Marcel Schwantes - Humane Leadership, Transforming Workplace Toxicity

Marcel Schwantes joins us to share the harrowing experience that inspired his new book "Humane Leadership: Lead with Radical Love, Be a Kick-Ass Boss." In a powerful testament to the physical impact of toxic workplaces, Marcel recounts how workplace stress caused his body to literally shut down—leaving him temporarily paralyzed and unable to walk for a month. This life-changing event became the catalyst for his five-year journey researching the leadership qualities that create thriving workplaces rather than destructive ones.

• Click HERE to order Marcel's book Humane Leadership: Lead with Radical Love, Be a Kick-Ass Boss
• Click HERE for Marcel's LinkedIn profile
• Click HERE for Marcel's first TBC episode Love in Action

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to The Boss Hole Chronicles
• 6:35 Introducing Marcel Schwantes
• 10:08 The Origins of Humane Leadership
• 15:34 From Toxic to Servant Leadership
• 21:31 Balancing Compassion with Accountability
• 33:44 Speaking Truth in Leadership
• 41:53 The Five Principles of Radical Love

Transcript

Sara Best: 0:06

Hey everybody, welcome back to The Bossh ole Chronicles. This is Sara Best, your co-host, so excited to be joined today by my buddy, my partner, my friend, John Broer. John, how are you today?

John Broer: 0:17

Sara, I'm good. Any day I can do an episode with you is a great one, so I'm excited that we're doing this one.

Sara Best: 0:24

Yeah, it's kind of a rarity these days, but there's some good subject matter we're going to cover today. John, who is our guest and what will we be talking about?

John Broer: 0:33

Well, we actually have a returning guest, and this comes originated back in May of 2023, when you interviewed Marcel Schwantes. And Marcel is a podcaster, an author.

Sara Best: 0:49

Motivational speaker.

John Broer: 0:50

Motivational speaker. Yep, he has just recently published a book that he was working on at the time that we interviewed him originally, but it is called Humane Leadership. We're so glad to have him back because he is also recognized as one of the top 101 global employee engagement and experience influencers. He does a lot of coaching for senior executives. He's an Inc magazine contributing editor and, of course, the host of the Love in Action podcast. When we were made aware of his book, I just thought it would be great to have him back, because it's just a super continuation of what we had before and I think it's going to be powerful stuff.

Sara Best: 1:30

I do too. Get ready everybody. We're going to be talking about love, radical love as a leadership. You know axiom that was great. So should we dig in John, let's do it. So should we dig in John.

John Broer: 1:43

Let's do it. The Bossh ole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm, helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode, Marcel. It is so great to have you back on The Bossh ole Chronicles. Welcome.

Marcel Schwantes: 2:16

Appreciate it. And you know, this is one of those podcasts where I, as soon as I wrote the book, I got to be back. Glad to be here. As soon as I wrote the book, I got to be back.

John Broer: 2:24

So glad to be here. Well, and before we hit record, we were just talking about you're on. Your original interview episode with The Bosshole Chronicles was back in May of 2023. And you were in the midst of writing a book which was a. I think you talked about it. It was like a. It was a five-year journey and that has to be, in and of itself, a remarkable experience and a challenging experience. It was a five-year journey and that has to be, in and of itself, a remarkable experience and a challenging experience.

Marcel Schwantes: 2:48

It was. It was a harrowing experience as well, because I started the proposal process before COVID COVID hit, publishing houses went dark, yeah, and right around 2020, late 2021, I thought let's get back into it. I reach out to my literary agent Lo and behold, she decides to do a career shift and she's out of the business. Oh wow, I was left with no agent, so I took a hiatus and then, you know, I thought, yeah, I'm just just gonna go the self-publishing route. But then I thought let me just try it on my own, just kind of a one last ditch effort, right, one last hurrah. And I I sent it, sent my book proposal out to a few, uh, publishers, and of course I got mostly no's. And then right around the midnight hour, business expert press shout out to BEP can call and say, hey, we love your manuscript, your proposal, let's do it. So I thought I had given up, and here I am.

