Have you ever wondered how deeply ethics influence business decisions and leadership practices?

Today on “Happiness at Work,” we’re joined by Jonathan Bennett, a seasoned leader who pivoted from managing a successful B Corp to coaching purpose-driven leaders. Jonathan brings a wealth of experience from his roles as a CEO, board member, and founder, combined with a socially conscious approach to tackling organizational challenges. Together, we’ll dive into the ethical dimensions of modern business, from boardrooms to individual values, and explore strategies for maintaining integrity under pressure. 

More information about Jonathan Bennett here.
***

Transcript

*Please note that the transcript has been automatically generated and proofread for mistakes. But remains in spoken English, and some syntax and grammar mistakes might remain.

Elisa Tuijnder: [00:00:00] What does it take for leaders to weave ethics seamlessly into the fabric of business, especially when balancing profit with purpose? Today on Happiness at Work, we explore the pivotal role of ethics in leadership. From aligning company missions with societal benefits, To managing stakeholder expectations without sacrificing personal [00:00:30] values, we tackle the essential strategies leaders employ to foster an ethical workplace.

Let’s discover how transparency and integrity not only shape business practices, but also influence company culture, ensuring a positive impact on both society, the employees, and the bottom line. 

Elisa Tuijnder (2): Before we dive in, you are listening to the [00:01:00] Happiness at Work podcast by Management 3point0, where we are getting serious about happiness.

Elisa Tuijnder: I’m your host, Elisa Tander, Happiness Enthusiast 

Elisa Tuijnder (2): and Management 3point0 team member. In this podcast, we share insights from industry experts, influencers, and thought leaders about what it takes to be happy, motivated, and productive at work, so that loving your job becomes the [00:01:30] norm and not the exception.

We will be publishing every fortnight on Friday, so be sure to tune in and subscribe.

Elisa Tuijnder: Jonathan Bennett has been in his clients shoes. He led a successful B Corp management consulting firm for a decade, but felt a deeper calling. Pivoting to create an intimate space for purpose driven leaders, he founded his coaching [00:02:00] practice. Jonathan blends CEO, board member, and founder experience with a progressive, socially conscious mindset to tackle tough organizational challenges.

As an advisor and executive coach, he helps founders and C suite leaders find greater impact. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. 

Jonathan Bennett: Thank you for having me, Elisa. It’s great to be here. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, look forward to it. So yeah, super excited to explore your insights and particularly interested in the role of ethics in modern business and your [00:02:30] experiences in this.

But we cannot start the show without our signature question, and that is what does happiness mean to you? 

Jonathan Bennett: I love that question. So two things come to mind. The first is I, amongst all the other business things that I do in my life, I also have been a novelist and a poet and I wrote a book of poetry a couple of years ago called Happiness Wise.

And the title of that book came from a question that a friend of mine asked me just in [00:03:00]passing, which went something like this, Hey Jonathan, how are you doing? I’m like, Oh, you know, good. And then he says, No, I mean, you know, happiness wise, and it just cut through everything for me. And I reflected a lot on that word on what it means to me.

And I think I eventually came to, uh, think of it around the concept of kind of enough. Like when I feel complete, when I think that enough has [00:03:30] happened. Then I feel a sense of contentment. And for me, that is what happiness means. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. That contentment seems to come back regularly. And it’s so interesting, right?

When people ask you, how are you? You don’t even think about it. It’s just like some kind of automated thing. But when we say, no, but I mean, how, how are you really? And how are you happy? That’s like, okay, that’s a whole different, uh, question you’re asking there. Hey, Jonathan, we also really like to sort of dive into the person we have in front of us.

And I already mentioned it a little bit in the [00:04:00] intro there. You’ve done a bunch of things that led you to this path. Obviously you just mentioned that you’re a novel and poet writer. Those are a lot of things that you probably took with you. So you know, why do you do what you do and how did, when did this ethical focus as well come in and why did it become so vocal for you?

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, so I appreciate it. And it’s really great to be here to talk about ethical business and purpose driven business. It’s something that I’m really passionate about. I kind of started my career journey coming up as a young writer. I have [00:04:30] an English lit degree. All I wanted to do was write stories and poems and I did that.

But of course, poetry doesn’t pay. I published a bunch of books, but I also developed a career in communications that moved into general management. I ended up. On the senior team at the big hospital. And I eventually hit a point in my life where I thought I need to construct the things around me that match who I am and what I believe in.

