Business is Personal

I recently joined the board of a women founded startup, called Ethena. Their founder & CEO, Roxanne Petraeus recently asked me to deliver the keynote address at their all-company off-site meeting.

I have spent the last 20 years (maybe 25) of my life building and running companies in the ESG category, which was formerly known as GRC (Governance, Risk & Compliance), and before that, as Legal & Regulatory. Since Ethena is an exciting new entrant to this category, I figured many of their employee questions would be about that.

Nope. The questions were almost exclusively around my career journey and what they could learn and incorporate from it. ?That surprised me.?

Given that, I hope you will humor me as I share with you what I shared with them. Really, it boils down to a single headline: Business is Personal.

Does that mean future leaders should meld their personal lives into their business? Not all at. Quite the opposite, in fact. But in my opinion, it does mean future leaders embrace business as personal. ?

Here’s a few thoughts I shared:

• Be relentlessly curious. Care about your customers’ journeys, know more about their business than anyone else that they partner with. Show an authentic interest in their challenges and aspirations. Tell them with your time that their success matters to you.
• Seek out the difficult. Show up. This week in America, we face yet another senseless tragedy from guns. This time, at a longtime partner of Ethisphere, 11-time World’s Most Ethical Company honoree Old National Bank. I’ve personally traveled to some of America’s small towns and seen there the level of commitment that ONB associates have to their communities. I have spoken to their top leadership at a program at Indiana University. I know that the people of Old National are clearly devastated, but I also know they are going to take care of their own and those around them. And if we can help, we will. We all will.
• ?Help others develop their careers. Invest in your employees, and when the time comes, help them leave. Yes, even your best employees. I promise you; it comes around. Just recently, one of my former colleagues, Tom Pfeifer —whose career I watched grow from entry level in their training department into a top executive at Thomson-Reuters Legal—joined Ethisphere as EVP, where he will make such a huge difference and help others grow. My longtime colleague Erica Salmon Byrne has not only grown from an associate practicing law to the CEO role at Ethisphere, but if you watch down the road, she will make a great board member. With the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance—BELA—we are intentional about helping countless numbers of members achieve, excel, and discover what’s next in their careers. Invest in their future with your time and network.
• Be vulnerable. That’s right, admit that you are fallible. Trust is the ultimate currency, and the best way to engender trust is to be vulnerable. That even means sharing some of the challenges you might be having personally, and my goodness, have the last few years challenged us all. I’m not ashamed to share that it’s been hard for our family, and some of the people that have helped me learn the most during those tough times have been colleagues and clients. And the most important thing I’ve learned? When someone shares with you, listen. Really listen.
• Surround yourself with better people. Graham Weaver of Alpine constantly cites Good to Great by Jim Collins as the foundation of their people strategy of “getting the right people on the bus.” To me, this means people with skills that you don’t have. This means customer boards, mentors, and colleagues that do some things (or many things) better than you. Like I mentioned before, if you help people develop their careers and boost their progress, even if they leave, they will pay it forward. But this also means that you should be honest with yourself on what you are really good at, and what you aren’t. Knowing your limits and admitting to them is a strength, not a weakness.
• Be clear on what good looks like. This means not only practicing values-based leadership but measuring how well you are living up to those values. Measure your culture. Be transparent about how you are doing and who is doing it right, by rewards and promotions. Be kind and quick with those who aren’t. They will succeed elsewhere. And help your company be a leader around Mental Health—one way to start is assessing your approach.
• ?Be compassionate. I think the best book I read this last year is Drinking Games by Sarah Levy. It’s an amazing story of someone who seemingly had it all but was secretly falling apart, and who managed to get help and now is living a much better life. I’ve shared this book with so many who have done the same, and they not only are appreciative, but they are using it to help others.??Everybody is facing a struggle that you might not know about. When we see that someone is struggling, they don’t need our judgement. They need our help.
• ?Cultivate relationships. Recently, Ethisphere partnered with Alpine Investors to drive the next phase of its organizational growth. Key players in that included Jean-Marc Levy, Nathan Graf, Veta Richardson, and Preston McKenzie to list but a few. All are amazing folks we have known as much as twenty-five years. Those and other relationships helped make this transformational chapter happen. Relationships make everything happen, really. If you don’t believe me, check out Harvard’s longitudinal study on happiness. The key to happiness? That’s right. Relationships.

Over the last few years, as we have transitioned into a Work from Home world, our bedrooms, garages, backyards all became part of our working life. None of us could continue doing our jobs without sharing these details with each other at some point. And a lot of times, we had to slow down, breathe, and smile when a barking dog vocalized their point of view as a delivery showed up.?

We learned more about each other than perhaps we imagined possible during that time. We got to see a side of our bosses, colleagues, clients, and customers that reminded us that they are all people.

And that yes, business is personal.

Remembering that business is personal can be really rewarding.

It has been for me. And I hope some of these tips will be rewarding to you as well.?

It will mean a lot to me.?Personally.?