The People Dividend, with Mike Horne

In this podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Mike Horne about his book, The People Dividend. Empowering Leaders for Over Three Decades, Mike Horne, Ph. D., is a distinguished global corporate Human Resources and Organization Development leader. As an executive coach, best-selling author, and sought-after speaker, Mike empowers innovation from within and guides executives and their teams to excellence. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the HCI family of podcasts. We're your source for personal, professional, and organizational growth and development. We share our own original research, explore industry trends, and interview executives and thought leaders from across the globe. Join us for practitioner-oriented content around all things leadership, HR, talent management, organizational development, and change management. Maximize your personal and organizational potential with the HCI family of podcasts.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Dr. Mike Horn, welcome to the conversation today.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  I'm so glad to be here, Jonathan. I'm delighted to be in conversation with you.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  It is a real pleasure to be with you. You're joining us from Palm Springs. I'm south of Salt Lake City in Utah. Today, we're going to be talking about your recent book, The People Dividend, and I'm thrilled to have a chance to chat with you about this. I think it's a really interesting topic, and of course, as a human capital person myself, I think it's an incredibly important framing, and I'm just excited to be able to explore it with you. As we get started, I just wanted to share a brief bio with everybody. Empowering leaders for over three decades, Dr. Mike Horn is a distinguished global corporate human resource and organizational development leader. As an executive coach, bestselling author, and sought-after speaker, Mike empowers innovation from within and guides executives

• 1:24Speaker 00

  and their teams to excellence. There's a whole lot I could share in terms of past positions and experiences and education, so many accolades, but I'm going to pause there, Mike. Anything you would like to highlight by way of your background or personal context before we dive on it?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  I'll just say that I'm a really good listener.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  That's a great skill to have.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  Especially in the world we're in. In our profession, I think, in the people world, in the human capital world, we need more listeners, we need more understanders, more empathy. All of that is so important. Well, as we dive on in, first question is really something I ask all authors. Why this book? By now, um, books are labors of love. You've written other books, um, but clearly there's something driving you that, you know, there's a passion around this topic. So what was it about the timing and that this topic itself that drove you to write this book?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Well, there are at least two forces that were at play in the people dividend, uh, leadership strategies for unlocking employee potential. And one was coming to terms with feeling like a cog in the wheel. Having worked for lots of big corporations, having consulted to lots of people in plenty of big corporations. This feeling of being anonymous, of enemy, and despite, you know, bringing your best, doing your best, having bosses that fake a lot of, you know, stuff during one on ones. It was that sense of anonymity in the workplace.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Does somebody really care about me? That was one impetus. And I think the second, you know, was a tribute to my mentors who valued humanistic leadership, humanistic values. So this is again, my chance to sort of blend personal experience with the scholarship, with, you know,

• 3:26Speaker 01

  the information of experience into the people dividend. There are so many factors at work right now, Jonathan, that make the people dividend relevant. One, I was really concerned about gig economies, the rise of gig economies. People don't, you know, it's not like the velvet coffin anymore where people stay at a place for ten years, fifteen, it doesn't happen, right? People string together various jobs in the economy to make a living. So the advancing gig economy, what, what really is the shortening of the work week, at least in the United States, people may not see it, but it's one of the reasons why people are so overwhelmed, because the work week is really shortening to about four days in the United States.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  There is the increasing use of AI and how that affects all of us and thinking about it. So some of these Forces, I mean, lead to a return to a new order, which is what's going to make the difference between good and great companies, between, you know, best places to work companies is the use of humanistic values as an approach to leadership. So, you know, what does that mean? Let's just unbundle it to say it's dignity, it's kindness and respect. So that's, that's, that's the way to win in the future.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I love that. And anytime we can get back to basics, treating people with dignity and respect, being kind to one another. I mean, it's groundbreaking stuff, right? Like, that's, that's not rocket science, yet it, man, it sure seems to get lost in all the noise of everything that's going on around us. And, you know, the, the division, political divide and, and polarization and, and it's just, I don't know, increasingly, it seems challenging to just treat people well, be kind, treat people with dignity and respect. Everyone wants that. And, and I truly believe that the vast majority of people want that for others, regardless of,

