Building a Culture Inspired by Leadership Design

Part 4 of our 4-part conversation on leadership design.

What does a workplace look like when leadership design is at its core? Host Russel Lolacher is joined by Georgi Enthoven — global advisor and thought leader on purposeful, high-impact work — to reveal how cultures shaped by vision and contribution inspire employees to say, “I’m proud of what I do.” This episode explores how organizations can foster community, pride, and sustainability to create modern workplaces worth belonging to.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: Who are the right people to come up with a vision? Because you've talked about leadership design, and you've talked about it. Not every leader is built for vision building. This is where I kind of get, this is where I kind of clash on defining leaders because there will be a lot of people that are bums in seats and they're called quote unquote leaders, and they have influence and they have, you know, whether on their team within the larger organization, but some of them should not be leaders.

And yet, and yet we're looking to design visions in this. Is this a matter of an organization going, you know what, you don't fit. You're not the kind of leaders we want. I'm just trying to figure out, not everybody is created equal when it comes to leadership, but we're talking about all of them should have visions themselves.

Is that realistic?

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I mean, what comes to mind when you're saying that is I think, again, we have this genera generational change. So business as usual for a Gen Xer is to work an environment without a vision, to roll up your sleeves, do the work, and get it done. Don't complain. Separate business and personal life.

It's okay if you've got these two different personas and the younger generation is not willing to do that. And so I don't know if in this particular time we can isolate like one sort of lead on creating a vision, but I do believe the desire for a vision should come from leadership and how we get people involved in creating it and building it, it may very well come from the younger generation who is, more influenced and have greater desire for their alignment with their own values and their work and what they're doing. And I hear things from people. I mean, my, when I was writing my book, I interviewed a lot of different people and people doing great work in the world, like very impact focused and other people who really just climbed a corporate ladder with no thought of impact.

And a lot of my Harvard Business School classmates are in the no impact. Very financially driven, have done work, been really successful ambitious, but a lot of them said, I am doing this work and I actually hate it. I, or I don't like it, or, I'm unfulfilled. And the worst that I heard is I'm embarrassed by the work that I do, but our generation was not asking those questions.

And so it's not that I want to give our generation a free pass at this, but I think what we notice, and there's many organizations and books on this regret about the career choices you've made and then how on this last act you get to go and give impact. We don't need to wait till then, we can build it in earlier, and there's great models that do this now and examples.

So it's not that we don't have examples or this is pioneering for the first time. We've got many examples that are doing a really good job at this.

Russel Lolacher: So what advice are you giving, and I'm splitting this up, Gen X, Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z.

I'm being a little too general in this. What advice are you giving to the older demographics? Get out of the way, like your time is dead dinosaur. Like what do you say? I hope not. 'cause I'm one of those people. The other half is the younger people coming in wondering if their visions are gonna be listened, wondering if their expectations of a better work environment and better impact.

So what advice should we be giving them?

Georgi Enthoven: I mean my biggest advice, and I have been walking this myself, is for anyone in the job world right now, given what's happening is be willing to be a beginner. And so that could be whether you've got 20 years experience, 50 years experience, five years experience. The world is changing under our feet so fast, and it's not just on impact, it's obviously on AI and all businesses are going to change.

And so we have to be willing to be a beginner. And when you're willing to become a beginner, it gives you so much freedom and it just means that you're not gonna start off at the same level of expertise and skills and even credibility as you have had, and that's part of the discomfort. But without it, I do believe you'll become obsolete. 

Russel Lolacher: Being humble, I think will also because there'll be people like ourselves and older generations where this is what success looks like. This is the ladder I climb to be successful, to get the role that I am, and not maybe being quite curious enough to those that are younger, that may have different visions that could take the organization even further with their idea and vision.

