To Lead Is Human – Episode 47
Crafting a Code of Conduct (Scott Freidheim)
Scott Freidheim: The business world is rife with opportunity, and if you stick to those tenants that you aspire to define you on your journey, you’re going to have a wonderful journey.
Sharon Richmond: I’m Sharon Richmond, and this is To Lead is Human. For not quite 40 years, I’ve run a business called Leading Large. I coach C-level executives to 10x their impact, clarifying priorities, energizing organizations, adapting their personal behaviors, and through this, building cultures of accountability and respect. In this podcast, we help you envision how to supercharge your leadership by introducing you to executives who lead with intention.
These business leaders exemplify the principles of leading large. They know that as leaders, the positional power they have comes with an equal measure of personal responsibility. These leaders not only deliver stellar value to their customers, clients, and stakeholders, they also prioritize building organizations that provide purpose, meaning, and a healthy environment for their employees. We benefit learning from the challenges and successes they’ve experienced on their human journey.
Joining me today is Scott Friedheim, the managing partner of Friedheim Capital LLC and author of Code of Conduct, Tales of the Rollercoaster of Life. Scott describes himself as a family focused, community minded, risk-taking adventurer and businessman. He served on senior leadership teams across multiple industries, ranging from financial services to mass merchandising, brand management, private equity, engineering, and even staffing. Specifically, Scott served on the global executive committees of Lehman Brothers, where he was Chief Administrative Officer, Investcorp, CDI Corp and Sears. Two roles, Chief Operating Officer and {resident of Kenmore, Craftsman & Diehard. He’s also served on the boards of several not-for-profit institutions, including Spelman College.
As Scott and I talk, listen in on how he describes the importance of organization culture, and when and how a leader can build it, as well as his tips on what helps develop a true meritocracy. Scott, welcome to the show.
Scott: Thank you so much for having me. It’s terrific to be here.
Sharon: Thank you. You’ve held many and varied senior leadership roles, so I guess with such a breadth of experience, I’m going to start with what might be kind of a tough question. But what would you say are the three or four major transition points in your life as a leader?
Scott: Well, I think each one of the experience an opportunity to reflect, to learn, and to approach your next area of responsibility with more maturity, depth, experience, understanding notwithstanding, whether it’s in the same field or not. So I’ve had a number of inflection points, one being I was on the executive management team of a Wall Street firm that was the largest corporate bankruptcy in the history of the world. Another one was when I had in my head a clear line of sight around value creation, but I didn’t have the support of the board. What do you do in that instance?
Well, frankly, from my perspective, if you’re a player on the field and the coach wants you to do something that is against your constitution, against your core beliefs, against where you think you should be headed, then you don’t belong on the field. So that was an instance where I proactively resigned. And then there was another one where I resigned from a position because it was under certain leadership. And if I wasn’t going to be the next leader, I was not comfortable with the other alternatives.
So having the presence of mind to say, life’s a journey, make sure that in whatever position you’re in, you believe in the mission, you believe in the vision, you believe in the strategy, and you believe and are excited about your ability and motivated about your ability to add value within that context.
Sharon: So in that bankruptcy experience, what was the big takeaway for you there? What did you have to face in yourself? Was there some kind of awakening?
Scott: Well, frankly, the immediacy of my proximity to bankruptcy was so startling that it focused me on the resilience and relentlessness that is required in sport. And I dug deep into the tenacity that was required when I played soccer and other sports. So I would say the predominant call to action was survival, because I went overnight from a position where I thought I’d never have to work again because I was living within the context of what I was making and my net worth, that evaporated overnight. So it was a call to action, and it was a moment in time where I had to reflect on what are the tenets that I want to define me in my life.
Sharon: So what was the tenet that came clear to you around that time if there was one?
