Speaker A
[Music] Welcome to Culture Conversations, Lessons in Leadership, where we bring together leaders, experts, and change makers to share the real lessons behind leadership, culture, and team success.
Leadership insights from Matthew McCarthy on values-based leadership, middle management, and fostering innovation through compassion.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Values-based leadership drives sustained team and organizational success.
- Middle managers hold critical influence and must be empowered to lead change.
- Personal accountability is key to effective teamwork and cross-functional collaboration.
- Compassion and empathy build innovation and resilience in organizations.
- Leaders should continuously reflect and authorize themselves rather than wait for external approval.
What the video covers
- Matthew McCarthy shares his leadership journey from brand management to CEO at Ben & Jerry's, emphasizing values-based leadership.
- He highlights the importance of personal accountability as foundational to effective teamwork and collaboration.
- Middle managers are described as the lifeblood of organizations, crucial for driving change and innovation.
- The pace of change demands continuous reinvention, especially for senior leaders, while offering opportunities for junior managers.
- McCarthy advocates for middle managers to develop healthy skepticism towards traditional leadership models and selectively emulate positive traits.
- He discusses the challenges of old power hierarchical tactics versus the need for inclusive, compassionate leadership.
- Compassion and empathy are essential leadership skills, especially in times of volatility and uncertainty.
- The conversation touches on the importance of culture as a competitive advantage and the role of leadership in embedding values.
- Matthew frames Ben & Jerry's as an experiment in integrating social justice and business strategy.
- The video emphasizes the need for self-authorization and reflection as critical leadership practices.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Leadership Journey
- 03:10Personal Accountability and Teamwork
- 06:08The Role and Power of Middle Managers
- 08:44Challenges of Traditional Leadership Models
- 11:19Compassion and Empathy in Leadership
- 17:13Culture as a Competitive Advantage
- 19:09Ben & Jerry's: Values and Business Strategy
- 22:17Self-Authorization and Reflection in Leadership
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I'm Denus Frell, your host, founder, and CEO of Culture Refinery, where we help organizations optimize the return on their most critical investment, their talent. Today, I'm super excited to be joined by Matthew McCarthy, former CEO of Ben and Jerry's and longtime Unilever executive. With over a 30-year career, Matthew builds a reputation for leading with courage, with purpose, and a deep commitment to equity and justice. His work infuses values into business strategy, culture, and impact.
Speaker A
And I am thrilled to dig into the lessons that he's learned from the boardroom to the front lines of social change.
Speaker A
So, Matthew, thank you. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker A
Danny, it is great to be here. It's a real treat, and thank you for including me.
Speaker A
Absolutely. So, your leadership journey spans everything from brand work to the CEO seat at one of the most iconic socially conscious companies in the world. And so, as we kick off, I'd love if you would just reflect a little on your journey and that transition from brand management to CEO. What were some of the pivotal experiences that shaped your approach to values-based leadership?
Speaker A
Sure. And thank you again. And I love this intersection conversation of career, personal ambition, and how we shape our lives and purpose. This is a crazy notion that I know I learned early in my career—that somehow that purpose stuff might be touchy-feely and that's separate from driving a career and having sustained performance for your teams and for yourself. And so I really appreciate you setting this up. You know, I started really working with my dad in a family business. I had always had jobs when I was a kid, and that helped instill in me a work ethic. So, I always had a job whether it was a paper route. I even scooped ice cream when I was a teenager one summer.
Speaker A
And eventually started working with my dad at a small family business in Massachusetts. And even though I was fortunate after that to sort of move on to larger companies, including a big company, a big multinational like Unilever, some of those key lessons I learned when I was in my late teens and early 20s, especially with my dad, really stayed with me. And the idea of entrepreneurial business has been a golden thread or maybe even a golden cable through my whole career. This idea that if I don't do it, it may not get done. That mindset of kind of ownership of the business and ownership of taking care of things was really helpful for me because I think you can get swallowed up in big companies where there seems to be a department for everything.
Speaker A
Yeah. What I've observed is that sometimes that creates a mindset that's like, I don't know, call so and so or have somebody else do it versus everything that happens here, I've got some level of responsibility for it. And so that's been very helpful for me. And what I didn't realize at the time was that sense of responsibility was not only accountability for the results, accountability for service to the people that your business is there to help or support, but also a cross-functional mindset where other people need help. Even if they're a function that I don't know much about, they need help. We need to work together. And so this idea of people talk a lot about teamwork and team-based cultures. Well, personal accountability is the flip side of the same coin of accountability to those that I support and who I need support from. So, that's just a little bit of a kind of background on kind of maybe themes or some thoughts that were important to me independent of the specific jobs that I've had the privilege of doing over time.
