PODCAST PEOPLE: A Summary from the Real Leaders Podcast

“Most people have the desire to change. They have the skill but what they don’t have is the permission. What we needed to do was actually create a culture that would allow people to have the behaviors of innovation.”

Lisa Bodell is a best-selling author, the CEO of FutureThink, and one of the top 50 keynote speakers worldwide. As a futurist and expert on the topic of innovation and simplicity, she is helping both individuals and businesses to ignite innovation.

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The following is a summary of Episode 119 of the Real Leaders Podcast, a conversation with keynote speaker Lisa Bodell. Watch, read, or listen to the full conversation below.

The Mindset of a Futurist

Lisa explains that futurists are big-picture thinkers who consequently think beyond activity-driven quarters or years. As a result, they employ foresight to anticipate trends 5, 10, 20, or more years ahead.

“Futuring is about helping people reach their potential. The future isn’t about who you are, the future is about who you’re becoming. So you can start planning for that now.” 

Kill a Stupid Rule

Through FutureThink, Lisa helps businesses pursue innovation, though the journey forward often requires companies to address what is actually holding them back. Oftentimes, innovation is less about generating new ideas and more about unexpected barriers. And sometimes these barriers are the rules built into company policy.

“We are taught to follow rules, not challenge them, and the companies that are more simplified and more innovative give permission to challenge and simplify those things. What became our number one tool was called ‘kill a stupid rule.’ It was not about having people come up with ideas, it was knocking down the things that were holding them back from doing it the first place.”

More Meaningful Work

Lisa states that many employees often can’t define what meaningful work is, because they spend the majority of their time bogged down by more mundane tasks, such as meetings and emails. It is human behavior, however, that most often prevents us from eliminating unnecessary work. This manifests accordingly as a fear of confrontation or direct feedback.

“Everyone has an agenda, a behavior, and everyone’s human. That’s why I say most of complexity is driven by behavior. Risk and fear and power and trust. No matter what organization we’re in, it’s the same thing.”

An overload of unnecessary tasks leaves employees overwhelmed, and consequently less productive. Beyond simplifying internal and obligatory thinking, the goal is to foster external, big-picture visions.

“Prouctivity is ‘you’re not being productive enough,’ simplicity is ‘I want to help you focus on what matters.’ Those are very very different.”

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This is what I said to a CEO who didn’t understand why they needed to be nice to their employees.

In December 2019, I flew to Los Angeles to deliver a full day of training on “How to Build Inclusive Teams” to an executive team at a flourishing tech startup. My point of contact before arriving on-site was the company’s head of people; I’d yet to speak with the CEO or any other executive. Luckily, when setting the agenda, we put aside a full hour before the training to sit down with the CEO and get to know them.

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The conversation started with the usual niceties. But not two minutes later, the CEO blurted out, “What’s the point of being nice to my employees?”

I was amazed, to say the least. Ultimately, after digging into their question, I responded with the following: “Every time you’re mean to someone, interrupt them or dismiss them in some way, you are shutting down the part of their brain that is making you money.”

Then they started to pay attention. 

We all have nervous systems. When we feel unappreciated or belittled in some way, we start to think we aren’t valued in our role at the company, simply by the way someone is speaking to us. When this starts to happen, our nervous system puts us in a protective stance—we focus on ensuring we’re not further harmed or insulted. We begin to lose our ability to make clear decisions, see the big picture or get curious about what might be happening with a colleague or manager. We move into a reactive mode rather than a responsive and active listening state. When we are in a defensive position, our ability to create, innovate, produce, and execute diminishes considerably, and we enter survival mode. 

But the truth is that any leader can motivate successfully through fear, insults, and humiliation, or through a masterful combination of psychological safety, appreciation, and recognition. Both styles will manifest results, build products, and deliver services. 

So ask yourself: How many dollars are you giving up when you insult, dismiss, ridicule, or interrupt your teammates? Let’s break it down: A $160,000 yearly salary divided by 2,048 hours equals an hourly rate of $78.12. Now, let’s say you have a 9:00 a.m. meeting where you slam your hands on the conference table and yell at a direct report in front of everyone. You continue dismantling your direct report’s competence in public and ask another employee to solve the issue. You just threw $78.12 out the window because you’ve officially shut the employee’s nervous system down. 

The direct report leaves for their 10:00 a.m. meeting, but is so upset—with you, with themselves or perhaps both—that they are not paying attention in the meeting, costing another $78.12. In their 11:00 a.m., they are now ruminating, fuming, or swimming in shame, losing another $78.12. The balance is now -$234.36, not including other people impacted by the first meeting. 

The 9:00 a.m. meeting recurs weekly, and the dysfunctional dynamics repeat with some variation for months. In just one month, you’ve lost $937.44 from one employee by crushing creative, innovative ideas and solutions because the employee has shut down. Additionally, consider the medical costs for stress medications mitigating anxiety, or addressing depression. 

Danielle Stewart, the lead consultant on Workplace Safety & Prevention Services’ (WSPS) Organizational Health Team, stated, “research from PricewaterhouseCoopers has shown an average of 230% return on every dollar invested in creating a mentally healthy workplace.” 