John Broer: 3:55

And here we are. That's awesome. So for everybody listening, you know, in the show notes. Well, first of all, I'm going to put a link in there to your original episode where you had a nice conversation with Sarah focusing on your work entitled Love in Action. That is the title of your podcast, your newsletter, the work that you do. But the book that recently released is called Humane Leadership Lead with Radical Love, be a Kick-Ass Boss. Love that. And, by the way, at the top on the cover, a quote from Stephen Covey. You have so many accolades from so many notable people, you've got to get the book. People have to read this. But we love the origin story and how this journey started for you, because in the very beginning of the book what I love is that there is a boss hole story, so help us understand how it started.

Marcel Schwantes: 4:49

Yeah, definitely a boss hole story.

Marcel Schwantes: 4:51

So, flashback 2002, I was still, you know, way, way before I went on my own as a coach and I was working in healthcare for a hospital that shall rename nameless, and that hospital had a very since now I'm speaking to you guys, your audience knows toxicity right and so it was a very toxic work environment from the top down, and I was in an HR management role, being groomed to one day walk away from that two-year residency program.

Marcel Schwantes: 5:35

It was a two-year contract, basically to head up my own hospital as an HR department manager or director. That was the intent, at least on paper. Manager or director, that was the intent, at least on paper. But around year one, somewhere around month nine of the first year, I started to run into the boss hole signs, and so that started to take a toll on my health, and to the point where the more stress accumulated stress, anxiety and you name it it started to affect my physical health, to the point where one day I stepped out of the shower and I crashed to the floor, couldn't move from the waist down, paralyzed.

Sara Best: 6:17

Oh my gosh.

Marcel Schwantes: 6:18

And it wasn't permanent. Thank you, Jesus. Sorry, I'm showing my faith there, but-.

John Broer: 6:23

That's welcome here on the Boss Hole Chronicles. I promise you.

Marcel Schwantes: 6:26

And. But you know, as I crawled on my elbows to get to the phone to call my parents at the time, I ended up in ER. They sent me to the ER and the ER doctor says hey, what's your? How would you rate your stress level on the scale of one to 10 at work? And I said, I looked at him in the eyes and I said a 25.

Marcel Schwantes: 6:48

And so I had the, the, the physical symptoms of um, so much cortisol be released in the body for such a prolonged period of time that my back couldn't hold it, and so it literally just stopped working. It just seized up, Seized up and seized up. For a month I could not move, I could not walk for about a month's time and then. So I was on disability for two months, and then there's the emotional toll that comes with it. So why the story? What's the context here? Well, the context is that when you are under that kind of a stifling high pressure cooker environment where you don't feel cared for and people don't really value your well-being, your mental health, your just you as a person, and you go through this over a long period of time and some of us are wired, where we, the stress flies below the radar, if you will, we don't know that we're experiencing stress to the point where then our body starts to tell us right, yeah, Like hypertension, and you know your, your heart starts to palpitate and you start to have shortness of breath. Those are all signals that, okay, it's getting too close to the line, you need to pull back right. But then, as I did the research on the book, I realized that when you're under those toxic work environments, having recovered physically, mentally and physically and so after that episode, I was able to complete the two-year residency I came back right from finally having recovered physically, mentally, emotionally, Took me about three, four months, Came back and was able to complete that program. And then the very next job at another hospital.

Marcel Schwantes: 9:02

I was under a completely different style of management, which what we call servant leadership these days. Right, and servant leadership is tied to a lot of love and care. And so I began my investigation of my own boss, who I worked for, who cared for us and mentored us and make time for us, and they let us have a voice in, you know, in opinions and concerns, and we had a seat at the table. And so I started to connect the dots to what makes a leader like that thrive, where it filters down to the team level and the team level begins to excel as well, and they're engaged, et cetera.