Speaker A
Oh, I love that. I love that notion of even thinking about the connection of personal accountability to how that relates to team and collaboration. We often hear that phrase, there's no I in team. And I always say absolutely there is. It's a whole bunch of eyes in team, right? You have to start with the individual before you can even consider and zone out to the team. They're made up of a whole bunch of individuals with their own roles to play. So I love, love, love hearing that connection. One of the things that we focus on heavily here at Culture Refinery is this notion, this belief that middle managers are sort of the magic, right? The lifeblood of an organization and specifically that new managers are critical. How we develop and support our new managers is really critical for the long-term sort of success from an engagement, innovation, retention sort of success perspective. From your experience, right, leading both legacy brands and mission-driven teams, what's the one skill, maybe two, that you believe every new manager needs to master first in order to be effective?
Speaker A
Yeah, this is a great question and I am too am a believer of the power of middle management. And it's not that I have anything against senior managers and having been a senior manager, but the pace of change, which is something we talk about a lot, is a powerful democratizing force within organizations. So, I spent part of my career wanting to be a guru of topic A or B, you know, be a guru of brand management or be a guru of advertising, creative design. One of the cool things about the pace of change is that just because you were good at something yesterday has actually very little bearing on whether or not you can be somebody who can drive real change today. And that pace of change is usually very exciting for more junior managers. It can be a bit terrifying for senior managers who have said, "Well, hey, I've got 20, I've got 30, I've got 35 years of experience and I have to reinvent myself all the time. I didn't know that I was going to have to do that." So, I think middle managers have a tremendous opportunity to seize authority within the organization.
Speaker A
And sometimes they're taught to do that. They're shown how to do that and they're given the space to do that, but often they're not. And we're in a time when this is incredibly critical for organizations because the pressure that businesses and really all organizations are under and still in very much the halo of the pandemic impacts. Just think about supply chains, think about consumer behavior patterns, let alone some of the craziness going on with governments and other institutions. But you've got a lot of people that are really moving backwards to old power tactics, right? You put any manager, any leader, anybody under pressure, we tend to go backwards to the trusted toolbox.
Speaker A
Well, let me, I'm here to tell you that a lot of those elements of the toolbox are rooted in old power, traditional hierarchical structures, which is not only bad for lots of organizations but it's especially bad for middle managers as they look to people that they can follow as mentors, both explicit mentors but also the informal. Like, we all have folks that we look up to, and I think that the middle managers have both a great opportunity but a challenge in a time when not all of the behaviors that we need in our organizations are being modeled at the top. The first skill I would suggest to answer your question is to have a healthy skepticism, but you can have admiration for your mentors, admiration for those that have come before you, admiration for folks that have worked their way up the ladder, so to speak, in your organization, but you also have to have something that I wasn't taught to do early in my career, which is to have a healthy skepticism.
Speaker A
What are those attributes of the leaders, my boss, my boss's boss, the head honchos of this organization that I do want to emulate?
Speaker A
And make a very clear list of those attributes you explicitly do not want to emulate and challenge yourself and how you
Speaker A
so that's been very helpful for me. And what I didn't realize at the time was that sense of responsibility was not only accountability for the results, accountability for service to the people that your business is is there to to
Speaker A
help or or support, but also a crossf functional mindset where other people need help. Even if they're a function that I don't know much about, they need help. We need to work together. And so this idea of people
Speaker A
talk a lot about teamwork and team-based cultures. Well, you know, personal accountability is the flip side of the same coin of accountability to those that I support and who I need support from. So, that's just a little bit of a
Speaker A
kind of a background on kind of maybe themes or some thoughts that were important to me independent of the specific jobs that I've had the privilege of of doing over time.
Speaker A
Oh, I love that. I love that notion of even thinking about the connection of personal accountability to how that relates to team and collaboration. We often hear that phrase, there's no eye in team. And I always say absolutely there is. It's a
Speaker A
whole bunch of eyes in team, right? You have to start with the individual before you can even consider and zone out to to the team. They're made up of a whole bunch of individuals with their own roles to play. So I love love love
Speaker A
hearing that connection. One of the things that we focus on heavily here at Culture Refinery is this notion, this belief that middle managers are sort of the magic, right? The lifeblood of an organization and specifically that new managers are
Speaker A
critical. How we develop and support our new managers is really critical for the long-term sort of success from an engagement, innovation, retention sort of success perspective. From your experience, right, leading both legacy brands and missiondriven teams, what's the one skill, maybe two, that you
Speaker A
believe every new manager needs to master first in order to be effective? Yeah, this is a this is a great question and I am too am a believer of the power of middle management. And it's not that I have anything against senior managers
Speaker A
and having been a senior manager, but the pace of change, which something we talk about a lot, is a powerful democratizing force within organizations. So, I spent part of my career uh wanting to be a guru of topic
Speaker A
A or B, you know, be a guru of brand management or be a a guru of of advertising, creative design. One of the cool things about the pace of change I is that just because you were good at
Speaker A
something yesterday has actually very little bearing on on whether or not you can be somebody can drive real change today. Uh and that pace of change is usually very exciting for more junior managers. It can be a bit terrifying for
Speaker A
senior managers who have said, "Well, hey, I've got 20, I've got 30, I've got 35 years of experience and I have to reinvent myself all the time. I didn't know that I was going to have to do that. So, I think middle managers have a
Speaker A
tremendous opportunity to seize authority within the organization. Um, and sometimes they're taught to do that.
