Oli Raison & Boris Maguire on Leadership Beyond the Boardroom | EP 703

What if the leadership answers you’ve been searching for can’t be found in another keynote, framework, or performance review but only by stepping completely out of the world you know? In Episode 703 of Passion Struck, John R. Miles is joined by Oli Raison and Boris Maguire, founders of Safarini Leadership, for a conversation that challenges everything we think we know about growth, leadership, and belonging. At a time when we are more globally connected than ever—and yet more polarized, distracted, and disconnected—leaders are facing pressures no playbook prepared them for: AI acceleration, climate anxiety, generational fracture, burnout, and a deep erosion of trust. Oli and Boris believe the problem isn’t a lack of leadership training. It’s that we’re trying to become wiser leaders without changing the environments that shaped us. Their work takes executives out of boardrooms and into the Kenyan bush, immersed in nature, culture, and relationships, walking alongside Samburu elders to rediscover leadership as a lived, relational practice rather than a performative role. Download the companion workbook: https://www.theignitedlife.net/p/ancient-wisdom-for-modern-leadersThis episode is part of The Season of Becoming series, following conversations with Brent Gleeson on the danger of comfort and Henna Pryor on why awkwardness is the frontline of growth. Listen. Watch. Go Deeper.👉 Read the full show notes here: https://passionstruck.com/leadership-in-the-wild-oli-raison-boris-maguire/🔗 All links in one place — You Matter, Luma and Passion Struck books, Substack, YouTube, and Start Mattering apparel:https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesIn this episode, you will learn:Why today’s global challenges require elevated leadership, not louder leadershipHow cultural immersion rewires creativity, self-awareness, and decision-makingWhy nature sharpens focus, learning, and emotional regulationWhat Samburu elders can teach modern executives about belonging and purposeWhy leadership cannot be developed in isolation—or in comfortHow stepping out of familiar systems reveals who you actually are as a leaderWhat it means to lead when connection isn’t optional—it’s survivalAbout the GuestsOli Raison has spent over a decade founding, leading, and selling businesses in Kenya. He specializes in organizational culture, leadership development, and cross-cultural teams. Oli is fluent in Swahili, holds an MBA from Aston Business School, and a Certificate in Executive Coaching from UC Berkeley. Boris Maguire has worked in over two dozen countries and lived in five. He has led teams across ten African nations, served as a startup CEO and Managing Director of a solar firm, and now leads global operations for one of Africa’s fastest-growing HR fintech companies. Boris holds an MPA from Columbia University, a BA from Duke, and a certificate from the African Management Institute. Support the MovementEvery human deserves to feel seen, valued, and like they matter. Wear it. Live it. Show it.👉 https://StartMattering.comDisclaimerThe Passion Struck podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Passion Struck or its affiliates. This podcast is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment from a licensed physician, therapist, or other qualified professional. Connect with John Pre-Order The Mattering Effect:

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  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. But, 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.

• 0:48John R. 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 changemakers, 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.

• 1:36John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, 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, I'm 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.

• 2:11John R. Miles?

  Mental health crisis, cultural fraction, moral exhaustion. And here's the uncomfortable truth. You 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.

• 2:55John R. Miles?

  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, Frank 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 pointed to something uncomfortable but essential: that becoming requires friction, that growth rarely feels elegant, and that staying where we are

• 3:39John R. Miles?

  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 guests 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 Oli Razin and Boris Maguire, the co-founders of Saffronian Leadership. Their work is built on a powerful idea: that cultural immersion and time in nature fundamentally change how we think, create, and lead. Oli has spent more than a decade founding, leading, and selling businesses in Kenya. He's

• 4:21John R. Miles?

  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 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

• 5:03John R. Miles?

  condition speed, ego, and certainty, and place them alongside some borough 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,

• 5:44John R. Miles?

  and come with me. This is my conversation with Ollie Raisin and Boris Maguire. 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.

• 6:02John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled today to have Ollie Raisin and Boris Maguire join me all the way from Kenya on Passion Struck. How are you, Ollie and Boris?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Very well. Thanks. How are you doing, John?

• 6:14John R. 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.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  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

• 7:35Speaker 01

  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.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 8:44John R. Miles?

  And Boris, safarini means on a journey. Why is that concept so central to your leadership philosophy?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks. That's a good question. Yeah. So people are typically familiar with the word safari, which does mean journey in Swahili, which is the lingua franca of this part of the world. And safarini just means to be on a journey. That was important to us for 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 today, 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

• 9:37Speaker 02

  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

• 10:21Speaker 02

  way. So all of that speaks to a literal and figurative leadership journey, and that's what we take people on.