Marcel Schwantes: 9:44

That's how I felt, and so that began my you know my whole research on how leaders, the most effective leaders, the ones that lead through love and care. We don't call it love, Some of us call it care, but I went as far as using the word that most people are afraid to use, and that's love, and that led to the premise of the book Humane Leadership. Well, if you lead with radical love and I explain what that is in the book through the framework you're going to be a kick-ass boss. So there you have it.

Sara Best: 10:19

Well, I'm glad you survived and thrived through that and have now used that to create something of a blueprint for other leaders. Part of me wants to go back and say what was this boss hole doing? We don't need to talk about that, though, because what we can appreciate and I'm sure people who are listening can appreciate, marcel is the impact. So the lack of empathy, the lack of being valued or understood or seen is can can hurt people, physically hurt people.

John Broer: 10:51

I do think in the book. To just expand on Sarah's point, while we don't want to necessarily talk, you know ad nauseum about the boss hole, about the boss hole when, when you did notify them about your, your back issue, I mean you were on the floor, you called. I mean it was accusatory. You were, you were doubted immediately, your, your truthfulness or your honesty was called into question. I mean that gives a really clear indication of the kind of individual for whom you were working and and, and that does not set a great stage.

John Broer: 11:31

Our managers ask themselves the question how do I react and respond to my people when it comes to the challenges and difficulties that everybody experiences in life? Do I doubt them? Do I question them? I mean again, can people lie, can people make stuff up? Absolutely, but that usually proves itself out, usually proves itself out. But what is your first reaction? Is it in suspicion, is it in scarcity, or is it in love and abundance? And I think that's a pretty clear distinction. And so when you made that shift, you went to that next manager, boss. That's what you experienced, somebody who really did care for you. Yeah, absolutely.

Marcel Schwantes: 12:10

And, to this day, care for you. Yeah, absolutely. And to this day, his name is Bruce, by the way.

John Broer: 12:15

Thanks, Bruce yeah.

Marcel Schwantes: 12:19

Bruce is the model. But you know, going back to the previous scenario, this is still. We're in the year 2025. This is still the way that a lot of people manage. I don't want to say most. I mean we are. We are beginning to shift towards, you know, gen zers that are coming, our demand. They're a different animal, they demand a different style of of leading, but we still see so so many of of the traditional models of of management that you can even trace back to early industrial era.

Marcel Schwantes: 12:52

Yep, it still permeates in today's workplace, where the people at the top, they make all the decisions, they hold all the power and they have all the control. And I mean, isn't it amazing we're still having this conversation? I know, 75 to 100 years later, that people are still treated like cogs in a wheel, and that has to change obviously it does.

John Broer: 13:17

It is as we would say. It's a shift from the command and control to the trust and autonomy model.

Sara Best: 13:23

Yeah, we do have to appreciate and recognize that maybe, while there was a slight uptick in engagement during the, especially during the beginning of the pandemic, managers and supervisors took the biggest hit during that time too for their well-being, being emotionally responsible and managing everyone else. Just last week I was presenting to a Vistage group on emotional intelligence and we had a slide there. That kind of evidences the debate happening right now. We've seen articles and I'm sure, Marcel, you've seen them too. Some leaders are emphatically shouting like hey, you're replaceable, Suck it up, buttercup. If you don't want to work here anymore, you don't want to be in the office, you can go work somewhere else, Like they're done.

Sara Best: 14:13

You know the economic pressure, the political unrest, the uncertainty has gotten to some people and pushed them back toward more of that command and control. Yet, on the other hand, the research continues to show us that, leading with love, everything that you spell out in your book, is exactly what people will need and respond to and will, in the long run, create the productivity, the outcomes and the outputs. And it's a raging debate in some cases, so it is very timely. This stuff is not fluffy stuff you're talking about. It is the pathway, and we believe this the pathway to a better workplace, but a better outcome. Like your company, will not only survive, it will thrive. Do you agree?

Marcel Schwantes: 15:01

Oh yeah, absolutely, and, like you said, the data has been. If you trace Gallup data, the last 50 years yeah, engagement.

