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What does it take to transform employee engagement into meaningful work that drives long-term loyalty and performance? In this episode of High Octane Leadership, Donald Thompson explores this critical leadership challenge with experts Bob Batchelor and Jackie Ferguson. Together, they unpack the essential pillars of meaningful work - from psychological safety and inclusive leadership to understanding how employees' life stages impact their relationship with work.
Whether you're a seasoned executive looking to build stronger teams or an emerging leader seeking to create lasting impact, this conversation reveals practical strategies for building trust and fostering an environment where people bring their full potential every day. Learn why true meaningful work goes beyond traditional engagement metrics and requires leaders to adapt their communication style for each team member's unique needs.
Future-proof your leadership with High Octane Leadership, a place where business leaders—whether by title or aspiration—share cheat codes for unlocking workplace excellence, lessons learned along the way, and insider tips for future generations of next-level professionals. With a career rooted in building people and businesses, Donald Thompson is an award-winning CEO, speaker, and author who empowers leaders to scale with purpose. Over the last 25 years, he has helped startups and enterprises alike drive cultural change, unlock performance, and deliver exceptional results through strategic leadership.
Find him on LinkedIn, and listen here to learn how you can become future-proof too.
High Octane Leadership Ep. 174
Slow Down to Speed Up: The Leadership Cheat Code
for Culture and Trust
With Jackie Ferguson and Bob Batchelor
[00:00:00] Donald: Welcome to another episode of High Octane Leadership. Today, we're gonna talk about a topic that I really wanna unpack with two great friends of mine, two savants in content communication, Jackie Ferguson and Bob Bachelor. And the topic we're gonna talk about today is meaningful work. We talk a lot about psychological safety, employee engagement, how to build high performing teams. But as I've talked with my two partners over the last year, as we've talked about employee engagement, as we've talked about psychological safety, one of the things that we've come to really define, but we want to unpack today, is the concept of meaningful work. We want to try to figure out and better understand and share with you as an audience that difference between people that are engaged and productive, and people that are bringing their full best self to their work, to their project, to their team every single day. And as we've unpacked our careers and thought about what makes us move, what gives us that extra energy boost, it is not only the people we're working with, but it is also the meaning that we apply to the work we're doing and how that work shows up in the world. And I couldn't be more pleased to have two of my great friends and business partners, Jackie Ferguson and Bob Bachelor, with me today. And so thanks for both of you, uh, to spend time in, uh, unpacking this great topic. We're all friends here.
[00:01:23] Jackie: Thanks, Don. Happy to be here.
[00:01:24] Bob: One of
[00:01:24] Donald: the things that I'd like to do before we really dive in is and, Bob, we'll start with you, and then Jackie, you can finish up. Give me your definition to build the foundation for our audience on what is meaningful work and what are some of the key elements to it. How you think about meaningful work define it, but then the pillars that underpin it from your perspective, your experience. And, Bob, I'll give the mic to you first, and then, Jackie, I'll let you
[00:01:48] Bob: dive in. Remember, you gave me all the time I want to talk, so I might just take that. This podcast is pretty much over now. So no. Thanks, Don, for having me on, and I love spending time with Jackie anytime that I get because she's so damn smart. So it's great to be here, and I appreciate it. Meaningful work to me, as you said, goes beyond employee engagement. It's a different level. It's a new way of thinking that I think is important. The way I see it as almost, uh, structure. The foundational pieces of meaningful work, to me, have to begin with psychological safety and inclusive leadership. So you have as the undergirding of everything, psychological safety, inclusive leadership. And then above that or almost derived from that environment and that way of your culture operating, I see it breaking down into three points, value, fairness, and craft.[a][b] And And I'm not exactly sure if craft is the right word, but maybe it'll make more sense in the second when I explain it. Value is that a person feels an employee feels that there is either customer based or societal value in the work. Regardless of the work, that it has importance. It has meaning. If you work at a bank, you're holding somebody's assets, and that's probably the most important thing to them from a a personal and professional perspective. But the meaningful work has to convey value. The fairness piece is that decisions and processes and the culture is based on transparency and fairness. And I think that it's interesting when you look at pay. People somehow figure out what others make. They have a idea. Who knows? But we often, in the world, don't talk about pay fairness, and I know that that equity is so important to the three of us. Pay fairness needs to be a part of that fairness look. And then craft, I see craft as how do you help an employee chart their path to success? So craft could be that you give somebody who thrives on success stretch projects, Or you give a younger employee opportunities to educate themselves beyond the day, that kind of thing. And so or promotion, even promoting somebody when they deserve it and through that process, I think that's part of the craft. When you take these pieces together, you create an environment and a culture built on trust. And that seems to me, if I just boiled it all down to one word, trust is the difference between employee engagement and meaningful work. Because what we know from the statistics is that people do not trust their employees, thus they are not engaged. And so understanding that this is super hard work, and though we might have at one point labeled this all soft, this is the hardest work that a business leader can do. Changing hearts and minds, that's tough. But I think if you take these different pillars that I've outlined for meaningful work, roll them up into something, it's creating a truly trusting culture that you could put benchmarks and put incentives financial incentives behind. You could put KPIs behind. So I think all this makes real business sense if an organization and leader is willing to put essentially, put your money where your mouth is, put your money where your culture is, and can you build that out. But it's super difficult work, and that's why I think the topic is is really, really important to to discuss. So that's me. Now I'll turn the microphone over to our much smarter colleague, Jackie, to give us the actual you know, what meaningful work is all about.