Gallup’s data reveals that just three in 10 U.S. workers strongly agree that their opinions count. However, by moving that ratio to six in 10 employees, organizations could realize a 27% reduction in turnover, a 40% reduction in safety incidents, and a 12% increase in productivity.

Paul Zak’s data shows that “people at high-trust companies report: 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, 40% less burnout.

So, how do we solve this problem?

Recognition vs. Appreciation

As leaders, it is imperative to understand the strengths of each of the brain’s hemispheres. 

Sarah Peyton explains it best in her book, “Your Resonant Self,” by saying that the left hemisphere (LH) is the functional aspect of who we are. The right hemisphere (RH) is the relationality of who we are. As employees striving to be successful, we need acknowledgment for both representations to bring our full, authentic selves to work.

When leading a team of any size, mastering your interactions and engagements with employees from both angles creates the level of performance and risk-taking every team aspires. The simplest way to begin is to separate “recognition” from “appreciation” and ensure that you’re embodying both when giving feedback. 

Recognition happens in the LH and is primarily focused on behavior or performance. Appreciation focuses on their qualities or personal values. 

Here is an example of feedback that encapsulates both: “It was awesome how you ensured that we made the deadline and kept everyone on track. [RECOGNITION] I appreciate your level of dedication to our clients and your sense of integrity to the team during these difficult projects [APPRECIATION].”

Speak from Both Hemispheres

Because our LH is the functional aspect of ourselves and the RH embodies our relational aspects, each hemisphere sees the world differently but causes us to speak differently, both to ourselves (our inner voice) and others.

When residing in our LH, we focus on problem-solving, seeing what’s missing or wrong at the moment, and then giving advice. When residing in our RH, we focus on the partnership and relationality of the interaction or engagement at hand. We access our feelings and needs from this place and our ability to self-reflect, be reflective, and have concern for ourselves and others.

Suppose we operate primarily out of our LH. In that case, we start to treat people as equations for accomplishment, solutions to problems or obstacles impeding results, just as the CEO I described in the beginning did. Operating out of our LH puts us at risk of losing sight of our employees’ humanity. 

Leading from the Inside Out

I always tell my leaders their job is not to become therapists, but rather to become aware of each employee’s needs, values, and desires. Discover who they are (RH) and what they want (LH), they cater to their goals and rewards accordingly.

Accessing our full selves creates a cohesive team culture; it gives meaning and purpose to the team’s objectives and key results. When employees feel seen and heard, they feel empowered to execute, create, work harder, and show up longer. And when they are respected and warmly welcomed by both their leader and peers, their sense of commitment and drive increases. Finally, when they feel supported and engaged with their colleagues, their stress levels plummet, and their productivity flourishes.

PODCAST PEOPLE: A Summary from the Real Leaders Podcast

“I think at the end of the day, people pretty much don’t believe what you have to say. I don’t think people even listen to what you have to say. But I do think they listen to see if you believe what you have to say.”

Larry Winget is a professional speaker and bestselling author, trademarked the Pitbull of Personal Development and The World’s Only Irritational Speaker. He has addressed nearly 400 of the Fortune 500.

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The following is a summary of Episode 117 of the Real Leaders Podcast, a conversation with the Pitbull of Personal Development, Larry Winget. Watch, read, or listen to the full conversation below.

The World’s Only Irritational Speaker

Winget considers himself a contrarian of the personal development industry:

“I went out and I sort of trashed all the motivational clichés that are out there and told people the truth: chances are if you’re not doing well, it’s cuz you’re lazy. Chances are you’re not working hard enough. Chances are you don’t have any core values. People don’t like you. People don’t trust you. You’re dishonest. You don’t have integrity, and you need to get off your butt and go to work.”

He has his own approach to inspire motivation, which comes with developing and sustaining core values.

“I believe I can make you so irritated with where you are, you will do anything that goes someplace else. We don’t change seeking comfort, we change to avoid pain. So if I understand the pain you’re going through and what it’s costing you and get you to agree with me, you’ll be willing to make that change. People don’t change because you want them to change. People change when they want to change because it’s so uncomfortable doing what they’ve been doing.”

Inspirational Irritational Quotes

“I believe this, if any one can do it, anyone can do it.”

“Regardless of what you want to stop doing in your life, it really comes down to this. Just stop.”

“We allow people to suffer in comfort. Most people don’t change their ways when they suffer in comfort. They change their ways when it hurts so bad that they’re not going to do it anymore.”

“If anything is going to take us down as a society, it won’t be Coronavirus, it won’t be politics, it’s going to be a sense of entitlement.”

Titles Mentioned

Written by Larry Winget:

• Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life
• Grow a Pair
• People Are Idiots and I can Prove It!
• Your Kids are Your Own Fault
• What’s Wrong with Damn Near Everything

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PODCAST PEOPLE: A Summary from the Real Leaders Podcast

“So what does it mean for your business? It means that you show up as a whole human being. You’re not just a job title with a skill set. You’re showing up with your heart and your hands and your head. And your work is an expression of who you want to be and the difference you want to make in the world.”

