HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics include HR Tech, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week. Shows are typically 15 to 30 minutes.
Past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, Ultimate Software, McLean & Company, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, Talent Board, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Want to be featured on the show? Learn more here and contact publisher@hr-gazette.com
HRchat Podcast
Love and Leadership with Dr. Glenn Thomas
Curious about how love can transform leadership? We welcome the insightful Dr. Glenn Thomas, a self-described recovering bad leader, to share the Heartwork Leadership Framework on this episode of the HRchat Show.
Drawing from his journey, Dr. Glenn illustrates how genuine care and effective communication can yield positive outcomes both in the workplace and beyond. As we navigate the often challenging landscape of post-Covid workplace cultures, he reveals startling research about employee disengagement, stressing the urgent need to align personal fulfillment with professional roles.
Explore the vital role of self-awareness in leadership as we discuss why only 30-40% of leaders excel in this area and how it impacts workplace culture. Dr. Glenn guides us through the initial steps organizations must take to create environments where employees are excited to return each week.
By acknowledging cultural shortcomings and fostering trust through love and support, leaders can inspire a sense of openness and accountability. We also hear heartwarming anecdotes about mentors Leslie Johnson and Michael Duvall, who epitomized these values in their leadership. Connect with Dr. Glenn and uncover his transformative work at Heartwork Leadership, as we embrace a new paradigm grounded in compassion.
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Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom. And visit HRGazettecom.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. This is your host today, bill Bannam, and I am pretty excited about today's guest because he is none other than Dr Glenn Thomas. Dr Glenn's books have touched the hearts and minds of countless leaders, igniting a movement towards a new paradigm of leadership that places love and the human experience at its core. Glenn has spent most of his life consulting and working with leaders from all walks of life. He often shares that his purpose in life is to inspire people to love more abundantly, selflessly and unconditionally, in the service and care of others. This is why I'm excited. This guy is awesome. This is going to be a very positive episode and I'm super excited to share it with you. Hey, dr Glenn, welcome to the show today.
Speaker 3:Bill, I am excited. I am more excited than you, bill, so I just want to say thanks for having me and I want to let everyone know I am excited. I am more excited than you, bill, so I just want to say thanks for having me and I want to let everyone know I love you.
Speaker 2:All right, there we go. That is the way to start this conversation today. Why don't you take a couple of minutes and introduce yourself to our audience and tell them a bit about the Heartwork Leadership Framework?
Speaker 3:Sure. So you know, listen, I'm a recovering bad leader. So all the leaders out there who have struggles, I'm with you, I'm recovering. We started this journey of Heartwork a little over 15 years ago because I realized that love is more powerful than manipulation. And I said that, and I'm going to say it again Love is more powerful than manipulation. And because of that, I had to go on my own self-discovery journey, and hard work is just that. It's a self-discovery journey first and foremost, and we've been working with hundreds of organizations over the past 15 years and thousands of leaders to help them understand that, listen, there's one way to lead and it's through love. And so it's been an exciting journey up until now, and I can't wait to do it for the next 30, 40 years, if I have that left on earth, hopefully and so be it. We're going to have a great time doing it.
Speaker 4:Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show.
Speaker 2:Quick follow up, if you don't mind, before we get into the hard-hitting questions for today's conversations. Um, I, I've been lucky to uh, learn a few different communication styles. I'm I'm a believer in the right context. When somebody says to me, bill, uh, I need to tell you this is coming from a place of love. And then it could be constructive criticism. Um, it could be ways, ways to help improve certain things, but I respect that kind of approach when it's done in the right ways, when the communication styles fit that. What do you think about that approach in terms of setting a context and explaining that conversations are based on the fact that you care about that person and you want to improve them, whether that's in a professional capacity or in a personal one?
Speaker 3:Look, I think it's amazing to do so. I think those leaders that really set context and really provide the listener and understanding that this is coming from a good place. I think that's half the battle. Coming from a good place, I think that's half the battle. But, bill, I think on the other half of the battle is demonstrating that through your actions, consistent and intentional actions.