[00:05:51] Jackie: Well, Bob, every time I meet with you and Don, I always have a note. So just because I'm on a podcast, it's no different. I'm sitting here scribbling my notes out because you all always say smart things that I wanna keep, so thank you for that. From my perspective, meaningful work is about purpose, connection, and contribution. So the sense that what you do matters and aligns with the company goals and aligns with what makes you feel fulfilled as an individual. But it's also a shared responsibility from my perspective. So leaders need to create the environment where people feel valued and connected to that larger mission, but employees also have a role in choosing where they work, who they work for, and ensuring that they're speaking up to say what they enjoy working on, what they're excited about working on, when they want those stretch projects as well. So I think when we think about culture in general, a lot of people talk about the employer's responsibility, but there's an employee responsibility as well. Um, also, I think it's important to remember that meaningful work is dynamic, so it evolves with us across the whole employee life cycle. So early in a career, people prioritize growth and learning. Mid career, it may shift more towards impact and recognition, and then later, legacy and contribution take center stage. It also evolves with what's happening in that employee's life. So when they're young parents, they need one thing. When they're taking care of their parents, they need another thing. When they've got that window of time where they can focus on work or they've got outside responsibilities, all of that contributes to what meaningful work means, and that changes, again, with the employee life cycle. I also think that meaning isn't just about prestige roles. Right? Every job has impact, and it's the leader's responsibility to connect the dots so that every employee sees the value in what they do. So that requires a level of authenticity. Right? Employees see through those performative mission statements pretty quickly. And another driver is agency. So when people have the autonomy and a voice in how they do their work, I think their sense of purpose deepens. And then finally, I would say the business case shows that meaningful work is important. So Gallup research shows employees who find their work meaningful are five times more engaged and far more loyal, and then McKinsey found that they're 1.4 times more satisfied and three times more likely to stay. So meaning translates directly into productivity, into creativity, into resilience, and it protects against burnout as well.
[00:09:08] Donald: So you both said a lot in a short period of time. And so, one, I'm gonna take the biggest takeaways from each. And so, Bob, from listening to you, I wanna unpack a little bit on that bridge between of trust, between employee engagement and meaningful work and get to now how do we build that as leaders? How do we monitor that? Right? So I'm gonna come back to that in a minute. Like, all of it was good, but I'm gonna pick the one thing for now that, like, just jumped off the page at me. And then, Jackie, for your component and I'm glad that I set it up for you all to lay the foundation because you both said similar things, but different perspective to the goal, which is powerful. So we'll talk about trust. Then we're gonna talk about the employee life cycle. Because, Jackie, I think that is really critical in learning how to lead. If we don't understand someone's relationship with work, then we don't know how to lead them. And I I really, as a business leader, as a CEO, as a board member, as an investor, it took me longer than I wanna admit to understand how critical that is to how someone operates on a day
[00:10:11] Bob: to day
[00:10:11] Donald: basis. Right? If you've got kids that are getting ready to go to college and it is more immediate, it's three, four years away. Money is how you are recognized because that money allows you to put dollars into that college fund that is more immediate because now your kids are in high school and you're panicking a little bit. And to your point of, when someone has a young family, flexibility and time is the critical thing Because you got activities, you got different things, you're sharing the burden And so, I want to unpack that because that is really important to the meaning of work Because a lot of times, we think it's the job description, the mission of the firm, and all these things are important. But if they don't connect to how I live my life, then I'm not gonna be as committed to those things. And I think that managers could use some thoughts there. So, Bob, I'm gonna let you jump off. Talk to us, and then, Jackie, we'll jump in on this. But the topic here is, how do we build, maintain, grow trust, so that we can make that leap from employee engagement to meaningful work? And to me, when you have people operating in meaningful work, now you're talking about loyalty. Right? And I'll give an example of a difference to me. It's a competitive marketplace. AI is eliminating some of the entry level roles in many businesses, which means your high performers are going to be even more valuable. You're going to have less people in the enterprise. And so the people you are leading are gonna be doing more impactful things. I was talking to Greg Boone, the CEO of Walkwest the other day. AI is to do the routine so that your team can do the remarkable. And so if you've got people working on your highest value things, now as a leader, you've gotta figure out how to build that trust and loyalty for the long term. And so I'd be interested in how you all think that plays out, right, in the real world, and how do we build trust, maintain trust throughout this high octane environment we're all working in.
[00:12:09] Bob: Thanks, Don. And I appreciate just the candor with which you both speak. Because as you were explaining, like, kind of the high points of what we said, I'm still unpacking and rolling through my brain my leadership of the marketing and communications team at walk or at Workplace Options. And so even though I've transitioned to being a professor now teaching at Coastal Carolina University, I am replaying my leadership style. And so my focus, my natural human being focus, is on the employee, but my focus over the last several years has been at the upper level leading teams. And I never really thought about it like that until you started piecing it apart. Now that I'm teaching people about to enter the workforce, I'm transitioning to a new mental model for myself. So I just appreciate the atmosphere and the candor, because I think the easiest thing is to come in and just everything's rainbows and butterflies, but let's actually parse it out. And Jackie obviously gives the smartest answer on the planet because she's an empathetic, inclusive leader and has that perspective and is very comfortable in that. I'm probably a more uncomfortable leader than than she is in in many respects, so I'm still hashing it all out. So how does somebody make or how does a leadership team make the bridge between meaningful work and trust? If I believe what I outlined, then it begins with psychological safety and inclusive leadership. Psychological safety, as we all know, is incredibly difficult to actually do in the real world. I was looking at the workplace options psychological safety study because I always return to it because it's such a great dataset. And what the psychological safety study does, for listeners who who are unfamiliar, is it looks at 18 countries and breaks down the top three reasons that an employee feels unsafe or has challenges in the workplace. And it's built on actual clinician conversation with real employees. So it's not survey data. It's not it's actually what's happening on those phone calls. So when I look at a place, look at India and all the challenges the Indian workforce has, the number one challenge identified in the psychological safety study is conflict with manager. Well, that's central to a workplace that does not have psychological safety, and probably the majority of the leadership from probably middle management on are not operating in inclusive leadership style. And so some of these pieces, extremely fundamental, when you look at, uh, France, the number one concern is lack of professional development. Again, that's directly opposed to this idea that I talk about with the secondary level of meaningful work is fairness and craft. And so maybe it's the impact of the psychological safety study since my team was able to put this out over two years, and we were so enmeshed in it and ran seminars and talked about this with people all over the world. But it's where I return to get the real data about what the challenges are. Fully understanding that building out a psychological safe workplace is not easy because you need to be able to speak truth to power, and we don't live in a society in which we feel free to speak truth to power. And so how do you then talk to leaders or leaders talk to their people in a way that's psychologically safe when your paycheck's on the line? So it it's very challenging. What I would say is in connecting meaningful work to trust is that it has to be sponsored by the c suite. It needs to be sponsored by the CEO. It needs to be the CEO, that person needs to be actively engaged. And I think like all good implementation, it needs to be done in small bites. You can't gobble up culture change. Culture change takes a long time. It's easy to break easy to break culture. You can do that quickly. But you can't turn around a culture, you can't take a good culture and make it great quickly. So it's small small steps, small incremental steps, And it's a recognition by leaders and leadership teams that this isn't the weak side of leadership. This is actually now flipped. It's the most important thing that you can do. It's the most important impact that you can have on your business and the business's future. Because we pretend that we're strategic thinkers, and we all have five and ten year plans when most people most families are one paycheck or two paychecks away from, like, destitute status. So we are not strategic thinkers, and we naturally don't like speaking truth to power for the most part. It's a rare trait to have somebody who's brave enough either to speak up the ladder or even speak down the ladder without it seem command and control. So small steps, incremental steps, sponsored at the top, get the manager level in your company enthused and engaged, incentivize them. That may be the biggest thing you could do.
