Leading with Conscience: Unlocking the True Power of Business as a Force for Good

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, Doctor Release Cortez.

1:03 Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program. Thanks for turning again in this week. Great to have you the show If it brought to you with passion and price since February of twenty fifteen. I'm your host, doctor Release Cortes. If we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm an organizational psychologist and local therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto Now help companies to enliven and fortify their operations by building a culture and leadership activated by meaning and purpose. Our mission is to help our clients create a destination workplace where people flocked to join or intentionally motivated to perform with their best can grow into their fuller potential and are committed to stay and dynamically deliver on the company's mission, which translates to higher profits. We can learn more about us and how we can work together at gusto dashnow dot com or my personal site, Elise Courtes dot com. With us today is Andrew C. M. Cooper, an internationally recognized executive leader and champion for for compassionate business practices. He led as a history making first millennial and black executive to serve as general counsel. UPS Airlines, the world's largest logistics airline with over twenty thousand employees operating in two hundred and twenty countries. Cooper's team was essential to the success of Operation Warp Speed, the United States pandemic vaccine relief effort.

2:13 He helps organizations regain and retain high performance through leadership transformation. He's the author of the Ethical Imperative, Leading with Conscious to shape the future of business today. He joines from Menlo Park, California, where he's working. His home is at Atlanta. Andy. Welcome to working on Purpose. Hi, doctor Cortes, thanks for having me. So so welcome, and please just call me Elise and look at this beautiful book. Let's celebrate this. We were talking about the camina. Look what you brought into the world. Look at this. It's crazy to think. I know, I know, and I do want you to know something else, really really precious. Okay, you ready what you did here is actually harder than bringing a child into the world.

2:56 Well, will I will take it on your on your authority on that. Yes, I am qualified to speak on that front. Done both so I'm really there's so many things I want to celebrate about your book, Andy, And we are aligned ideologically, really in so many ways. I couldn't find any way that I wasn't aligned with you put it that way, I do want to start by situating just kind of why you wrote the book. You said you have two objectives for the book, So what I really understand here is one. You know, you identify yourself as a millennial, so I know one of the things you're trying to do is to influence the new generations to view business as a transformative force for positive change rather than immovable obstruction to progress. I know there's some of your iterations have a resistance to capitalism and are moving more towards socialism because of that. Exactly, you do want to influence business leaders to think conscientiously about a corporation's role in local communities and in the broader society. So I think those are just so amazing reasons to write a book.

3:57 Andy, Well, thank you? Can you? Yeah? So? Can? Is the connection better? Now? Yeah? You sound a heck of a lot better. I've gotten before. I was getting a little bits and piece of you and that just wasn't enough. Okay, I'm sorry, I am in I am in a hotel. But you would think in Silicon Valley the technology the internet would be great here, but. One would Yeah, whether it's not, it's you know, it's not perfect. Well to your point, there are there have been a number of studies that have come out since oh my gosh, since the mid two thousands that really show the point, these two points, these two focuses, are really needed to be addressed in today in writing and through leadership. There was a Harvard Business Review article in twenty twenty that that talked about how millennials and net are looking for businesses to prioritize social impact because they care about social impact, and that really is a sea change in the way that businesses have approached the marketplace and local communities, and it's something that we should focus on in the future.

5:05 Okay, So I might as well come clean now with you that as to how I align with you ideologically and philosophically, among other things. I am a conscious capitalist, so I'm on the board here in Dallas of conscious Capitalism, which of course means that the four tenants are that organizations subscribe to doing business with a higher purpose in mind. They do it with conscious leadership, conscious culture, and a stakeholder orientation, not a shareholder orientation, a stake orientation. All that aligns with your book and of course my work specifically, Andy is helping organizations to create cultures that are activated in meeting purpose again, because the majority of the workforce is going to be gen X and gen Y or excuse me, gen Y and gen Z in about five to seven years, and so we need to create those kinds of environments. So I'm completely aligned with you.