Simon Mainwaring is a brand futurist, global keynote speaker, and best-selling author of We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World. He is also the founder and CEO of We First, a creative consultancy helping companies build brand reputation, profits, and social impact.

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The following is a summary of #1 of the Keep It Real Series from the Real Leaders Podcast. This is a conversation with brand futurist and global keynote speaker, Simon Mainwaring. Watch, read, or listen to the full conversation below.

Meaningful Work

Simon discusses the importance of fulfillment in any given career, and consequently shares how he has found success to be an “inside-out” kind of job:

“There’s a big fundamental difference between people who go to work to do a job, and people who go to work to give their gift, to give their skills. The way that you’re fulfilled is that you fill yourself up from the inside, through what you give to others. You don’t get filled up by what others say about you from the outside. And that sounds very simplistic, but I swear to God, it is transformative in your life.” 

Rethinking the Business Model

Simon discusses the need to re-distribute our global business model. He emphasizes, however, that capitalism reimagined could be essential for improving the world on both a societal and ecological level.

“I am a deep, deep believer in capitalism. But I think the benefits of it need to be distributed more evenly so that it’s actually sustainable. And what you’re seeing right now is a breakdown, you’re seeing the natural ecosystem breakdown through climate crisis, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, and extreme weather and all these things that fall out of it. And you’re seeing that global social fabric breakdown, and Black Lives Matter, and all of these issues are a function of that.”

Responsibility comes with this new business opportunity, and it will have to be a gradual process of evolution:

“Only when you’ve got that coalition of all the different key players, can you start to build out a viable alternative to the way capitalism is being practiced. And a lot of people talk about how we’re trying to switch out the engine of capitalism as we’re hurtling down the road. But until we have all the parts, we don’t have an engine, it can’t actually operate as a viable alternative. And so I do think we will change where there’s sufficient pain. There’s a sufficient coalition, stakeholders that want the same things, and that we’re collaborating in new ways to make that happen.”

Environmental Optimism

The interconnectedness of environmental issues is a cause for hope in healing our planet:

“The same way all these issues are connected from climate, the same way they hurt us more because they’re connected, they can help us if we do the right thing, because they’re all connected. If we start to treat the planet more effectively, that’ll have a better effect on the environments in which we live and the species and biodiversity out there, and so on and so on. This connectivity can work in our favor, not just against us.”

What does success look like for you? @SimonMainwaring shares how you can look within to figure out what's most important.

Watch the full episode of the Keep It Real series with Simon here: https://t.co/JZcBU88vzJ pic.twitter.com/g5vN8Kgqy4

— Real Leaders (@Real_Leaders) October 30, 2020

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Bridging the humanitarian governance triangle of politics, power, and ethics is a complex task, but one Peter Maurer was destined to achieve as president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Known for its rapid response in disasters and within armed conflict zones, the Red Cross is arguably the largest and most sophisticated humanitarian organization in terms of governance.

Businesses that find themselves entangled in complicated geopolitics can learn how the ICRC can maintain its neutrality while preserving its purpose. Here are four critical takes from my recent conversation with Maurer:

1. Being Purpose-Driven is a Strength  

“Defining [the ICRC’s] purpose is unnecessary because everyone who comes here knows what the purpose is,” says Maurer. “It is so self-evident that it doesn’t need to be restated. For 130 years, it has been enshrined in the practice of the organization.” 

This unmistakeable purpose is essential to good governance, particularly during a crisis: in highly unstable environments, humanitarian supply and command chains break down, and isolated individuals must make critical decisions. Because of the ICRC’s clarity of purpose, its alignment and efficiency have remained high, even in remote and complex locations (such as Sudan and Iraq). “After three to four months of strong purpose in action,” says Maurer, “we are—despite all the restrictions—at 85% of delivery of services.” 

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While purpose drives humanitarian organizations like the ICRC, it’s not necessarily so for commercial companies and businesses that must take time to define their purpose. That said, Maurer believes that the ICRC is indeed a business; it’s in the business of humanitarian diplomacy. 

Yet, purpose does not come without consequences. “In a purpose-driven organization like ours, everybody believes they are a part of the purpose,” Maurer says. “Those who work here have a solid opinion on almost everything. Purpose can sometimes overshadow management good practices,” admits Maurer. So, keeping efficiency and having a board that emulates good management is essential for success.

2. Geopolitical Skills are the Next Big Board Competency  

From decades as a diplomat, Maurer’s vast geopolitical knowledge is undoubtedly one of his top strengths. But shouldn’t all board members upskill their geopolitics to succeed? 

“There is an advantage today of knowing something about geopolitics; it is uncontested,” says Maurer. “Of course, you need diverse skills on a board. Not everybody has to understand the intricacies of power politics. But only one skilled director is not enough.”  