Speaker A
They're shown how to do that and they're given the space to do that, but often they're not. And we're in a time when this is incredibly critical for organizations because the pressure that businesses and really all organizations are under and and still in very much the
Speaker A
halo of the pandemic impacts. Just think about supply chains, think about consumer behavior patterns, let alone some of the craziness going on with with governments and other institutions. But you've got a lot of people that are really moving backwards to old power
Speaker A
tactics, right? You put any manager, any leader, anybody under pressure, we tend to go backwards to the trusted toolbox.
Speaker A
Well, let me I'm here to tell you that a lot of those elements of the toolbox are rooted in old power traditional hierarchical structures which is not only bad for lots of organizations but it's especially bad for middle managers
Speaker A
as they look to people that they can follow as mentors both explicit mentors but also the informal like we all have folks that we we look up to and I think that the middle managers are have both a
Speaker A
great opportunity but a challenge in a time when not all of the behaviors that we need in our organizations are being modeled at the top. The first skill I would suggest to answer your question is to have a healthy skepticism, but you
Speaker A
can have admiration for your mentors, admiration for those that have come before you, admiration for folks that have worked their way up the ladder, so to speak, in your organization, but you also have to have something that I
Speaker A
wasn't taught to do early in my career, which is to have a healthy skepticism.
Speaker A
What are those attributes of the leaders, my boss, my boss's boss, the head honchos of this organization that I do want to emulate?
Speaker A
And make a very clear list of those attributes you explicitly do not want to emulate and challenge yourself and how you want to bring maybe I'll call them new power principles, a more distributed power model, a more agile model, a more
Speaker A
inclusive model. Not all senior leaders, you know, big surprise, have those skills to pass on. So, this is a new challenge and an opportunity for middle managers and something I believe is critical that we're investing in more these days, particularly as many HR
Speaker A
departments, many LD leadership development functions are kind of embattled these days. That's really where we need to be investing most.
Speaker A
Oh my goodness. Such good such good stuff. That healthy skepticism, right? question. Figure out what what what serves me and what doesn't. What serves where we're going and what doesn't? And if the folks in front of me aren't there to give it to
Speaker A
me, then where can I go find it? And sometimes you got to be the one to create it.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's just that I wasn't told this in my career. I kind of wish someone did. I had to find this out the hard way. When you find out some of your heroes have attributes that are not
Speaker A
actually helpful, it can be a little depressing because I I would tend to lionize the folks that I looked up to.
Speaker A
And that's perfectly fine. But the pace of change now is again, if you want to seize that democratizing force of the pace of change, you have to have both lists. Those things that you want to emulate, adopt, and grow on, and those
Speaker A
things that you actively want to leave behind. That's something I don't see enough leaders talk about. here's an attribute that is that that I've brought with me my career and I need to leave this behind. It's it's actually a challenge
Speaker A
more to the senior folks and how are they actively leaving behind skills that worked for yesterday but they don't work for today let alone working for tomorrow.
Speaker A
I love this. I love this. I I actually you know I know we're talking about middle managers but I'm glad that you you introduced that notion for senior leaders too, right? The old playbook may not serve us anymore. And as much as
Speaker A
middle managers, emerging leaders look up to our senior leaders, there's so much opportunity for that reverse mentorship as well. Right? There's so much richness in perspective and sort of freedom and new ways of thinking that I think even more seasoned and senior
Speaker A
leaders could benefit from. So this sort of more collaboration and this is a perfect time for it with so many generations actively engaged in the workforce right more than we've ever had before. So this is just such a ripe a
Speaker A
ripe moment and I know we had a conversation on this you know kind of where we are in the world right leadership today is not static it's always evolving and even in the current dynamics right that we're navigating
Speaker A
there's so much change volatility uncertainty this is at an all-time high and for leaders at all levels the expectations the expectations are high too and we're navigating things that most folks haven't seen before. I don't I don't know that we haven't seen it and
Speaker A
we couldn't predict it and but we do have some things, right? Some instincts and some history that we can go back to.
Speaker A
And this this might be um a little bit of what you shared already, but you've led through times of uncertainty, heightened public scrutiny, right? Those things. So thinking about that, what advice would you give leaders, new leaders, senior leaders as we're
Speaker A
navigating these times of uncertainty, rapid change, external pressures? I often will say to people, um, I'm often the most dangerous person in the room because I I often have high, if not the most positional authority, and that tends to travel with distance from the
Speaker A
front line, distance from where the decisions need to be made. So we can talk a good game about empowerment and helping the front line and all this talk. And a lot of it's just talk.