Speaker 3:We call that compassion and because compassion is the action of love and empathy, we often see times that we may give context to the listener in understanding that it's coming from a good place and that's great. But if the listener or the receiver doesn't see the action consistently or with intention, it can fall short. So I'm totally in agreeance with you that is great to always preface your statements, your comments, your conversations, with the understanding that this is coming from a place of love and concern and care. And it's also equally important to make sure that we are living with intention and consistency with our actions, with compassion, so that when those circumstances occur that the receiver or the listener has some historical context to lean on, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:It does. Thank you very much. Okay, so where are we at at the moment, dr Glenn? What does the research tell us about the current state of workplace cultures? Are employees happy? Are they fulfilled? Are they engaged? Are they performing at high levels? Or actually, post-covid and all the other crazy things going on in the world at the moment, are workplaces struggling to find synergy with a future forward workforce.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I think when you look at the research and look at some of the studies that have been conducted over the past year or so post-COVID, there's a range of things, but I think we can really center in on that. It's around. People are still kind of feeling disengaged for the most part. We conducted a study a year and a half ago over 250 leaders, private and nonprofit sector leaders and what we found was over half of the folks basically say they're not fulfilled in some kind of way. That's a big statement. It doesn't mean that the workplace is a bad place of way. That's a big statement. It doesn't mean that the workplace is a bad place. It doesn't mean that their jobs are bad, but it means there's some disconnect between what's happening in their lives and then how that's translating in the workplace culture.
Speaker 3:What we also have found with our research as well as we see some other studies through some very prominent firms and research firms what we also see, though, is workplace cultures are struggling to continue to get great engagement from team members and leaders, and ultimately, that's affecting performance. I think what we really focused on on our end as far as as a company, we saw that love actually influences performance by more than 16. That was a great data point to to really take a look at and because of that, what we, what we understood from that, is that folks want to be connected with, they want to be engaged, they want to be valued. They, they still want all those engaged, they want to be valued, they still want all those things they wanted pre-COVID.
Speaker 3:But I think what COVID did for many of us and we see this in a lot of the articles around workplace culture and leadership and performance what COVID did was it kind of woke us up. It told us hey, listen, we deserve more, we deserve to be seen, to be valued, to be loved, to be cared for. And I think workplaces as well begin to understand we have to do a better job of treating our team members in a way that they want to be treated, and that doesn't mean negating performance. What it means is that it will actually influence performance and again, our firm conducted studies that we did a year and a half ago demonstrates that when people feel connected, they perform at a higher level.
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Speaker 2:Okay, well, thank you. There's a lot to unpack there, so let's hone in on parts of it. And regular listeners of this show know that sometimes I like to be mean and switch things up. For this one in 60 seconds or less, which is interesting given that my question is in your more than 25 plus years in executive leadership roles, consulting and coaching high performing leaders, dr Glenn, what is the single biggest pain point that is consistently prevalent in most organizations? Go?
Speaker 3:a lack of self-awareness. I did it in three seconds.
Speaker 2:I didn't say wow okay, okay, all right then. Uh, follow-up question. Would you like to elaborate and take your time? Great answer that deserves time to explain.
Speaker 3:It all boils down to self-awareness.
Speaker 3:You can go on TikTok, you can go on LinkedIn and you take all of the kind of the premier leaders, executive leaders or consultants, thought leaders that talk about this type of stuff, and you're going to find a thread. The common thread is that we understand fully. That's about self-awareness. When our leaders, our team members it doesn't matter who you are when you're unable to understand who you are, how you show up in the world, how you actually express yourself which is what we focus on in our company how you express your heart, center, you know leadership skills and attributes, then everything else is going to be in trouble in the workplace, because self-awareness allows you to position yourself.
Speaker 3:To be honest with yourself first, so you can then be honest with others. To see yourself first, so then you can see others. To see yourself first, so then you can see others. To understand with clarity your mind, your heart, your emotions, so you then understand others and then take that understanding and turn it into compassion. Self-awareness is the key, fundamental issue that all organizations are challenged with From here until the next century.
Speaker 6:That's going to be the area that we should always start with. Our approach is centered around cognitive neuroscience research, combining the latest research and modern learning methods to create informative and psychologically safe learning experiences. Our programs enable individuals to achieve career readiness and immediate impact in their chosen field. Moreover, we help businesses create positive learning experiences, increase productivity, enhance team performance and build upskilling resources to meet the needs of today's modern workplace. Learn more at nebulaacademycom. Thanks, and now back to the HR chat show.
Speaker 2:Quick follow-up to that, then how many leaders that you work with when you go into an organization? Give me a percentage? Maybe I don't know that you would say are actually self-aware and that they are.
Speaker 3:They are at that level I think, high self-awareness when we even we, you know administer our assessments. I would give you 30 to 40 in the room on an average, which is a decent number, uh. But the only challenge there is, if you have 60 of your leaders not somewhere, uh, then they're going to impact you, most likely in a greater way, in a in maybe in a more negative way, and so, yeah, three out of ten, you know that's. I think that's a good, safe number interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, uh, we like to offer some practical tips and tactics on this show, of course, because we want to give our listeners lots of reasons to to continue their learning journeys. Uh, here's one that I'm hoping you can help with what's the remedy for designing cultures where people hate leaving the workplace on a friday and they're excited they're actually excited about showing up to the workplace on monday? And, of course, let's caveat by saying workplace means many things these days.
