On this episode of the Truly Human Leadership Podcast, we’re introducing a new regular installment, the People and Performance Playbook, featuring Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute.
As you may recall, Chapman & Co. is Barry-Wehmiller's consulting company that was founded by our late CEO and
Chairman Bob Chapman to bring Truly Human Leadership to organizations
around the world.
Each one of these episodes will be shorter bits of insight from experts at Chapman & Co. as they share stories from their work and the thinking and methodology they use to help organizations understand and put into practice the idea that people and performance, or human vibrancy and economic growth, can exist in harmony, not in conflict with one another.
These episodes are also a deeper dive into issues written about in Chapman & Co.’s People and Performance Playbook Newsletter, to which you can subscribe when you find them on LinkedIn. The companion article to this podcast is titled: "Is Your Leadership Future-Ready or a Thing of the Past?"
Chapman & Co.'s Andrew Barenz and Mike Budden continues that discussion on this episode. You can listen to the episode through the You Tube link below or through your favorite podcast provider.
Transcript
Andrew Barenz: Well, Mike, it's exciting to sit down with you here today and talk about the past and the future of leadership.
Mike Budden: Yeah, it's a rare occasion, Andrew, for us to be in person in many ways. So, I'm Mike Budden, and I come from Cape Town in South Africa, and I've had the privilege to be spending some time with our team here in St. Louis. Just been incredible to be putting our heads together and thinking about this topic of leadership and the impact it's having in our world right now. And, so I'm keen to share and explore some more of that with you.
Andrew: Yes. Very excited. I'm Andrew Barenz, been with Chapman & Co. for going on a decade now. And very excited to kind of talk about some of these topics around human-centric leadership, how leadership has evolved over the last 50 years or so. And certainly, over the last maybe five to 10 years, we've seen a lot of change there.
Well, let's dive in, Mike, to this evolution we're talking about kind of where leadership has come from, where, where we think it is and where it's headed. And maybe you could kind of share with our listeners what changes you've seen in your time doing this work.
Mike: Yeah, there's been a lot of changes. I can think of some personal experiences, as I started on this journey, you know, interesting. Somebody asked me where did my interest come in leadership. And I remember in a time when we were growing up in South Africa, we had to do national conscription. Two years in the military, which we had no choice of.
I remember as an 18-year-old, in fact, I was 17 when I joined. I was a little insecure, lacked confidence. And in my time in the military, I was given rank and became a corporal. And I was allowed to literally push people around. I reflect back on those times, on anything I do. I'm not really proud of those times.
I wish I could go back and do it again, and when I came out of it, I studied, not leadership, I studied a course on management. I was dying to actually go back and unravel these, like, really terrible things I did to people. And as I reflected back where did that interest for leadership in me start was back then. I think back to how we led then and what people are expecting today is such a stark contrast.
But certainly, my passion for thinking there was going to be a better way started right there and then. And that's been, I've just been incredibly blessed to have along the road had experiences, awakenings and just this desire to see our world impacted better through better leadership. And so, one of the stories I reflect on is, I was working for a very large insurance company.
I got to a time in my life, I got promoted into management. Like, OK, I've now got to either decide to play this game or get up, and I'm not a game player. So, I decided, hey, it's time for me to move on. And I was approached by a smaller consultancy. We had about 500 team members, but the leader was just an incredibly visionary guy.
He had a vision for us of being globally competitive and locally dominant, with so much energy that we’re winning business. It was just a real exciting space to join. I felt this sense of belonging in this team. We also had these terrible offices and horrible desks, and we didn't care. And then our little microsystem put pressure on the bigger system in this organization.
And the owner who happened to be the CEO actually took him out. And literally, we had a whole disciplinary process, awful thing to go through. Took him out of the business. And we know we were lifted into that rank of leadership, and we couldn't even call it leadership at that point, but suddenly, we experienced what toxic leadership was all about.
And the amazing thing was, suddenly we all went into our little silos, into our little holes, we were all trying to protect each other. People started complaining about the desks and the benefits. For me, that was like, I feel we always, sometime in life, need to experience a toxic leader and an inspiring leader and know the difference.
And that really even further set me on this course of thinking of what leadership looks like. So, I think, I would love to hear from you in a moment on this, but what for me has, I think, evolved over time, is that it's not that we want leadership to be different. Our expectations have changed.