I have a progressive person and progressive politics, and I just felt like [00:05:00] business could be those things too. And so the company that I founded and should be, absolutely. I founded this company with those things in mind and along the way we Connected with the B Corp movement, we became a B Corp, which really just felt like we were.

Kind of going home, like it felt like what we’d done up to that point was leading us in this direction. I think all the different threads and strands through my career and my life, my art and my business have all kind of come to [00:05:30] circle and focus around a sort of purpose driven business model. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah.

Obviously also working for a hospital or in a medical thing, although sometimes people go into that for helping people, but that does not how that translates often in reality. One of the things I, I sort of also linked there, you said like, how are you, it’s kind of also like the, your first, you know, the first thing when you answered what does happiness mean?

We have one of those in business as well, right? You know, that’s just the way it is, or that’s the way corporate goes. There is often a movement towards more ethical and [00:06:00] more value driven and purpose driven, but too often I still get, you know, that’s just because that’s the way it is. We just need to make more money without thinking why.

You are in the fortunate position that you’ve been on numerous boards and you’ve advised also numerous boards throughout your years and you know, I can only imagine that it’s pretty hard sometimes to convince a board to go for something that is more driving social good or ethical considerations than [00:06:30] catering to what is predominantly of interest often to a board and that is profit.

So how do you go about leveraging? What is an effective strategy? 

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s lots to unpack there in your question. Um, I kind of came up through healthcare and social services. And so I met the for profit sector about halfway along in my journey. I now sit on a couple of privately held corporate boards, which are social purpose companies.

A lot’s changed in the last 10 to 15 years. The rise of ESG, obviously [00:07:00] around board tables, environmental social governance, uh, DEI and all the social movements and social change, environmentalism, all of these things. Are of deep concern to, to every organization, whether it’s a, uh, a not for profit or a for profit entity, whether it’s small or large, you simply have to be able to connect with and decide what your stance is going to be on each of these things.

There’s been a lot of churn out there over the course of the last 10 years, as companies have [00:07:30]gone from standing on the sidelines, having no opinion to their stakeholders, wanting them to stake it, take a stand. And so we saw it through Black Lives Matter, through Me Too, we see it now in campus based riots that are happening as you and I are talking.

Politics and the personal and the collective purpose of companies have all become very intertwined. It’s A very difficult place for a board to be and a very difficult 

Elisa Tuijnder (2): place 

Jonathan Bennett: for a, um, for a management team to [00:08:00] navigate. We’ve seen all kinds of hollow and false promises that companies have come out with and then have later on walked back, failed to action, and it’s almost made it worse, it’s almost 

Elisa Tuijnder: made it 

Jonathan Bennett: worse.

It’s one thing if you’re going to choose to stay apolitical and that’s your stance and you make that choice. It’s another thing. To decide to come out, which are the right causes of the many that exist out there? How do you go [00:08:30] about choosing why this one and why not that one? What happens if it’s driven from inside your company, from an employee base, that’s particularly focused in one region of your company on a particular issue, but another region over here maybe has a different perspective.

Or holds a different set of values. And so it is really fraught. And, you know, I would point any of your listeners to Alison Taylor’s new book called Higher Ground. She’s a prof with the Stern School of Business in New York, and she’s [00:09:00] taken, I think, probably the most comprehensive look at how companies can navigate and how they found themselves offside with so many of these things that comes from, in some cases, A good place in other cases from a less good place, just kind of whatever the equivalent of social greenwashing is.

That’s a lot of what’s going on here in the last five to 10 years. And things are coming home to roost here right now. So I think that we’re seeing a real, a real inflection point around these issues. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, I think [00:09:30] also, you know, we talk a lot and I remember I’ve gone through this with companies while trying to make, you know, strategic decisions and being apolitical is also not apolitical, right?

You’re choosing to not say anything. I think it was Maya Angelou that said that, but don’t quote me. I didn’t know. I think it is, but I’m not 100 percent sure. Uh, yeah, that, that, you know, just staying quiet is also a statement that you’re making, but I understand, especially in very diverse areas and very globalized companies, that this [00:10:00] is a very difficult thing to navigate.

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, it really is. 

Elisa Tuijnder: You do actually, so I was wondering sometimes, like, I mean, I’ve never been on a, on such a corporate, uh, board, like do those, issues really get driven all the way to the top. I’m sure with something that is so public, like the Copernic thing, or I’m guessing they had some involvement in there, but how, where does, how does that work in practice, really?

