In this Proteus Leader Show episode, host Erika Andersen interviews Kevin Hancock, CEO of Hancock Lumber and author of 48 Whispers. Hancock explains his decade‑long experiment with a shared‑leadership model that pushes decision‑making power away from a central hierarchy and into the hands of every employee. He describes how resetting the company’s mission to prioritize the employee experience, coupled with real‑time feedback metrics, lifted engagement scores to around 90%—far above the national average of 33%. The conversation delves into the practical day‑to‑day changes required for shared leadership: leadership restraint, patience for process, and creating culturally safe spaces where people can speak authentically. Hancock argues that the biggest cost of traditional command‑and‑control structures is the human cost of silencing authentic voices, which also harms organizational performance. By fostering psychological safety, organizations make better decisions and see higher commitment. He offers concrete recommendations for leaders—listen without judgment, thank contributors, and practice restraint—grounded in Gandhi’s principle of becoming the change you wish to see. The episode closes with resources for listeners to learn more about shared leadership and Hancock’s work.
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You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you'll get practical tools and insights for leading, managing, and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Kevin Hancock, CEO of Hancock Lumber and author of 48 Whispers, a book based on Kevin's work with the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Kevin is an advocate of strengthening the voices of all individuals within a company or a community Through listening, empowering, and shared leadership. In addition to his work as CEO, Kevin is also the founder of The Seventh Power, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing economic sovereignty for Native communities across America. So welcome to the show, Kevin.
Erika, hello. Thank you for having me.
Oh, I'm so glad to have you here. I, I know that you're deeply committed, both in your role as CEO and in your work with Native American communities, to this idea of shared leadership and respect for all voices. And I think a lot of my listeners are reflecting on these same ideas themselves, especially over these past couple of years. And I think your insights will be really helpful for them. So let's, let's roll into this.
Great. Okay.
So my first question is, can you tell us more about what you mean by shared leadership and how you've seen it work in practice?
Sure. So the traditional leadership model to me that we're historically accustomed to is about power to the center. It's about collective power at the capital, the headquarters in the hierarchy. The new model that I'm really into is its opposite. It's dispersing power, pushing it away from the center out to the individual. So shared leadership is exactly what it, what it says. It's distributing leadership responsibility to everybody. within an organization. And in practice, so our company, Hickok Lumber, has been working on a distributed power shared leadership model for about a decade now, and the statistical results have been pretty dramatic. Most importantly, in terms of the employee experience, our engagement survey scores are running around 90%, meaning 9 out of 10 people who work at our company will describe that work experience as meaningful to them, more than just a paycheck. And Gallup will tell us that the national average, unfortunately, is about 33%, meaning only— About 1 in 3 American workers will describe their work experiences as personally meaningful.
So what— that's wonderful. So, so just so those of our listeners who are trying, who want to try and create more shared leadership in their realms with their teams or whatever, how— what are some of the day-to-day differences? Like, how, how do you operate differently at Hancock Lumber to To embody this shared leadership?
What—
just give us some examples, if you would.
I think that'd be helpful. Yeah, the first thing we did is we reset the entire mission of our company to make the employee experience our first priority. Think about it this way: most companies get whatever it is they prioritize.
Yeah.
So if a company's not achieving something, it's not because it's not possible. It's just because it hasn't become a big enough priority. And we decided at our company to make the employee experience the biggest priority and then to develop metrics, employee feedback systems that would give us real data and information about how the employee experience was going. And then finally, we've just stuck with it. We've been at it for a decade now. So it's actually, I like to say this, it's actually not complicated. The old model of controlling, holding onto power, that's complicated. That takes lots of rules and extra work and supervision.
Yeah.
That's hard. Releasing power is actually easy once you make the sincere, permanent commitment to do it.
That's great. So I assume that one of the things— you can correct me if this is wrong— one of the things that it means that I've seen in organizations who are doing this is that decision-making is much less centralized, that people have more authority and autonomy to make decisions within the purview of their jobs. Is that, is that true for you guys as well?
That's exactly right. So one of the big ingredients that is required in this model is leadership restraint. So as a leader, you might think you know what you want to have happen next, but the rest of the organization may not be quite ready, may not have processed that, or may have some different and even better ideas.
Ideas.
So it's patience for process. And the second part of that is the processes for dialogue have to be culturally safe for people to say exactly what they Think if the culture is not safe, then the dialogue won't matter because people are gonna hold back.
Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's— oh, I, I could not agree with that more. With that, the whole— all the research that's been done lately about psychological safety, that people are their most— are their most honest, their most productive, their most creative, their most insightful when they feel like it's safe to be who they are and to say what they have to say.
Right. My favorite question on that topic, Erika, is this: what if everybody on earth felt trusted, respected, valued, heard, and safe? What might change? I think everything would change.
