Marcel Schwantes Reveals the Power of Servant Leadership in Transforming Teams and Culture

Episode recap:
Sam Caster, a previous guest on episode 237, graciously offers to interview show host Marcel Schhwantes about his journey to becoming a go-to authority on Servant Leadership, highlighting the twists and turns, trials and tribulations of his professional path that led him to where he is today.

Guest Bio:
Marcel Schwantes helps organizations create high-performing cultures where employees thrive and businesses grow. He is an international speaker, executive coach, and author who has been recognized by Inspiring Workplaces as a Top 101 Global Employee Engagement Influencer. His thought leadership reaches millions monthly through outlets like Inc., Time, Fast Company, and Forbes. For the past seven years, Marcel has hosted the Love in Action podcast, which is now heard in 160 countries. He is the author of the soon-to-be-released book Humane Leadership: Lead with Radical Love, Be a Kick-Ass Boss.

Marcel Schwantes revisiting a conversation with entrepreneur Sam Caster, founder of ALOVÉA, who shares his journey of building a successful company and the challenges of maintaining its culture after going public. As the company grew, the culture Sam cultivated began to erode due to silos, financial pressures, and a loss of connection—a common issue for leaders when rapid growth threatens core values.

Key Quotes:

• "It doesn't start with serving shareholders first. It starts with implementing a vision, carrying it out, and differentiating yourself from competitors."
• "Culture won't happen at the flip of a switch. It takes time and starts with leaders championing the call for that culture."

Takeaways:

1. Prioritize Values: Embed organizational values into daily operations, decision-making, and hiring. Consistently demonstrate how these values are lived out.
2. Align Leadership: Ensure your leadership team is committed to a people-first, servant leadership approach. Address resistance proactively to avoid undermining cultural transformation.
3. Expand Diversity: Go beyond race, gender, and ethnicity to build a workforce with diverse ages, backgrounds, and perspectives to drive innovation.

Conclusion:
Organizations that embrace servant leadership principles can achieve lasting success, even in tough times. By prioritizing the well-being and growth of their people over short-term profits, they build resilient, trust-based teams with a shared sense of purpose. True leadership lies in uplifting others and creating a foundation for individual and collective success. Marcel Schwantes emphasizes that servant leadership, though challenging, is a transformative approach that fosters loyalty, innovation, and long-term impact.

Links/Resources:

Join the “From Boss to Leader” workshop here: https://www.marcelschwantes.com/frombosstoleader/

Website: www.marcelschwantes.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelschwantes/

Transcript

Sam Caster 00:04

Well, hello everyone. My name is Sam Caster. I am a social entrepreneur, and today I get to interview Marcel Schwantes. Hi, Marcel, how you doing? 

Marcel Schwantes 00:17

Hey, Sam. I'm good. 

Sam Caster 00:20

I'm excited about this because we had the chance to meet, and I think it was on a Sunday morning, spent several hours talking about what you're doing these days. I'm going to tell you why that's important to me, especially for the listeners out there. First of all, I've been an entrepreneur all my life and started businesses. The bigger that my businesses got, the harder it was to control the culture. So for instance, I started a business in 1994 and over a 20 year period, we expanded into 26 countries. We took our company public. We were doing about a half a billion dollars a year in revenue. But along the way, we completely lost what I would call our culture and we, you know, of course, part of that was going public. You know, they're created that created silos within our business. 

And, you know, instead of a culture of innovation, it became a culture of penny pinchers, you know, just everybody watching every sentence, and every organization within the organization buying for their own, you know, place and budget and all these anyway, we completely lost our entrepreneurial spirit and our ability to innovate in risk take and things like that. I brought a lot of consultants into that business, Marcel, to kind of help us figure that out. And, you know, some of them are very motivational, but motivation lasted about a week, you know, after they left, and then we were right back into the same challenges in, you know, 2015 I was introduced or 14, to a concept called social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is really my calling in life. A social entrepreneur is the new breed of entrepreneur that is leveraging the economic power of the marketplace to provide sustainable solutions to the world's biggest problems. So instead of opening a charity, you open a business. 

Now, I would have loved to just converted my existing business at that time again, it was doing about a half a billion dollars a year into a social business, but it was too far gone. You know, I had too much accountability, too many, you know, make your make your numbers work this month, and the whole giving concept and leader stewardship went out the window with that. So I had actually resigned from the company that I had started and built to start a new company in the area of social entrepreneurship. And I always thought, you know, that was really, really disappointing. 

