All of a sudden, the lens through which I saw the people, the 13,000 people in our organization, was reversed. Not as the engineers' accountants, receptionist hourly workers. I saw them as somebody's precious child who was being placed in my care for 40 hours a week, knowing that the way I treat them would have a profound impact on their health and their family life. And it changed everything. The lens through which you see people affects the way you treat people. Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. My guest today is Bob Chapman, the Chairman and CEO of Barry Waymiller. This is a $3.5 billion company that supplies manufacturing technology all around the world. But Bob will be the first to tell you, it's not what they do that makes them remarkable. It's the culture they built around truly caring for their team members that does it. If you're struggling to build a company culture you love, or if you're an emerging leader and you're trying to figure out your leadership style, then let me tell you, Bob is going to show you all the ways that leadership can be a powerful force for good and how you can infuse those principles of care into your organization's culture without compromising on results. And you're going to have fun too because Bob is a heck of a storyteller. He really knows how to use his stories to land a point. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Bob Chapman . Bob, it's great to have you on the show. It's a privilege to have this exchange on something so important to everybody in this world which is leadership. We are kindred souls. I know you've read a little bit about me and I've read a little bit about you and I can't wait for this conversation. And in my research, I heard you give a talk to a group of new employees at your company. And one of the first things you said is that you believe you had a message that could help heal the brokenness of the world. Now I've got to tell you, I have been around a lot of CEOs and I don't think I 've ever heard anyone talk about their leadership philosophy like that. Where does this belief come from? Well, my message was shaped by three revelations, okay? But the one specifically you're referring to is I'm an Episcopalian. We were at our church in here in St. Louis and our rector gave who was my mentor, gave a spectacular sermon. At the end of the service, I looked at my wife, Cynthia, and I said, Cynthia, Ed, our rector has only got us for one hour a week. We have people in our care for 40 hours a week. We are 40 times more powerful than the church to influence people's lives. And so when I walked out of that church, right down by Washington University in St. Louis, I walked out of the church. I can remember the spot on the concrete. I said, business could be the most powerful force for good in the world. If we simply had leaders who had the skills and courage to care for the people, they have the privilege of leading. That is so powerful. You also say, Bob, that society is suffering from what you call leadership mal practice. Explain. Well, when you look at the world existence, I'm going to give you a couple of statistics that will verify that 88% of all people that work in this country feel they work for an organization that does not care about them, 88%. Three-quarters of all people are disengaged in what they're doing. And when I talked to CEOs and they complained about the cost of healthcare, I said, you are the problem. 74% of all illnesses are chronic. The biggest cause of chronic illness is stress. The biggest cause of stress is work. And Jeffrey Fyferage, Stanford wrote a book, Dying for a Paycheck. And he wasn't talking about anxious to get one. He estimates we're killing over 120,000 people a year from work-related stress. So when I look at the position, business plays in terms of capturing the time people spend in their lives, because remember, one of the things, David, that is so important that your list was here, in my business education, accounting undergraduate, MBA from Michigan, I was never told, never read, never heard, never taught that the way I would run Barry Whamler would affect people's marriage and their health and their relationship with their children. But when we created a university to teach human skills to convert managers into leaders, 95% of the feedback we got was how it affected their marriage and their relationship with their children. Do you have any idea how that touched my heart to find out that we had been blessed with a path to create human relationships at home? Because we wonder what's wrong with kids today? And I say, kids come from families where parents are working in places where they don't feel valued. And it's hard to care for others if you don't feel cared for yourself. So we are amazed at the impact, because again, I thought it would improve the business, but everybody goes to how it affected their marriage and the relationship with the children which we desperately need to be good stewards of these young lives and create a more caring world for the future. Yeah, so there's definitely malpractice out there. And the great news is, is you've got a lot of great solutions on how to go about being a better leader and having a more positive impact with people. So I want to get into your approach to leadership, but first, give us a snapshot of Barry Whamler and what it is that you do. Well, I stepped in to Barry Whamler in 1969 from Price Waterhouse and it was an $18 million pretty much old technology made equipment for the brewing industry. That was its 100 year history. And I worked with my