HIGH PERFORMANCE COACHING AND LEADERSHIP PSYCHOLOGY
🔹 “The higher you rise, the more your inner architecture determines whether you plateau - or ascend.”

PNEUMA is built for leaders who are already winning. Visionary founders. Boardroom warriors. Senior partners. C-suite decision-makers. People who are respected—sometimes even revered—but who sense that their internal operating system is out of date, or that something unconscious is limiting their next evolution.

They're not in failure - but they feel friction.

Maybe they’re repeating patterns. Or secretly exhausted. Or no longer satisfied by achievement alone. Or simply wondering: what am I still not seeing about myself?

At PNEUMA, we specialize in guiding elite performers through deep psychological introspection that unlocks the next tier of strategic power, clarity, and inner freedom.

We don’t “coach.” We transform. Using a clinical-depth lens grounded in psychodynamics, trauma psychology, and executive performance, we help leaders master the invisible forces that determine whether they ascend, plateau, or unravel.

Working from a systems-psychodynamic, clinical leadership and organizational role analysis perspective PNEUMA Consulting engages both our individual as well as group executive coaching clients at a depth level that extends well beyond surface dynamics. We serve corporations and executives in Ottawa,Toronto and Internationally and Virtually.

Our goal is to provide a safe confidential space where our clients can mindfully reflect on their own specific intra-personal and relational selves that are primarily driven by unconscious dynamics that very typically operate well below the surface. Working within a psychodynamic coaching domain the executive/leadership coach facilitates a pathway to what has been described as the individuals’ subconscious “inner theater” where leaders / executives are symbolically playing out in a sub-conscious manner a self-other psychological drama based on their early developmental and historical experiences and for which intra-psychic conflicts, complexes, identity and self-esteem issues, defense mechanisms, personal blind spots, prejudices, negative emotions as well as decisional weak spots can reside without any significant level of awareness. While the goal of our leadership and executive coaching programs is not to provide psychotherapy, becoming aware of and working through our sub-conscious psychological inner and relational dynamics is vital from the perspective of emerging as psychologically sophisticated, healthy and effective leaders. The ultimate goal being to create highly effective leaders, leadership teams and ultimately organizational cultures and systems that produce desirable corporate bottom line results.

Not developing personal insight can severely prejudice an emerging high potential, executive or senior leader and can significantly effect both intra as well as inter-personal functioning both in one’s personal and professional and corporate life. For the executive to remain unaware of the dynamics, conflicts, needs that drive their outward relational behavior, decision making, cognitive perceptual templates and blind spots makes effective decision making at individual / team / organizational levels, difficult and self-limiting at best and can de-rail an otherwise promising upwardly mobile career and have a negative impact on overall corporate performance.

In conducting our coaching and developmental work with our clients in the final analysis our goal is to through a process of challenge and deep introspection to create executives and leaders who are deeply self-reflective, have the capacity  and willingness to not only be aware of their own beneath  the surface dynamics but have developed the capacity to apply the same reflection in their decision making relative to professional peers, executive teams, key stakeholders and the organisation as a whole. Becoming more authentic in one’s personal, professional and corporate life, increasing one’s emotional, relational and even spiritual intelligence, being able to apply one’s mentalization strategies to others, coming to recognize one’s personal blind spots and personal limiting or de-railing negative cognitive and psycho-emotional internal schemas, being highly aware of one’s own “inner theatre” or potentially limiting cognitive / emotional / perceptual and decision making schemas and to be psychologically adaptive and resilient and to have a lifestyle that promotes a high degree of psychological health, resilience and flexibility.

🔹 The Shadow Side of Leadership: When Personality Becomes Pathology

We specialize in identifying, mapping, and advising on:

• Executive personality disorders: narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, borderline, histrionic

• The dark triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy—often rewarded in corporate settings until they rot the system

• Addiction, burnout, trauma reenactment behind executive volatility

• Conflict-avoidant leaders creating dangerous cultural appeasement

• Compulsively dominant leaders who crush innovation, dissent, and morale

• Sociopathic executives who attract sycophants and destroy institutional trust

These pathologies often go unchallenged until:

• The team fractures

• The board panics

• A crisis leaks to the media

• A top performer burns out or resigns without warning

Our task is to enter quietly, analyze deeply, and advise at the level where the personal becomes structural.

🔹 Clinical Leadership Services

🔸 Executive Psychodynamic Assessment

A structured clinical-psychological diagnostic of senior leaders or candidates for promotion/succession. Identifies potential derailers, shadow motivations, unresolved conflicts, and psychological architecture.

Useful for:

• Succession and promotion planning

• Pre-investment executive due diligence

• Crisis-prone teams or unexplained turnover

• Long-term leadership development

🔸 Organizational Pathology Diagnostic (OPD)

For boards, investors, or HRDs facing unexplained dysfunction. We analyze the intra-psychic, interpersonal, and systemic dynamics within the executive ecosystem.

