In this heartfelt podcast episode, Daniela Hartman, discusses her unique journey from UN journalism to fostering heart-centered leadership. Emphasizing authenticity, she introduces the GRID process, encouraging individuals to reconnect with themselves, set boundaries, and find common humanity. She offering free resources for leaders and change-makers.
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Transcript
Hi and welcome.
To the You World Order Showcase Podcast today we have with us, Daniela Hartman. Daniela is the founder of Grid Leadership Program, author of the Book The Grid, Uncovering Heart Centered Leadership for those working with humans. She's been a journalist who worked for the UN, has been immersed in Tibetan.
Buddhist philosophy for over 20 years.
Has lived in eight countries on 4 continents and traveled all over the globe. She uses this unique background to assist influential leaders to actualize their individual recipes of inner truth and guidance. Welcome to the show, Daniella. We're so excited to have you here and to.
Talk about all of these things.
Thank you so much.
So gosh, where to start? Let's start with how did you get started? I you. You've done a lot of traveling. You've got a huge background. I'm excited to hear about all.
Of these things.
Well, I got started even when I was a baby, my parents moved me the first time when I was three months old. The second time when I was 6.
Months old.
So I spend my first five years actually in Paris, France, and then we moved to Switzerland and then actually we moved to Germany. I am German and then I went to international.
Schools I went to high school in the US because I wanted to figure that out.
And I just continued like that and what I loved about being in this international background is that you meet people from all over the world and you kind of can distill it down to a common humanity. And that is something that has kind of guided me all my life to find out, you know, what actually connects us as humans.
I love that I went to international schools also and traveled around the world as a child. So we kind of connect there and I could totally understand your thoughts about we're all connected. There's something about an international community and I think zoom is really helping with that.
That just it.
It makes.
People look at the world differently once you once you've been there, it's really hard to look at the world as us.
And them it's just.
We're all in this together.
Absolutely. And we can always find common ground if we just know we have the same needs, the same ones, fundamentally the same desires, we can connect over what you know connects us or what is common to us rather than what is different. And once we have connected on a common.
Humanity. Then we can explore our differences in kindness, you know, in respect and of common appreciation, rather than saying, as you said, you know, you're like this. And I'm this and it's me and other.
Yeah, yeah, I love that so much. And I take it you bring this into your grid leadership program, how does that look and what is what is that all about?
Well, it started off. I mean as we as.
I just talked.
About when I went to school, I went to an International School university had the same thing, and then I thought I was studying international relations.
What was the most international place ever? And that's the UN, so applied there and with my stroke of luck, I was able to get in very easily. But it's a very complex place, you know, it's over 190 countries. I think now it's even over 200.
That are trying to find a common ground work on international law. So there were moments I was working on HIV and AIDS and I was stationed in South Africa where I found my integrity challenge that we were talking about international pharmaceuticals giving medicine.
Out how to work on programs to really help people in such great suffering and the blockages to that that I had to step back and think what is it actually that makes us help each other or not help each other? You know how does greed come about?
How can it happen that we have all of these resources, but we don't distribute them to the people who actually need them? So at that time?
That's over 20 years.
Ago was something that was very interesting and challenging and deep into my heart center it kind.
Of poked me there.
So I had already started to look into Buddhism because I wanted a spiritual path that I could step into and get.
Training in and Buddhism is a very clear path.
In meditation and mind training and training of perception and the very clear philosophy. So I went to South India, studied there for 10 years and then worked as a translator for another 10 years. So that's the philosophical background. And I learned what I wanted to learn to understand how my mind.
Works how we create a self. What is a healthy self? What is an unhealthy ego and all of these things and when COVID hit a lot of people.
Where in a situation to rethink their lives, to rethink the systems that they had followed more or less blindly or more or less, you know, because everybody else did it.
So I started working with people one-on-one and I really got interested, especially in leaders and change makers to find their authenticity, to find their access to their minds. They're in a guidance system. Yeah, this is how I got started and then put together.
The great.
Does the grit stand for something?
Is it an acronym?
Yeah, it.
