Human-Centered Leadership | Renee Moorefield | 575

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Renee Morfield. I'll give you a little bit of her background. For over 25 years, Renee has been a visionary leader and innovator in the field of human-centered leadership. She's the CEO and co-founder of WisdomWorks Group, which is a social enterprise that offers guidance and state-of-the-art resources for building brands, workplaces, and leadership capabilities that advance the thriving of all people. So she's been around this space for a long time, and I wanted to talk to her about, you know, what's working, what's not working, the things that we typically talk about on the show. So welcome aboard today, Renee. Thanks for coming in.

That's great to be here.

So maybe, maybe start with, go from the, maybe the development of the IP to how, 'cause you're in the mature phase, right? Of you've tried out lots of things, some have worked, some didn't, you're certifying folks and all that. But let's talk about sort of how the IP got developed and then how you knew it was solid, and then we'll get to the business side of it.

Sure, sure. That's a, that's a really good question. So, For many years, even before co-founding WisdomWorks, I worked in two global companies. And in those global companies, I was part of humanizing mergers and acquisitions, really supporting leaders in humanizing the change process, basically, kind of an easy way to say that. And what we saw then, and then in, in, in our work with clients with WisdomWorks, really saw that often leaders are moving so quickly, so fast, worried about the financial performance, worried about the technical performance of things, worried about other systems and structures, but not paying quite as much attention to the people and culture of things. So really started tracking, um, that over many, many years, couple decades actually.

Let me pause you for a second there, and, and I think if you put this contextually this is probably at the point where things like Six Sigma are taking off like wildfire, right? Sometimes you have to say, well, what else was going on in the world? And I think there was this, this overarching embracing of Six Sigma, which basically is take all the waste out and be more efficient and, you know, get it there and there and there. Nothing wrong with Six Sigma. Six Sigma is great except for the fact that it doesn't always look at the people side, you know?

Right, right, right.

That we're, we're living in a world today where the, the machines are efficient, right? We produce things with little, you know, inefficiencies, but that people thing is where we get jammed up, right? Totally.

I'm really glad you made that pause because you're right, so much, um, was focused on efficiency. Yeah, rather than— and, and, and you are right, we needed to do that, but we hadn't focused on what are the human factors, what are those human factors that we really need to take into account if we're going to create thriving, sustainable organizations. So not just efficient, not just effective, but thriving and sustainable. So we were tracking that over time, just the patterns that we were seeing, and not only the patterns we were seeing in how leaders led, but in leaders' lives themselves. And—

When you say their lives, I'm assuming that encompasses, you know, 5:00 PM to back to 9:00 AM, right? Not just the 9 to 5.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

This is the, this is the whole life of the leader because it's, it rarely do we show up in one way as a leader and we show up differently in our life overall. Normally how we're showing up at work is how we're showing up in life in most all arenas in life. And so we were seeing things like, as an example, and this might, um, connect in with some of the people that are listening, things like I've worked so hard that I've lost relationships with my children. Like, I don't know, Logan anymore. Um, you know, partnerships, marriages, significant others, breakdowns in those relationships. Um, not really knowing, not taking care of your own physical health, for example. Having a sense of getting to kind of in 30s, 40s and losing a sense of purpose and meaning in life. So we were really tracking all of this and that was the basis of, we, we now had We've been doing work with leaders for a few decades. And for me personally, a few decades, or for a while, not a few decades, for a while before that. And I brought all of those patterns to the Positive Organization Center at the Business Management School at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. And I said, you know, we are doing work one leader at a time, but we want to be able to provide a platform based in science that looks at these different factors of thriving and stress resilience as it is linked to leadership so that we can not just do the work one leader at a time, but we can really scale this kind of thinking in the organizations that we're working with. So that was the basis of the, of developing the IP that is now our, what we call our framework of thriving and it's under a platform called Be Well, Lead Well. And this is the The tool called Be Willing to Impulse is the IP under which it's used.

So there's, what I like about this is there's a hypothesis, the hypothesis is validated, and then there's the rigor and the underpinnings of an academic standard, right? Because oftentimes folks from a thought leadership or standpoint come out there and it's more story-based or anecdotal or whatever, whatever. To make the points that are more maybe dramatic. And what most businesses want is maybe there's a time and place for that entertainment kind of thing. But does this work? You know, if you say it is so, why is it so? Show me it. So prove it. So, and then I'm gonna believe you. It might be less sexy, you know, over the top, whatever. But we want things that work in the business world. And I think oftentimes thought leaders lose track of the mundane or the basic standards, if you will, of how do you succeed at enterprise scale. Well, it's not charisma that's going to blow you up to be embraced by large companies, right? You've got to, you got to have the data, you got to have the research, you got to have the credentials underneath it. So I want to move now from— so, so that's sort of how we bake the cake, right?

Yeah.

And then we got to sell the cake, right? So how is it that— what are some of the models that you've worked with and where are the, what are the ones that you've landed on now that are working best for you in terms of business models for you?

