Intentional Power E-Book

Lisen Stromberg

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 290

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Intentional Power: The 6 Essential Leadership Skills for Triple Bottom Line Impact is THE playbook for modern leaders. Intentional Power: The 6 Essential Leadership Skills for Triple Bottom Line Impact explores how the transition from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism has created an urgent need for a new model of leadership; a model that enables leaders to navigate competing demands from both internal and external stakeholders including the most racially and age-diverse workforce in history, activist investors, purpose-driven customers, and global government regulators. Intentional Power argues persuasively for a more inclusive, comprehensive approach to leadership disrupting the conventional approach that has been taught for decades in business books, management courses, and by traditional leaders themselves. It is a guide for delivering triple bottom-line impact: enhancing profits, people, and the planet. Written by Lisen Stromberg, JeanAnn Nichols, and Corey Jones, three leadership experts who bring a wealth of experience from their decades of working within companies and alongside leaders as advisors, coaches, and corporate consultants, Intentional Power is a call to action for the next generation of leaders to move beyond an entirely individual focus toward a more sustainable approach to lead and succeed. Deeply researched, the authors draw on an extensive review of the latest literature and insights on leadership development, cognitive and positive psychology, organizational design, and performance management, as well as extensive interviews with leaders across several industries to highlight the most critical skills required by today's executives and managers. They offer a new model of leadership, the HEARTI® model, built on six core competencies: Humility, Empathy, Accountability, Resiliency, Transparency, and Inclusivity. These 6 leadership skills are essential for success in today's new world of work. You'll also find: * A comprehensive, inclusive, and effective approach to leading organizations through the rest of the 21st century * Examples from leaders across numerous industries who are driving impact for the teams, the companies, and the world at large * Practical "How-To's" and actionable Leader Tool Kit activities to help you learn and apply the skills discussed in the book An essential and exciting new resource for next-generation and practicing leaders ready to create profitable companies full of meaning and purpose, Intentional Power is the hands-on leadership guide that founders, entrepreneurs, directors, executives, managers, and impact-driven employees everywhere have been waiting for.

Leseprobe

INTENTIONAL POWER

The 6 Essential Leadership Skills For Triple Bottom Line Impact

Lisen StrombergJeanAnn NicholsCorey Jones

Copyright © 2024 by PrismWork, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN 9781394193509 (Cloth)ISBN 9781394193516 (ePub)ISBN 9781394193523 (ePDF)

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Inspire free people, societies, and cultures to move courageously toward mutually beneficial positions where all can thrive.

“Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.”

—His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

The Modern Leader's Goal

Inspire free people, societies, and cultures to move courageously toward mutually beneficial positions where all can thrive.

The Modern Leader's Responsibility

Create and maintain environments that encourage confidence, creativity, and constructive change where all stakeholders prosper.

Preface

If you, like us and like the thousands of leaders around the world with whom we have worked, coached, and collaborated, are realizing that everything has changed, that the old ways don't work anymore, and that we need a new model of leadership, then you are in the right place.

Welcome!

Intentional Power: The 6 Essential Leadership Skills for Triple Bottom Line Impact is for anyone who believes that their purpose as leaders—as humans—is to use what power they have in service to something far greater than just their company's bottom line. This book is for leaders who understand that work—and here we mean paid work—is central to our collective well‐being, and so the places in which they work must support all of us to thrive. This book is for leaders who feel a sense of moral urgency because they recognize that the devastation of climate change won't just impact their lives but the lives of their children and grandchildren and the many generations that follow. This book is for leaders who see the potential of capitalism as a force for good, rather than as a force for the 1%.

Intentional Power is for leaders who are committed to delivering triple bottom‐line impact—people, planet, and profits—because that is the only way to lead in this new world of work.

So if this sounds like you, thank you for giving us your precious time. Here's a little about us.