Marcel Schwantes: 15:11

Surveys galore will tell you that when the immediate manager is the one, that's the most crucial for that loving, caring environment to take place, right? So when you have those managers in place that are taking care of the people, then the people are going to be more engaged and that makes really good, a good case for all kinds of other metrics in the business world, right? Customer interaction or profitability, you name it. But, sarah, one thing you mentioned that maybe it's a talking point here is that, yes, managers themselves need to be cared for. So who's responsible for that?

Marcel Schwantes: 15:53

So that's a conversation that's not happening often enough, right, often enough. For example, when I take on a client, I'm speaking to the person in the penthouse, the man or woman at the top, right, and I'm feeling out for whether that person has the belief and the mindset to take this on and say, yeah, we, you know, we want this because I believe in a caring, loving, nurturing environment for my manager so that it filters down to the front lines, right, but I'm, I'm finding that that it starts at the top. You have to have a champion at the top who's already a believer in you know, if you will, in the gospel of loving leadership.

Sara Best: 16:35

Yeah.

John Broer: 16:36

I just I'm tracking down the author because I might want to invite that person to be on the podcast, but there I think it was. Wall Street Journal published an article, sarah, I think I shared it with you Mm-hmm, managers are tired of being nice, mm-hmm, nice, and this is the whole. You know well, we've accommodated everybody through the, you know, as we come out of COVID and the remote workforce, and the leverage was to the employee and the managers are tired of being nice. We now need to really put our foot down and get back to business. And my question was well based on our anecdotal evidence of almost five years of doing this podcast. I didn't know that they were being nice.

John Broer: 17:18

Well, no, I mean, it would suggest that it's not a manager problem, it's an employee problem, and I would say that is an oversimplification of it. Because, and, by the way, I don't think anybody worth their salt in leadership development or manager or supervisor development and training would ever say that your job is to be nice, your job is to be effective, your job is to be humane, borrowing from the title of your book, and understand that you have human beings. And if you don't understand, if you don't have your own self-awareness and awareness of others, which is totally attainable. We talk about that all the time. You will struggle to be a humane leader, and if it was a reference to the book or something like that on LinkedIn and she's amazing, she's been on the program too I think that is evidence that we still don't understand what a manager needs to be A developer, you need to be self-aware.

John Broer: 18:25

Yes.

Sara Best: 18:43

And a developer of people and inefficient in that role.

Marcel Schwantes: 18:45

Right.

Sara Best: 18:46

We know that systemically there's not a lot in place in many organizations to support managers being effective in their role. I mean we could say, hey, yeah, your job is to develop people, but that you know 90% of their job is actually doing the work, then managing the people. We could talk about that all day. But I do think the underpinning of what we're talking here, marcel, that points to radical love, is, you know, you have to be self-aware and you have to manage what's going on with you such that you can then be aware of and care about what's happening for the other person. And that's the empathy, that's the patience.

Sara Best: 19:23

Those are some of the qualities and characteristics you describe in your book. I get it why CEOs and people are losing their minds. They're not tuned in to what's been happening emotionally and physically for them through all this stress. So it makes sense that it's kind of this trickle down really bad domino thing that you know people are left in the wake of no coping skills. And CEOs and leaders, not only do they have to buy in, they have to get healthy, they have to be willing to feel their feelings, and I'm sure some people's toes are curling right now Like feelings don't belong at work.

Sara Best: 20:01

Oh, but they do because they're there anyways. That's what's killing other people is your toxicity, your negativity, your self-doubt, your anger, your frustration. Okay, now I'm on a roll like a bad roll, so I'm going to toss it back to you, marcel.

John Broer: 20:18

Okay, wait before you toss it to Marcel, though. And no, I don't think that's a bad role at all, sarah, because I will tell you no. When we do our leadership team development, sarah, oftentimes you will bring up on the screen, we will use a feeling word list, and at first I mean people look at that and going it's like the first time any leader has been asked how do you feel right now, and they struggle with it. But once you go through that and check in with them multiple times, they begin to appreciate how critical that is. So I think I absolutely agree that it is a different way of looking at it. I love that point, sarah. So, yes, marcel, now you, this is about you, this isn't about us. So now you, this is about you, this isn't about us. Love and leadership, humane leadership. How does this translate into this work?