A robust diversity of skills—and the ability to “connect the dots” in a world which, for many people, is no longer easily understood—is crucial for boards. While finance and technology are the most required skills on boards today, geopolitics is quickly becoming a key area of success. Geopolitics drives relationships to relevant stakeholders, including governments, state-owned enterprises, and regulators, and is a force behind social evolution and technological choices. In short: geopolitical abilities are crucial.

3. True Diversity Overcomes Deadly Blind Spots

True diversity is required for good governance. In such a complex world, we need creative thinking, open minds, and constructive dissent to form as complete a view of reality as possible. While diversity may hinder alignment, in the face of epic transformations in society, politics, technology, and business models, creativity and agility trump alignment and efficiency.

Throughout history, humanitarian governance has consistently welcomed diversity in all forms—ethnicity, age, gender, religion, and fundamentally divergent perspectives—far more than businesses have. Of course, companies have an efficiency advantage. But with the average tenure on the S&P 500 dropping from 67 years to 14 years over the last century, many question whether short-term efficiency is being overwhelmed by medium-term failure. Diversity may well be a long-term driver of resilience.

4. Maintaining Neutrality is Challenging, but it can be Preserved

Today, the basic notion of business remaining neutral, keeping politics to politicians, is being threatened. Somehow, businesses are pushed to take sides: Which country is supplying key technology? What social views does business support? What is an organization’s true identity?

Companies caught in the push and pull of politics can learn from how the ICRC maintains its neutrality and its purpose. The key, says Maurer, is to keep trust with each party, avoiding grandstanding while staying firm on universal values. One’s organization’s views should be expressed respectfully and privately, while always acting with integrity.

As Maurer has tackled relations between Ukraine and Russia and Iraqi government officials and Taliban representatives, he has found that these principles work well to preserve neutrality.

In our rapidly evolving world, these four takes from humanitarian governance—defining a purpose, understanding geopolitics, embracing diversity, and maintaining neutrality—can be useful to any organization, large or small.

In our volatile world, bravery is no longer the purview of caped crusaders. Instead, it’s an essential, though unexplored, capability that all leaders must develop. Bravery is the one force that will make a difference in an environment craving changemakers. 

For some leaders, bravery challenges them to seek out unproven solutions to familiar problems. For others, it is being the lone voice, advocating what is right for your brand, customers, or employees. And for others yet, it is seeking out the humanity in our industry. Bravery makes us better as individuals and leaders. However, what happens if you struggle with harnessing your mental and moral strength? The truth is we all possess the seeds for becoming braver, and bravery can be fostered through habitual behavior. 

As CMO of a branding agency and New York chair of The Marketing Society, I have the privilege of meeting many leaders. My insight is that seven keystone habits engender bravery, and these habits have the power to shape how people perform, make decisions, and lead.

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1. Be audacious

Audacity is the ability to dream big and set ambitious goals. Often, the challenge is identifying where to begin. Having the courage to find ways to venture out of our comfort zones is a powerful first step. Organizations are often set up to be safe, and while brave leaders are acutely aware of boundaries, some strengthen their self-confidence by taking small steps into territories unknown. Bear in mind, audacity does not mean being foolhardy. Strike a balance between assertiveness and risk management.

2. Be curious

The heart of some of the most memorable campaigns or bold leadership initiatives is an inspired, actionable insight. However, insights only emanate from asking astute questions — and genuinely listening to the responses. For example, always be curious enough to ask the difficult questions of customers, to empathize and understand their journey. And especially for those in senior roles, it’s brave to ask for feedback and never stop questioning.

3. Be vulnerable

In business, vulnerability is generally viewed as a liability for leaders. However, in my experience, vulnerability equals strength. It is the courage to remove one’s armor and embrace uncertainty and risk, opening yourself up to public exposure of both triumphs and disappointments. For vulnerability to be institutionalized, companies need dedicated resources and budgets for experimentation as well as a culture of providing employees physiological safety. Brave leaders and brave organizations recognize that not every program will hit the success thresholds — and that’s okay.

4. Be a connector

Brave leaders recognize they cannot chart a course alone. They understand the importance of building highly functional teams, so they welcome diverse views. They ensure all team members are aligned on vision and priorities before giving them the freedom to execute and deliver. Whether it’s finding time for lunch with a senior colleague from another department or fomenting relationships outside the company, strong connections provide air cover when implementing unproven initiatives. Ultimately, being a connector produces trust, and when leaders feel trusted, it adds wind to their sails, imparting the necessary courage to push boundaries.

5. Be resilient

A defining habit of truly brave leaders is the ability, much like elite athletes, to recover quickly. Spending too much time dwelling on losses can be debilitating, limiting the ability to advance to the next project. Even the impact of the daily grind can take its toll. However, developing resiliency is not contingent on experiencing substantial losses. You can practice your resilience in accelerating your ability to pivot from that tough client meeting to the next brainstorming session. It is the speed of recovery that is integral. When getting back on the horse, does it take hours, days, or weeks?