A month before the global lockdown, Lisen's mother died from a rare brain disease called PSP, or progressive supranuclear palsy. In many ways, her passing was a blessing given that it was both inevitable and timely. Lisen and her family were able to be in the hospital in those last days of her mother's life unlike so many whose loved ones died in hospitals alone because the pandemic limited access. The month before her mother's death, Lisen and JeanAnn, previously strangers, joined a small group of women committed to supporting each other professionally. Meanwhile, Lisen and Corey, who knew each other from previous work in advertising and marketing, began ideating how they could partner to help companies foster highly inclusive, highly productive, highly profitable workplace cultures—and then, Covid.

All three of us had recently left leadership roles at companies and were launching into new entrepreneurial careers. We were each on a mission to move from success to significance. What was supposed to be a professional connection, turned into a lasting collaboration to understand life, leadership, and the power of legacy.

Over the next six months, in the darkness that was the global pandemic, Corey, JeanAnn, and Lisen gathered virtually to try and make sense of the world. We bonded over our experiences as traditionally underrepresented talent in Corporate America and as humans. We pondered why it was so hard to thrive in the workplace, why companies—and their leaders—keep making the same mistakes when it comes to fostering cultures of belonging, and debated how companies could and should serve a purpose far greater than filling the bank accounts of a select few. It didn't take long for us to realize we were aligned in our belief that the challenge was both rooted in, and could be solved by, focusing on leadership.

Our career journeys could not have been more different. After graduating from college with a degree in engineering and doing a one‐year stint at National Semiconductor, JeanAnn built her career exploring the corporate jungle gym at one company, Intel. She started by working 12‐hour night shifts in the manufacturing plant solving problems at 3:00 a.m. with a team of independent rebels. She made moves between product business units, communications, marketing, and sales groups honing her technical and business skills by leading global teams. The breadth of experiences served her well when she was appointed vice president and general manager, Sales and Marketing, leading Intel's Sales Enablement and Customer Experience organization with an $80B revenue pipeline. In that role, she also served on Intel's Ethics Compliance and Oversight Committee, providing the board of directors with insights to mitigate risks inherent in global corporate operations.

JeanAnn worked with leaders who were inspiring and supportive. Leaders who pushed her to grow and challenged her to expand her capabilities. She also worked with leaders whose leadership attitudes and behaviors were models of what to avoid. JeanAnn started at Intel the year Andy Grove was appointed CEO, and she thrived, in part, because of his leadership. A Hungarian Jew who escaped the Nazis, Andy inherently understood the plight of being “other,” much like women are in the tech industry. He was renowned for his humility, believed in transparency, and proved his resilience in the face of challenge both personally and in his leadership of one of the tech industry's most successful companies. Andy is famous for coining the concept “Measure what matters,” the foundation for venture capitalist John Doerr's book on the importance of objectives and key results (OKRs)—in other words, being accountable. Even though he led Intel in the latter decades of the 20th century, to JeanAnn, Andy Grove set an example for many elements of Modern Leadership.

Lisen's career has been decidedly nonlinear. After getting her MBA, she spent the next 15 years working in marketing and advertising. First, as a brand manager at the Nestle Corporation and then as a vice president at Foote, Cone, Belding—one of the largest advertising agencies in the United States. It was motherhood, or rather motherhood bias, that sent Lisen on a different path. Realizing that Corporate America abhorred caregivers and caregiving—it wants ideal workers who have no distractions and can be work devoted, thank you very much—Lisen became a “single shingle” marketing consultant working with Silicon Valley start‐ups and a number of large tech companies as well. In her personal and professional life, she saw the same pattern again and again: highly skilled, ambitious women like herself who bumped up against leaders who couldn't, or wouldn't, support their dual identities as mothers and professionals.

Lisen ended up interviewing 186 women and surveyed over 1,500 more for her book, Work, Pause, Thrive: How to Pause for Parenthood without Killing Your Career. She learned about trailblazing women whose paths were not a direct route to the top. Unlike JeanAnn, these women twisted and turned and found their own path to success. Like Lisen and like JeanAnn, they faced #MeToo microaggressions, motherhood bias, and the challenge of being the “only” in the room. These women were the canaries in the coal mine indicating that something was not working at work. They proved to be harbingers for millennials and Gen Zs who, in recent years, have challenged leadership because they, too, see something is “rotten in Denmark.”

