Todays episode is with Anton Gunn. Anton is a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama and the world’s leading authority on Socially Conscious Leadership.
This episode is important because the construct of socially conscious leadership is a perspective that I think would resonate with many organizations around the world.
Anton does a great job tying in how this framework can really support leaders at the individual level as it relates to eradicating toxic workplace behavior.
This episode is with Anton Gunn. Anton is a former Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama and the worlds leading authority on Socially Conscious Leadership. This episode is important because the construct of socially conscious leadership is a perspective that would resonate with many organizations around the world. Anton does a great job tying in how this framework supports leaders at the individual level related to eradicating toxic workplace behavior.
Welcome to the show. We have Anton Gunn. How are you?
Im doing fantastic. Good to be with you.
I ran across some of your work in the healthcare industry related to toxic workplaces and leadership. Im excited to have this conversation with you in particular about the industry of healthcare and things like that. Thank you for being here.
Thank you for having me.
Tell the readers a little bit about yourself and further your journey to becoming an advisor to President Obama.
Its definitely been a long winding road. The first I always start is for people to understand my family history. Im a fourth-generation military brat. When I say military brat, literally four generations of men in my family served in the military, all branches of the military, great grandfather, grandfather and my father, all of his brothers, served in the military. However, I didnt serve in the military. My brother joined the Navy. The main context is that I come from a family where leadership was paramount in everything that we did. I had good and bad examples of leadership. That was my framework for the world.
Im a former college football player at the University of South Carolina. When I went to college, I thought I wanted to be a school teacher. That was my career path. I wanted to teach eleventh grade US History and I wanted to coach girls’ basketball. Some people said, “Why is that?” I think girls play a better brand of basketball than boys do. It’s more fundamental. Im a fundamental kind of guy. I ended up not finding a job after college because I had a toxic leadership experience in college football.
It led me to a career in grassroots community organizing. I ended up working for a small nonprofit that hired me to do surveys in the community around how people were being treated at the local hospital or healthcare system. In that conversation, you could imagine those stories that poor people and people are told about how they got treated at the hospital.
I led a big protest march outside of a hospital with patients and family members who were complaining about how the hospital treats patients and the nurses would walk by our picket line and say, “If you think they treat patients bad, you should see the way they treat us.” I said, “What?” The next thing I know is that Im having a conversation with nursing leaders and nursing executives about how they were experiencing toxic workplace culture in their workplace. That led me to a public policy path where I was changing laws, writing letters to the legislature, and meeting with lawmakers.
I got elected to public office and because Id been working in healthcare policy for ten years, I got to know people in DC. One of them was a skinny guy from Illinois who wanted to become president of the United States. The next thing I knew, I was helping him to become president, then a couple of years later, I was working for him as he was trying to make healthcare a right for all Americans.
One theme I hear here is the theme of injustice and how you transitioned from working with those in the community and the injustice they faced in the healthcare industry and hearing from nurses within that organizational system. Injustice comes up a lot as a sign related to organizational culture and thats toxic. You say that injustice in the workplace is the great challenge. Its a very big challenge faced by nowaday’s leaders. Why do you go that route? Why do you say that?
Lets use the basic word, unfairness. Every last one of us knows what it feels like to be treated unfairly. We all have experienced it in our lives. Whenever we experience that unfairness, immediately if somebody doesnt do anything to make it right, that unfairness begun to fester inside of us. It can bring into effect a physiological makeup. It can affect how we look, treat and even lash out at other people. Were finding more often than not that people experience some level of injustice in the workplace.
Socially Conscious Leadership: Everyone knows what it feels like to be treated unfairly. You all have experienced it in your lives. If that unfairness isnt made right, it begins to fester inside of you. And you will lash out because of that.
Maybe you got downsized and your coworkers got to keep their jobs or got passed over for a promotion that you deserve because you worked hard to get it, but it was given to the bosss nephew who doesnt work as hard and not as good as you are. Maybe you show up for a boss who discriminates, disdain or just blatantly disrespects you because theyre dealing with their own toxicity that they bring into the workplace.
It starts very small. It starts as a little bit of stress, fear and then it moves to distrust, resentment, isolation, separation and then resignation. I call those things the eight stages of alienation. Alienation starts at the core of injustice. You become alienated when you experience injustice. Look at anywhere in our society. People have become alienated from so many different things that lead to so many more challenges and thats at the core of whats happening in workplaces presently.
Thank you for sharing those stages because that lifts up some red flags or some things that leaders can look for in employee behavior daily beyond like, “Lets do an engagement survey.” What can we do to actively get involved with people that are feeling like you did when you get your grassroots organizer? How can we have CEOs, HR Departments and chief people officers take a more grassroots approach to the employee experience?
I think youre right, whether youre a chief people officer, chief of HR or manage your own department because I dont think we do a good enough job of helping prepare the manager and supervisor for engaging around and building a good culture. We leave it all on the shoulders of the HR team and the HR team is already overworked, overburdened, dont have enough staff, dont have enough resources, but yet they get blamed for every problem when it comes to culture.
Many of these problems are manifested right at the unit level that person who you report up to. People dont quit organizations and companies. They quit supervisors and managers. I try to give people a basic framework of thinking about, “As a manager, what you should be looking for before you do an employee engagement survey?” These are the same three questions every employee asks.
They may never verbalize these three questions. You may never see them written down on a piece of paper, but I promise you, when somebody shows up to work, they want to know the answer to the three questions. 1) Do you care about me? 2) Will you help me to be successful? 3) Can I trust you? No matter who you are, when you show up to work, you want to know, “Does the person I report to care about me or my wellbeing? Am I able to do my job? Is everything out of the way for me to be successful? Do you even care?”
The second question is, “If you do care, will you help me be successful by taking these impediments and barriers out of the way? Making sure I got the personal protective equipment and all of the things that I need to be able to do my job?” The third question is, “Can I trust you? When things get tough and times get tight, are you going to have my back? Are you going to throw me under the bus?” Every employee is asking those three questions of every manager. They dont want to know your verbal answer to those questions. They want to see in your actions the answers to those questions.
Day-to-day, as a manager, are you showing the people that you work with that you care? Are you showing the people that you work with that youre there to help them? Are you showing them how you can be trusted as a leader or a manager? I tell people to start with the basics, showing people you care, youre willing to help them and you can be trusted.
Thats one of those notions of actions speak louder than words in this case. People are inundated with the words. I think a lot of people are tired of the words, especially as we are looking at the COVID transition back to work and all protective equipment that people have to wear and how organizations have responded. Are you creating this place for me to be safe or are you creating this place to open back up? Ive had that conversation a lot with leaders. Thank you for sharing those three questions because before you said them, I was like, “Definitely. You said it every day.”
The context is that you got to understand people. A big part of the success of great leadership and building great culture is knowing people. Ive done some training and been in a lot of training with John Maxwell, a great mentor, business guru, and business leader. He says very clearly and very simply, “People want to know that you care about them and they want to know that you understand them.” Its not about the hard stuff. Its around how you communicate with people and how do you show people that you care.
A lot of leaders become managers or supervisors, and they put on the lens of leading employees when in reality, the lens should be leading people because it actually doesnt change. People are people.
Its not only the people piece of it. Another thing that John Maxwell said is that when you get into a leadership position, 87% of your job is focused on people and only 13% of your job is focused on the product or the service in which you know. If you were a doctor, your job is % focused on your knowledge of the product, which is the delivery of medicine.
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