The cast is enough to raise eyebrows. On April 12, at the independent cinema Le Balzac, in the very chic 8th arrondissement of Paris, there will be a screening of the film Etugen by Arnaud Riou. Along with the author of Awaken the shaman within you, there are several members of Medef, including Paola Fabiani, its spokesperson and vice-president, and Patrick Martin, now president of the employers’ organization. The broadcast of the documentary with slightly mystical overtones – it intends to discover a “universal wisdom” through the meeting of doctors, philosophers, but also shamans and healers – is an opportunity for an exchange, on stage, between the leaders of the organization, the coach and Rezlaine Zaher, the organizer of the evening.
This is not the first time that Arnaud Riou has approached the business community: a regular speaker, the coach and speaker explains to L’Express that he has had “between 250 and 300 business clients” for thirty years. Its seminars are charged for several hundred euros – the most expensive listed on its site amounting to 5,900 euros. “I often work with structures that will do a ‘vision quest’ to have a better perspective of the coming year,” he explains. To clarify this concept which may seem nebulous, the coach spins the metaphor: “The geese go on migration without making an Excel table. For humans, it should be the same. Shamanism assumes that everything is linked. Rather than presentations Powerpoint, you can connect to things other than intellectual intelligences, like intuition.”
Embarrassment at Medef
The leaders of the Medef are visibly emerged delighted with the screening of his film. “Very happy to have attended this very beautiful screening and participated in this exchange which is quite out of step with our current benchmarks, wrote Patrick Martin in the commentary to a LinkedIn post. Without denying our values - for me confidence in progress and human intelligence – you have to know how to question yourself and respectfully confront different visions.” However, the activities of Arnaud Riou, which combine personal development, Buddhism and shamanism, raise questions. They have been the subject of several reports to the Interministerial Mission for vigilance and the fight against sectarian aberrations (Miviludes). What now embarrasses Medef, where the entourage of the management confides his “discomfort” and explains “not to condone”. “The screening focused on ecological issues. We did not know who he was, it says. The member who organized this event did so on a personal basis.”
A priori innocent, this screening/conference is symptomatic of the links that the business world maintains with the subject. Under cover of allowing individuals to better live their relationship to work, a watered-down esotericism has made its way into the private sector. According to an OpinionWay study published in June 2022, 43% of working people would consider leaving their job in order to find one “with more meaning”. The search for the “invisible” would be a way of responding to this quest. “There has long been the idea that the company was a team, a family. Now, it comes to take care of the souls of its employees, analyzes Damien Karbovnik, author of a thesis on esotericism general public. There is the search for transcendence in personal development, of which esotericism is one of the vectors.” Who, after all, has never been transcended by an Excel spreadsheet?
New tools
In this frantic search for new management tools, companies are turning to pseudo-scientific techniques. As L’Express reported in June, around thirty companies and around twenty Vendée schools have been tempted by the enneagram. Presented as a simple personality test, this esoteric practice would make it possible to decipher “the soul and human psychology”. With its diagrams and conclusions on each person’s personality, the enneagram is all the rage in the “Silicon Vendée”. Fleury Michon would pay around 170,000 euros a year to train its executives there. The test results are reserved “strictly for the person” and “are not used for recruitment or internal mobility purposes”, assures the company.
Yet companies that use esoteric tools for these purposes are not uncommon. “The more an individual is subjected to significant stress, his decision-making power high, and the more he is likely to turn to these techniques to try to reduce the random part of a recruitment, for example”, underlines Damien Karbovnik. Some business leaders do not hesitate to turn to specialists in “strategic numerology” to be sure not to be mistaken. The practice, founded by coach Lydie Castells (who did not wish to answer our questions) resumes the classic principles of numerology: it attributes properties to numbers, and uses them to determine a person’s personality and life path.
Numbers to recruit
The technique is used to choose candidates for a position, as Marina, a strategic numerology consultant in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, tells us. “The HR of a company contacted me because two of their recruitments had not worked: they were all leaving because they did not support open space, she reports. each candidate, I was able to determine which one to choose.” The company decides to hire based on his diagnosis. “The candidate stayed, she assures. You have to be careful: some numbers may need peace of mind, others not.” Florence, numerologist in Vendée, also advises bosses. For her services combining reflexology and numerology in business, Florence charges between 350 euros (half day) and 700 euros (full day). She remembers helping a leader choose between two apprentice candidates. “She was going to choose the person I advised her against and who was, she learned later, frowned upon by her teachers. I was right,” boasts the numerologist.
The use of these practices therefore goes beyond the simple security blanket for stressed decision-makers: it can have a real impact on management or the recruitment of potential candidates. It is also a possible form of indoctrination, reinforced by the credit provided by a professional setting. “The problem is that, often, these speakers advance masked and only reveal their spiritual practices during the course”, explains Elisabeth Feytit, creator of the podcast Méta de Choc, dedicated to critical thinking. Potentially vulnerable during seminars dedicated to the management of stress or emotions, employees are likely to be more receptive than elsewhere to the methods and techniques of coaches and their esoteric practices. The risk has also attracted the attention of Miviludes. In its latest report published in November 2022, the organization noted that the sector, “in addition to its financial attractiveness”, was “a means of disseminating practices and doctrines on which Miviludes calls for vigilance, and also a mode of recruitment new followers.