The Southwest Debacle has Wreaked Havoc on a Beloved Brand

Posted on by Real Leaders

When you think of your favorite brands, how do you feel? Whatever those feelings are, for successful brands, the way you feel has been fully orchestrated from the day you first encountered the brand.  

For instance, for those who embrace Nike’s brand, it elicits very strong feelings. And from the brand’s culture to its designs to its marketing, those feelings are intentional. Apple elicits strong feelings. Netflix, Harley Davidson and Red Bull also elicit strong feelings. Until recently, Southwest Airlines was among that set, although now, feelings about the brand seem to be shifting. More on that in a minute. 

In his marketing classic, Becoming a Category of One, author Joe Calloway gives what has become our favorite definition of branding. Calloway says, “Your brand is what people think it’s like to do business with you.” That statement isn’t grounded in product attributes and quarterly profits. It’s grounded in feeling.  

How does engaging with your brand make me feel? Is your brand congruent? Do what you say and do align, and will they every time I interact with your brand? When the interaction makes me feel good, strong, proud and happy, and the brand is fully congruent, that’s how brand evangelists are born.  

At their core, brands are meaning-making systems designed to reflect, signal and communicate a company’s values. That’s why brands that focus on culture win. It’s also why company culture is something that requires constant curating. Let’s jump back to Southwest Airlines.  

Even Cultures Built to Last, Don’t 

On January 4, 2019, the day after Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher passed away, an article ran in Forbes, “20 Reasons Why Herb Kelleher Was One of the Most Beloved Leaders of Our Time.” In it, authors and leadership experts Kevin and Jackie Freiberg said this about their longtime friend:  

“Herb played the game of life full throttle. One of the most passionate people we have ever known, he had a zest for life, an indefatigable spirit, a contagious sense of humor, a servant’s heart and an intellectual acumen that allowed him to carry on an interesting conversation with anyone, anywhere, about anything. For almost 30 years we’ve been asking, ‘What if you could build a company that is as human as the human beings in it? What if you could create a culture that inspires passionate people to come to work fully awake, fully engaged, firing on all cylinders because they know they are doing epic work?’ Herb did.” 

Yes, Herb did. But even cultures that seem perfect can crumble when left unattended. For years, the team at Southwest could do no wrong and we loved them for it. From turning planes in record time day after day, to making flying fun again, Southwest was a cultural touchstone and one of the most beloved challenger brands of all time. But the events of the last month show there were also cracks in the culture at the top that company leaders ignored until their infrastructure was imploding along with consumers’ trust across the country.  

While the long-term fallout remains to be seen, Southwest Airlines is now a cautionary tale for the leaders of every company and brand culture. Leadership isn’t a top-down edict that demands buy in. It’s an employee-first, customers-second, leaders-third mindset. The debacle at Southwest happened the week of Christmas but it started 20 years ago when a leader wholly committed to his employees and customers gave way to a CEO who focused exclusively on ROI, cutting expenses, and Wall Street. When that happens, culture becomes the sacrificial lamb for profit, and while that can certainly inflate numbers temporarily, it’s not sustainable. You can only cut your way to profitability for so long. 

3 tips for building a strong brand 

Building a brand your team will embrace and your customers will love in perpetuity takes time, energy and vision. It also takes the realization that brand building — just like culture building — is a constant process. When those two efforts work in strong, strategic alignment, the world sits up and takes notice. Here are three tips for how to make that happen: 

1. Start with “lighthouse leadership.” 

The single-most effective way to differentiate your brand is to firmly ground it in company culture and that culture has to begin with leadership. In challenger branding, we talk about brands having a “lighthouse identity” — an identify based on an authentic truth that burns so brightly even those not looking for it will see it. Lighthouse leadership is what happens when self-aware leaders have crystal clarity about who they are, where they want to take their companies and how they intend to get there. Your team doesn’t need a manager. It needs a beacon of clarity. It needs an inspired thinker. It needs a champion who can build team members up and lead them into battle with clear direction, conviction and support. 