5:54 Yes, yeah, it's something that we are seeing. It's a phenomena we're seeing both in the for at the firm level, but also in our society at large. So if you look at the voting population, if you look at those who are in childbearing ages now and are are influencing their local communities, all of the demographic changes are beginning to hit at the same time. And so it's ripe for businesses. It's a right time for business is to think about what does gen Z look for, what does what do millennials look for? And and what do the future generations look for. My daughter, who's who's in alpha, you know, she's already being raised with certain beliefs and thoughts and she's raised in a If you go to any playground in America, you will see it has completely changed in the last fifty years. And so yeah, this is this is the world we find ourselves in.

6:50 And I'm okay with that. I'm then I'm very happy to help us share that in and champion it. Just alongside you. I'm coming over, so look out, all right, So I do situate you. You really you situated something really interesting in your book that I had never really heard before in terms of a concept, and that's this idea of a conventional meta. Can you situate that for us? Please? Yeah. So, the META is an acronym initially used by military tacticianers, which stands for most effective tactics available. I happen to be a gamer, and it was adopted by gamers to refer to using the best tools available in a certain circumstance. Now, the interesting thing about meta is that most developers. Game developers try to avoid the creation of a meta because it tends to create a stale game.

7:43 If you know exactly what you need to use in every circumstance, well, the game becomes stale and stagnant. In the context that I import the term for business, it is to create a distinction between those executives who are looking to use the best tactics available in an updated game, or as circumstances change over time, versus those who want to slavishly kind of hold themselves to the conventions of old. And I try to position it as those executives, those traditionalists that hold to a conventional meta in this new environment we find ourselves in will surely fail. Those are the organizations that will no longer be at the forefront tomorrow.

8:29 There used to be this concept of too big to fail, and now we are starting to see that nothing is too big to fail in this market. And so the encouragement for executives emerging leaders is to always adjust your meta in this new environment. Let's go ahead and grab that. One of the things I certainly admire is your acronym for traditional to describe the more traditionalist executive, and I think that bears talking about before we get into really your situation of conscientious executive. So you break it down to traditional, So I'll say what this is so you don't have to do it yourself, but means that breaks over to leaders that are traditionally more used timidity, resistance, arrogance, dogmatism, inflexibility, tunnel vision, intolerance, outmodeled conduct, narrow mindedness, authoritarian tendencies, and loophole seeking behaviors.

9:29 So that's how you talk to us the contrast of the kind of leader that you are trying to move away from. Help us move away from that kind of leadership style. Yes, that's true. So I wish I could take complete credit for these characteristics of a traditional leader. But Megan Casually has a great article in the Harvard Business Review, and I would just encourage folks to read her take on it. But we have all had bosses that have these types of characteristics, and they tend to align with folks who are comfortable in a way of doing things and in a way of operating, and as opposed to those traditionalist executives stands this concept that I've created called the conscientious executive. The conscientious executive is really the antidote to each one of these characteristics, and they are the type of person who looks at who looks at compassion, and who is not resistant to change, and who is humble in the way that they are coaching and being coached in reverse mentorship relationships. So there are all these different characteristics that I talk about in the book of the Conscientious Executive, and the hope is that we can create an archetypal antidote to what we see in the office today. And I would even go one half step back and say, this hasn't always been the case. We haven't always seen executives in large and small organizations that had these characteristics. In fact, if you go back to

11:02 the nineteen twenties, if you look at the fifty year period between nineteen twenty and nineteen fifty, what you find is that that cohort the greatest in the silent They tended to really model conscientious leadership in the way that I described, because that generation went through defining events as well, such as World War One, the aftermath World War One, the beginnings of World War two, the Civil rights movement, and so those executives of at least the beginnings of civil rights movement, those executives saw great generational change, and as a result, they were on record of making statements and policies in their organizations that tended to look after the good of people. I think about executives during that time, and you contrast that with executives in the nineties, for example, and what you find is a very different approach to doing business. Yeah.

