President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats are one of history’s most successful examples of using language to win public trust. In the depths of the Great Depression, FDR calmly addressed the public, which was shocked by bank failures across the country.  For his all-important first “chat,” FDR called on one of his closest advisors, Harry Hopkins, for a way to explain the crisis (and its solutions) to a desperate and terrified public.

Hopkins is best known as the designer of many New Deal programs. Under his leadership, relief programs such as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) provided income, independence, and restored dignity to millions of American families suffering during the Great Depression. What is less known about Hopkins, however, is that he played a crucial role in crafting the simple language used throughout Roosevelt’s public addresses, or that he was Roosevelt’s primary collaborative partner for the pivotal Fireside Chat that helped end the 1933 Banking Crisis.

Let’s examine FDR’s first presidential Fireside Chat for leadership tools we can apply today. Our role model, Harry Hopkins, shows us how to use clarity and transparency to explain a complex and emotional subject, and the trust such an approach can garner.
 
THE CHALLENGE
The Great Depression, which began with the stock market crash of 1929, significantly weakened the American economy. As businesses failed, Americans began to fear banks would lose what little money they had left, and people rushed to withdraw their funds—which is known as a bank run. These mass withdrawals, combined with unregulated and risky actions that left banks vulnerable to financial shocks, created a cascade of failing banks, and the banking industry collapsed. In an attempt to restore stability, Roosevelt declared a nationwide “bank holiday” on March 6, 1933, temporarily closing all banks to prevent further bank runs. During the bank holiday, Roosevelt’s administration crafted the Emergency Banking Act, which provided a framework for reopening financially sound banks, and reorganizing or permanently closing those that could not be saved. The question was, would the destitute American people trust what little money they had in a banking system that had so recently failed?
 
REBUILDING TRUST: The First Fireside Chat
With healthy banks scheduled to reopen on March 13, a lot was riding on Roosevelt’s March 12 radio address. Hopkins understood that success hinged on accessibility, and he provided Roosevelt with a detailed outline, distilling complex financial information into plain and familiar language.

Working closely from Hopkins’s notes, Roosevelt demystified how banking worked.

As leaders, how do we measure the success of our work, the development of our teams, or the achievement of our goals?

While history best remembers Julius Rosenwald as co-owner and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, he is widely recognized as a visionary leader whose commitment to social change transformed the landscape of African American education in the early 20th century. Working closely with Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute, Rosenwald established more than 5,000 Rosenwald Schools across the country, offering equal education, dignity, and opportunities for Black students. Channeling what he learned while growing Sears, Roebuck and Company from a small, mail-order catalogue into a retail giant, Rosenwald led his school initiative using a three-step leadership approach we can learn much from, today. 

Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools we, as leaders, have to educate and inspire our teams toward a shared goal. But, do you know how to harness its potential, or where to find an example of effective storytelling in action?
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History best remembers Bertha Benz as the daring wife of Carl Benz, the inventor of the world’s first automobile. Debuting in 1886 in Germany, the Benz-Patent Motorwagen was met with skepticism and widespread public disinterest. After nearly two years of dismal sales and a complete failure to attract investors, Bertha loaded her two teenage sons into the family prototype and set off on the first long-distance automobile trip from their home in Mannheim to her mother’s house in Pforzheim. The 66 mile journey was widely publicized and was groundbreaking—both for the mode of transportation, and because it was a woman undertaking this unproven method of travel. As sensational as this journey was, however, and as much as it piqued the public’s curiosity, it would not have been enough to convert interest to action without Benz’s masterful storytelling blueprint.

