Truly Human Leadership

Here's something our CEO Bob Chapman recently wrote in a post on our Truly Human Leadership blog:

The people our leaders lead, they do not "report to" that leader, they are within that leader's span of care. Just that simple deviation from the normal way of phrasing things completely changes the dynamic of the relationship. Per a Google search, the literal definition of "report to" someone is "to work under the supervision of or take instructions from someone who is in a higher position. It implies a hierarchical relationship where the person reporting is accountable to the individual they report to." But when you talk about being within a leader's span of care, it helps to change the way leaders think. It suggests the sense of responsibility a leader should feel to those they lead. Our children do not "report to" us. Our spouses certainly don't. When we invite someone to join our team, we are bestowed with the awesome responsibility to provide the care and inspiration and support that that precious human being needs to become everything he or she was meant to be.

As Bob says here, just a simple phrase like "span of care" can change our perspective as a leader. And this takes us to our conversation today.

Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute is Barry-Wehmiller's consulting arm that specializes in helping other organizations unleash the extraordinary in their businesses and their people. They do this by helping those organizations identify, develop, and equip their leaders.

On this podcast, Ben Huebner, a Senior Consultant at Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute is going to talk to a couple of leaders from Metlife, who I'm sure you've heard of. Since 1868, MetLife has been of the world's leading financial services companies, providing insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management to individuals and institutions around the world.

Ben's conversation is with Anna Lavery, Vice President, Market Enablement and Andrea Douglas, Vice President, Regional Business Service & Implementation. The three talk about the work Chapman & Co has done with Metlife for a few years now, mainly with what Chapman & Co calls Truly Human Service and Truly Human Language. Notably, you'll hear the impact using the phrase "span of care" has made in their organization.

Barry-Wehmiller's Chief People Officer, Rhonda Spencer, was recently recognized by the St. Louis Business Journal in their 2025 HR Awards for Innovation in HR. This was a long overdue recognition of Rhonda's leadership, but also the work of the BW Global People Team and everthing they've done to help all of our people, all over the world, feel like they matter.

Rhonda has been with Barry-Wehmiller since before the development of our Guiding Principles of Leadership and was one of the major voices in its creation. She was our first Chief People Officer and it's her primary responsibility to be the steward of our values and make sure that light shines to the furthest reaches of our organization.

Recently, Rhonda took part in a webinar discussion with Mike Budden, one of the partners in our Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute, Barry-Wehmiller's consulting arm that specializes in helping other organizations unleash the extraordinary in their businesses and their people. They do this by helping those organizations identify, develop and equip their leaders. You can learn more about them at ccoleadership.com.

On this week's podcast, we want to showcase an edited version of that discussion. It's an interesting conversation as Mike and Rhonda discuss what it means to scale a Truly Human Leadership culture globally. They talk about the processes and systems we've developed to try to make that happen and there's a lot of insight to apply to your own organization.

True leaders create space for individuals to be passionate about their work and feel a sense of ownership. Nobody wants to be managed, bossed or supervised. We must inspire creativity in our people. Those ideas are the backbone of a culture of continuous improvement and a culture where people feel like they matter.

Michael Gelb is the author of books such as How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci and Innovate Like Edison. He has been applying the principles of genius thinking to personal, leadership and organizational development for more than 40 years. He has worked to inspire creativity in the workplace and his journey led him to our friend and Everybody Matters co-author, Raj Sisodia. Together, they wrote The Healing Organization: Awakening the Conscience of Business to Help Save the World.

On this podcast, Michael talks about inspiration, creativity and how that leads to helping people in organizations feel like they matter.

BW CEO Bob Chapman often tells a story about meeting Steve Jones, who was formerly a high school football coach who led his teams to five consecutive state titles from 2013-2017 with an incredible run of 70 consecutive victories, a Wisconsin state record. With those impressive credentials, Bob asked Steve what he taught his players about winning and losing. Steve said they didn't. He said that they teach them to play their position well for their fellow team members. Do it as an act of respect for their fellow team members.

He said, "When people truly care for one another, it's amazing how hard they will work for each other."

To Bob, it begged the question: if you create an environment of unconditional care, wouldn't the people there want to "play their position well" for their teammates?

Our friend, Shawn Murphy, has written a book about teams, team building and team performance: Work Tribes: The Surprising Secret to Breakthrough Performance, Astonishing Results and Keeping Teams Together. To Shawn, one of the key aspects of an environment of unconditional care is belonging. As he wrote in a guest post on our Truly Human Leadership blog:

"As human beings, we are wired to belong. Some researchers say that belonging is what bonds people together. It's the bond that is either life-giving or life-depleting... Of course, the reverse is true when you don't feel a sense of belonging. You protect your thinking. You become hyper-focused on yourself. You limit pro-social behaviors. You close yourself off to relationships. Your potential is limited. Yet, when a leader can help someone feel like they belong to the team, the team benefits. Ultimately the company benefits. Human potential is unleashed. Mediocrity is diminished."

As we often say, everyone wants to know that who they are what what they do matter. That is important for every leader to remember. On this podcast, you'll hear a discussion with Shawn as he talks about Work Tribes and the idea of helping your people feel like they belong.

Marcel Schwantes is a speaker, author, acclaimed executive coach, and an Inc. Magazine Contributing Editor. Marcel writes and delivers presentations, workshops, courses, and coaching programs about the human side of business and how cultures of care, connection, and belonging power companies to thrive and outperform the competition. Marcel also hosts the popular "Love in Action" podcast, on which our CEO, Bob Chapman has been a guest.

Marcel has a new book that just came out, Humane Leadership: Lead With Radical Love, Be A Kick-Ass Boss. There are a lot of parallels in Marcel's writing with what we talk about at Barry-Wehmiller. In his book, Marcel draws on personal experiences, case studies, and compelling research to reveal how leaders can transform organizations by embracing genuine care for their people.

