Ken Huey 0:00

Welcome to The Voice of Hope, where bold leaders and healers share how they're building hope, not just talking about it. I'm Dr. Ken Huey. Let's meet the change makers transforming lives from the therapy room to the boardroom. Hello, and welcome to The Voice of Hope. Today's guest is Saliman Abu Hamdan, a psychologist, executive coach, and keynote speaker who blends neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and trauma-informed leadership. He is the creator of 3C's method and has spent over 15 years helping executives regulate under pressure, lead with clarity, and transform from the inside out. His work is shaping what human leadership looks like in the age of AI. Slavin, thank you.

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 0:46

Thank you, Ken. Great to be here. Welcome, everyone who's listening.

Ken Huey 0:50

Yeah. So I'd like to start with asking why this? What landed you in this area? What's your reason for doing it?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 0:59

So my purpose in life, I realize, was to is to surface human greatness. So I think everybody has uh an inner greatness that could be veiled, disguised, blocked. So I've discovered that what we're really good at is helping people understand themselves better to then surface that greatness. I went through that story myself. And so whatever I use with executive coaching, with workshop facilitation, with keynotes focuses on leveraging my experience and the expertise from the sciences to surface human greatness. That's what we do.

Ken Huey 1:45

All right. You have said that most people don't burn out from workload, but from unseen internal patterns. What internal pattern did you have to confront first in your own life?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 1:56

One of the biggest internal patterns that I was facing earlier in my life is believing that my value came from achievement. And so that pattern made me work harder and harder and nearly burn out because I was chasing that level of validation, of acknowledgement. And it was only after I realized that pattern that I was able to name it and reframe it and get the best out of it. So that was one of the key patterns. And being in the Australian army, management consulting, working with elite sports, it perpetuated that pattern until I realized that what looked good on the outside, I wasn't feeling on the inside. So yes, I was getting all these accolades, but I wasn't feeling it on the inside. And when I realized that pattern, then I was able to optimize it.

Ken Huey 3:06

Do you have an indication or a belief as to where that pattern started originally?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 3:13

Look, no baby is born thinking that they want to be seen as high achievers. You can't think of a three-month-old baby thinking, oh, I really want to nail this crawl. No, it's shaped by society, right? So society shaped it, parenting shaped it, being compared to others shaped it. And you know, there's no blame for our parents. You got to understand that they're the cards that you were dealt, and then the question is how do you make the most of that in an optimistic, positive way? Yeah.

Ken Huey 3:55

You grew up uh in a civil war. Uh, tell us a little bit about how that shaped the way that you understand emotional intelligence.

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 4:06

So growing up in a civil war really conditions your nervous system to be always on survival mode, always in threat mode, because you never know when the next bomb's gonna fall or the next bullet's gonna fly past or the next person's gonna be hurt or killed. So the nervous system is always wide. So noticing that in conversations, although the physical threat wasn't there, the psychological threat is there. So even though you may not feel physical threat around you, you sense a psychological threat because of this embodied pattern. That then enabled me, and you can see that enabled me, it didn't make me, it enabled me to study neuroscience and behavioral science to understand how do people and leaders understand their embodied reactivity because that shows up without you even knowing. Right? Carl Jung said if you're not aware of your unconscious parts, they tend to control you without you knowing. So that enabled me, that experience, to delve deeper into that embodied intelligence space, which I now use for leadership development, workshop facilitation, keynotes to enable others to understand it themselves.

Ken Huey 5:49

When did you first realize that your nervous system was still operating in survival mode, even in boardrooms?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 5:56

Yeah, once again, it's about understanding your patterns. So if it's one experience, I could share a story. So I'm sitting in a senior defense meeting. I was part of that organization, and lots of senior officers around, and I knew the answers. I had done the analysis as a capability analyst, as an executive, and I had something important to share. But there was something that was holding me back from sharing it. And it was unconscious because I could not understand it at the time. And afterwards, after we left that meeting, my director at the time said, Slay, I noticed you didn't share what you needed to share in that meeting. I wonder what's happening there. So ever since that moment, that was about 20 years ago, I've really delved into understanding this embodied pattern and how it shows up and what we can do about it. And now I teach executives and leaders and professionals to identify the unconscious blockers of their greatness, of their expression, of their communication.

Ken Huey 7:24

Yeah. You built the three C's method, really focusing on this clarity, courage, connection. Yeah. Those three, which was the hardest for you personally to master.