1. Identify Your Audience and Purpose.  Benz knew that while her husband’s company needed to attract investors, her real audience was potential buyers. Rather than hire an engineer to drive the vehicle, which would send the message the Motorwagen was difficult to operate, Benz knew the sight of a mother and her children successfully navigating the road alone would communicate that Benz-Patent Motorwagen could be operated by everyone.  
2. Choose the Right Story.  While Benz and her sons encountered numerous difficulties on their journey—the Motorwagen had to be pushed up hills; the brakes failed before they reached their destination; the fuel line was prone to clogs—Benz focused her storytelling on the pain point her audience most wanted solved: travel took too long. The 66 mile trip to her mother’s house, which entirely consumed two days via horse and carriage, took just twelve hours in her husband’s new invention.
3. Craft Your Story and Practice Its Delivery.  Working with her sons, Benz wrote out the story of their journey in letter format, creating several copies and including different details in each. She sent these letters to her closest friends and family, asking them for feedback. She also asked them to share her letters with others, reporting back to her how the story was received.
4. Share Your Story.  Once Benz understood which parts of her story most resonated with her target audiences, she began writing letters to newspapers, sharing her story with the public. She made herself available for interviews, and even answered questions from readers, creating temporary columns, of sorts, in several national newspapers. Locally she drove the Motorwagen to hotels and restaurants, parking in front, and shared the story of her road trip with interested passersby.  
5. Follow Up.  As public interest in the Benz-Patent Motorwagen grew, Benz worked with journalists to interview customers who had purchased a vehicle, documenting and sharing their stories, and listening for ways to serve them better. Their customer base exploded, creating with it a culture of adventure-minded people bonded by a new common passion and excited to bring others into the fold. 

Harnessing the power of effective storytelling allows us, as leaders, to connect with our teams, to inspire those we lead toward action, and to create a shared sense of purpose. A good story captivates the human mind, long after dry facts and figures have been forgotten, giving us the perfect vehicle to communicate our vision in a way our teams will remember. Bertha Benz changed the course of an entire industry with a well-told story, and we have that same power within our leadership toolboxes.

Let us equip you with effective leadership strategies from the world’s most successful leaders. You bring the team members, and we’ll create an immersive program, linking real-life examples with your individual workplace issues.
 
 
 
 
            

Recent studies show companies that invest in leadership training enjoy a remarkable 25% increase in organizational outcomes. But would you be surprised to learn that figure significantly increases when leadership training extends to employees outside the management tiers?

While history best remembers Cesar Chavez as the civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association—which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW)—and fought tirelessly for fair wages, better treatment and safer working conditions, he was also one of the first to create a movement fueled by the belief that leadership training is important for everyone.

A Brief History. Born on March 31, 1927 to immigrant parents, Chavez spent much of his childhood traveling from farm to farm, picking crops, and attending school intermittently. During his 8th grade year, the United States and Mexico signed the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican laborers to enter the U.S. as temporary workers to mitigate labor shortages due to World War II. The program, however, became a way for corporate farms to exploit workers by lowering their wages and subjecting them to dangerous working environments and unsanitary living conditions. Chavez’s family suffered under this mistreatment, and at the end of the school year, Chavez dropped out of school and went to work full-time in the fields to support his family.

In 1952, Chavez joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a group that advocated for Latino civil rights. Very quickly, leaders within the organization noticed Chavez’s natural ability to motivate others to action, and they began training him as a future leader. Chavez spent 10 years working for CSO but believed focusing his advocacy on Latino rights fell short of addressing the wide spectrum of injustices faced by migrant farming families like his own. On his birthday in 1962, Chavez resigned from CSO, moved with his family to the heart of the migrant farming population in California’s Central Valley and founded the National Farm Workers Association (later merged into United Farm Workers of America).

A Core Belief. During his years with the CSO, Chavez observed that people who received leadership training enjoyed higher confidence, were more productive, and worked better together—whether they led in any formalized capacity. Believing that open access to leadership training could make the difference between the movement’s success or failure, Chavez immediately established the NFWA Leadership Training Program, which was available to any NFWA member, regardless of educational level or previous leadership experience. The Program taught its students how to listen effectively, communicate clearly, organize others, and work collaboratively, even across differences.

