Psilocybin, Once Taboo, Emerges as a Tool for Healing and Insight For Leaders

I love the underground work, working with the Shamans in the Amazon, small ceremonies in the middle of nowhere, exploring life and death, and everything in between. But as I have always worked in financial politics, I couldn’t help but explore: How can these compounds, being taboo since the 1960s, create a healing effect for leaders and thus potentially create a positive butterfly effect in the world?

Why Leadership Needs This Work

I believe it works. I have seen it with many leaders now, from scale-up leaders and corporate leaders to YPOers: Working with psilocybin deepens self-awareness and breaks through limiting mental patterns. The experience is for me not a trip (that would be too recreational and misses the point that a certain sacred quality is needed to transform) but a journey into one’s deepest being. From that sacred place, the subconscious beliefs can be examined, and fresh insights can emerge. I often get back from leaders profound realizations about themselves, their leadership styles, and the dynamics they want to better in their most important relationships.  Often, they regain renewed clarity and a stronger sense of authenticity and empathy. And most importantly, they work on it to bring these new qualities back into the world.

What Ceremony Can Offer That Coaching Alone Cannot

Yes, ceremony work is different than classic coaching. Unlike traditional leadership coaching, psilocybin is not just a tool or a quick fix. It does more: it softens the ego and fosters radical honesty. In the open state of ceremony, leaders often meet themselves anew, leading to a shift in how they engage with their work and relationships.

It doesn’t mean psilocybin is without risk. For some people with serious mental or physical health conditions, it’s better to refrain from psychedelics. And to get the most out of ceremony work, coaching is key. The good old-fashioned coaching makes sure the experience is prepared well and that the data from the ceremony can be integrated properly. Without that integration, the experience can slowly subside again without any meaningful change. 

Solid Research Paves the Way for a New View on Psychedelics

A good development is that step by step, the taboo is becoming less. Big productions in the media, especially the book How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan, have changed the public's perspective that psychedelics are not another addictive drug that will hurt you physically and mentally. It’s quite the opposite: psycilobyin, for example, is safe, much safer than alcohol, found to a study by David Nutt of Imperial College in 2010, and has no addictive tendencies. Since 2010, a big surge of new research has emerged in this field. A landmark 2016 Johns Hopkins study (Griffiths et al., Journal of Psychopharmacology) showed that a single high-dose session could produce lasting reductions in depression and anxiety in cancer patients. A 2021 randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Psychiatry (Davis et al.) found psilocybin to be as effective—if not more so—than traditional antidepressants for major depressive disorder. Meanwhile, recent neuroimaging research (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012, PNAS) revealed that psilocybin increases brain connectivity and disrupts rigid patterns of thought, offering insight into how it helps treat conditions like depression, PTSD, and addiction.

More Well-being, Empathy, and Creativity for Leaders

On leadership and psychedelics, research is getting better as well. Research from Maastricht University, led by Dr. Kim P.C. Kuypers, has explored how psilocybin influences traits like cognitive flexibility, empathy, and well-being—key qualities for effective leadership. Supporting this, a 2023 Frontiers in Psychology study involving over 3,000 managers in the U.S. and U.K. found that both mindfulness meditation and psychedelic use were linked to enhanced leadership traits, including empathy and creativity.

With these solid findings, we can have a new and fresh look at these compounds. Not as dangerous drugs, but as a powerful medicine that can change the future of leadership.

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