As a creative and an innovator, Corey's career has centered on storytelling in and around the dynamic world of advertising. He has collaborated with and led teams that produced everything from digital technology, TV commercials, broadcast specials, and feature‐length films to extensive digital installations and in‐person activations that facilitated engagement and change for audiences all over the globe. Early in his career, Corey spent time creating content for T.D. Jakes and The Potter's House of Dallas, where every message tied purpose and leadership for better outcomes. It was there that Corey realized how important the actions and behaviors of leaders were to the communities that rely on them for growth and change.

Corey moved on to work in advertising, designing and delivering creative content for many brands you probably know. He experienced a few bumps including layoffs and stalled promotions along his circuitous journey to executive creative director, where he worked as one of only a handful of Black creative executives in that role across all agency holding companies in the US. Like so many people of color and other historically marginalized talent in the workplace, Corey experienced overt and hidden discrimination, but he also noticed something else. As the only person of color in the room of decision‐makers, Corey found his approach to leadership differed from others who didn't share his experiences or perspective. He realized his teams always led in productivity, trust, and job satisfaction compared to other groups in those organizations. Corey understood microaggressions and the dark underbelly of living as the “other” in a white majority culture. He also understood that a new type of leadership was needed if people like him were going to not just survive but thrive in the workplace—and beyond.

And then Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd …

The horror facing Black Americans, the often inept response by company leaders to social and political upheaval, and the looming climate crisis fueled in us a sense of urgency. With JeanAnn serving as an advisor, Lisen and Corey launched PrismWork in 2020 in a world tilted sideways, but we saw disruption as an opportunity. This inspired us to ask, “What is a best‐in‐class Modern Leader? How do they foster workplace cultures that deliver on the triple bottom‐line goals of people, planet, and profits? How can we support companies and leaders to make culture their competitive advantage?”

Our clients came to us asking for solutions, and so together we embarked on a journey to understand the core competencies of Modern Leadership. Our goal was to map those competencies to give leaders a new paradigm to meet the complexity of today's world.

We read scores of leadership books, listened to a myriad of podcasts, conducted extensive secondary research, and asked leaders themselves. We interviewed hundreds of women and men ranging from directors of engineering to vice presidents at manufacturing plants, from chief people officers at biotech firms to advertising CEOs, and then we surveyed thousands more. We wanted to unpack who was successful and why. Patterns emerged. Again and again we saw six core competencies rise to the top. Best‐in‐class leaders shared these traits and behaviors: humility, empathy, accountability, resiliency, transparency, and inclusivity. We call it the HEARTI® model—the six essential skills for Modern Leadership.

We wanted to test our philosophy around these new leadership competencies and decided what better place than to start with some of the smartest, next‐gen talent struggling to lead in the midst of this century's biggest workplace disruption. In the fall of 2020, JeanAnn and Lisen offered our class on “Modern Leadership in the New World of Work” through Stanford University's continuing education program. It was, if we can say immodestly, a game changer.

We saw that the HEARTI model spoke to these leaders in ways previous leadership courses had not. Our students told us,

I finally have clarity on why it has been so challenging to lead before.

Now I know what I need to do.

You've provided me with a new way of showing up in the world.

This material should be provided to every person aiming to be a successful leader.

We have since taken HEARTI around the globe to leaders through our Modern Leadership labs, to teams through our group leadership programs, to international conferences, and to companies through speaking engagements, webinars, and coaching with their senior executives. As one of our students said, “This is isn’t just about leading differently, this is a movement. Not just for our selves, but the world at large.”