One of the key goals of the program was to help farm workers develop the skills and confidence to create effective and forward change within their communities. Chavez developed a comprehensive mentoring program where farm workers could learn from one another and also come together in workshops to study real-life scenarios and their outcomes.
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To create opportunities for his students to practice their leadership skills, Chavez gave members of the NFWA a voice in the organization, welcoming debate and community-style discourse during decision making meetings. In 1966, he established the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), which formalized this process, and taught students how to form teams to work toward a common goal within the larger organization.  

In spite of the difficulties of organizing a largely uneducated, marginalized workforce, strong opposition from commercial growers, and limited financial means, the NFWA successfully advocated for farmworkers’ rights, changing the landscape of poverty and discrimination that migrant farm workers had endured for decades. Chavez’s belief that leadership is a way of thinking, rather than a formalized position, continues to influence advocacy groups today. But we, as business leaders, should also learn from his example. Recently, the Global Leadership Forecast reported that companies that approach leadership training from an inclusive model were 4.2 times more likely to financially outperform those who confine leadership training opportunities to management positions—a statistic that wouldn’t have surprised Chavez at all.

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Situational awareness has become a popular concept in today’s rapidly changing workplace. Originating in military operations, the term simply means to understand the elements within your environment, then use that information in real-time to inform your approach. But what does this look like in practice?

Let’s look to Dorothea Dix, whom many remember for her role as the Superintendent of Army Nurses for the Union Army during the Civil War. Dix was also a major force working on behalf of the indigent mentally ill, her efforts drastically changing mental health treatment in our country. But change was hard won. The Victorian ideal of “separate spheres” confined women to the private domains of home, family, and morality, and many argued that political engagement would undermine this “perfect social order.” Working carefully within this construct, Dix partnered with powerful male allies to limit her political exposure. She also adjusted her approach when her efforts met with failure.

A Brief History.  Prior to Dix’s advocacy, the vast majority of America’s mentally ill were hidden away in family attics and basements, or worse, thrown into prisons with violent criminals. Treatment was limited to exorcism by a local priest, and most mentally ill prisoners lived manacled to floors or walls or kept in cages to try to manage their behavior. Following the pervasive belief that the mentally ill couldn’t feel pain, cold or hunger, patients were often beaten, stripped of their clothing, kept in damp, unheated cells, and given scraps of food for sustenance. Frequently, wardens supplemented their income by charging entrance fees to allow citizens to gape at the patients as if they were animals.

In March 1841, a ministerial student familiar with Dix’s work as a Sunday school teacher, invited her to teach a class for female prisoners at the East Cambridge jail in Massachusetts. What she encountered there shocked her. Mentally handicapped children and adults were not segregated from violent criminals, their quarters were nauseatingly filthy, and the entirety of the jail was unheated. Working with the male seminary student, Dix immediately secured a court order to provide heat and sanitation for the jail. Within weeks, she embarked upon one of our nation’s earliest social research projects, touring the jails and almshouses across Massachusetts and documenting their treatment of the mentally ill.

A Promising Start.  During her tour, Dix met Samuel Gridley Howe, a physician and powerful advocate for the blind. She convinced him to tour the jails and almshouses in eastern and southern Massachusetts with her, then help her publish a commentary to expose the deplorable treatment and conditions. The two became friends, and when Howe won the election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, he asked Dix to complete her documentation so he could present it at the opening session of the 1843 legislature. Her finished report, a 32-page, unflinching documentation, contained accounts of the “cages, closets, cellars, stalls and pens that the insane are kept in,” and provided her eyewitness account of “the chained, naked [prisoners], beaten with rods and lashed into obedience.” Dix filled her report with political rhetoric and a call to the religious commitment of protecting and caring for those who could not care for themselves.

The response was mixed. Some reacted with incredulity, setting out to conduct their own investigations, which soon proved the truth of her words. Other opponents strongly objected to Dix’s religious fervor, believing emotion has no place in public policy. In spite of these tensions, the report was successful, securing funds for the expansion and improvement of the State Mental Hospital at Worchester, which Dix helped plan.