12:08 So one of the things that I definitely wanted to comment on that front. I had just a couple of weeks ago on I had Hunter Hastings on my program. He is an economist and he wrote a book called Aberrant Capitalism, I think the Rise in Return of Customer Capitalism something like that. What was great about that, Andy, and it really kind of aligns with what you're talking about, is what I really took so many things I took away from it. But what he did was he really helped describe the evolution of capitalism over the last two hundred and forty years. And you described how when it first was introduced, it really was and was focused on creating value for the consumer and bettering their lives, and you know, uber focused on that. And yes, it did change during after the world war, World War two, because what happened is as he narrates it, is that we then looked to business to be able to help serve the people, right, so it became kind of a war economy.

13:00 So it was that business, you know, that that social focused. But then we got into as he calls it, fiscalization and bureaucraizage barocratization, which really began to you know, really bloat organizations. And then we got heavy into that whole shareholder value thing and like eighty right, right right, and so it really really opened my eyes. And but then what he what he speaks to is he says he thinks about fifteen percent of the organizations today are really run as a consumer capitalism front. And that's really more of the answer. And I see that too when you talk about, you know, today's executives are focused more on profit than value. That's what he's also speaking to. So we're returned to let's create value and not focus on profit that will come naturally if we create the value.

13:48 No, that that's fascinating, you know. I'll just give one anecdote to kind of support that thinking. So if you look at like David Packard at HP, or Thomas Watson at IBM, or Herbert dat Now at dal Chemical, these pre nineteen seventy CEOs, you know they were they would say things like and this is this is coming from Herbert Dale. He said that the most effective way of working is to care for our employees and see that they are happy and contented. It's a but then, but then when you look at you know, nineteen nineties era CEOs, if you think about a guy like Albert Dunlap. We all, we all, you know heard about Dunlap at Sunbeam. You know, he was famous for tearing companies apart. He you know, went on record saying employees don't matter. The only thing that matters is shareholder value. That's a quote from a CEO, and it's there was a major shift, and I think what we're seeing today is in the post twenty twenty era, the post COVID era, there is a similar consensus among employees when it comes to the type of leadership that is most effective for them, and that is the CEO or the leader that asks or that answers the question do you care about me? In the same way that the World War One and World War Two CEOs were saying things like we want to care about the employees because everyone was going through the same thing everywhere during the war. The same is true, you know post twenty twenty,

15:22 where everyone was going through the pandemic everywhere at the same time, and as a result, everyone sort of came out of that with similar questions. That's and that really is where the focus on people has become elevated. I know, we were going to have a great conversation all right, let's grab our first break. I'm your host, doctoralities Cortez. We've got on the air with Andrew C. M. Cooper, an internationally recognized executive leader and champion for compassionate business practices. We've been talking a bit about where his book came from and how he was really trying to be able to help more younger generations embrace capitalism as it is in to then encourage business leaders to do business in a way that really benefits their full communities. Stay with this, We'll be right back.

16:23 Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today, we're to open a conversation with Elise. Send an email to a lease Alisee at Alascortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

17:14 Thanks for stating with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, Doctor Elise Cortes. Like Andy, I too, am dedicated to helping create a world where people are actually enjoying their work and feeling good about what they're doing. So I continue to research and write my own books. My last one came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically inliven your business and perhaps, like Andy, I wrote it to help business leaders better understand the lay of the workforce land today, what do they want and need from their work? And then I offer twenty two best practices to help fold into your culture to provide that for them. You can find more about it on my website at least core test dot com or on Amazon if you are just joining us.

