Excerpt from a YouTube interview titled "The Responsibility of the Leader with Andreas Widmer" (Dec 19, 2023). In this closing segment Andreas Widmer emphasizes leaders should treat employees as ends in themselves (not means), promote employee flourishing, build trust to overcome past managerial harms, and offers practical steps: ask employees how to help them flourish, ask what would make their jobs easier or more effective, and inventory each direct report's talents (and 'non-talents').
Chapters
For your employees, ask, can you say Tivolio Bene, or are you just using them? The human person should never be used as a means to an end. The end for them is the Bene the good, right? What is the end you want for your employees? Have these kinds of discussions, and I promise you that's courage. I challenge you. If you take the courage and do this, you, you will reap flourishing. I can't say to you that your business is going to flourish or not, because quite frankly, maybe your business sucks. So I never judge when my business, when my students have a business, I never judge the idea, because what do I know? I'm not going to judge your idea. But you know what? Businesses do not have a right to life. Businesses are an accumulation of an opportunity to pursue something, and maybe that was a bad idea. Don't hold on to the business. There's only people. No companies. Companies are a constellation of something that constantly changes. At the end of the day, there's only you and me and your employee and you and you wanting the good for each other. Tivoli obene, if you do that honestly, you will not just have a flourishing business here and there, but you will have a flourishing career and a flourishing life.
So we normally ask this final question. Andreas, I almost feel like you in some ways have answered it, but I'm going to ask it anyway. What's one practical tip you have for listeners who are listening to this today? Something they can start doing if they're in a leadership role that would help them be more effective as leaders with their teams and their customers starting tomorrow. What. What's the starting place?
Yeah, there's a. I talk about this. There's a million things and the volume. Maybe there is a way introduce new vocabulary to say, I mean. And you see as a leader, you're representing and paying for the sins of every other leader or manager they've ever had. So don't think it's you. You. You're representing. This is like, as a Catholic, if I go to somebody and I say, oh, I'm Catholic, you know what I'm paying for? For 2000 years of Catholic history and every mistake any Catholic has ever done, that's what you're doing as a leader. So you pay for Bernie Madoff, you pay for the, the. The young woman there with Theranos and so on, that whole suspicion, and everybody who's ever cheated them or been mean to them as a manager. So what I'd like you to do is to go in and start to work to change that image. And that is up to you to build that trust. So start to ask them, how can I help you flourish? You could say in more classic, in a more concrete way, what can I do to make your job easier to do or make your job more effective? Start to ask what you can do rather than them. Right? And make the path to their flourishing straight in front of them. That's your job. Your job is not to tell them what to do. Your job is make them flourish. Try to write a list of every one of your direct reports and write down what their talents are. God given talents. If you can't do this, go talk to them and talk to everybody around them of what are your talents? And I can up you want, which is what I'm developing with my students. Give me their non talents.