father for about six years in that role until he suddenly died of a heart attack when I was 30. So the first person I met when my father passed away was our bankers who pulled the loans on the company. That caused me to rise to a level of intensity and focus to get ahold of this business and turn it around. And over since 1969, so here we sit in 2024, the company has grown to a $3.5 billion global company that has created shareholder value and excess of 12% of your compounded growth for the last 25 years. And it's a unique business model and is a unique culture. We're the combination of 150 acquisitions around the world. We operate from China to India to Italy to Germany to Serbia. So my message is very much the experience of building a company, inviting people into our company and being good stewards. We have about 13,000 people globally in our company. And my focus is making sure that each one of them goes home at night feeling a grounded sense of hope for the future. They can decide to raise children, buy a home, educate their kids, take a vacation because they can count on this business for stability in their life, which gives them a sense of dignity, a sense of comfort and a sense of confidence that they're in a place where they feel valued. And again, a little bit of background, Cynthia and I raised six kids. And to be a good parent, we went to classes on parenting. And so much of what we brought into leadership, I learned about parenting because to me, parenting and leadership is identical. It's the stewardship of the children whose lives come into our family through birth, adoption, second marriage we all take seriously. What is leadership? The stewardship of those precious people that walk in our building around the world every day who simply want to know they matter. And we can give them that gift of showing that we care about them and they have a future with us and they can live healthy, vibrant lives. You know, Bob, sometimes as leaders, we have things going on in our personal lives. And you talked about how you get treated at work, you take it home. And it's very difficult for anybody to compartmentalize. And you talked about you taking over the business and the business was in tough financial shape. But worse yet, you're grieving your father's death, you know, while having to show up and give people the hope that you're going to turn this around. How did you dig deep? What did you do as a leader to really have that mindset in such a challenging time? The way I explained, I heard years ago, if in a family, something very heavy falls on one of your children, the mother, the father can go seeing their child under that gives them a sense of energy they didn't know they had and they virtually can lift it off that child. I would say to you the combination of the death of my father and the bank's pulling on us called me to be my best self. Nobody coached me. I was on my own. But I said, I'm not going down like this. And I grabbed ahold of that business with intensity just like you would your child if they're in a crisis. And one of the things I'd want your listeners to know, I learned more during my crisis than I did in the good times. My greatest learning that shaped the business we have today, human growth and economic growth, this place where people feel bad. What I experienced when I had no money, no hope, but I never gave up again. What I tell people is I was blessed with simple North St. Louis kid with an accounting degree with public education. I was blessed with common sense, creativity and a positive attitude. And if you mix those three together, I was able to see value where other people didn't and create a business very unique that is vibrant today again in terms of growth, organic growth, acquisition growth. Again, we're the combination of over 140 acquisitions around the world. There's very few companies and we have never sold a company. We don't sell our kids and we don't sell our companies. We adopt them. And as I understand it, Bob, you operated a couple of decades like most leaders . You focused on generating profit. You didn't spend a whole lot of time caring for your people. But you're obviously, you've already made it very clear that you're not even close to being like that today. Going from a profit guy to a people guy, that's what really happened to you, was there a seminal moment for you that caused that big shift? What happened, the third revelation occurred at a wedding. I was watching this precious young couple who were getting married and how everybody was in awe of how precious they were, how proud the parents were. And I had a revelation. That's the only way I can explain it. All of a sudden, the lens through which I saw the people, the 13,000 people in our organization was reversed. Prior to that wedding, I saw people. I was a nice guy. We had a nice company. We were doing fine. But I saw people as a function for my success. They were engineers, accountants, secretary, labor union, machinists. Everybody was a function that I needed for my success. I was nice, but that's how I saw people. That day at the wedding, when I saw those precious young men and young lady getting married in awe, everybody was the lens through which I saw the people in our organization was reversed. All of a sudden, I saw the 13,000 people, not as the engineers, accountants, receptionists, hourly workers. I saw them as somebody's precious child who was being placed in my care for 40 hours a week, knowing that the way I treat them would have a profound impact on their health and their family life. And it changed