Marcel Schwantes: 21:03

What can people experience when they crack open your book Wow, there's so many things I can. I can go. I can go down many rabbit holes. I think that they will get a good baseline for how to lead effectively.

Marcel Schwantes: 21:17

And I want to speak to the impression of managers are tired of being nice. Managers who think that they first have this false idea that they have to be nice are probably the ones that are. They're probably drinking from the fire hose of way too much empathy and compassion data coming their way where, yes, those are good. Yes, we have to be good listeners and listen to the voices of our employees and meet their needs, et cetera. At the same time, leaders have to hold people accountable and demand excellence and still demand that the numbers are met and the expectations are met for performance. Right, but the two worlds have to mesh Right. It's not lead with the iron fist and expect people to perform at a high level. It's provide the environment and provide the caring behaviors for people to excel and then hold them accountable as well, because if they don't excel and meet their numbers, then that's a different conversation we need to have. Okay, why is it that? You know? We've created the environment for you to excel. We are supportive and nurturing. You, have clear expectations and you're still failing. Okay, so that's when the hard side of leadership has to show up to make sure that people's feet are still being held to the small fire.

Marcel Schwantes: 23:09

Maybe it's a flicker, not a raging fire, right, but again, it's because in this day and age, yes, we are coming out of a employee sort of an employee leveraged economy where they called the shots, and maybe we're swinging back to an employer led economy right, but we still have these young 20-somethings that are bouncing around. They don't have, maybe, the same direction and guidance in life that my generation or your generation had, right, where they know exactly where they're headed. They bounce around from job to job, they're delivering and they're driving for Uber, and so it's kind of like we have these unstable people now transitioning through the workforce, and those people have to understand that, hey, we would love to have you work for us, we will take care of you and we will grow you. If you understand that we are doing this for you, to keep you and to make you a better human being, more effective and have an awesome career here and again, that's when the soft side of leadership has to step aside and the other side of leadership has to take the forefront. And so, yeah, the nice guy, the nice guy manager I think it's really a stigma, it's sort of a false idea or analogy there is really, the nice part of leadership is always going to be the one that shows up with the things that we talk about.

Marcel Schwantes: 24:59

That made Bruce a great boss, and that's what caused me to want to run through walls for Bruce and I had high performance because Bruce set the conditions for that kind of performance to happen. But let me tell you, bruce was not somebody that you would ever walk over, because he was still very large, very much large, and in charge. He was my boss, he was an executive level person and I knew what my expectations for performance were, and if I failed, I was going to be called to the carpet. Sure, and so that's, I think, the balance or the paradox that we have to remind ourselves of important in all of that is to apply the concepts you speak about in your book.

Sara Best: 25:44

You know humility, love. I would just say that I don't see accountability as something that requires something different from a leader. To have conversations of accountability, there has to be candor and there has to be truth telling.

Sara Best: 26:01

But why does it have to be that we can't just tell the truth in love Like can we out of love and respect, and I mean I think all three of us will have job security until we're all done here and they put us in the ground and throw dirt on us because people are scared and unwilling to do that. How many times it is that we get called into a dynamic or a situation to support or help and it's just that no one's been saying the truth, no one's been talking about you know what's really happening or what's really needed, and then, when it doesn't happen, there's no follow-up conversation. And then all of a sudden there's a write-up in the file and it's confusing and ugly and ugly. So I'm just over here, marcel, saying, hey, people can follow the principles you spell out in the book to also tell the truth to people and hold them accountable, to outline those expectations, but in order to do that they have to get out of their own way. I would think yeah.

Marcel Schwantes: 26:53

Oh yeah, absolutely, and thank you for that, because you opened up this whole conversation, for speaking the truth. I talked about a humble leadership. I also talked about the last chapter of my book. Is leadership is trustworthy.

Sara Best: 27:10

Yes, trustworthiness, I love that phrase, yeah.

