The Secret to Thriving Teams? Heart-Centred Leadership, Says Lubna Samara
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
By Tabish Ali
Dr Lubna Samara is a trailblazing mental resilience speaker, merging her foundation in mathematics and investment banking with deep spiritual practice to deliver powerful insights into human performance and wellbeing. As Founder & CEO of the award-winning HigherWill, she has crafted a unique narrative that spans purpose-led leadership, team transformation, and individual resilience.
Her work sits at the crossroads of high performance and holistic wellbeing, empowering leaders and organisations to embed empathy, vision and resilience into their culture. Her #1 international bestselling book Beyond Potential has topped charts across the UK, US, Canada and Germany, reflecting her global impact and authority.
In this exclusive interview with The Female Motivational Speakers Agency, Lubna shares her journey from the boardroom to mountaintops, explains why mental resilience is now the cornerstone of workplace success, and reveals how we can all reclaim our innate potential—even when the pressure is on.
Q: Empathy is often mentioned as a leadership quality, but few truly understand its impact. From your experience, how does genuine empathy influence trust and teamwork within organisations?
Dr Lubna Samara: “Well, empathy is really when you're listening with your heart. Yes, it's about putting yourself in another person's shoes, but it's listening with your heart to people. When people feel that you're listening to them — being a good listener is a very big part of empathy. When you feel somebody is hearing what you're saying, you feel supported. You're able to go and ask them a lot more questions.
“Empathy builds trust — that's very, very key. In cultures where you have collaboration, you're going to have much better teamwork. But if you have, for example, one person who is very competitive in a toxic way and they're not really working in an empathetic way with their colleagues, it creates a lot of fractures.
“It creates tension in the workplace, breaks all the trust, and it's up to the manager at that point to take that person aside and say you either change the way you're working or find a better fit somewhere else.
“Nowadays, most employers hire managers more for their EQ — their emotional intelligence — than their IQ, because they find that they are much more empathetic. They can be more supportive of their teams and can resolve conflicts much better.
“So, just in terms of personal growth, it's a big thing to connect to your heart. Our hearts actually send 90% more signals to our brains than the other way around. We are very emotional beings. We respond to emotions, and when somebody makes you feel wanted and that you belong, you're much more comfortable to work, to share your ideas, to trust — and it improves collaboration and productivity a lot.”
Q: Leading teams remotely has changed how people connect. What can leaders do to maintain real human connection and trust when their teams are scattered across countries and cultures?
Dr Lubna Samara: “Well, this is actually a very interesting question because if you think about how much of your interaction happens just through being in an office —chatting, overhearing people talking, discussing problems, knocking on your boss’s door and saying, “Can I have ten minutes of your time?” — you don’t have any of that when you’re remote. It’s much harder to have those natural interactions.
“One of the biggest challenges in remote working is that everything is being recorded. If you’re asking for help, there’s always that thought at the back of your mind that it’s going to be there forever — that it might make you look like you’re not doing your job properly if you ask too many questions or admit challenges.
“So, one of the first things in remote working is to establish a growth mindset: that it’s okay to ask questions. You don’t have that natural way of working where questions get answered in conversation without even needing to ask them directly.
“It’s also vital to have regular meetings — both one-on-one and group sessions — to discuss challenges together, because everyone learns from these experiences. Many people have similar challenges.
“Discussing them openly, supporting professional development, and focusing on well-being are all crucial. And, of course, having biannual or even more frequent in-person meetups can strengthen those bonds.
“When I run my programmes online, I have people joining from all over — Hong Kong, Mongolia, Europe, Canada, and the US. One thing I always do is a short five-minute meditation to connect them with their “higher self” — the wiser, more compassionate part of who they are — and to connect everyone to each other.
“It creates amazing energy and builds trust. Participants often end up supporting each other, even arranging to meet up in person. It’s something I always recommend if people are open to it, as it really helps build connection on a deeper level.”
Q: You describe the “Genius Zone” as a state of higher awareness. How can professionals recognise when they’ve reached it, and what practical steps can help them operate from that space more often?
Dr Lubna Samara: “It’s a state of awareness. The genius zone — which coaches have called that for the last 5 to 10 years — is actually the superconscious mind, or higher mind, a concept written about for millennia. The term “superconscious” was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 1820s. It’s a level of awareness that allows us to access a massive wellspring of information, knowledge, wisdom, and creativity.
“Brian Tracy, one of the leadership gurus, calls it a “CPU in the sky”, and we all have access to it — it’s inbuilt. Almost everyone has experienced being so inspired and absorbed in what they’re doing that time just flies. You forget to eat, you’re completely immersed. That’s when you’re connected to that very creative zone — the genius zone.
“I see each of us as a prism, each one unique, like a snowflake. When light comes through that prism — through our mind — what it refracts depends on us. For Einstein, it was mathematics and physics; for Mozart, it was music.
“For others, it might be painting, writing, photography — whatever they love doing.
That’s why passion matters — not in the cliché sense, but because it connects us to that flow state where we can create our best work.
“You can also connect to it through meditation or conscious questioning — exploring things that don’t make sense or seem paradoxical. The more you dig, the more you find. I discovered this myself after moving from banking into spiritual practice. Energy healing also played a big role.
“Though I was initially sceptical, it led me to explore the superconscious mind deeply — and I realised it’s something we all have access to. The more awareness we bring to it, the more potential we unlock.”
Q: When you step onto a stage, what is the one idea you want people to leave with about human potential and how it can transform both their lives and their workplaces?
Dr Lubna Samara: “I think it really comes back to our potential — we have so much more than we can ever truly realise. Yet we spend so much of our day fielding problems: emails, deadlines, interpersonal worries, endless distractions. It’s draining. Of course, we need to deal with problems, but we also need to make space for inspiration.
“I always come back to the Oscar Wilde quote: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” We all face challenges — that’s life — but we should still look up, make space to dream, to explore what’s possible. When we do, we’re amazed at what we can achieve.
“I’ve been doing a lot of research for a talk on where quantum physics meets consciousness and how it impacts our evolution. It’s fascinating how science now supports what mystics have always said — that our thoughts and intentions shape our reality. If all we do is focus on problems, that’s what we’ll continue to experience. So, deal with your problems, but focus on what brings light and hope into your life.
“I like to offer practical tools and exercises that help people feel more confident and live richer lives. When individuals bring that energy into organisations, it creates a ripple effect — uplifting the workplace, sparking excitement, and inspiring collaboration. That’s what I really hope people take from my talks.”
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