Failure in New York.  In early 1848, Dix set out on a 10-week tour of New York’s almshouses, insane asylums, and jails, creating a report very similar to what she presented in Massachusetts. Having learned from her critics, Dix removed any mention of religion or emotionality from her report, providing a dispassionate, objective documentation of her findings and suggesting a nonmedical care model, based on the successful Antwerp Hospital in Belgium. The medical community exploded, arguing that all institutions for the insane should be under the direct control of physicians. Dix’s report met with abject failure, but she learned another valuable lesson: get the stakeholders on your side and understand the opposition.

Adapting Her Leadership Strategy.  With a refined plan, Dix traveled throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania, documenting her findings. She carefully researched prevailing medical views on the mentally ill, and common objections to recent requests for funds from a variety of sectors. Dix incorporated ideas to please all sides, arguing that insanity is a condition of the brain (rather than “demons of the mind”), that prompt medical therapy cured many cases of insanity, and that building new hospitals administered by physicians would save taxpayer dollars by removing cured patients from public assistance. Her report met with resounding success, and New Jersey and Pennsylvania passed legislative funding bills to construct mental hospitals across both states.

Although Dix paused her advocacy to serve the Union Army during the Civil War, she resumed her fight, and by 1880, was directly responsible for establishing 32 of the 123 mental hospitals across the United States at that time. Designing her leadership approach to work within the social construct of her environment, and adjusting to difficulties and failures in real-time, Dix’s situational awareness allowed her to adapt and lead with remarkable success. Sometimes a shift in approach is all we need to succeed.
 
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Building a high-performance team can be challenging, to say the least. For true success, its members must share a common vision and work together within an efficient framework. Why do some leaders have success while others fail?

​Our model this month, is William H. Taft, 27th U.S. President (1909-1913), and also Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1921-1930). Taft is the only person to have held the highest office in both the executive and judicial branches of the U.S. government. While history generally remembers presidents more than chief justices, Taft’s reform of our judicial system resulted in a strong Supreme Court and a cohesive court system that clears a docket of over 100 million cases each year. To lay the groundwork for this success, Taft focused on two important areas.    

1. Government Bottlenecks – When Taft was confirmed as Supreme Court Chief Justice on June 30, 1921, the court’s docket was congested by war litigation and an enormous (and growing) backlog of cases, which flowed automatically out of the circuit courts of appeals. In addition, many of the lower courts were mired by inefficiencies and crowded dockets that delayed the delivery of decisions, sometimes by years. Taft considered this a gross denial of justice, stating, “A rich man can stand the delay… but the poor man always suffers.” Immediately, he approached the Attorney General to discuss new legislation, and passionately campaigned for support during congressional hearings, in speeches he made throughout the country, and in articles he wrote for legal periodicals.
   
   ​Reform arrived in stages. In 1922, Congress voted to provide 24 additional district court judges to manage the lower court caseload, to empower the Chief Justice to temporarily transfer judges from overstaffed districts to understaffed districts, and to establish the “Conference of Senior Circuit Judges” (now called the Judicial Conference), an annual meeting of the senior appellate judges from each circuit that, under the direction of the Chief Justice, discussed potential judiciary reform and made proposals to Congress.
   
   With the lower courts beginning to operate more efficiently, Taft proposed legislation to grant the Supreme Court greater control over its docket. Arguing that appeals should be handled by the circuit court in all but very specific circumstances, Taft lobbied for cases to receive consideration by the Justices only if granted a writ of certiorari (the legal document issued when the Supreme Court agrees to hear a case). In 1925, after three years of aggressive lobbying, Congress passed the so-called “Judges’ Bill” (so named because it was authored and championed by judges), which drastically increased the authority and independence of the Supreme Court by converting the majority of its mandatory jurisdiction into discretionary jurisdiction. Within months of each stage of reform, Taft was able to show a remarkable reduction in the backlog of cases.
   