Yeah, let me, um, before I answer that question, because I will answer that question, before I answer it, let me say just one thing about what the IP does. So it helps to reframe what it means to thrive and it helps people understand what are all of those factors that really, um, enable thriving. We base it on the fa— able thriving in the middle of complex, um, situations, all of our complexities and demands. We all have complex lives. Thriving is not being about being happy all the time. It's not about being well all the time. It really is how internally well-resourced do I feel to meet my complexities and demands with a sense of growth, with a sense of competence, and then with a sense of high quality of life. So with that definition, There are really two ways that we have used the work and begun— I feel like we're beginning to scale the work. One way is through organizations themselves, so our work direct to global organizations. So we do a lot of work in the food industry, in the consumer goods industry.

Well, no, no, but stay there a minute. When you say direct to global organizations, to me, that says, OK, well, this is— industry agnostic. People are people are people. And, and, you know, there might be different nuances of working with a high-tech crowd than a food services crowd in a hospitality situation, et cetera. I was looking more of, well, how do, how do you get that to scale? Do you go from individual to dozens to hundreds to thousands of people in organizations? 'Cause that's where a lot of thought leaders, they have that vision, that dream of, oh my God, if everybody at this company or some subset of the population could embrace this, that would be really cool. But what are the actual formats and modalities and the underlying business models to do that?

Okay, let me see if I, um, will answer this better then. So some of it is one-on-one work, some of it is teamwork, and then some of it is organization-wide assessment work, just like you were saying, so that you can really reach that whatever number, it doesn't matter what that number is, of people and, and look at in the organization, um, where are there pockets of high thriving? And where is it low? And where is it moderate? And what do we need to do about that? It brings up a whole new conversation and honestly, a whole new metric by which the organization can measure its success. So one is that direct organization, that individual, team, organization level.

Yep.

Other, which is a really different business model, and this is when I say I feel like we are just beginning because, um, we now have, we now certify people in the work because I realized early on there are industries that WisdomWorks has not worked in, even though the tool is agnostic. We aren't experienced in that industry, but there are others that are. And so we certify people to bring the tool into other industries in ways that we might not have. And we now have about 225, what we call guides, people who are certified in this assessment framework and assessment system. And they then bring the work in however it makes sense for their organizations.

So there's typically two variations on that model. One would be external and one would be internal. So external being a bunch of independent coaches, consultants, et cetera, in a local marketplace or that has expertise in a specific industry that you grant them the rights to deliver that. And then the other would be people embedded in your client companies that have the rights to do that. Is— it sounds like yours was more of the first?

No, we're actually doing both. So many of our open enrollment programs, which we do twice a year, are the external consultant, external coach, the strategist, the organizational development person, the executive themselves that finds our work and says, hey, I want to be— I want to kind of embrace this way of thinking as a leader, and I want to bring it into my practice, whatever that is, practice or their company. But the other is the internal work. And so when I go back to that first way, I said that we were working direct to organizations. Many of those organizations are making some pretty massive culture changes. So for example, they are moving from more hierarchical models to more decentralized, maybe an agile organization. And starting to realize that the limits to growth for an agile organization is that you can do so much collaborating and connecting in an agile organization. That one of the human factors you fail to consider is burnout, that people—

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And then people, you know, then they can't reach kind of sustainable performance because people are burning out. Well, our work brings that element in. Perfect. Culture changes. And so we also have certified many people inside organizations.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So I wanna talk about the differences between the two, so I'll give you what has been my observations in being in this space for a long, long time, and I'd love to get your reaction to that. So I see on the two models, the, let's call 'em the external and the internal. On the external side, the challenges are oftentimes the folks that lean in to do that are really, really amazing practitioners. They fall in love with you and the model and the frameworks and the methodologies, but they might not be the greatest business people. Then they might not be able to sell as well, and they might not be able to get embedded. And they need a lot of support and nurturing. And when you look at the amount of time and energy and the effort that your organization has to spend to yield a decent return from them, it could be frustrating, right? And then you also have the variable of, well, people are people. And if, you know, Peter Winick was to deliver a program today and woke up in a cranky mood, that might reflect in on your brand, right? So that would be on that side. On the internal side, I actually like that model much better. Because if it's deemed part of your job by your employer, et cetera, et cetera, to do it, you can, as the IP person, create the select criteria, right, of what people need to do. Little bit more support, a little bit more control, and you're sort of neutralizing the stressor of bringing in the business, right? Because they have clients to serve. So react to that a bit. Is that— am I on point with your experience?

You are so on point. So what I first say is when I look at our higher purpose to really create a healthier planet, create a more thriving planet through organizations, I say they're both good. They're both good if I just measure based on purpose. But if I get to business and look at, okay, now let's, let's look at what feels more effective. I will say the external, the people that are external coaches, external strategists, et cetera, you are right. Those are people that usually absolutely love what they do in the world, their profession. And what they don't love is sales and business development. That's what they don't love. So they're looking for a tool and this tool helps them kind of deepen the conversations they can have with a client and it gives them another value proposition. So that's good.

Yeah.