17:54 My guest is Andrew C. M Cooper. He's the author of The Ethical Imperative, Leading with Conscious to shape the Future of Business. So one of the other many things that I found that I could relate to and embrace and champion along with you is this idea of compassion. What a concept and I really appreciated that you went on the way that you went on to define it, Andy, is you talk about this is a critical part of investment in human capital, And the way that you defined it is compassion is a deep understanding of other suffering and a desire to help. It is expressed through acts of generosity, empathy and support, and it is rooted in our shared humanity. Yes, please me, I have another that sounds real good to me. Could we do more of that.

18:39 As we as we should? You know? And I'll tell you that compassion key really became important to me during COVID. As we were dealing with information coming from lots of sources. People had different opinions about the pandemic, and that not just on the leadership team, that was even among the rank and file. And then something interesting happened. There were individuals within my vertical my structure that began losing family members. They began and the conversation started to shift from you know, whether or not the information we were receiving was accurate to how do we support and help and show compassion for the people who were going through enormous amounts of loss.

19:32 As you mentioned in the intro, this was a twenty thousand person organization, and so you know that pivot was critical to reduce churn, to ensure that we were effective at delivering on a critical mission for the nation, and generally to just ensure the well being and productivity of the folks that were on the team. So you know, there were a few sources of truth that were instructive for me. One one was Harvard and the research that was coming out at the time about compassion and how compassion can ensure that you you keep employee retention high, that that overall engagement and productivity in the workplace is high.

20:19 And compassion is very simple to do. It costs nothing for us. So, for example, during the time that they we began getting reports of of some of our team losing family, I was overseas and and compassion for me was uh ending my international trip coming back to these States, ensuring that those employees had unlimited time off to take care of their family and ensuring that there were there were coverage there for for them, even if that meant I had to roll up my sleeves and and be involved in doing some some of the hard work as every leader should do so. I mean it's sometimes it's just sweat equity that we invest in our people to ensure that they know that they are not alone uh through challenges well.

21:12 And to that end, Andy, one of the other many things I appreciated about your book is you've shared in their relative to the subject, how you at one point your boss said get everybody back in the office, and you had you had people that who had you know, they they if they got exposed, they had severe you know, ammudity problems. And are the people that you know, I think that somebody had been in it, perhaps an automated automobile accident, and it's hard to get around, et cetera. And so walking that fine line between this is the manday you get your people back in the office and having the compassion for your people that says, hang on, I know my people, I know what they're dealing with, and if I do that to them that one it's not compassionate and two, you know what are the ramifications of that requirement.

21:55 No, that you're spot on, And you know, the way I navigated that politically was going back to our core values. As an organization, UPS is one that believes in safety. It elevates safety above all else, and so making the case that allowing our workers to have the flexibility to work remotely, and I was one of the first Vice presidents to do so, was merely connecting all of the various data points that we had available to us to the core value of safety and in saying, hey, if we want to walk consistent with that approach, then we have to do the compassionate thing here, And that ultimately prevailed won the day, particularly when our CEO made a decision that aligned with that point of view.

22:51 Well, I really really want to celebrate that. That's fantastic. A lot of organizations are still really struggling with that whole idea. Okay, so now let's really celebrate compassion. It really can pay dividends. I loved the story that you told about Gravity pay so let's share it out with our listeners and viewers. This is kind of, you know, way out there when it comes to talk about a business case. But can you share that story with us? Oh? Sure, yeah, So, Dan Price at Gravity Payments, there is a small well at the time, there were a small company out in Seattle, Washington. Back in twenty fifteen, Dan is in the business of payment processing. So you know, I also run a small micro market you know business, and we use payment processors and his business is one of those. And in twenty fifteen, he's walking around his office and he finds a fast food training manual on the desk of one of his employees, and you know, when he inquired about it, what he found was that this particular employee had to work a second full time job in order to make ends meet while there, and that just didn't sit well with him. So what he decided to do, he took a lot of flat for He decided to raise the minimum payment each year yearly payment to all of his employees their salary to seventy thousand dollars. He lowered his own salary from seven figures, which was a eight hundred percent pay cut, if I'm

24:23 not mistaken, And he he was branded, he was branded as socialist by all these different you know, capitalists and so on. And what ultimately happened, despite all the prognostications that his business would fail, is that seventy percent of his employees the turnover rate dropped, it's by seventy percent. More employees were covered by health health insurance because they were able to either go out into the market or be covered by the company's offering. There were ten times more babies purchase born and ten times more homes purchased during the time shortly after he raised the salary to seventy thousand dollars, there were seventy I think it was seventy percent of debt paid down by employees that were in his organization shortly thereafter. For I think they looked back.