Yes, everything would change. Yeah, that's wonderful. Well, so let's, let's kind of go to the dark side. What have you seen as being the main— you started to talk about this a little bit, but the main costs of traditional top-down command and control management leadership?
Yeah, that's a great question. The biggest cost to me— I don't think people think about it enough— it's the human cost of people at work not feeling safe in their authentic voice.
Yeah.
I think that perhaps the, the purpose of a life on Earth, it's self-actualization, everyone coming into their own unique voice. But that old command and control management structure does not foster safety for authentic voices.
Yeah.
That's the biggest consequence. It's a human one. Then within the organization, I mean, just think about all the problems that are caused by people not feeling empowered, not having a voice, not feeling heard, and how that would show up in the performance of an organization. It just manifests in all kinds of ways. But one of the biggest to me that we found when we, when we took the time for process, for dialogue, and figured out how to make it safe for people to say what they actually thought— guess what? The company started making better decisions.
Yes, of course.
This was the biggest benefit. And when we started down that road, as funny as it sounds, I hadn't I hadn't really thought about that, but it makes perfect sense. When every voice is heard and everyone can say what they think, you're going to get better feedback and you're going to make better decisions as an organization.
Yeah, that makes complete sense. And I suspect— I think one of the reasons that people are scared of or resist shared leadership is they think that everybody is going to want their opinion to hold sway all the time, and that's not actually true. People want to be heard much more than they want to be agreed with. And so if somebody— if a group of people who have various opinions are all heard, and then a decision is come to based on all those opinions, people generally— not everybody, but generally— feel pretty satisfied with that process.
That's such a Great point. We've totally experienced just what you said. Our safety director once described it this way. He said people are much more apt to support that which they help to create, and people don't expect to get their way. They just want to be included.
Yes, yes, yes.
Authentically. Authentically included.
So, you know, we always try and provide our listeners with practical takeaways, because I suspect that a lot of people listening are on this journey in a way, understanding that they want to push decision-making down and out, be more inclusive at a whole variety of levels. So what, what are some recommendations that you have? What can leaders and managers do on a daily basis to empower their employees better, especially now during these wild times?
So to me, it really starts with Gandhi's iconic thought, become the change you wish to see. They, meaning the employees within the company, they don't have to do anything to create this change. You, the leader or leaders of the company, can create this change by becoming something Different. And 2 thoughts come to mind in terms of what we can become that's different as leaders. And the first starts with listening and transitioning the purpose of listening from judgment to understanding. The purpose of listening is not judgment, it's understanding. When someone in a huddle said something, you don't need to validate it or refute it. Here's my favorite reply: thank you for sharing that. And then the second key, I think, skill that leaders need to acquire is restraint, which to me is having the power but not using it, which really translates into patience for process. We have 620 people, for example, that work at our company, and to get them aligned in deeply engaged and committed ways, that takes time for them to have dialogue. It's not just about me as the CEO or the manager in terms of alignment. There's got to be patience for process. So they're actually really simple changes that can create a dramatic transformation in the way a company functions. And the value that the humans take from being a member of the team within a corporation.
That's wonderful. And, and, and from my own personal experience, given that I've been working on both of those things for the last 40 years, listening and being patient, they are simple, which doesn't mean that they're easy. I mean, changing your behavior in fundamental ways like that is challenging, even if it's not complicated things that you're trying to do. And It also— I love what you're saying because it really goes absolutely against a lot of what we learn either explicitly or implicitly as managers, that we're supposed to be in charge, we're supposed to be the ones doing the talking, we're supposed to be the ones having all the answers, right? And that in what you're talking about in this model of shared leadership, which I— It would be hard for me to agree with you more. I agree with everything you're saying, that it The whole idea of being the person whose primary responsibility is to listen, invite, include, create that dialogue that yields great decisions and great outcomes. It's very different than traditionally what we've all thought of and heard. So it's, even though it is simple, I agree with you, it's challenging to do well.
Yeah, that's such a great point, a shared Leadership culture does not mean it's an easier place to work. It's actually, in a lot of ways, going to call forth a deeper commitment and change in everybody. When leadership changes, followership has to become something different as well.
Oh, Kevin, this is so helpful. And as I said, it would be hard for me to agree with you more. I really Totally am lined up with everything you're saying. And I feel like we're just starting to have this conversation. And I always promise our listeners that we'll keep it short and sweet. So, um, listeners, if you want to find out more about Kevin and his work, you can go to thebusinessofsharedleadership.com and you can find 48 Whispers on that website and on Amazon. And if you'd like to find out how Proteus works with leaders, you're welcome to go to proteusleader.com, click on topics and choose Accepted Leader. So thanks, Kevin. I really appreciate this.
Erika, I loved, loved it. It was great to be with you. Thank you.
Oh, you're so welcome. And thank you all for listening. And until next time, here's to creating the life you truly want.
We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, Join us at theproteusleader.com. Have an excellent day, and thanks for listening.
