Bob Chapman 0:00 

All of a sudden, the lens through which I saw the people, the 13,000 people in our organization, was reversed, not as engineers, accountants, receptionists, hourly workers. I saw them as somebody's precious child that 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.

David Novak 0:34 

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 Wehmiller. 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,

Unknown Speaker 1:55 

Bob, it's great

David Novak 1:57 

to have you on the show.

Bob Chapman 1:58 

It's a privilege to have this exchange on something so important to everybody in this world, which is leadership.

Unknown Speaker 2:04 

You know, we

David Novak 2:05 

are kindred souls. You know, 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 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?

Bob Chapman 2:37 

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 and here in St Louis, and our Rector gave a who is my mentor, gave a spectacular sermon. At the end of the service, I looked at my wife, Cynthia. 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 church, I can remember the spot in 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

David Novak 3:31 

is so powerful. And you also say, Bob, that society is suffering from what you call leadership malpractice. Explain,

Bob Chapman 3:42 

well, when you look at the world exists as 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, okay? And when I talk to CEOs and they complain 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 Pfeiffer at 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 listeners 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 weimler would affect people's marriage and their health and their relationship with their children. But when we created. City 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,

David Novak 5:50 

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 and I want to get into your approach to leadership, but first, give us a snapshot of Barry Wehmiller and what it is that you do.

Bob Chapman 6:11 

Well, I stepped in into Barry Wehmiller 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. And so I began kind of with the crisis, the loss of my father, the crisis, loss of our financial support, and that caused me to rise to a level of intensity and focus, to get a hold 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 in excess of 12% a year compounded growth for the last 25 years. And it's a unique business model, and is a unique cultures that 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, okay, 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.

David Novak 8:33 

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 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 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,

Bob Chapman 9:10 

the way I explain 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 a hold 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. Valued 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. 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.

David Novak 10:42 

And as I understand it, Bob, you operated a couple decades, like most leaders. You focused on generating profit. You know, you didn't spend a whole lot of time caring for your people, but you're obviously, you've already made it very clear you're not even close to being like that today. You know, going from a profit guy to a people guy. I mean, that's what's really happened to you. Was there a seminal moment for you that caused that big shift?

Bob Chapman 11:10 

You know what happened? The third revelation occurred at a wedding. I was watching this precious young couple who are 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 man and young lady getting married, and how in awe everybody was. The lens through which I saw the people in organization was reversed. All of a sudden, I saw the 13,000 people, not as engineers, accountants, receptionists, hourly workers. I saw them as somebody's precious child that 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. Okay, so 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. And I remember at my granddaughter's graduation a few years ago, and 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,

David Novak 13:21 

you know, you've talked about two revelations. The first thing she said is, you're in church, okay? 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?

Bob Chapman 13:37 

In 1997 I acquired a company in South Carolina is a big acquisition for me. I flew down to be there the first day. It was March of 97 and, you know, in the southeast and 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. I just was 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 gonna 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 1,000% 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. They can. We had an individual award and team award. 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 their hand. And third was the wedding story, the lens through which we see people we have the privilege of leading.

David Novak 15:58 

So you go from this prophet 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.

Bob Chapman 16:18 

Well, after that third revelation, I sat down with our team and having a dinner, and a young man asked me a question. He's relatively new. Just came out of wash U'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 John an internal optimist. And I thought of it, 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 asked 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 belief 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 1000 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 to create disciples. So we started with a clean sheet of paper. Started Barry Wembley University, and this eclectic, incredible, talented 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 in people and thank them for that. Okay. And third, we need to teach a culture of service, seizing the opportunity to serve others, moving from a me centric world to a we 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 a stewardship of the lives you have the privilege to lead. So

David Novak 18:31 

you get these three guiding principles, okay? And you said this is what's going to really be the foundation that we build our our company on, and but you're still new at this. Now it's, you know, this didn't happen overnight. I mean, you know, it's not something that you just roll out of bed and you say these three principles in it. And I understand you, 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

Bob Chapman 18:59 

listening tour occurred a tiny bit of background which goes context. We had a session about this time said, what did we learn? And we started writing things down on the board, and 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 officer, Rhonda 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 flew, 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, and 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, 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. And I looked at this gentleman, I said, That is brilliant. First of all, you never have to use a punch card again to validate your hair. 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 or the plant, and 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 areas. So it changed our language, it changed our practices. And 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. And I said, his name was Dan. I said, Dan, what did these people do wrong? He said, What do you mean? I said, Well, you got them all locked up. 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? So no, you got to do that. 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 and steel. So 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.

