Truly Human Leadership
The Crisis of Leadership in Our World
I want to make you aware today of a crisis we have in this country and around the world—a crisis of leadership. We have over a hundred and thirty million people in our workforce who go home every day feeling they work for a company that doesn’t care about them. That is seven out of eight people in the workforce. These are our mothers, our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, our sons, and our daughters. Those precious people we brought into this world have a high probability, an 88% chance, that they go to work for an organization that doesn’t care about them. Our goal is to create an environment where everybody matters. Unfortunately, we live in a world of capitalism where we see people as objects for our success.
I was educated and raised in an environment where creating shareholder value and profits would result in my success. I took management classes, I got a management degree, and I got a job in management. So, what I tried to do was manage people. I was never taught the awesome responsibility that leadership has over the lives that are influenced by my leadership—never taught, never exposed to that. I was raised and educated where capitalism was about profits, shareholder value, and my success. So, I think from this perspective that we have a crisis in this country, a crisis of leadership. Many of the symptoms we are seeing—broken families, broken marriages, broken lives—are the result of us sending people home each day with a sense that they work for an organization that doesn’t care about them.
The good news is that we have the power in this room, in this country, to solve this crisis tomorrow. We just need to engage our heads and our hearts in a leadership process that validates the worth of every individual, where everybody in this country matters. For a second, Barry-Wehmiller is a 1.5-billion-dollar company with 7,000 team members around the world. What do we build? We build great people. Our primary role is to invite people into our organization, give them skills and abilities, and offer an opportunity for a meaningful life. To do that, to raise the economic model, we produce machinery for various companies around the world, and we produce consulting services.
Building a Truly Human Organization
In 1988, when we began to develop this truly human organization, we had to convert a hundred-year-old industrial company into a human organization. There was a combination of a vibrant business model and a vibrant culture. So, today, we have created an organization that has grown by about 20 percent a year since 1988 and created shareholder value in excess of 15 percent compound a year, when the S&P 500 in that same period of time since 1988 has only created 3 percent value. Clearly, some combination of a vibrant business model and a vibrant culture that validates the worth of every individual and allows people to be who they were meant to be in a common purpose has created value.
Our idea in leadership, what we have come to realize, is that our responsibility is to create an environment—whether you’re in the military, in the industrial area, in government, or in education—where people can discover their gifts, develop their gifts, share their gifts, and, extremely important, be recognized and appreciated for doing so. This creates an opportunity for them to go home each night to their families, whatever that family situation is, and have a more meaningful life—a life of purpose where they feel valued and where they get the chance to be what they were brought into this earth to be.
So, at Barry-Wehmiller, we have worked on this. We have about 400 shareholders who invest in this company and who believe in us. To me, this is the definition of capitalism, where we create value for all stakeholders, not just the shareholders. Let me go through a couple of the defining moments in my journey to understand this leadership, because it did not come from my education or my awareness of what’s going on in this country.
Lessons from Life: The Wedding That Changed My View
It began with something that many of you will relate to: a wedding. I was sitting in a wedding, enjoying the splendor of this father walking this precious daughter of his down the aisle, and everybody enjoying how beautiful she looked and how proud the father looked. You can all imagine that. When they got up to the altar, he took the hand of this young lady, his daughter, and he gave it to this young man and said, “You know, I give this young lady to be wed to this young man. Her mother and I give this daughter to be wed.” Now, any of you who are parents, who’ve talked about the importance of their children, know that those are the ceremonial words they used, but that is not what was in the head and heart of that father and mother right then.
What was in their head and heart was, “Look at this, young man -- I’m going to trust you with this precious human being her mother and I brought into this world. We have given her unconditional love, and I expect you, through your union, to continue to allow her to be and grow to be whatever she was meant to be. That is what I expect of you.” What I got from that is a realization that all 7,000 of our team members were just as precious as that young lady. Every one of our team members was brought into this world by some mother and father who hoped the best for this precious young child that they brought into this earth. And we, as leaders, when we allow somebody to walk into our organization, we have an obligation as stewards of that life to continue to allow that life to be everything they were meant to be that we possibly can, toward our common vision—whether they walk in the gate of this Air Force Base or they walk into our organization. So, I walked away saying we can have a dramatic impact on this world if we accept the responsibility for that life that joined our organization and shared our gifts.