[00:17:36] Donald: So, Bob, I'm gonna jump in here. And, Jackie, I'm gonna ask Bob a question, and and then I'm gonna turn the mic to you for a little bit. Bob, when we first started working together and so let me paint a picture here. Right? When we first started partnering with Bob at the diversity movement, and Bob is was instrumental in my book and several books in the past, and really now my creative partner, but that's present. When we started, you already were a PhD. You already were a globally famous author. You already had 15 books under the belt. You already had been a chief communications strategist with Bank of America and other billion dollar companies. You already had been a professor at UCS. So your resume, before we met, was already a career full of wins. And yet and still, it took you and I many months for you to believe that I wanted your full feedback, that I wanted you to push back on my ideas. And so, what I want to ask you now to kind of be open, vulnerable, and even if it affects my leadership or my ego in this moment, I want you to be truthful. What did I do right and wrong from your perspective coming in to build that trust? And then knowing what you know now, what should you have done as a team member and an employee different or better? How did you learn from that experience? Because it was still the reason I give the backdrop of all of your accolades. It still took you time to develop that trust and confidence to be open, to take advantage of the psychological safety that was there. That means even the best trained leader is still gonna meet with resistance of people accepting it. So I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit. And then, Jackie, you saw that evolve. And so I want you to jump in and comment in in all the things.
[00:19:21] Bob: I think about that a lot, actually. And I thought about that a lot when I was leading my team. And so what were the challenges? We are all Gen Xers. We're of a certain age. I think that makes us super wise and super talented, but it also there's baggage. And so I would say from my perspective, especially in marketing and communications and being a public relations practitioner, it's pounded into your mind that you're like the electricity heating or lighting up the building or or the HVAC system. You're just a cost center. And so you spend your career as a communicator trying to prove your worth, but also looking over your shoulder. And so early in my time with the diversity movement, Jackie and I were working very closely. And so we vibed from the day one. And so my number one concern was to make sure that my relationship with Jackie was hand in glove. My baggage that I carried, particularly it's strange because it's different when you're a consultant. When I was a professor at University of South Florida and some other places, I would meet with CEOs regularly. Because when they're asking you for help, you have a certain amount of power. And so I could talk freely, openly. You pay me or not. I don't even care. Like, at that point, like, I'm doing this because I'm interested in the problem or challenge the company is facing, the CEO is facing. Once you're somebody's employee, the power structure shifts. And when I had been an employee earlier in my career, the CEO was the person up on the top of the pedestal. Everybody else was Joe, Steve, Janice, whatever, but the CEO was mister or missus. It was a different level. And so even though I saw you frequently and we talked, we didn't have the kind of personal relationship that would develop over time that then was kind of the blossom of the trust. So what I should have done is said, hey, Don. Let's go get lunch. Let's spend some time together. And I should have also looked ahead and tried to map out the future and then brought that to you and said, here's what I'm seeing. Where do you agree? Where do you disagree? Whereas from my past, I was probably a little hesitant to do that because I was used to executives. If you brought them that kind of perspective, play devil's advocate or whatever, they'd pick up on the negatives and then assume that you don't wanna be put in the foul ball category. And so there's always that concern in a power structure. How is the other person perceiving me? So it was easier for me, particularly in the earliest days at at the diversity movement, to align with Jackie and make sure she and I were on the same page when I should have been spending more time engaging with you.
[00:22:18] Donald: Jackie, I'd love to hear your thoughts so much on the Bob and DT dynamic, but on that same construct of what is the employee's responsibility when there is that opening from leadership for psychological safety? There is that desire for feedback being more candid and and collaborative to walk in that space. And what you've seen in leading teams and consulting and and would love that perspective from you as well.