   
2. Team Unity – Taft believed a judiciary that operated as a team would be more organized, efficient and effective. After addressing the most pressing need of overloaded dockets, he turned his attention to establishing “smoother relations within the judicial system.” In a series of personal letters, Taft reached out to every district judge, soliciting their input for national reform in judicial procedure, to every circuit judge, seeking advice to make circuit dockets manageable nationwide, and to every state supreme court justice, asking for help establishing a united federal approach to decision making. “Heretofore,” he said, “each judge has paddled his own canoe and has done the best he could with his district… He is likely to cooperate much more readily in an organized effort to get rid of business and do justice than under the ‘go-as-you-please’ system of our federal judges.”
   
   Creating a sense of teamwork, however, required more than giving the courts a national voice. Taft knew each judge must also learn to prioritize compromise and shared success over personal victory, so he led by example. In nearly ten years of service on the Supreme Court, Taft dissented only 20 times, and only four times in writing. “Most dissents, elaborated,” he said, “are a form of egotism.” Taft held a policy of open discussion in his Court, and encouraged Justices to carefully craft opinions meeting the concerns of all decision makers whenever possible. He taught his Justices to restrict their opinions to the essentials of each issue, and to avoid any confrontation not directly necessary to the task before them. Taft, himself, struck a discussion of Congress’s Commerce Clause from one of his published opinions in deference to a fellow Justice’s opposing view, stating, “It is the duty of us all to control our personal preferences to the main object of the Court – which is to do effective justice.” Incredibly, the decisions coming out of Taft’s Court were 84% unanimous. (By contrast, within ten years of his retirement from the Court, only 39% of the decisions were unanimous, with a figure hovering closer to 29% today.
   
   While building high-performance teams is challenging, Taft’s approach shows us it’s possible when we focus our efforts on creating efficient workflows and a mindset of cooperation. What bottlenecks reduce the productivity of your teams? Do priorities need realignment from personal to shared goals? Answer these questions, and you’re on your way to success.

Let us equip you with effective leadership strategies from the world’s most successful leaders. You bring the team members, and we’ll create an immersive learning environment, linking real-life examples with your workplace issues.

There is an old business proverb that says, “If no one is criticizing your leadership, you’re not leading correctly.” But, expecting criticism does not prepare us, as leaders, to respond to it. Is there a best practice model we could follow? And where can we look to find an example of this model in action?
History remembers Eisenhower as the president who ended the Korean War, sponsored and signed both the Federal Aid Highway Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (the first federal civil rights legislation passed by Congress since 1875), who balanced the federal budget three times, and who kept the American people safe through the Cold War crises of Korea, Vietnam, Formosa, Suez, Hungary, Berlin and the U-2 incident. Despite these successes, however, Eisenhower had his share of critics. He also had a remarkably effective two-step response protocol we can emulate: validate the critics’ right to criticize, then enlist them as allies.

When Eisenhower was named Supreme Allied Commander over the pending European invasion during WWII, he already had vast experience dealing with unfairly critical newspaper journalists. Thousands of miles from action, and seeking to drive sales, journalists would oversimplify complex maneuvers, sensationalize minor events, and lay the blame for failures squarely at Eisenhower’s feet. “In the stories that began to circulate about me,” Eisenhower said of his wartime dealings with the press, “I should have seen the ample warning that the printed word is not always the whole truth.”

Eisenhower recognized that his new role as the public face of the war effort in Europe could be made exponentially easier or more difficult by the press, and on Monday, January 17, 1944, he put his two-step method into action. “Basically, and fundamentally,” he told the group of 50 war correspondents, “public opinion wins wars.” Speaking casually from behind a desk flanked by both British and American flags, Eisenhower validated the correspondents’ right to criticize him to their readers, saying, “…there is one thing that will never be censored in my headquarters—any criticism you have to make of me. That will never be censored, you can be sure.” Then he enlisted them as allies: “I take it you are just as anxious to win this war and get it done so we can all go fishing as I am… we are partners in a great job of defending the Axis. You have your job, and I have mine…” While Eisenhower’s tenure as Supreme Allied Commander wasn’t free of criticism from the press, it was marked by respect and a congenial give-and-take not enjoyed by many in wartime leadership positions.