But after we talked to that Sunday morning, I thought, I wish Marcel had come along about 10 years earlier. So with that set up, Marcel, I'm excited about sharing the things that I learned that Sunday morning about you and what you're doing right now, because I think organizations that are struggling to try to protect their culture need to hear what you're doing. Let me just give an introduction. Marcel is the speaker, an author and acclaimed executive coach and an Ink Magazine contributing editor with a global following. Marcel delivers presentations, workshops, courses and coaching programs about the human side of business and how cultures of care, connection and belonging power companies to thrive and outperform their competitions. Marcel hosts the popular love in action podcast, which is heard in over 160 countries. So Marcel, to start this out, tell us your story. How. How did you get involved in all this?

Marcel Schwantes 04:41

I love this question, because I always ask of my guests, and now it's like, going right back to me. I'm like, so my story, shoot, you know, I'm a I'm a corporate guy, so I didn't venture into the world of entrepreneurship until maybe. Uh, 2013 when I was laid off of my last corporate gig, and I came up to ranks through, you know, HR. So I helped leaders and organizations become more efficient, streamline their hiring processes, and, you know, help recruit and in, and then I got into the leadership development side of HR, because that's where I saw most of the problems coming out of the people, issues that I was seeing always pointed, pointed right back to leadership. So if I Okay, well, if I, if I can start to build up leadership capacity, maybe we will see some of these people issue. People issues disappear. Well, they didn't Right, yeah, people issues are always going to be there. 

And so I, you know, kept moving up the ranks to through up, up through the HR management route, and then when I was laid off my last corporate job, I kind of tossed in the towel Sam at the corporate world. I'm like, Okay, I am done with the corporate world, because I thought that I could bring more value to being that third party that now sort of feel like stands on the on the on the outside, and helps people, helps leaders, helps executives, to really work on the culture piece that you're talking about, and then, you know, since then, I've been helping them do that, and we can get into that discussion. But yeah, I've been coaching on my own now, been on with my own practice now for, I would say, about 10 to 10 to 12 years roughly.

Sam Caster 06:53

And what kind of lessons do you think you've learned throughout this progression?

Marcel Schwantes 06:59

Well, the biggest lesson I think I learned is a personal one that's going to come out my book. And you know, I got to see the worst side of leadership, which I call toxic management, and then the best side of leadership. But let me talk about the toxic management part first, okay, because I got to experience it firsthand. There's a lot of suffering going on in the world, and what we're what we are not doing right, is placing people, placing the right people, into leadership roles. And so, you know, if you go back decades, if not a century or more, there is this, this stigma that that dictates that for you to rise up to the top, you have to have certain skills and or maybe certain ways of being that get you going up the ladder right. And so you can talk about how so many people that you see now are they? They get up there through power and control and charisma and even, obviously, confidence is a big deal. 

We always we want confident leaders. However, when you get to the point where confidence becomes over confidence, then we start to go into the realm of narcissism and all of those things that that that, unfortunately, the really bad, bad leadership behaviors. But those are the people that sometimes float to the top because of how we have sort of determined, or pre determined, that this is the criteria for moving up the ranks if you want to be in the C suite, right? And so we have people with a lot hungry for power that arrive there by not having the right, the right skills, the right competencies to re lead other human beings. And so, you know, if, if you're familiar with some of the recent history of some of the companies that have gone down, Enron and WorldCom, most recently in the last 20 years or so, 2025 years, yeah, those are the leaders I'm speaking about that got there, and they were very much successful, but what they failed at is to understand the human empowerment and an integrity and even something as counterintuitive as humility, which is one of the one of the biggest leadership strengths that you can utilize in the role to get the best out of people, right? 

And so yeah, we saw the opposite of all those things flow to the top, creating massive financial hemorrhage, hemorrhaging in a lot of the organizations because they lacked this. Skills to become a leader so and so that's the that's the toxic management side, right? So I, I got to see that, and I got to experience it firsthand as an employee under that kind of toxic management where even my health was at risk. I ended up in disability. And for a couple of months I could not I was literally paralyzed from the waist down due to immense stress caused by toxic management. And so when I recovered, you know, and gained mobility again and phased out of that, that one job at a hospital on the West Coast under toxin management I finished that that role moved on. The next company that hired me was another hospital under a completely different style of management and so we can talk a little bit about that person, but he was an executive that led through what we call, what we now call servant leadership, and that was the first time that I didn't have the label yet. Sam. 

