At Barry-Wehmiller, we consider leadership to be an awesome responsibility--it holds the key to growing our business and, as important, improving the lives of our team members.
It’s our job, as leaders, to help them establish goals so they know how to contribute, to remove barriers that get in the way of them achieving their goals, and help them chart a path for their growth.
Our team members deserve that and, consequently, if we’re asking them to contribute, we must ensure that they are led by leaders who have the skills to help them perform and the courage to care about them along the way.
A few years ago, we introduced Leader Expectations & Commitments, developed to help all formal Barry-Wehmiller leaders with team members in their span of care understand the actions and skills needed to embody Truly Human Leadership.
On this podcast, we thought we’d explore Barry-Wehmiller’s leader expectations and commitments through five outstanding leaders in our organization. You’ll get to hear how they view these expectations in the scope of their responsibilities and how they try to apply the commitments in their daily interactions and leadership of those within their span of care.
While presenting our message of Truly Human Leadership, our CEO Bob Chapman is often asked: What about the people who don't get it? What about the people who actively work against positive change?
Barry-Wehmiller has acquired more than 130 companies and we've certainly found that the people within that company are a product of their experiences. They may have experienced great leaders in their past or, more likely, they have had some negative experiences. Consequently, some have difficulty trusting our leadership message. That’s okay. We’re all at a different point on this journey, and we have to be patient and trust that the skeptics will eventually see the transformative power it can have—on both their work lives and their personal lives.
On this podcast, you'll hear the story of Randall Fleming, who was a welder in our BW Papersystems company in Phillips, Wisconsin, and very much a skeptic. Randall's story is testament to the life-changing power of meaningful work. It's what happens when you establish a workplace culture of empathy and shared purpose as opposed to the "command and control" atmosphere of most traditional management environments.
When Lean was introduced to the Barry-Wehmiller organization a number of years ago, CEO Bob Chapman's concern was that people would be lost along the way. But we found a way to adopt Lean methods and stay true to our Guiding Principles of Leadership.
Instead of using Lean to reduce waste, we use it to reduce frustration. It's part of the bag of tools we use in continuous improvement to ensure a stable and thriving business for the benefit of our people. It's part of our overall Operational Excellence strategy. Our vision is about engaging people’s head, heart and hands in creating their own future and actively shaping the legacy of the business every day.
On this podcast, we take a look at how our approach to Lean puts people at the center to make it about eliminating frustration, not waste. In addition, you'll hear an interview with Jacob Stoller, author of The Lean CEO. Jacob’s book features a number of organizations, which, like Barry-Wehmiller, found a way to empower people, not processes. And that is the true power of Lean.
John Michel is a former Air Force General who has not only used his leadership experience in service of his country, but also to help transform businesses into places that think more about people than profit.
John has written two books, (No More) Mediocre Me: How Saying No to the Status Quo Will Propel You From Ordinary to Extraordinary and The Art of Positive Leadership. He has written articles for the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Huffington Post, National Geographic, Joint Forces Quarterly, and the Washington Post.
In addition to writing and speaking about leadership, John has held executive positions in the transportation and aeronautics industries and is an entrepreneur in the hospitality industry.
John talks about his leadership journey and what he's learned from Barry-Wehmiller in an interview with Brent Stewart and Mary Rudder on this podcast.
Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute is Barry-Wehmiller’s consulting company that helps organizations identify, develop, and equip leaders. They bring the lessons we have learned at Barry-Wehmiller and our principles of Truly Human Leadership alongside scientific methods to provide individual and organizational assessments, training, and consultation. They help their clients drive exceptional results through a culture where people and performance are in harmony.
On this THL Refresher podcast, we bring you a discussion between two of Chapman & Co.’s leading partners, Sara Hannah and Matt Whiat and Barry-Wehmiller CEO Bob Chapman. This was done at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the three use Barry-Wehmiller’s experience during crisis to give leaders insight into how they may handle their own. But it’s not a discussion that is limited to the unique situation of a global pandemic. Crisis can hit business at any time.
Rhonda Spencer is Barry-Wehmiller’s Chief People Officer. She has been with our company since before the development of our Guiding Principles of Leadership and was one of the major voices in its creation. It’s her primary responsibility to be the steward of our values and make sure that light shines to the furthest reaches of our organization.
Rhonda joined Brent Stewart and Mary Rudder on this podcast to talk about the nuts and bolts of how we try to make everybody feel like they matter at Barry-Wehmiller. She also talks about how she became Barry-Wehmiller’s first Chief People Officer and what the position means to her.
Imagine going to get coffee for your team and finding your coffee maker had been repossessed.
In the early 1980s, Barry-Wehmiller was in trouble as a business, but we learned to embrace the lessons that arise during times of adversity and uncover the opportunities hidden within periods of crisis.