Key components:

• Confidential interview

• Power-mapping and behavioral forensics

• Leadership culture profiling

• Risk mapping: personality-based red flags

• Strategic recommendations for intervention

🔸 Clinical Interventions for Executive Pathology

Where warranted, we conduct private, confidential therapeutic interventions with problematic but high-value executives—addressing narcissism, addiction, trauma, paranoia, rage, or burnout. Quietly. Without damage to reputation. With measurable change or strategic exit guidance.

PNEUMA IN-SIGHT PROGRAM

INTENSIVE RESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE AND LEADERS RETREAT EXPERIENCES
Ottawa, Toronto, New York, Miami, London, Zurich and selected International locations.

Several times a year a very select group of executives / leaders make application to and participate in our IN-SIGHT 10 (TEN) DAY RETREAT PROGRAM. Upon completion the retreat is followed up with ongoing monthly individual coaching sessions in order to solidify and integrate the achievements and progress made in the 10 day intensive retreat. After the post retreat one (1) year coaching experience is completed, participants may engage for ongoing coaching specific to select areas of need or interest. Our intensive retreats are hold in a number of international health spa/conference centers and as a component of experience, time is set aside each day for participants to meet with a wide range of holistic healthcare practitioners or to engage in the spa’s many health enhancing activities.

As with all our executive and leadership development and coaching experiences the intent of the retreat is to focus deeply on the human side of the corporate enterprise and to engage in a deep dive into the subconscious dynamics which drive our intra-personal and inter-personal needs, internal conflicts and complexes and how they form into individual cognitive-emotional schemes that ultimately inform our professional relationships, relations with our key stakeholders, our teams, our decision making, our performance as leaders and human beings and ultimately our success or failure or de-railment as executives and senior leadership.

The insight group maintains all of the same outcome goals for participants as we target in all of our executive / leadership coaching programs:

• Increased ability to be personally reflective and maintain a generally non contaminated mindfulness;

• Extensive depth exploration of the clients’ inner conflicts, complexes, self-other relational representations. A unique understanding that it is our historical personal experiences during our key development years and developmental stages that write a deeply embedded intra-psychic narrative in our subconscious mind that very few of us are aware of and effect our personal leadership, professional relationships, our teams, key stakeholders, our decision making and ultimately our ability to be effective leaders and executives.

• To increase our emotional, relational, physical and spiritual intelligence;

• To understand and to identify and resolve our subconscious blind spots; to identify and learn to manage their unconscious and conscious relational and work related triggers;

• To increase our understanding of the dynamics of our personal and leadership related authenticity;

• To increase our psychological adaptability, flexibility and personal resilience;

• To develop the requisites of mental toughness.

In the IN-SIGHT program the intensive nature, the duration, the supportive feedback from other participants greatly enhance our personal ability to examine ourselves at a deep level and has the added advantage of allowing us to experience other participants as they explore their own unique psychological depths and personalities. The experience in itself is very emotionally empowering and in addition provides us with a new unique skill set in our professional lives as we learn how to create a psychologically sophisticated “coaching leadership style” and to develop a greater appreciation of the unique psyches, conflicts and challenges in the professionals, teams and the organizational culture in which we lead.

Our intensive in-sight program assists participants in achieving that goal.

In addition, our program has a related goal to specifically utilize one’s hand earned self-knowledge and to know others utilizing an enhanced understanding of individual depth and relational psychology. Our ten (10) day program has an intensive format that utilizes both didactic as well as experiential methods and is highly relational in nature, participants have the opportunity of developing a deep and practical understanding of the human psychology that lurks below the surface in relation to their colleagues, teams, units and ultimately their organizations as a whole. The programs process provides new learning and insights and propels participants towards leadership excellence.

🔹 THE INNER CAMINO INTENSIVE LEADERS RETREAT PROGRAM

A Psycho-Spiritual Pilgrimage for Executives, Founders, and High-Performing Professionals

“You cannot lead others until you have truly met yourself.”

🔹 The Call to Journey
Every truly great leader must, at some point, face a deeper threshold:
Not one of performance, promotion, or portfolio—but of the self.

This is the leader’s call to the inner pilgrimage—a vision quest for those who’ve succeeded outwardly yet remain shadowed by unprocessed stories, hollow victories, or a haunting sense that something essential remains unmet.

The Inner Camino is that path.
Not a vacation. Not a team-building weekend.
But a sacred passage inward—through the unexamined emotional architecture of your life, your leadership, your legacy.

For those who dare, it is the place where the performer ends and the authentic leader begins.

🔹 Why Leaders Need This Pilgrimage

High-performance professionals often carry invisible wounds beneath their competence:

• Narratives of self-worth formed in the crucible of early trauma

• Adaptive personas that earned them success but now restrict their growth

• Shame-based perfectionism, imposter fear, or emotional detachment

• Compulsive success cycles driven by unseen hunger, grief, or ghosts

• Leadership styles shaped by old defense mechanisms, not authentic choice

Over time, these internal structures fracture identity, distort relationships, and ultimately derail careers.