I didn't know what server leadership, but I knew that the way that this individual led his team and led me was completely a 180 from where I came from, in the previous job, toxic management. So it was the first for me. I'm like, What's going on here? This is not this is unusual. What you know? Why is this person spending so much time trying to help us to succeed, trying to help us to remove obstacles from our path and mentoring us and making sure that we have all the tools and resources we needed, you know, this was like foreign concept for me, right? Yeah, gifted, that my previous history was just toxic management, so I didn't think that that was possible in in, in a real life work setting, you know? And so that's when I got exposed to that. So I started to investigate, okay, what is it about this, this executive that that that makes him different than every previous boss I've had up to that point? Yeah, I realized, as I delved into the research and the literature that all of his styles of leading people and managing people pointed back to the tenant of servant leadership, and that's when the light bulb went on.

Sam Caster 12:34

So define servant leadership as you understand it today. 

Marcel Schwantes 12:41

I think the simplest way to define I mean, there are various ways to define it. I would say the sort of leadership is, is when you when you have the mindset of putting others needs ahead of your own, and helping people to grow and succeed, and so it's a very selfless way of leading. And so you lead by serving others first. And so very counterintuitive even today, but we're finding out more and more that these cultures that are adapting the servant leadership mentality or methodology they are becoming more sustainable. They have less turnover. They have higher productivity outputs. You know, whenever engagement scores come back, engagement is very high, which is really important for keeping people, you know, into their jobs and not, you know, quitting. 

And nowadays, you know, servant leadership has become sort of an umbrella term for so many other things that you don't even have when you talk about a good high performing company culture, you don't even have to slap the label servant leadership on it anymore, because it's just a given that people are going to be empowered. If you're in a high performing company culture, there's good community there, right? People feel like they belong, and managers do whatever it takes to take care of people and then, so there's a high trust level. So, yeah, server leadership now is, you know, it's almost like a catch all term, right, from its origins, because it's, it's, it's permeated the corporate sector and entrepreneurship to such degree that that I think that right now it's, you know, there's a lot of overlaps into other areas of leadership.

Sam Caster 14:51

And why do you think that it's, there's so few servant leaders in industry? Because it's not common. It. May be coming more common from your experience, but from what I've seen in the industries I've been in, it's not a common thing, you know, and I know that, like, for instance, when, when we took our company public and we really started growing, you know, what corporate America required us to do is have outside board members, you know, have MBAs, have this and that and the other. And so we built the culture of people that were very accountable in terms of financial but not in terms of personal, and just completely lost control of the culture. 

Now I would consider myself a servant leader, because that's just what I'm geared to do, but, but it didn't work in that environment, and it's because I didn't understand how to implement that and or to transfer my passion for it into an organizational structure, right? So, so I don't know if that's what you see. Is epidemic out there, not you have individuals that may have the traits, but there's no training like you don't, no MBA trains for servant leadership. You know, it's all numbers and running a successful financial organization, yeah, so what do you see out there? What is the biggest challenge with, yeah, with implementing something like this?

Marcel Schwantes 16:32

Yeah, I can't say. I mean, I'm curious as well about some of the pressures that you have faced as an executive, because you might, you might have some good input on this as well, but I have seen that. You know, public companies, especially, they have to, they have to respond to the shareholders and so a lot of that pressure for to financially perform well and bring shareholder value, puts a lot of pressure on executives to put the profit over people, and so when that, when you start to look at short term gains, and you lose sight of your North Star, Right, you're kind of like you are more focused on serving the wrong people. So if you, if you have a culture, if you have the best of both worlds, where you have a culture, say, like Southwest Airlines, where you take care of people and the culture is healthy and that's strong, and even when they have, you know, disasters, like they had one recently where they, you know, the airplane passenger got sucked out of the of the window, and that was a horrible thing. 

They were able to bounce back from that, and still, you know, they didn't go down because of that. It was sort of a little bit of a PR nightmare, but they overcame that. They're resilient because of the culture, right? And so they were able to withstand that and so then what happens is these companies that have strong cultures from the top down, you have the executives and the executive team that are believers. And so let's take the example of servant leadership. They are believers in in in this style of leading, right? And so for them, if, if they have a you know that if they have a board or shareholder, etc., they are able to actually convince the all of their stakeholders of the power and the impact of having this kind of culture and so but it's not a flip of the switch, because Southwest Airlines did not become the number one airline in in the US. Overnight, they built this culture, they had a belief system, right? And they transferred the mindset down to the managers on the front lines to take care of employees who then took care of their customers. And that's why customers love South airlines, right? Because you're not going to get that kind of customer service anywhere else. 