25:28 So Harvard actually used this as a case study and went to look back at how these employees were doing. And there's a five year look back after the implementation of the salary, and what they found is the debt ratios on his employees dropped by seventy percent. So the bottom line is that all of these there were a bunch of metrics that were evaluated by very successful researchers at Harvard, and the conclusion was doing this looking out for his employployees, ensuring that they had livable wages, ensuring that they were compensated well, was not only good for them individually, but good for their families, good for local communities.

26:09 And I think the conclusion truly is it's good for society. You know, I spend a bit of time in the book talking about poverty and how poverty becomes entrenched in communities and it creates a vicious cycle within communities that destabilizes the market and creates economic conditions that make it hard for businesses to thrive. Not just the people who live in those communities, but it makes it harder for us as as conscious capitalists to make money. And so Dan Price is a great example of the type of leader that we should be looking for boards. I encourage boards and share owners to do as their part to encourage leaders like Dan Price to be elevated.

26:58 I love all of that, and I also I want to echo for those people that are like, I'm still not seeing the bottom line results here. The other thing that I just want to situate the you that it took from your book that in terms of the business results of that move here is you say that it's customer The company's customer base doubled and they increase their payment processing from three point eight billion to ten point two billion dollars a year. Yes, so you know, there's you know, the financial turner around here. So when on all fronts back on that whole stakeholder orientation win on all fronts. I just want to make sure that we celebrate. I've had doctor Roche the studio in my program a couple of times. He's the co founder of Conscious Capitalism. He's done a ton of research that shows organizations that embrace these kinds of principles oftentimes outperform their peers financially.

27:44 In the SMP, this isn't just soft stuff. It really is good for everybody. So I just want to echo that. Oh, I'm so, I'm so glad that you pointed that out, because because that is the bottom line for us that are in big business, right, we want to ensure that we're making money. And look, it's it's a win win. It's a win for the company, it's a win for employees, and I even go so far as to say it's a win win win, it's a win for the local communities as well. So to your point, you know the increase in their payment processing, that is no small increase. I mean that that's it was almost threefold. And what I think ends up happening is that the story of the impact on people and newers to the benefit of the organization because people want to get behind positive and good stories, and so it creates that virtuous cycle because if you are living in a in a in a community and there's a company doing good, you want to support that company doing good and it bears out in the metrics.

28:45 H absolutely, Okay, So let's take our last break, because after the break, I really want to talk more about this hierarchy of inspirational needs that you situated so beautifully that really aligns with my world. I'm your host, doctor. Early QUOTESK. We've got on the air of Andrew C. And Cooper. He's an internationally recognized executive leader and champion for compassionate business practices. We've been talking a bit about the business case for doing these sorts of things. After the break, we're going to talk a litle bit more about how these things translate to the actual when they're put in place, into the actual performance and engagement of the people that are powering the organization. Stay with us, We'll be right back.

29:38 Doctor Elise Court says as a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose, an inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elise Coortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease A lisee at Elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose.

30:29 Interesting with us and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. I mentioned in the last break about my last book coming out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meeting and purpose can radically en liven your business. What I did for you is I created a three page assessment for you to be able to pull off my website. It's free. It's at gustodashnow dot com. And that will help you understand the extent to what your current culture is really suiting what today's discerning workforce really wants. If you'll help you on your culture and organizational development, If you are just now joining us. My guest is and Andrew C. And Cooper. He's the author of The Ethical Imperative, Leading with conscient conscience to shape the future of business. So for this last segment here, Andy, I really wanted to focus on this notion of how we can elevate the actual experience of work. I mentioned in the introduction that I'm out to create destination workplaces within organizations, and I was very intrigued, and I want to thank you tremendously because you have contributed squarely directly into my world in a way that I hadn't discovered on my own.