[00:22:43] Jackie: One of the things that I would say first is agreeing with Bob. When Bob talks about leadership, he always integrates self awareness. And I think that one of the things that leaders think about themselves is that they are an open leader, and they invite conversation, and they invite conflict, and really, they don't. So that's why Bob felt the way he did because that's his experience, that's many of our experience. So a leader that really wants that creative discourse is rare. And that's why employees respond the way they do because they know that, they feel that, and they don't trust it until they have time. Where I think an employee can participate in finding that out with that specific leader is to push a little bit at a time. I don't think they have to say, Don, I know you had this idea. I don't think we should do it. I think it's terrible. I think it's sending us in the wrong direction. That takes time. But to say, Don, have you thought about this scenario, or could we think about it like this? And then see what your response is to that. If it's positive, now you can push a little more and a little more. So I think that's how an employee can determine if that leader is really open to hearing best thoughts versus the thoughts that align with what they think. But I think that leaders also need to have real self awareness because, as we also know, many leaders are put in positions based on relationships or tenure that they may not fully be qualified for. The reason why you invite that conversation is because you're confident as a leader in your capabilities, not everyone is. They think they are, but they're not.
[00:24:54] Donald: One of the things that you described, and I'll push back a little bit, is that leaders think they want to create an environment, but they really don't. And part I'll push back a little bit as I talk to leaders is I think it's not they don't want to. I think it's they don't know how. I think that now, certainly, there are leaders that don't want to, but a lot of the leaders that I'm talking with are struggling with the how because what is introduced is the pressure and the time pressure and the revenue pressure that they're under that is a competing demand, often to the culture they want to create. Because leaders are compensated by very measurable figures, and not always equally or even substantially weighted for the culture they create. So there's a conflict often at the board level and then the c suite level of how we design compensation for leaders. But then, more importantly, to your point, Jackie, that I completely agree, leaders are actually elevated often for their technical acumen in a certain industry. If you're in retail, they were a great retail person, they had great ideas. If they're in marketing, they were Admaster. They're promoted based, a lot of times, based on certain excellence and skill set, but they've actually not demonstrated the people leadership capabilities that are required in this time and that employees expect. And so my thing on meaningful work, to bring it back to the core topic, is I think the leader's responsibility is to pull from the team on such a consistent basis that it becomes a practice habit that you know if you're gonna go in a meeting with me, I'm going to ask your opinion. I'm going to pull from others in the room. I'm going to wait till the end to make a statement of what I think or believe because leaders change the flow of the entire room if they make a statement of how they feel about something. Then the rest of the room starts to just coalesce around what the leader thought versus the leader pulling and saying, Julie, tell me what you think about this challenge and how do we attack it? James, I know you've got some good ideas in marketing. How do you think we ought to package that? And leaders often, and you all taught me this, you have to slow down and have a more full conversation. And most leaders want to operate in sound bites. And most people don't operate that way, and they need a little bit more time to unpack their thinking. And so, my thing as a leader that I've learned the most about creating meaningful work, meaningful conversations, is I have to slow down the conversation to speed up what I learn. And that took a lot of time for me to believe that that was the best, highest use of my time, to be really direct and transparent. But now that I do, I try to give a lot more space. But I wanted to continue. Jackie, you wanna add to that?
[00:27:45] Jackie: Well, Don, your disagreement with me actually made my point. The reason why is because leaders want to do this, but they really do this. And the experience that employees have is with what they really do, not with they with what they want to do. They think they're doing this, they want to do this, but they don't make the time, but they don't know how to approach it. The employee's experience is with what they actually do, not with what their intention is.
[00:28:15] Donald: Audience, ladies and gentlemen, that would be one of the top 10 smoothest checkmates that I've, uh, experienced in my working career, and I will say well done about it. Wait. Well, take it. Go ahead, Bob.
[00:28:28] Bob: No. I was gonna say, you know and, Don, you're probably tired of hearing me say this, but I keep saying it because I think people need to hear it. And it it underlines a lot of the things that you and I have been writing lately and the things that we continue to write about is there is a power structure in every relationship in your personal and professional life whether you recognize it or not. You may want to ignore it, but it's there. There is a power relationship. And I've been in situations where I've talked with teams, and on my one on one conversations with teammates who are, quote, unquote, lower on the ladder, they're intelligent. They're saying great things. They understand the culture. And then you get in a room where there are bosses or the boss's boss in the room, and they're Zippo. They say nothing. And you have to wonder well, you don't have to wonder. You see it right in front of you, like, there. The disconnect here is that people are scared for some reason. Now it could be 65% the employee, 35% the leader. It could be vice versa. But that recognizing that that power is there is, I would say, a first step toward thwarting it or overcoming that power gap so that people can actually speak. And I've seen it in teams that all three of us manage, and we are consider ourselves inclusive leaders. And I know but once you start talking and watching and that's why it's so difficult because, like you said, leaders are trying to move fast. Their incentive priorities are different. It's a vicious circle because leaders are getting paid on success and performance. They would get better success and performance if they spent more time on culture, but it's not recognized because we haven't incentivized or built a performance system around culture the same way we have other parts of the business.
[00:30:21] Donald: Let me flag that both for this conversation and then our team that's listening. Right? Bob, what you said right at the tail end is that we don't have a way that we are structurally measuring the impact of culture. And that is really important as a point in the business context because that's the type of we're talking about the way the leader needs to communicate with their team and employees, and that's right. And it's the leadership responsibility to create the environment where healthy discourse exists and maintain that. 100% agree. I also think it's important, it's yes, and, that we have a better assessment of why culture impacts the bottom line to create more sustained buy in from leaders based on the way that leaders think, the way that leaders are compensated. And so when we're talking to our emerging leaders, when we're promoting people, that part of the onboarding and mentoring process, we don't really spend as much time as we need to with leaders on why culture impacts everything they're trying to get done. And whether it's a five person company or 50,000 or a 150,000 company, The leader sets the temperature of the organization based on what they respect, what they recognize, and what they tolerate in all those things. And so that's really important and and good. Jackie, let me ask you this in as we're looking at this topic holistically, what are some of the things that you would recommend to a leader that is not currently having their behavior match their wants, to your point? Let's get practical. Let's get tactical a little bit. What are some of the things they can do to improve? What are some of the things they need to think about and unpack? So that they can begin to get on that journey to drive that meaningful work. Because you can drive employee engagement through fear. You can be like, if you don't do this, you're gonna get fired. Now, that doesn't create loyalty, but that'll get somebody to do what they need to do. You can have a fear based leadership style or a numbers based and get productivity. Meaningful work is about longevity. It is about creating a resilient employee base. It's about building trust and loyalty. So what are some of the steps that that those leaders can think about to move more towards a leader that drives meaningful work?
