Episode 114: Winning at Business and Life with Lee Chambers

This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.

I'm Lee Chambers, I'm an environmental psychologist and wellbeing consultant and founder of Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing. We work with organisations to assess organisational culture, purposeful business, and conscious leadership to help wellbeing advancement on a further scale by building strategies that embed inside business processes that already exist and organically grow well-being inside. We then bring additional health awareness and monitoring in and help companies build policies and strategies that then embed, can be measured, iterated, and change and grow.

Very interesting. Well, Lee, it's great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?

So one of the best things about working in my industry is being able to go into other industries experience their challenges, the great bits that they enjoy, and also the continual learning that I have to undertake to understand how to navigate different organizations, but also the many different people that I meet, and the fact that I'm continually helping people to improve processes, improve people, and that in many ways is fulfilling, and for me I'm quite a diverse figure, slightly disruptive, and that allows me to go and express myself in a workplace environment, and I really enjoy that.

I love that, and I can hear the passion in your voice. It's great. Question number 3: I have a fictitious book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?

Um, the chapter that I think most companies should read is that the secret sauce to leadership is love. And to unpack that a little bit further, in so many ways, leadership is about leading yourself first. So to be a great leader, you have to be authentically you and bring your gifts to your business and build your business to be purposeful, to be a vehicle to take you to a destination where you can change something in the world. For the positive, and when you can express yourself and help other people to also become leaders, you're there and able to serve a cause. You're able to care for your people, and the more you care, that becomes love for what you do, for the people who do it with you, for the people who are growing while you're growing, and in so many ways I quite often say this, and it seems quite abstract. It's not in the leadership textbooks, and yet leadership at its heart is you taking the mantle, becoming the messenger. Instead of expressing the message, show your people the example that you wish to change. Lead them in a way that allows them to lead themselves. They will also become leaders for your cause. They will move with you. Together, you can amplify change. Companies will change the world, and you can be a part of that by leading with love from a place of enlightenment and understanding that human potential is massive, and you can care for your people, look after them, Look after all your stakeholders and move forward together to make long-lasting, purposeful change.

That is so powerful. Wow. It takes my breath away. Thank you for sharing that. Question number 4: Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?

So again, It's your people, your business, and yet they are the greatest source of data and experimentation. So they carry out many roles that are necessary for your business to be successful. What's really interesting is in my work, so often they are not tapped for the incredibly powerful feedback that they can provide often enough and it's very simple to appreciate them for what they do, to give them a level of autonomy which gives them space to grow, will allow them to start to articulate things which you higher up managing other elements are not privy to in the same way and again that feedback is incredibly powerful. When I'm assisting with environmental design of offices. It's the people who are there working every day that have similar issues that can be addressed to increase performance, to increase retention, to increase employee health. And yet when I take it as a document saying 88% of the employees have said this, action happens when a single employee goes and speaks about it. This person they're just a troublemaker, they're just a complainer. And it's the employee who's still complaining after all this time that is your most valuable data source because he's not giving up. He's still complaining to this day. He's still got the passion to express how he feels authentically. And that in so many ways is the person who will harness the power to increase your business in so many ways simply because they still care.

And, you know, and going back to your previous point about the love and stuff, that just makes, makes them want to care even more, I would assume. Am I right?

Yeah. And in so many ways it's amplified. It's care squared.

Yeah, I like that. Care squared. Question number 5: What other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?

I'd like to invite David Wetton, and he is a conscious business leader. I feel that his message is very much something that should be spread, and he also is a great example of a leader who works on his own self-awareness and emotional intelligence and leads himself first.

Great. Well, thank you for that referral. I'll reach out to him. And our final question, question number 6: please tell me about your first job.

So my first job was when I was 16. I worked for the Health Service in England, data entry. Seems like the most boring job in the world. It paid me $7 an hour. I was 16. I was rich. And also I met lots of interesting people who imparted lessons upon me that I've taken to become the person that I am today. And we all start with something quite simple, and yet it shapes us in unbelievable ways and propels us towards our unknowable potential.

And you know, it's so funny that you said that at $7 an hour you felt rich, but you know, at 16, I know exactly what you're talking about. Those first jobs when you make, make an hourly wage that you seem is a lot, it's, you feel rich, don't you?

Oh yeah, and I came from a blue-collar family, so to me it was wow.

Same here. Oh, so Lee, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show. How can people find you?

Yep, so they can find me at essentialize.co.uk and on LinkedIn at Lee Chambers.

Wonderful. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.