• 5:28Speaker 00

  you know, political ideologies or whatever differences, you know, people might have in, in terms of their worldviews and framings. I, I think the vast majority of people want to be treated that way and they want to treat others that way. And yet, we have this huge gap in how people are experiencing the world, how they're experiencing relationships at home, in their communities and at work. And so we have a long way to go, I think, to recapturing this idea of just fundamentals of dignity, respect, kindness. Let's get back to that.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  My coaching clients are successful people, typically founders, chief executives or in the C-suite. I mean, they're leading substantive portions of organizations. They're technically accomplished folks generally. They didn't go to leadership school, though many of them had, you know, successive leadership experiences in life that lead them to these, you know, organizational penultimate positions. But my, usually my early advice, because they want to do well on people and they're usually failing at Some way is I encourage them just to say hello to other people. I think it's the, you know, it's one of our oldest technologies and it's also a great act of inclusion is just say hello. I mean, start a conversation there.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just, just as you run into people saying, hi, how are you doing? It's, it's a very simple, fundamental thing, smiling at people, like looking up, smiling at people.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  It, it's a very, very simple thing to do and but it's, it's amazing how much that doesn't happen today.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Because people are busy and they're running around from place to place. Maybe they're, they're down, looking down at their phone, whatever, right? Um, there's so many reasons why it doesn't happen. Uh, and, and usually it's not because someone has malice towards you, you know, it, that's not usually it at all. It, it just is people are distracted. They're busy. They're, they're hurrying to their next priority or whatever. And so just the small act of, of being able to show, you know, that consideration towards another person to, to look at them, to give, to make eye contact, to smile, to say hello. Yeah. I mean, it's a tiny thing. It's a really tiny thing, but it goes a long way. And if, if, if you can make a habit of doing simple little things like that and to do them consistently.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Um, not only will they change others' impressions of you, but they'll change your outlook on others and your outlook on the world around you and how you engage with that world.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Surely, and uh, it, it's a way of, um, of, of being authentic in the work, Tyson. Maybe authentic isn't the right word, but it's, it's a way of being congruent in the workplace that.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Maybe you can, you know, you're, you, you enable your, uh, words and actions to match. And, you know, hopefully your thoughts as well, your cognitions. So that you can go about, uh, you, you know, presenting yourself as, uh, as present. Because you don't know what happened to people, uh, five minutes before their meeting with you or what's going to happen in the five minutes, uh, after, uh, but to, uh, be present, to bring some discernment, uh, to say hello. I mean, these are all factors that, uh, go a long way regardless of how and where people are working. You know, this isn't just something for, uh, uh, technologists in Silicon Valley or.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Uh, people in biopharma in uh, uh, in Boston. This is, you know, for people on a shop floor, uh, people working in Amazon, uh, people working in any of the big warehouses, uh, you can do this in across any context, across any frame of employment, you know, whether that's, you know, a typical fifty hour week for some people, whether it's shift work, however you want to think about it.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I like that. It, it really is across any modality of work. It's across any industry, you know, role, type of work. Um, it, it, it definitely applies. Well, let's unpack more um, around the, the dividend um, here. And, and what you mean by that, you know, obviously there's these, these core fundamental components of really just what makes us human and how to treat people well. Um, tell us more about what you mean by the people dividend and how we leverage that.