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right and I act, I called my book Work That's Worth It because that's the words I hear from the younger generation. Hmm. It's not worth it, not worth my time, not worth my energy. And so I think that's what feels frustrating for anyone who has been in the workforce for a long time and the, the feeling is, well, I did it. I didn't question it. I got to work. I, you know, rolled up my sleeves and did what my boss asked me. And the younger generation are saying, ah, I think I'd rather go to the beach. And we're wondering why. And really it's a shift in mindset like these younger people are, activists, they're rebels, they're disruptors, they want to change the world. And I think all of us have been there. I think all young generations emerging into the workforce are feeling like that. And so how do we harness that for good? And there is a great opportunity for any company to be able to do that.

And the ideas may very well come from those younger, new entrants.

Russel Lolacher: So what do you suggest we do tomorrow, georgie? What do you suggest are, are we talking about reverse mentorship possibly for older generations? Are we, what would you recommend that we do to fix all the problems? 

Georgi Enthoven: I like your, I like your conversation about reverse mentorship and I actually was talking with a group of Stanford students last night, and that is something that came up. And I talked about when I graduated from UC Berkeley, I graduated at a time when the marketed crash. And these young graduates are also graduating at a difficult time where there's a lot of freezing in hiring within companies and they are feeling anxious about this after, you know, spending lots of money on their education and feeling like they made it to the top of the funnel and realizing, but wait, that's still not enough. And I shared with them when I graduated from Berkeley, the same thing happened in 1994.

There was you know, the market was in a difficult situation and it was right before the tech boom. And I ended up getting a job in techno. I wanted to do good in the world, but I was not able to find something that met my ambition and so I ended up in consumer technology. And the people that I was working for, I was the youngest person on the team and the people that I was working for had no idea about the internet or what it was.

And I had already started using it in my last year of college. And then I took a class that first year working of like designing a website for your business. And I was just more curious about what this was about. I ended up being an expert in the business that I was in, even though I had people, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years older than me because they had no knowledge or understanding how to do this.

And I was literally sitting at the computers helping them type www as like they were getting into it.

And this younger generation has that same gift and they have it on two levels. The first is on AI. So I actually, the students I talked to last night, what a gift that they've all actually learned to write.

Like they actually got through school and they know how to write, which I think the younger generations is gonna be so tempting not to ever learn to write and to do a lot of the work. But this generation right where they are right now, they know how to write. But they also have a very flexible mindset.

They are resourceful. They know how to shift gears, so they may not understand everything about AI, but this is something they're gonna pick up easily and that they may find that they accelerate very quickly in the workforce. And the second aspect is understanding sustainability and the desire for sustainability.

And again, people in the workforce do not have the skill. And so I work with a lot of young individuals that are in corporate environments and they are heading up or building sustainability areas within companies. And they're young. They're like 26 heading up sustainability area, but they can do this because what they've been educated on and and their understanding is a lot more progressive and current than people in the workforce. And that's why if you're older, becoming a beginner or be willing to become a beginner or willing to have this reverse mentorship, like I can give the wisdom and I can show you the staying power and how to make it work and how to solve real problems and why to solve real problems. And you can show me how to be how to do this quickly, how to be incredibly resourceful, what we need to think about, and the partnership is really great. 

Russel Lolacher: Last question, what is a culture look like based on your interviews, based on everything you've learned, what is a good culture look like that embraces leadership design like this. Like what are the qualities, what are they getting right? 

Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is people feel inspired by where they work. I love the example of people saying, I'm proud of what I do.

So I think that's something that we never really asked of, of a company. Most of us went to work and thought yeah, I'm gonna pick up some skills and learn some stuff.

And whether I'm proud of it or not is not part of it. I think. So having something inspiring. I believe that in the world of feeling very disconnected. Especially with AI and a lot of these younger generation having to go to school during COVID on remotely or part of college, but like it being remote and a lot of young people have not had training and leadership skill training because they're working remotely.

That building community is really important aspect as well. So those are the two pieces that I would say really define success.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you. That's Georgi Enthoven. She's a seasoned entrepreneur. She's the author of the USA Today bestseller Work That's Worth It, The Ambitious Professional Professionals Guide for High Impact High Reward Career, and she's got herself a podcast you should check out as well called Work That's Worth it.

Thank you so much for being here.

Georgi Enthoven: Oh, it was a pleasure. Thank you for the interesting conversation.