Good morning,
In a Kellogg Insight meeting last week, we spent a solid five minutes talking about a very important subject: Mr. T.
Our 21-year-old summer intern had never heard of the ’80s wrestler/actor/fool-pitier, so we got off on a tangent trying to explain his celebrity appeal.
As editor in chief, I could’ve exerted my authority and steered us back to more important tasks. But the freewheeling conversation got everyone involved and in a creative mood, making the rest of the meeting more productive.
Today, we share research from Kellogg professor Nicole Stephens that shows this kind of casual, warm leadership style leads to more inclusive and collaborative environments. And Kellogg executive fellow Ravin Jesuthasan makes the case for upskilling employees instead of tossing them aside for hot new tech talent.
Keep it warm
Traditional stereotypes of business behavior are very aggressive. Think Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout, or any reality-show contestant who “didn’t come here to make friends.”
That competitive attitude sometimes carries over to business school classrooms, where it can discourage participation among students who don’t fit the archetype. In a study of 76 MBA classes, Stephens and her colleagues found that women disproportionately participated less often than men. And that gap could have a domino effect on careers.
But there’s a fix for this: when professors used an approachable speaking style, made eye contact with students, and used humor or disarming language, the participation gap disappeared.
“If you feel like you are included, comfortable, and have a voice, then you’re more likely to speak up,” Stephen says. “And if you speak up, you’re more likely to get a better grade. That can then shape how you see yourself in the classroom or in the business setting and the types of jobs you have access to.”
In a follow-up study, when business school students read a description of a professor utilizing these “warm” cues, women and men were equally likely to say they would participate, and both were more likely to say they would feel included.
Though these lessons emerge from a classroom setting, Stephens believes the same dynamics are also likely to occur in business meetings or other organizational interactions.
“The norms that get set early on in terms of who has a voice and who’s respected when they speak can have long-term consequences for people’s engagement and outcomes over time,” Stephen says. “So I would encourage us to be more aware of the way in which our behavior reflects these norms and [how we can] create a culture that is more welcoming and open to everybody’s perspective.”
Read more at Kellogg Insight.
Love the ones you’re with
As executives rush to adapt to the new AI era, their instinct is often to dramatically reshape their workforce: cut jobs, hire new tech-savvy talent. But in a piece for Fortune, Ravin Jesuthasan argues that the wiser option for leaders is to transform the workforce they already have.
“Your future workforce often already works for you,” says Jesuthasan, who is also the global leader of Mercer’s Transformation Services business. “This is not nostalgia or loyalty talking. It’s economics.”
While AI will change how work gets done, it doesn’t replace all skills equally, he says. Technical skills can now more easily be automated, but the know-how to operate within the unique context of your organization is harder to replace.
“When you hastily dismantle teams because a role looks out of date, you risk losing this institutional knowledge,” says Jesuthasan. “And you tend to lose it precisely when you need it most—when procedures break, systems glitch, or work goes off script.”
Ramping up new hires to understand and work within that organizational culture can take years. Conversely, retraining current workers saves money and time—and benefits the employees as well. Meaningful opportunities to upskill build employee loyalty, engagement, and retention, according to Jesuthasan.
“With focused reskilling and deliberate on-the-job learning, today’s employees become tomorrow’s advantage,” he says. “You preserve institutional knowledge while accelerating productivity and innovation.”
Read more in Fortune.
“You have to set the direction and define what your organization is about. But as a leader, you need frequent feedback in the process of getting there because you are going to make tons of mistakes.”
—Craig Wortmann, promoting his appearance on The Practice podcast.
Until next time,
Rob Mitchum, editor in chief
Kellogg Insight
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