The second story really had a profound impact on me. We had developed the ideas of continuous improvement and, in parallel with that, the ideas of people-centric leadership. We were having a management meeting up in our Green Bay operation, and somebody emailed me the night before and said, “Bob, you might be aware a group of our team members went through this event for a large project in the plant to improve and employ continuous improvement ideas. You might want to walk out and recognize them.” I said, “Why don’t you invite them into the management meeting in the morning, and we’ll let them share their experience with all of us?”
So, these three gentlemen—at seven o’clock in the morning, we invited them into this executive management meeting—and they stood before us as I stand before you, and they shared with us the achievements of this project. They’d improved quality, cut lead time, reduced inventory, and everything was shipping on time. You know, the typical dialogue of an organization is all about numbers and performance and profits. I was blessed with a thought to ask this one gentleman, Steve, who I’d never met before—he was a valued member of our assembly team in the plant—I said the following: “How did it affect your life?”
Now, this gentleman I had never met before was called into this executive meeting, so he had no time to prepare his thoughts. So, he told me that profound truth. His answer was, “I’m talking to my wife more.” And I said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean you’re talking to your wife more?” He said, “You know what it’s like to be a part of an organization where you go in every day, you’re told what to do, people don’t ask you what you think, you get ten things right and you don’t hear a word, and you get one thing wrong and you never hear the end of it? Do you know what it feels like to go home at night from that environment?” He said, “You don’t feel very good about yourself, and when you don’t feel very good about yourself, you’re not very nice to your wife.” He said, “Since we’ve embraced this people-centric leadership, since we’ve embraced the idea of continuous improvement where I have a chance to make my role better, to contribute my gifts, people ask me what I think, for me to contribute to making things better—since we’ve done that, I go home feeling valued and better about myself. And when I go home feeling better about myself, I find I’m nicer to my wife, and believe it or not, when I’m nicer to my wife, she talks to me.”
Connecting the Dots: Leadership’s Ripple Effect
What hit me suddenly was that the biggest number that I was going to look for, the biggest measurable, was the reduction in the divorce rate of our employees. Now, I want to connect one final dot. I was hiking in the mountains with my 40-year-old daughter, who has three children, and a lady named Beverly. So, Jennifer and Beverly and I were hiking with a group of people in the mountains, and I explained to my daughter that Beverly had a TV show in Dallas on family counseling and family issues. So, my daughter asked her what you would ask her—any of you with a family—said, “Beverly, what’s the most important thing in raising good kids?” Beverly thought a minute and she said, “A good marriage.” She said, “Other things are important, but the most important thing in raising good kids is for them to see a loving relationship that’s a foundation for their life.”
So, that was the final dot. I realized that if organizations would embrace the responsibility to send people home with a sense of fulfillment, a sense that what they do matters, they’ll be better husbands, better wives. They will have a better chance of dealing with the issues of marriage, of raising a family, and getting along in this world if they feel good about themselves and they end up with a better relationship. So, their children will grow up seeing loving relationships, and many of the issues we face in this country will dissipate because we will have organizations that truly care about the impact they make on the lives of the people who join them.
That clearly said to me that we can change the world. We don’t need the government or politicians or any organization. It is up to us, the way we treat each other every day and the profound impact that makes on our life when we go home, to know that our life mattered. Finally, one of the keys we learned in our leadership model is recognition and celebration. A key part of what we teach is to reach out—just like your parents—to recognize and celebrate the goodness in people.
So, we created what we call the Guiding Principles of Leadership, which are the articulation of our beliefs on how we should treat each other in leadership. Then we ask people to nominate anybody in the organization—anybody in the organization—who they felt exemplified those qualities. Then, in a ceremony—and the first one was up in northern Wisconsin where we have 450 people working—we had this crazy yellow SSR Chevrolet outside with the top down, and we had 400 people out there, and we announced the person whom our employees picked as the first recipient of the Guiding Principles of Leadership. Their family was always hiding in the back to experience their precious child being recognized for their goodness in the organization. It’s a profoundly meaningful experience for everybody involved, specifically the family.
Two things I’ve learned in doing this: number one is the winner—the first thing they do is call their spouse to tell them they won. The second thing, the ladies say, is they take their mother for a ride. They don’t say they take their father; they say they take their mother for a ride. Now, because I’m trying to learn the skills of deep listening, and I’ve interviewed two or three hundred of these winners around the country, let me tell you what they really are doing when they win the nomination. They say it is the most profound recognition they ever had because it is from their peers for their leadership. Relative to calling their spouse, what they really call to say is, “You know what? You are lucky to be married to me because I just got judged an outstanding leader.”