It is an acronym absolutely. It stands for G which is growth, you know, to figure out how do we become who we actually are and how can we use the present moment to design our future when we know our recipe for growth responsibility. It's all about taking responsibility for our actions and minds.
And starting to master our mind through awareness and meditation integrity, what are our values? You know, what do we see as morally right and ethically right? And what is wrong for us?
And how do we live that in that is then D of grid diversity in the different beings that we are and in a world that is more and more diverse. And how can we find as we just spoke about a common humanity in everything that we encounter? Yeah. So that is great. And I always talk about.
Stepping from the matrix into the grid and to find our own interconnectedness and our own inner core in such a diverse world.
I love that so much. The diversity is everybody is so unique that we were talking about this before we got on that. I talked to coaches every day and they're all doing.
Something different, even if the thread of what they're doing is similar to what somebody else is doing, it's.
They have a unique approach to it and it's so interesting to me to see how.
People are.
Stepping into their uniqueness, which is the core of diversity and instead.
The way the world has worked for a while and that we're all supposed to be the same and everything should be equal. And then that breeds competition because you want to be the best at everything instead of just allowing yourself to be in integrity with who you are and who you are.
Created to be and the gifts that you have.
And to bring them forward and present them to the world in a way that they can, the people that need your particular flavor of whatever it is that you're gifted with, they can find you and it enables them to be the best at what they're doing. And it it's all.
Interconnected in that way, and instead of competing with each other, we compete with ourselves to be the very best at what we're doing ourselves so that we can admire and appreciate the uniqueness and the gifts that the other person has it.
I see this change happening and it's a lot has to do with people like you that are out there sharing this message with people.
I think it's extremely important.
This I mean I call it authenticity, uniqueness to have this own unique core. And then how do we shine it out?
So I always talk about 3 levels. The first one is the connection to ourselves and I see that a lot of people have lost a bit the connection to themselves. That's on an emotional level on a spiritual level on a health level, you know, on a physical level. So what I support.
People and through this grit process and through these Buddhist philosophical tools and these tools of contemplation to first of all, really reconnect to themselves.
So they start to.
Be comfortable with themselves.
To have their own backs to be their own best friend.
Because the worst kind of competition is a kind of negative competition with yourself, you know, not appreciating ourselves.
Trying to be somebody who we're not, but the moment we can drop into ourselves, you know, feel comfortable with ourselves. Then we can connect to others. And I always say, you know, authenticity is coherence and our thoughts and our actions.
Actually are the same thing and people then can trust us. You know, we're accountable. We can take responsibility for ourselves. We're reliable. I think that is so important. And then the third step is to go out into the world and serve and build the legacy that we want to build.
But if we're not, if we don't understand our uniqueness, if we don't understand our authenticity, or we cannot step into it, all of that is impossible.
It is really impossible until you know yourself.
You can't hope to know others.
And part of it I think is the building of boundaries.
If you know yourself, and if you can, you can take responsibility.
For who you.
Are and be OK with that? You can lay out boundaries and boundaries, help other people interact with you as well as you to recognize that other people might have boundaries also.
If you don't have boundaries, it's really hard for.
You to understand that other people do.
And you're more likely to trample on those boundaries.
Whereas if you have.
Your own boundaries and other people. You can see other people's boundaries.
The their interaction becomes much more a flow of energy between 2 beings rather than a posturing of position.
Absolutely. I call it just being clear, you know, and sometimes we can feel that something's not right for us. And when we have the inner clarity to actually lay.
It out, as you said and just.
Say hey you.
This doesn't work for me because.
And this is what we can do and this is what we simply can't do because it does hurt my integrity because it does push something that is uncomfortable for me or goes, you know, against my values that is extremely important. We absolutely.
Right.
I think it even comes down to working with people you know sometimes.
Some things aren't meant for you or they aren't meant for you right now, and you need to be able to be OK with that. I think a lot of us went through the shiny syndrome shiny object syndrome, and it's really easy to, like, get on a path and think you're going to do this and then something else comes along and distracts you.
If you don't have integrity in yourself and you don't know what your mission is and you don't know where you're going, it's really easy to get pulled off course.
But if you're really strong and you know you're all about working with people in a leadership setting, leaders need to be, you know, dead set. They know what their mission is and.
