The New Standard: Conscious Leadership

“Well WTF am I supposed to do? Pick a side? Say nothing? Ahhhh!”

This was the first minute of a call I had with another CEO here in NYC right before the election.

I understand his angst! The work landscape and the expectations of leadership are not what they used to be.

Brian Armstrong’s stance on making Coinbase an apolitical company, who would refrain from taking a stance on social issues and discouraging such discussion in the workplace received all the polarizing attention it deserved. Some loved it, seeing it as a progressive way to stay focused on the business. Some hated it, calling it a cowardly move that was out of touch.

When the election came around, David Barrett at Expensify took the opposite stance and infamously emailed all 10M of his end users with a meandering plea to vote for Biden. 

“What am I supposed to do?!?!” is the writhing question from most CEOs these days.

Well in the case of both Coinbase and Expensify, neither approach was technically right or wrong.

You want an apolitical culture? Fine. There are plenty of people who will appreciate that and want to work at an apolitical company. 

You want an activist culture? That’s fine too. There are plenty of great potential employees who that will appeal to.

The third stance, the third style of leadership is the one nobody has talked about yet. Not apolitical, not activist, but conscious. 

I strongly believe that conscious leadership will become the new standard in business over the next decade. 

The facts are pretty clear - in the last 5-7 years a new generation of employees have entered the workforce who grew up with the internet and social media. As a result, and in many positive cases, people who previously didn’t have a voice now have a voice. Bad actors who previously weren’t held accountable are being held accountable.  Broadly speaking, the rate of positive change in society is charging forward with a generation of voices behind it.

So the bottom line is that many people today (particularly young people) have wildly different expectations about communication, transparency and tolerance from the companies they work for and the people who run them.

This is not a trend that’s going to reverse! Every day more and more people are joining the workforce who expect their leaders to be on the right side of morality, the right side of social issues, and expect their leaders to communicate clearly and often about how the business fits into the world. 

Taking no stance (apolitical) will likely become a niche leadership style that looks out of touch in the eyes of most people entering the workforce in the coming years. And likewise, a full-blown activist stance may have equally alienating consequences as a company scales and needs to attract a true diversity of opinions and viewpoints.

Again, I don’t think any of these three approaches are wrong, But one (conscious) represents the most inclusive, far-reaching approach that companies can adopt to stay on the right side of where the world is headed.

If I look back on the past year at Electric, I think we’ve done an excellent job operating with a conscious mentality. A few examples:

• Election: we didn’t tell people who to vote for, but we went out of our way to stress the importance of voting, helped employees register/take time to vote, and fostered a healthy dialog among employees
• Pride: we have a full week of discussions, events and content to promote awareness, positivity, remembrance and healthy dialog within and outside the company.
• BLM: through extensive internal discussion and self-reflection we changed or implemented many new policies to help drive real change in the world. These discussions didn't end, and fighting systemic racism is now an ongoing priority within the company.
• COVID: we made it our job to parse the data behind the headlines to tell a fact-based, pragmatic story to our team about what was going on and what that meant for them and the company

Some of what we do leans more in the direction of apolitical, some in the direction of activist. If any employee doesn't care to participate in a discussion, no problem. On the other hand, when a group of our leaders wanted to attend the March on Washington, we enthusiastically supported it. Conscious leadership means every team member is free to be as apolitical or activist as they want so long as they don't do so at the expense of another person.

Regardless, the point is that we made the outside world part of the internal conversation. We foster inclusive and healthy dialog, we reflect, we actually take action, but most importantly every day the lights are on we’re taking steps to operate with openness, inclusion and integrity. I don't think we have or ever will get it 100% right, but regardless of what your belief system is, inclusion and integrity always win. 

“This seems like so much work” - is the common reaction I get to explaining how we roll with this stuff. Yeah it absolutely is a lot of work - but if responding to the needs of your employees sounds like “a lot of work” then maybe being a CEO isn’t for you.

Every generation sees a fundamental shift in workplace expectations and as leaders we’re either going to get with it or be left behind.

So while all three of these leadership styles are technically ‘right’, the companies who have the highest likelihood of success in the next 10 years are going to be the ones who are fact-based, compassionate and inclusive. When you act more like a human and less like what you *think* a business leader is supposed to do the job gets a lot easier.