2. Embrace the greater good. 

If you’re unaware of the Conscious Capitalism movement afoot across the country, read up and learn all you can. Conscious Capitalism is about embracing the idea of doing well by doing good espoused by a stakeholder model that rewards all the constituent groups involved in commerce — versus the shareholder model that squeezes everyone possible to drive all profit to the shareholders. The movement’s mission is more than simply elevating humanity through good business. It’s something that delivers results. In his book Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit From Passion and Purpose, author Raj Sisodia (co-author of Conscious Capitalism), cites research that, from 1996 to 2011, consciously led publicly traded companies outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of 10.5. That’s the power of positive culture.  

3. Think like your customers and deliver for them without fail. 

Remember the Joe Calloway quote we started with? “Your brand is what people think it’s like to do business with you.” Great brands — challengers or not — never lose sight of the customers’ perspective. Thousands of brands die on the vine every year because they never stop to ask, “What kind of experience do our customers want from us?” It’s not about faking it or trying to be something you’re not. Brand loyalty is built on authenticity as much as anything. Smart, successful, lasting brands understand they have to consistently show up in a meaningful way for their customers, not the other way around. Whatever your authentic truth, be the brand you say you are, build the culture that will support your team, and do whatever you have to do to deliver without fail. Do that, and when failure inevitably comes, it’s something you’ll most likely survive.  

How Business Leaders Can Build Trust As They Work Toward a Sustainable Future

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As many in society are losing trust in our systems and institutions, business leaders need to step up and lead the way. Trust in Action is a leader’s guide to drive the sense of urgency and change needed to address the big issues we face today. The book, which will be released on April 10, 2023, is part memoir, business case, and model instruction, where readers learn to define trust, identify the building blocks of trust, and apply a novel model to maintain, and if needed, regain trust.

Trust in Action was written by Jim Massey, a former VP of ESG Sustainability, Ethics, and Compliance at AstraZeneca, who led and developed Ambition Zero Carbon, the world’s most comprehensive corporate environmental programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gasses.

“As ESG topics become more relevant, more and more business leaders were asking me what they should do,” says Massey, currently Chief Sustainability Officer at Zai Lab, a global biopharmaceutical company. “My answer and the reason I wrote this book, is that it comes down to trust, and trying to help others understand that we can’t afford not to be singularly focused on social impact.”

The book is based on the premise called the trust model, an idea Jim developed that focuses on three elements: can, care, and do. For trust to be present each of these elements must be present. The model demonstrates how trust is the connective tissue that makes positive action possible, as it creates the building blocks for a successful self, team, and system. Here’s how it works:

●       Can: Leaders need to have clarity of their vision or purpose first, as this will enable them to be secure in their ability to tackle whatever issue or problem needs solving. This idea of ‘can’ allows leaders to try new solutions.

●       Care: Leaders need to demonstrate that they and their company will engage, listen, and take actions that benefit those who depend on them, balancing company profits with impact. Employees, customers, communities, and investors want companies to be successful, just not at all costs. Leaders and companies must show they care about people and our planet when they do business.

●       Do: Leaders and organizations must turn aspirations into operations and walk their talk. To make sense of the chaos, humans create built systems. Since we created these systems we can fix them and potentially use them to regain society’s trust.

“Jim’s most distinguishing characteristic is his ability to deliver on what he committed. He walks his talk,” says Dame Polly Courtice, Emeritus Director and Senior Ambassador, University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership. “He has used these leadership qualities to help define the trust model of can, care, do.”

Book Launch Events: There will be two launch events for the book on April 10. During these events, Jim Massey will speak about what prompted him to write the book, and how the trust model he developed can help leaders gain trust to achieve their goals. To register for either event, visit: Monday, April 10, 8 AM – 9 AM EDT or Monday, April 10, 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM.

If Negotiations Are So Important, Why Are They So Hard?

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High-stakes negotiations can be nerve-racking. There’s a lot riding on the outcome, and because of it, you place enormous pressure on yourself. Will you secure that sought-after client? Will you seal that big deal? Land that investor? And what happens if you don’t?

Preparing for and engaging in these kinds of negotiations generates beta brain waves, which keep you alert and focused. That’s a good thing. Negotiations can be complex; so much information is exchanged in the back-and-forth of all the bargaining. You need to keep track of what you committed to, what the other party committed to, and any contradictions that may arise.