Marcel Schwantes: 27:13

Right, and you have to be able to speak the truth in love, like that's the hard part of love is, if somebody is not meeting expectations for performance, the most loving thing you will do is sit down with that person and basically say listen, you know, something needs to change here. What else do you need to get you going in the right direction? And but then set the expectation as well that listen, we've given you a year here and you're still coming up short. So you know, the loving part of leadership just requires some. The hard part of loving leadership requires discipline, and I think a lot of managers are afraid of that as well.

Marcel Schwantes: 27:56

Yeah, and that just comes from having good, healthy communication and boundaries, where you have to speak the good into people, but you also have to speak the truth into. Okay, you know you're not doing well here and I just want to let you know what's going on, right, and so the person is not left in the dark and then one day they get their walking papers and they don't understand what happened. So it's walking along those periods of maybe some uncertainty and walking alongside them ways amicably. You said okay, you know, sorry, it didn't work out for you, but we would love to at least set you up for your exit as in the most caring fashion as possible.

Marcel Schwantes: 28:47

It didn't work out for us here, but we, you know we have a competitor down the road that has a position open. We would highly recommend you there. Et cetera, et cetera. Right, you still want to pave the way with compassion for somebody that may not have been the right fit for you?

Sara Best: 29:04

Yeah, why don't we do that more often? We like to say love on them and let them go, you know, create some runway for them. And we have to watch out for the fundamental attribution error which is rampant. From a leadership perspective, it's when bosses look at performance and they can't help but make it about the person's character and they get frustrated and caught up in their own emotions and not seeing kind of the other side of it, which is the circumstances.

Sara Best: 29:31

This is not a good job fit for this person. They're not wired to do this job or the system that we have here doesn't really support someone doing this job effectively. System that we have here doesn't really support someone doing this job effectively. So if we can separate out the character and the personal attributes from the dynamics at play, it's much easier to part as friends. I know scarcely little few organizations, excuse me that have actually embraced that and done that. It usually gets ugly. It goes down that performance you know 30 days, 90 day performance improvement plan and then people are out on their ear and it doesn't have to be that way. I think you do a nice job of spelling that out.

Marcel Schwantes: 30:09

Yeah, and the other reason you want to treat people with dignity, even on their way out, if it's not a good fit, is because three years down the line that person is going to grow. Down the line that person is going to grow and maybe that person will then fill the gaps that he didn't have prior. And then we'll come back and you can, you know, welcome that person back in a different stage of life, a more mature stage of life where they kind of like finally got it. And that was the case of Rich Sheridan, who wrote the foreword for my book. Rich Sheridan, the CEO of Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, michigan.

Sara Best: 30:44

We had him on our podcast too.

John Broer: 30:46

He's a great guy.

Sara Best: 30:47

Yeah, the joy. Chief joy officer, chief joy officer.

Marcel Schwantes: 30:51

He talks about how one particular employee has come back twice. They have basically told him the doors are open here for you, but you know the expectations have been set If you want to come back here, here are your areas of growth. And that gentleman did come back and did work again for a few years and did quite well because you kept the door open.

John Broer: 31:16

Marcel, something you said before regarding the perspective of love in a management or supervisory role. It made me actually think about when I became a dad, and nobody I mean people become parents naturally. Nobody teaches you really how to be. Nobody is naturally a good parent. I think you learn. Sometimes we have great examples or role models from our own parents or we have to learn it.

John Broer: 31:42

But it is hard work. It is work and I remember you make me think of a time whether it's a child or an employee is to say I love you too much to let you continue down this pathway. And I want to talk to you about how we course correct. Talk to you about how we course correct Now, and it could be whether, again, whether it's with a family member or an employee. I think the same thing applies and it's a tough conversation to have.

