ABOUT THIS PODCAST 🔗
The ceiling on your leadership isn't external. It never was. Mike McDonnell is a three-time CEO and former Jesuit. In CEO Exercises, he makes the case that developing your interior life is the highest-leverage investment a leader can make — and offers practical tools drawn from five-hundred-year-old Ignatian spirituality and The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius to help you do it. No spiritual background required.
Hosts:
Update frequency:
weekly
Average audio length:
31 minutes
English
United States
13 episodes
since May 3, 2026
episodic
LATEST EPISODE 🔗
In this season finale, host Mike McDonnell closes Season 1 of CEO Exercises by answering seventeen listener questions gathered throughout the season. He explains why he created the podcast — primarily to share practices that elevate leadership, but also to convey the growth potential and the sheer …
PREVIOUS EPISODES 🔗
In Episode 12 of CEO Exercises, Mike McDonnell steps back from adapting individual Ignatian meditations to reveal the engine that has powered the last several episodes: imaginative contemplation. He opens with a provocation — leaders already trust disciplined imagination with enormous stakes throug…
Episode 11 of CEO Exercises tackles the most stubborn failure in leadership development: the gap between knowing and doing. Many leaders can speak fluently about ego, attachment, and inner freedom, yet lead exactly as they always have. The insights never cross into action. Mike McDonnell argues thi…
Episode 10 adapts one of the most psychologically sophisticated meditations in Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises — the Meditation on the Two Standards — into a practical leadership tool. At its core is a single, unsettling claim: there are two competing value systems alive inside every …
Episode 9 continues the Second Week of CEO Exercises, picking up directly from Episode 8's examination of Jesus as a leader. Host Mike McDonnell guides listeners through an adaptation of Ignatius of Loyola's Contemplation on the Incarnation, framed not as theology but as a leadership medi…
Episode 8 marks a turning point in CEO Exercises. After seven episodes devoted to self-awareness and inner freedom — the "First Week" of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises — Mike McDonnell pivots into new territory: actively building leadership capability. This episode draws on the "Se…
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 a…
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 th…
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…
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 w…
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mike McDonnell, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
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