David Novak 22:01 

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 payphone again. You can get coffee anytime you want. You know, you got, like a lot of people, under you or above you, depending on how you look at things, okay, that have been doing it the old way. They've been doing it the whole way, all the time. You know, how'd you bring them along with you? Because you've had this, you know, transformation, almost spiritual transformation. How did you get other people to believe too?

Bob Chapman 22:30 

I get that question all the time, David, and the answer, it's 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 gonna let people take a break. Said, here we go. It's gonna be chaos out there. And I said, you know, that's unfortunate. You you feel that way about these fine people that are working there. Let's treat them with respect and dignity and show them that by our behavior, we never had an issue. Okay, we have never had an issue in 20 years. And it was incredibly meaningful to them that I listened to them this 20 I have listening sessions almost every week now, some of them virtually. I mean, 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 listen 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.

David Novak 23:50 

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 Mulally 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

Alan Mulally 24:16 

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, you. 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,

David Novak 25:16 

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

Bob Chapman 25:36 

when I was raising six kids, I'll never forget a session we had with other couples where 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? 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 through 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 realize 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, out walks their daughter, 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.

David Novak 27:22 

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 not respecting someone, or certainly not giving them the respect that they deserve. What would you do? How would you treat me?

Bob Chapman 27:44 

I'm going to answer you with the words of Bill Ury of Harvard. He's a World Peace negotiator for 30 years, profoundly thoughtful individual who came to see our culture. And he said, what you have, Bob, is courageous patience. Courageous patience. You give people the time to decide they want to be part of it, but 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 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 are two McKinsey partners from their leadership consulting firm who had invited me that 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 partner to the office where we're 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, Michele, 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 owned 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's 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. And again, we see this issue, but we deal with respect and dignity, and we give them the idea of courageous patience is it's like a bus going around a circuit. The bus pulls up and said, David, would you like to join our movement to truly limited say, You know what? I'm just not ready. We say, That's. Okay, David, because we'll be back. So 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.

David Novak 30:14 

I love that courageous patience that's fantastic and and here you have this company where you're all over the world, you've had hundreds of acquisitions. How do you measure success? You know, the problem in this world, we

Bob Chapman 30:26 

measure success all wrong. It's all about money, power and position. 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, you know, 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. So to me, what I realized is 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. And 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. And my focus is business again, to try to take all these blessings, these learnings, 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 got the skills and courage to care. So a lot of initiatives like you've got right now, you

David Novak 31:39 

know, let's get super practical here, because you teach leadership, and you've talked a lot about empathetic listening. You know, what can a leader do from the get go to be a better listener? I mean, what would be the top thing you teach?

Bob Chapman 31:53 

Well, the first thing we do is we do a DISC profile, okay? Because I thought we're all kind of the same, but when you do a DISC profile, there's four distinct types of personalities. And you know, the golden rule is, treat others as you want to be treated. Well, we find that the real golden rule is treat others 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. And 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. And 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 steward of that life. The same thing with leadership. You can't 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 that we're 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 again. So we teach confrontation, effective confrontation. How do you help people meet your needs, not telling them they're wrong, not arguing with them, but it's called the bended knee, okay? 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 intense 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

David Novak 33:51 

do you get people to understand that's important? How do you get people it's one thing for you to sit here and you know, as you do very articulately, tell people this is how you should think, okay, how do you get people to internalize these thoughts? You know, you talk about bringing people to tears. You know they go through these things. How do you make it so that telling isn't selling and people really self discovery? David,

Bob Chapman 34:14 

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 are the people we're going to 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. Okay, that helps you understand your faith. I inspire people through stories. Okay? When I spoke to the United Nations event in May. 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. David. 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 8000 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 into class, because I'm sure when you hear the stories, David, you realize I was flying with Simon Sinek and Bill Yuri, the World Peace negotiator, and 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 he said, Yes, I flew from New York to St Louis, took you 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 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. And 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 that make sense? Oh,

David Novak 36:50 

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?