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Well, the people dividend is the result of these actions, uh, the result of uh, behaviors in leaders uh, to treat others with dignity, kindness and respect. And it doesn't happen often enough. I mean, we have seven, seventy years of social psychology.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Uh, that tells us that, you know, great technical leaders don't make great people leaders. And yet we have, you know, a persistent pattern of ignoring that. If people get promoted based or, or they advance, they develop their careers, they start companies based on their technical expertise. So it, it, it, it is the job, uh, you know, thinking about how do you empower the system to produce the dividends, you know, whether you call them great place to work dividends or uh, some other uh, kind of placement so that you make money and or if it's not a, a for-profit enterprise, that you're succeeding against other measures that you have.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, you all, you're.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  It's too late to strategize when things are going south.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. When, when it, when it's stopgap measures and you're trying to put fingers in the, in the, the dam to stop up holes, right? That's, it's just too late. Um, and.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  We have so many bad. Leaders.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. Too many examples, uh, you know, to point to and and and you're right, like every organi- It doesn't matter if you're a for-profit, a nonprofit, every organization is bringing value in some way to stakeholders, to communities, right? Um, products, services, purpose, um, you know, something, right? And and so you're you're trying to do that, you're trying to do that well, and leaders, um, catalyze their people to make that happen. Um, you know, you know, in a wide variety of contexts, obviously, but but ultimately, that's what it is to lead is to to bring together the folks that you have, working with you to to bring value to your communities, to your stakeholders.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Um, and that obviously, that takes different forms, right? And you have different metrics, but ultimately, the fundamental, um, the fundamental purpose is the same, that you're you're trying to add value and you can't do it without the value in your people and investing in those people. And and so this people dividend, yeah, unless that's there, um, you you're always going to fall short in the long run. You might be able to get short-term, you know, value a- and and kind of squeeze the the orange and, you know, get get a little bit of short-term, um, uh, productivity out of your people, but you're not going to be able to do anything in long-term, sustainable fashion, uh, to to be able to do that, certainly not in any way that's going to keep you competitive in the long run, right?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yes, and I hope, uh, you know, our listeners, uh, everybody in the listening audience, they understands that or or can reflect on an experience where there are certain bosses that you have or have or or had, for whom you would like jump through hoops, that you would almost do anything. And and there are plenty of others that, you know, you wouldn't do that. So what is it that distinguished, uh, those people, uh, for whom you would jump through hoops? And it's usually because at some level, they demonstrated that they cared about you.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  And, you know, they may have a lot of bad behaviors, maybe they talk over you, maybe they are too busy at times. Uh, and when they do interact, uh, with you, when you, they they care. And, uh, that's something different than our typical pattern that we have to disrupt, which is to see each other as elements of production.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, it no, nobody expects your leaders to be perfect. Um, I, I guess maybe some do, but nobody who's experienced like that's a very naive, um, immature kind of a, a way to think about it. And so anyone who's been around for a second doesn't actually expect any level of perfection from their leaders. But what they do expect is intentionality, caring, clarity and, and like, um, to, to own up to stuff, right? So like when you do misstep, like you don't throw your people under the bus to cover it up, but you know, you don't gaslight your people. Um, you, but you actually just say, oh, that, yeah, that didn't work or yeah, I messed that up or