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 7:39

Well, the three C's are an integrated framework. So they're a puzzle that come together, and you know, if I may share it, in in the book, there are three orbs that integrate together to enable us to thrive in the age of AI. So you have to start somewhere, right? If you have courage, which is great, but without clarity, you might burn out because you're peddling, peddling, peddling, working, working, working without that clarity of why you're doing what you're doing. And if you have connection and belongingness without clarity of the self and clarity of your experiences, then you might be swayed and compliant and approval seeking without you knowing. So the biggest focus of mine was around clarity. So clarity is where we start. I believe on the old in ancient Greece and the Temple of Delphi is said, know thyself. So it's about that self-awareness, and it's a continuous journey of clarity, knowing what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, what I'm sensing in the present moment, which then informs my actions and my connections.

Ken Huey 9:12

In this age of AI, what's the biggest misconception leaders have about emotional intelligence?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 9:19

I think one of the biggest misconceptions leaders have is thinking that emotional intelligence is soft and it's just about being nice and empathic. Now, obviously, kindness and empathy are part of it. However, what many people don't realize is that emotional intelligence is our biggest differentiator from artificial intelligence. AI can't empathize, can't connect, it can't hold the space for others to feel safe, to be themselves. Yes, it's great at neck up processing, so neck up cognitive. However, it can never replace human judgment, human trust, empathy, decision making. So if leaders aren't aware of that and over-leverage AI while missing out on emotional intelligence development, then they are outsourcing their capacity to AI. And we do research in neuroscience, and we're finding from the literature reviews and the research that there is atrophy in the brain. So there's a decrease in brain capacity due to overuse of artificial intelligence. And those leaders who are aware of that and do the work that we share on emotional intelligence are better able to be the most adaptive they can be in the age of artificial intelligence.

Ken Huey 11:04

You've spent time in a lot of different environments. You've been in elite sport, worked there in government, military, psychology. You know, these have taught you about human beings under pressure for sure. What have you learned? What are some takeaways, at least one, from the work that you've done?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 11:22

Probably one of the biggest takeaways is understanding your why, understanding why you do what you do. Because that question then cascades a different pattern, cascades different questions following that. So, for example, if a leader is building companies, leading huge teams without knowing why they're doing what they're doing, they might be peddling harder and harder without slowing down enough to understand themselves and what they need in that particular moment. And that could lead to unmet needs, into high inflammatory markers, into reactivities rather than proactivities. And that could really lead to burnout. So it's key to understand why you're doing what you're doing, and are your actions aligning with that?

Ken Huey 12:37

Yeah. I I'd like it if you'd stop describing my life while we're talking. Yeah, seriously. In all seriousness. So talk about, if we could, identity confusion and how it shows up in high achievers. Everything looks great from the outside, but what's going on?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 13:00

You know, someone once said everyone goes to work doing two jobs, the job that they're doing at hand, and the job of being the person they think others want them to be. And it's only after you distinguish those two parameters that you realize that, you know, you are enough as you are. You are evolving, you're growing, and there's there's no external expectation on you. It's that misperception that keeps you going. So it's when you go within and understand why you're doing what you're doing, then that external pressure dissipates, and then the intrinsic motivation surfaces.

Ken Huey 13:49

So you've done some work. You've wanted to understand your own process, as I'm gleaning from our conversation. And you show up, if I might be so bold, quite centered and understanding of kind of where you are. That takes some time to earn, it takes some time to work through. When did that start gelling for you? And was there a trigger for that?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 14:17

I I come back to the humanistic aspect of it, Ken. Because when you say it takes time for it to gel, it takes time for you to harness and cultivate that core quality of centeredness and balance, doing it for yourself can take you far, right? So doing it like so, if you're thinking, I want to be centered, I want to be calm because that's what I want, so that individualistic self, then sure, that will take you a long way. And what's gonna take you further is doing it in service of others. That is the real force multiplier. It's that you're understanding that what you need to do is important because it's in service of others and it's that aspect of leadership. So one of the key insights that I had was I need to cultivate centeredness and balance so I can hold the space for others to surface their greatness. If I'm not centered and balanced, I'm not able to help others bring out their best. Does that make sense?