John Broer: 32:09

It takes courage, but it also takes training. It takes an understanding of how to have that conversation in love and in a compassionate way, and whether, if some people are out there and I'm uncomfortable with the word love, it's like okay, I respect you too much to let this continue. I care for your progress and your success to allow this to go unmentioned, and I have to talk to you about this. That's the kind of stuff that people are not necessarily realizing is part and parcel of being an effective manager, supervisor or leader, and that also gives rise to. One of the things we've realized in the last five years of doing this and we've known this all along is that when you take, when you promote somebody into a management or supervisory role who is not ready for it, who may be easy, who really doesn't have the heart to develop other people, you automatically put them at a disadvantage, and especially if you don't train them to do it, and I think we're experiencing a lot of that right now.

Marcel Schwantes: 33:07

Yes, we are, and you touch on a lot of the radical candor style of man We've been talking about. That is being able to be more authentic and I think that, Sarah, to your point earlier, that takes a lot of inner work.

Sara Best: 33:25

It does.

Marcel Schwantes: 33:25

And a lot of self-awareness, but these are all things that are teachable and are learnable.

John Broer: 33:30

Yeah, as human beings.

Marcel Schwantes: 33:32

We are innately designed to grow as people, not to stagnate. You know growth mindset versus fixed mindset, and so that applies to leadership as well. If you want to become an effective leader, you have to continue to grow into the role of leadership. It is a highly aspirational place to be, and not everybody has the capacity or is equipped to be put into that role. We spend a lot of time promoting people that are high performers as contributors Maybe they're rock stars and the first thing a decision maker says is hey, yeah, you know what You'd make a great manager. We'd like to promote you because you are excelling as a contributor. Well, that falls on that decision maker's end to realize does that person or does anybody listening that is in a role of promoting contributors to managers understand the real competencies that makes for an effective leader? And I would wager that not everybody knows what those competencies are. Totally agree.

Sara Best: 34:48

Well, one that you talk about is radical love. Can you just tell our listeners about how radical love is different than kindness and empathy?

John Broer: 34:58

And being nice.

Marcel Schwantes: 35:00

Yeah, so radical love. Once you get past the understanding what holds you back, you have to do some inner work. The work of self-love, yes, saves the way for loving others. You cannot possibly be able to step in the role of loving and caring for others if you don't take care of yourself first. Sarah, you mentioned that at the beginning, and so that takes a lot of inner work to understand. You know, perhaps, gosh, can I even bring the world of therapy into this conversation, right?

Marcel Schwantes: 35:33

If you are suffering from some kind of trauma that is an unresolved issue for maybe, say, a family of origin thing, or an abuse issue or some kind of dysfunction that you haven't gotten over, that's your first step before you dive into the world of loving leadership. Yeah, you have to be able to close the gap on that and have closure to whatever that trauma is, heal from it, move on beyond it, right, gain your self-awareness to understand. Oh okay, so here are my triggers now. So now you are able to manage your emotions when because we all have triggers somebody might say something that's going to trigger a reaction in you, how are you going to manage your emotions around your triggers, right?

Marcel Schwantes: 36:25

Yes so you've got to understand what's inside your bag, your baggage. We all carry a little bit of baggage, right, so it's managed right. And once we kind of know how to manage ourselves effectively now we can step into the role of the esteemed role of the leader, right. And so what I did is I looked at well if I am going to be an effective leader in the 21st century in a way that creates impact for people as well as an organization. I delved into the religious literature that goes back a couple of millennia and I pulled five. But then I needed scientific backing from the world of positive psychology, organizational behavior, leadership literature to back it all up. And sure enough, I was able to do that and the data clearly backs it up and the five that floated to the top after various manuscript interpretations and looking at different translations of scripture and text and all that it came down to leadership is patient, leadership is kind, leadership is humble, leadership advocates for people or on behalf of people.

Marcel Schwantes: 37:43

And leadership is trustworthy. And so around that, those five, there's very little room for error if, because of everything now is integrated into how to become an effective leader but also a human being, through those five principles and you can reference any research that falls inside this framework. But the interesting one is the patience, because we don't often find patience as a leadership virtue, as a strength of a leader, but I think that that's a conversation that needs to happen more often.