I think what our parents accepted in the workplace is very different to what we accepted. And I think for your generation that looks different. I'd love to hear what you're thinking is around people in your generation. What are they wanting as they come into the workplace today?
Andrew: Yeah, I think as I reflect on my story, maybe I entered it in a slightly different way. I think this whole message of Truly Human Leadership, of people-centric, human-first leadership, really spoke to me and attracted me to this work. I never anticipated, working in kind of the business world. That's not what my background is in.
It comes more from health and education policy, and my focus is always on improving people's lives, making people's lives better. And just the mental model world view I had at the time was, that the business world was not the place I would be doing that. But Bob's message of leading in a different way, using business as a powerful, sustainable way to have a positive impact on people's lives really spoke to me, and I think that's what attracted me to this work and what really inspires me and fills me up, in our work with clients.
But, I think what's interesting about kind of my experience there is coming in from that perspective. And now stepping into actually doing that work out of the ideas in the concepts into doing that work with our clients and leading inside the business here at Chapman & Co. and how difficult that can be. And to your point, I think it's not so much that what makes a good leader has changed.
We have greater awareness around it. Different expectations around what people want out of their work and what they expect when they, when they walk in the doors at their workplace. But, Mike, one thing that came to me, a question that came into my head as you were sharing, is this notion of how leadership has changed or hasn't.
And I think you had said what we view as a good leader hasn't changed. But what would you say has changed then if we're talking about this evolution of leadership? What has changed?
Mike: Yeah. Well, I think you've just said it in some ways. What an incredible blessing and privilege for you, in a way, to have really started thinking about I want to do work that's purposeful and impactful. I think when we started work, I know I always wanted to make a difference, but I had to really work hard at connecting what I did to it is making a difference.
Partly that's why I left that big insurance company. I couldn’t feel, I was doing exciting work, but I couldn’t feel the impact it was having on people. And so, your sense of already you came in, and you know, you make me think of my own son, Matt. It was exactly the same what they said to me, Dad, I want to do work that I'm passionate about. I'm purposeful.
And I think that's where that's one of the biggest shifts that we are facing or seeing is you're already entering into the workforce thinking about that, knowing you want to make an impact, knowing you want to bring your whole self to work, knowing you want your voice heard and ideas, that wasn't really the place of us as employees when we were young.
Yeah. And so that shift, I think what is hard for leaders today in many ways is that they have expectations on them to drive the results to get the performance and deliver on shareholder performance, etc. good results. And sitting with people like you, who’ve got these expectations who want to be led as whole and nurtured and developed and, as I say that, I don't think that's a generational difference.
I wish that was, well, I want that same. We weren't allowed to even think about that literally because you had a paycheck. You had to come in. You've got to do your job.
Andrew: That's what the expectation was.
Mike: Yeah. So, that’s a shift that I think I'm seeing. We, as we grow in our consciousness in the world, are getting a finer sense of what's right and wrong and what's appropriate and acceptable or not. And so, we got an old paradigm of how we managed people in this new expectation and for people who've been around a long time, there's a lot of programming that has to happen to help us get there, I think, and understand that.
But yeah. So, leaders sit in this hard place. It's a messy, we call it the messy middle. Holding that. So, as you think about that, as we think about the shifts, what are some of the hallmarks for you of an inspiring leader?
Andrew: Well, I think the thing that, Mike, stands out to me, and I think probably the core question we wrestle around most with clients is that you describe the messy middle, this tension between caring for people, leaning into these newer concepts around leadership. How do I inspire, develop, care for people? And the tension between that and running the business, running an efficient operation and driving results for the business.
I think good leadership absolutely sits in that middle space. Being able to navigate the tension between those. I think of my life story with leaders that I've worked for. It's not the ones that I had just the best relationship, and it was easy to sit down and talk to, if they didn't also hold me to a high standard and help us achieve something.
And, on the flip side of that, it's not the leader who just drives all the time that you want to work for. Those are the leaders. You don't give that discretionary effort to. I think it's the ability to do both. Someone, a leader who challenges you to grow, challenges the team to be the best that it can be, and does so in a way that helps everyone develop.
I think that's truly what an inspiring leader, who an inspiring leader is, and how they show up for their team. Yeah.
Mike: I think I just say that, like, makes me think what does business need today? It needs people who will bring their discretionary effort, intrinsically motivated. It's people that are going to be loyal. It's going to be people who care. And yet we can't demand that anymore. We used to be able to try it when we try to demand it.