But as you do, you may produce more beta waves than you need, which isn’t a good thing. Spikes in beta waves ultimately lead to poor concentration, brain fog, and fatigue. In addition, your body ramps up cortisol, a stress hormone, and stress can be debilitating, especially when it comes to your creativity.

What exactly is happening during negotiations that causes so much stress? One possibility is that when preparing for a negotiation, you’re solely focused on the outcomes you want. This is a natural tendency.

Perhaps you map out the path you intend to take to get to those desired outcomes. You might even identify mini-milestones along the way that will let you know you’re on track. However, as we all learn at one point or another in life, things don’t always go according to plan. Sure, you planned how you wanted the negotiation to flow, but this wasn’t a dialogue with your negotiating partner. The person you’re negotiating with doesn’t have your road map!

So, when the unexpected happens, you start to stress because the situation has deviated from your carefully drawn map. The beta-cortisol cycle in your brain and body picks back up, keeping you in a frenzied state and limiting your ability to be flexible and creative. As a result, you end up in a rigid cycle and don’t advance the negotiation to where you want it to be.

How do you get back on track?

Here are three ways to transform some of those beta waves into alpha waves, which will help you relax and flex your negotiation muscles:

01. Map out different scenarios during your negotiation preparation.

It’s always a good idea to map out multiple scenarios of how the negotiation might flow. What detours should you anticipate? What resistance points and constraints might you run across? At these junctures, you can either try to get back on your pre-planned path or follow the new path the detour presents.

You can do this by asking questions that uncover why there are roadblocks and resistance. Start with easy-to-answer questions that get the other side talking and more comfortable sharing information. For example, you might ask, “Can you tell me more about why you think this won’t work?”

If the other party answers, “This isn’t a good time,” you can respond with, “So, it’s not a good time now?” By doing this, you’re integrating the person’s response into your clarification without sounding defensive. Your new mini-goals is to figure out when a good time might be.

02. Center yourself in the moment.

Habits and practices that allow you to remain physically and emotionally present in your negotiations are essential.

Reciting mantras, visualizing tranquil images, or remembering soft melodies will generate alpha waves in your brain and keep you centered and calm. If you can’t actually perform these practices, recall a time when you did and the benefits you gained as a result.

Slowing down your breathing is also a good stress reducer. Breathe in to the count of four, hold for four, breathe out for four, and repeat. When you’re tense, your breaths are short and rapid. Slowing your breathing will relax you and send more oxygen to your brain so that you can be more agile and creative in the moment.

3. Listen throughout the process to hear what’s most important.

During a negotiation, you may think you need to have all the answers, but that’s an unrealistic expectation to place on yourself. Your negotiation partner is a treasure chest of information; your role is to unlock it to find out what you need to know.

Spend more time listening than speaking. This will give you insights into how to move the negotiation forward. As part of your alternative scenario preparation, identify what you should be listening for.

Listening is a complex activity, and too often, we lack focus and miss collecting the information we seek. This includes listening for the other party’s underlying needs, their constraints, and what might sweeten the deal. Identifying these tidbits in advance will make it easier for you to recognize them when you hear them. This listening practice will hone your skills so that you’ll be able to surface critical information that may have previously been overlooked.

Combining these three tips will lead you to easier, calmer, and more creative negotiations.

Embracing the Space Between Transition

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“Ready or not, the only way through it is by being curious, patient, and honest with ourselves — three of the most important leadership qualities.”

There’s a kind of no-man’s-land we enter once we embark on a journey of change; it is called liminal space. You may not be familiar with the term, but you’ve certainly been there, either physically, emotionally, or metaphorically — or perhaps all of the above. Liminal space is the space between what is and what is next. Physical liminal spaces come in the form of bridges, hallways, and staircases, to name a few. Their sole purpose is to help you transition from point A to point B. Emotional, metaphorical, and even spiritual liminal spaces serve the same purpose and represent the crossing of a new threshold from who you are to who you are becoming. This is something leaders have long felt, but seldom have had a name for. While it may feel good to put a label on this grown-up growth spurt, it doesn’t always feel good to experience it. Liminal space draws us out of what we’ve known, yet it doesn’t quite reveal what’s coming or when. It has a way of shaking us loose from our foundations, forcing us to relinquish control, and teaching us to appreciate the lessons of the “in between.” As a slight control freak who likes to plan and has an affinity for crossing the finish line, you can imagine how uncomfortable this space makes me. There are three distinct moments I have been in liminal space. Though vastly different experiences, the feeling that accompanied the transition that followed was familiar.