​But what of the less public criticisms Eisenhower received? (After all, not many of us become the target of newspaper journalists.) Eisenhower’s method remained the same: validate the critics’ right to criticize, then enlist them as allies. During the same timeframe as the above-referenced press conference, Eisenhower received a letter from a private British citizen, John Burn, criticizing his appointment as SHAEF commander. He responded in true Eisenhower style.

The next time you’re faced with criticism—whether fair or unfair—try responding as Eisenhower did. While our natural inclination is to defend our actions and decisions, we have much more to gain from making an ally than we do from making a point.

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​WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
How have you handled criticism, as a leader. Do you have effective strategies to share, or questions for other leaders? Please join the conversation, below, so we can all learn from each other. 

Recent studies from institutions such as the Harvard Business Review, McKinsey, and Gartner agree: diverse-workforce companies overwhelmingly outperform their less diverse competitors—in almost every measurable area. But what does that mean from a practical standpoint, and how do we, as leaders, increase diversity within our own teams? Corie Barry, Best Buy’s CEO and the youngest female CEO in a Fortune 100 company, has ideas.

Raised by self-employed artists, Barry credits her unique upbringing with shaping her desire to lead inclusively. “The interesting thing about artists is it’s not about one beating the other,” she says. “It’s about art being important and all of them succeeding. And that means your success is inextricably tied to someone else’s… Those ideals and those ethical moments really were important in shaping… the leader that I’ve become.” Barry works hard to uphold these beliefs.

​Since taking the helm as Best Buy’s CEO in 2019, Barry has committed $44 million to expand college prep opportunities and provide scholarships for HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), has provided hands-on training and mentoring to tens of thousands of highschoolers in lower-income areas through its Teen Tech Training Centers, and has boldly (and publicly) committed to filling one out of every three new non-hourly corporate positions with BIPOC employees, and one out of every three new, non-hourly field roles with women by 2025. “I always get frustrated when I hear… ‘We don’t have enough diverse talent,’ or ‘We need to bring some talent into the community,’” Barry says. “No… we have plenty of diverse talent. We just aren’t creating the pipelines into our organizations.”

What about organizations that can’t invest millions of dollars into future diversity, or leaders who don’t make the hiring decisions? Barry offers three effective strategies:

1. Reverse Mentoring – “Your whole career, you look for mentors who are more accomplished than you, and can help you get to the next level. My perspective, now, is that I need to surround myself with people who are incredibly different.” Barry encourages leaders to look for the differences within existing teams (age, gender, race, experience, able-bodied or disabled, cultural fluency, political mindset, etc.) and then to pair diverse teammates together with the stated and explicit goal of learning from one another. Barry credits Best Buy’s reverse mentoring program with increasing empathy and creative problem solving within her teams, and she believes any leader in any type of workspace can benefit from this practice.
2. Sponsorship – To increase diverse representation in leadership roles, Barry encourages leaders to pair promising employees from underrepresented groups with sponsors who already hold leadership positions. “A mentor is there to help you think differently… A sponsor is someone who’s going to advocate for you when the door is closed.” Barry maintains this type of advocacy is essential to changing the unconscious bias that often accompanies leadership appointments and believes truly diverse leadership across the business landscape cannot be achieved without it.
3. Cross-Dynamics – When building teams for new projects, and especially when making company-wide decisions, Barry pulls together employees with the widest variety of differences possible. “A more diverse approach means you will look around the corners of problems in a different way… It means you come to really differentiated solutions because you’re getting all these different points of view.” Barry encourages leaders to participate in the conversations, to listen more than we speak, and to ask enough questions to understand the differing points of view before making decisions together with the group. “We believe it’s a business imperative,” she says of this approach. “Every bit of work that’s ever been done in the field would say more diverse teams deliver better outcomes. Period.”

​While it remains vitally important to lay the groundwork for future parity, Barry believes today’s leaders have remarkable influence over the current workspace environment. By shifting our focus toward leveraging—rather than managing—the differences within our teams, we not only harness the strength of our combined human experience, but also set the tone of collaboration and respect throughout our companies.
 