BW CEO, Bob Chapman, tells this story in his book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring For Your People like Family, co-written with Raj Sisodia. On this podcast, Bob talks about challenging times in Barry-Wehmiller’s history in greater detail. Many of the lessons learned during that time were lessons that informed BW's journey to Truly Human Leadership more than a decade later.
Here are some insights on the effects of burnout:
Our guest this week, Neha Sangwan, MD, CEO and founder of Intuitive Intelligence, is a physician, engineer, author, speaker, and communication expert. Her new book, Powered by Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life deals with her struggles with burnout and gives practical life advice to coping and overcoming burnout in the workplace and in a very stressful world.
A few years ago, the World Health Organization added “burn-out” to the International Classification of Diseases. Here’s how they define it: Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.
Quite a while ago, we learned from the Centers for Disease Control that your immediate supervisor is more important to your health than your primary care doctor. If burn-out results from chronic workplace stress, we’re seeing that to be true.
And it makes sense. 74% of people say the workplace is the leading cause of stress. On Monday mornings, there’s a 20% increase in heart attacks.
On this podcast, you'll hear an edited version of a webinar featuring Barry-Wehmiller CEO Bob Chapman and Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of Dying for a Paycheck, called, “The Next Leading Cause of Death: The Workplace?” They'll talk about this crisis and what leaders need to do to solve the issue.
As we’ve talked about in several past episodes of this podcast, Barry-Wehmiller’s CEO, Bob Chapman, has a passion for transforming the way business education is taught in our universities. We want to transform these institutions that train people to manage into institutions that foster Truly Human leaders who honor individual dignity and demonstrate the courage to care for others. It's why we helped found the Humanistic Leadership Academy.
But it’s not only important to teach students how to be truly human leaders, the teachers must model those principles as well.
On this episode, we feature a conversation between myself, David Pickersgill (who is on Barry-Wehmiller’s outreach team who is working with the Humanistic Leadership Academy) and Abhimanyu Gupta, an Instructor in the Department of Operations & IT Management and Interim Director of Emerson Leadership Institute at St. Louis University.
Our conversation with Abhi discusses how he approaches his relationships with his students and why modeling behaviors of truly human leadership is important. And then we talk about his experiences with the Humanistic Leadership Academy, why he became involved and how it has affected him.
Throughout his writing career, Raj Sisodia has put together a roadmap of how businesses can be a powerful force for good in the world through powerful stories of conscious organizations and their leadership.
However, in Raj’s new book, Awaken, The Path to Purpose, Inner Peace and Healing, he uses his own story to show others how to turn inward if they want to be an effect, empathetic and truly human leader.
On this podcast, Raj talks about the circumstances that inspired his turn inward, which then inspired the idea to write the book. But we also place it in the context of why the story he tells in Awaken is important for leaders.
It was Simon Sinek who coined the term “Truly Human Leadership.”
Simon and Barry-Wehmiller CEO Bob Chapman became fast friends when they first met years ago. Simon wrote about Barry-Wehmiller in his book, Leaders Eat Last, and he also wrote the foreword to Bob and Raj Sisodia’s book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring For Your People Like Family. He is a significant voice and one of our most important allies in spreading our message.
In 2015, Bob and Simon recorded this conversation around the release of Everybody Matters. We re-present it to you in this THL Refresher podcast.
In 2016, Harvard Business School published a case study on Barry-Wehmiller's approach to leadership that is now taught at 80 business schools. In this episode of our podcast, its authors, Jan Rivkin and Dylan Minor talk about the case study method of teaching, why they chose Barry-Wehmiller as a subject, how business school students are responding to people-centric principles and how Truly Human Leadership might apply in our current business and political climate.
Joey Coleman is the founder and Chief Experience Composer of Design Symphony – a customer experience branding firm and also the author of Wall Street Journal bestseller, Never Lose a Customer Again. Joey has a new book that very appropriate for our current times where we’ve had a Great Resignation and people are demanding better leaders and better work experiences, Never Lose an Employee Again: The Simple Path to Remarkable Retention. Whether you are an owner looking to hire your first few employees, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or an enterprise that needs to keep growing on a global scale, on this podcast, Joey will reshape the way you think about recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and retaining quality team members.
What if the best workplace we’ve ever experienced is just a fraction of what is possible? Dare we dream of something so far beyond ‘business as usual’ that it feels like a fantasy? ...to venture past the workplaces of the past and into the unknown to imagine and create something recognizably different. To create Truly Human work.
The preceding passage is from the introduction of the book, Human Work: Five Leadership Mindsets for Humanizing the Workplace, written by Leanne Holdsworth and Naryan Wong. On this podcast, we’re going to talk about the five leadership mindsets mentioned in their book’s title and we'll address the initial question asked in their introduction.
Does your organization have a Speak Up Culture? One where people feel it is safe and worth it to share their ideas, concerns, disagreements, and mistakes?
Are you a leader who listens? What are you doing to make sure all voices in your organization are heard? These things are vital to having a thriving organization.