The first was when I graduated university and realized that the career trajectory I’d been on my whole life until that point was not one I wanted anymore. The realization blew me entirely off course and I found myself back at square one, needing to figure out what to do next and who I was without that part of my identity. The second precipitated my divorce, which forced me to reevaluate what I wanted in all areas of my life, catapulting me into a wild ride of entrepreneurship. I’m in the midst of the third one now, navigating a new role and piecing together the parts of me and my experience in a way that allows me to amplify my impact. I’ve heard this transitional period be described as “limbo.”

Personally, it feels as if I’m floating through space with nothing to hold onto but the trust that I’ll find my way. I begin to wonder how long it will last, if I’ve missed my exit and if I should’ve packed more snacks. The vastness of this space can feel both paralyzing and liberating, like I’m simultaneously lost and exactly where I’m meant to be. When I fight it or try to rationalize my way out, I spiral further into the abyss. If this sounds like I’m all over the map, it’s because this process is anything but linear. But if this speaks to you, rest assured you’re not alone and not crazy — unless we’re both crazy, but I digress.

Sometimes we’re ready to enter liminality and step into the unknown. This might be driven by a pursuit of greatness, a call to adventure, or a desire to disrupt the status quo. And other times, we trip and fall into this space unexpectedly with no idea how we got there. Ready or not, the only way through it is by being curious, patient, and honest with ourselves.

These are, in my opinion, three of the most important qualities of any leader, for our ability to improve the world is only as strong as our willingness to improve ourselves.

Ways to Lean In

Navigating liminal space will never feel easy because each time you step into it, you are a different version of yourself crossing a new threshold. But I have learned a few ways to lean into liminality with a little more ease:

01. Get Clear on Your Values

Your values serve as an eternal compass. While you may not always know where you are going, you will always know you’re heading in the right direction.

02. Keep Your Ego in Check

Your ego is going to want to defend the thoughts, opinions, decisions, and beliefs of your current self. When you find yourself resisting change, ask yourself if it conflicts with your values or your ego. Most of the time, it’s the latter. Until you outsmart your ego, your ego will always win.

03. Remember that Possibility Propels Change

Uncertainty triggers fear and when we operate from a place of fear, we are often closed to new ideas and experiences. Your growth and the growth of the community you serve will be stifled unless you remain open to possibility and have the courage to do things differently.

04. Know that You Are Not Your Experiences

Liminal space will prompt a great deal of self-reflection. This is not an invitation to fall victim to blame, shame, and guilt. This is an opportunity to learn from your decisions and carry the lessons through to the next chapter of your story.

05. Don’t Rush the Process

Wanting to rush through liminal space defeats the purpose. Trust me, I’ve tried. Take your time and explore what comes through when you actually give yourself space to just be. Without forcing any answers, see what your ideas, emotions, observations, and questions reveal about who you are becoming and what you want for your future.

06. Doing the Internal Work is Hard

Catalyzing change is hard. Leadership is hard. But the world needs people like us — the ones that know it’ll be hard and do it anyway.

How to Innovate in Hybrid and Remote Work

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Some major companies have implemented return-to-work policies, but at what cost? Disney CEO Bob Iger demanded in January that all employees come to the office at least four days a week because, “In a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physically together.” Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed similar sentiments when he mandated that employees show up at least three days per week since, “Innovation isn’t always a planned activity. It’s bumping into each other over the course of the day and advancing an idea that you just had. And you really need to be together to do that.”

Yet is this true? On the one hand, research at MIT found that remote work weakens the cross-functional, inter-team “weak ties” that form the basis for the exchange of new ideas that tend to foster innovation. Along the same vein, a study by Microsoft concluded that remote work weakens innovation since workers communicate less with those outside their own teams.