6. Be reflective. 

Serious contemplation allows brave leaders to extract the right learning from successes and failures. The exercise here is being reflective in a deliberate fashion. Be careful, though — it is not about a pity party nor a gratuitous celebration. Take a beat and ruminate on the results from an experiment or experience. The intention is to celebrate the accomplishment, acknowledge the failure, and, most importantly, unearth wisdom.

7. Be selfless

It took centuries for builders to construct the grand cathedrals of Europe. These anonymous artisans made tremendous sacrifices, giving their lives for works they would never see finished. Yet their passions did not waiver because they possessed a clear sense of purpose. That kind of mentality is essential for today’s business leaders — the notion that the struggle is not just for the present but the future. Habitually check in with yourself to ensure you are clear on your purpose and focused on the long-term. Brave leaders will sacrifice short-term returns for long-term gains.

Fear not: You do not need to master every keystone habit to unlock bravery. Different personalities and cultures will exhibit various combinations of all seven. In my observation, bravery transcends socioeconomic circumstances and educational backgrounds; it is not the territory of introverts versus extroverts. Bravery is accessible to everyone — a muscle we can all develop and strengthen by practicing specific habits.

Virtually every leader of any successful organization will tell you that collaboration lies at the center of what makes an organization successful. So why do so many leaders struggle to get their employees to collaborate?

As a conflict mediator, I’ve worked with dozens of organizations over the past 15 years that deeply value collaboration. By the time I enter the picture, they are doing everything but collaborating.

Collaboration, as a cultural value, starts to fall apart when conflict enters the picture.

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In an ideal world, every team in the organization collaborates to provide the most effective results. In the real world, people don’t see eye-to-eye, have competing values, or get stuck when faced with challenging tasks. Factions and silos begin to emerge. By the time I arrive, many organizations are paralyzed or failing.  

They say they want more collaboration. But everything they are doing and thinking is producing the opposite result. One way to define conflict is “our inability to collaboratively solve problems with other people.”

Conflict is always going to be with us—relationships are funny that way. Knowing how to transform destructive conflict into constructive conflict is critical to our personal, professional, and societal well-being. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it.

This inability to collaboratively solve problems typically leads to fear and frustration and then leads to individuals choosing alternative, less effective conflict styles to try to get through the problem. When faced with conflict, most people choose to avoid, accommodate, compete, or compromise to solve the conflict.

The challenge is that most of these conflict styles don’t get us to collaboration and end up making the problem worse, not better. What keeps us from re-engaging collaboration? Fear.

Conflict feels dangerous for most people. We flee from it if we can. If we can’t run, we either give in or prepare for war. We build walls to protect us from the impending harm—emotional and physical—we fear is coming. People react to fear differently. Here are the four most common conflict styles I see when team members are in conflict.

1. Avoidance

This is the most common style I see at work. People just bury their heads in the sand and ignore the breakdown completely. How do I know I’m avoiding? Have you been keeping everything in, avoiding awkward conversations, or even avoiding being in the same space? Do you change the topic of conversation if something uncomfortable comes up? Do you feel anxiety, stress, or tension in your relationship? Are you emotionally disconnected?

2. Force or Competition

This is the second most common style at work. When faced with the inability to collaborate, team members or leaders begin just forcing their solutions through. Are you competing? Do you believe that the only way to get what you want is to win the conflict? Are your solutions to the problem the only ones that make sense or seem rational? Are you afraid of appearing weak, soft, or enabling if you acknowledge or concede that you might not be right? Are your values or opinions or being right the most important factors for you?

3. Accommodation

This style happens more at home than in the workplace. Still, I’m surprised how often employees get positive reinforcement for being “easy-going” or “going with the flow” even though this style hinders real collaboration. Do you quickly give in when conflict arises? Do you keep your opinions to yourself and just agree to keep harmony in the relationship? Do you feel resentful that your needs aren’t being addressed? Do you feel guilty asking for or getting what you want? Do you feel like a martyr or victim? Are you the only person in the relationship who is trying?

4. Compromise

Many leaders covet compromise as a way to get through conflict. But compromise, while potentially superior to the other styles, has its drawbacks. Instead of working on solutions that work for everyone, each party tries to maximize their gains and minimize their losses while sticking to the same tired solutions that haven’t worked in the past. Have you been trying to work out a solution that seems fair? Are you offering to give up things if they give up something too? Are you pursuing a strategy where you split the difference? Are they complaining that the solutions you keep suggesting are unfair or are asking them to give up too much? Or are you complaining that the solutions they keep suggesting are unjust or are asking you to give up too much?

So how do you get to real collaboration? Collaboration is to try to find a creative solution to our problems that will give everyone what we need. We practice collaboration when we:

1. Have a high level of concern for our outcomes and a high level of concern for others’ outcomes in the organization. Our success and their success matters. And most importantly, the success of the organization matters to us. 
2. See the humanity of the people we are working with so clearly that their needs and desires matter as much to me as my own, regardless of how the other people on the team see me.
3. No longer feel the need to defend ourselves or avoid the conflict or give in. We spend more time building relationships and listening and less time trying to convert, correct, or convince others.
4. Ask questions instead of jumping to conclusions. We get curious about the people we are problem-solving with and the people we are problems solving for.
5. Commit to working through the problem until it meets all the needs of the people and the organization. This may mean scrapping our good ideas or letting go of getting the credit for finding the solution. The best collaborations happen when everyone on the team feels that their voice was important to the process.