Scott: Resilience, relentlessness. The majority of your audience is going to resign or be fired in their career. And what do you do? And you’re not always going to have an alternative readily available. What do you do? And do you attack the moment with optimism or do you sulk? And do you have a mindset of victim mentality? And I think it’s incredibly important. And I think today, much more so than decades ago, corporate America is much more transient part the desires of the younger members of the workforce, but also on behalf of the corporations, who have much less allegiance to the tenure of the employee base.
So I think more than ever, it’s really important that people who operate in business come up with those things that they want to define themselves but one of them being you need to be relentless.
Sharon: So when you’re thinking about some of these other key transition points, I noted a couple really interesting things about your background. For one thing, you grew up in a, I hope this doesn’t sound offensive, in a pretty privileged environment. You’re coming from a well to do family. You grew up overseas, your dad has had a significant corporate role his whole life. And so you grew up in an environment knowing about business, knowing about what was possible, having a sense of, oh, I can see people before me have achieved a certain degree.
And listening to one of your previous podcasts, you talked about how important it felt to you to be intentional. And I’m just wondering, like, where in the journey did you switch from driven to achieve the, like, early career goals to, oh, I should maybe be a little more intentional. Maybe I haven’t been as mindful as I could have or should have been earlier on.
Scott: Yeah, I think there were a number of moments in my career where I was given a wakeup call as it relates to intentionality, particularly as it relates to how I wanted to live my life. 9/11 was one of those moments in time. I didn’t think I was going to get out of the downtown area alive. I had a near certain death experience where I was riding a bicycle from Aspen, Colorado to Colorado Springs, and I went into a truck. And in that moment in time, what I realized was life is not about what you accomplish, what you accumulate, what you achieve. It’s about how you live your life. And that’s the only scorecard that matters.
So, frankly, that was the most fortunate day of my life because I didn’t pass on to whatever comes next for us. Rather get an opportunity to redefine my track record for that moment in time. As it relates to the journey as child, you’re right. My father was CEO of Chiquita, vice chairman of Boz Allen, CEO of Sun Media companies, which included Chicago Sun Times. But what I witnessed every day was someone who was creating opportunities, who was working relentlessly to achieve, and who instilled in me a desire to accomplish something.
There’s a passage in the Bible that speaks to the talents that we’re all given. And what do you do with those talents? Do you bury them? And if there’s something that weighs on me more than anything, that I feel I’ve been given more talents than I’ve given back, and I feel the pressure of time to deliver on using your word, those privileges that I’ve been given to.
Sharon: I would say I grew up maybe in the widest privileges situation, but very well off in my family. And so opportunities, I could see them, I could hear people achieving them. There might be people in our audience that haven’t had that experience. And so how do we help folks recognize that they have a lot more agency than they might think they do early in their careers?
Scott: In the case of my father, he got accepted to Harvard. He didn’t go. He didn’t go because he couldn’t afford it. So he is a caricature of the American dream, and someone saying, I’m not going to accept the norm that is my family, rather, I’m going to chart new territory. And he took risks. When I was five years old, he was a junior person in the Chicago office of Blue Zone and Hamilton, which is a management consulting firm. But he was one of the brightest young talents. And they said, how would you like to start a Latin America practice? And he had three very young children.
And he said, I’ll go, and we move to Sao Paulo and I think risk taking has a lot to do with it. And where you come from is much less relevant than what talents you have, how much effort you’re going to put into developing them, and thinking with clarity about who is in need of your talents. So it’s a mindset of drive and problem solving versus entitlement. And if you can think of how your talents can be used by various companies, it’s incredibly powerful and your background is largely irrelevant.
So when I was on Wall Street, I was in an environment that was rife with racism, misogyny, antisemitism. And at the time, there wasn’t a supportive HR department where you could go and be safe and say, hey, that managing director just told me real situation. Scott, I understand you’re supportive of this candidate. I said, yeah. He said, but he’s black. And I was absolutely flabbergasted. And I immediately said, yeah, he’s the number one finance student at Stanford Business School, has a 720 at his GMat. He’s got a 3.8 GPA. Yeah.
