Episode 19: Leading with Heart and Soul: Unlocking EQ and SQ with Amy Lynn Durham

Welcome to Season 2 of Culture Secrets! We’re kicking things off with a conversation that goes beyond strategy and into the soul of leadership.

In this episode, Chellie Phillips sits down with Amy Lynn Durham—founder of Create Magic At Work and a trailblazer in workplace emotional and spiritual intelligence. Together, they explore how EQ (Emotional Intelligence) and SQ (Spiritual Intelligence) are essential tools for leaders who want to create cultures of connection, meaning, and purpose.

You’ll discover:

• How self-awareness and self-talk shape your leadership impact
• The difference between managing people and leading with presence
• Simple ways to cultivate EQ and SQ in your leadership journey
• Why tapping into intuition and empathy matters more than ever in today’s workplace

Whether you lead a team of 2 or 200, this episode will inspire you to lead from the inside out.

🔗 Learn more about Amy’s work at createmagicatwork.net

🎧 Hit play—and let’s build a more connected, conscious workplace together.

Thanks for listening. Grab the book the podcast is based on at https://mybook.to/culturesecrets . Check out my website www.chelliephillips.com for more great content. Follow me on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Chellie: 0:00

if workplace culture is your jam you're in the right place check out this episode of culture secrets the podcast dedicated to creating workplaces where both employees and the companies thrive so Welcome back to Culture Secrets, now in its electrifying second season. I'm your host, Shelley Phillips, and in today's episode, we're diving deep into the magical world of workplace transformation with none other than Amy Lynn Durham, the mastermind behind creative magic at work. She's known affectionately as the corporate mystic. Amy is redefining the fabric of corporate culture through the integration of spiritual intelligence and executive coaching. With a remarkable track record of fostering human-centered workplaces, her innovative approach not only enhances productivity and profitability, but also significantly reduces stress, all while building courage, confidence, and connectivity among team members. Can anyone say culture building there? As we explore Amy's journey from a successful corporate executive to a visionary leader, we'll uncover the secrets behind her unique ability to blend serious inner work with fun, humor, and deep insight. Prepare to be inspired as Amy shares how to create a workplace that's not only about earning a paycheck, but about connecting Thanks, Shelley. I'm happy to be here. And to have this conversation, it's going to be a good one. Yeah, I'm just so excited for my listeners to get to meet you and hear about what you're doing. And with that in mind, can you kind of talk about the journey that you've been on and how you transitioned from a corporate executive until becoming this corporate mystic? And what is corporate magic at work all about?

Amy: 1:55

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well... The way that you just described that journey sounded very clean and linear. And we all know it's not, right? There's been lots of twists and turns and setbacks and all the things that we experience in life, living the human experience. And I'm no different. I used to work in the telecom industry for many, many years. I worked for private and publicly traded companies. And that's where I really earned my skills as a corporate leader. What happened towards the end there was I... Really felt like my creativity was being stifled in my role. I wanted to break out and tap into something that was a little more inspiring. And then I also had at the same time, this epiphany of... human connection in the workplace. And I know there's a lot of posts and articles out right now about human-centered workplaces, which how could they be anything other because we're all humans doing the work? Well, I guess until AI has come about, right? And all these bots start entering the world. But really what that is to me is having a... a culture and cultivating a culture as a leader that we recognize the humanity within each other. And the only way that you can do that is by doing some sort of connecting activities with each other and not just talking about the numbers. We would have grueling quarterly business reviews where we reviewed up late, reviewing payroll, scheduling hours, sales, quotas, all the things. However, We can't just go over just that in a meeting. We have to do something that connects all of us together. And that's where I really started skill building in these areas and doing these activities with my team that I ended up putting in my book, Create Magic at Work. So that was really the moment for me where I was like, this is the win-win. This is where, wow, they can walk away feeling really good. They can walk away feeling just like me. This person is experiencing life and everything that comes with it. And I'll reach out to that other person that I just connected with and partner with them on the project even more because I got to know them better versus just... spitting out some numbers in a meeting. And that was the game changer. Aside from that, in my personal life, I experienced a spiritual awakening. I've gone through quite a few... dark moments that turned into aha moments. You know, there was a point in my life where I almost died. I mean, that's probably a whole podcast in itself, right? Um, so all of those things were, were in my life experience to get me to where I am today. I left the corporate world, started create magic at work, um, went to the UC Berkeley executive coaching Institute, got my certification there and, um, have been waving the spiritual intelligence flag ever since in the workplace. It's a faith neutral skill set that I'm an SQ21 certified coach for leaders in the workplace. Yeah, that's one of the big tools I use with Create Magic at Work.

Chellie: 5:22

So you bring that up and I know you do emphasize the importance of spiritual intelligence alongside emotional intelligence. I know people have heard a lot about emotional intelligence lately, maybe not about spiritual intelligence. Can you give me a little bit about what is that? And then how do you integrate both of those concepts into your leadership at work and in building workplace cultures?