As you can imagine, trying to engage in a collaborative style negotiation or problem-solving session at work while both sides are separated and mired in the fear-based view of conflict can be challenging. No wonder collaboration takes so much time and is so difficult to achieve.

However, those limitations disappear when the people in conflict begin to see each other as people. Once that happens, they are suddenly alive to the needs of others, even their supposed enemies. They begin to matter the same way we matter. That changes everything.

This pandemic is an opportunity for us to have a forthright conversation about making our workplaces more resilient. Here are a dozen ways businesses can create healthier employees and sustainable companies based on the science of resilience.

1. Structure

Offer employees just enough structure to make their workplaces predictable. That means whenever possible, offering secure employment, solid supervision, and clear expectations concerning workload. People cope better with stress during natural disasters, pandemics, and economic crises because they know what they are expected to do and have the support to do it. 

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2. Responsibility

Insist employees share responsibility for some part of the business. While mission statements and meaningful work are ways to make a workforce resilient and productive, making people feel accountable for what they do and giving them responsibilities creates a more practical approach to motivating a workforce to do their jobs during challenging times. 

3. Relationships

Invest energy in building relationships with staff and between staff. While there will always be competition, creating opportunities for people to support each other in the workplace builds the social networks necessary for Resilience. Whether that’s celebrating people’s birthdays, the annual summer BBQ, or peer mentorship, every sustainable relationship on the job decreases staff turnover and increases opportunities for innovation. 

4. Networks

Link your business with other businesses in your community. Networks of collaboration may conjure images of Elks meetings and strange dress codes. Still, social cohesion ensures a united front during a crisis when no one business is able to cope. 

5. Identity

Take this opportunity to strengthen the parts of your corporate identity that work while also exploring new identities for your business. What talents do your employees have, and what capacity do you have for production that could be used differently as the world changes? Distilleries found a niche as producers of hand sanitizer, and airlines have turned passenger jets into cargo haulers. My work with communities dependent on the oil and gas industry is helping them to find ways to diversify their economies and buffer them against emerging green technologies. 

6. Control

Take control of whatever you can control. A small business on a downtown street may not be able to compete with the box stores in the suburbs, but it can convince the city council to rezone the community to encourage denser housing and an urban landscape preferred by new urbanists who want chic libraries and public transit. No matter the size of your business, there is always something you can control and someplace where your efforts will be rewarded with change. 

7. Citizenship

Be a good corporate citizen. My work on corporate social responsibility campaigns with large multinationals has convinced me that a triple P approach (people, profits, planet) is good business and good for employees. People like to see their workplaces become relevant to their communities, whether that is through fundraisers or meeting people’s needs at a meaningful scale. There is an almost spiritual quality to being a part of a community that needs its businesses to thrive.

8. Rights

Protect your rights as a business and the rights of your employees. Whether that means asking for help from your government or ensuring employees are treated fairly, we are more resilient when we insist on transparent rules and equal access to justice.

9. Needs

Look after everyone’s basic needs. Minimum wage laws, access to zero-deductible health care, occupational health and safety rules, paid sick leave, and maternity benefits do not decrease overall productivity if they produce a healthier, more stable workforce that cuts training costs and prevents workers from making each other sick. Meeting employee needs can also mean changing where people work and when. If people can work from home part-time, or office hours can be staggered to avoid the morning congestion on the highways, consider the real value to employees of these small modifications to business as usual.

10. Health

Take care of everyone’s physical and mental health in the workplace. That could mean stand-up desks and a vending machine selling healthy food, or subsidized gym memberships. It can also mean encouraging employees to take all their vacation to ensure maximum performance. Pushing employees to the point of exhaustion undermines a business’ long-term Resilience. 

11. Finances

When possible, stabilize your finances. Take risks but ensure a secure foundation for the next big crisis. 

12. Positive thinking

Be positive and avoid catastrophic thinking. Even during a crisis, there are still things to be grateful for. Encourage moments of appreciative inquiry during staff meetings to celebrate what has gone well even during the most difficult of times.

Resilience is not something just inside individuals. It is the result of how well our environments provide the resources we need to cope with a crisis. The better business is at making itself and its employees’ well being sustainable, the better the business will survive the next big challenge.

“Possible is more a matter of attitude; a matter of decision to choose; among the impossible possibilities; when one sound opportunity; becomes a possible solution.” ― Dejan Stojanovic

The imperative for companies today is to be purpose-driven in how they operate. 

The acute health and economic crises we are living through from Covid-19 have beamed a spotlight on the urgency to build stabilizing coalitions, support the whole individual, and share in collective pain. Intersect the twin existential crises of coronavirus and climate change with the social justice movements of #MeToo and #BLM, and a necessary mindset shift becomes apparent. We must wholesale pivot away from a single-minded pursuit of growth and profits toward a more measured, nuanced, and holistic organizational mindset that embraces servant leadership. Pursuing sustainability is the path for doing so.    

