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.

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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.

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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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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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​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.    

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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.
 
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When it comes to employee happiness, business leaders play a larger role than we might assume. Recent McKinsey research shows today’s employees rate their relationships with management as the top deciding factor in job satisfaction—which matters very much, as research also shows happy employees are 20% more productive than unhappy ones. But, what do today’s employees want--specifically—to be happy, and how do we learn how to give it to them? The answers to both questions might surprise you.

Most people remember Harry S. Truman for the long list of world-shaping decisions he made during his two terms as president. Among his accomplishments, Truman eliminated the communist threat in Greece and Turkey, initiated the Marshall Plan, helped organize the Berlin Airlift, helped form the UN and NATO, established the CIA and NSA, and put an end to racial segregation within the US military. What isn’t as commonly known about our 33rd president, however, is that Truman not only learned how to lead a country by leading an undisciplined group of military misfits, but that his approach to creating team happiness was way ahead of its time. Truman’s approach consisted of several principles:
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1. Leaders care about their people.  During WWI, when Truman took command of Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, the majority of its 200 men were detained to quarters for drunk and disorderly behavior. Having cycled through several officers who’d failed to “bring them into order,” the men immediately sized up and dismissed their new leader. When Truman released the soldiers from their first lineup under his leadership, they responded with a disrespectful “Bronx cheer.” That evening, several noncommissioned officers within the group released horses to run through the camp and staged a drunken brawl in an attempt to anger their new leader. The next morning, the unit woke to learn that while they’d slept, Truman had demoted anyone who’d participated in the pranks… and that he’d put plans in place to improve the quality of their food rations. Truman took an interest in their lives outside their military service, asked about their families, encouraged them to write to their mothers and sweethearts, and restructured their time so they could do so. It became apparent to the men that Truman cared about them as people, and their behavioral issues disappeared.
2. Leaders protect their people. In September 1918, the 129th Field Artillery (including Truman’s Battery D) began a 10-day march through heavy rains and “mud as thick as paste” to the Argonne Forest for the largest American military action up to that point—the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Food was scarce and carefully rationed, and exhausted, hungry men and horses began to falter. As the incline increased, men steadied themselves on the artillery wagons, which was forbidden because of the extra load it placed on the horses. Regimental commander Col. Karl Klemm noticed, and he immediately ordered the men to advance up the hill at double-time. Fearing his soldiers would be too tired to fight when they reached their destination, Truman ordered Battery D off the road and commanded them to camp down for the evening. When a high-ranking officer asked what Truman was doing, allowing his soldiers to rest, Truman responded, “Carrying out orders, sir.” The orders, of course, were his own. Truman’s men learned he could be trusted to protect them, and in return, they trusted him when he pushed.            
3. ​Leaders lead their people.  During WWI, batteries were ordered to fire within a narrow, restricted zone called a “sector” in order to protect American soldiers in neighboring units from death by friendly fire. During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, however, Truman observed German cannons preparing to fire upon the infantrymen his men were protecting. Truman acted immediately, ordering his men to fire out of sector to destroy the enemy’s cannons. Klemm, already angered with Truman for having allowed Battery D to rest, severely reprimanded him. The next day, Truman, again, observed German cannons preparing to fire upon the infantrymen. Again he ordered his men to fire out of sector to destroy the guns. Truman would have been court martialed if Gen. John J. Pershing had not intervened, crediting Truman’s leadership with saving the lives of many American soldiers. Through all of this, Truman’s men observed that when decisions needed to be made quickly, Truman was prepared and willing to lead, and they loved him for it.

While Truman forged his leadership skills during extreme circumstances, his leadership principles are just as applicable in today’s environment. Recent studies show that employees who believe their leaders care about them as people, have their backs, and will lead them confidently toward the stated goal report the highest job satisfaction. In today’s shifting world, prioritizing employee happiness is a good business decision, and one that’s completely within our skill-set to deliver.

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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!

Leadership, in its essence, is about connection. Create this bond with your team, and they will work harder for you, longer for you, and will take risks they wouldn’t otherwise take. Numerous studies show connected leaders enjoy markedly low employee turnover and markedly high team productivity. But how do we connect with our teams in our increasingly disconnected workspaces? Tim Cadogan, CEO of GoFundMe, says it comes down to building community in three specific ways.

When Cadogan joined GoFundMe in March 2020, the WHO was days away from declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic. “We had to transition very quickly,” Cadogan says, “and by the end of my first week, we said, ‘We’re going to go fully distributed.’” Faced with the multiple imperatives of getting to know his new team while simultaneously helping them adjust to a new working environment and increased demand on the GoFundMe platform, Cadogan immediately put three connective approaches into action:

1. Ask for help - Coming from an economics background, Cadogan earned his executive stripes pioneering advertising technology for OpenX and Yahoo, and by consulting with business management giants McKinsey and The Boston Consulting Group. “I found it intimidating to learn a completely new business,” he says. “I came from a very different sector, so I needed to learn a new business, a new company, and a new set of people at a time in which the usage of that product and system was going up massively.” Rather than trying to learn everything on his own, and risking missing vital information, Cadogan immediately turned to the experts: his employees. He set up what he calls an “open-source learning curriculum,” then asked experts within each team to help him understand the specifics of their departments, and how he could best support them. What resulted was a thriving online knowledge base, which both deepened Cadogan’s understanding of the different teams working within GoFundMe, and communicated his respect for their contribution and expertise.   
2. Create avenues for collaboration - With the entirety of his workforce newly telecommuting, Cadogan knew he needed to create operational changes to ensure GoFundMe would continue operating efficiently. “Typically, when you do that in a company,” he says, “you take the time to get to know people… then you work thorough those situations in a room where you can kind of read people’s body language… This format [Zoom] isn’t so great at nonverbal communication.” Whenever a decision or change needs to be made, Cadogan creates a Google Doc which contains everything he knows about the issue, his ideas and opinions on the appropriate next steps, and his basis for arriving at his conclusions. He then sends the doc to every leader involved in the decision and asks them to push back on his ideas, add their own thoughts, and present alternate solutions. Cadogan considers the doc and decision final when there is group consensus, which he terms, “shared mind," and he has found this collaborative approach leads to organizational change with very little (if any) pushback.   
3. Take time to be together - With “water cooler” bonding temporarily on hold, Cadogan built weekly online town hall meetings into the schedule. Employees were invited to come together to talk through current events, share their personal stories, seek and provide advice on navigating the new reality of the workplace, and talk about anything else on their minds. Cadogan attended these meetings, got to know his employees, and always ended with a very important question: “How can I help?” What resulted was a business culture that drew closer together during a time when they were more physically separated than ever before.
   

Today, while both resignations and job openings are at record highs, leaders who know how to connect with their people will always enjoy a more stable, productive work environment. “Life happens,” Cadogan says. “A fundamental part of being human is wanting to get through it together.”          
 
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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!