Everybody Matters

Here are some insights on the effects of burnout:  The World Health Organization (WHO) officially recognized burnout as an occupational phenomenon in 2019. It estimates that over 75% of professionals worldwide experience burnout at some point in their careers. According to Gallup, burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take a sick day and 2.6 times more likely to actively seek a new job The American Institute of Stress estimates that workplace stress and burnout cost U.S. businesses around $300 billion annually due to absenteeism, reduced productivity, and healthcare costs A study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that individuals with burnout are at a significantly higher risk of developing mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health revealed that individuals experiencing burnout were more likely to report personal conflicts and difficulties in

A few years ago, the World Health Organization added “burn-out” to the International Classification of Diseases. Here’s how they define it: Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Quite a while ago, we learned from the Centers for Disease Control that your immediate supervisor is more important to your health than your primary care doctor. If burn-out results from chronic workplace stress, we’re seeing that to be true. And it makes sense. 74% of people say the workplace is the leading cause of stress. On Monday mornings, there’s a 20% increase in heart attacks. On this podcast, you'll hear an edited version of a webinar featuring Barry-Wehmiller CEO Bob Chapman and Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of Dying for a Paycheck, called, “The Next Leading Cause of Death: The Workplace?” They'll talk about this crisis and what leaders need to do to solve the issue. 

As we’ve talked about in several past episodes of this podcast, Barry-Wehmiller’s CEO, Bob Chapman, has a passion for transforming the way business education is taught in our universities. We want to transform these institutions that train people to manage into institutions that foster Truly Human leaders who honor individual dignity and demonstrate the courage to care for others. It's why we helped found the Humanistic Leadership Academy. But it’s not only important to teach students how to be truly human leaders, the teachers must model those principles as well. On this episode, we feature a conversation between myself, David Pickersgill (who is on Barry-Wehmiller’s outreach team who is working with the Humanistic Leadership Academy) and Abhimanyu Gupta, an Instructor in the Department of Operations & IT Management and Interim Director of Emerson Leadership Institute at St. Louis University. Our conversation with Abhi discusses how he approaches his relationships with his students and why modeling behav

Throughout his writing career, Raj Sisodia has put together a roadmap of how businesses can be a powerful force for good in the world through powerful stories of conscious organizations and their leadership. However, in Raj’s new book, Awaken, The Path to Purpose, Inner Peace and Healing, he uses his own story to show others how to turn inward if they want to be an effect, empathetic and truly human leader. On this podcast, Raj talks about the circumstances that inspired his turn inward, which then inspired the idea to write the book. But we also place it in the context of why the story he tells in Awaken is important for leaders. 

It was Simon Sinek who coined the term “Truly Human Leadership.” Simon and Barry-Wehmiller CEO Bob Chapman became fast friends when they first met years ago. Simon wrote about Barry-Wehmiller in his book, Leaders Eat Last, and he also wrote the foreword to Bob and Raj Sisodia’s book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring For Your People Like Family. He is a significant voice and one of our most important allies in spreading our message. In 2015, Bob and Simon recorded this conversation around the release of Everybody Matters. We re-present it to you in this THL Refresher podcast. 

In 2016, Harvard Business School published a case study on Barry-Wehmiller's approach to leadership that is now taught at 80 business schools. In this episode of our podcast, its authors, Jan Rivkin and Dylan Minor talk about the case study method of teaching, why they chose Barry-Wehmiller as a subject, how business school students are responding to people-centric principles and how Truly Human Leadership might apply in our current business and political climate.

Joey Coleman is the founder and Chief Experience Composer of Design Symphony – a customer experience branding firm and also the author of Wall Street Journal bestseller, Never Lose a Customer Again. Joey has a new book that very appropriate for our current times where we’ve had a Great Resignation and people are demanding better leaders and better work experiences, Never Lose an Employee Again: The Simple Path to Remarkable Retention. Whether you are an owner looking to hire your first few employees, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or an enterprise that needs to keep growing on a global scale, on this podcast, Joey will reshape the way you think about recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and retaining quality team members.

What if the best workplace we’ve ever experienced is just a fraction of what is possible? Dare we dream of something so far beyond ‘business as usual’ that it feels like a fantasy? ...to venture past the workplaces of the past and into the unknown to imagine and create something recognizably different. To create Truly Human work. The preceding passage is from the introduction of the book, Human Work: Five Leadership Mindsets for Humanizing the Workplace, written by Leanne Holdsworth and Naryan Wong. On this podcast, we’re going to talk about the five leadership mindsets mentioned in their book’s title and we'll address the initial question asked in their introduction.

Does your organization have a Speak Up Culture? One where people feel it is safe and worth it to share their ideas, concerns, disagreements, and mistakes? Are you a leader who listens? What are you doing to make sure all voices in your organization are heard? These things are vital to having a thriving organization. You may recognize Stephen Shedletsky from his work with Simon Sinek. On this podcast, Shed defines a Speak Up Culture and talks about why it is important for leadership, business and the people within. 

Howard Behar, former president at Starbucks and a key figure in establishing their culture, talks about his views on leadership, his time at the coffee giant, Uber, Lyft, Amazon, Whole Foods and a whole lot else.