On this episode, we talk with Marcel about how he defines "Humane Leadership" by exploring what he calls the five principles of effective leadership: patience, kindness, humility, advocacy, and trustworthiness.

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This podcast features a story from Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute, Barry-Wehmiller's consulting arm that specializes in helping other organizations unleash the extraordinary in their businesses and their people. They do this by helping those organizations identify, develop, and equip their leaders. You can learn more about Chapman & Co. at ccoleadership.com.

Chapman & Co. has a dedicated branch in South Africa which has worked with Coca-Cola Peninsula Beverages on leadership development for a number of years. Peninsula Beverages is the largest Coca-Cola franchise in South Africa with 1300 team members. To date, more than 60 percent of their organization has taken the Listen Like a Leader class, which is Barry-Wehmiller's groundbreaking empathetic listening training.

Mike Budden is a partner at Chapman & Co. and the managing partner of their Cape Town South Africa office. On this episode, we're going to feature a conversation between Mike and his friend and colleague, Bryn Morse, Coca-Cola Peninsula Beverages HR Leader.

Mike and Bryn talk about their journey to bring Cola-Cola Penn Bev's company culture to another level. They talk about the difference it has made in the company and why the journey was important. And they talk about the importance of Barry-Wehmiller, our CEO Bob Chapman and Chapman & Co to that journey. They talk about a trip to a Barry-Wehmiller facility in Phillips, WI and a lot more.

Kristen Hadeed hadn't turned 30 and she was already the CEO of a successful company and well on her own leadership journey.

Through her company – Student Maid, an all-student cleaning company – she was able to touch the lives of hundreds of college students and hundreds more clients. She has helped these students work their way through school, but she also created a culture that helps them develop important life and leadership skills.

Today, Kristen spends her time helping leaders, teams, and organizations around the world embrace their humanity. She has worked in just about every industry,in almost every U.S. state and several other countries, and in hundreds of virtual meeting rooms. Whether she is delivering a keynote talk, multi-day workshop, or facilitating ongoing development, her goal is always the same: to ignite the kind of human leadership that builds trust, belonging, and wildly engaged cultures.

Her work has been featured in news outlets including PBS, FOX, Inc., NBC, TIME, and Forbes. Her first TED Talk has more than three million views on YouTube.

Kristen has long been a friend of Barry-Wehmiller and she wrote about her leadership journey in a new book, Permission to Screw Up: How I Learned to Lead by Doing Almost Everything Wrong, that has sold more than 50,000 copies worldwide. Kristen was previously a guest on our podcast for a profound conversation about the Millennial generation. She returned to talk to us around the time Permission to Screw Up was released.

Raj Sisodia is the co-author of our CEO, Bob Chapman's, book, Everybody Matters, and the co-founder of Conscious Capitalism. You can find out more about Raj on his website, Raj Sisodia.com

Raj is working on a very special project we'll be able to talk about soon and, as every conversation with Raj is enlightening, we decided to roll the proverbial tape to capture some of his insight.

We ended up talking about Raj's experiences for the last 20 years or so, specifically through some of his books: Firms of Endearment, Conscious Capitalism, Everybody Matters and The Healing Organization. Raj's career in and out of writing has mirrored the rise of the conscious leadership and conscious business movement, and so we talk a little history as well.

On this podcast, you're going to hear that conversation. One of the reasons it's such an important conversation, is that while Raj recounts a bit of history, he traces things to today and where the conscious business movement is right now. It'll give you a lot to think about.

Our friend Donna Hicks, a Harvard professor, world peace negotiator and author of the book, Leading With Dignity, was recently in St. Louis to participate in an event co-sponsored by Barry-Wehmiller at St. Louis University. It was a roundtable discussion on a subject of which Donna is an expert: dignity. We also brought her to Barry-Wehmiller to have a discussion with our senior leadership team.

Donna has appeared on this podcast before, but while she was in town we wanted to sit down and have a conversation to talk about her work in defining and characterizing the importance of the concept of dignity. We also wanted to talk with Donna about how Truly Human Leadership and the work Barry-Wehmiller is doing to influence leadership and business honors dignity.

We've all heard about those organizations who have a dynamic and powerful leader who brings everything to new heights of success and notoriety. But then, when the times comes where that leader moves on, things are never quite the same. Other able and competent leaders left because they never received an opportunity to grow and use their gifts because the organization so relied on that one dynamic leader. So, after his departure, the organization flounders, or worse, ceases to exist.

This is a scenario that Barry-Wehmiller has seen a time or two in our history of acquiring or, as we say, adopted companies and brought them into our family to hopefully give them new life.

One of the most caring acts of leadership and one of its greatest responsibilities is to provide a safe and stable living for those people who are in our organizations, who are within our span of care. That's why the subject of today's podcast is so important. We're going to talk about succession planning, or strategic workforce planning. You may think you understand what that means, but after this discussion, you'll truly understand why it should be a high priority of caring organizations.

Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute is Barry-Wehmiller's consulting arm that specializes in helping other organizations unleash the extraordinary in their businesses and their people. Succession planning is at the heart of what Chapman & Co. does, helping those organizations identify, develop, and equip their leaders.

Today's discussion features three Industrial Organizational Psycologists from Chapman & Co. — Melinda Bremley, Andrea Cornelius and Jenny Morton Eagen — and is moderated by Chapman & Co's Jessie Turner.

As Melinda says during the discussion, "Succession planning requires people to stop and think more strategically about 'what are we looking for, what is needed now, what is needed in the future.' And that front-end piece of the process really is kind of the game changer for having a more strategic mindset."