everything. The lens through which you see people affects the way you treat people. When you reverse that lens and you treat those people, you have the privilege of leading, not like employees or hourly workers, but you treat them as somebody's child like you would like your child treated. It changes everything. I remember at my granddaughter's graduation a few years ago, when everybody's cheering as each child walked up to get their diploma, I was the only person that had tears in my eyes because I knew the world we were sending our kids into. Again, where there's an 88% chance they're going to work for an organization that doesn't care about them. So, I was determined to take this blessing through these revelations and try and heal this brokenness in the world that we desperately need, which I know you are working on and in parallel we are working on. You've talked about two revelations. The first thing she said is you're in church and commanded your attention for an hour. The second was you went to this wedding. The third was you went to the wedding. So I got to ask you, what was that second revelation? In 1997, I had acquired a company in South Carolina. It was a big acquisition for me. I flew down to be there the first day. It was March of '97. And in the Southeast in March, it's all about March Madness. So I walked into the lunchroom to get a cup of coffee, bunch of employees, team members talking in there. And they were all talking about which team won, where they were in the office pool. And I didn't know what I was feeling. They didn't know me and I didn't know them, so I was just standing there. But the closer it got to eight o'clock, you could just see the fun go out of their body. And in hindsight, I had a revelation because I walked down to a room with a meeting with a group of our customer service team members, which just happened to be the first group I was meeting with. And that revelation, I said, you know what? We're going to play a game. Whoever sells the most spare parts each week is going to win $100. And if the team makes the team goal, the team's going to make $100. Kind of taking March Madness, betting office pools. And again, I had never done it before, never thought about it. It just came out of me when I sat down with this group of 12 people. They had 21 reasons why it wouldn't work. I had 21 reasons why it would. And I've never done it before. And I went back subsequently after we started that game. And our revenue went up by 20%. But joy went up by a thousand percent. And I asked this one lady named Vicki. I said, Vicki, what happened? I just wanted you to have fun. And Vicki said, Mr. Chapman, I always thought I was nice to the customers. Now I'm really nice to the customers because I want to win. Okay. And so what we saw was a dramatic improvement in service, attending us to the customer because people wanted to win and they had fun. We had an individual award and teamwork. So that day I realized why can't business be fun? Why do we leave work to go have fun, play team sports? Why can't we play team sports at work and see people express their gifts fully? So that was the foundation we began with. Okay. Why can't business be fun? Second one, business could be a powerful force for good. If we realized we had people in our care for 40 hours a week and the way we treat them would dramatically affect our hand. And third was the wedding story, the lens through which we see people we have the privilege of leading. So you go from this profit guy and you obviously had to begin to start making some change. You had now a different thought about what leaders should really do. Tell us about some of the first steps that you took to really begin to transform your own leadership style. Well after that third revelation, I sat down with our team and I was having a dinner and a young man asked me a question. He's relatively new. He just came out of Worshoe's graduate MBA program and joined our team and he asked me a question that people know me would never ask me. He said, "Bob, what is your greatest fear?" I told you I'm an internal optimist and I thought I'd been and I said, "My greatest fear is that we were blessed with a vision of the way the world was intended to be and that it would die with me because I've seen great leaders leave organizations and they fall apart." And so we got up the next morning and I said, "Okay young man, you've awakened in me a fear I didn't even know I had, what are we going to do about it?" So I said, "What do great religions do to survive over time? They articulate their beliefs and they have disciples who tell stories that bring their beliefs to life." I said, "We need to create disciples. It can't be me. It can't be you standing up doing the Yum cheer in front of a thousand people. I need disciples who believe what I believe to create a movement." So I said, "We can't send them back to universities. We're going to have to create our own universities and create disciples." So we started with a clean sheet of paper, started Berry Whamly University and this eclectic, incredible talent of the team came together and said, "We need to teach." Empathetic listening, I said, "Wait a second. We're adults. We don't need to be taught to listen." And they said, "Yes, we do, Bob." And they insisted it. And the second thing from Cynthia and my raising kids, I said, "We need to teach people recognition and celebration. We need to teach people how in appropriate, timely, thoughtful ways to recognize the goodness and people and thank them for that. And third, we need to teach a culture of