Now, ladies, the other piece of this is they say they take their mother for a ride—that is the words they use every time—but what they really mean behind what they say is, “I went to the person who is the source of my goodness, and I said to my mother, ‘You know, Mom, I turned out okay.’” It is unbelievable how many people tell me they took their mother for a ride. I gave this speech up in Baltimore when we were awarding one of these vehicles to a new winner, and after a night—and I gave the summary that I just gave you—and after I gave that talk, a lady came up to me named Ruth. Ruth said, “Mr. Chapman, I work in the IT department. Two weeks ago, I won this award, and I took my daughter up into the mountains, and we had a wonderful time. But I just want you to know something. When you talked about taking your mother for a ride,” she said, “unfortunately, my mother died two years ago, but I want you to know that I took that car up to the cemetery to show my mother that I turned out okay.”
Truly Human Leadership: Changing the World One Life at a Time
I’m going to tell you something: there is an unbelievable need in each one of us—every one of you in this room—to tell the person who is the source of your goodness that you turned out okay, and there’s a tremendous need to feel that you matter. We have that opportunity every single day to let people know that their lives matter. There’s an expression that we learned along this journey that says, “We’ve been paying people for their hands for years, and they would have given us their heads and their hearts for free if we had just known how to ask them and say thank you for sharing that.”
How do we sustain and build this culture? Because it doesn’t exist in this country. The first thing we decided to do was to create a university. We created Barry-Wehmiller University to teach people-centric leadership, to help people understand the profound significance and responsibilities of leadership over the lives that they have the privilege of leading in organizations. We’re trying to convert managers into leaders—people who understand the significance every day of their actions.
A most interesting development along this journey of this leadership was that our team decided if we’re going to teach leadership, we need to teach communication. It never would have occurred to me that we need to teach a group of adults how to communicate. I would say to you, in my 40-year career, it is the most profound learning that I’ve ever experienced. I interview people now who take this three-day course in communication skills, and the most common statement our students say after this course is “life-changing.” They had no idea how they were treating their kids, their spouse, or their fellow workers. Nine out of ten comments of feedback on this course are related to their family and their children. And what they say about this course, and what we’ve learned, this profound, is that they learn to listen. They didn’t learn to talk in communication skills; they learned to listen. As parents and as couples and as a country, we have a tremendous need to enhance our ability to listen to each other because it validates the worth of each one of us.
We believe that organizations in this country—business organizations, our military, our government, our educational system—tomorrow morning, if they embrace people-centric leadership, which is the responsibility to send people home each night with a sense of fulfillment, we could profoundly change the world as we know it. A lot of the brokenness you see would be dissipated. We would change the amount of conflict in the world that exists, that you respond to with the elegance of your skills.
We call this leadership model Truly Human Leadership, but it’s built on the premise of people, purpose, and performance. Everything starts with people. This is all about people’s lives and creating meaning around a common vision for people to come together. Purpose—why would they come together, for what? That’s clearly in the Air Force; you have a great purpose. In our business, we are trying to show we can pay people fairly, treat them superbly, and compete globally. And performance—we have to perform. We’re all called within the vision; we have to perform and create value for all stakeholders.
When I give these talks around the country, I’m always taken back by the fact that usually within the first two or three questions—usually the first question—is, “What do you do about the people that don’t get it?” And I am always taken back by that because I really have to stop and think about who doesn’t get it. I’m now come to the following conclusion: the reason I’m taken back by that is the initiatives I’ve talked to you about are all about a light and shining it in every corner of our organization to look for the goodness in people, just like you would as parents. There’s no difference in our leadership model from your parenting model. We’re looking for the goodness in the people whose lives are entrusted to us—whether they are born of us or we had the opportunity, through leadership, to shine that light to find those people and hold up that good behavior. We try to share it with the family. We send notes to the home. We recognize people with their family there. We have Guiding Principles of Leadership awards, Going the Extra Mile awards, High Five awards, Innovation awards—all kinds of awards. So, what our airwaves are filled with is goodness. So, recognition is a key to our organization.
We have a hundred and thirty million people in this country going home unfulfilled, and what I want to leave you with is that we—you and I—can change this tomorrow. It doesn’t require money; it doesn’t require anything physical other than your head and your heart to understand the profound significance you have on people’s lives every day. We can change this world if we understand the great joy of leadership and the grave responsibility of leadership to look at those people under our care and help them have a successful life—one of significance where they can share their gifts, be appreciated for doing so, and go home to whatever their family situation is with a sense that they matter. We need to move from a me-centric culture to a we-centric culture. Thank you very much.