When do you drive that up the line? Are they given clear guidelines? Uh, yeah. Well, how does that work? 

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, well, I, I think any good board is setting tone from the [00:10:30] top. They’re participating in the vision, in shaping the values. And, you know, while management is maybe coming to them with. What the next five to 10 years are going to look like and how that’s going to unfold, how that connects with brand.

With overall purpose. Some companies have a very kind of apolitical stance. Others are, you know, there’s no issue that they haven’t found that they didn’t want to weigh in on and everything in between. And that’s really where the change has been is that you have to have a stand. If your stand [00:11:00]is no stand, that’s taking a stand.

You better be consistent and you better be clear. Yeah. And you know, if you’re going to pick a couple of lanes that are important to you, you better be able to articulate why. So, you know, if, if you’re a brand of soap like Dove and you pick women’s health and you go hard at that consistently over time, then that can be brand enhancing.

As long as you’re staying on top of it as an issue and as long as you’re participating in the right way. And so it, it’s when [00:11:30] companies that have, you know, they’re in many, many verticals around the globe, you know, kind of end up trying to stand for everything. Their mission statements sound. Like motherhood and apple pie.

They just want to be all things to all people. They end up being, of course, nothing to everyone that it’s really, really difficult, really problematic. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it gets even probably more problematic when you say, I think Dov, is Dov not part of any lever? And then you have this, so then you have multiple brands that are trying to do multiple things, but then your parent company [00:12:00] is, yeah, all of these don’t always have the right reputation also just because they are so involved with so many things, right?

When I was reading, when I was preparing for this, I did a lot of practical examples from my own time, it kind of came to light. And I wondered, you mentioned this a little bit, what happens a lot as well is this compromising of values and in times of stress, like, okay, money’s down, we can’t be doing this, or like, you know, we have to go a different direction, I think something.

Like, you know, Budweiser now being told when, you know, everyone pouring out their beer cans or something [00:12:30] like that. We justify this almost sort of either the one way, like, okay, for the profits, or when somebody does something else wrong under some kind of Machiavellian principle, like, okay, well, if, as long as we continue to exist, we will be able to do good along the line, but you kind of compromise yourself and your brand, I would assume.

So how dangerous is that? And have you got any examples there where that really went wrong and backfired? 

Jonathan Bennett: Well, I mean, there are some great examples out there and you just cited one of the most recent ones that we’ve watched. [00:13:00] And you know, it’s what happens when you hire an ad agency and your senior management team have one set of values, but your primary customer has a completely other set of values.

That’s why diversity in 

Elisa Tuijnder: your teams is important. 

Jonathan Bennett: That’s right. You can get toned up to the realities of what it is that you’re trying to do. I think it’s increasingly difficult having the conversation and keeping it alive inside your company, inside your team, understanding that compromises are probably necessary at most steps along the [00:13:30] way, but make them intentionally.

If you’re always reacting. Then the world will win. You can’t just be passive towards these issues. You have to have a risk profile. You need to manage these issues as they connect with your stakeholders, with everybody that cares about the success of your company or organization. You have to know what they care about and you have to know if they’re going to care whether you care.

And so that level of sort of sophistication around what used to be called issues management. Now it’s called [00:14:00] like values alignment. 

Elisa Tuijnder (2): Yeah, exactly. 

Jonathan Bennett: These things need to be stewarded in a very active way. If you take your eye off the proverbial bull, you’re in trouble quickly. Some examples would be one of the largest B Corps in the world is Danon, the yogurt company.

They’re a global, global brand. They are in all kinds of lines. They had a few years ago, a lot of trouble from shareholders pushing back hard against how much they were spending on being a social purpose company. You know, the CEO was. [00:14:30] Pretty famously kind of moved on, you know, flash forward a couple of years, the list of the number one plastic polluters, like the top 10 plastic polluters in the world just came out and they were on the list, you know, behind other beverage, you know, Coca Cola and all that sort of stuff.

And that’s a really problematic list for them to be on as a global B Corp, as somebody that has really wrapped themselves and their brand in being environmentally responsible. And so I’m not suggesting that they’re not doing a lot more than many others [00:15:00] on that list. Of course they would be, but it’s fraught because you’re stuck your neck up and you’ve said, this is us, this is who we are and what we believe in.