Sara Best: 38:30

Oh, I think there's a little paradigm here that I don't know if that's what you call it, but you know, the emotional intelligence research, especially that contributed by Dr Travis Bradbury, says that the higher you go in an organization, the less emotional intelligence there is, and it actually peaks at the manager level and then drops pretty dramatically all the way down to the CEO. So it would be safe to say that we can say these things, that they're needed and that they're important and they should be valuable. But that's not what gets people promoted, as we've talked about. In particular, when CEOs rise to the top. They're pretty visionary, results-oriented, they're pretty fast-paced, they're less likely to receive honest feedback, so people stop. You know they do all the weird things around the CEO as far as giving feedback or not giving feedback, and they don't necessarily see the value in continuing to develop because they get results.

Sara Best: 39:34

So we have a lot working against us. Leaders have a lot working against them in terms of okay, here's what you say you need, but here's what gets results in my industry. How do I reconcile the both of those? And then it comes down to the heart part, doesn't it? It's got to be a choice.

Marcel Schwantes: 39:51

Right, they may get results and they may be meeting financial expectations for shareholders and their board, et cetera. But I've been in those environments where there's you know they're doing fine at the top layer of the organization and they are achieving results, but then you look at the company's turnover ratio or data at 60%.

John Broer: 40:16

The wake of bodies behind them.

Marcel Schwantes: 40:18

Yeah, and they're bleeding money, and so that is a financial question as well, because turnover is very costly.

Sara Best: 40:25

For sure.

Marcel Schwantes: 40:26

So you know, we have to look at the organization as a whole and not just fixate at the top level. If you're a CEO, about what's going on in the C-suite and how do you maintain your numbers, et cetera. Suite and how do you maintain your numbers, et cetera, come down to what's going on down in the front lines and experience what your workers are experiencing, because I can tell you that if again, look at the numbers, if we take care of their emotional and physical and any other well-being metrics and take care of the needs of the employee, they're going to experience higher engagement, and engagement translates to business results. That's the results you're after at the top.

Marcel Schwantes: 41:13

Imagine how much more results they would experience, right.

John Broer: 41:17

For a fraction of the cost of not doing it Exactly. A fraction A fraction, and we call it ERP. Our version of ERP is engagement, retention and performance Totally manageable with the right data and the right practices from the top down.

Sara Best: 41:32

I just wanted to ask, marcel, in your perspective, what's one small action a leader could take today? Maybe this is a lot to digest, like I'm going to have to go to therapy and do this inner work but what's one small action? We're talking about a small change that makes a big impact that you might recommend as we wrap up today.

Marcel Schwantes: 41:55

Yeah, I'm going to go back to the kindness chapter of Leadership is Kind and that's just to show genuine interest in other people. We spend so much time, just you know, during the day, it's where we go from meeting to meeting to meeting. We put out fires, we send emails back and forth and we just got tunnel vision, and then we forget the people in the margins and what's going on, because they each, each of your, of your team members, have unique needs. They have interest, they have goals and you want to find out what those things are, because it may become an opportunity to match work assignments to those needs, interests, goals to contribute to performance. So that's where I would start is show genuine interest to find out what's going on with your people. Nice, nice, nice.

John Broer: 42:50

Well, everybody, the book is Humane Leadership. Lead with radical love. Be a kick-ass boss. Marcel, thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure to have you back and hey, can we make you promise to come back when you publish your next book.

Marcel Schwantes: 43:05

Yeah, you got it, and let's make it a habit. You know a ritual.

Sara Best: 43:10

Yeah.

John Broer: 43:10

We'd love it Now. We won't wait two years, though We'll have you back sooner than that, but this has been great.

Marcel Schwantes: 43:17

Thanks so much and congratulations on the success of your podcast as well.

Sara Best: 43:22

Thank you, thanks marcel, coming from you, that means a lot. Hey guys, we'll see you next time on the bosshole chronicles.

John Broer: 43:33

Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the bosshole chronicles. It was so good to have you here, and if you have your own bosshole story that you want to share with the Boss Hole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystoryatthebossholechroniclescom. Again, mystoryatthebossholechroniclescom, we'll see you next time.