service. We need to teach them the opportunity to serve others, moving from a me-centric world to a me-centric. So it was an eclectic journey, not an intentional one, to simply create leaders , not managers. Because to me, the word manager means the manipulation of others for your success and leadership is the stewardship of the lives you have the privilege to lead. So you get these three guiding principles, okay? And you said, "This is what's going to really be the foundation that we build our company on." But you're still new at this now. It just didn't happen overnight. I mean, it's not something that you just roll out of bed and you say these three principles. And I understand you went on this listening tour after you had these guiding principles. What did you learn and how did you handle what you learned? Well, the listening tour occurred a tiny bit of background, which was context. We had a session about this time, said, "What did we learn?" And we started writing things down on the board. All of a sudden, we looked at that board and we said, "Those are guiding principles of leadership. That's the way leaders should be called to behave." And so we were incredibly proud of this document we created. And our chief people off, Serana Spencer, looked at me and said, "Yeah, Bob, a lot of companies had good values like Enron on the wall, but they didn't live those values." I took that as a challenge. I said, "Ron, I'm not going to put them on the wall. I'm going to put them in people's heads and hearts." So I started flying out to our operations and I always had a listening session with a diverse group of people. And I said, "Here's what we believe in. How are we doing?" And it was unbelievable. The most meaningful one, I'll never forget. This gentleman said, "Mr. Chapman, I love your values, but let me ask you a question. I work in the production area. I was privileged to go represent the company to fly to Puerto Rico to install the machine. I flew down there, worked two weeks, installed the machine. I came back when I was walking in the plant with Mary, who works in accounting. Our kids are in the same school. We got to a certain spot. Mary turned and went in the office and I went in the plant. Mary went and sat down at her desk and started her day. I had to punch a card to validate I was here. I had to wait for a break to have a cup of coffee. I wanted to call home to see how my son was doing because he wasn't feeling well when I left. But I had to go get some money to use a pay phone. Mary, she called home. She just picked up the phone and dialed home. He said, "Mr. Chapman, why do you trust me when I'm in Puerto Rico and you don 't trust me when I'm in your plant?" I looked at this gentleman and I said, "That is brilliant. First of all, you never have to use a punch card again to validate you're here. You can have a cup of coffee anytime you want. We're going to put phones in the plant. Thank you for pointing out those unintended differences between whether you walk into the office of the plant." We refer to people as working on the floor in the plant, which is to me a degrading statement. These are professional people who bring incredible skills to refer to them as working on the floor as opposed to working on our production area. It changed our language. It changed our practices. Then I walked up to the storeroom with the president company and he knocked on the cage in the storeroom and said, "Can you open this? I want to show Mr. Chapman something." I said his name was Dan. I said, "Dan, what did these people do wrong?" He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "We got them all locked up." He said, "Bob, they're not locked up. They're in the storeroom. You got to secure the store." The inventory I said, "So you're worried about people stealing things? Is that what we're saying?" No, you got to do that. I said, "Take the cage down. Tell people we trust them and they're not going to walk out with gears and motors and belts and steel." Anyway, that revelation led to a lot of visibility of broken historic practices that showed people we trust you. We care about you and it was profound. You're the leader when you walk in, Bob. You can hear the great story and you say, "You're never going to have to use a pay phone again. You can get coffee anytime you want." You got a lot of people under you or above you depending on how you look at things that have been doing it the old way. They've been doing it the old way all the time. How did you bring them along with you? Because you've had this transformation, almost spiritual transformation. How did you get other people to believe too? I get that question all the time, David. And the answer is the easiest thing we do because people want to care. What I took away was their obstacles to care. I do remember in that plant that I talked to you, the vice president of operations at the time. This was 20 years ago. He looked at me and said, "When I told him, 'Get rid of the time cards. We're going to let people take a break." He said, "Here we go. It's going to be chaos out there." And I said, "That's unfortunate you feel that way about these fine people that are working there. Let's treat them with respect and dignity and show them by our behavior. We never had an issue. We have never had an issue in 20 years." It was incredibly meaningful to them that I listened to them. I have listening sessions almost every week. Now some of them virtually. I had people from Scandinavia, Italy, Germany, America on the phone today, 20 people, new people talking about a listening session. Here's our values. How are we doing? And people really appreciate it that I listened to them. And then I try to address their areas of concern. So listening, I will tell you, David, the greatest leadership skill that we don 't teach in school is empathetic listening, listening to understand not listening to debate or judge. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Bob Chapman in just a moment. You know, Bob's commitment to care for people and drive good in the world reminds me a lot of the way Alan Mulalley leads. For Alan, leadership is all about service. And that was the driving force behind one of the most remarkable turnarounds in history when he was the CEO of the Ford Motor Company. I would really focus on serving. I mean, it's the ultimate in living is to serve. And you can serve everywhere in your life. And once you decide you want to serve, then you start thinking about yourself on how you do that too. And you also ask for advice on how you can serve. So back to your lifelong learning and continuous improvement, you start thinking about this all the time and you start gathering feedback in a positive way. You start asking people, what can I do? Whatever your job is, what can I do to help more? Be more effective. But the thing that allows you to do that is if you have decided that the purpose of your life is to serve. And then when you move to the greater good, wow. I mean, this is all about human dignity, human beings, humanity. So great question. And it would be service. And then everything that would go into that, including your lifelong continuous improvement to serve at the highest level. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Alan, episode 146 here on How Leaders Lead. You mentioned earlier the power of recognition. When did you learn that that was so important? When I was raised in six kids, I'll never forget a session we had with other couples or this speaker said, you need to tell your kids five times more what they do right. So when there's issues they could do better, they can hear it. And that's a fundamental in raising kids. Instead of saying, why were you late? Why didn't you get your homework done and say, boy, thank you for coming down on time. What I realized, David, is adults are absolutely no different. Okay. Remember, we live in a world where we focus on the brokenness. We inundate people when they leave our care with the brokenness of the world, to media because what bleeds reads, how can people feel good about the world when they 're inundated with the brokenness everywhere they look? The news covers what's brokenness. So what we realized in the 40 hours a week, we have people, we need to feel them with goodness. And the beauty is when you recognize Mary or Bill or Fred in thoughtful, timely , appropriate ways, because remember, quite often we kind of sneaky and we get the family involved quietly. So when Bill or Mary are called up because of their leadership qualities to be recognized for their goodness, outwalks their daughter, the director of their church, their mother-in-law to watch them be recognized. And it is a profoundly meaningful. It's like throwing a pebble in a lake and seeing the ripple effect. Everybody feels good when you stop and look at the goodness of people. Honestly, it's been like feeding candy to kids everywhere in the world. People want to know they matter. And as leaders, we have a chance to do that. And we look for the goodness, hold it up and say thank you in thoughtful, timely, appropriate ways all the time. I know you're always looking for the good, but give me an example, if you have one, of how you recognize bad behavior too, because a leader, you'll see people doing things that shouldn't be done. Let's say you see me exhibiting some bad behavior, not respecting someone or certainly not giving them the respect that they deserve. What would you do? How would you treat me? I'm going to answer you with the words of Bill Yuri of Harvard. He's a world peace negotiator for 30 years, a profoundly thoughtful individual who came to see our culture. And he said what you have, Bob, is courageous patients. Courageous patients. You give people the time to decide they want to be part of it. And when we see people behave in ways that are not consistent with a caring culture, it's the same thing as parents. It's called hard love. The most thoughtful thing you can do with your kids, being a good parent is not about giving your kids what they want and being nice to them all the time, is doing what you need to do to shape their personality. So what we do is when we have a situation, which we naturally do all over the world, how do you treat that person the way you would want to be treated? Okay, and I'll give you an example. I was speaking in Amsterdam to a business school and there were two McKinsey partners from their leadership consulting firm who had invited me and I attended. After the speech, one of the partners had to leave to Manchester, England for a consulting event and I went back with the other partners to the office where we were having a round table discussion. So we're sitting there having a round table discussion and the partner that left, all of a sudden walks in the door. I said, "McKellie, what are you doing?" I thought you left to Manchester. He said, "Bob, unfortunately when I left, I got in a cab with a relatively young cab driver and he made some mistakes on getting to the airport. We got stuck in a traffic jam and I was going to miss my flight. Irritated as hell with his cab driver." I said, "Just take me back to the office." As I