And if you believe what we believe, you know, steal from Simon Sinek, you should join us in this course. And here we are on this list, on the ugly list, and that’s really difficult. And things like that are happening all the time to brands. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. And especially, I mean, like we, we started this thing, like it’s almost, I, for me, it’s really worse when a company has been so vocal in one side, whether that is, you know, women’s rights, but then ends up [00:15:30] being like extremely polluting or like, you know, if a dove now comes out doing animal testing for it is products that they are like, you know, that would be really bad for the product as well.

But you know, even in, in, in, in those kinds of things, it’s, It’s, it’s sort of detracts from their original time and investment on, on, uh, and then going forward there’s that you don’t have any trust or, or in, in the brand anymore because they’re saying one thing outwardly, but something we equate to. Funny that you also mentioned Anon [00:16:00] because I grew up literally 10 minutes from the, from their original factory in Belgium.

Jonathan Bennett: Oh, wow. Okay. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. So, you know, it’s, it seems like they’re inescapable or at least important to have a strategy inside of the company, but also towards the outside more and more that people understand what you stand for. So how important is that? Is it really big that also into the mission statements and the purpose to get some societal good in there for companies, especially like, I mean, I could see like sort of Patagonia, for example, [00:16:30] has these really famous mission statement.

I mean, that’s, I get that. That’s clear. There must be, there’s a lot, a lot of companies where that initial sort of link to societal good is not as clear. So how important is it for them also to really kind of align with that or put that in there? 

Jonathan Bennett: I think if it’s real, if they deeply believe it, if it’s aligned with people that work for them, with their suppliers and supply chains, if it’s aligned with the people that they [00:17:00] serve and or sell to, then why not?

I mean, if you’re so moot. And you can stand by it and at the long term play, then to articulate it is only to help connect you with the people and what they believe in, and it will become a virtuous circle. If it’s fake, then people will find you out. I would suggest it’s better not doing it at all. If you’re sitting around a corporate board table and the bottom line is the only thing that matters and you don’t care about anything else, including your employees, and you’re purely [00:17:30] about driving money to the bottom line or cost containment at all costs, then you At least own it.

Don’t pretend to be something that you’re not because that increases your risk. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. As well as like, it’s counterproductive. Like I would have seen a lot and I said to you before that I was seeing some of these things like the, the people first culture kind of washing almost like, let’s just call it like that really betraying towards the outside world.

We really care about our employees and then you hire them and they realize. I mean, they have the highest burnout rate or those kinds of things. So [00:18:00] then people are expecting a very different culture on the back end and they’re going to lead. 

Jonathan Bennett: And very, very difficult during times of downsizing and layoffs as we’ve seen in PEC.

You know, I mean, there’s some really like people first culture stuff that’s been put out and then, you know, massive layoffs. Even if you look at the numbers, they’re still hiring as many as they’re buying. I mean, they’re just churning stuff. They’re so big. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Pushing them through all their departments and retraining.

Yeah. 

Jonathan Bennett: And that’s really it. I think we live in an age where the [00:18:30] internal is the external and whatever you’re communicating internally, it’s going to be on Reddit. It’s going to be on Glassdoor. And if you can’t communicate to your staff and to the folks that are hopefully all in. on your mission, on your company’s purpose, then you don’t stand much of a chance because you’re not going to keep it hidden anymore.

There’s just too many channels and too many ways in. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, absolutely. And also, you know, everything gets leaked. I mean, I was listening to the New York Times the other day about these, [00:19:00] the original sin of AI, how they were all using each other’s sort of source materials and using all of them, skimming the internet or whatever the name is.

And just all of the actual conversations in a very small group of people, they’re all recording. And if somebody doesn’t align with that company anymore, somehow it’s going to come out. So I guess something like that. It 

Jonathan Bennett: always comes out. 

Elisa Tuijnder: So sometimes, you know, maintaining alignment with, with stakeholders, without compromising your personal values as a leader, or even as we’ll go into the employee sort of point of [00:19:30] view in a little bit further.

It can be difficult. And let me give you an example of what I’m really talking about. I was once, not that long ago, still pre pandemic. I was working for a large university in the United Kingdom. Red Brick University was subscribed to Stonewall. Everything was all about LGBTQI everything for all the students was there.

Very much outwardly saying these kinds of things. And then they decided to open up a campus in Dubai. So like a subsidiary campus and there was a lot of problems around that since certain [00:20:00] staff weren’t able to go there and work there. So certain senior staff was saying, like, you know, I can’t progress in my career cause I can never actually visit this campus.

