The Awareness Quotient: Leadership as a Path of Growth
A New Way of Being
Simon Mundie
4.8 • 523 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
In this episode, I speak with Brian Cunningham, a leadership expert with over 45 years of experience exploring consciousness, human potential, and what it really means to lead. We unpack Brian’s idea of the Awareness Quotient—a practical framework for understanding how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world around us.
This is a conversation about leadership as a developmental journey—not a fixed set of skills, but a process of growing through different stages of awareness. We explore how connecting head and heart, being clear on intent, and staying present can transform how we show up—in our work, our relationships, and our lives.
Brian's website: https://awarenessquotientleadership.com/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In today's episode, I'm joined by Brian Cunningham, who spent more than 45 years exploring human potential awareness and what it really means to lead. |
| 0:09.8 | Now, Brian's journey started with a fear of death in his teens, which sent him on a path of exploring indigenous wisdom, meditation, and ultimately a very different way of seeing the world, and in particular, leadership. |
| 0:22.3 | We talk about something he calls the awareness quotient, a framework for understanding how we relate |
| 0:28.0 | to the world, to ourselves and to other people. |
| 0:30.9 | Now, Brian sees leadership as a developmental process where you can move from fear and control-based authoritarian approaches to far |
| 0:40.4 | more open, integrated and heart-centered transformational ways of leading. We explore how |
| 0:47.3 | presence, intention and integrating head and heart can really radically shift how we |
| 0:51.9 | show up in every area of life from work to leadership and |
| 0:55.9 | relationships. Brian, it's good to see you, my friend. How are you? Simon, great to see you, my friend. |
| 1:04.6 | Great to be here with you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to have you on and I want to dive in |
| 1:08.2 | because I want to take you back to some of your formative years. So let's go back to the 70s. I want to dive in because I want to take you back to some of your formative years. |
| 1:12.3 | So let's go back to the 70s. I want to talk about some of the formative experiences and insights |
| 1:18.4 | and cultures you were introduced to or came across that really shaped everything thereafter. |
| 1:25.1 | You were reading about indigenous cultures in the 70s, right? And this |
| 1:28.8 | idea or this recognition that everything is connected and it grabbed you. Yes, for sure. |
| 1:34.5 | So I appreciate that question. I grew up born in 1960, actually. So grew up in the 60s and then |
| 1:40.6 | my teenage years in the 70s. And the consciousness was shifting on a societal level |
| 1:46.4 | during that time, definitely in the U.S. and I think really across the planet. So that was what I was |
| 1:52.2 | exposed to as I was growing up. And as I was growing up, you're just doing whatever you do based |
| 1:57.8 | on the programming of society. But there was always something nagging |
| 2:01.5 | at me in the matrix, the splinter in your mind. I had this really acute fear of death growing up. |
| 2:08.1 | I was thinking about it all the time. And then in my teams at some point, I started to get interested |
... |
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