[00:32:38] Jackie: So I think it's three part with the third part being the most important or the most meaningful. There's prioritization. So a leader needs to understand the priorities and be able to disseminate work based on what is important. So to understand and I actually had this conversation yesterday. It's really about I, as a leader, understand the priorities of the organization, and I understand what my team needs to be doing. So I understand their priorities. And I'm not saying yes to every single thing out of laziness, fear, whatever the reason is so that I'm able to manage my team appropriately so that they're working in areas of strength with some of those things that we do because we get paid to do, not because we like it, but they're working in areas of strength, areas of excitement. The second thing is there's cohesiveness on the team. So that doesn't mean every person needs to be best friends with every person. It just means there's respect. There's understanding the value of what each person does, and there's good synergy in working together and and doing your part. But the center of that is relationship with your team. We need to understand who that person is and what matters to them, where they are in their life, what things stress them outside of work, what things are exciting them outside of work, and how work plays into their full life. So it's not just the marketing guy. Right? But what's his name? What's his family story? What's happening right now? So I have on my team one that just got married, one that's about to get married. So there's natural distraction, and that's okay. This is part of the life thing. So what I'm not doing is giving new work, hard work that takes a lot of new brainpower in a specific period of time where they have outside distraction. It's good distraction. Sometimes it's not good distraction, but this is amazing distraction, wonderful distraction. So then I need to manage time differently in this period than I will two months from now. And so understanding relationship, having relationship, and understanding who your team is and being able to lead based on where they are from a professional standpoint, what they need professionally, what they need personally is how you create meaningful work and partner with that employee to create meaningful work.
[00:35:32] Donald: So let me start the process of why that perspective you outlined is valuable because everything you said is true. So, the problem in our audience is, and I'm thinking about the things you're saying from the leader's standpoint, how do I have time to do that with all of the people I lead and interact with? How do I make that important with all of the other things that are on my plate? And so I wanna create the environment, one, we're not advocating you're doing this all at once, that you're going through some twenty four hour leadership metamorphosis. Second is the behavior you demonstrate will be duplicated. So, what leaders don't recognize when we're talking about these things, they just think of, how am I gonna do all this? But that's not how they do anything. We lead through the performance of people, and the higher your ability to scale your leadership through people is the success of your overall business. So then that means we have to change our expectations of the leaders we lead. And if everybody is ten, fifteen, 30% better being an inclusive leader, now all of a sudden you start to have scale. And so, so Jackie, just to be clear, I wholesale agree with what you described. What I think is missing and an excellent one is 50 to a 100 times in productivity. When you're thinking about somebody that is a savant, right? Right now, the two of you, when I think about all of the recognition I've gotten as a business leader in different things, each of you have had a hand in it, period, bar none. The things I'm getting credit for writing, it's the two of y'all. I put my little spin on it. I don't care who hears it. You are amazing, but you work very differently than I do. So in order for me to gain the best value from the two of you, I had to change and modify my communication style and standards a little bit, and then we met each other to get great work together. But it was because I value the contribution of your skill set such that I'm willing to augment my fear to make you the most comfortable as possible while I'm asking you to do difficult things. I didn't change the difficulty level of my ask. And that's the other thing with leaders, and then I'll hush. Not talking about changing the standard, that makes it all weird. I am as economically focused as any human on this planet. When I talk to CEOs, like, I don't want to talk about that soft and fluffy stuff. It's like, no, you don't want to talk about winning. What I'm talking about is winning. And you win through highly talented, highly effective, highly productive people. And so, I had to, over the years, rethink my communication style and standards, and here's the thing that is difficult, but it's worth it. You have to have a personalized leadership approach. I work with Bob different than I work with Jackie, then I work with Shelley, then I work with Kurt, then I work with Greg, who's the CEO of one of my companies. I've worked with Abba, a partner and the CEO of one of my companies, then I do with Brian. I do with Tony Pease, who's a CEO of his own firm now. Each one of these high octane leaders I just mentioned, it's a very, very different operating system. And to the degree I slowed down to learn that operating system, then I was able to maximize the value of those relationships. And so, I just wanted to add that perspective as to the why it's super important, some of the points that you all are, are unpacking. Let me flip this a little bit,[c] Bob and Jackie, and Bob, what is a question that you'd like Jackie to come in on? Jackie, what's a question that you'd like Bob and I to come in on from this same topic, but why don't I'm gonna flip the script just a little bit. And and how would you, uh, frame the next phase of our conversation? And, Bob, I'll start with you.
[00:39:22] Bob: Jackie mentioned my kind of obsession with self awareness earlier. So I would love to dig in a little more on that because, Don, honestly, from my perspective, if we're being honest, and we always are, you changed massively from the day I met you to who you are now as a leader. That was based on the fact that you were self aware enough to, a, recognize that it was gonna improve the value of whatever you were doing and the self confidence to do it. And so I don't wanna be negative about it. Most people are not self aware. We don't teach civics anymore, so people don't understand how to act in public. We don't teach how to think critically, so people carry around the same belief system that they formed in their minds when they were 13 or 14 years old. Both those things lead to big problems when you're talking about 350,000,000 adults trying to hold up a democracy. So self awareness, we say it we say it, like because I think we're three people who find ourselves pretty self aware, but it's not universal. And so how do we is it even possible to manifest this? Maybe a great CEO who is not good at certain things could at least go out and find a champion who could they could surrogate that to them. A true chief people officer who could be transformational for a company or an organization's culture, Just CEO just hands that person enough power to get that thing done. Maybe that's the answer, but I'd love to dig in a little more and get get Jackie's opinion and your opinion.