Our students asked for more, a guidebook to support their leadership journey long after they completed our course. This book was designed to meet their needs and yours. We start with context setting, putting words to the gestalt, and then lay out an overview of HEARTI to give you an understanding of the framework. At the heart of this book, we go deep into each of the six core competencies of HEARTI—humility, empathy, accountability, resiliency, transparency, and inclusivity—providing you with data, stories, and tools to help uplevel your leadership capabilities. We end with a call to purpose because why lead if you can't make an impact?

Thank you for the time you are committing to this book and for including us on your leadership journey. Most importantly, we are grateful to have you join the HEARTI movement and commit to making change for the generations to come.

1Everything's Changed

When their faces popped on to the screen as they joined our virtual classroom, you could see the eagerness and the anxiety. Thirty‐seven students, mid‐career professionals, had signed up for our winter 2023 Stanford Continuing Studies seminar on “Modern Leadership in the New World of Work.” These up‐and‐coming leaders would be logging on to Zoom one night a week for the next eight weeks. In this class, like previous classes, we have students from around the world: San Francisco, New York, Toronto, London, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Sao Paulo, and many places in between. This means they'll be forced to stay up or wake up just to show up. And they do.

Why?

Much like the hundreds of students we have taught through Stanford and the thousands of leaders we engage with through our global leadership labs and our daily work, employees at every level are struggling with the complexity of today's new world of work. They, like all of us, are facing tectonic shifts in where, how, and even why we work. As one of our new students, Abel,* a senior director for a well‐established tech company based in the San Francisco Bay Area shared, “I'm taking this class because I'm trying to understand how to be a good leader in the midst of this chaos.”

Abel is zooming in from Atlanta. He moved back home mid‐pandemic to be near family. Like him, his team of over 100 designers and engineers are now spread across the United States. Abel's boss wants everyone back in the office. He believes it will boost productivity, but Abel's teammates enjoy their newfound flexibility. He's already lost two high‐performing employees to remote‐first companies, and he worries he'll lose more if his company leaders stick to their plans. On top of that, with a looming recession, the company just cut funds for a deeply valued initiative: a program that offers technical skills training to minority students who can't afford a four‐year college degree. His team is upset, morale is low. “I feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place,” Abel admitted, bringing a vulnerability that is not unusual among our students.

Another student, a chief people officer for a fast‐growing start‐up, sympathized with Abel, “I'm taking this class because our managers are unsure how to lead in this environment. I need tools to help them.”

At the beginning of each semester, we do our best to help our students put the challenges they are facing into context. We explain that to lead today, you need to understand the unprecedented forces that are putting pressure on companies and the people who run them. From employees who are challenging previous assumptions and expectations about the nature of work, to external stakeholders who are demanding companies step up to solve critical societal issues, to the underlying question of what is the essential purpose of a corporation, more is being asked of leaders than ever before.

It starts by understanding that everything has changed.

What Used to Work at Work No Longer Does

We don't need to belabor the reality that workplaces have seen a radical evolution these past few years. Global forces such as Covid‐19, supply chain disruption, rampant inflation, rising interest rates, a labor shortage, and the threat of recession have amped up the stress level in today's businesses. Then, of course, the culture wars brought on by movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, the heightened political wedge between left and right, and the stark generational differences, only compound the disruption. Mashing together employees who bring different attitudes and beliefs about their relationship to work and the workplace has created a potential cauldron of cultural divisiveness.

Consider this: Millennials—those born between 1980 and 2000—already make up over 50% of the global workforce, and by 2025, Gen Z—those born between 1997 and 2012—will account for 27%.1 As has been well‐documented, millennials and Gen Zs see work through a very different lens than their predecessors. Rather than work‐first, they are decidedly work‐adjacent. In other words, work isn't their singular focus, it is part of the many things that make up their identity and only one of the things that gives them purpose.

Demographically, when combined, millennials and Gen Zs are the most diverse and the most educated workforce in history. Contrast this up‐and‐coming talent pool with the typical Fortune 500 CEO: Based on averages,2 he's a man, around 60 years old, white, straight, and very likely has a spouse at home caring for the needs of the family. He has singularly devoted his life to rising up the corporate ladder and, in doing so, resembles the “ideal worker.”3 That's the person who is available at the drop of a hat, can work 24/7, and whose identity is defined by their job and title.