• 10:28John R. Miles?

  And I want to take a step back because you brought up a whole bunch of things. There are 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

• 11:13John R. Miles?

  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? You know, 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?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  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 need 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.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  So we really slow everything down. And like Boris says, 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.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Could I just 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, 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 methodologies, methodology.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  So there are lots of outdoor adventure leadership experiences that one might do over the course of a couple of 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.

• 14:36John R. 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?

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah. So we've actually, 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 group. We have a kickoff call where

• 15:33Speaker 02

  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 Aperian 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, to 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

• 16:14Speaker 02

  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 experience is 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.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  People are being quite reflective. We're getting quite vulnerable and 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 Ali and I will often offer prompts or open questions that kind of emerged from the day prior. On the assumption that people have had a chance to sleep on it, literally reflect in their journals and might wanna 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.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  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 a 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? What does it mean and where does it come from? And we'll hear from the elders on that topic and then Ali 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, what we call a commitment to action.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  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, where it's not just, we're keen that this isn't a distant memory, a fun story you talk about at parties or in meetings,

• 19:08Speaker 02

  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 a value that they achieve. So it's really three parts, but the core is obviously the Kenya experience.

• 19:45John R. Miles?

  Before we continue, I want to pause on something important. 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 I actually do this in my life? 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.

• 20:32John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Now, back to my conversation with Ollie Razin and Boris McGuire. Yeah, so if I had to encapsulate that, it sounds like the three phases are kind of you go through a diagnosis phase, then an experience phase, and then a follow through phase that you take them through. I know you've been doing this a couple of 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?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, some of our cohorts actually continue to want to meet. If I can just take a step back, the Samburu Society is very collectivist. They have a philosophy called Navarish, 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.

• 21:52John R. Miles?

  Yeah, 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? Like what? 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?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  I think if I could summarize it at 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. 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 really dependent on the health of their livestock.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  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, the people are grounded in the society's values from a very young age. So if we could 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,

• 23:55Speaker 01

  That boy goes through a circumcision ceremony where he becomes a warrior. And then for the next fifteen 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 fifteen year period, they then collectively, en masse, graduate to become junior elders.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  And the junior elder period is a really a, it's a real shift in, 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 fifteen 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 that from a young boy, he knows what his destiny is going to be. His destiny is ultimately to be a leader for the welfare, the collective flourishing of the tribe.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  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, what is the word for anxiety in Ma, which is the language of the 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. And 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

• 26:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 26:20John R. Miles?

  Yeah, for them, what is their average lifespan?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think it's much shorter than ours. We've met people who are in their 80s in the Samburu society.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not sure what is. From the data I've seen, though, 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 Hadzaba as well. High levels of infant mortality, and that is largely driven by nutritional challenges, right? This is not a farming community. It's in a very, very arid, beautiful, but challenging area, subject to droughts and floods and the rest. Nutritional challenges often affect maternal and infant mortality levels. But after childhood, average lifespan, the likelihood of an 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.

• 27:22John R. 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 pair it up 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.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  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'd been a lot of rainfall. That meant there was a lot of growth. And 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

• 28:38Speaker 01

  think that in the West, we are overscheduled. 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 et cetera, et cetera. 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?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 29:32John R. 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. And 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 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,

• 30:14John R. Miles?

  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?

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a great question, and I think it's one of the fundamental, yeah, points of differentiation, maybe. And I guess if I could summarize it, a good life is a life of a Samburu. And 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 death. 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.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  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 Sem Beru is to have a family, to create more Sem Beru, but also to fulfill your role and purpose to serve your community. And in almost everything that people do, never, one can never see someone doing something solely in service of themselves. Even parenting is collective. We always say it takes a village, but in the Sem Beru communities, this is true. And children are literally considered the children of all. And likewise, leadership to become an elder

• 31:49Speaker 02

  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, as an award, 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, is really comes to resilience. What is it to be strong? Is it to be resilient? Is it to be gritty, to power through, to wear the heavy crown?

• 32:30Speaker 02

  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 all 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.

• 32:58John R. Miles?

  I could talk for days about that, but.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  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 nineteen or twenty. There are many successful entrepreneurs who build multimillion dollar businesses, but they don't achieve it until they're fifty or fifty-five. 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.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  It's the life's path and how you get there is more important than where you end up.

• 33:51John R. 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 Samburu culture, a lot of this really reflects also on what Native American 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 in Native American life.