31:33 So you talk about this idea of the hierarchy of inspirational needs. My mentor and coach is doctor Lance Secretan, and he is known for inspirational leadership. And I do know that Bain Consulting does is informed by his work. You mentioned Eric Garton and Michael Mankins. I guess it is partners at being a company, and they wrote this instructive article in the Horror Business Review that uses this index to pay mathematically the baseline level employee productivity and satisfaction using three different levels satisfaction, engagement, inspiration. And I thought that was fascinating. So can you kind of first I want to first just talk about the measures that you came up with or they came up with, and then I also want to situate kind of what that looks like in each of those three categories.

32:23 Yeah, absolutely so, Gardn and Menkin they surveyed over three hundred executives worldwide who assessed productivity, and they looked at productivity based on dissatisfaction, satisfaction, and engagement and inspiration. So you've got really four metrics. So I talk about the three in the book, the satisfaction, engagement, inspiration, but they also looked at dissatisfaction as well, and what they found was that there were truly noteworthy productivity scores for those employees who were inspired. They were, as we say in economics, statistically significantly statistically significant, so there was at least one or two standard deviations from the mean and productivity. So what does that mean? That means so at a satisfaction level, at the basic satisfaction, when an employee is satisfied, it means that they have the necessary tools to do their job and they do it, and it manifests itself as employees showing up for work and using the tools that you give them, and it's just like showing up for practice and on game day in a game. You know, at the next level, that's where there's one hundred, right, So it's one hundred, that's right.

33:45 The mathematics that will really help people understand the distinction here. Oh yes, absolutely, So, satisfied employees are productive at a baseline level of one hundred, right, then at the next level you've got engaged employees. In these engage is akin to thinking about winning the game and attempting to do so, actually putting in some effort, so you've got all the elements of satisfaction. They show up, they use the tools, but then they're also thinking about how do I win this game? And I'm actually going to put an effort to win the game along with my peers. They focus on the best how to best use the tools that you've provided them to achieve better than expected results. And so if satisfied employees are satisfied at a baseline of one hundred, engaged employees are productive at a level of one hundred and forty four. Now inspired employees these are employees who are productive at just really astounding rates to one two standard deviations from the mean. These are teams that become consumed with a task, they understand its importance.

34:58 They look like eighteen that is laser focused on winning a championship. And when you look at the numbers, when when Minkin and Garten looked at the numbers, productivity level for these employees were two hundred and twenty five, which is, you know, two hundred and twenty five percent more than the standard than satisfied employees. This I mean, it was. It was incredible results. And what it really shows us is that employees who are inspired by the work will actually produce more than you ask them and more than you could even imagine. And I can tell you just anecdotally that that that actually happens. So during the COVID pandemic, when we began working on Operation Warp Speed and our employees understood that the work we were engaged in was like, was important to the world. When the Trump administration asked the Civil Relief, Civil Reserve, Air Fleet and or big integrators like UPS and five X and DHL to help to do things that the government could not do alone, our employees really understood their importance in the overall effort, and what we saw was an inspired team that did far more than we anticipated and within several months had delivered over a billion vaccines and therapeutics to needed patients around the world.