Client, but they don't often love doing that sales and business development work. So I think you're spot on there. The great thing, but they're fabulous people and often, and in fact, in fact, in a number of occasions now, work has come, larger work has come through them by just them making some connections, and then we can back them up and support them, which is great. The internal folks are exactly what you say. They usually have some sort of a mandate to try. So it not only becomes part of their job, they now have a culture shift or something happening in the organization that gives it roots. It gives it a place, the conditions in which that work can thrive in that organization. So they have that in a way that often the external people don't. So I'm really reinforcing what you're saying. I'm finding some of the same kind of—

I wanna, I wanna push on the second one. A trend that I'm seeing lately, meaning the last couple of years, and, and my hypothesis is that when COVID hit, lots of large organizations had lots of internal facilitators, trainers, et cetera. We stopped doing all that because the world ended for a couple years. So those people got let go. And then when things started to turn, return to normal or semi-normal or whatever, they tried to move that as much as they could to a variable cost instead of bringing back the bench. So one of the things that we've seen that's a positive through that lens is that it used to be the only people that got certified were HR learning training professionals. And now in many instances, some companies are saying, hey, We're gonna open this up. So if we have a program on whatever it is, resilience or negotiate, whatever the program is, if that's something that's of interest to you, even if you sit in, I don't know, whatever technology or operations, it doesn't have to be part of your function. Let's have that conversation 'cause it's part of your personal development. And, you know, so it's sort of a double win. You're taking people that aren't necessarily quote professional facilitators and they're leaning in because they embrace the ideas and they love it. Have you seen it much of that?

You know, I would say during COVID we actually certified just as many people internal and inside organizations as outside. But it's probably because the content of our tool really met the time. So the content of the tool is about thriving and stress resilience. So we're looking at— linked to mental, physical, spiritual, emotional well-being and how do we lead in a way that really creates an organization that embraces those. So I think the framework and tool really met the time, met the needs. So we did not see kind of a, a downturn there. We actually saw sort of an uptick in the internal coaches. Yeah.

Last thing I wanna touch on before we wrap is one of the challenges in scaling through people, right? Because this isn't just a technology scaling model where, oh, there's software as a service or something like that, or an app or, or whatever, is that people are people, right? They have good days, they have bad days. You and I could both deliver the same program and both score a 10, you know, on the feedback charts, but it's totally different experiences if the quality controls aren't there. What are the things or the processes that you put in place from a select criteria perspective to ensure that in essence you're delivering a quality or consistently high-quality experience to the learner whether they're an employee of the company or someone that is a client of another consultant. That's really hard, right?

It, it's, it's challenging, but I think it's super important. It's actually important for me personally because of the quality of work that I want our organization to produce and for our brand. I mean, we actually are known for delivering that kind of quality. So in our program, we have a set of, we've, we've articulated knowledge, skill, ability areas that upfront people know that these are the knowledge, skill, ability areas that you are being measured on. Now we do make it an honor system. So by the end, they have to, you know, we're kind of giving them feedback and checking, but they need to say where they are in that. We also, you know, you can also go to a program and then forget what you learned if you're not immediately using it. So we also have ongoing conversations after that program so that people continue to dive deeper into the science and thriving and stress resilience and the link to leadership. Right. And they offer a program, you know, we've done it, I think 15 times at this point has a 94% return on investment rate. So we also ask for feedback and we, we find out, is this really, does it, does it meet the objectives that we've set? Are you meeting the knowledge, skill abilities? And is it really meeting your need? Are you able to use this and apply it? And we get really high scores on it. So I'm, I'm proud of that, our ability to do that.

Fantastic. And sometimes that means you, you have to be able to say no, like this person isn't a fit or— Totally.

And we've done that before. We have done that.

Yeah. And I think that's, that takes a lot of courage, particularly early on in the business cycle. Say, geez, I, I would really love the revenue, but the, the data or my intuition or whatever is telling me that this person's not a fit and therefore it's gonna hurt the brand and therefore it's gonna, decrease my odds of penetrating further in that sort of organization. You know, you're going to make it a short-term win at the expense of a long-term payback.

Yeah, I think more important than the revenue in that situation is the, is the quality of the work because we're interested in a certain type of impact in the world. And it is a different way of a healthier, more effective way of leading in the world. Yes. We're going after that. And so if the person either isn't a fit or more often than not, it's not that they're not a fit. Is that they can't meet, they can't complete everything that they need to complete.

Yeah.

What we've more often had to do is say to people, okay, you're not going to get certified now, but if you do these things over this period of time, you can complete the certification. So it's rare that someone is attracted to this kind of program already. If they look at everything we've written, our work, they're already vetted.

No, but, but I think that's an important part is that self-selection, right? You don't need to fall in love with a technology to be able to teach someone how to use Excel, right? Probably you like it, but I think there is an affinity or a love of the work that leads someone to want to do it. And you can't really force that like you can with some product training or technical training or some other things. All right. You, you kind of can't fake it. Well, this has been great. I appreciate your time and, and sharing your experiences and story with us. It's great stuff. Appreciate it, Renee.

And you, you too, Peter. Thanks so much.

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