Transformational Leadership with Henna Inam

Paddy Hull is the VP of Future of Work at Unilever. In this role, he is responsible for bringing Unilever’s social commitments on the Future of Work to life, to help people stay fit for work – now and in the future. He is leading a program to deliver on three commitments, equipping people for the future of work, pioneering new flexible employment options, and partnering with others to create jobs and skills for young people outside of Unilever.

In Part 2 of our conversation, we discussed how Unilever is thinking about bringing flexibility, purpose and sustainability to the career experiences of employees. As work becomes disrupted with the advent of artificial intelligence, robotics and other technologies, the work humans will do is rapidly changing. This can create a lot of fear and anxiety. The antidote to this anxiety is to help people become future-fit through thinking incorporating their purpose, strengths and interests in their career planning. Paddy explains how Unilever leaders facilitate  this transition for employees and how it's time for different and more flexible employment options that fit employees' needs. You're sure to leave this conversation inspired to bring this thinking to your workplace.

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Paddy Hull is the VP of Future of Work at Unilever. In this role, he is responsible for bringing Unilever’s social commitments on the Future of Work to life, to help people stay fit for work – now and in the future. This involves delivering on three commitments: equipping Unilever people for the future of work, pioneering new flexible employment options, and partnering with others to create jobs and skills for young people outside of Unilever. He has identified his purpose as "To bring the essence of Pollyanna into the room". He sees this as bringing joy, creativity and innovation into everything he does.

In this episode (Part 1 of a two-part series) we spoke about Unilever's commitment to enabling over 60,000 associates to discover their own purpose and bring it to work. We spoke about the impact this has had on the workforce and how it fits in with Unilever's leadership values and purpose to make sustainable living commonplace.

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Carol Campbell is Managing Director – Consumer Insight for Delta Air Lines, responsible for guiding and shaping long-term strategies to deliver world-class experiences for Delta’s customers. Under Carol’s leadership, the Consumer Insight team plays a critical role in helping Delta to understand what’s most important to customers in the present and anticipate expectations in the future. Carol joined Delta in 2018 after 22-years with the Walt Disney Company. 

In this episode, Carol gave us a front-row seat view to how Delta Airlines managed the often competing needs of stakeholders (shareholders, customers, employees, communities) during the pandemic. Led by their purpose and core values, Delta leadership navigated tough decisions and doubled down on a culture of humility, deep listening to stakeholders and focus on restoring trust in travel. It's an inspiring and instructive story about how to manage the needs of our own stakeholders during rapidly shifting times of disruption. 

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Kevin John Delaney is a voracious reader, night owl, musician, husband, father of three and lives by the words of Helen Keller, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” He is the Vice President of Learning and Development at LinkedIn and the author of A Life Worth Living – Finding Your Purpose and Daring to Live the Life You’ve Imagined. In 2008, Kevin suffered a series of health issues that left him in a coma, very close to dying. He received an organ transplant that saved his life and left him determined to live a life of purpose.

In this episode we discussed the power of being open to the many purposes in our daily lives. We don't have to wait for a bolt of insight to discover our true purpose in life. When we find ways to be useful to others which also bring us meaning, it is good for our own well-being as well as our impact in our workplace and community. This is also especially useful in times of disruption.

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Joe Whittinghill is the Corp Vice President of Talent, Learning, and Insights for Microsoft. Joe leads a team responsible for activating culture and learning, building world-class leaders, and enabling the workforce of the future for Microsoft.  Joe has expertise in strategy, organization development, learning, executive development, the neuroscience of leadership, and culture activation.

In this episode, Joe shares the story of Microsoft's business and culture transformation, partnering with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. He shares how growth mindset has been a proven driver of Microsoft's transformation. The underpinnings of the business and culture transformation is personal transformation and a new set of leadership principles. Here are Microsoft's three principles: leaders create clarity, leaders generate energy, leaders deliver (multi-stakeholder) success. These principles are driven by proven neuroscience of human performance. Take a listen into our conversation about the three simple leadership practices under each of these principles. Finally, we also spoke about Joe's aspiration for us as a leadership tribe, what we would have learned by 2030.