The Inner Camino offers the opportunity to break the cycle—to face the shadow, confront the wound, and emerge as a wholly integrated self capable of true leadership, intimacy, and creative freedom.

This is the Hero’s Journey reimagined for the executive class:
A descent into the unconscious, a confrontation with the shadow, and a return to the world bearing a renewed self and vision.

🔹 Who This is For

This retreat is curated for high-functioning individuals who are ready to go further by going deeper:

• CEOs, founders, professionals, and thought leaders at a crossroads

• Leaders with outward success but inward dissonance or fatigue

• Individuals grappling with relational or identity crises

• Executives repeating self-sabotaging leadership patterns

• High performers with attachment injuries, unresolved grief, or addictive cycles

• People facing ethical or existential upheaval in their professional life

🔹 The Hero’s Journey:

The Inner Camino is structured around a modified Hero’s Journey, clinically guided and psychologically held:

1. The Call to Adventure: Awakening the Need

• Success no longer satisfies.

• Inner conflict, burnout, or relational collapse signals something deeper.

• The question arises: What story have I been living—and at what cost?

2. Crossing the Threshold: Leaving the Known

• Participants enter a protected, sacred container

• Disconnect from roles, personas, optics

• Begin honest self-examination beyond public masks

3. Descent into the Depths: Confronting the Shadow

• Explore early wounds, traumas, and adaptive defense systems

• Face unconscious drivers, self-schemas, and complexes

• Deconstruct compulsions, addictions, false personas, and dark triad traits

• Bring compassion to grief, fear, shame, and abandonment stories

4. Revelation and Re-Storying: Discovering the True Self

• Distill the essential values, longings, and leadership DNA

• Separate identity from pathology

• Begin to author a new internal narrative and way of being

5. Return with the Elixir: Reintegrating a New Leadership Identity

• Re-enter life with clarity, integrity, and psychological freedom

• Lead not from performance but from presence

• Rebuild relationships, boundaries, and leadership vision from the inside out

🔹 Clinical Foundations and Philosophical Influences

• Depth Psychology & Jungian Individuation

• Attachment Theory & Trauma-Informed Leadership

•  Clinical Paradigm of Leadership

• Kohutian Psychology of the Self

• Archetypal and Narrative Identity Work

• Spiritual Formation and Existential Renewal

🔹 The Clinical Journey in Detail

🔸 Deconstruction — The Mask and the Myth

• Analyze personality structures, defense styles, and adaptive behaviors

• Surface intergenerational narratives and internalized belief systems

• Identify career-driven compensations rooted in early unmet needs

🔸 Confrontation — Inner Reckoning

• Explore loss, betrayal, and trauma

• Work through moral injury, perfectionism, and executive isolation

• Engage shadow material and dark triad patterns in leadership behavior

🔸 Integration — The Coherent Self

• Align values with identity

• Create a psychologically integrated leadership model

• Practice emotional vulnerability, mature intimacy, and strategic empathy

🔸 Re-Entry — Strategic Reintegration

• Map triggers, regression patterns, and new self-leadership tools

• Craft a renewed internal compass

• Optional 3-month mentorship to sustain trajectory

🔹 Format, Setting, and Experience

• Duration: 5–7 days

• Format: Solo executive or curated group (max 6–8 participants)

• Setting: Luxury retreat space chosen for silence, nature, and containment

• Facilitators: Clinical psychologists, psychospiritual guides, executive mentors

• Confidentiality: Total discretion; optional NDAs; no media, no optics

🔹 Tangible Benefits for the Executive

• Profound increase in self-awareness and emotional intelligence

• Freedom from outdated self-limiting narratives and compulsions

• Greater authenticity, intimacy, and strategic empathy

• Enhanced capacity for ethical decision-making and moral clarity

• Recovered passion, creativity, and purpose

• True executive presence grounded in integrated identity

• Career re-alignment based on values, legacy, and inner congruence

OTTAWA, TORONTO AND GLOBAL EXECUTIVE LIFE COACHING AND HIGH PERFORMANCE CONSULTING
Ottawa, Toronto and International Locations

In our life coaching and high performance consulting program we serve high performing people be they our typical executive/leadership clientele or blue chip asset professionals, professional athletes, performing artists or just anyone  who wants to live a high performing life in a manner that blends the best research and methods emanating from high performance psychology, modern neuroscience, positive psychology along with ancient philosophy, spirituality and wisdom.

We work with high achievement motivated individuals with the individualized goal of increasing their performance, meeting high level personal and professional goals while concurrently investing and living a holistically enhanced healthy lifestyle.

Achieving high performance and achieving the goal of maximizing the very best version of yourself is an extremely challenging but very achievable outcome. We live in a time of extreme insecurity, non predictability, chaos and possibly overwhelming stress. We work with you to achieve your highest possible goals both professionally and within your personal life. All the while you are improving your physical, emotional and spiritual health. We believe life is about thriving not just surviving.
We are the partner you bring in after traditional coaching fails to go deep enough—and when you’re finally ready to go beyond maintenance, toward transformation.