36:23 Talk about doing something with your one precious life. So Zach Vincurio is a friend and a colleague. He's been on the program, and he really focuses on this idea of mattering. And so when people understand they matter, and they know how their actions are religned with the organizational purpose, and they see what their role is, how they're connected, that that is like almost unstoppable. It's just so beautiful to see that and think about that happy person then goes home to their family and positively infects and brings that beautiful energy into their home life. And then they go back into their communities and they bring it there as well. And that's the next place I wanted to go to with you, Andy, that I thought was really Beautif pull about your book, your first opening chapter about you know, the Burning House is really incredible. But I really appreciate that you talk about how you know, the conscientious leader values the invisible and often overlooked aspects of communities and that they can they can reach in there and do something with these distressed areas. So could you speak a little bit about just, you know, why is that perspective so important to you and how do you see leaders really championing that.

37:29 Yeah. Sure, I grew up in a single wide trailer on a dirt road in rural South Carolina. My parents, either of my parents went to college, and I it was a student in the schools that my mother integrated. So it's I look at the opportunities that I've had in life with a humbled lens, a grateful lens, because the metrics suggest that I should not have been able to pomplish even half of what you know, prayerfully, I've been able to, and largely was a result of having someone take a chance on me. And that person was my mentors, Denisa Folmar, who was a in house lawyer at the Coca Cola company. And Coca Cola invested in my education, invested in my professional development and career, and I could not be more grateful. And we see that story play out with organizations all around the world's Coca Cola invests in Atlanta, so does Chick fil A, and in some of the most underserved neighborhoods. If you think about Bittonville, Arkansas and how Walmart has turned that town around, Hershey, Pennsylvania.

38:44 I could go on and on with these what used to be company towns that were not on the map, and they were put on the map because there was someone in a company that said, you know what, we want to invest in this place. So my belief is that when organizations, and I think it bears out in the metrics as well, that when organizations decide that they are going to lean in and invest in ways that they otherwise don't. There are dramatic things that take place in Louisville, Kentucky. When I was there at the airline, the airline engaged in a program called the Metro College Program, which provides one hundred percent college tuition for employees for the airline, and most of them were students at University of Louisville. And many of those students have family in Appalachia or in rural Kentucky and would not have the resources to be able to get a college education. And so it just means it means so much to me personally and has to my family. And you will see the folks that listen that read the book. I start off talking about my cousin Wilhelmina and Nesbit, who did not have the benefit of the resources that I did, and we had two very different outcomes. And so I am a believer in the good that capitalism can do.

40:07 I'm a believer in the good that companies can do if only they will and if only have they have the right leaders, and. If all they learn right. Which is why I appreciate what you're doing. And I mean, I'm very proud of the work that I get to do as well. And it's incredibly fulfilling, an incredible honor to walk that journey with leaders and help elevate their consciousness, elevate what they can see doing with and through all of their stakeholders. So I really appreciate that. Into that end, I can't let you go without addressing what you also put toward the end of your book. You said that there are three non traditional archetypes of professional relationships that are essential to career growth for their conscientious leader and are not routinely discussed. Would you share those with us? I thought they it was incredibly compelling. I had never heard of this before either. By the way, Andy.

40:53 Well, yeah, absolutely, so we've all heard of the mentor, the sponsor, and the board of directors there these these are you know, groups of people that you know will help you through your journey. But I think there are some other archetypes that are really important. The first is the shifter, and that that person, unlike the mentor, who will you know, give you a strategy about how to go about your career. The shifter is really your tactician. They're the person who gives you the the the eventualities, and when something negative happens, they say, well, we've talked about this, now let's let's shift gears. Let's move to UH Plan B. That person, for me has been doctor James Stevenson, a former NASA researcher. He also also wrote a comment on the back of the book. But this archetype is like your tenth man, your own budgment, and every single one of us needs someone like that, not just somewhat a mentor showing us the way, but also a shifter who is able to pick us up when we fall down, and who is gaming things out on the fly, you know, in real time. The the connector UH is the social the social butterfly you know, unlike the sponsor that is in the room that is able to pull you up on your career journey, the connector is is also someone who is walking alongside you, but they they may be naturally inclined to connecting very disparate points of view and people UH to help you see that there might be threads where you where you least expect them,