[00:41:00] Jackie: I think to be self aware, you have to be equal parts humble and confident. Because if I'm doing something that I can do better, it doesn't mean all of the things over here that I do great or not great. And I need to know that about myself and be confident in that, but also be open to where I can, um, grow and be better. For me, not everyone can multitask. I can. So I can hear what people are saying and also, oh, I'd have to remember to do this other thing and this other thing. That doesn't translate well when an employee is giving you an update on the work that they're doing and they feel is important, and you're writing notes to remember to do something else. So one of the things that I had to do as a leader is say, okay. This stuff goes down. You have my full attention, and understand how you come across to leaders. Now I don't feel distracted because I'm like, oh, let me remember and write this quick note. But the way that it's perceived by that employee who is very important, very much part of the success of the company is like, this must not be important to her. And so that's just one example of understanding that there are ways that we can grow and we can develop and we can listen better and we can react differently in situations. So understanding how we're perceived is the center of self awareness because we all think we're coming across as one thing. One of the things that I say is, well, you can't see your face. And so you have to really evaluate yourself and audit yourself and say, is the person that I'm interacting because that's part of relationship building. Is the person that I'm interacting with, do they feel like they have my full attention? Do they feel valued in this conversation? And I think that's important. So equal parts confidence and humility to be able to evaluate yourself critically and then also hear evaluation from other people, which is sometimes hard for us, but important for those of us who endeavor to really grow and be the best leader we can be.
[00:43:32] Donald: I think I mean, all of that great stuff. For me, self awareness became more of a pillar of my leadership style and being the more it was connected to where I wasn't going to be able to win without being better. And for me, I had to any significant change in my life personally or business is tied to an outcome I want or an outcome I don't want. If it's an outcome that I want, then that willingness to dive in, because I'm a competitive learner, and many leaders are, it just has to what's the motivation, is I wanted a team that could operate without me. And so, if every decision had to come to me, if every if nobody felt comfortable making a mistake, then here's what people will do. Everything goes to the top leader, and until that top leader says yes or no, nothing really gets done. A lot of things get discussed, but nothing really gets done. And, personally, I'm really allergic to that. I'd rather my team make three or more mistakes, learn from it, get to the right answer, and they're doing it, than wait, wait, wait, wait till I make what is a guess on my part anyway. Right? I don't have the answer. I'm just willing to make a decision. That's different. I don't have all the right answers. I'm just willing to make a decision. That's very different. So, because I wanted that kind of autonomous culture, then I had to create enough space for that to be real, even if it took time and effort in terms of years to get it there. The other thing that I think about self awareness and the things that I don't want is I don't want to be perceived as someone not willing to change. Now, if I don't agree with you, I'll tell you. But if we talk and we have a point of agreement, because I'm gonna ask people that work for me to change a lot, to be better, be stronger, different things, I don't wanna be a hypocrite. I'm a lot of things that don't wanna be a hypocrite. If there are areas that I need to be better, and self awareness was one, Jackie, I'll give a very specific example. It doesn't matter the meeting. It doesn't matter who's in it. But I was in this meeting, and I was getting the same question that I thought I had answered three different ways, and I was getting frustrated. And somebody sent me a little text, and I looked at it, and they were like, Look, you need to be patient, because once all the questions are answered, this team will execute flawlessly. And you won't have to think about this again, it'll just be done. And I was like, word? Okay. Any more questions? And then I answered every question, even if it was the same question 10 times in different language, all the different things. And then, to Jackie's point, three, four months later, the prototype I got back for a new product we wanted to do. The way we wanted to market, it was good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. But the team was not going to act in an aggressive way without really fully understanding my point of view. And then they went off and did some good work. But, to Jackie, your point, and then Bob, your point on having somebody not as a proxy, I have at least cultivated team members that will tell me the truth and will orient me real time. I respond to it because I like directness, but I think meaningful work as a responsibility for a leader is something we have to reiterate that is a real time statically changing thing like the stock market. It is not something that you get right and it stays right. It is something that you're managing on an up or down level because there's so many dynamic factors, and that's one of the things makes it really hard, but it's worth it. And Jackie, I'll flip the microphone to you. What question of Bob or, or me, like, what would you wanna unpack? Self awareness was great. Bob, that was awesome. I'll give the mic to you, Jackie.
[00:47:08] Jackie: So I am interested in your thoughts on how the integration of AI affects meaningful work for employees in the workplace.
[00:47:20] Bob: Bob, I'll let you jump. I think first and foremost, I am kind of in an AI bubble because I'm a power user. I've trained myself. I work with it every day, and I know that that's not the consistent. I know for a fact. And not just in the business sense, in the personal sense. There are people in The United States who don't even have a solid Internet connection in their home. Lots of people. Thousands and thousands. So things are unfair and unfairly being rolled out. From a business perspective, I think that companies have to move deliberately, but with small successes to build on larger successes. And I think that I know there are people on my team when when I was running the global team at Workplace Auctions who were a little bit afraid to tell me that they were using AI because they would make assumptions about what I thought of their skill set or they were doing strange things, odd things. I don't know what people think, you know, when they're sitting in at their desk and trying to get their work done. So I think that meaningful work has to begin in the AI era with some transparency, some some guidelines, and some guardrails. So that's probably just good in the business world in general. It's probably good in most organizational settings in general. In my current work, I have to give out a syllabus at the beginning of the semester, and that is our contract. It has the guardrails and the guidelines, and we follow it. Maybe it could be a little more of that in the organizational world, particularly when it comes to AI. Like, here's where we're headed, Here's how we use it. Here's when we don't use it, and here's what we never ever ever do. So that's kinda my initial thinking.