Amy: 5:45

Yeah, spiritual intelligence is going beyond EQ. It's going beyond emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence has really become popular to discuss and talk about in the workplace. And I've often heard it referenced with people that might not even have done maybe the work to understand what it truly means. But from my lens, emotional intelligence is that point where you have some self-awareness of your emotions. You have an emotional management strategy that you can tap into in the workplace and you're pretty well off at being able to build connections with others. Spiritual intelligence is when we can go beyond EQ. It's when we start thinking about, why am I here? And what's my purpose in life? I'm craving a deeper sense of meaning and I want to leave a legacy for the greater good. in my daily decisions and in my life journey. And how do I do that? And the 21 skills of SQ help you tap into that. It's a framework that I use. That's just nice because when you talk about spirituality, it's something that people, there's all sorts of layers to it, right? So the 21 skills is a nice framework because it's faith neutral and leaders can really hold on to something tangible and tactical that they can skill build in.

Chellie: 7:14

A lot of times you don't hear about spirituality in the workplace. It's like a taboo topic. We don't talk about that at work because everybody has their own belief systems and everything else. And so I find it really interesting about the way that you're integrating it into what you're doing. I

Amy: 7:30

think that came from... hr you know the hr where it's like we can't discuss religion people afraid of having lawsuits and different things like that but i think what what what happened was the pendulum swung way too far to the other side to where people weren't able to be their full selves in the workplace and if you're not bringing your your full authentic self to the workplace or if you're not able to then we're cutting off a big part of innovation and creativity that people can bring to the organization for productivity and profitability. And a big part of that is spirituality. And that's the next wave coming to the workplace. You can be agnostic, you can be atheist, as long as you believe there's a place within you that comes from wisdom and compassion and love. and you can access that, then you can skill build in spiritual intelligence.

Chellie: 8:32

That ties in so well with Like some of the things that we talk about here on the Culture Secrets podcast, because my value formula, the you and it is the uniqueness of the people that you have in the organization. And it's about recognizing that we all bring something with us when we show up at work every day. And that's our past experience. It's our life experience. It's our previous jobs. It's our families. It's our friends. It's our culture. It's our heritage. It's everything. It all wraps up into who we are. It goes back to that being human centered, like we were talking about is that you can't really build a culture and you can't really have a workplace when you leave the human part of it out. So I want to kind of keep on with that. I know you use tools like coaching, workshops and different things like that. Can you give me an example of maybe how these tools have been used to transform a workplace so far? Here's

Amy: 9:19

my philosophy today. It might change if we talked, you know, a few months or a year from now. But today, it really starts with courageous and vulnerable leaders wanting to step into the or feeling a call to step into doing this work themselves, the inner work, the look in the mirror. How do I clean up my side of the street before I roll this out to everyone else? And that comes through a private coaching experience that's really profound. So there's an assessment you can take, the SQ21 assessment through me, and it'll kind of give you a rating between level zero to level five on where you sit in the 21 skills of spiritual intelligence. And then we usually meet for 3 months, 6 months or a year. And we have that assessment as a foundation for growth in anything that you're working through in the workplace. Of course, I bring my corporate background, my executive coaching from UC Berkeley and all that to the table as well. One of the more popular... Topics that leaders like to dive into in those private sessions is skill 19, which is making wise and compassionate decisions, whether they want to amplify that a little bit more in how they're making wise and compassionate decisions for their organization, or maybe. They need to exercise some self-compassion and really make some wise and compassionate decisions for themselves. Maybe they're teetering on the edge of burnout and there's some boundary setting that needs to happen. Maybe they're falling into the pitfall of being an empathic leader versus a compassionate leader. You know, the empathic leader takes on everybody's stuff to try to fix it. The compassionate leader observes and creates systems that will help alleviate stress. That's one example of kind of the private experience. The other is workshops, you know, create magic at workshops. I have so many activities in the book that help people tap into their higher self. In SQ, the skill five is, are you aware of your ego versus your higher self? And who's in the driver's seat the majority of the time? And how can we practice keeping our higher self in the driver's seat of our life a higher percentage of time? And so all of the tools from Create Magic at Work help you do that. I have my journal prompt card deck. I have lots of different modalities and activities that we'll do in workshops, some of which involve setting some things on fire that are super fun. Just, you know, this is deep inner work. It's profound. It's transformative. So I... designed the Create Magic at Work tools to be fun and whimsical and playful and childlike, to bring that into the space for people that feel like their soul has been crushed in these spaces. workplace systems.

Chellie: 12:22

I always like to bring in real world to this conversation. My book, Culture Secrets, one of the things I love about it was the fact that so many people were willing to share their journeys inside certain organizations about what was working for them, what didn't work, plus all the fails and the obstacles that they had to come across and then rebuild from. Since you've been doing this for a while and without breaking any confidences or anything, could you share maybe a memorable experience or a success story where you've helped guide a leader to uncover their gifts and how that impacted their business or their life?