And then there was a moment where he was looking at me incredulously and I didn’t know if he was going to conveniently find a way to fire me, which, in that environment, he was permissioned to do. We had one where the same thing we were evaluating, I was an associate and we had two managing directors in the room. We had the HR department in the room with us. We’re evaluating the top candidates from Northwestern’s business school and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. And we were evaluating the top female candidate and the rankings, one to five, based on problem solving, leadership, and some other competencies.
Then the one managing director said, 3 M. Now, everyone in the HR department didn’t say a thing. I didn’t say a thing nor did the other junior associate. The other managing director said, enlighten us. What do you mean? And he said, mmm, mmm, mmm. Now, did anyone say anything? Did the HR department say, outrageous, inappropriate. You’re gone? No, nothing happened. So what did I do? What I did is I worked my tail off to get in a position where I could do something about it. And then I dedicated myself to contribute to transforming the organization.
So, for example, we created the Center for Finance and Economic Development at Spelman College, an all women, historically Black college and university. I joined the board of directors, and we committed ten to $10 to $15 million. And more importantly, I created a mentorship program where every vice president at our Wall Street firm had a student. I set up video conferencing, and I took away 10% of their compensation. And what was going to happen was, wherever they ended up after Spelman would define whether they lost that compensation or made multiples. So it was a results-based program. But…
Sharon: A very unusual results-based program, I would say.
Scott: Yeah, diversity inclusion is largely about legal protection. It’s about marketing. It’s about checking the box, not about taking your best and brightest and having them apply their problem solving to creating the land of opportunity in corporate America. It’s something very different. So my only point in going through the situations I experienced versus one example of a program I put into place to say, the corporate world, the business world, is rife with opportunity. And if you stick to those tenants that you aspire to define you on your journey, you’re going to have a wonderful journey.
Sharon: Yeah, I appreciate that. So many of us, we go to business school, we take that consulting job. I had not a dissimilar experience to yours, except I was the person. But it’s pretty normal to spend the first part of our young lives chasing success. And I wonder, from the vantage point that I sit in now, and maybe you wonder the same, is it possible for people to start with that awareness before they chase the big dream? Or is it only something we can really come to after we’ve reached a point where we say, oh, this is what I thought I would achieve, and now what?
Scott: I think that’s a great point. And I think when you look across professions, there’s an ecosystem of maintenance, if you will, to get all of the talent that starts in that field to aspire to the next rung on the ladder within that silo. And you could see Hollywood portray it as well. When they portray some movie about Wall Street, there’s no doubt when you’re looking at the protagonists in that film that that is the coolest profession in the world. They do the same thing in the legal profession; they do the same thing in the armed forces.
Well, in Wall Street, for example, a lot of those levers that are used are titles. You stay a couple more years, you could be a vice president. Couple more years, you could be a senior vice president, managing direct, et cetera, et cetera. Compensation. Each year the compensation goes up by x amount of dollars. And then even when you get into very senior levels, there is a whole ecosystem of status around continuing to stay within your vertical, whether that be prestigious boards. Are you on the board of the symphony, the opera, the Met?
So I think, I mean, part of the reason I wrote a book was not because I had anything to talk about as it related to leadership. Frankly, there are 7,000 plus publicly traded CEOs in the United States. And almost every one of them is writing a book at some point. And there been any more before. So rather the only message I had was I was at the edge of life.
Sharon: Yeah, several times.
Scott: But the certain one, that moment, what I realized is the only thing that mattered is how you live your life.
Sharon: Yeah. So we have two previous guests who also have had near death experiences. And they talked about them also with such passion and such clarity that it was for each of them a real turning point. So today’s business landscape is moving faster than ever. It’s more complex. Everyone talks about the world, and I think it is challenging to executives and to leaders at all levels. One of the things I heard you talk about was delegation. And this is something I work with a lot of clients on. How do you think about delegation when you are in the C suite?
