The Ceiling

The Leader You've Actually Been

Leaders often move from crisis to crisis and success to success without ever stopping to ask a harder question: What are the actual patterns in how I lead? In this episode, Mike McDonnell introduces the The Field Notes exercise — a structured, two-hour reflective practice designed to give leaders an honest, complete picture of what kind of leader they have been across their professional lives, deepening self-awareness. The Field Notes draws on a five-hundred-year-old Ignatian practice from the Spiritual Exercises — a meditation in which one systematically examines one's sins, organized by life period, to reveal deeper patterns of behavior. Mike encountered this meditation during his 30-day silent retreat as a Jesuit novice and has since refined it for secular leadership development. The secular version examines both sides of the ledger: not just failures and regrets, but moments of genuine pride, courage, effectiveness, when one is their “best self.”  The exercise is organized into three Parts. In Part One, the Positive Field Notes, leaders move through the segments of their professional life and identify the specific actions — not achievements — that represent their best self: moments of courage, integrity, generosity, or honest truth-telling. In Part Two, The Disappointments, leaders catalog the choices they made that, measured against their own values, they remember with regret or shame — such as moments of avoidance, self-protection, dishonesty, or harm to others. Critically, both Parts focus on personal agency: what you did, not what happened to you. Part Three, the Pattern Work, is where the real value emerges. By stepping back from the individual events and looking across time periods, leaders begin to identify recurring patterns and themes — the conditions under which their best self reliably appears, the triggers that reliably produce their worst behavior, and, often surprisingly, the ways in which their greatest strengths and deepest failure modes can be two sides of the same coin.  Mike closes by encouraging leaders to translate what they find into specific behavioral commitments, share their patterns with a trusted partner, and return to the practice annually. The Field Notes, he argues, provides leaders with the kind of self-knowledge that builds leadership capability and wisdom over time.       Send CEO Exercises a message [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2601888/fan_mail/new]

Who Are You When Your Scorecard Is Empty?

Episode 6 of CEO Exercises serves as both a capstone and a deepening. Host Mike McDonnell opens by revisiting the four foundational questions posed at the end of Episode 5 — questions about ultimate purpose, identity stripped of achievement, disordered attachments, and the fear of loss — framing them as a leader's personal Principle and Foundation. He then steps back to map the architecture of the first five episodes as a coherent whole, showing how each built toward the central question: who are you, really, when everything external is stripped away? From there, McDonnell moves into new territory, exploring what a sound Foundation actually feels and functions like from the inside. He argues that grounded leaders are not those who have resolved all uncertainty, but those who have developed a genuine relationship with the hardest questions about themselves — making those questions companions rather than threats. The practical consequence is significant: a leader who fears those questions spends enormous energy defending against them, energy that is permanently unavailable for leadership. A leader at peace with them is free — free to hear difficult feedback, acknowledge a failing strategy early, and make decisions from clarity rather than from ego protection. McDonnell extends his earlier metaphor of the Foundation as a cognitive operating system, arguing that a deep Foundation lives not just in beliefs but in the body and nervous system — in the automatic responses that fire before conscious thought. This means Foundation development is not intellectual work. It happens through practice, reflection, and daily examination, not through frameworks or behavioral training alone. He also observes that Foundations don't erode gradually — they fracture suddenly under pressure, precisely when clear perception matters most. The episode's centerpiece is an imaginative reconstruction of how Ignatius of Loyola himself might counsel a sitting CEO. McDonnell presents a portrait of the real Ignatius — an experienced organizational leader who had himself been driven by disordered attachments — and walks through three major components of the Principle and Foundation: the direct challenge to name one's ultimate purpose, the probing examination of where instruments have become ends in themselves, and the uncomfortable but essential question of whether the scale was truly level before a consequential deliberation began. Ignatius' concept of indifference, McDonnell argues, is not an instruction to stop caring about results. It is the precondition for the highest quality of judgment — the capacity to see clearly what a situation actually demands, undistorted by what we need to be true. McDonnell closes with two practical additions to the ongoing exercises: a periodic return to the four Foundation questions every six months, and a pre-decision check-in — a five-minute practice before any consequential choice to examine personal entanglement with the outcome. He closes with an image of the rare leader whose presence shifts the quality of attention in any room — and names that quality not as personality or style, but as the fruit of slow, cumulative interior work. Send CEO Exercises a message [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2601888/fan_mail/new]

Inner Freedom Isn't Soft

Every leader operates from a foundation — a largely unexamined cognitive operating system that shapes how they filter information, assess risk, and make decisions, often invisibly and without their awareness. Drawing on Ignatius of Loyola's Principle and Foundation from the Spiritual Exercises, Mike argues that a sound foundation offers "inner freedom" by anchoring a leader's identity in something more durable than their work, their self-image, or their reputation.  The episode introduces the Ignatian concept of indifference — not passivity or detachment, but the practice of achieving temporary inner equilibrium so that high-stakes decisions are made from clarity rather than distortions from ego or fear. Mike closes with four pointed questions designed to help listeners articulate their own Principle and Foundation, and reinforces that the daily Examen is the essential ongoing practice for making that foundation conscious, available, and constructive for the work of leadership. Send CEO Exercises a message [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2601888/fan_mail/new]

A Guided Ignatian Examen Practice

The Ignatian Examen is the one practice Ignatius wouldn't give up.  I thought it might be helpful to provide you with a guided Examen for your use as you begin the practice.  The podcast will move into other tools, practices and insights from Ignatian spirituality for leaders, but I hope you will continue to practice the 15 minute Examen each day.   Send CEO Exercises a message [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2601888/fan_mail/new]

The Questions Behind the Questions

This episode provides a perspective on the fundamental questions that underlie the claims made so far in this podcast:  that there is a dimension of human experience that is meaningfully called spiritual, and that this spiritual dimension is constitutive of great leadership.  This episode is specifically for those who might be skeptical about spirituality and its place in leadership development.  The next episode will then resume with the tools, practices and insights from Ignatian spirituality that can take your leadership and your inner life to a higher level.   Send CEO Exercises a message [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2601888/fan_mail/new]