But that was a trickle down process that starts with the leaders, Herb Kelleher. It was, you know, the one that actually had the belief system to say, we're going to operate this way, and, and, and then, you know, and then, of course, Herb's way is went, you know, he traveled that down, down to lower ranks and that that's how what transfer the or that's what transformed the culture of Southwest and but it took a few seasons, right? And then once you start to operate that way, and you become financially successful doing it. And other people, the media and shareholders will pick up that this is something that we want to jump on. This is a this is a bandwagon that not only is profitable for us, but the employees and communities are saying this is the kind of culture that takes care of people as well. So it's the best, best of both worlds, but it always start. It doesn't start with serving the shareholders first. It always starts with implementing a vision, carrying out the vision, and differentiating yourself from your competitors. Right? 

If you're going to say you're a you're a people first company, well, you're going to have to back that up with, what are your What are your employees saying, right? And then, because if, if the employees are having a great employee experience, because they are in an amazing company culture, your customers are going to notice it. They are going to notice it's going to be a palpable it's going to feel different. And then that's what's going to attract, then those shareholders, that's going to attract media attention, that's going to attract even more employees as the as you grow and go through your inflection points, etc, people want to be part of it, right? Want to be part of that culture. And so now, the hardest challenge now is being able to protect the culture. Because once you get there, sort of like, you know, it's like in sports analogy, right? You become the number one team in the country. 

Now everybody wants to take you down. So how do you maintain your ranking, right? So you got to protect the culture. You got to protect the values instilled in your culture, right, to make sure that you know that it's, it's sustainable. And that wasn't just a fly by night scenario, right? Some of these, a lot of these companies, yeah, they, they, they have long term payment plans 10 years ahead, to make sure that that their company culture withstands changes and fluctuations in the market, right? I mean southwest, I can't speak for COVID. But even, even during the financial crisis of 2008 they did not lay down, lay off one person, because they, you know, it's, they believe that they could do it without ruining the lives of people, right, and creating suffering in their employees. And so they were able to do that just by getting creative, by putting people in different functions that were less busy at that time, right? And so, yeah, so it's, it's, yeah, culture is, it's, it's not going to happen the flip of the switch. It'll take a few seasons in time. And it always starts with the people at the top, championing the, the calling for, for that kind of company culture.

Sam Caster 22:59

Right. Hey, I'm gonna stop just a second. I know you can edit this. I've got some light coming in. That's okay. Larry, you know, Marcel, what's interesting is that my wife, Linda, who you've met, was the flight attendant for Southwest years ago, when it first started, and it was a, it was a, it was a very catchy culture. It's like, I got on the plane one time we were, we were flying on a pass, and I don't know it was in July, but they had Christmas napkins. Why Christmas napkins? She said, Because herb killed her, just made a heck of a deal on Christmas napkins, because they were, you know, overstocked and, and so we all want this airline to succeed. We want it to be a great experience. We want it to be profitable and, and so they embraced it, you know, something that your employees and some companies would go, this is ridiculous. In southwest, it was like they were all in, right, you know, on that. So anyway, you're, you're exactly right. What, what got you into servant leadership? I mean, you had this background, you experienced, you know, your servant leader in the hospital. But you also work with think magazine. You saw corporations all over the place. What kind of led you in to the umbrella of servant leadership?

Marcel Schwantes 24:33

Yeah, so I'll reference back that, go back to that that hospital where I went from toxic management to that one person that led through servant leadership, and that was my first exposure. So it got a little curious. And then as I delved into the research and, you know, to understand a little more about okay, connecting the dots to how this, this individual, his name. Bruce, how Bruce led our team to servant leadership. You know, I kept bumping into terms like humility and self awareness, emotional intelligence and service to others. You know, even like empathy and compassion, things like that, right? Though, all those fuzzy terms that you would don't that, even to this day, the hard lining companies that rule with the iron fist, they look down on terms like that because they don't think that it is that it's directly transferable to results and profit and so. So all of the terms I mentioned are still very much sort of stigmatized as, yeah, that's not going to work for us. Okay? And you know what, Sam, they're right. If you have a top down command and control structure, certain leadership is now going to work for you.

Marcel Schwantes 26:08

Yeah, so you have to have the right the right belief system and mindset and then be able to champion the cause, like I mentioned earlier. Okay, so, so that brings you to the question, at what point did that shift towards? Okay, I'm gonna just like, dive head first into this and make this a practice in my coaching and all that, I was invited to speak for a company called the Casualty Actuarial society, C, A, S, they're over 100 years old. And they called me up and said, want you to come out and do a speaking, speaking for us. And I said, Great. What topic? And they said, we're thinking about servant leadership. So I said, Sign me up. So I put together a server leadership talk. It was my first speaking engagement. I wasn't even the keynote. I mean, there were, you know, 1000s of people there flying in from all over the world. It was their 100th anniversary event. You know, these are, like, some of the smartest people you'll ever meet, or you know actuaries and scientists. You know PhD level people that know all about math and data. 