Scott: When I first walked into the office of the chairman and CEO of the Wall Street firm where I work, my responsibility was to assess our acquiring another company. And when you’re trained as an investment banker, which I was, you’ve got a whole bunch of tools at your disposal that can give you insights to potentially what something is worth. So I started to tell the CEO, well, if you look at this analysis, he said, what’s it worth? And I continued to embark on my analysis. And he interrupted me getting a little bit frustrated. What’s it worth? Finally I said, well, the range. He said, I asked you what it’s worth. I want one number. And I gave him a number, which is counterintuitive to everything an investment banker is trained to do.
But what I realized was he had so much experience. In any decision, you’ve got effectively a pyramid, which has layers of foundational knowledge, and it all builds up to an answer. And when he said, what’s it worth? He wanted me to skip all of the layers, jump to the answer, and then in his head, in his experience, he would say, does he have any gap in his pyramid of knowledge that he’d want to ask a follow up question? So delegating, if you’re in that leadership spot, which I wasn’t, he was, you own the responsibility and accountability that comes with whatever you decide.
Delegating is something you have to do in a career. The knowledge of the team is far superior to the knowledge of any individual. However you own the accountability that goes with however you decide to delegate.
Sharon: Most young people, when they think about delegation, go from, here’s how you do this to, okay, you go do it, it’s all yours as opposed to making sure along the journey that the person to whom you’re delegating is learning, that their thinking is clear, that you understand how they’re going to make their decisions, that you’ve got that journey with them to make sure that it’s okay to delegate to this person because we’re now aligned with goals and outcomes and I have confidence in their judgment.
Scott: If you do not know how to delegate, you cannot lead because you will not be able to harness the team. And any leader has countless examples. In fact, the majority of these examples’ successes, the vast, vast, vast majority, will be instances of successfully delegating and creating a culture of teamwork.
Sharon: That’s a perfect segue, actually. You didn’t even know this, but the next thing I wanted to raise with you is you’ve lived and worked in many cultures. And I wonder, having worked across so many different environments, what have you learned about the impact of the culture you’re in on the organizational culture that you can shape?
Scott: I think one of the most important things as it relates to culture in a business is ensuring that you have an inclusive environment, that you have a north star that supersedes the value or potential individual motivations of any individual seat, that by virtue of the team-oriented meritocracy that you create, you become a magnet for the best talent because they know that it is a place where everyone can achieve, everyone can add value. Culture is, in my view, one of the single most important things that an organization can have. And as it relates to your audience, where you have a combination of entrepreneurs and large company, there’s a transition.
And, you know, in the early stages of a company, you’re going to have a founder led organization. It’s going to rest on his or her shoulders for the most part, but that’s got to migrate, evolve, otherwise, it will fail. But the lessons that I learned through the various countries where I’ve done business applies to the United States as well. Being open to the concept that people have been exposed, grew up, and have experiences that are completely different than yours. And starting with the premise that they have value puts you in a good position to be open minded enough to find the intersection of value.
Sharon: So is there something you think is core to creating and sustaining a kind of people centric culture? I guess hearing you talk about the importance of inclusivity, do you think we can create that kind of culture? Can we have a corporate culture of accountability and respect?
Scott: Yes, I’ve done that. The way I think about it is there’s an opportunity in the marketplace. From an opportunity in the marketplace comes a solution. That solution should be differentiated or have a competitive advantage in some way. And each one of these steps, there’s some brilliant person that has helped us understand it. So for a culture for which you want your talent to operate within, you need to make sure that everything in the organization is constructed in a consistent way.
So what’s the vision? What’s the mission? What’s the strategy? What is the communication from leadership? What is the compensation program? What does the titling and advancement look like? So, for example, meritocracy. Okay, well, if you advance people simply because they were there for the past 20 years, and it’s a service award, as opposed to a title that was achieved by virtue of value creation, you’ve just created a chink in the armor of the power of your culture.
