Robert H. Chapman

And they're proud to be a part of this company.

And they have a CEO, Bob Chapman, who has built so much of this leadership philosophy around the idea that the people who work there aren't just employees who happen to make machines.

They're people whose lives are being impacted by the organization that they work for.

And I just love that because you can have the most boring product in the world.

You can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, and Blue Sky at Barry Waymiller.

And find our podcast articles and videos at trulyhumanleadership.com. And if you want to implement the principles discussed on this podcast within your organization, to improve its leadership, culture, and performance, check out Chapman & Co Leadership Institute at ccoleadership.com, founded by our late CEO and chairman, Bob Chapman, to bring truly human leadership to organizations around the world.

As you may have heard previously on this podcast, over the last several years, Barry Waymiller has been involved in an effort to bring truly human leadership to universities and business education.

Brian Wellinghoff has spearheaded this outreach effort, and it's led to partnerships with several colleges around the country, one of which is Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.

Last October, we were honored when Gonzaga instituted Chapman Leadership Week to bring a spotlight to people-centric leadership in business on campus.

And they did it in honor of our late chairman, Bob Chapman.

His son, our current chairman and CEO, Kyle Chapman, was the inaugural keynote speaker at the event.

This year, Chapman Leadership Week continued, and the featured speaker was our friend Steve Gund of the Gund Company in St. Louis, a leader whose philosophy was greatly influenced by Bob Chapman and Barry Waymiller.

As of last year, workers owned 30% of the company through the program.

Still, Steve said he didn't fully implement the People First strategy until a conversation with Bob Chapman, the CEO of Barry Waymiller, another family-owned St. Louis business.

Chapman made a name for himself, championing truly human leadership, which espouses that better business performance starts with improving the lives of the workers driving their performance.

It was 2015, and Gund's board had just challenged Steve and Rich to return Gund to a 15% compounded annual growth rate after several years of slowing sales.

It builds the ability to personalise care and have a meaningful connection.

It's interesting when you say that because I was fortunate enough to interview Bob Chapman and he was the CEO of a company called Barry Waymiller in the US and helped with the growth from $20 million in turnover to $3.6 billion.

And as it grew, he basically had a bit of a revelation.

He first of all thought that you show you care by talking to people and giving them things and And what he discovered after a period of time was it was actually listening with empathy that made a massive difference.

It's very well, Miller.

And actually, you know, part of my goal in writing the book was to interview people, many of whom have been pioneers in the area of bridging values into work and many of whom kind of getting on in age and actually Bob Chapman, who I interviewed for the book, has actually since passed on and as has one of the other amazing leaders that I interviewed for the book, Lisa Hall.

And so you really see the book as a way of honoring some of these stories and journeys that Bob Chapman with Barry Wellmiller, exactly to your point in terms of their growth over time, they credit so much of their success to a framework that they have around human performance leadership and this ability to really think about what is the impact of their day-to-day decisions on the lives of their employees and on their communities.

And sometimes there can be this notion of, oh, if we consider purpose and values, that that's juxtaposition to also generating strong financial returns.

But being able to I think show examples like that where they've actually seen this collinearity between this deep investment in purpose and considering the ripple effect of the decisions that are made with also generating these strong returns over time.