You know that work for insurance companies and but they lack the people skills a lot of them that were rising to hire upper echelons of their businesses were realizing that they were running into the people issues all the time because they had the left brain skills. Yeah, of you know, of Actuaries. But as they moved up the ranks, they realized that they really lacked the right brain skills of people and culture anyway, so I did my talk, and it was awesome. And then when I got back, my phone rings, and it's the guy that brought me out there, and he says, We want to hire you for and put you on a contract to deliver a series of workshops throughout the year on server leadership. And I was off to the races from there. And that was 2014 so roughly 1011, years ago, and so from there, I was like, who else is doing this? So, yeah, there are big companies. You know, Kim Blanchard companies does serve a leadership, leadership development curriculums and all that. There are a few others. There's a couple of universities that have servant leadership curriculum, but not enough to that you're always competing against the bigger fish and not making a name for yourself. I decided to jump on that bandwagon and really use the term to brand myself as sort of like the servant leadership guy, right? 

And so that worked for it worked for a while, and then Ink Magazine picked me up as one of their key columnists, and I've been writing a column for them for about nine years now, called the servant leadership hub. And so you define me. There is all kinds of articles on that, on server leadership I but in full disclosure, I think that because it's such a branded term, I didn't want to now pigeon hole myself into just one area, because leadership is such a wide there's such a wide array of styles and methodologies and practices and habits and skills, right? So I still in my coaching programs, in my keynote, I still adapt. Any of these servant leadership beliefs, mindsets, habits and practices. But I don't think that I'm calling myself anymore of the leadership guy or guru or you know, because, again, servant leadership has sort of like extended its tentacles into so many other areas and so many other leadership philosophies, if you will, that I would be doing a disservice now, just saying, telling the world I'm just servant leadership. 

Sorry, I can't come out to your keynote. I just do several leadership No. I mean, it's like, you know, one of the tenants, tenants of servant leadership is culture building itself. It's build community, right? So the evidence, the servant leadership evidence, says that if you want a profitable company culture, you have to build community. You have to make sure that people come together and there's good relationships going on. People feel like there's connection and belonging, right? That's straight out of the servant leadership research that goes back 50, 6070, years, right? And now people are just tuning into it like, Oh, hey, we need to build community around here. Oh, Duh, of course. Right? That's not nothing new. And so yes, I've ventured out a little bit out of the ventured out of the sort, the servant leadership cookie cutter, if you will.

Sam Caster 31:31

Well, I think, I think it's, you know, having run corporations before, having struggled with culture, and I have brought consultants in, and they usually have, like a cookie cutter plan. I don't I have not met many that have ever, that have ever had the experience that background that you did of talking to so many different companies and when I spent the Sunday morning with you, that was one of the things that, that I just latched on to, is that this isn't just your idea through studying, you know, what's in books. This is your this is your overview of what you've seen working in companies. And that's kind of how you put your program together, it's, it's, I'm just, I'm helping you duplicate what I've seen to be successful, rather than follow my ABC plan of action. And so when you come across the CEO from a company and they say, I want to, I want to change the culture. I want, I personally want the company to have a culture of giving say. For instance, what is the first step that you do with a with a CEO of a company? How do you get them started down this pathway?

Marcel Schwantes 32:55

The first question I ask them is, Mr. CEO, what are your values? Sam, if they cannot, if they cannot recite one value that happens to be on all their, you know, all of their, their fancy plaques on their on their wall, as you walk down their conference halls and stuff, if they can't tell me what one value is, that tells me, right there, that this company is in trouble. So I start with revising, or, you know, if they're not living out their values on a day to day, if their values are not embedded into their people operations, in how they make decisions and how they hire even how they fire people, right, then we need that's, the starting point for me to build your company culture. 

Okay, let's, let's go back to okay, what are your values if you, if you inherited your founders values, and you're 120 year old company, and those values are just words on piece of paper on the wall. Man. Okay, that's a great starting point, because now we have, you know you have, if you have a new executive team or a new ownership, then let's start with, okay, let's find out what the values of the of the founders, the current founders, are, or a few new founders, and you haven't done through, gone through a values identification process. That's your number one priority. Because you want the culture to have a you have you want a culture of shared values. Because now you have a baseline for hiring the right people, you have a base. You have a strategy for retention and for promoting people into the right places as they exhibit those values, right? It becomes part of their performance management system they have to exhibit. So you want to make sure that those are living, breathing values. And so that's in answer to your question. That's where I go. First, before I even talked about leadership and all of the mindset and practices.