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Consider the mindset of Signify’s CEO, Eric Rondolet. 

He articulates purpose and sustainability this way: “Sustainability starts with being the purpose of the company. The company’s purpose is not what it does, but what is its reason for existing.” During the acute period of Covid-19 in Europe, Signify prioritized its employees’ health and safety while taking collective mitigation measures to support a broad swath of its stakeholders. 

The company mandated a 20% salary reduction in the second quarter for its supervisory board and executive leadership team, mirroring the request of its workforce to take a voluntary 20% work-time reduction in pro-rata pay adjustment.   

Nike, one of America’s best-known brands, quietly yet boldly clarified its purpose in 2019. Noel Kinder, Nike’s CSO, affirmed conditions were right to align Nike’s initiatives within diversity and inclusion, community and environment under one umbrella. The company’s new “Purpose Committee” has accountability to Nike’s Board of Directors and C-Suite and aims to catalyze sustainability decision-making across its workforce and global business operations. As quarantine measures set-in in Oregon where Nike Inc. is headquartered, John Donahoe, Nike’s CEO, inwardly communicated to employees his commitment to servant leadership to see the company through the economic upheaval during the early weeks of spring. Outwardly, he reinforced that the company would provide employee pay continuity and committed more than $25 million to Covid-19 response efforts and local communities heavily impacted by business closures. Nike benefitted from a 75% increase in digital sales in its fourth quarter of 2019.  

Businesses Must Continue to Address Climate Change Head-On

Corporate leaders are being forced to acknowledge a growing imperative: our economic system is inextricably linked to Earth’s eco-system. Blackrock’s Larry Fink stated in his latest annual letter, “Every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change.” Earth’s survival is becoming every company’s strategic priority. And the foundational goal of corporate sustainability is to operate with a net neutral carbon impact. Climate change did not cause our current pandemic. But impacts from climate change increasingly will be on a comparable scale as the pandemic:  disruptive, disorienting, and detrimental to our way of life, well-being, and economic productivity.  

Governance Reform

Sustainability-driven companies reform governance to align better boards, shareholders, and financial markets to a new framework of value creation. The four conversation areas include:  

1) Having corporate Boards and the C-suite agree to a multi-stakeholder approach to value creation. 

2) Taking a medium-to-long-term approach to measuring business results. Corporate sustainability measures often need time to implement, lacking quick ROIs. Signify has adopted a long-term compensation scheme and educated its investors on its value. 

3) Valuing business initiatives that support climate change mitigation. In one example, one-year after Interface launched its Climate Take Back initiative in 2016, the company’s R&D team had developed a carbon-negative carpet tile prototype. Just three years later, those carbon-capturing tiles will be commercially available globally.  

4) Investing in businesses that seek-out rather than shy away from the pursuit of sustainability, even if their efforts are incomplete to date. Markets should provide higher valuations to companies such as Patagonia for its post-consumer waste recycling efforts; Adidas for its commitment to using ocean plastic pollution to create new, high-value consumer products, and Heineken for its emphasis on freshwater resource stewardship, particularly in water-stressed regions in which it operates. 

An Action Plan  

Taking action can be difficult, demanding, and laborious work – yet necessary for a company to move from pronouncements of sustainable intent to results. Take heart; many companies have walked this path before yours. Rondolet emphasizes that reinforcement of words with action is a strong sustainability activation mechanism:  “Sustainability is quite intuitive at this point in Signify’s life. There is a straightforward mechanism for this to happen. First, we were saying it very consistently. Then, we were achieving it consistently. We had a reinforcement of our words through results.”

Below are the steps toward building a lasting sustainably-driven company:

1) Take an inventory of your company’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions[1]. This initial carbon accounting allows a company to identify opportunities to pursue greater operational efficiency and energy optimization measures at its place of business and across its fleet of owned assets. 

2) Commit to a more in-depth carbon accounting. Conduct a Scope 3 GHG inventory of your company’s full value chain. The majority (80-90%) of companies’ GHG balance falls into their Scope 3 totals. Scope 3 work greases the runway toward increased efficiency measures, product innovations, and operational transformations.

3) Open enlightened and productive conversations around circular business models and closed-loop processes. Rondolet talks about lighting systems and the utilization of 3D manufacturing to offer “full-circularity to customers. We can sell a luminaire that [Signify] can reprint after a few years so that we just take back the old one, reuse the raw material, give it a new shape, and [the customer] has a new luminaire. No need for virgin materials.”

Companies must conduct these inventories to gain a base assessment of their environmental impact. Once a baseline is achieved, conversations around setting performance goals and success metrics are warranted. 

Interface uses the following metrics around stakeholder value creation to measure its progress towards stated goals, including:

● For customers: the net promoter score.

● For employees: benchmark against other high-performing companies’ culture scores.  

● For shareowners: shareholder return over time.

● For the environment: track carbon emissions.   