Speaker A
I see too often is that senior leaders want to do both. They want to be the big boss and then when it comes to what are we doing on topic A, B or C or crisis XYZ, they want to insert themsel in
Speaker A
because they think that that's what their job is to be helpful. Um and then often we've got a lot of uh let's say investors, activist investors. You've got board members. They too are under lots of pressure, right? Everybody's
Speaker A
trying to figure out how to navigate all the changes that are going on around us right now. And I don't need to list all of them. We see them every day in the news and in the business press and
Speaker A
beyond. But, uh, this idea of of acknowledging that positional authority is a completely different topic than who's best suited to help us address these issues. when that can be difficult to do because a lot of senior leaders don't know how to say I don't know cuz
Speaker A
they don't want to look dumb. They don't want to look like they don't know what they're doing. But in fact to to acknowledge anything other than the fact that you need to get the right people in and around topic X topic ABC whatever it
Speaker A
might be is absolutely uh absolutely critical. And the other thing I would say and it's not often talked about when it we're close to say the disruption word but the power of compassion.
Speaker A
The power of compassion. Sometimes people look at me like oh what is this like a human resource topic or is this like a from kind of a let's all hug each other retreat? And and I have to actually help people understand uh that
Speaker A
I'm not talking about something that's on a poster outside of your human resources department. All people have values. All organizations are aggregations of people trying to do something together. Therefore, all organizations, whether you choose to acknowledge them or not, have values
Speaker A
embedded. And having compassion for those around us is an incredibly important skill. When everybody is carrying a burden, many of which we're not going to ever see or know about. You know the very old adage very timeless uh
Speaker A
notion this idea that everybody's carrying around burdens but we really saw that through the pandemic and many people still carrying those things. So having business in a business uh envir having compassion in a business environment I found is essential to the
Speaker A
success of a team. Um and these old notions about just being tough. You know I've seen toughness masquerading as intelligence for years right? I'm gonna be tough. We're going to be tough. we're going to take a difficult decision. Yeah, difficult
Speaker A
decisions actually require more compassion, particularly if they have impact on people's lives. If you need to have a major layoff, that is painful. It may be what you need to do, but don't dress up difficult conversations as we're going to get through them by being
Speaker A
tough. Well, let's actually come together and acknowledge that these difficult things that we need to do sometimes to save the organization or to save the company in a crisis situation actually requires us to bring more compassion. And a lot of people are
Speaker A
taught, I know I was taught to leave all that stuff aside, but in fact when people see that you care, they will put so much more of themsel into the job, the challenge, the issues. Um you know it is the ultimate X factor for an
Speaker A
organization and a team when people know each other care and in fact all great breakthroughs innovations overcoming huge challenges and adversarial situations or crises as you were speaking to actually all of them require people to show up more fully and the
Speaker A
team that shows up more fully where there's a higher degree of trust among the team members will always kick the pants of the team where they lack trust.
Speaker A
So there's this whole kind of of if a equals b and b equals c that that's the connection again one of what I would call a golden cable of why caring matters, why trust matters. These aren't like again touchyfey topics. These are
Speaker A
directly related to your sales, your profit, your market share, and winning in the marketplace, but too often they're couched as a kind of a something you might do as an offsite and uh and whatnot. So, I'm I'm glad you asked that
Speaker A
question, but I think at this time when there's a lot of pressure out there that people are under personally in their teams, their organizations, in their communities, this is a time when your performance is actually more connected to your
Speaker A
ability to show up as a person and bring that. People talk about authenticity. Well, what is authenticity?
Speaker A
One of the aspects of authenticity in my book is showing up with compassion and acknowledging um where we are struggling and where we need help. If you can't tell people where you need help and you can't build trust, then people don't
Speaker A
come to support each other. Oh my goodness, Matthew. I love love this. I we hear folks say it's it's not personal, it's just business.
Speaker A
And I always cringe and I'm like, business is personal. Everything Everything is personal. You know, our our tagline is cultivate culture, unleash genius. And when I say unleash genius, a lot of times when you have to show up in a space where you don't feel
Speaker A
that you can be your whole most authentic self, when you have to show up that way, your brain is not operating at its best. Right? If I'm thinking about censoring every word I say and worrying about my outfit, my hair, who's thinking
Speaker A
about me, proving myself because they don't necessarily believe that I have the credibility, whatever. I'm spending all of that trying to contort and conform to fit in. That's mental capacity that's not being used to solve the problem. And so the company is at a
Speaker A
loss. It's not getting the I I I don't have the data to back it up, but I believe that we are seeing a fraction of the the the innovation, the creativity, the the productivity of talent and that if we can create the spaces where folks
Speaker A
can truly tap into their brilliance, my goodness, we'll see so many like quantum leaps in all of the areas that we're that we're focused on. So when you call that out, right, the the your performance is connected to who you are
Speaker A
and compassion is a part of that, right? I can give you a lot if I know that it matters to you, who I am and and what I bring to the table.