On the other hand, McKinsey & Company research pointed to a different verdict. It determined that during the two-plus years of the COVID-19 pandemic, a record number of new patents was filed across 150 global patent filing authorities. Moreover, in 2021 global venture capital more than doubled from 2020, rising 111 percent. McKinsey suggests that this is because more innovative companies developed new ways of connecting remote workers together to build and sustain the cross-functional, inter-team ties necessary for innovation, thus widening the pools of minds that could generate new ideas. Deloitte similarly highlighted how adapting the process of innovation to remote settings offers the key to boost innovation for hybrid and remote teams.

My experience helping 21 organizations transition to hybrid and remote work demonstrates that innovation is eminently achievable. But it requires adopting best practices that address the weakening of cross-functional connections and the lack of natural, spontaneous interactions that breed innovation.

An excellent technique to replace those hallway chats involves collaboration software like Slack or Microsoft Teams. I suggest that you set up a specific channel in that software to facilitate the creativity and collaboration behind serendipitous innovation, and incentivize employees to use that channel.

For example, at a late-stage SaaS start-up that used Microsoft Teams, each small team of six to eight people set up a team-specific channel for members to share innovative ideas relevant to the team’s work. Likewise, larger business units established channels for ideas applicable to the whole unit. Then, when anyone had an idea, they were encouraged to share that idea in the pertinent channel.

We encouraged everyone to pay attention to notifications in that channel. Seeing a new post, if they found the idea relevant, they would respond with additional thoughts building on the initial idea. Responses would snowball, and strong ideas would then lead to next steps, often a brainstorming session.

This approach combines a native virtual format with people’s natural motivations to contribute, collaborate, and claim credit. The initial idea poster and the subsequent contributors aren’t motivated simply by the goal of advancing the team or business unit, even though that’s, of course, part of their goal set. The initial poster is motivated by the possibility of sharing an idea that might be recognized as innovative, practical, and useful to implement, with some revisions. The contributors, in turn, are motivated by the natural desire to give advice, especially since it is visible to and useful for others in their team, business unit, or even the whole organization.

This dynamic also fits well with the different personalities of optimists and pessimists. You’ll find that the former will generally be the ones to post initial ideas. Their strength is innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, but their flaw is being risk-blind to the potential problems in the idea. In turn, pessimists will overwhelmingly serve to build on and improve the idea, pointing out its potential pitfalls and helping address them. 

Remember to avoid undervaluing the contributions of pessimists. It’s too common to pay excessive attention to the initial ideas and overly reward optimists – and I say this as an inveterate optimist myself who has 20 ideas before breakfast and thinks they’re all brilliant. Through the combination of personal bitter experiences and research on optimism and pessimism, I have learned the necessity of letting pessimistic colleagues vet and improve my ideas. My clients have found a significant deal of benefit in highly valuing such devil’s advocate perspectives as well. 

That’s why you should praise and reward not only the generators of innovative ideas but also the two or three people who most contributed to improving and finalizing the idea. And that’s what the late-stage start-up company did. The team or business unit leaders made sure that they publicly recognized the contributions of the initial idea creators and the improvers of the idea, and also gave them a bonus proportionate to the value of their contributions. Indeed, several of these ideas ended up prompting patent applications.

While this technique helps address the problem of missing spontaneous interactions, what about the weakening of cross-functional ties? To help tackle that challenge, while also improving the integration of recently hired staff, we had the SaaS company set up a hybrid and remote mentoring program. 

The program involved several mentors. One came from the recently hired staff’s own team. That mentor assisted the mentee with understanding group dynamics, on-the-job learning, and professional growth.

However, we also included two mentors from other teams. One was in the same business unit as the junior staff, while another came from a separate unit. The role of these mentors involved getting the new employee integrated into the broader company culture, facilitating inter-team collaboration, and strengthening the “weak ties” among company staff to help foster collaboration.

Six months after these interventions, the SaaS company reported a notable boost in innovation across the board. The channels devoted to innovation helped breed a number of novel projects. The mentor-mentee relationships resulted in mentees providing a fresh, creative perspective on the company’s existing work, while the mentors from outside the team helped spur productive conversations within teams that bred further innovation and collaboration. 