• 34:34John R. Miles?

  I'm wondering what type of role they play in Samburu life.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  I think that with spirituality, they have a belief in God. Nkai, they call is their God. But Nkai is represented in nature 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.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:55John R. 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.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. 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. And one of the things that our elders always say, and they often tell the clients, particularly when clients are a 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 question's about what do we get out of the walk? And spirituality and living a good life as a Samburu, I think, does in many ways come back to this fundamentally different perspective.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  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, it 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

• 38:02Speaker 02

  convene in different kind of sizes. Typically at a village level, this might be a dozen, 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 re-adjourn later down the road and see if either everyone is now bought in or whether a different decision needs to be made or if 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

• 38:42Speaker 02

  harmony over dissent. I think we have all, 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 you, 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.

• 39:27John R. Miles?

  So Ali, 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?

• 39:45Speaker 01

  I think probably the hierarchical nature of things. Just having one person who ultimately is accountable and gets to make the 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.

• 40:20John R. Miles?

  Okay, and I did want to ask just one more thing about-

• 40:22Speaker 02

  I think homelessness as well.

• 40:24John R. Miles?

  Oh homelessness, yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 40:28John R. Miles?

  So, obviously-

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Sorry, I'm a bit of a delay.

• 40:31John R. Miles?

  Yeah, obviously their life is dependent on the terrain that they occupy. How sacred do they hold the land and tending to it as part of their culture? Like, how does that play?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  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.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Pushing on through. And actually, in the Sunbury 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 neighbor 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 thirteen 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.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 43:12John R. Miles?

  Boris, I'm gonna 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' perspectives shifted dramatically? And how that unfolded?

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Sure. You really put me on the spot. Let's see. Like, in the moment during the trek, had this kind of revelation?

• 43:42John R. Miles?

  Like a powerful transformation that you saw happen? Maybe someone talked to an elder, you did a workshop, and they had just like a lightbulb moment where how they'd been operating changed?

• 43:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  You can talk about the cow game that we play Boris.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, let me let you talk about that. I have, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give two examples of an individual. So as much as this is principally, we talk about leadership, it's leadership development. You know, who we are personally and what we're going through outside of work directly impacts how we show up at work. Right? We don't believe, 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.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  And that didn't seem to us initially connected to her work, which we had learned a lot about during the discovery process. So what, I wasn't necessarily sure how that was gonna show up during the experiences, during the experience. And at one point, she's told us this and talked a lot about it 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 are always looking at your, 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 Samburu culture. And to kill and eat a wild animal under any circumstances is to bring a curse upon your family.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  So there are like cultural tenets and spiritual beliefs that necessitate protecting the resources around you. Because while they don't farm, they're, they do depend on the land for their livestock. And our elders 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 in 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

• 46:09Speaker 02

  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 a 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 with me, struck me because it's so simple and one might think that you could get that insight anywhere and anyone could

• 46:51Speaker 02

  give you that, you know, 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.

• 47:22John R. Miles?

  Yeah. Ali, did you want to give the other example that you were thinking of?

• 47:26Speaker 01

  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, 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 overgraze, if you send too many cows out to graze, then you risk actually causing the grazing area to deteriorate and

• 48:07Speaker 01

  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.

• 48:53John R. 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?

• 49:15Speaker 02

  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 in 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?

• 50:01Speaker 02

  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.

• 50:18John R. 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?

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Sure, we have a website, safarini-leadership.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 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

• 51:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 51:36John R. Miles?

  Okay, and maybe what is the typical team size that goes out with you on one of these treks?

• 51:42Speaker 01

  It's quite, well, 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.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 52:39John R. 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.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  Thank you for having us.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Honored to be with you. We appreciate it.

• 52:53John R. Miles?

  That's a wrap on today's conversation with Ollie Raisin and Boris Maguire. And what stayed me the most from this episode is this truth: 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 Samburu 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

• 53:37John R. Miles?

  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 at 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 Hansen, 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

• 54:22John R. Miles?

  shapes conflict, compassion, 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.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  All living systems are built on a combination of cooperation and competition, right? So cooperation at multiple levels means, starting with primordial soup, you have molecules come together to form cells, and cells come together to form More complicated cells and colonies and individuals with organs that are work together in complementary ways. And then we have individuals forming small-scale societies, villages, chiefdoms, nations, and sometimes even United Nations. And all of that works because the parts are able to accomplish more together than they can separately. And so they form a whole.

• 55:10John R. 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 a man.