was driving back to the office, I was thinking about your talk that I had heard and I remember your statement that everybody is somebody's precious child and instead of talking to this cab driver like a cab driver, I talked to him like he was my son and it profoundly changed the way I dealt with my frustration with this young man. The way you see people affects the way you treat people. Again, we see this issue but we deal with respect and dignity and we give them the idea of courageous patience. It's like a bus going around a circuit. The bus poles of them said, "David, would you like to join our movement to truly eliminate the success of the crisis?" He said, "You know what? I'm just not ready." We said, "That's okay, David, because we'll be back." We give people time to step on the bus but the people who behave in ways that hurts others, we address in a compassionate, caring way, hoping that they learn and grow from that experience. I love that courageous patience. That's fantastic. Here you have this company where you're all over the world. You've had hundreds of acquisitions. How do you measure success? The other problem in this world, we measure success all wrong. It's all about money, power, and position. It doesn't matter how you get it as long as it's legal because then you can write checks to charity and everybody will say you're a wonderful person. You could have treated the people horribly in your company, downsizing, firing people, etc. But as long as you write a check to American Cancer Society or the Boys and Girls Club, they think you're a wonderful person. To me, what I realized is, again, the greatest act of charity is the way we treat the people that we have the privilege of leading. So it profoundly shaped the way we did this. Again, it was relatively easy to transform these companies because I haven't met anybody in the world who doesn't want to know they matter. My focus is business, again, to try to take all these blessings, these learn ings, these experiences, this platform I have now, and try to transform this world by both working with people like you, working with major corporations, which we're doing, and then trying to transform education to create tomorrow's leaders who've got the skills and courage to care. So a lot of initiatives like you've got right now. Let's get super practical here because you teach leadership and you've talked a lot about empathetic listening. What can a leader do from the get-go to be a better listener? What would be the top thing you teach? The first thing we do is we do a dis-profile because I thought we're all kind of the same. But when you do a dis-profile, there's four distinct types of personalities. The Golden Rule is treat others as you want to be treated. Well, we find out the real Golden Rule is treat others as the way they want to be treated because your needs are different than my needs and different than Mary's needs or Bill's needs. So the first thing we do is understand that you have a unique personality and the people you have the privilege of leading have a unique personality. So it's called flexing, style flexing. I have six kids. You can't treat them all the same. You need to flex to the particular personality of each child to be a good stew ard of that life. The same thing with leadership. There's not one size fits all. So the first thing we teach is to understand the different personality types and how to deal with the different personality types because we have different feelings and emotions. And so I always thought there was kind of a way of thinking. But when you realize the word uniquely different and when you realize that, you realize as a leader, you need to learn to sense this personality type of the person and deal with them and just so we teach confrontation, effective confrontation. How do you help people meet your needs? Not tell them they're wrong, not arguing with them, but it's called the bended need. And then we teach that confrontation in a positive way to help people meet your needs, not to tell them they're wrong. So the class is a three day and tense class. You get grown men and women in tears in the class because they realize they've hurt the very people they love the most, not intentionally. Because I thought when you love somebody, you went and talked to them. It turns out when you love somebody, you go listen to them with empathy, not judgment, not to debate, not to tell them what to do, simply listen to them with the skills. It is a teachable skill. How do you get people to understand that's important? How do you get people? It's one thing for you to sit here and as you do very articulately, tell people this is how you should think. How do you get people to internalize these thoughts? You talk about bringing people to tears. They go through these things. How do you make it so that telling isn't selling and people really self discovery? David, we don't sell this. When we started the university said we're going to feed the hungry, the people that want to do this or the people we're going to put. So we're not going to try and convince anybody. We're going to start with the early adopters. So in listening class, when we started this, so how did Jesus teach? He told stories that helps you understand your faith. I inspire people through stories. When I spoke to the United Nations of NNA, I didn't academically say why you want to listen. I told stories because we tend to speak in an academic terms which informs our brain, but it doesn't move our heart. And so when you say how do you measure, I'll go back and say to you, how