If a late-stage start-up with 400 employees could adopt these techniques, so too can major companies like Disney and Apple. Certainly, some tasks may best be done in person, such as sensitive personnel conversations, intense collaborative discussions, key decision-making and strategic conversations, and fun team-building events. But otherwise, the more tasks you can do remotely, the better. 
Unfortunately, Disney and Apple have adopted a traditionalist perspective on how to innovate, which ironically hinders innovation, as they are already losing talented people due to such return-to-work mandates. The future belongs to companies that best make use of the most creative people around the globe – those who have options about where to work – while minimizing their time wasted in rush hour commutes. Doing so requires adopting best practices for hybrid and remote work instead of being stuck in the past.

Leading with Emotional Intelligence is a Superpower, but How Do We Start Doing It?

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Being a leader isn’t about having all the technical know-how or business acumen; it’s about being emotionally intelligent. By forming deeper emotional bonds with your team, you can create a more inspired, kinder workplace.

Some leaders like to think that showing no emotion is what makes them successful. They strive to keep emotions and even intuition out of the workplace, and they face societal pressure to appear strong rather than vulnerable (as if vulnerability were not a strength).

But that type of thinking couldn’t be more wrong. Studies have found that emotional intelligence makes up nearly 90% of what sets high performers apart from their counterparts with the same knowledge and skills. What matters in a business setting is not so much technical know-how and financial acumen, but softer leadership skills.

Being a leader myself, I’ve experienced deeper connections with my team after being vulnerable and opening up about my emotional life. When I was dealing with mom guilt after going back to work, I decided to tell my team about it. Employees really responded — they told me it was relatable to hear about my work and personal hurdles, and it showed them that I was a real human being. It also validated their own feelings, which they might have kept hidden for fear of seeming weak or unprofessional.

Communicating my feelings and leading with emotional intelligence became a strength of mine, creating deeper bonds with my coworkers and motivating them to open up about their struggles.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is about self-awareness. Although the majority of people believe they are self-aware, only about 10% to 15% can show that they practice self-awareness in their daily lives.

To be emotionally self-aware, you have to be able to take a minute and ask yourself which emotions are affecting your actions. What are you feeling right now?

Emotional intelligence also involves viewing things from a different perspective. Self-awareness is a starting point, and from there, you can venture into other people’s viewpoints and imagine their emotional lives too. How might emotions be playing a role in your employees’ behaviors?

Practicing emotional intelligence — for yourself and others — can make leadership more rewarding and more effective. For yourself, emotional intelligence helps dissolve the mask between work and home. It allows you to be yourself confidently, open up, and make more meaningful relationships with the people you work with.

Emotional intelligence helps you begin to fulfill your “hierarchy of needs,” which, according to Abraham Maslow’s theory, includes social needs such as acceptance, belonging, friendships, and community groups.

For others, a leader who shows emotional intelligence will be more likely to inspire their team. Research from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence found that people who work for supervisors with higher emotional intelligence scores feel 50% more motivated and inspired than employees whose leaders have low emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence helps people feel cared about. A workplace with leaders who ask, “How are you feeling today?” is a place people want to work and contribute to growth. Just show interest in your people and create the space for them to show up as they are.

How to Start Leading with Emotional Intelligence

Start putting those leadership soft skills to work, tap into the power of intuition, and bring your team along with you by actively practicing emotional intelligence. Here are a few actions you can take to start this journey:

  1. Start with yourself.
    It might seem like an uphill battle to ask your team members to start practicing and valuing emotional intelligence when society has been telling them to avoid it. Starting with your own emotional life can help. Explore your own emotions at work. Be open to whatever they might be, and if you need to, ask for help exploring them — a therapist or leadership mentor can be a good sounding board.
  2. Share your experiences.
    Like I did when I shared my mom guilt with my team, sharing a personal, emotional experience (especially when it relates to work) can help others offload too, and makes you more relatable as a leader. Lower your own taboo and try talking about your struggles and perceived weaknesses; this vulnerability will show others that it is OK to struggle.
  3. Ask questions.
    As you learn to approach the world of work through an emotional lens, questions will be extremely helpful. This is true for gauging your own emotional responses, but it’s especially true when you start reviewing your team. Questions can help you discover what other people are going through. Could your teammate possibly have factors within or outside the workplace that impact their performance? Has their engagement with work changed? Do they seem distracted or irritable?