42:24 and and so that person plays a vital role in bridging the gaps that you may find in a relationship with a sponsor who is somewhat removed from your your your day to day and is not really looking to to do that type of on the ground connecting. And then there's there's my personal favorite, the benevolent antagonist. For me, this is UH. This is an attorney UH named Nate Smith who became a CEO of a company out in Australia today, a billion dollar vote management company. But Nate Smith, if you're listening, I love you brother. He is. The benevolent antagonist is someone who is always challenging you, but in good ways. We sometimes we confuse these people with a shark, someone who wishes ill in your career, but they don't. They actually want to sharpen themselves, and they want to sharpen you, and so they're going to challenge you, actively challenge you to do more. And it tends to be as we get higher and higher in organizations, we have less people like this, less people who are willing to challenge us and say, you know, maybe we don't go the Milton Friedman route on this, Maybe we take a different a different road. Maybe we don't think about profit in this particular equation. Maybe there are some intangibles that we should be thinking about. But the benevolent antagonist truly is someone who has your best interest at heart and they drive constructively improvement in an inn executive. And so some people may be thinking, well, why are we

43:54 talking about this in the context of conscientious leadership. It's because the latter part of my book, the last five chapters or so, are what I call the Moves that Matter, and they are geared for executives and leaders and even emerging leaders who may not be at the sea level yet, but to give them the steps that are are relevant for them to become more conscientious in their in their in their work. And it's beautifully written. By the way we talked about what it took to actually bring it into the world. So I'm so glad it made it across the finish line. So we've done it. It happens, it goes by so fast, Andy. So this show is listened to by people around the world, and they are they really are out. They want to either join organizations like the ones you and I are out to help organizations create. They want to become that better leader, inspirational, conscientious that we've been discussing here, and they do want to do business that better is the world.

44:49 What would you want to leave them with, Well. I want them to know that any thought, any process, and experience that can manifest at an individual level, it may manifest at an organizational level given the right conditions. And that means that corporations, they can perpetuate acts that are hateful and loving. They can experience stages of life like growth and death. They can be vindictive and generous, innovative and stagnant, sick and healthy, uncaring and conscientious, all the range of things. So all of these are an expression of a composite personality that results from the distinct corporate reputation and that's driven by the individuals within the organization.

45:32 So you know, as my current boss, Jeremiah Chand says, if we want to move to metrics, all we have to do is do it. And so if you're an executive and you want to be more conscientious, just do it. It doesn't have to go through a committee, and it can go through just the little things that you do every day that you have control over, interactions with your employees, management of your budget. So I hope people leave this conversation with a sense of hope that you can be equipped to make a difference and that those little differences do matter. Andrew C. And Cooper, I'm very very happy to host you on Working on Purpose. I want to celebrate your passion, your mind, your heart, what you're putting out into the world. I'm right there with you. I'm growing right with you. So glad to meet you, read your book, to learn from you, to be inspired by you. Thank you for joining Working on Purpose, Thank you for having me. Very welcome listeners, viewers.

46:27 You're gonna want to learn more about and DCN. Cooper and the work that he does helping organizations to regain and retain high performance through leadership transformation. In his book The Ethical Imperative so start by visiting his website. It's Andrew Dashcooper dot com Andrew dash Cooper dot com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch it be a recorded podcast or wherever you get your podcast. We were on the air with doctor Julia de Guanji talking about her new book Energy Rising, The Neuroscience to Leading with Emotional Power. She taught us so much about the need for all of us to not only be come more aware of our full range of emotions, but also what to do to heal painful emotions so that we can lead more holly and make a greater impact.

47:08 Incredibly powerful conversation. Next week will be on there doctor Marie Helene Peltier talking about her book The Resilience Plan, a strategic approach to optimizing your work performance and mental health. See you then, remember that work is one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave. So let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes each week on W four C. Why Together We'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose. They crave see you there. Let's work on purpose.