You know, everything is about the mission rather than, you know, the shiny things that are on the side. The flashing lights, and oh, this could be fun, but.
It's easy to get distracted.
Can hear you.
Absolutely. It's easy to get distracted, but sometimes we also get distracted because of our internal turmoil. When I had one client, for example, who had a lot of problems in her workspace because.
The team that she was leading was constantly abusing her boundaries. She was trying to put them in but.
Somehow, she also let it slip when people did abuse these boundaries. So when we looked into that, we could see that she had never learned to actually stand in her boundaries. She could articulate them because she could see it wasn't working for her practice and for the team she was a doctor.
Holding or she is a doctor holding quite a big practice.
But to for her to understand that this constant breach of these boundaries actually came from a childhood wound, for example.
That made it possible for her to actually enforce the boundaries and not let people trample over it.
So sometimes we get distracted because we simply do not know where certain behavior comes from.
And we do believe that if somebody tells us that our boundaries or our values are wrong or that we're being too straight or we're being, you know, we're kind of being gaslit in a way that is something that I'm working on a lot, especially with leaders, because either they're sometimes too strong.
On their boundaries and people do not want to approach them anymore and they do not get mirrored anymore and they do not become aware of their own problems or faults.
Or they're too loose. So it is like this beautiful middle way of being receptive to feedback and being open to.
The people around.
But at the same time, stand in one's own power.
And that is a very fine dance.
Very fine.
It's easy to as women, I think we get trained to just.
Do what we're told to do and to be quiet and to not stand in our power and to be everything to everybody. And I don't think that serves society very well, at least not anymore people, women who can stand up.
And take ownership for who they are and the power that they have. And we all as individual human beings, have so much power.
When you when you play small and when you're when you're over on the.
The I'm going to just let you do whatever you want because I want you to like me.
When, which is usually what is going on when people don't have boundaries that they can hold, they want to be liked at the expense of themselves, and it usually doesn't work.
People don't respect you.
Let alone like you so.
Or there's the other side where you're just like, I'm just going to own all of this territory. I'm holding strong and. And those people have wounds also. They're like, I've got these walls up, and I'm not letting anybody in. You're nobody's going to hurt me ever again.
I don't care if you like.
Me or not, it doesn't matter.
But there is a middle ground in there.
Definitely, and a lot is like we're emulating actually somebody else's behavior. So usually when I go back into peoples's upbringing, they're actually emulating either, you know, one of their parents or somebody else within their vicinity because they learned this is how I'm going to be loved.
This is how I'm going to be respected or this is how I have to stand in the world in order to be seen or liked or loved or fear.
Whatever it is and what I do is that I really navigate with people back into what do they really want? And sometimes it actually takes them at least a month to really start to articulate.
And really find their own parameters of what they want, and then the connection comes to others. And usually what we then look at is what we talked about before. We all sort of have a mission and especially as leaders, we do have something we want to bring into the world, whether it's a product, whether it's a.
Not whether it's an organization and we are responsible for people, so everybody needs to benefit somehow of what we do and needs to be roped in and believe in what they're doing or else. And that is very prevalent in Germany. And I assume in the US also it's silent.
Quitting if people do not feel touched or motivated by their leader, they will simply show up at their work, do their bare minimum, and then go back home.
But to have a good teamwork to be an effective leader, this connection with the team has to be there and this common mission needs to be something that everybody works for. So this is something that I work on a lot with people because this integrity piece.
This responsibility piece then needs to go out into the teams and into the population or people or consumers.
Whoever is targeted by our work.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's so important so.
Do you work with corporations where you help?
Leaders in the.
Corporations. Do you work? How? How does that all look?
Well, usually it's.
Word by word of mouth so people who are in this situation where especially now leadership is really changing.
You know, after COVID and with social media and with artificial intelligence, there's so many more factors.
That challenge? Leadership that usually.
You know, somebody just says hey.
You know, I've been working with Daniela.
Give her a call and then we have an exploratory of call. Just a session to find out what is it that is challenging them right now. And then we pull out a plan to.