The most important way emotional intelligence operates in the workplace is by making us aware of ourselves, our well-being, others, and their well-being. The more aware we are, the more we can move in the right direction to make a kinder, more motivating, and inspiring (and ultimately productive) workplace.

5 Questions Every Leader Should Ask Before Hiring

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Yes, this is a difficult hiring environment, but quick decisions to fill job openings will have major consequences on your time while dealing with employee issues like engagement, absenteeism, workman’s comp cases, turnover and more.  

Here are Five questions to answer BEFORE you make any hiring decision.

  1. Will this candidate add talent to the team?
  2. Will the candidate take ownership of their job responsibilities?
  3. Will this candidate get along with the other team members?
  4. Can I manage this candidate?
  5. If hired, how can I help this candidate learn, grow, and succeed – quickly?

If you answer these questions honestly, your new hire will have a better chance of fitting your management style, being a productive member of the team, and embracing the company’s culture.  Additionally, you will have more time leading the team and less time trying to fix a poor hire.  Benefit: Less turnover and more employee engagement.

Note: You can improve your hiring skills by writing your answers down and reviewing your notes in the future.

Searching for a ‘Forever’ Job That Will Boost Your Bank Account? Look for Ownership

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If you’re at the point where you’re trying to find a forever job — one that will secure your financial future — we have a suggestion. Several suggestions, in fact.

If you want to work in the grocery business and you live in the Southeast, check out Publix Super Markets. If you’re in the Mountain States, see whether there’s a WinCo Foods around.

Or suppose you’re in construction. In Dallas, contact TDIndustries, a big mechanical contractor. In St. Louis and elsewhere, look up McCarthy Building Companies. In California, check out Swinerton.

What about manufacturing? New England residents should look at Hypertherm, headquartered in New Hampshire. Or Web Industries, based in Massachusetts.

All these companies have one thing in common: they’re employee owned. Get a job there, and—after a probation period—you, too, will be an owner.

The companies we just named, moreover, are only the tip of a good-sized iceberg. All told, there are more than 6,000 enterprises in the U.S. that are substantially or wholly owned by the people on the payroll. They’re in every state of the union and in most industries.

These companies have what’s known as an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, which is a kind of retirement plan. Employees of ESOP companies generally get shares in the business every year they work for the company. Those shares come at no cost—they’re a benefit, paid on top of your wage or salary. The ESOP holds your shares in trust until you leave or retire.

The financial magic of ESOPs

The magic here is that those shares typically increase in value as a company grows. Put that value hike together with more shares every year, and you’re talking real money. At WinCo Foods and other companies, some hourly employees have retired with more than a million bucks. Right now, the average worker in U.S. companies with ESOPs has $132,000 in a retirement account. Long-timers are likely to have considerably more.

Sound good? There’s more. ESOP companies typically take ownership seriously. They’re more likely than others to treat you like an owner: sharing information with you about the business and soliciting your ideas for on-the-job improvements.

By the way, these are not mom-and-pop operations. Most ESOP companies are thriving businesses with dozens or hundreds of employees. The biggest, Publix, has more than 200,000 workers. Fortune magazine has named it a great place to work every year since 1994.

So here’s what to do if you want to be an owner as well as an employee:

Learn more about ESOPs. The National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO), a nonprofit headquartered in Oakland, California, has a lot of good introductory material, including a colorful free booklet called “Employee Ownership: Building a Better Economy.” It describes how the whole thing works.

Explore the ESOP Map of the U.S., provided by the NCEO. The map shows ESOP companies throughout the country, color-coded by industry. It’s fully searchable; you can zoom in on any region you like and find ESOP companies.

Research those businesses and see whether any of them fit with your skills and interests. Be warned: ESOP companies tend to have much lower turnover than other businesses, so it can be hard to get hired. But now is a great time to be looking. And if you show the company that you’re knowledgeable about employee ownership and interested in becoming an owner, you’ll have a leg up.