do you measure love? How do you measure love? You can't. You feel it. How do you measure the impact of listening? You tell the stories I've told listening to five. So we've taught in our nonprofit, we taught 13,000 people around the United States how to listen with empathy. And we have a very active program in our company. We probably taught 8,000 people in every language. And when you hear the stories I hear, the word spreads. I don't have to convince anybody. There's a waiting list to get in the class because I'm sure that when you hear the stories, David, you realize I was flying with Simon, Senek and Bill, Yuri, the world peace negotiator. We were talking about this exact subject. And there was a lady named Kim who was working with Simon and I said to Kim, you took our listening class and you said, yes, I flew from New York to St. Louis, took your class. I said, what did you think of it? And so Simon and Bill are kind of listening. And Kim says, well, first of all, you have to know my mother and dad are divorced. My mother lives alone in Colorado Springs and I'm extremely close to my mother. She said, and I call her almost every day to see how she's doing and talk to her. After I took your course, I realized that I called my mother every day, but I didn't listen to my mother. I talked to my mother. And so I started using these principles and I just listened to my mother and she started sobbing, sobbing in front of Bill and Simon. She said, my mother has changed profoundly for the good when I stopped talking to her and I listened to her. And I've heard that story. So when you tell stories like that, you don't need to invite people into the class. You just need to have enough classes for everybody wants to take it because it heals the most important relationships of your life. Okay. Does it make sense? Oh, absolutely makes sense. You know why you're a heck of a storyteller. You know, this has been so much fun and I want to have some more with what I call my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Give me the best shot you got, kid. What's one word others would use to best describe you? Caring. Who would play you in a movie? Richard Burton. I have no idea. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? Jesus. What's your biggest pet peeve? People who don't care for others. What do you love the most about your hometown of St. Louis? Values. The values. What's one of your daily rituals? Something you never miss. Talking to people, listening to people, being around people. I get energized. It's like plugging into a socket to be around people. I get energized being around people. If I turn the radio on in your car, what would I hear? Country and Western music. What's something about you a few people would know? I'm an accountant. The greatest compliment I ever got is somebody said to me one time, "I can't believe you're an accountant." Okay. Last lightning round question. What was your last? I can't believe this is happening to me moment. The United Nations event this year just, I was overwhelmed with the standing innovation from educators from around the world when they heard our message. I gave me hope that we have been blessed with the message you could heal the world. That's awesome. A few more questions and I'll wrap this up. You wrote this amazing book called Everybody Matters, the extraordinary power of caring for your people like family. What's the single best piece of advice you can give aspiring leaders to help them live out what you call your truly human leadership principles? The single biggest word of advice is the lens through which you see the people that work for you. When you see them not as functions but as somebody's precious child, everything else changes. If your dad were still alive, what do you think he'd be most proud of when thinking of all you've done leading Barry Waymiller? David, that's a profoundly meaningful question because a lady asked me a few years ago, what does heaven look like? I've never thought about that and I sat him and I said, "Heaven looks like a chance to sit down with my dad who died trying hard to keep this company alive. It's 18 million broken company and today it's a company being studied by Harvard, McKinsey around the world and my dad would not even know how to handle the emotion of this broken company to now a world renowned company. We're not known for our products as much as we are our culture. It's interesting. You're so passionate about people and caring about people. I'm wondering when you talk to shareholders. Do you have a lot of them question you about valuing people over profit or what do you hear from that front or how do you think about it? Well, so remember, I had an extremely strong outside board of directors. Very strong independent, renowned businessmen and I don't ever remember them saying no to me because I always say I would never take something to them that they would say no to. When I talk to our shareholders, remember, we've had a 12% compound growth in the value of our stock from a worthless stock to now a vibrant stock. The credibility that gives me with our shareholders in terms of our message, they love our message. I have never met anybody ever that debates this. It's just so uniquely different. I want you and your listeners to hear some. Washington University had two of their organizational development professors come and interviewed me for an hour and a half. After an hour and a half interview, they looked at me and said, "You know, Mr. Chapman, you're the first CEO we've ever talked to that never talked about your product." I