Speaker A
Danny, I'm with you. I am you're Yeah, I'm loving what you're saying. And and and I and I'm I'm grateful that you're out there helping organizations, helping individuals, teams, and large organizations do that work. And I think that some of the pressure tactics that
Speaker A
have been applied on businesses are by design. They're designed to create a paralysis at the top. You know, if you think about what is cancel culture, like regardless of where you are on a political spectrum, where you are on
Speaker A
some of these topics that everyone likes to get all worked up about uh uh these days, stepping back and acknowledging that that there are intentional efforts to create fear within organizations, fear among the seauite, fear among board members and that actually will obviously
Speaker A
flow through the organization. Well, fear is the is the ultimate destroyer of sustained productivity and high performance. So, anybody who comes from the old school book that I'm going to kind of like scare people into high performance, you don't you don't you're
Speaker A
dangerous. We need to remove you from the organization. It doesn't mean that we don't have urgency. As a CEO, I would often say part of my job is chief urgency officer and that doesn't mean make everything urgent. If everything's
Speaker A
urgent, nothing's urgent, right? So people, so it's so so powerful what you're saying because some of the stress that people are under is by design where people are thinking, well, if I just create more pressure, if I just create
Speaker A
more kind of intense urgency and people reject that we we can't be on that level of alert 24/7 throughout the weekend.
Speaker A
You and I were talking earlier about kind of, you know, managing your workflow and managing your personal energy.
Speaker A
um this type of stress that people are applying within the organizations or or not filtering it uh and allowing perhaps outside pressures to come through.
Speaker A
Sadly, people sometimes don't understand that that's having a direct negative impact on the business performance on sales on profits on market share on the quality and execution of innovation. I mean innovation just by itself to your point by itself is such an important
Speaker A
element of the lifeblood of organizations in business all innovation all breakthroughs start with curiosity and people having uh the the space to be curious not the panic I mean panic and crisis is the actual is the exact opposite of the type of matter that's
Speaker A
required to create the kind of curiosity and trusting environments for people to to take chances.
Speaker A
Have people taking chances, you do not have breakthrough ideas, things that help transform an industry, transform a business and and win in the marketplace.
Speaker A
So, I love what you're saying and drawing that kind of connective tissue or connecting two or three dots.
Speaker A
Sometimes people are just too freaked out and that that's unfortunate and I think the businesses that create that space to care for their people and and want to create a a compassionate culture that will directly contribute to their
Speaker A
performance in the marketplace which is what a lot of investors and uh and other senior executives want.
Speaker A
So powerful, Matthew. And I think, you know, as you were talking about fear and compassion and innovation and sort of the thread that that that weaves through it all, what stood out to me, right, is our brain's natural response to fear,
Speaker A
right? We we process fear, whether it's a physical threat or social threat, the same way. Our brain doesn't differentiate. And so our response to fear is fight, flight, or freeze. No matter what, whether it's a lion in front of me or a scary boss, right? It's
Speaker A
fight, flight, or freeze. And none of those things allows my brain to operate at its absolute best. And so when you say like fear is like the drain, it truly is. And when you talk about compassion curiosity innovation what
Speaker A
you're what I'm hearing is workplace culture, right? This is all this is what we're talking about. And we like to say that culture is your competitive advantage. It is your culture is what is going to let you win. The way that you
Speaker A
invest in your people and show up on behalf of your people in any environment is what lets you win. And I think the pandemic demonstrated this so clearly because on the the pandemic fear was it fear everyone was afraid. And you saw
Speaker A
that and you saw organizations that really had the compassion invested in them, people sort of survive that and come through it in a different sort of way from a culture perspective. And you saw the folks who didn't, right? They
Speaker A
struggled and then on the back end of it, you heard all of the rage, which I do not I do not love this term of quiet quitting. M the quiet quitting was I'm afraid and I'm seeing you for who you are
Speaker A
and and now you get the bare minimum. So when for you might have just gotten, you know, 70% of my brain power, now you're getting 50. I'm going to do my job and go home. And and you know, organizations
Speaker A
are like, "Oh no, they're quietly quitting." No, they're doing their job. They're not necessarily quitting, but you quit on the piece that they needed from you, right? they don't trust you.
Speaker A
They don't trust you. You've not shown up. And what do we do to solve that? And so I think, you know, thinking back to just the amazing work that you've done, right? Cuz you know, even at Ben and
Speaker A
Jerry's and that we talk about Ben and Jerry's, it's just such a an iconic brand and and the work and the impact that you were able to have theirs is is so so strong. But even there, like you
Speaker A
didn't just lead the business, right? you led with po with with purpose and culture wasn't an afterthought. It was right that business imperative. So I'm I'm curious from your perspective, what does a thriving culture actually look like in action? Because we throw away
Speaker A
buzz, we throw out bud buzzwords, but how what does it mean and how do you create it?
Speaker A
Yeah, that is such a massive a huge question. I will try to take a little baby bite out of it because you're asking like the the gazillion dollar uh qu so to speak. But I I'll take a couple
Speaker A
of goes at it. As you're asking the question, my gears are clicking along like, oh man, how am I going to answer today's question. You one of the things I would say then and hopefully this there'll be some threads if not cables
Speaker A
through this uh for for for the to the earlier parts of our conversation. Um, you know, one of the most magical things about Ben and Jerry's, and it truly is a magical, special, I often say an experiment. People talk about a
Speaker A
business. Yes. An extremely successful global ice cream company that has thrived for over 45 years. And that is true. But I also think about Ben & Jerry's as an experiment. uh an experiment in how you can create a
Speaker A
tremendous product and do it in a way where you're acknowledging your connection to the communities that you serve. Now, I I could show you a lot of slides. We can go in lots of uh go into great depth, but in a lot of ways, it's
Speaker A
it's as simple as that. And simple doesn't mean easy. Yeah. Simple and easy are two totally separate things. Uh and and one of the one of the beautiful things about the magic of Ben and Jerry's is that because
Speaker A
acknowledging the impact and role that a group of people in this case a company has for the communities that it serves and supports um is inherently an acknowledgment of humanity.