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​WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
How are your teams navigating the changing landscape of today’s workplace? Have you developed methods which have helped equip them? Do you have questions for other leaders? Please share your ideas, stories and questions below. 

​In the seven years since Lisa Su took the helm as CEO for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the company’s stock has risen an astounding 1,700%. Couple that with her 99% CEO approval rating, and it’s tempting to believe her leadership approach must be as magical as it is complicated. (How can we, as leaders, emulate either?) But Su maintains she owes success to real-world leadership principles that are not only easily taught and reproduced, but also apply to any field of business.    

​ Let us equip you with effective leadership strategies from the world’s most successful business leaders. You bring the team members, and we’ll create an immersive, online-learning program, linking real-life examples with your individual workplace issues.


​WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
How are your teams navigating the changing landscape of today’s workplace? Have you developed methods which have helped equip them? Do you have questions for other leaders? Please share your ideas, stories and questions below!

Dean Carter, Patagonia’s head of human resources, finance and legal, wants leaders to change the way we measure employee performance… and our own. Considering the outdoor clothing and gear giant has less than 4% staff turnover rate in a period of time business experts are calling “The Great Resignation,” his ideas couldn’t come at a better moment. But what would this shift in thinking look like, and how could it improve retention and bottom line?

​When Carter joined Patagonia in May 2015, he was stunned to find the company that prided itself on “irreverence and non-traditional, non-conventional culture” was using a traditional, sit-down annual review process for performance management. Simultaneously Patagonia was making a passionate foray into regenerative agriculture, which moves a step beyond sustainable farming’s “harm-reduction” approach and comprises a set of practices designed to increase and enhance the agroecosystem. Carter immediately saw a way to shift Patagonia’s approach to leadership. He explains it like this:

Armed with white papers demonstrating the damaging effect traditional annual reviews have on employee satisfaction and employee performance, Carter likened Patagonia’s current annual review process to conventional farming practices—which razed growth to the ground and forced an employee to rebuild emotionally—and laid out a plan to implement a “regenerative farming style” continuous-feedback system. Carter believed so fiercely in this approach, he put his job on the line, promising the board he would clear out his desk if the change didn’t result in a profoundly positive outcome. His gamble worked, and within a year, employee morale, satisfaction and retention were on the rise.

As corporate wheels can be slow to turn, Carter followed a phased approach to make the transition, spending the first six months getting his employee base accustomed to quarterly—rather than annual—reviews. Employees were encouraged to set short term performance goals, then participate in informal, employee-led discussions with their managers. To keep the reviews on track, Carter held company-wide training workshops, teaching best practices for giving and receiving feedback.

Once his teams had mastered the informal, quarterly reviews, Carter introduced a digitized feedback system [there are many options on the market], which allowed employees to request feedback from colleagues and managers at any time, providing real-time performance evaluation. According to Carter, this generated a cascade effect in which the employee or manager who was asked to provide feedback was then three times more likely to ask for feedback on his or her own job performance.

In addition to increasing employee satisfaction and making performance reviews less time-intensive (and costly) for leadership, this digitized, continuous-feedback approach increased employee productivity. “We’ve learned that people who are giving feedback digitally are a lot more likely to hit their goals and objectives,” Carter says, “and they actually get a 20% higher bonus than people who aren’t engaging in digital feedback.” Workforce surveys after the shift showed that employees not only trusted management more than before, but that managers showed greater confidence in employees and were more likely to give them opportunities with greater responsibilities.

​“I think it’s really important to understand what you put into people as well as what you take out,” Carter says. “At Patagonia, our view is that people are resources to steward, not just resources for extraction and depletion.” With a turnover rate less than 1/3 the national average, Carter’s approach is certainly food for thought.
 
Let us equip you with effective leadership strategies from the world’s most successful business leaders. You bring the team members, and we’ll create an immersive, online-learning program, linking real-life examples with your individual workplace issues.


​WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
How are your teams navigating the changing landscape of today’s workplace? Have you developed methods which have helped equip them? Do you have questions for other leaders? Please share your ideas, stories and questions below!