to this and then decides they want to come on one of our experiences. But one of the workshops that we do, we play a game where we break the participants that the clients into different teams and we give them instructions. They each have eight cows. And without going into too much detail, the goal of the game is to maximize the herd. And you maximize the herd by grazing the appropriate amount of cows. If you over graze, if you send too many cows out to graze, then you risk actually causing the grazing area to deteriorate and that reduces your herd, the size of your herd. And it's very interesting because once you split people into teams, they typically start thinking in a we're going to win, we've got to maximize our herd for our team. And the instructions that we give are deliberately vague. It's quite ambiguous. We just say the goal is to maximize the herd. And the catch of the game is you can't win the game. Right. You can only really maximize the herd if you work collectively, together, as teams, as a whole. And that kind of aha moment that even though we didn't say the goal is for your team to win, that's the mindset that people enter into the game with. And I think that's quite a revelation for people.
- [51:26]
John Miles
And then I think a program like this, I always think knowledge is important, but applying that knowledge is the most important aspect going forward. So I understand that you have a capstone called the commitment to action exercise. And I was hoping one of you could walk us through that. Do you want to take that for us?
- [51:47]
Boris McGuire
Yeah, sure. So the last night, the core kind of five to six nights, is trekking through an incredibly remote and beautiful part of the world. And it's very comfortable, but it's certainly not luxury. We are camping. It's a sort of glamping experience perhaps, but the last night we typically spend in a much higher end, nicer community run lodge or camp somewhere where we have hot showers and things. And so it's at that dinner that we typically, we give people a form to fill out to think about the kind of hours before that dinner. But at the dinner we ask people to share out to what have they, what have they reflected on in those final kind of 24 hours as they say goodbye to the elders, as they say goodbye to the mountains and they start this process of reintegration. What are the things that stay with them? And so it's not particularly any more sophisticated than that, but we ask them to fill out their forms to share out with us, we take notes, we collect those forms and then we use that as the basis for coaching down the line.
- [52:50]
John Miles
Okay. And then Ali, for leaders who might be watching this or maybe they bring this up to their organization or a manager about bringing the whole team. What's the best way to engage with you or explore Safarini Leadership in more detail?
- [53:06]
Boris McGuire
Sure.
- [53:06]
Ollie Raisin
We have a website, safarinileadership.com we have an Instagram safarini leadership. We have a YouTube channel which is also Safarini Leadership. Where particularly on our YouTube channel there's a number of short sort of 90 second snippets of client testimonials talking directly about their experience. But our principal sort of social media is LinkedIn which again is Safarini Leadership. People can find out a lot of details there. Our emails are obviously on our website. We're very open to talking to anybody that may even just be curious. We don't give anybody the hard sell. It's really important that anybody that is thinking about coming away with us has a really good understanding that it's the right fit for them and that they really think that they can work with us because they're going to be out in the bush with us for six days. That's important. So yeah, any one of those social media platforms, they can learn a lot more about what we do.
- [54:08]
John Miles
Okay. And maybe what is the typical team size that goes out with you on one of these tracks?
- [54:15]
Ollie Raisin
It's quite minimum of six and really a maximum of eight. We can take more than eight people, but we have to change how we operate a little bit. What I mean by that is it's quite a heavy undertaking. We fly people way up into the north of Kenya and then we embark on a six day trek where every day we're moving, we're setting up a camp, we're cooking lunch, we're cooking dinner, and then the following morning we decamp and we move again and again. So logistically, it's quite an undertaking and we need to keep it to a very small group. So maximum eight clients, plus myself and Boris, plus our three Samburu Cultural Co facilitators. So that's 13 people. And we actually really like the intimacy that small group creates. People really do foster very strong relationships over the 10 days that they're together.
- [55:12]
John Miles
Well, Boris and Ollie, thank you so much for joining. Passion struck. It was such an honor to have you on today's program and I'm so intrigued by what you both are leading here.
- [55:21]
Boris McGuire
Thank you for having us.
- [55:22]
Ollie Raisin
Yeah, pleasure.
- [55:23]
Boris McGuire
Honored to be with you. We appreciate it.
- [55:25]
John Miles
That's a wrap on today's conversation with Ollie raisin and Boris McGuire. And what stayed me the most from.
- [55:31]
This episode is this truth.
- [55:32]
Becoming doesn't require more information. It requires a different environment. When we change that context, we change what becomes possible. Here are a few reflections worth carrying forward. First, leadership isn't a position. It's a responsibility to the collective. Second, speed is not the same thing as progress. And wisdom doesn't always come from the newest framework. Sometimes it comes from the oldest ones. The Samburo elders don't rush decisions. They don't lead alone, and they don't separate success from service. That's a powerful mirror for the world we're living in right now. If today's episode expanded your thinking, please share it with someone who leads or wants to lead differently. And thank you for helping this season of becoming reach more people than ever before. If you want to go deeper with these ideas, join me@theignitedlife.net where each episode is paired with reflection tools to help you integrate what you're hearing into how you're actually living. And next week, we continue this journey with a conversation I'm especially excited about. I'm replaying a live conversation that I did with Joshua Green, the Harvard moral philosopher, and Rick Hanson, my friend, psychologist, and senior fellow at the Greater Good Science center at UC Berkeley for a powerful dialogue on expanding the circle of moral concern. In the conversation, we explore why humans divide into us and them. How moral reasoning shapes conflict, compassion, and cooperation, and what it takes to widen our sense of who belongs in leadership, society, and everyday life. Because becoming isn't just personal, it's collective.
- [57:06]
Ollie Raisin
All living systems are built on a.
- [57:09]
Boris McGuire
Combination of cooperation and competition, right? So cooperation at multiple levels means starting with primordial soup. You have molecules come together to form.
- [57:18]
Ollie Raisin
Cells, and cells come together to form.
- [57:21]
Boris McGuire
More complicated cells and colonies and individuals with organs that are work together in complementary ways.
- [57:27]
Ollie Raisin
And then we have individuals forming small.
- [57:29]
Boris McGuire
Scale societies, villages, chiefdoms, nations, and sometimes even United Nations. And all of that works because the.
- [57:37]
John Miles
Parts are able to accomplish more together.
- [57:39]
Boris McGuire
Than they can separately. And so they form a whole.
- [57:42]
John Miles
I'm John Miles, and you've been passion struck. Until next time. Keep choosing growth over comfort, connection over certainty, and live like you matter.