Speaker A
Yeah. There's that touchy feeling like we are humans and people may not want to use that word like oh humanity we no we're all humans like this like there is no degree of separation all the humans are doing until we get to a time when AI
Speaker A
is doing everything humans are going to matter for a period of time so when you have a group of people that have come together um for something more than just selling stuff uh and different people can identify in
Speaker A
different ways the freedom of a model like Ben and Jerry's is clarity about the vision of the company, but also freedom within that. So there's some people that may be more excited about making unbelievable, crazy, euphoric flavors of ice cream. That's beautiful.
Speaker A
There could be other folks that are really, really engaged by how we make that ice cream, right? How is it done?
Speaker A
What's the impact to say farmers or farmer animals or the environment? And there could be other folks that are much more engaged with I like the ice cream, but I'm really here because justice is important to me. Climate justice or
Speaker A
social justice. So when you've got um a business that acknowledges its relationship with the community and is encouraging people to bring some of their self, some of their personal drives, their personal passions, their their own values into that environment.
Speaker A
There ain't nothing touchyfey about that at all. That is normal. That is natural. is a completely natural thing for us as humans. It doesn't mean we're always going to agree. That's a whole separate thing and we can touch on that if you
Speaker A
want. But, you know, organizations are not democracies. Not everybody is design. They're not designed so that everybody gets their way all the time.
Speaker A
We wouldn't get anything done. But I think the first the one of the first and most important things about having an organization where you've prioritized purpose and and and a and and and values within the organization is is in itself
Speaker A
an invitation to talent. It's invitation to people to bring more of themsel just doing a job. You to your point earlier about quiet quitting. So that that to me is one of the most uh and sometimes it isn't spoken about because people want
Speaker A
to jump immediately towards what specific positions is a company taking but it's Ben and Jerry's or or some of the other tremendous companies out there that have really prioritized purpose and impact. But before you even get to the specifics of the positions or
Speaker A
the activities or the philanthropies or whatever an organization or company's doing, acknowledging the power of purpose at the individual, the natural working team and the enterprise level is absolutely essential for sustained performance uh to the earlier parts of
Speaker A
our conversation. Um, and I I'll speak briefly about conflict because what happens when you encourage people to come forward, you're going to have debate. I mean, I always joke with folks. I say, "We I don't agree with my
Speaker A
family members around the dinner table sometimes. Why in the world would I would I think that we're going to agree when you put even more people around a business where you've got all kinds of other pressures like profit and delivery
Speaker A
and and big customers putting pressure on you and big competitors sometimes beating you in the marketplace." um and and being able to move towards conflict and sometimes the tensions often the tensions of conflict that is normal and natural and in fact it's how
Speaker A
teams navigate impasses navigate conflict that to me as as a as someone who witnessed teams some high performing and some really struggling how conflict is managed is usually the most important element of forensics that I'm looking for to understand that these
Speaker A
folks trust each other. Am I building trust or am I doing things to hurt trust and acknowledging that as part of high performing teams? So again, people, you know, that not everybody at Ben & Jerry's agrees on every topic and
Speaker A
that shouldn't surprise anybody. Lots of folks have different points of view on any range of topics, particularly when you talk about things that can be more passionfilled like social and climate justice issues and having the courage to show up and say, "Hey, I don't know.
Speaker A
I'm sorry. I I did something that that was didn't land well with you." Or, "Hey, I didn't know. I'm on a learning journey myself." These things are normal and natural when you're in an environment where you're trying to do
Speaker A
more than just sell more stuff and make more profit. the selling and the profit absolutely essential to the business.
Speaker A
And sometimes people like they kind of want to talk about them as separate conversations. I really try to merge them into one conversation that even for an ice cream company, the success of the ice cream depends on all these things
Speaker A
we're talking about. We wouldn't have a conversation about business and and sales and profit that was really very far away from how are our values showing up today.
Speaker A
So powerful, Matthew. And I and what I've noticed, right, and I think that this is why it's, you know, one of those things that's easy to say and hard to do, right, is that a lot of times we
Speaker A
spend our time and our energy drafting these amazing mission and vision statements and listing out our our values. And somewhere there's a disconnect between what we said our values were and what's actually happening in in in the room, right, on
Speaker A
the Zoom, in the workplace, right? It's different than what actually shows up. And and I think a lot of times that's the gap because you don't you you rarely see a company who has values that you're like, "Oh, that's a terrible value. Why
Speaker A
would you why would you?" You're like, "Okay, those all sound great." And then you dig in and it's like, but you're not living, you're not living this. And there's that sort of disconnect. And it's like, how do you make sure that what you said
Speaker A
is what you do? And that brings me back to what we talked about earlier, that middle, right? Because the middle is what's driving everything. And they're not bought in, they're not aligned, they don't see the direct tie, the purpose.