If you can’t find any fits with ESOP companies, don’t give up: many companies have other programs that provide employees with stock or stock options. If you have marketable skills, you’re in a strong position right now to get the kind of job you want. Ask the interviewer whether the company shares stock or offers option grants, and if so, whether the awards go to everyone on the payroll or just a few top executives.

The bottom line

Most Americans expect to be wage earners all their lives. That’s not so bad if you’re a high earner, like a doctor or a data scientist. But many people’s wages have been stagnant for decades, and raises in recent years haven’t kept up with inflation. If you want to build a secure future with a great forever job, you’re better off being an owner, not just a hired hand.

10 Ways You Shouldn’t Go About Hiring an “A” Player

Posted on by Real Leaders

Companies want to hire high impact “A” players. To accomplish this goal, senior executives and HR have developed detailed hiring methods. 

However, within the company, there are always managers who want to short-circuit the process.  There are no shortcuts when hiring “A” players. Here are 10 ways not to hire an “A” player:

  • The hiring manager does not have a clear picture of the job’s current and future needs, challenges, and goals.
  • The hiring manager is unprepared or arrives late to the interview.
  • The hiring manager seems distracted, stressed, or impatient.
  • The hiring manager hires based on first impression.
  • The hiring manager is intimidated by the candidate’s qualifications.
  • The hiring manager is not an “A” player.
  • The hiring manager is living in a “that’s the way we have always done it” world.
  • The hiring manager has an antiquated “I’m a good judge of character” attitude.
  • The hiring manager talks too much during the interview.
  • The hiring manager thinks their current hiring skills do not need to be changed.

The world is changing at speeds never seen before. Whole industries are experiencing revolutionary change. Is the human side of your hiring process keeping up? Is hiring your competitive advantage?

Why Leadership Starts in the Family

Posted on by Real Leaders

The pandemic of the past two years has reset many things in the world, but the concept of leadership and what success means has never been adequately defined for all people. By this, I mean that a dominant group of people on the planet have decided what leadership looks like — it was never designed for diversity, for belonging to all.

Women’s movements over the past few years have urged us to “empower ourselves,” “have confidence and rise,” “attend inclusive male training exercises,” and a myriad of other encouragements. But we need to redefine what leadership means. We should instead be asking ourselves what we, as human beings, are contributing to the world and how we’re showing up in our leadership.

An increasing number of CEOs want to create social impact, solve the world’s problems, and form collaborations. To do so, we first need to build initiatives, cultures, and systems that will be inclusive of all. Ask yourself, “Who is contributing to this collaboration?” and then think about how you can make it more effective by adding underrepresented voices.

The old leadership definition was money, power, and influence. The new definition is purpose, inclusion, and well-being. Remember, too, that your behavior can create as much impact as any of these things.

I believe that equity and leadership begin at home. Look at the broken political, social, and economic systems around us today — they are products of the family. We are all the sum of previous generations, and unless we teach our kids diversity of thought and a more responsible way of looking at life on Earth, we are destined to repeat our mistakes.

We should build businesses, families, and the world on a firm foundation. Right now, this foundation has so many cracks, yet we continue to build on it. Xerox developed the world’s first women’s employee resource group in the 1960s, yet women only make up 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs today. We keep adding Band-aids to a broken branch while the real problem lies deeper at the roots.

Think about how you lead yourself, your family, and your team in the workplace. In Whole-life leadership, the first concern is your mental health, the second is your family, and the third is your work, followed by your community. Within your marriage, it’s about your partner first and then your kids. So many negative issues I see in society today are because people are triggered by their story — the way they were brought up and the narratives and belief systems that were instilled in us. Work on elevating how you show up for those around you by becoming more aware of opportunities and new ways of thinking. Many of us think that because we’ve done something the same way for 20 years, that’s how it should always be done. A shift in focus may unlock the solution you’ve been seeking.

We transform culture when we transform people. If you want to create a thriving, social impact company, you’ll find it in your employees and those living in your home. When there’s an economic downturn, many business leaders cut creative activities first, such as keynote speakers, team-building exercises, or family outings to focus instead on quarterly results. But if you prioritize humanity before productivity, you’ll find greater success.

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