This ideal worker's experience in the midst of Covid has been decidedly different from the vast majority of his employees. A mid‐pandemic study of over 31,000 knowledge workers worldwide revealed that 66% of them reported they were “struggling”—burned out, overworked, experiencing unprecedented levels of stress. Leaders? Nearly two in three said they were “thriving”—feeling more connected to their colleagues, earning more income, and enjoying increased time with family.4

This Covid chasm between leadership and employees has landed squarely on the shoulders of our students—next‐gen leaders who are caught in the middle between old‐school (we call them “Traditional”) leaders who consider work to be their end‐all be‐all and are enjoying its benefits, and rising talent who definitely do not and are shouldering most of the load.

We've heard again and again in our research, “What used to work at work no longer does.”

They're right. The traditional approach to how, where, and why we work has fundamentally shifted because of the significant internal and external demands on leaders, as well as the rapid pace of change. Businesses, and the leaders who run them, must either adapt or die. For instance, hierarchical, autocratic leadership is out; collaboration and democratic approaches are in. As we've seen from Abel and so many others, in‐person, every day, all‐day work is a failing strategy. Millennials and Gen Zs want more flexibility in the workplace, despite the dogged efforts of Traditional Leaders. And if your business focus is on productivity at all costs but lacks a clarity of purpose or mission, you probably already know that's a recipe for failure, sending employees into quiet quitting or loud resignations.

It's not just about how we work that is under fire, it's about why. Today's employees and job seekers want more from work than a paycheck, they want to work to be the vehicle through which they can make an impact on the world. They want their companies to be driven by more than the bottom line.

And it's not just employees demanding change. It is consumers, too. A recent study surveying 8,000 individuals across eight global markets revealed that consumers are four times more likely to buy from a company that they perceive as purpose‐driven. And if they didn't think the company was “walking the talk,” 76% said they took action including no longer buying from the brand, switching to a competitor, or discouraging others from buying from or supporting that brand.5

The expectation on business as a tool for social good has increased significantly over the last five years. Public relations powerhouse Edelman reported in a recent study that 70% of consumers wanted the brands they buy to address social and environmental issues. The report revealed that business is now the sole institution seen as competent and ethical; government is viewed as unethical and incompetent. Meanwhile, six times as many respondents said business is not doing enough (vs. overstepping) on societal issues such as climate change, economic inequality, energy shortages, health care access, and reskilling the workforce.6

This puts leaders, as Abel made clear, between a rock and a hard place. Why? Because the stakes have never been greater for leaders like himself to improve the overall health of the business, all the while satisfying increased employee expectations for meaning, purpose, inclusion, and societal good.

The purpose of the corporation must evolve, but Traditional Leaders are struggling to adapt.

Corporate Purpose: It's Not (Only) Profits

A brief history of corporate purpose reveals that sentiments have swung back and forth over the past 100 years. In the early days of the 20th century, companies were exclusively focused on profits, but by the mid–20th century opinions had changed. In 1957, Harvard economist Carl Kaysen wrote that management should see “itself as responsible to stockholders, employees, customers, the general public, and, perhaps most important, the firm itself as an institution.”7 However, all of that changed in 1970 when economist Milton Friedman redefined the role of the corporation to be exclusively focused on shareholder value.8 His philosophy became embedded into how companies have been run these past 50 years. This means every decision made by a leader has been designed to ensure profits for the company and, by implication, money for the shareholder.