Sam Caster 35:08

You know Marcel, that's interesting, because you know, what you're taught to do and buy into is mission and vision. What's your vision? What's your mission statement? Values is very seldom brought up in terms of what a corporation needs to develop so that the outside world knows who they are. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm just saying there's not a lot of emphasis put on that. So when you're talking to CEOs, is, do many of them really understand the importance of values. Do you think, historically in their organization? 

Marcel Schwantes 35:46

I think that those that have come those that come to me, have sort of already, they've bought into the idea that values is important, that you operate through these, through these, these, these values. So it's not a, it's not too big of a hill to climb when you already see the importance of it. It's, it's the CEO that just wants to come in. They, hey, Marcel, we want a leadership program. We want to get some get our leadership, our managers, you know, up to speed on none of that. Okay, great. Okay, so what they really want? They just want to, they're checking the box for some, some kind of training, the annual training, just so they stay compliant, right? And so those people are the ones that don't see the value of values being embedded into your organization. They just want to, you know, get their managers some, some good training. That is not sustainable. It's just, and I've done those, and I know, I know, as soon as I sign on, I'm like, Yeah, this is just going to be good information for them, one in one year out the other, the behavior is not going to be sustainable because they're just going through the motions. 

So that's those are the ones that I question and caution so I almost stand screen out CEOs that are having those kind of conversations with me to say, this is not how we operate. This is not how we do business as a leadership development company. Okay, so if you really want to see change in growth and transformation, yeah, there's here's your starting point, and then we will be happy to walk you through a leadership development process. But once you have this belief in system in place about the values and culture, right? Because those two are very, very aligned, right, values and culture. Because now we can talk about, you know, raising their capacity, the lead the other human beings, etc. But if they, if they're not aligned, on, on the values and one, one manager operates through integrity, and another manager basically says it's my way or the highway. Well, there's misalignment there. So yeah, let's back up. Let's go back Okay, step one, let's talk about your values, right? And sometimes the values don't even align with their mission or their vision or who they say they are, or how they're going to get there, right? The strategy. There's no values in the strategy. And so you got opposing agenda agendas. You got members of the C suite pulling in different directions, right? Because they all got their own agendas. So yeah.

Sam Caster 38:39

And when you go into a company and a leader said, look, we got to make a change. We've got to create culture. Do you find that the participants in in the program, within that company embrace that change, or is there resistance to it?

Marcel Schwantes 38:58

Sometimes at the C suite level, I've seen this the CEO will be 100% all in but what happens is that he may have had a shift in belief system where he realizes we want to lead this way. We want to make culture one of our highest priorities? Well, it just so happened that that person may have inherited a VP that isn't all in, that doesn't want to go that route, right? And so right? And so that this is what I've seen. They go along with it. The VP goes along with the new strategy, new direction culture is important. We're going to do certain leadership, etc. And they fake it till they make it. 

And then six months down the line, I get a call Marcel. We just lost one of our VP. Is. Oh, okay, who was it? It was so and so. Oh yeah, okay, yeah. I saw that coming. I saw that coming from day one. Because if they, if they don't, if they're just kind of going through the motions and not really showing the enthusiasm and, or they're pushing, pushing back against the new strategy. Of course, you're going to run into problems down the line, right? So, yeah, I've seen it. I've seen it that way. The best case scenario is always one where you inherit a an executive team, where everybody's all in, they're fully on board, because they believe that this stuff works. Those are great to work with.

Sam Caster 40:44

Yeah, and in your experience, because I'm speaking now to other corporate leaders, that goes, boy, I don't know, I don't know how my organization would take this overall, what your experience is, they're more of an embrace. I mean, do people want culture in general? I mean, I know you've got your obstinance out there, but yeah, in general, don't people embrace culture

Marcel Schwantes 41:13

in general? The best case scenario in general is the CEO embraces it, but not all managers want to operate that way. Yeah, that's where I run into problems. And so what happens now? Well, what do you do? Do you keep those managers on and really, you know, brainwash them into believing like the owners or like the executives? Well, sometimes the managers take care of the problems themselves. They filter themselves out of the organization. What that means is they realize I'm no longer a fit here, so they move on.

Sam Caster 41:54

Wow. And so, so someone say says, I want to change my culture, you take them through the value proposition experience. What's step two? Then you, you do, you create a plan that you then meet with the other senior management with kind of go to step two in that process.

Marcel Schwantes 42:17

We want to make sure that we want to gather enough evidence that a that the values are being instilled in, in your opera, day to day operations, in your decision making process, right? And that that, that there's no, no shenanigans, if you will, going on, meaning that you're not saying that you're going to operate through values and then hire a bad apple that doesn't align with the values, right? And now, all of a sudden, you've got a new employee that is spreading their toxicity around. So yeah, we want to make sure that there's a season once, once we start to embed the values into the organization, in into their communication channels, in and exhibited through examples of how, how they're doing it. 