Speaker A
They don't create the flexibility for you to lean in to what you're passionate about. Even if it's not your exact job description, for you to have a say so or be able to share a thought, right, to even right bring it up that it causes
Speaker A
people to shrink and you don't get the the sort of the magic that we're trying to cultivate.
Speaker A
Oh, this is so rich. So rich. I I I'm I'm always excited when I get to talk to you because I feel like, you know, we just we we can go and go and go and go. I um
Speaker A
I want to I'm I'm going to I'm going to force myself to rap us a little bit.
Speaker A
I love it. I love it. I'm going to force ourselves to to rap just a little bit. Um I've got a couple like last lasting thoughts. I wanted to know right even at the top, right? You talk about curiosity and sort of leaning
Speaker A
in and continuing to develop and being agile right now with this sort of new structure of power and how we lead. How do you personally continue to develop and refine your own skills um and leadership skills today?
Speaker A
That's a great question. I um and and I um you know I think learning uh you know we've for many years now we've talked about the importance of and I say we I'm talking generally in leadership development and competency building the
Speaker A
the idea that we are responsible for our development yes your organization uh should be vested in that with you and great learning opportunities but most important for us to adopt a kind of a constant learning mindset and often that
Speaker A
is uh in terms of let's say intelligence topics uh a new okay what's going on with AI okay what's going on with supply chains what's going on with you know currency exchange whatever the topic might be I think it's what I have found
Speaker A
is it's just as important to be on a learning journey as it relates to most of the topics that you and I have been talking about and one of the things I've learned sometimes the hard way is the
Speaker A
power of humility right um and uh being able to say I don't know and in fact often and what you know the the the old adage of what got me here won't get me there. Uh, building on something we
Speaker A
talked about earlier, often I find that a lot of the things that have got me, they've gotten me to where I am in a career are not only not going to be getting me there in the future. They're
Speaker A
not future fit, but they may actually be blocking me. My own way of doing things 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that's part of my toolbox. And I may be very proud of how I developed that skill. But
Speaker A
humility, for me, one of the powers of humility is being able to gently interrogate. interrogate with love yourself and say, "Is this is this are you really showing up the way that's going to be helpful right now, Matthew?
Speaker A
What does this team need?" And just because it looks like a situation that maybe you've encountered 10 times before, I I'll I'll try to have that dialogue with myself. That's a that's a foundational skill of humility to be
Speaker A
able to gently interrogate with care yourself your own skill set and how you're showing up because it's really hard as a senior leader sometimes for some folks to say I don't know as I've said a couple of times or to your point
Speaker A
about values you know the first one of the first times I was standing up in front of a room of people where I was had a imagine like a town hall right so you're the senior person in the room
Speaker A
you're having a town hall and you're presenting and the slides are up over and to have someone stand up and challenge you and say, "I don't think we're living our values." Or, "M, I don't think your decision on that topic
Speaker A
was actually the right one." And you get nervous. You kind of get hot under the collar, right? You get a little like, "Oh man, everybody's looking at me and and here this person is is challenging me." And you might want to feel a little
Speaker A
I know personally I felt at times a little embarrassed or like like, "How dare this person challenge me?" What a beautiful expression of agency. Yeah, what a beautiful expression of agency.
Speaker A
Now, I may or may not like what that individual had to say. I may not actually agree with them, but to have an organization, that's what inclusion, the power of inclusion, among other things, is agency.
Speaker A
Agency, people feeling that it's okay to stand up and say, "Hey, Matthew, I don't think we were at our best. I don't think you were at your best. I don't think we're living our values." You know, those things that are carved into the
Speaker A
marble in the front office or outside in the front of the building, to your point, Denny, are we living up to them?
Speaker A
But that's what I'm talking about. Having a bit of humility to separate the maybe the fight response or the shame response. You know, I've learned and I've read that that one of the most powerful human emotions is shame.
Speaker A
And sometimes the fear of embarrassment, the fear of shame. But people who are truly at ease with themselves, the most confident people I've I've met in my life are the ones that have a healthy and growing sense of humility because
Speaker A
inquiry requires humility. What's the old adage? I can't remember who said it, but it is impossible for a human to learn something when they actually already believe they know it. Mhm.
Speaker A
So, so inquiry and self-exploration is it's not a destination, it's a journey, it's a practice. And having that humility is necessary, I find. So, cultivating humility is a precursor for being able to say, you know, where am I
Speaker A
actually doing a great job? Where am I falling short? As much as I'm proud of the things I've done in the past, 100% of my experience is in yesterday.