Signify reports on, among other metrics, the percentage of revenue from the sale of sustainable products (79%) and is committed to reaching carbon neutrality across its operations by the end of 2020. Best Buy has set an absolute goal to reduce carbon emissions across its value chain by 50% by 2030. After its 2018 Scope 3 inventory analysis, Best Buy extended its carbon reduction goals to its products, post-consumer purchase. The company’s sustainable technology goal is to reduce product carbon emissions by 20% by 2030, helping customers save $5 billion in energy costs. A company’s commitment to progressing its reporting of Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions to Scope 3 supports strategic sustainability thinking, robust vision-setting, and competitive product differentiation.  

Reporting Sustainability Initiatives, Goals and Progress Made

The pursuit of sustainability involves transparency. It is wise to avoid both greenwashing (i.e., marketing spin of insubstantial sustainability measures) and greenwishing (i.e., setting goals that are well-intentioned but have a negligible positive impact on climate change mitigation). Corporate stakeholders are an increasingly sophisticated bunch.    

Annual reporting of a company’s environmental impact is standard practice. What reporting standard a company decides to use is dependent on several factors. Many small and medium-sized, privately-held businesses that are registered Benefit companies in their state and a certified B Lab organizations will opt to publish their sustainability reports using B Lab’s impact assessment protocol. If a company is publicly-traded, it will use either GRI’s Core or Comprehensive Reporting Standard or SASB’s reporting framework. 

Both GRI’s and SASB’s reporting protocols support deeper material disclosures to the financial markets.   

Aligning with the Paris Climate Accord 

Managing an organization’s environmental impact means tying its individual goals to something larger, world-recognized, and measurable: The 2015 Paris Climate Accord. Under the climate agreement, all nations agreed to work toward keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to ideally “limit the global temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.” The CDP (formerly the Climate Disclosure Project) asks companies to disclose their sustainability climate targets, creating aggregated data sets that are reported to key stakeholders and the financial community. CDP is the great amplifier of climate change mitigation targets. It uses company disclosures to put pressure on value chain suppliers to report meaningful actions taken in support of GHG emissions reductions.   

The Science-Based Target Initiative (SBTi) guides companies in setting climate change mitigation targets that a) align corporate GHG performance targets to the goals of the Paris Climate Accord and b) set businesses on the path to meeting net carbon neutrality by some set date (i.e., 2030). Best Buy, Nike, Heinekin, and Signify have just in the last year (July 2019, September 2019, November 2019, and December 2018, respectively) submitted GHG reduction targets to SBTi for approval. 

SBT-verified companies will grow substantially in 2020.     

Progress Financial Reporting of Climate Change Impacts

In 2018, CDP began embedding The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations into its corporate disclosure and supplier surveys. CDP questionnaires now ask companies to consider taking a forward-looking[2] approach to climate risk in their businesses and across their global operations and assess climate change impacts through risk scenario planning and business opportunity identification. With each passing reporting year, CDP’s sustainability ratings will grow more stringent, requiring reporting companies to embed the TCFD framework into their decision-making models.  

The goal of TCFD more broadly is to persuade publicly-traded companies to disclose to investors, quantitatively, how, where, and to what extent climate change impacts are a risk to their businesses. Investors seek to utilize the disclosed information to better inform their decisions on how best to allocate their financial resources in support of a low-carbon economy.  

The World Economic Forum publishes an annual Global Risks Report where experts and business leaders are surveyed to predict from a set of global risks which ones are likely to occur and have the highest impact on economies and businesses. The 2019 Global Risks Report identified climate change impacts made-up half of the high likelihood and high impact risks. Notably, the “spread of infectious disease” risk was predicted to have a higher-than-average impact but lower than the average probability of this year. Although forecasting the relative likelihood that a pandemic would happen was off-mark, it was an identifiable risk to businesses.  

Sustainability-embedded companies have a distinct competitive advantage over unsustainable ones when they invest in planning, risk management, and resiliency tools to assess future outcomes that are increasingly likely. The art of business nimbleness relies on taking science and sustainability measures seriously. The potential with TCFD is that it formally and fundamentally drives sustainability planning into the heart of corporations’ financial strategic business decision-making.

The Take-away

Declaring the desire to be sustainable does not make a sustainably-driven company. Intention, values, alignment, action, reporting, and goal-setting will win the day. To be sustainable is not a nice-to-have but a need-to-be. Sustainability-driven companies that take a multi-stakeholder approach to value creation is a stand for justice. Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Covid-19, and plastic pollution are all social justice issues. Embedding sustainability into a company’s core makes for a compelling, efficient, innovative, inclusive, and performance-driven organization that progresses ‘business as usual’ toward tomorrow’s business.   

[1] Scope 1 GHG emissions are on-site combustion of gas and fuel consumption from vehicles that a company owns. Scope 2 GHG emissions are indirect emissions from energy used at facilities owned or controlled by a company.

[2] This is a significant statement in that, it is recognized that annual sustainability/impact reports are historical summaries of corporate actions taken and read as snapshots in time.