And it’s for every organization to decide I only care about shareholders, too. I care about the community. I care about my employees. I care about my impact on the world, the environment, etcetera, etcetera. But a culture cannot have inconsistencies in the architecture of the company, and that’s a deliberate process that leaders can go through to identify all of those elements.
Sharon: So is there a particular thing you did in one of your companies that you think was key to creating that kind of culture?
Scott: It starts with vision when you look at all of those elements. So have I put pen to paper and created a process where we’ve defined our vision. Yes. Mission, yes. Strategy, yes. Operating principles. Yes. The communication of all of those. Yes. Through processes that were not top down rather permeated the entire organization. So all of these things were co-created. Yes. Now everyone has equity into this shared culture, vision, strategy, business. So I’ve yet to enter into an organization where you could not readily identify that there were some inconsistencies that had to get addressed.
Sharon: So one of the things our listeners tell us they especially appreciate is those kind of open kimono moments, you know, those personal reckonings. I’m just wondering if you have any moments that you could share about your leadership growing pains that, you know, you had to come face to face with something in yourself, something you learned about yourself, something you had to come accept about yourself that helped you change the way you were interacting with the people in your organizations.
Scott: Well, I gave you one, which was the example of racism and misogyny, and there was another anti semitism experience that I endured, which I’m Catholic, but the presumption was that I wasn’t, and I found horrifying. That being said, you brought up something earlier which I think was a really powerful point, and that was a lot of us graduate from college or business school, we get on a train and we stay on the train for a very long time. It wasn’t until Lehman went bankrupt that I had the opportunity to say, wow, I just spent close to 18 years, maybe 80, 90 hours a week on average. Over 18 years, seeing everything in my life at the expense of work, and I’ve got nothing to show for it economically.
And I had to sell my house and move into a one bedroom and start over. And I thought, what would have I done differently? And I will tell you, I would have had some process in place. I’ve been told this by my father and others once every three years, or whatever it is, have a very deliberate time where you check yourself. Where are you? Where are your priorities? My dad had said, have a life where you cannot wait to get home to your family and have a life where you cannot wait to get into work.
I would elaborate on that concept, and I would say, think of all the things you want to engage in in life, whether it’s spiritual, physical, fitness, nutrition, culture, friends. Think of the universe of things and create a portfolio and make it so that you have time for all of these elements. Allocate deliberately how much time you need to each of these things and be the CEO of your own life. I never did that. And I spent 17 to 18 years on Wall Street and there I was out of a job and nothing to show for.
And I’d love it if anyone listening thought, you know, hey, maybe I should have a deliberate thing. And would have I changed things? Yeah, I would have. So since then, I’ve been living my life professionally much more deliberately. And the nonlinear career going from mass merchandising to brands to private equity is a function of a much more deliberate process.
Sharon: And I think in a way, I mean, what I don’t want to pass here without mentioning is that what you accumulated wasn’t measurable at that time. You accumulated experience that once you digested it, would metabolize into wisdom. And that is how all of us figure out what is core to us, what does matter most. I remember my application to Stanford business school. The big question everybody laughed about is what matters most to you and why? And it was actually a really challenging essay to write in my early twenties. I think that question actually was the first time anyone had really asked me. It actually started me on a journey of thinking more regularly about that question.
Scott: Yeah, you’re much smarter than I am. You know, when I saw those essays, whether it was in college or business school, and yeah, I applied to Stanford Business School and I got rejected. I think in part because I didn’t have the maturity to think about or experiences to think about what a question like that really meant. I was thinking more about how can I come up with a good essay as opposed to internalizing a question that’s as fundamental as that one? So those are the kinds of questions that really matter. And I think anyone on their corporate journey should architect moments in time to deliberately think about their journey.