So you want to bring, bring good storytelling into your huddles, your team meetings, and maybe even your all hands, right? So you will always want to reinforce, reinforce, reinforce those values, so that people are they're getting acclimated to it. So that whole process is really step two is we, we want to make sure that that is now what we said we're going to do, we're actually doing it, and we are seeing how it's affecting the organization in a positive way. And, you know, in our hiring and then, you know, I've seen values create the challenge of this individual no longer, no longer aligns with the values and so what do we do with that person? Okay, let's put them on a performance improvement plan for 90 days. Well, 90 days goes by. They're still not, not getting it. And so now, now it's another conversation you have to have. 

Do we get rid of this person, or, you know, or invest more coaching and training into them. So, yeah, it does. It creates some, some tension, if you will, some good tension, because, you know, you're trying to elevate your culture and determine, all right, well, okay, who do we got in here, and are we? You know, do we? Do we invest into, into the people that are the not cutting it, and they were mishires in the first place, and now they were right. So what do we do with this? Okay, so that's, that's all. Part of Step two, and in steps when, then, when we move beyond that, and that could, that could be a good six months to a year until an organization has sort of fully immersed into their value system, and it's permeated their org structure. 

Then step three is we can talk about, alright, now we can take the leaders, and we can do this in conjunction with the values, is, let's bring our leaders and give them some new skills that align with those values. And that's where the servant leadership curriculums come in, coaching comes in, in, you know, to like, to just bolster the managers ability and capacity to lead. Well, you know, because if integrity is one of your values, well, guess what, you're going to have to lead by integrity. So then that speaks to the leadership piece, right? So it's constantly in alignment there.

Sam Caster 46:05

You know it's interesting hiring the right people with that culture in mind. I know when I was starting to build and we were growing exponentially, and I had to hire an HR person. Just because we were growing so fast, we needed an HR department. And so I got a very, very qualified person, you know, highly recommended, brought them in in the first year, Christmas comes and I say I want to ride a Christmas bonus to everybody, because we've had such a good year. And the head of HR said, Oh no, you can't call it Christmas, you know, it will be offensive to certain people. And so this is political correctness, which evidently was part of her training, wherever she came from. Yeah, and, and he was just like, Wait a minute. Okay, so I said, I, I don't know that. I totally believe what you're saying, that people will be offended, you know, by my generosity at Christmas time. 

But let's, let's test it. So let's write a check to everybody and put Christmas bonus on the check. And if someone is so offended they turn the check back in and won't cash it, then I'm all in for your political correctness. And we did that. And of course, nobody turned the check back in. So do you find that that that getting HR to buy in and understanding how to hire people that that embrace a culture of servant leadership is important?

Marcel Schwantes 47:56

Say that one more time. Let me see if I got that.

Sam Caster 47:58

Do you think that training I'm trying to think of, okay, so you're trying to bring in a culture you're growing, you got to hire the right people. Yeah, I mean, there's no sense in hiring the wrong people like I did, and not a bad person just wasn't on the same page with you know, the culture that I wanted to create is that an, is that something that you have to specifically work with if they have an HR department setting those standards for how are you hiring people? What is the criteria? Right?

Marcel Schwantes 48:32

I think most HR departments that are well versed and they have capable, skillful people understand the legal side of it. So the HR person that was trying to consult to you to say, no, don't put Christmas on it. She is trying to protect the organization from, you know, any kind of loss. And in this stage of wokeness and politically correctness and all that is, yeah, especially, you know, you have to be sensitive to what's going on, because you have people that are have good intentions, that we want diversity and all that. And then you have those that have an agenda to push, push on you, right? And so I caught, I tread with caution, because a lot of companies have been sort of like sabotaged by wokeness, to, you know, make sure that they are having their dei mandates thrust on people and HR, a lot of HR, HR departments, they've been handcuffed they, you know, it's, it's mandated from the top, and it's the agent culture that we're in. 

But I see a shift going away from that now as well. So we're recording this in December of 20. 24 I think 2025 and I've already seen a shift of a lot of companies leaving dei strategies behind, because they have seen how it has caused more hurt, more harm than good with mandating these die programs. It, it anyway. So, so, so for me, is, is, is to sit down with an HR person. If I ever do, usually I sit down, sit down with the with the CEO or the executives team. But if I sit down with the HR person, I just want to make sure they have an understanding that is not politically motivated of what diversity is, because the city goes so far beyond just racial or ethnicity or even sexual orientation or identity. It goes so far beyond that, but right because of the political world that we live in now, they, it has become sort of it, has they? 