Ken Huey 15:49

It really does, yeah, absolutely. All right, we're going in some directions I didn't expect to, but it's that's fun stuff, so thank you. Um if I can ask you about shadow integration, what does that actually look like on Tuesday morning at work?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 16:04

Yeah, shadow integration is is really important. We do a lot of shadow coaching. So it's not, you know, you might not think, oh, it's superstitious. What is shadow? Is it like this secretive kind of space? It's simple but hard to do. It's simple, but it's not easy. It's simple to understand. So imagine it's Monday, it's Tuesday morning, and you're in a meeting with your team or with your stakeholders, and you've presented your idea to, let's say, to the board or your executive group, and two of the group members challenged your idea, and they they presented alternative views. Now, as a leader, you may feel a level of defensiveness about what they said because you might be perceiving a threat to your identity because you are being seen as wrong or getting something wrong, right? And so that's gonna trigger a sequence of events within you that's gonna hold you back from being present and collaborating with everyone on the table, and that's an example of the early work that we do with leaders to identify their shadow patterns, their unconscious shadow patterns before the risk is so great that's it's limiting collaboration, limiting decision making, limiting connection, and limiting growth. So that's an example of the shadow work that we do.

Ken Huey 18:03

Right. We're in a very, very fast time. I mean, AI is accelerating change, you know, faster than humans can regulate, faster than we can process. What is one skill you believe will become non-negotiable in the next five years? Adaptability.

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 18:25

Being adaptive. Think about when we discovered fire thousands of years ago. Fire was obviously life-changing, and those who overused it got burnt out. Who pushed through too much got burnt by the fire. Those who avoided using it altogether and detached from it missed out on all the great things that the fire enabled. And those who just went along and used it because everyone else was using it, around you know, 60% of the population fall into that sphere, lost their level of identity, lost their personal autonomy, right? Because they're just doing it because everyone else is doing it. Now, AI, I think, is like discovering fire in our era. And being adaptive is understanding why you're using it, what is the ethical way of using it, for example, data sovereignty and data governance, this ethical decision making in terms of AI, and where is it getting in the way of human connection? So to answer those questions within yourself, you need that skill, that capacity of adaptability. And we truly believe that through clarity, courage, and connection, people and leaders are able to develop this adaptability to be human-centered, high performing, and adaptive in the age of artificial intelligence.

Ken Huey 20:22

Sleeman, if a if a leader could only fix one thing and it would improve 90% of their performance, where should they start?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 20:31

My oppositional defiance does not agree with you asking me one thing. I'm gonna say two things. I'm gonna say self-awareness and connection. They're key. In terms of connection, you are wired to connect with others under stress. When you are stressed, the brain is sending a message for the body to produce cortisol and oxytocin. Cortisol is a stress neurochemical, and oxytocin is the mend and befriend neurochemical. So we are wired for connection under stress. And in the age of AI, where everything is going so fast, it's inevitable that you're gonna feel a level of threat because things are changing, and change means uncertainty, and uncertainty means threat. You gotta remember we still have the old brain, yeah, the limbic brain in there. So connection is key, and the World Health Organization is saying social disconnection is akin to having half a packet of cigarettes a day to our health. So connection is really key. And self-awareness, which I've spoken about before. It's being aware of your sense of self, being aware of your thinking, your feeling, your embodied awareness in the moment in order to take actions aligned with your values, with your why. So I would say those two are key and they dovetail beautifully together.

Ken Huey 22:09

Yeah. Sleeman, there's going to be people listening that will want to know more about what you're teaching, what you're giving. How do they eind you? What should they know?

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 22:21

Well, the first step is often the hardest. So I'd like them to know that it's normal for them to be apprehensive about taking this first step. But after they take that first step of inquiring, then it flows more smoothly after that. So asking the question, reaching out to us on holisticpsychology.com.au, connecting with me on LinkedIn, Slayman, Abu Hamdan on LinkedIn. We're also on Instagram, if they want to follow us on Instagram, Holistic Psychology on Instagram, and having that conversation to say, hey, that really resonated for me. Could we have a conversation around that? That is the first step. It's that asking, hey, what could that be? And then we co-create the answers with you. I mean, you don't need to understand exactly what your goals are from coaching or a leadership program for your organization, will co-formulate what you need. Because often you might say, Yeah, I need to be more courageous, or I need to understand this better, or work on my courage or confidence. That might be the case, or it might be something else that you need to work on. So that's what we can clarify first.

Ken Huey 23:58

Sleeiman Abu Hamdan, thank you very much. This is just a powerful, hard-hitting, very quick nugget. But on a bright and early morning in Australia to join us, I really am grateful.

Sleiman “Slayman” Abou-Hamdan 24:11

Look, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me. And look, think about it this way I've got the rest of the day now. It's very early in Australia. I've got a full day ahead, so thank you for waking me up early.

Ken Huey 24:24

Fantastic. Thanks for joining us on The Voice of Hope. If you were inspired, share the light. And remember, hope's not just a feeling, it's a force. We'll see you next time.