And also for our students, it was a very. Very big problem, but it was a smart move from their bottom line point of view, even from their continuation. But I wonder, like, yeah, how do you work with that? If your personal values are being compromised or challenged? I just wanted to have your take on that.

Jonathan Bennett: That’s a great example. I mean, an unfortunate and complex example, but a pretty great one. Companies, [00:20:30] institutions, organizations make compromises all the time, and they’re playing off one set of values against another. And, you know, you can tell yourself a story that, you know, we do A, we’re going to be able to take the money and reinvest it in B.

And so while we might not love A, we want B, you know, and then you’ve got all these people that are all focused on B who say you’re selling out, you know, we don’t want growth at any cost or that is not what we signed up for. And it feels like a bait and switch for them on a values basis. And [00:21:00] so it really is difficult.

I think that decisions get made too often around senior teams. And they’re in a kind of bubble. The echo chamber is in full effect. Somebody has an idea about something. There’s this opportunity, they start to spend money on it and then becomes a bit of sunk cost stuff. And it becomes this inevitability and they really haven’t done the deep work of understanding what the ramifications and ripple effects of that decision will be until it’s too late.

The organization [00:21:30] and the stakeholders. Who haven’t been brought along, who didn’t feed in, and that’s a cycle that I see fairly often. I mean, the way through it is to help people bring, you know, to bring people along in that decision. If there was some early stage thinking and there was some engagement that were done by people that would be obviously opposed to it, if there was a way through it that they could live with, given the benefits.

and they were participating in it, then great. [00:22:00] Not always possible. Sometimes there’s contractual obligations or confidentiality. There’s lots of reasons why you can’t always, uh, include folks in decision making, but it’s often not as tight as people begin to think it is. And there’s ways to include folks into, into the thinking.

And I, I lean towards that as a coach. I like to help CEO broaden. The pool of ideas and insights that they’re taking in, not just a C suite [00:22:30] around them, who let’s get real, you know, after a while become pretty captured and they start to become very protective of their own legacies, their own decisions that they’ve made along the way.

And you know, if they’re a well functioning team, rightly enough, of one another. And so ideas become pretty tightly held and that’s not always a good thing.

Elisa Tuijnder: Does your workplace feel stuck in a rut? Are silos and outdated leadership [00:23:00]styles stifling creativity and collaboration? At Management 3point0, we understand these frustrations. That’s why we offer tailor made training programs designed not just to enhance skills, skills, but to transform entire organizational mindsets with our expert guidance and vision or workplace where barriers are broken down and everyone is empowered to contribute their best and leadership not only manages, but motivates and inspires [00:23:30] ready to create a thriving workplace culture.

Then visit our website at management3o. com and see how we can help your organization build a happier, more productive workplace. I’m of the belief, in any case, that taking everybody along to a certain extent. is always going to bring you valuable insight. I think it’s very important in order to have an actual people first culture, to have the trust among employees and staff that, yeah, those things don’t come [00:24:00] up out of the blue, out of nowhere.

And this one, okay, was for a certain set of people. A lot of people were very angry about that, but there’s sometimes these really ground breaking Decisions that come out of nowhere and we can’t even see them coming. And I think that’s what angers a lot of people then. And that also for those who remain the, the trust and, and, and, and motivation is very much broken.

I would say then as well. 

Jonathan Bennett: For sure. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, so the role of transparency [00:24:30] is that that’s, I think it’s incredibly important in, in, in goals and, and, and values. And, and how do people do that best? Is that literally just blatantly saying, okay, here is our internal communication. How does that work best? How do we keep employees and, and other stakeholders involved in these processes without giving all the nitty gritty, all, all of the, the confidential stuff as well.

There’s 

Jonathan Bennett: this old line around strategy setting. You know, if they plan the battle, they won’t battle the plan. And I think conceptually it’s a good model to keep in mind. The extent to which you can build [00:25:00] up a reservoir of trust through activities and planning and participatory. Engagement, whether it’s staff, whether it’s customers, whether it’s other stakeholders that you can bring along and include them in the development, because then you’re building agreements with people, they’re all in, they’re committed, they see their work in the finished product, all of that’s great.