Bob Chapman 37:01 

Give me the best shot you got. Kid,

Unknown Speaker 37:03 

What's one word others

David Novak 37:05 

would use to best describe you, caring who would play you in a movie?

Bob Chapman 37:12 

Richard Burton, I have no idea

David Novak 37:14 

if you could be one person for a day besides yourself. Who would it be? Jesus, what's your biggest pet peeve,

Bob Chapman 37:22 

people who don't care for others?

David Novak 37:24 

What do you love the most about your hometown of St Louis?

Unknown Speaker 37:28 

Values, the values.

David Novak 37:31 

What's one of your daily rituals? Something you never miss, talking

Bob Chapman 37:34 

to people, listening to people, being around people. I I get energized. It's like plugging into stocking to be around people. I get energized being around people.

David Novak 37:44 

If I turn the radio on in your car, what would I hear? Country and Western music? What's something about you? Few people would know I'm an accountant.

Bob Chapman 37:55 

The greatest David, the greatest compliment I ever got is somebody said to me one time, I can't believe you're an accountant.

David Novak 38:03 

Okay? Last lightning round question, what was your last I can't believe this is happening to me. Moment

Bob Chapman 38:09 

The United Nations event this year, just I was I was overwhelmed with the standing ovation from educators from around the world when they heard our message. Gave me hope that we have been blessed with a message that could heal the world. That's

David Novak 38:21 

awesome. You know, 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?

Bob Chapman 38:40 

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

David Novak 38:52 

your dad were still alive, what do you think he'd be most proud of when thinking of all you've done leading Barry Wehmiller,

Bob Chapman 39:01 

David, that's a profoundly meaningful question, because a lady asked me a few years ago, what does heaven look like? Now 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, and we're not known for our products as much as we are our culture.

David Novak 39:34 

You know, 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, you know, valuing people over profit, or what do you hear from that front? Or how do you think about it? Well,

Bob Chapman 39:50 

so remember, I had an extremely strong outside board of directors. I mean, very strong, independent, renowned businessman, and I don't I. I ever remember them saying no to me? Because I always say I would never take something to them that they would say no to. So 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. And so 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 hear some Washington University had two of their organizational development professors come and interview 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. And I paused them in and I looked down 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, that caught them completely off guard. So our language is so unique, I would say to you, people almost don't know how they're acting, but because of our phenomenal financial success, it gives credibility to these other messages.

David Novak 41:10 

You know, it's interesting. Simon Sinek, Harvard professors these, you know, un standing ovations. How in the heck do you stay humble

Bob Chapman 41:20 

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.

David Novak 41:58 

You may have just answered it, but I'll ask it anyway. Looking forward, what do you see as your unfinished business?

Bob Chapman 42:05 

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 handed that diploma, we could look them in the eye. Your grandchildren, my grandchildren, say you are ready to go out and live a life of meaning and 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 get promoted to 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.

David Novak 43:04 

I got to ask you this because you talked about family, the importance of treating your people like you treating people in your family. Last question here, what's the biggest thing you've learned from your grandkids?

Bob Chapman 43:17 

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

David Novak 43:49 

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 how leaders lead, because you are one heck of a leader.

Bob Chapman 44:14 

Well, thank you. You're honestly, it's an honor to meet you. I did a little homework. You are 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

Unknown Speaker 44:32 

you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Applause.

Speaker 1 44:40 

Bob. Now, I

David Novak 44:45 

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. 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, Cleveland Browns, the NBA, Milwaukee Bucks and the Major League Soccer Team, the Columbus Crew.

Jimmy Haslam 46:16 

You realize I do a few things? Well, I do a lot of things orderly. 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

David Novak 46:32 

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. You