Together, the minimum is 3 months, but usually I do six months one on ones on weekly calls to really get into the integration and the embodiment as well. So in in Buddhist philosophy I mean of course nobody.
Needs to be Buddhist who works with me but.
It is such a well laid out plan we talk about too.
Some gum and two means to look at something more from an intellectual side.
Right. You know. Yeah, that makes sense. That doesn't make sense. But then we have to contemplate it and see does it resonate, is it really applicable to my life? And then we go into a third phase which is integration or in Tibet and we say gum also meditation but meditation more with familiarizing ourselves with a new concept.
How do we embody it? How do we let it flow into our work?
So this is how I work with people and these leaders are change makers. They usually come from all sorts of different.
Walks of life.
So I don't have like a preference, but I do. That's just kind of what makes my heart sing when I can see.
That my work and their work then ripples out to their teams and to what they want to actually bring into the world.
So you don't really, you're not restricted to like corporate professionals. You, you'll work with entrepreneurs, you work with. Really anybody that's leading A-Team so.
Yeah, but also very much with international organization. So my next move is to Geneva to work more with UN and.
The NGO's that are around there, the non governmental organizations that are around there.
Because I know that world pretty intimately, and I also like to work a lot with charitable organizations because the 20 years in in Nepal and India, I've worked a lot on charitable projects, and I know the difficulties there, especially in the cultural exchange.
And wanting to bring something through, but when you do something in the US, it's very, very different than when you do it in Nepal.
There are different kinds of communication. There are different ways of respecting one another. So to find this common ground of humanity that we spoke about before and then from there explore the differences. That is something that I really, really enjoy.
I love.
That so much thinking about, you know how.
How being in different countries and traveling a lot international people, there are some things that are recognized universally, that there are some things that really aren't and things that are accepted as mainstream in the US or.
Are different than things that are mainstream in other countries.
Even if you speak the same language like I know in the UK things are different than they are in the US, things are accepted differently over there than they are here. And unless you've been around a number of different cultures, you don't really understand that you need to step back.
For a minute.
And let it.
Soak in and watch what other people are doing before you, just like.
Step out there and step in it.
Exactly. And that means this anchoring into our own core, our inner guidance system, first of all. And then we also become more.
Aware and more open about the other, if we're too involved with ourselves and you know, we're feeling insecure in ourselves, it's very hard to pick up on somebody else and to find these ways of communicating between the cultures.
And to work also especially with a piece of integrity.
What I found.
When you especially work in an international arena.
Sometimes you have to work with your integrity and your values because every country is a bit different. Every culture is a bit different and to kind of see where can I compromise on certain of my values or how can.
We sort of.
Adjust that all of our values are being met.
That is a very interesting dance. Also, that kind of really challenges me and opens me up to new possibilities.
I love that.
So do you have a?
Access to your book and do you have something that you offer people?
In terms of getting to know you and work with you.
Right.
Well, on my website it's simply the grid dot global. There is an access to the book which is just a sort of way of going through growth, responsibility, integrity and diversity.
And then I.
Offer also on the website free sessions. It's just an hour to chat, have coffee together and see if there's anything I can do to support people in finding their authenticity. There is somebody called Ramdas. Have you ever heard of Ramdas?
Recognize the name, but I don't.
Yeah, he has a saying that I love, which is we're all just walking each other home.
So that is kind of what I have at my core. So in this discovery session, this free session that I have with people, I kind of look, can I support you to walk you home to your inner self? What can I do for you and how can I serve and how can we build something together? Yeah.
That's so beautiful. I love that one. So what's the one thing you'd like to leave the audience with today?
I think it's for us.
To really understand that we are all connected by this common humanity.
And the moment we understand that.
We can really develop.
Love and compassion and be kind and I.
Think my main thing is.
We need to be kinder.
To each other. It's a tough world out there.
Yeah, everybody's going through something and everybody has gone through something. Yeah. You don't get through childhood without being traumatized at some level or another, but it's from good.
You know, we can grow from it and we can become the hero of our own story.
Yeah. And if we have children, maybe we also traumatize them so we can start forgiving ourselves whatever we did.
For sure on that one.
Thank you so much for joining me, Daniela.