[00:49:07] Donald: Wonderful question. AI in the workplace to me is this is a this is a transformational change in the way work is done in every business. I'll use COVID and then I'll come back to Aon. One of the things about the two and a half years in 2020 and into 2022 with COVID is everyone was experiencing it. Now, everyone experienced it different, country to country, based on your beliefs, were you for vaccines or not. I'm not trying to unpack all those things. What I am wanting to describe is everybody was experiencing it at the same time, which makes it very different than many other global phenomenons and different things. It was happening to all of us in real time. It's the same with AI. Only difference is people think they have a choice to participate with AI or not. And so there's people that are putting it to the side versus leaning into it, that it is going to decimate how they work, how their business operates, if they don't take it seriously as a new construct. The second thing with AI in terms of adoption, and Bob, this speaks to your point, just because it's important, doesn't mean you have to try to do something with it quickly. You have to have your goals as a company for AI, your guidelines, and then what are your guardrails to your point? Those come from the top in the leadership of how we're going to do it. Then what tools are you providing? And the way I think about AI is very simple. You have to have an education phase for your team. You have to have an experimentation phase, where people are just playing with it. Then you move to an execution phase, which is some pilots in your organization, and then you start to chase the economic value of it. If you skip those phases, you end up putting a lot of effort into AI for AI's sake, not for the productivity of your employees. You're doing it for AI's sake, and now you're producing a lot of content that's garbage, that people can tell was written by a machine, that doesn't have a heart to it. And so I think AI plus the human centric nature of winning in the marketplace of communication is a beautiful thing, and it will help you be faster, smarter, quicker. There was a paradigm years ago where you can have something that was fast, high quality, low cost. Pick two of the three. That was the mantra. In the age of AI, I want it all. I want it fast. I want it high quality. And I want it low cost. And in the age of AI, they want it all. And so, we've gotta teach an employee base now how to integrate a new toolset that is afraid that AI could take their job. Great. That's one way to think about it. Let's just assume it will. And if something's coming to take your job, then you might wanna put up a fight. And the way you put up a fight is how do you become AI fluent and then learn how to apply AI to the things that you're doing in the work that you're pursuing. But, I'm a big fan of it, but I'm equally as afraid, because there's so much knowledge that you can bubble up quickly, that you really have to be talented and smart and innovative, to now how are you going to use this information to grow your employees, to grow your clients, to grow your business? Because the average things people used to get a lot of credit for, the machine can kinda do. And that's a really big shift in in everything we're working. That's a great, great topic. Jackie, on the same point though, I'm interested in your thoughts. I'll throw that question back to you in terms of AI's impact on meaningful work.
[00:52:38] Jackie: So I asked it because I don't really have a great answer. I think what's important is still centering relationship, communicating the real impact, the transformational impact of AI, and ensuring that you're providing the resources for your team to utilize AI without the impacts of what Bob alluded to earlier. How does how do does this leader perceive me in using AI? Because for women, especially, and underrepresented professionals, there's historically been a different level of repercussion for mistakes and errors, and it's tougher to establish real credibility professionally. And so those people that have experienced that don't wanna mess with that using a tool that could be perceived as cheating or doing something quicker, not using my own mind. And so there's historically, and historically, just in the past year, been a little bit of hesitance in adopting AI. And so the problem with that is now because large language models are based in what you can find online and also inputs, if the inputs are all coming from one type of demographic, then they don't get those necessary inputs from women, necessary inputs from underrepresented professionals that can create a more holistic outputs versus biased outputs. So there's there's lots of problems with people that look like me in particular not using AI. So I think it's important for companies and for leaders to say, this is the direction of the world. This is the direction of business. This is how I'm gonna support you in using it. Totally agree with Bob on, here's kind of our operating system for how we use AI in our workplace to make people feel comfortable. But those are my thoughts about how we integrate AI. It's the leader's responsibility to create a level of comfort and accessibility in the workplace.
[00:54:55] Donald: I've kinda guided the conversation, which I love doing with the two of you because I just wanna get those nuggets of wisdom out. What should I have asked that I didn't as we wind down this discussion? Like, what you know, Bob, I'll give you kick it off, and then Jack can give you the some space as well. What would you like to share on this topic that I didn't ask or guide us to, uh, as we land the plane for this conversation? This won't be the only one. This is really for our audience. The three of us are really unpacking this. We've got a upcoming book we're in the process of researching. We're gonna take the shared knowledge and perspective that we collectively hundreds of years of knowledge and and perspective and really create a blueprint for leaders to drive meaningful work in their organization. So in no way is this the last word. It is the landing the plane for this conversation. And so, Bob, I wanna give you some space, and then, Jackie, I'll pass the baton to you. And the thought is, what hadn't I asked that you'd like to share?
[00:55:53] Bob: I'd actually as we've all been unpacking this, Don, I think one of the things that I value when we talk is that you're getting into rooms through your executive advisory services. You're seeing the world from a different level. And so I'm thinking that if I were in the c suite of a billion dollar up, it could be a $1,000,000,000 company, it could be a $100,000,000,000 company. Am I gonna be listening to this and saying to myself, this is okay if you're in a 20 person business or a 100 person or even a thousand or 2,000? But what happens when you have a 188,000 employees? So I'd wanna hear from your perspective, is it actually possible in large corporations for leaders to do the kind of work that we are outlining or that we are advocating for strongly?