Speaker A
those things are actually helping me today. And some maybe right they pull oh I can open my toolbox I can help them is some of the activities that I that I do now in my life as a board member as an
Speaker A
investor um uh as a founder of of a business. Um but having that humility I find is most important things. Sometimes it's difficult, right, to go, "Oh, I I kind of screwed that up, or I don't have the right skill set here, or my skills
Speaker A
in this topic area, they just don't honestly, Matthew, they don't feel like where they need to be for me to fully show up for the people I love, the people I care about, the people I'm supporting, the people I have the
Speaker A
privilege to work with." So, I'd say that cultivating humility is an absolutely essential thing um in in self-development. And if you don't have it, then maybe you're learning new things, but integrating that into how you do what you do so that you can
Speaker A
become a more effective leader, a more decisive, a more powerful person in the way that you bring decisions to life and how you execute things. Actually, upstream from that is a healthy and growing sense of humility and curiosity.
Speaker A
Oh my goodness, I love that so much. And there were a few themes that I heard, right? Definitely humility huge. And when you talked about that, you made a note around a lot of of of not just focusing on those sort of intelligence
Speaker A
building skills, but some of those what we call soft skills, but they're really power skills or interpersonal skills cuz that's what truly drives it. We talk about the power of reflection a lot and this interrogation theme is what I'm
Speaker A
hearing. That that willingness to sit down and pause and stop going. We go go sit down, be still for a second and think. Right? A lot of times when we're planning, we don't think that the thinking is is a step. We think that the
Speaker A
thinking comes before the step. And so we don't feel like we've done anything because we're still thinking. And I'm like, you get to check the thinking off.
Speaker A
If you're if you're a list person, the the thinking is a check mark. Get clear on this, consider this, interrogate this. Those are all power. They're probably the most important steps that you take. So I love that theme. And the
Speaker A
the last thing that you said around making sure that you don't just learn it but you integrate it into how you become a better leader. Right? We are in the the period where every we have access to all sorts of information
Speaker A
and many of us consume and consume and consume and the consumption is only valuable if you do something with it. if you apply it, right? And so I was like, yeah, you can be the encyclopedia and know all the
Speaker A
random facts, but if you're not applying them to anything, then you know, we call you, hey, Google or whatnot, but you you you've not done anything. Okay.
Speaker A
Yeah. Oh my god, these are such great nuggets. I love it. Great questions. Great questions unlock great conversations. So, I'm I'm thankful to you as well, Denny.
Speaker A
This is amazing. So, okay, Matthew, as we wrap up, this has been such a rich conversation around courage, clarity, compassion, leading. This is really why we created this this this series, right? And so, I'd love just as your like closing thought, if you had to
Speaker A
leave fellow leaders with just one piece of advice, what would it be? Uh, that's another really tough question. uh because I've uh I've received such great pieces of advice over the years and and cultivated those uh as nuggets that reflect kind of
Speaker A
important chunks of wisdom that people have imparted to me. So, one of them is definitely is something I learned from my dad. My dad taught me once um if you wait until you feel ready, Matthew, you probably will have waited too long.
Speaker A
And that's an incredibly insightful thought um that he shared with me because I want things I want things to be perfect. I want to do my best. I want to show up. I want to be successful. You know, I don't want to fall on my face.
Speaker A
But what my dad taught me with that I was probably 10 when he said this to me, 10 or 11. But we have to authorize oursel. Sometimes those mentors or bosses or authority figures or more senior caring figures in our life will
Speaker A
authorize us but nothing takes the place of us authorizing ourselves. So, so I really encourage people to think about because this is lesson that's been very important to me. If you're waiting for your boss or your boss's boss to authorize you, you may be
Speaker A
waiting a damn long time. So authorize yourself and get comfortable with discomfort because all progress requires discomfort. A healthy skepticism and dissatisfaction, a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo includes not only the businesses and the teams we're part of, but with oursel a
Speaker A
healthy and a gentle caring dissatisfaction with um yourself. And I mean that in a caring, loving way again. and um and authorize yourself. Authorize yourself.
Speaker A
Oh my gosh, what a powerful note to end on. You have the agency to authorize yourself. Don't wait for anyone else to do it for you. It is yours to do for yourself. Matthew, thank you so so much.
Speaker A
If folks want to follow you, where can they stay up to date, be in touch?
Speaker A
Yeah, LinkedIn. I I I I take LinkedIn with a grain of salt, but LinkedIn is a great place to connect. Um, and I I'm not posting all the time there, but it's a it's probably the easiest way for
Speaker A
people to get to get a hold of me. I love it. I love it. Thank you. Thank you so much. I cannot thank you enough.
Speaker A
I'm super excited. All right, friends. Thank y'all for tuning in. At Culture Refinery, we believe great leaders aren't born, they are built. And that happens through intention, through learning, and through refining at every step of the way. So until next time,
Speaker A
keep leading boldly, keep investing in your people, investing in yourself, and refining your leadership.
Speaker A
[Music]
Topics:leadershipvalues-based leadershipmiddle managementteamworkinnovationcompassionaccountabilityorganizational cultureBen and Jerry'schange management