And then when things come along that due to circumstances, you’re really not [00:25:30] able to build a collaborative process. And you have to make a tight, fast decision and just execute it. Hey guys, we’re selling. Hey, we’re moving into a new territory. Hey, we’re buying a company. You know, these are often things that you just, you can’t like, it’s companies aren’t democracy and we ought not think about them in that way, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be ethical and that if they build up a reservoir of trust and they mostly do a really good job around this stuff and they do need to make a fast business [00:26:00] decision that does have ramifications and there is consequences.

That people on the ground on balance will say, I still trust them. I don’t like that decision, but it’s not enough for me to leave or for it to have eroded everything. And that’s where I think that, you know, doing the right thing more often than not will get you that. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, you bank it sort of. And definitely not saying you’re doing one thing and then going, going a few months later, do the complete opposite or stand there and be like, [00:26:30] we promise you there’s not going to be any layoffs.

And then, you know, for a while, somebody, the performance, so the people who, well, obviously in the United States, you have office, you often have these mass layoffs. So people are way more used to this kind of thing or being so great as well, but. These are very unusual in Europe, at least. And so when that happens, the emotional impact of it, as well as the impacts on performance and motivations of those that are left.

is so significant that it takes, I believe [00:27:00] sometimes it can take years. Yeah. 

Jonathan Bennett: You absolutely can destroy a culture through a round of layoffs. Absolutely. And you know, it’s also heartbreaking on the other side. I mean, nobody’s going to give a lot of sympathy to, you know, exorbitantly paid CEOs, but lots of organizations have to right size and change the mix of skill mix if they’ve got business changes out there and they’ve got to go through layoffs.

And they’re heartbreaking. Uh, these are people, they’re well paid. [00:27:30] I’m not going to sit here and cry for them, but I can tell you it keeps them up at night because I talk to them. That’s my work. I spent a lot of time and they are often trying to figure out ways of doing things as gently as possible, or it’s an ethical way as possible.

And there’s often not good ways to do that. You know, that you’re really upending somebody’s life. And so there’s no great moving way to buy somebody, especially if you have to do it in a big way. What I would say is [00:28:00] that mostly the worst decisions are when they wait too long, because these things are compounded.

So if the situation is getting bad and a management team doesn’t course correct, then because they don’t want to lay people off because they think, Oh, you know, the next big contract is just around the corner. It’s 10x the problem in another quarter or two and they’re making a much more draconian hit which has a Much bigger outsized impact on culture ultimately.

Those smaller [00:28:30] adjustments along the way, while never feel good, are almost always better than allowing it to become the proverbial runaway train. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll never forget. I once was a facilitator in a training in New York. And the company, it was a mixed group. So it was a sort of an open training.

Two of them are from the same company and they had a phone call during lunch. Uh, and yeah, they were literally just, they’d been there for years, were fired. 

Jonathan Bennett: During lunch over the phone. 

Elisa Tuijnder: During lunch, it wasn’t even in the building. They could pick up their [00:29:00] stuff. And, and for me as somebody, you know, in the European culture where the, where the employees were way more protected in that sense that they can, and if they can send them home, but there’s going to be with some money as well.

And just sort of to see that for the first time and how heartbreaking that was. And it was literally done on purpose to send them to those training day so they can pack up their stuff and they could pick it up with security so that they didn’t have to deal with it. That was just, you know, that was the most insane I saw in that respect.[00:29:30]

Jonathan Bennett: That’s a horrendous story. I mean, LinkedIn does get lit up by these kinds of stories that happen and famously, you know, people firing people over Zoom, mass fire. I mean, this stuff is just. Absolutely ridiculous and lacks any humanity. There are ways to do things, to do hard things as ethically and as responsibly as possible and to treat people best.

They’re not going to like you, they’re not going to say thanks, but you can know and you can sleep at night knowing that you did everything you could do. within your [00:30:00] control to, to make that person’s exit with as much dignity as possible, with as much money as you can manage, all of those things. I think that’s, you know, every ethical, like executives should be thinking lots about.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. And seeing it on LinkedIn is one thing, but seeing that in person, I will always take that with, and the funny thing was they were not surprised. They were like, Oh, happened before the industry. And I’m like, that should not be the industry because that’s how do you do your job, your job well, because it’s a fear based culture.

It’s like [00:30:30] every day you can get fired or every Friday can be your last. I see myself being motivated with trust and I mean, there’s so much work around this and obviously I work in it as well and I can see what the benefits of this are, but this stick thing is horrible to me. It really 

Jonathan Bennett: is.