I'm not sure if we got it right, but definitely today we can’t demand that. Based on what you've just said, it's about a leader that can help me unlock that in each of us as people.
Andrew: And I think too, for business leaders today, that's less of an option and more of a necessity as our economy has grown. And there's so much options for talent out there for people to go. And if I'm deciding between working for a company where I don't feel some of those elements, I don't feel like I'm cared for.
I'm not able to grow. I don't find meaning or purpose in my work, and I have an option that I do, that changes the dynamic for talent. And therefore, I think it changes whether leaders and companies want to address that or not. I think it's increasingly becoming a necessity that businesses are aware of that. And that their leaders show up in that way.
Mike: Yeah. You know, one of the related shifts to that that I see is I think as our world has been growing up, and I'll call it that, because we continually are actually growing and evolving. Sometimes it feels to be going backwards a little bit, but I genuinely think we're going forwards is that we've sort of moved from this world where we used to be very codependent on each other, and then we've been in this time of independence like it's all about me and my success, and I need to be independent to survive. And I think we're starting to get a bigger, a stronger realization that we are interdependent, and we are only going to survive, well thrive.
Not only call it survive, but thrive, as we collaborate. And so, we've been thinking, I know, with our model that we've been thinking about leadership, that there's the operational leadership, which I think that's been around for a long time. And I think what I described is we've had a lot of managers who know how to lead and manage operations.
The other big piece in business that I'm seeing is this notion of what we’re calling collective stewardship. And, or visionary stewardship, and it is more about the collective. And so, one of the big pieces of work we've been involved in recently in South Africa has been with our health department. Health in South Africa is largely public health.
It's a hard place to be. We've got people, lots of people in real need, but we also live in a country that's got limited means. And, we've been working in the Western Cape with a phenomenal leader there who I would call a truly inspiring conscious leader. And, he called on me one day and said, like, we're not going to be able to achieve what we need to do with the means we have and the mandate to deliver health care to all these people in need.
If I can't get my leadership team to start thinking collectively about this organization and that we’re stewarding the whole rather than each of these managed, massive hospitals themselves, like, they're each in an organization in their own right. But they needed, he needed, to help them shift to say, we are needing to think about the whole system.
And it might even mean one has to sacrifice something in the interest of another to ensure that we can keep the whole system going. And that was an incredible journey because, to get there, we started right at the other piece of our model, which is personal, a leadership of personal account ownership, becoming self-aware of me, how I show up, how I show up in this team, how we contract this team, and then how does this team lead those people in their span of care, which included not just the people in their direct better care, but each other was in their span of care?
That was a prerequisite to get to visionary stewardship. It's just been an incredible journey to witness them shifting their mindsets to what it means to steward that collective whole. Yeah.
Andrew: And, Mike, I think that notion of collective stewardship or visionary stewardship is becoming increasingly important in our world while we're all navigating such a tremendous pace or rate of change, the ability for leaders to operate effectively at that level, at a senior team level, I think is increasingly important. The ability to pivot. A lot of businesses experienced this during Covid.
It was a pretty dramatic change in our world and the ability to kind of operate and pivot the business, I think is increasingly important in our world today.
Mike: Yeah. Well, if we just think of all the change we're facing, you know, we don't know what AI is going to do for us, to us, with us. I don’t know. The geopolitical situations, the supply chain things, inflation, all these workforce changes we're seeing. I don't think any of us can do that on our own, you know?
And that's where leaders are feeling so alone today is they do feel like they have to. But the more we can sense that we have to learn how to be better at collaborating and stewarding that collectively, I think the better we're going to be able to navigate these times.
Andrew: As I think more about that, Mike, I think it's to the earlier question, what has changed in leadership? It's less that what it means to be a good leader or a great leader is different. It really has changed as much as there's additional skills or competencies that leaders increasingly have to lean into.
I don't just show up to work in that operational management bucket that you described of defining clear roles and building processes that work for people. But now I have to show up and lead people, and I have to be mindful of how they operate. And how do I develop and care for and inspire them? And I also have to be mindful of how do we grow this business in a dramatically evolving world?
How do we evolve the business and ensure the longevity, the safety of the business into the future and of the people that work for it? And I think that is a high calling for leaders today to be able to manage all of that. Or I think you would say, to be able to hold all of that at the same time.