[00:56:49] Donald: I'm smiling because I am emphatically yes. And yesterday, I had a call, and I and I won't name drop here, but I'll get permission to leverage some of the learnings from this particular client. But I was talking to the CEO of The Americas of a billion dollar global brand and his senior VP of HR. And we were talking about training and education and the call was at from 05:30 to 06:30PM. So I wanna, I wanna unpack this a little bit. It was important, but this is when in the day, the CEO could get to this important topic with all of the other items, number one. But number two, here's the thing that was really powerful. Started working with this company three years ago, and the CEO was not on board with some of this stuff. Three years forward, we were looking at every single reply to a survey questionnaire that we sent out to the director and director level folks for his entire organization, and we were walking through every piece of feedback and had his undivided attention. He didn't agree with it all. He didn't like it all, but he was walking through it, and he was like, this is gonna be the my leadership team's responsibility. Alright? This is what I need to work on better. This is what and I was so excited because this high octane leader, if you meet him, if I told you the company, but three years, he is now very, very open to feedback because he ties the feedback as a part of his formula to know how to win. And once we got over that hurdle, slowly but surely became more and more open, and now the team is more open of being very direct and clear on the things that they see working and not working. So, yes, but not without a very significant amount of effort. But the value will be significant. Second thing that I'll share on that now, that I'll actually wanna hear from from from Tacky, is I also think it is not really the size of the business. If you have a 200,000 person company, then that CEO's gotta make that mandate with their leadership team and their top 200 leaders. I have another client that I'm doing a one and a half hour seminar on this topic with their top 200 global leaders. So, that means the CEO thought enough of psychological safety, employee engagement, that wasn't going to flow through their organization of thousands. Think about how big this company is. The top 200 leaders is who I'm talking to. So, yes, it can be done, but it does require a CEO with the courage to look at the commercial impact along with the cultural impact and put those things together as a part of their winning strategy. So it's really, really important the relationship that the CEO has with their self awareness, with their really goal with growth, but it can happen. And I'm seeing a lot of leaders that I'm talking to work with that. And the reason that I'm able to be helpful, and then Jackie, I'll give you the microphone, is I am very much like them. Now, I don't always deal at the scale there. I work with clients that have much larger businesses. But the perspective of how do we manage the bottom line and link the people stuff to the charter of the business is a problem worth solving. And I'm seeing a lot of CEOs wanting to dig into that as we all grow together. Jackie, I would want to hear your thoughts on kind of the the last word, the thing that I didn't ask, or if you wanted to comment on what I just said, I just wanna give you that space as we land the plane.
[01:00:23] Jackie: I think the the thing that is left to ask is how do leaders get started creating meaningful partnering with their employees for meaningful work for each individual?
[01:00:38] Donald: So where do you get started? One is the ask. And so I'll give it my perspective on two things. If you have a partner like us, if I'm coming in to help you, great, I will help you with a blueprint. But what if you don't? And you wanna do something tomorrow. Right? You don't have to have a formal three sixty degree, all the different things. You can sit with your leadership team, have everybody on your leadership team break out a white sheet of paper, and then do the magic wand exercise. And just say to your leadership team, listen, if I were going to accept your ideas to help transform and grow the business, what are two or three things that you would want me to know? And just write them down. And give your team a minute, let them jot those things down. If you were able to counsel me and I was gonna take that counsel, what are the two or three things that I am doing that are inhibiting our growth as a business, our culture growing in different things? Just write those down. And depending on the relationship you have with that team, they can pass them in to HR. You can consolidate it. It's anonymous. Or you can tell each one of those folks, our next one on one, I want to walk through what you wrote down on the sheet. You're gonna have my undivided attention. I want you to think about how to present these things to me when we have thirty minutes together, and I'm going to at least take one or two of them and try to be better and stronger. Now, that's not exactly how everyone should do it, but that's a way you can do it as a leader to just start communicating your openness and your commitment to being better and stronger and more collaborative. And then the second thing that is really, really important is getting outside points of view. Most of the time, the things that you need to fix inside of your business, it's not that you're not capable of addressing them. It's that you're looking at the same data, people, personalities, all the time that you can miss simple but powerful opportunities that are right in front of you. And so, I do recommend working with an outside partner to just help you and your other leaders think more about how creating meaningful work is meaningful to the bottom line, meaningful to building your culture, and meaningful for you to become more and more of an inclusive leader. And so those are a couple things that I would share with folks that needed some nuggets to get started tomorrow, and then maybe work with somebody to help them on a long term basis.
[01:02:57] Bob: I would say to the listeners, follow us on LinkedIn, send us an email. We'll send you a electronic copy of the Inclusive Leadership Handbook, which is filled with areas for people to start. I'll give it to you. There's your starting point, and then figure it out from there. That's a it's a great the Inclusive Leadership Handbook for for listeners who are unaware, a book that that we published a year or so ago that Don and Kurt Merriweather, who's now the director of marketing at Workplace Options, wrote. And it's a fantastic guide because it's it provides the insight, but also practical exercises that leaders and their teams can do together and individually to promote inclusive leadership. So it's a great resource.
[01:03:41] Donald: Jackie, final thoughts?
[01:03:43] Jackie: I would say the real question for leaders is, are you connecting daily tasks to larger purpose? Are you recognizing contributions? Are you creating growth opportunities and inviting that employee's voice into the conversation for business? Because meaningful work isn't a perk. It's a necessity, and it's the foundation of engagement, of well-being, and, ultimately, business success.[d]
[01:04:11] Donald: I'll let that be the last word. Follow us on LinkedIn. We have a lot of free material we'd love to share with you. We're gonna be building out this concept. And so if you follow us, we'll probably have some polls and different things out as we do our research. But meaningful work to just restate Jackie's comment, how do you connect large tasks with your overall purpose is a really important thing to reflect on. And both, uh, Bob, Jackie, I talk to you all day. I could talk to you all and unpack these things all the time. I have a page of notes. And so I just wanna thank you all for being partners, for being friends, and we're gonna attack this and try to change the world and make work a better place.
[01:04:46] Bob: Thanks
[01:04:47] Jackie: for having us, Don.
[01:04:48] Bob: Thanks, Don.
[a]@abegail@fame.so lets use this as a hook
[b]@abegail@fame.so @will-h@fame.so just checking as we usually have another hook if its more than 1 part. Am i to use the same hook for both parts or will another hook be selected for part 2?
[c]@abegail@fame.so let's start part 2 here if possible :)
[d]@abegail@fame.so @andy@fame.so let's go with this for the part 2 hook :)