Elisa Tuijnder: How important is it, especially in these massive times of turmoil and change, to really Stay connected to your values, the ones that you have on the wall, but the ones that you’re also supposed to take with you everywhere.

And the culture started years and [00:31:00] years and years of building it. Cause culture doesn’t come like, Hey, tomorrow we’re going to be a people first culture or tomorrow we’re going to live by fun or ethics or those kinds of things. And we both know that it’s a process with a lot of money invested in. So staying true to them must be incredible.

Yeah, 

Jonathan Bennett: it’s really hard. And I think that values tests happen during a time of crisis. That’s when we see the true colors come out and there are as many examples of a company that responds well in a crisis or a leader that [00:31:30] responds well in a crisis, is values driven, makes tough decisions, but is able to face up to them, explain and align them with why they made the choices that they made and so I think it’s There’s way too much time and money spent on creating the beautifully graphic designed poster on the side of the boardroom wall or, you know, on that, on the, you know, the landing page, which isn’t worth the font, you know, it was downloaded to be written in, like, and we’ve all, [00:32:00] you know, seen companies and or organizations that do that because you’re supposed to, but it’s hollow and everyone knows it.

And it doesn’t take much. You know, I’ve been a management consultant for years. I’m a coach now. Like I can walk in the door and know in 10 minutes. Yeah, you can read a, 

Elisa Tuijnder: you can read a, what’s it called a, what kind of job description and you can read between the lines. I was doing some research the other day on, around it and they’re, they’re, they were saying all the right words, but I could already feel it because I was doing research for a blog article.

I wanted to [00:32:30] click on it. And the first thing they asked me in this forum was about my high school degrees. It was like a director role. And I was like, you know, for, for us in, in. This was a super, super long thing. And it was a people and culture wall, all of these kinds of things saying that you’re all about, 

Elisa Tuijnder (2): but 

Elisa Tuijnder: then actually you’re still holding it.

This is a very old school kind of way of, okay, you’re, you’re in your 50s probably, but please tell me what degree you had on English in high school. Right. Uh, that tells you that they’re not going to be a very forward [00:33:00] thinking institution as well. And 

Jonathan Bennett: there are so many tells aren’t there. If you pay attention and you know what to look for.

You can just feel it. I’ve done a lot of planning work in my time. Whenever I was doing focus groups with employees, like little questions that you would think are really innocuous, you know, it’s like, Oh, Hey, you know, if you had a former colleague that you knew and there was an open job at this company, what would you say to them if you were going to try to recruit them to apply to this company?

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah.

Jonathan Bennett: And that little question [00:33:30] would get so many interesting responses because in some places everybody would be like, I wouldn’t invite my friend here. An avalanche of recruitment enthusiasm and everything in between. And so as soon as you go into a place, you really do have a sense of whether those values on the wall are just words or whether they’re actually real.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially as a good management consultant and change consultant, you should be able to come in and basically just be a fly on the wall for the first times and [00:34:00] really hear what’s being said, not being said. And for me, one of the really good telltales as well as how the office, well, it’s a little bit less nowadays, but.

How the office feels. I used to, once again, came into an office where it was literally like a church. And I know that’s pretty obvious, but there’s a lot of things in between that as well. And how, you know, are there very small things in that bed and you can listen in, even listening in on

Jonathan Bennett: meetings, you know, like just being sometimes doing board work, you know, I just observe a board meeting and [00:34:30] I like, it’s just a study in human dynamics and power.

Elisa Tuijnder: It’s fantastic. 

Jonathan Bennett: Who talks, who doesn’t talk, the kind of questions they ask, where they focus, where they don’t focus, why. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, as an anthropologist by the by degree, I love this. I lit this one of my favorite parts of like, it’s like really doing a proper ethnography on, on, yeah, on a, on, on a culture and on a company, because that’s sort of the future of anthropology now.

And that’s how I bring it into my work as a culture consultant. Interesting. It’s really good because it’s not tangible, [00:35:00] but it’s there in everything, obviously. Yeah. Before we start wrapping up, we’re going towards the end. And I, I kind of wanted to. Bringing the, the, the, the client lens as well, um, because we’ve talked about these sort of the employees, the, the, the T suites and, and, and stakeholders and the boards, but how important is it to attract like minded customers?

Is that same across the board for all sorts of companies? Obviously there’s small nuances, but why, or why is it so important there, or could it be important? 