paused them and I looked at them and said, "I've been talking about our product for the last hour and a half. I'm not going to go to my grave proud of the machinery we build. I'm going to go to my grave proud of the people that did that. It caught them completely off guard. Our language is so unique. I would say to you, people almost don't know how they're active, but because of our phenomenal financial success, it gives credibility to these other messages." You know, it's interesting. Simon Sennick, Harvard professors, you know, you in, standing ovation. How in the heck do you stay humble? When you think you've been blessed by God with the message, it creates a tremendous amount of humbleness. Why me? I am profoundly humbled that I have been blessed with this message, that there 's no way my accounting background running a manufacturing company would allow me to speak to somebody of your caliber of a message of this impact on the world. And it gives me a huge sense of humility and purpose that before I leave this earth, I want to make sure that with people like you and your ability that this message lives on beyond my time. You may have just answered it, but I'll ask it anyway. Looking forward, what do you see as your unfinished business? The single most important thing I will do in the time I have left is elevate the purpose of education from solely academic focus to creating human skills so that when these kids in our care from primary school and secondary schools, when we hand that diploma, we could look them in the eye, your grandchildren, my grandchildren say, you're ready to go out and live a life of meaning, purpose and service of others. You have the skills, you have the knowledge, both professionally and personally , to live life fully because right now we give people academic skills, they get job with their technical skills and they can promote a leadership position, they have no idea how to care for the people they have the privilege of leading. And so we see this poverty of dignity we have in this country that Tom Friedman talks about, not a poverty of money, a poverty of dignity. And they just don't know how to move from management to leadership. They want to, but they don't know how. I got to ask you this because you talked about family, the importance of treating your people like you treat them with people in your family. Last question here, what's the biggest thing you've learned from your grandkids ? Thank you for asking that because I say it all the time. I can't be with my grandkids forever, but I can be in their heart forever. And when I saw my son send me a picture of my grandson reading my book in Spanish on his way to school, I knew I was touching his heart. So again, you can't, I can't live forever, but our message can live forever through our kids and their kids that they have a sense of pride that their grandfather had a message that could heal the world. You know, Bob, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast. And I have to tell you, you are a zealot about what you believe in. And you say it with such conviction. And it's really exciting to see someone who has the passion you have and the courage to speak up and really want to make a difference in the world. So thank you very much for taking the time for being on Hal Leater's lead because you are one heck of a leader. Well, thank you. Your ear, honestly, it's an honor to meet you. I did a little homework. You're blessed with a good heart and a good mind and a good platform. And people like you can really help us share this message around the world. And we can start healing this brokenness that we're sending our kids into everywhere. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Now, I don't know about you, but I get fired up when I hear that 88% of people feel like they work for an organization that doesn't care about them. But great leadership can change that number. And I'm encouraged talking to Bob because he's changing that number. And you're changing it too by listening today and being a part of our mission to make the world a better place by developing better leaders. When we have the skills and courage to truly care for the people we lead, to see them as someone's child, everything changes. People know they're valued and they bring their best selves to work. And it's not all fluffy feels good stuff. I'm telling you, that kind of culture helps you take better care of customers and it all impacts the bottom line. This week, find one way to show your team you care about them. Use some ideas from this conversation like empathetic listening or recognition or get creative and come up with your own unique way of showing your team that you value them for who they are, not just what they do. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders see leadership as a powerful force for good. Coming up next on How leaders lead, just in time for the start of the NFL season, I'm talking with Jimmy Haslam, chairman and managing partner of the Haslam sports group, which is the ownership group of the NFL's Cleveland Browns, the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks and the major league soccer team, the Columbus crew. You realize I do a few things well. I do a lot of things orally. Here's mistakes I've made. Here's a couple of good things we did and you learn from them. And I find people find it. They enjoy that more when you say, I really messed that up and here's how I should have handled it. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you'll become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]