I was at the World Economic Forum and the gist of what the speaker did was calculated how much time we each had left. And when you actually think about how much productive time you have left and what are you going to do with that time, it’s invariably much less than you think and it creates a call to action. So you’re stimulating for all of your listeners a call to action. And however you can pound the table, I think it’s brilliant.
Sharon: I mean, that’s the pounding I can do, is to say there are lots of people leading out there in ways that are inspiring and you didn’t think was possible, but if you want to do it, you can do it. And I find I learn different things with each guest, but I would say that there is a strong common core, which is that if you’re going to be an effective leader, you have to know yourself, and you have to be intentional about your behavioral choices, because once you’ve said or done something, you can’t take it back.
And the ripple effect that you have when you have a megaphone as large as a C level person has, even in a little company, much less in a $45 billion company, you’ve got to be thoughtful about what impact am I having on this world through these words and actions? So I do think it’s really important to me that leaders think about the power of their language. And the title of this podcast is To Lead is Human. So I wonder, what does that mean to you?
Scott: To me, it’s quite easy. And it was the premise behind writing a book, which is how you live your life, is the most important thing there is, and that’s personal life. It’s professional life. So, to lead. Yes. Number one is, what are the tenets which you aspire to live by? And make sure that the pressures, the motivations for economic value creation do not deter you or derail you from your delivering on the tenets that you aspire to live by. You’re going to fail at every one of them. I’ve failed every one of mine. But to lead is human, and it starts with that.
Sharon: And I think this code of conduct idea, it’s an aspirational effort to provide one with a clear sense of how. What will matter to me. So I went to your site, your Scott Freidheim site, and I filled out the questionnaire, and I got 15 possible categories for my personalized code of conduct. And now I want to know, what do I do with it next?
Scott: So, the point of the book and the site, frankly, is not to give you any answer. I’m not qualified to do that. All I’m trying to do is to put a query in your head, just as you may come up on an annual basis with professional goals, personal goals. And there are all kinds of, whether it’s philosophical or spiritual, places people can go to get depth. I’m simply trying to create a partial bridge to the reflection on that point.
Sharon: Yeah, I have to say it’s a pretty good 15-point list. I mean, I would say whatever your algorithm is, it sorted me out pretty well. How does it work?
Scott: I start with the default, that the nature of humans is good. And I ask ten questions. And in the responses, I say to myself, this is a wonderful person who said this was the answer. What would be the tenants that would describe the person who most positively endorses that?
Sharon: That’s terrific, because, in fact, my code of conduct was very similar to client feedback that was collected on my behalf some few years ago. And so I was like, this is funny. So, for example, wisdom, altruism, service. It’s a very interesting combination. And here we sit telling our stories in service of other people’s learning for just basically the joy of the universe.
All right, so we’re going to wrap up. Is there a last piece of advice you would share with folks so they can have. I’m going to change, I often say, so they can be more successful leaders and build more fully human workplaces. But I think to honor the nature of our conversation, to be more successful leaders in their lives, and to live a life that feels purposeful.
Scott: I think he most important thing is to reflect on how you want to live your life, because fast forward 5, 10 20,30 years, you’re going to care much less about the destinations you achieved, the value you created. You’re going to care, most likely intensely about how you did it.
Sharon: And I might add, the relationships you’ve sustained along the way.
Scott: Correct.
Sharon: Because those relationships turn out to be key to our health as we continue to age.
Scott: I’ve never heard of anybody say who’s made a donation to any organization or has put themselves in the service of others. I’ve never heard someone say, you know what? I gave too much.
Sharon: I’ll believe that’s true.
Scott: There must be a reason.
Sharon: And also, for most of us, many of the people listening, I’m sure we all have an abundance of riches, and it’s incumbent on us to share those.
Scott: Unquestionably.
Sharon: Thank you so much for being here today, Scott. It’s been a delight and a joy to get to know you and to talk with you about your personal journey, your leadership journey, and some of the perspectives you’ve generated along the way. I imagine folks are going to want to know how to follow up with you or stay up to date on your work and maybe learn more about the book. So would you like to tell people where they can find you, how to track you?