For some current context regarding those shareholders, 1% of investors own a majority of the stocks in the US stock market, and since 2020, that 1% gained nearly two‐thirds of the $42B in new wealth creation.9 According to the World Bank, we are experiencing the biggest increase in global inequality and poverty since World War II.10 We also face the single biggest existential crisis of our time in the potentially devastating impact of climate change. As the rich have gotten richer and the rest have struggled to make do while the looming climate crises went from a theoretical debate to a daily reality, attitudes regarding the role of the corporation have changed. Employees, customers, consumers, and even investors have been asking themselves, “Given all of its power, shouldn't a company do more than make the 1% richer?”

Without question, the balance of power on the planet today lies in the hands of business. Corporations rival governments in wealth, influence, and power. … If a values‐driven approach to business can begin to redirect this vast power toward more constructive ends than the simple accumulation of wealth, the human race and Planet Earth will have a fighting chance.

—Ben Cohen, founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream11

Hamdi Ulukay, CEO of yogurt maker Chobani, thinks so. He came to the United States from Turkey to study English in upstate New York. He'd heard about a Kraft food plant closing in the area leaving hundreds of long‐time employees jobless. Hamdi was furious. How could the company abandon these loyal workers?! With no money and no business experience, Hamdi managed to raise the funds to buy the plant. Within a year he was able to hire back all of the employees who had been fired and eventually hundreds more.

Hamdi decided his company's purpose was to provide meaningful jobs and create a workplace culture of inclusion and belonging where the employees, their families, and the communities in which they live thrive. Today, Chobani employs over 2,000 women and men; 38% are minorities, 30% are refugees. His executive team is 50% women, and each and every employee is an owner of the company.

In 2019 Hamdi took the stage at TED and declared, “We need a new playbook that sees people … above and beyond profits.” Hamdi told the TED audience, “If you are right with your people, right with your community, and right with your product, you will be more profitable, more innovative, and have more passionate people who work for you, and a community that supports you.”12

Even investors have been rethinking the purpose of the corporation. In his 2022 annual letter to CEOs, Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, one of the world's largest asset managers, declared, “The pandemic has turbocharged an evolution in the operating environment for virtually every company… . And the relationship between a company, its employees, and society is being redefined. A company must create value for and be valued by its full range of stakeholders in order to deliver long‐term value for its shareholders.”13

Pressures from consumers, employees, and investors among others has forced Corporate America to take notice—and take action. In 2019 the Business Roundtable, an association of 181 CEOs who run the largest US‐based corporations, announced the purpose of a corporation should no longer be exclusively about shareholder value—now it would be about stakeholder value.

Their announcement read:

We commit to:

Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations.

Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits. It also includes supporting them through training and education that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world. We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect.

Dealing fairly and ethically with our suppliers. We are dedicated to serving as good partners to the other companies, large and small, that help us meet our missions.

Supporting the communities in which we work. We respect the people in our communities and protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses.

Generating long‐term value for shareholders, who provide the capital that allows companies to invest, grow and innovate. We are committed to transparency and effective engagement with shareholders.

They finished the announcement with this:

Each of our stakeholders is essential. We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.14

This new statement affirms the essential role corporations can play in improving our society when CEOs are truly committed to meeting the needs of all stakeholders.

—Alex Gorsky, CEO of Johnson & Johnson and chair of the Business Roundtable's corporate governance committee15

The move by the Business Roundtable was a clarion call for change.

From Shareholder to Stakeholder Capitalism

Capitalism as we have known it is dead. This obsession that we have with maximizing profits for shareholders alone has led to incredible inequity and a planetary emergency.

—Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce16

For far too long, leaders and shareholders have argued that a singular focus on delivering profits for investors was the only way to ensure optimal financial outcomes. But broader stakeholder capitalism is challenging that approach. Let's start with some definitions:

Shareholder capitalism

(aka “me‐first” capitalism) is a system that is rooted in the belief that the sole purpose of the corporation is to provide value to shareholders. This means the sole purpose of the leaders within that corporation is to focus on productivity, output, with a relentless focus on limiting expenses to ensure the singular bottom line delivers as much profit as possible.

Stakeholder capitalism

(aka “we‐first capitalism) is a system in which corporations are oriented to serve the interests of

all