That has been put into a very small box, and we have to shatter that box to understand the full spectrum of what diversity is to include people that are victims right now of ageism. If you're even 40 and over, and those of you that are listening to me, right, you know what I'm talking about, right? If you are 40 and over 50, you can't even find a job. You can even get your resume in through those AI driven screening, resume screening services, because they they're screening out people that via keywords or experience level. So yeah, talk about diversity. 

Bring in people of every generation, from 20s, from Gen Z years all the way up to boomers, because that's what's going to create a much more impactful organization when you have different views, diverse views and viewpoints, I should say, and bringing in differences of how, how you see the world around you, and how to make decisions around problems that not just one segment of the population has a say in, but open it up to other sectors and bring everyone's perspectives in and color that with ideas and input from various internal stakeholders, employees, etc, right in your organization, whatever, whatever your background is, whatever your affiliation is, gender, whatever it is, right? So, yeah, that to me, that is true diversity, and it's a conversation we need to have. Moving, to move it beyond this, this DEI box that we have placed in Since 2020.

Sam Caster 53:09

That's timely. I've got two questions for you as we're coming down the home stretch here. Number one, what do you think the biggest myth about servant leadership is?

Marcel Schwantes 53:19

That it's weak, and that you're a doormat if you operate that way, and that you're going to lose your power, and it's a subservient way of leading. So those are all misconceptions about servant leadership, because people spend too much time focusing on the servant part of servant leadership, and they forget about the leader, part of servant leadership, which is about holding people accountable, which is about creating excellence around you and achieving results, just like every leader want wants to achieve results. So servant leadership is not just, yeah, let's, you know, gather around and have a country club atmosphere and make sure everyone's having fun, right? Right? We still need results, and we still have to hold ourselves to the expectations of our various stakeholders, right? So,

Sam Caster 54:23

So what is equal about what is, what do you think the biggest truth is, then, about servant leadership.

Marcel Schwantes 54:29

The biggest truth about servant leadership, well, the biggest truth really is, that is the, it's probably the hardest leadership philosophy to pull off. And in the set, I'd say the second biggest truth about is that when you know how to pull it off, you're probably going to see the best results, the best results you've ever seen in your organization, once you're able to adapt to that style and. And train other managers to operate that way, you're going to see a noticeable difference in how people respond, people in in inside your organization, meaning your employees, but you're also going to see a noticeable difference in those people you serve your customers, and even if you don't have customer facing people, who do you serve your who are your internals? Quote, customers, you're going to see a noticeable difference in in how they respond to that style of leadership. So it's a win, win on, on all, all sides.

Sam Caster 55:41

Well, Marcel, the Sunday morning that we spent a couple of hours going through this discussion and looking at how you evaluate an organization as to, are they on track? Are they not on track? And then your implementation of services to that organization was very engaging. I mean, I was just blown away, because, again, I've had all kinds of consulting organizations that have come in and introduced, you know, a weekend training, a 90 day training, none of it was sustainable. But, you know, thinking back, none of it actually went to values. It was all mechanics. And is this person talking this person? Are having the right kind of meetings? Are you meeting? 

You know, frequently enough, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they were trying to tear down silos without values. And I, and I see that as a huge missing piece of the puzzle that you capitalize on. So I want to encourage CEOs out there that may be watching this, you need to call this guy. He's on to something significant. I want to thank you for today, Martha, I want to thank you for what you're doing. It's really needed in industry out there. People need to because I think a lot of people have that passion and desire and calling to do something that goes beyond what benefits themselves. They're just not quite sure how to get there. So Blessings to you for everything that you're doing, and congratulations on your success.

Marcel Schwantes 57:19

Appreciate it, Sam, and I'm glad we did this, this, this reverse, reverse interviewing, and I'm honored and folks that Sam that actually was his idea and it's the first time that that actually the second time that has happened to me. But I'm honored that you decided to take the time to actually interview me. I have, you know, over the years, have been so ingrained and almost programmed to, you know, interview people and serve my community by placing lead. Leaders and executives that that have the same belief system that I do in front of my audience to, you know, to make sure that they are getting the proper attention, but I've never had the tables flipped on me. So this has been a humbling experience, but one that I have welcomed and, and I hope it has blessed you folks that are listening as well to, you know, to listen to me for a change as well, and some of the things that are going on in my world. So thank you, Sam for creating this space for this conversation.

Sam Caster 58:39

Well, let's talk again soon. 

Marcel Schwantes 58:41

You bet. 

Sam Caster 58:43

Thanks.

Marcel Schwantes 58:43

Take care, everybody. Bye.