You may recognize Stephen Shedletsky from his work with Simon Sinek. On this podcast, Shed defines a Speak Up Culture and talks about why it is important for leadership, business and the people within.
Howard Behar, former president at Starbucks and a key figure in establishing their culture, talks about his views on leadership, his time at the coffee giant, Uber, Lyft, Amazon, Whole Foods and a whole lot else.
Over the past several years, for multiple reasons, we’ve seen an upheaval in the workplace. Not least of which is the so-called Great Resignation.
But could the turmoil of the last few years result in better workplaces? Could business leaders really understand the value of caring for their people? Could we really see a massive shift from traditional management to Truly Human Leadership?
Dr. Alise Cortez thinks so. In fact, she thinks the time is ripe for a Great Revitalization.
Dr. Alise Cortez is an author, leadership consultant, an organizational logotherapist, the host of the Working on Purpose radio show and the Chief People officer at Dr. Alise Cortez and Associates. Alise has been on our podcast before, where we had a conversation about the insights she gained from leaders and their experiences in 2020.
On this podcast, Alise will talk about her new book, which is incidentally titled The Great Revitalization: How Activating Meaning and Purpose Can Radically Enliven Your Business.
You may have heard our CEO, Bob Chapman, say that the person you report to at work is more important to your health than your primary care physician. It sounds outrageous, but it underscores one of the profound truths we’ve discovered at Barry-Wehmiller: That the way we lead impacts the way people live.
The research to back it up can be traced to Dr. L. Casey Chosewood, the Director of the Office for Total Worker Health at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Learn more in this in-depth discussion about wellness and work.
Jennifer Wallace recently wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal, "The Power of Mattering at Work" that was forwarded to Barry-Wehmiller CEO, Bob Chapman.
Jennifer has written a book that discusses the importance of mattering in children that comes out in August 2023, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It. Along with her friend, Sarah Bennison, Jennifer is trying to build The Mattering Movement, with the goal of helping people of all ages learn the skills and tools to enact meaningful social change by identifying genuine needs, big or small, and to recognize the unique value that each individual can bring to the world.
Bob and Jennifer struck up a conversation because of their similar interests in the idea of mattering. Bob invited Jennifer and her friend, Sarah Bennison to visit a couple of Barry-Wehmiller facilities. After their visit, they had a conversation with Bob and Mary Rudder about the idea of mattering, which is featured on this episode of the podcast.
“Today, leaders need to recognize the impact work has on peoples’ overall life satisfaction. It is an antiquated belief that leaders should focus solely on the professional side of team members’ lives. Work needs to be a positive influence, given that it consumes much of our waking time. The work we do and how we feel about it shapes our identity. Leaders have a responsibility to help their teams understand the importance of their work."
On this podcast, find out more about what "The Optimistic Workplace" is in an interview with author Shawn Murphy.
Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute is Barry-Wehmiller’s consulting arm that helps other companies and organizations through what we have come to call a Truly Human approach to business.
They can help companies hire the right people, inspire them through a thriving and inclusive culture, develop and support your leaders and create stronger customer loyalty.
Sara Hannah and Matt Whiat are the leading partners of Chapman & Co. On this THL Refresher, we’re going to bring you a couple of individual talks given by Sara and Matt that discuss their personal leadership journeys.
Bill Ury is the co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and is one of the world’s leading experts on negotiation and mediation. Trained as a social anthropologist, Bill has carried out his research on negotiation not only in the boardroom and at the bargaining table, but also among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the clan warriors of New Guinea.
On this podcast, Bill shares his unique perspective on how empathetic listening can make a difference. Not just across a negotiation table between world powers, but in our day to day interactions with people. He also has a conversation with Barry-Wehmiller CEO, Bob Chapman.
One of the cornerstones of Truly Human Leadership is that everybody wants to know that who they are and what they do matters.
Someone else that came to that same insight in a scholarly manner, through his experiences and his research, is Professor Isaac Prilleltensky. He, along with his wife, Ora, wrote a book on the science and importance of mattering: How People Matter: Why it Affects Health, Happiness, Love, Work and Society.
You can find our more about the Professor, his work and his book on his website: professorisaac.com
On this podcast, we talk about the science of mattering, the poverty of dignity in the world, the importance of listening, moving from a me-centric culture to a we-centric culture and we also talk about how all this relates to the work place and how leaders can apply the science of mattering to those within their span of care.
This is such an important discussion, you’ll want to go back and read the transcript of this conversation on our website, trulyhumanleadership.com.
It’s been almost eight years since the publication of Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family by Raj Sisodia, one of the founders of Conscious Capitalism and Barry-Wehmiller CEO, Bob Chapman.
It’s the story of Bob and Barry-Wehmiller’s journey from traditional business thinking to Truly Human Leadership. All these years later, people are still discovering the book and are touched by the story.
Around the time of Everybody Matters’ release, Bob and Raj did a number of interviews talking about why they wrote the book and what they hoped to accomplish by writing it.