Speaker 3:Yeah, listen, I think what we also see in the data, the most recent data, that more than half of folks they want to get out of there on Friday and they don't like really coming back on Monday too often.
Speaker 3:I think the first practical step is to identify as an organization and be self-aware enough to know that that's your culture. I think organizations have a responsibility to say listen, we have the majority of folks that work here that they don't like coming back in on Monday morning and I think the first step is to own it and the first step is to be honest. But I think the problem, bill as well, and many folks can receive this is that if you don't have a safe culture for folks to be honest about that, that they don't feel they don't, they're not excited about coming back in on Monday, then you will never really truly know, feel safe enough to share with us that, hey, they're out of here early Friday and they're dreading coming back on Monday. Because if they feel safe enough to admit that, then you can begin to own that and then take the next step. It's ownership and responsibility.
Speaker 2:What gets in the way of creating a safe space space, historical actions.
Speaker 3:So we are as humans. We only pull from what we have seen, not what we have heard necessarily. So what we see is what we equate to be true. So how do you treat the team members that get fired? Or how do you treat the team members that have consequences based on bad performance? How you treat people that go through, uh, personal experiences that affect their work?
Speaker 3:We look at all these things and then we make an assessment of the organization and based on those actions, that's how we see the organization to say to the organizations whether or not we trust you or not. So if you do things that are not trusting right and your team sees it, they're going to equate that to you are not trustworthy. And if you're not trustworthy, then I can't share with you my true feelings. If I can't share with you my true feelings, then the organization can't have accountability and responsibility to own the deficiencies of the culture of the organization to make change. It is a traumatic cycle. Understand to be true, based on their eyes, not what you send in the communication, but based on what you do every single day that consistently tells someone whether or not you should trust, they should trust you or not so a big theme of today's conversation is around spreading the love, the message of love.
Speaker 2:Let's, let's uh offer a bit of love now to uh, maybe two or three folks, perhaps uh, who in your career has influenced you maybe that's a mentor, maybe that's a manager, someone else in a leadership role, maybe a colleague, but folks who've perhaps shown you the way to better communicate with other people, um to to put them on the journey that you're on today.
Speaker 3:Oh man, I'm glad you asked that question because I love to give flowers while people are still living. Leslie Johnson she is a deputy county manager of Mecklenburg County government here in North Carolina. She demonstrated to me through one action over 21 years ago how love should look in the workplace. So I want to shout out Leslie Johnson because she was awesome to me. Another individual Michael Duvall. Michael Duvall is the actual. He's the national director for Boys of Color with the YMCA of USA here in America. He demonstrated to me patience and grace when I was struggling to be a good leader and that was an act of love. And I think that those two acts of love and there have been a number of others, but those two acts of love have really influenced me tremendously over my career, because they didn't have to do those things, but they were genuinely those people and they demonstrated in a way that really illuminated for me what it means to really exhibit love to another period, but also in the workplace.
Speaker 2:Well, that is awesome. Thank you for sharing the love there. Dr Glenn, we are almost out of time. I'm afraid we're going to get you on again soon. I love the messages that you share and they're very important. Before we do wrap up for today, how can our listeners connect with you? So maybe that's email, linkedin. I bet you're super cool and all over tiktok and places. Uh, do you want to share your website? Uh, you've got a podcast. Tell people about that. Any events coming up for you? Anything else you want to share?
Speaker 3:sure, just check this out on all social media platforms. Uh, at dr glenn speaks, dr gl-R Glenn Speaks, g-l-e-n-n Speaks, dr Glenn Speaks, or HeartWork Leadership Just look up Google HeartWork Leadership. You'll find us on LinkedIn. You'll find us on TikTok. You'll find us on Facebook. You'll find us on YouTube. Just love to connect with everyone and continue to share and learn from you all as well. And then you know, know, we have some great events coming up. Uh, this year. Uh, you know, the heartwork summit. The first ever heartwork summit will be here in the charlotte, north carolina, in october, uh, october 18, 2024, as well as a lot of other speaking events. I'll be a keynoting at some I can't talk about because they they tell us to wait until after the event has happened. They're private. Some of those are private events, but still excited about always sharing the message of leading with love. And just wanted to say thank you again, bill. Awesome, awesome, awesome platform.
Speaker 2:Well, that just leaves me to say for today. Dr Glenn, I think you are awesome. I love the message that you share with folks. Thank you so much and thank you for being my guest today.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:And listeners as always. Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom.