Amy: 12:59

Yeah. Okay. So there were two that just came to mind. I'll share one. So one was with a private client in charge of a very large group of people. And they stepped into my world in an interesting way. They needed some help in maintaining presence and maybe helping have a greater area of compassion for women leadership. I'm trying to maintain confidence. And so this individual took the SQ assessment and lo and behold, they came back a zero on skill 19, making wise and compassionate decisions. And in the SQ world, we call those precious zeros, love them. I had one myself when I took the assessment. So no judgment here, right? And when we met in session, We, you know, it looked like this person was kind of like they thought they were going to be in trouble or something, you know, this hyper achieving world we're in in the corporate space. And what really came about the very first question I asked this client was, what are the thoughts you tell yourself throughout the day? I'm really curious. Like, how do you treat yourself? And I got emotional and they looked at me and they said, I'm really hard on myself. That negativity loop was running, the self-criticism. And it was like, of course, that's why you came back a level zero on making wise and compassionate decisions. How can we possibly have compassion for others if we can't even give it to ourselves? And so that's why I say it's that inside job with compassion. No judgment. So the first step there is not, oh, run out and try to have more compassion for others. It's like, no, we've got to change this negative loop and the self-criticism that's running. You're beating yourself up all day. We have to start there. Because once that goes away or once that's alleviated, you'll automatically start giving it to others as well. That was a really powerful moment for me. And this was a client that I... that wouldn't typically step into my world, which was beautiful. And

Chellie: 15:20

I can so see that in, in, in, in one of the, in the first book that I wrote that wouldn't doubt delete it. One of the things I talk about is deleting that negative self-talk that we all go through, you know, and it's, it's one of the hardest things, like you would never talk to other people the way we talk to ourselves sometimes. And it's so powerful what words do to us. And when you hear them over and over, even when they're inside your head, the impact that they can have on, on on the outcomes of what you're doing and everything. So as you look to the future, how do you see the role of spiritual and emotional intelligence evolving in the workplace? Oh yeah, it's where it's at.

Amy: 16:00

I mean, it's coming. I mean, I say go beyond EQ. I mean, this is where, this is the game changer. This is where we step into quantum leadership. This is where we have people leaders that are operating from wisdom and compassion. This is where we have wise and effective change agents. This is where we have less ego-induced drama and less stress in the workplace. Leaders that operate from a spiritually intelligent perspective have all of that. And so by default, people are going to choose to work for that leader. over the one that isn't. And my hope is the system naturally transforms in that way. And then we're making business decisions, not only for profit and the bottom line, but for impact. Impact on our well-being, impact on communities, impact on the planet and humanity itself. I love

Chellie: 17:00

that. So if people want to learn more about EQ, SQ, Amy, the work that's happening at Create Magic at Work, how can they connect with you and how can they learn more about you?

Amy: 17:12

Yeah, so createmagicatwork.net has everything there. There's a shop, you can find all those whimsical, fun, creative tools. The podcast Create Magic at Work is very popular with leaders in the workplace tapping into that calming and healing inner peaceful type feeling, no matter what space you're in in your life. And then yeah, if you want to connect with me and learn what you might score on the SQ21 assessment for fun and learning and as a part of your journey, that's on there as well. So everything's on createmagicatwork.net. Yeah.

Chellie: 17:48

All right. Great. I always love to ask if you could share one culture building bomb with a leader, what is one takeaway? If you're going to be a great culture builder inside your organization, what do they need to focus on?

Amy: 18:03

Oh my gosh. I can't, I hate, I mean, I'm going to say it like skill building in your SQ. Yeah, really. Like it starts there. That's where this is. This is what's coming. This is here. I really would encourage you to skill build in making wise and compassionate decisions, the ability to make wise and compassionate decisions, even when you're under great stress and maintain inner peace while doing so. If you can make wise and compassionate decisions and maintain inner peace, even under great stress, you've nailed it. At least a high percentage of time, right? We're human. We're going to have moments. Absolutely.

Chellie: 18:47

Well, I appreciate it, Amy. Thanks so much for joining us today. And thank you for listening to this episode of the Culture Secret Podcast. I hope you've jotted down a few ideas to try over the coming weeks and help you grow a value culture inside your organization. And if you enjoyed what you heard, please like, subscribe and share this podcast. Make sure you give Amy a shout out and check out her podcast as well. Please drop us a rating because that's the way that more people can hear these stories that we're telling and that we can spread our messages and we can help build better cultures in the world. If you want more information about me and what Culture Secrets is all about, visit www.chelliefillips.com. That's it for this episode. And until next time, remember, building a value culture is your competitive advantage and the backbone of any successful organization.