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Sarah Devereaux has spent the last 14 years in the Learning and Leadership Development space at Google. Some of her more recent roles included: Head of Executive Development Programs, Head of Strategic Initiatives for The Google School for Leaders, and Global Lead of the g2g (Googlers-to-Googlers) program. She has a keen interest in the future of work and leadership and a passion for learning and helping individuals and organizations to realize their full potential.

In this episode, Sarah shared lessons learned from creating the g2g program with over 11,000 people across the globe (about 10% of the workforce of 100.000+ at Google) teaching and learning from each other. If you want to create a peer teaching and learning network, listen to Sarah share both the benefits of and their failures along the way. We also spoke about how Google develops change-ready leaders. The executive leadership program helps leaders to upgrade their operating system (for humans this is our consciousness) to understand their own mindsets and grow in-the-moment self and situational awareness. Hint: this isn't the kind of program you're likely doing so take a listen. You're sure to leave energized by Sarah's passion for growing people and their happiness in the workplace.

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Simon Brown is Chief Learning Officer for Novartis, a leading global medicine company based in Switzerland focused on reimagining medicine. He is also author of the Amazon-bestselling book ‘The Curious Advantage’. He is leading the strategy for Novartis to ‘Go Big on Learning’ in support of the company-wide culture transformation to become ‘Curious, Inspired and Unbossed’.

In this episode we spoke about Simon's new book and the steps each one of us can take to become more curious and learning agile. Simon shared the importance of learning in the future of work where most skills will be obsolete in 10 years (many in as few as three years). We also spoke about how we can create cultures of safety in teams for a world that is more disrupted and unpredictable, so people bring their naturally curious selves to their workplace.

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Dr. Jim Loehr is a world-renowned performance psychologist and Co-Founder of the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute. He is also the author of 17 books including his most recent Leading with Character: 10 Minutes a Day to a Brilliant Legacy. In this book he examines the relationship between character and leadership and the timely importance of writing and living your own personal credo. From his more than 30 years of experience and applied research, Dr. Loehr believes the single most important factor in successful achievement, personal fulfilment and life satisfaction is the strength of one’s character. Dr. Loehr has worked with hundreds of world-class performers from the arenas of sport, business, medicine and law enforcement.  

In this episode, we explored how discovering our leadership character through personal reflection is a key anchor for us particularly in times of disruption. His research from the J&J Human Performance Institute shows that character is the #1 driver of sustained success and fulfillment in life. Take a listen to understand how to develop your own personal credo.

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Atul Khosla is the Senior Vice President and Global Head of Talent, Learning & Organization Effectiveness at Mondelēz International. Atul's international HR experience, spanning more than 25 years and three continents, has been primarily focused on driving large scale transformation, strategic Organizational Development and Talent Management initiatives. Atul’s passion is to bring back humanity in leadership.

In this episode, Atul shares his personal story of evolution to becoming a more human-centered leader. He also shares how he and his team are evolving how potential and performance are measured and rewarded for the 70,000 leaders at his company, to shape a human-centered culture.

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Kurt Harrison is a Partner for Russell Reynolds and Co-Head of the Global Sustainability Practice. In this role, Kurt specializes in executive assessment and succession planning advice for clients. Russell Reynolds is a global leadership advisory and search firm with 46 offices in 26 countries. This perspective from their website inspired me: “Sustainability has emerged as the defining issue of our time. There is now an urgent need for a new type of business leader—one who can deliver financial success while also making the long-term sustainability and resilience of our world a top priority. We call these people sustainable leaders.”

In our podcast interview, we talked about what sets these sustainable leaders apart: multi-level systems (ecoystem) thinking, inclusion mindset, ambition & ability to drive change, and long-term view. We also spoke about the gap between our need for these leaders and the current availability of sustainable leaders, how to embed sustainable leadership in the organizational culture and HR practices and the specific action steps we need to take. Take a listen if you want to be part of the movement to change the way the world is led!

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