Jonathan Bennett: [00:35:30] Yeah. I mean, I. I think voice of customer is essential in product design, in service design, in marketing, in values alignment. Like if you don’t know what moves the people that you are trying to sell the thing to, or you’re trying to help the people with, then you really don’t know your business very well and the chances of you screwing it up pretty good.

And it’s, it’s kind of breathtaking how often I find I’ll be somewhere inside some organization helping a CEO. And I realized that they don’t really know. [00:36:00] Well, they used to know, but they don’t know any longer what the real experience, the lived experience of their customers are on the journey towards purchase on post purchase, especially SaaS companies.

You know, there’s so many of them these days. And I think that they care a lot about front door and they say they care a lot about churn, but they don’t really, not as much as I think they should. They just burn through so many customers. And it’s because you’re experienced. [00:36:30] as a consumer of the product has a lot of wow factor at the start and then just costs money and is a headache until you eventually get sick of it and leave.

And not to just pick on that business model. It’s true in many different ways. It’s true in the nonprofit sector. It’s true in government. I just think that understanding your, you know, who you exist to serve needs to be essential and it does connect directly to your purpose. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, I am. And there is something really powerful.

I think what happens [00:37:00] a lot is a certain, uh, CEOs or, or companies are afraid of alienating a whole new base that they haven’t actually broken into or a whole new segment of the population that they haven’t broken into. But then conveniently forget that if they alienate all the people that they already have, actually, that’s just, you know, the cost benefit analysis probably doesn’t make sense, but it’s interesting there.

I, for example, when Nike, when, when we’re Nike, sorry, when, when, when this happened during the pandemic and they stood by it, I [00:37:30] think that was very admirable whilst, you know, the old Anheuser Busch thing now is also a bit more wishy washy and people don’t really know where they stand because even if they go back on it, It’s sort of too late because not everybody’s following the debate and people are like, Oh, didn’t they do that?

So you really dilute the message, I guess. 

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah, you really do. 

Elisa Tuijnder: Right. It’s been really interesting to talk to you about this topic that I feel like we haven’t actually approached enough on the podcast. So might have to do some thinking around this, how we can bring that in more. But here on the [00:38:00] podcast, we are really big fans of tangible practices.

You know, things that our listeners can start implementing tomorrow. And This topic is obviously kind of complicated. This is one for the overall direction of companies often, but is there anything that we can try and break down that people on individual scale or in smaller teams can start practicing and leave them at an actionable step or something to really keep in mind?

Jonathan Bennett: Yeah. I mean, I think that it begins with you as a person, as a consumer, as an employee, and you should really ask, you know, where [00:38:30] is their alignment for me with this organization or not? And is compromise okay? Is it understandable? Where are my boundaries? Where are my, like, limits? You need to connect your personal mission with folks that you want to work with and for, and it can take time to find your voice, I think, especially if you’re earlier on in your career.

But over time, that will get clearer and clearer to you. And I think if you can align your interests and the things that move you with other people [00:39:00] that care about the same things you do, That you’re in a good place and to just know that it’ll change over time, right? Like the stages of life influence things that move you.

So whether it’s parenthood or aging or the maybe, I don’t know, societal forces that play, they all affect our lives and, and, and why it is that we get up in the morning, we want to go and, and work. And so, you know, I, I just stay flexible and stay kind to yourself as you’re doing, as you’re doing that work.

On the On the corporate side, I [00:39:30] think it’s, uh, it’s pretty similar. Like we need to make sure that we stay really attuned to whether it’s our customers or whether it’s our partners. Clients or our staff, they’re the people that care about our success and will ultimately help us be successful. So these things are, they’re, they’re not going away.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. And that is one of the, I kind of work with people who are not aligned with my values or outwardly saying it’s one thing and inwardly otherwise, or anything like that. That’s just, like you said, [00:40:00] destroys the motivation completely, just destroys your alignment with the organization. And yeah, think about that before you say anything as an organization and make sure Because the depth can be very, and long lasting, I guess, as well.

For happiness at work, intense and important. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really, really appreciate it. And I thought that is very, very valuable. So I will continue following you and hopefully we’ll see you again at some point in some capacity for more insights.

Jonathan Bennett: I would [00:40:30] love that.

I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks so much, Lisa. 

Elisa Tuijnder: You’ve been listening to the happiness at work podcast by management. Oh, where we are getting serious about happiness. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy our shows, don’t be shy. Write us a review. Share the happiness with your colleagues, family or friends.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn under Management [00:41:00] 3o.