Scott: Yeah, they can find me on scottfreidheim.com. They can email me. I email everyone who reaches out to me. And if I can help anybody, obviously, that’s high on my to do list.
Sharon: That’s lovely. Thank you so much. And then is there a site for code of conduct or we just go to our favorite bookshop?
Scott: Amazon. If you type in Code of Conduct, you’ll see it.
Sharon: Or, you know, you might have your favorite local bookstore. Tell them they should order it and have it on a shelf.
Scott: That would be great.
Sharon: All right, well, thanks again for being here.
Scott: Thank you so much. It was a treat and congratulations on everything that you’re doing.
Sharon: Please stay with us for a moment and I’ll share some takeaways in a coaching tip to help you up level your own leadership, starting right away.
So the main two themes that Scott shared as key to his leadership success, and not just in the business world, are relentlessness and intentionality. And these are words that our guests haven’t often mentioned. Well, maybe intentionality a little more. Under the pressure of such professional and personal challenges, Scott faced company bankruptcy at Lehman Brothers, an unsupportive board, he was passed over for promotions, neared personal bankruptcy, not to mention two near death experiences. He describes returning to the mindset of his younger days when he played team sports, and what he remembered was the relentlessness, the persistence that he had to muster to succeed in that environment.
Hitting a rock bottom of sorts prompted Scott’s reflection on what is really important to him, and it’s what inspired his work and his book on the personal code of conduct, as well as the website he’s provided to help folks sort through some of their own beliefs and priorities. His idea of intentionally building the life you want, creating a portfolio, if you will, of the parts of your life that you care most about and will invest time in to help make sure that he is living with intentionality, and suggests the same for us.
One of the things we talked about was how to help others build personal agency, a topic I’d like to explore more with other executives and that I’ve been thinking about quite a lot. So Scott suggests that as a start, you have to really know your own talents, and then you have to take the actions required to figure out where your talents can best be used. This is what inspired him to figure out where he could go to earn enough money so that he could personally address the injustices that he was seeing earlier in his career that at that time he felt powerless to address.
And at later dates, this is what helped him be able to serve on, for example, the Spelman College Board. So I see some injustice even in how we think about and talk about personal agency, which I see is closely related to how we experience power differentials at work, maybe elsewhere as well. For those of us, and I include myself, who grew up in relatively more privileged environments where we were more or less part of the normative group, the dominant group where we were, we often feel more personal agency because of the relative ease we’ve had in achieving the things we’ve attempted in our lives.
Some people even say they’re self-made and believe that the societal lifts that are contributing to their success actually were less important than perhaps they were. This is a controversial topic and one that I think about quite a bit. Does the power differential inherent in hierarchical organizations, which we need for structural alignment, does it by nature limit how much agency an employee can feel and is willing to express at work? Or is it possible for us to build organizations where we have a respected hierarchy and where all individuals are respected and valued regardless of their position?
Of course, not all leaders see the value of their employees feeling more agency. Scott certainly does, and he talked about it when he spoke about the importance of inclusivity in how he builds cultures. That’s about as deep as we can go to that topic today, so I’ll defer further discussion of how do we help our employees feel agency for a different day. My tip for you is to spend some time talking with the employees in your organization about how free they feel to speak up if they disagree, if they see something differently, or, most important, if they see an error or problem in someone else’s part of the business.
I’m Sharon Richmond, and this has been To Lead is Human. You can find out more about me leadinglarge.com. That’s L-E-A-D-I-N-G large dot com. To Lead is Human is part of the Mirasee FM podcast Network, which also includes such shows as Once Upon a Business and Making It. This episode was produced by Cynthia Lamb. Andrew Chapman assembled the episode. Danny Iny is our executive producer, and post production is provided by Marvin del Rosario.
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