Over the past several years, for multiple reasons, we’ve seen an upheaval in the workplace. Not least of which is the so-called Great Resignation. But could the turmoil of the last few years result in better workplaces? Could business leaders really understand the value of caring for their people? Could we really see a massive shift from traditional management to Truly Human Leadership? Dr. Alise Cortez thinks so. In fact, she thinks the time is ripe for a Great Revitalization. Dr. Alise Cortez is an author, leadership consultant, an organizational logotherapist, the host of the Working on Purpose radio show and the Chief People officer at Dr. Alise Cortez and Associates. Alise has been on our podcast before, where we had a conversation about the insights she gained from leaders and their experiences in 2020. On this podcast, Alise will talk about her new book, which is incidentally titled The Great Revitalization: How Activating Meaning and Purpose Can Radically Enliven Your Business.

You may have heard our CEO, Bob Chapman, say that the person you report to at work is more important to your health than your primary care physician. It sounds outrageous, but it underscores one of the profound truths we’ve discovered at Barry-Wehmiller: That the way we lead impacts the way people live. The research to back it up can be traced to Dr. L. Casey Chosewood, the Director of the Office for Total Worker Health at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Learn more in this in-depth discussion about wellness and work.

Jennifer Wallace recently wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal, "The Power of Mattering at Work" that was forwarded to Barry-Wehmiller CEO, Bob Chapman. Jennifer has written a book that discusses the importance of mattering in children that comes out in August 2023, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It.  Along with her friend, Sarah Bennison, Jennifer is trying to build The Mattering Movement, with the goal of helping people of all ages learn the skills and tools to enact meaningful social change by identifying genuine needs, big or small, and to recognize the unique value that each individual can bring to the world. Bob and Jennifer struck up a conversation because of their similar interests in the idea of mattering. Bob invited Jennifer and her friend, Sarah Bennison to visit a couple of Barry-Wehmiller facilities. After their visit, they had a conversation with Bob and Mary Rudder about the idea of mattering, which is featured on this episode of the podc

“Today, leaders need to recognize the impact work has on peoples’ overall life satisfaction. It is an antiquated belief that leaders should focus solely on the professional side of team members’ lives. Work needs to be a positive influence, given that it consumes much of our waking time. The work we do and how we feel about it shapes our identity. Leaders have a responsibility to help their teams understand the importance of their work." On this podcast, find out more about what "The Optimistic Workplace" is in an interview with author Shawn Murphy.

Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute is Barry-Wehmiller’s consulting arm that helps other companies and organizations through what we have come to call a Truly Human approach to business. They can help companies hire the right people, inspire them through a thriving and inclusive culture, develop and support your leaders and create stronger customer loyalty. Sara Hannah and Matt Whiat are the leading partners of Chapman & Co. On this THL Refresher, we’re going to bring you a couple of individual talks given by Sara and Matt that discuss their personal leadership journeys.

Bill Ury is the co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and is one of the world’s leading experts on negotiation and mediation. Trained as a social anthropologist, Bill has carried out his research on negotiation not only in the boardroom and at the bargaining table, but also among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the clan warriors of New Guinea. On this podcast, Bill shares his unique perspective on how empathetic listening can make a difference. Not just across a negotiation table between world powers, but in our day to day interactions with people. He also has a conversation with Barry-Wehmiller CEO, Bob Chapman.

One of the cornerstones of Truly Human Leadership is that everybody wants to know that who they are and what they do matters.  Someone else that came to that same insight in a scholarly manner, through his experiences and his research, is Professor Isaac Prilleltensky. He, along with his wife, Ora, wrote a book on the science and importance of mattering: How People Matter: Why it Affects Health, Happiness, Love, Work and Society. You can find our more about the Professor, his work and his book on his website: professorisaac.com On this podcast, we talk about the science of mattering, the poverty of dignity in the world, the importance of listening, moving from a me-centric culture to a we-centric culture and we also talk about how all this relates to the work place and how leaders can apply the science of mattering to those within their span of care. This is such an important discussion, you’ll want to go back and read the transcript of this conversation on our website, trulyhumanleadership.com.

It’s been almost eight years since the publication of Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family by Raj Sisodia, one of the founders of Conscious Capitalism and Barry-Wehmiller CEO, Bob Chapman. It’s the story of Bob and Barry-Wehmiller’s journey from traditional business thinking to Truly Human Leadership. All these years later, people are still discovering the book and are touched by the story. Around the time of Everybody Matters’ release, Bob and Raj did a number of interviews talking about why they wrote the book and what they hoped to accomplish by writing it.

At the start of every new year, many people make New Year’s resolutions to get in shape. They join a gym, go on a diet. But do we ever think about what shape our leadership is in and do we take steps to change it? On this podcast, David Vandermolen talks about the shape of leadership and offers tips on how you can improve yours.

Matthew Lee, Baylor professor and Research Associate at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University and Brian Wellinghoff, Barry-Wehmiller Director of Strategy, Improvement and Culture, recently had the opportunity to speak at the Humanity 2.0 conference at the Vatican. This conference gathered distinguished academics, researchers, philanthropists, and business leaders around the question: “How do we promote human flourishing in our world?”  On this podcast, we feature a conversation between Matthew and Brian about this event and it's importance. You'll hear about the idea of human flourishing as it pertains to business education and you’ll hear how Barry-Wehmiller fits into this work.