• 13:53Speaker 00

  what we're, you know, turn to your people and say, hey, how are we going to approach this? I don't know what, you know, what to do here. Um, you know, like people don't need a facade of it. It's, it's the weirdest thing to me. Because there's also like you, you said 70 years of social psychology research there. I mean, there, there, there's years of behavioral economics and social psychology and sociology and like all, all the different social sciences and management sciences that demonstrate over and over and over again that we do not need the puff out your chest, pound your chest kind of leader who just like pretends like everything is fine when it's not like we need people who will bring people together and work through problems, right?

• 14:37Speaker 00

  And I just don't expect perfection. I don't expect my leader to have all the answers. In fact, I know they don't have all the answers. And when they pretend like they do, I just don't trust them because I know they don't, right?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Yes, I often do an exercise with, uh, my clients there where I say, you know, let's list all the qualities in an effective leader. And to your point, the list doesn't end, right? You can easily create 50 qualities, 50, you know, traits, how, whatever you want to think easily, you know, even up to a hundred. Absolutely impossible for anyone to live up to, you know, all of these, uh, accolades. It's so, it is, you know, getting clear about what it is that you bring, uh, to the situation so that you can deliver on that over and over and over again. And also use that as a platform for anxiety and fear and so that you can learn more.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so that big, long list, dozens of things, I mean, literally 50 things, 100 things, all the things that people have in their head of what they want to see in a leader, right? When you really boil it down, where do you get? You you tend to get to, I want to know that my leader cares about me. I want to know that they see me, that they understand me. I want to know that they're going to support me, invest in me, right? I want to know that they're going to treat me fairly, you know? Like, it's pretty basic things. There's a whole bunch of other things that they stack on top of that. But it really comes down to, you know, fairly fundamental components that tie directly back to those three fundamentals that you shared at the very beginning. Treat people kindly. Let's let's treat people with dignity and respect.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  And it's it's a low bar, but like, if you can do that consistently, you're you're going to be in the top echelons of leaders. Because the number of like toxic leaders that are out there that are just horrible and just run railroad and run over their people, treat them horribly and get to where they're at by stepping over their people. It it's just tremendous. And and it's not always intentional, like I it's sometimes it is. But but sometimes it's it is intentional. But a lot of times, it's just they don't know any different. And it's just kind of how they see it's it. That's what it means to climb the ladder. And that's what it means to to, you know, it's not personal. It's just business and like whatever cliche thing you you want to say.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  And I think it's so important as, you know, we think about this, that we consider, you know, giving clarity on those objectives about how you want to be seen in the world and how you want to lead. So so important.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So if someone's to pick up your book, they're going to get this this message, I think, over and over again to to make. It's going to come through crystal clear. What what can they take away? Like, what are they going to do about it? So anyone listening today or watching, what what are maybe two or three actionable things? They should take with them and start doing themselves, start to implement within their team, within their organization today to start to enhance, to increase that that people dividend.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  That's great. And I think for, you know, probably many of the folks in the audience for this podcast, people who are in human resources, you know, the people dividend leadership strategies for unlocking employee potential is very popular among human resources leaders. And, you know, we have to think about what does, what are the implications for creating these people dividend cultures for human capital leaders, for human resources leaders, for people and culture leaders. And by default, the executives who are responsible for those. The world of HR has changed dramatically. It's changing dramatically. Last year I gave, you know, multiple presentations on AI and human resources.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  I know in my own graduate program where I lead the graduate program in human resources management at Golden Gate University, the leadership program, you know, at our core, we're thinking about, there isn't an area of human resources that is really untouched by AI, whether it's in total rewards, whether it's in performance management, in talent acquisition. So, you know, what's next? What's on the horizon for human capital? And I think what HR leaders will find, what what human capital leaders will find in the people dividend are strategies and approaches for building the people dividend culture.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  And, you know, what I say is, you know, here are particular strategies around dignity, respect. Let's define it. What does it mean? You know, practicing kindness. How do you begin to build that into the culture of the organization, into the fabric of leadership? So the book is complete with practical strategies, applications, you know, and lots of resources to support the journey towards creating the people dividend culture.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, excellent, excellent. Well, this has just been a really great conversation, Mike. I know at the time, I'm gonna have to let you go here in a few minutes. As we start to wrap things up, share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about the work that you do. You coach, you speak, you write. How can they tap into that? Where can they find your book? And then give us the final word for today.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  The easiest way to connect with me is at Mike-Horn, H-O-R-N-E, dot com. And you'll find all the resources, links to books, links to my weekly podcast, links to my weekly blog. You'll find lots of ways to connect with me at Mike-Horn, H-O-R-N-E, dot com. And also on LinkedIn where I have, I think, thirty-five thousand or more followers who are reading my weekly newsletter on the People Dividend on LinkedIn. So but visit me at Mike-Horn, dot com. I prefer that. And if I were to, you know, as I think about the last thought, it's what I work with a lot of clients on.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  And I think what we try to do with the People Dividend is we know that bad systems trump good people. So we really are working at building systems to create equity, to inclusion, where all of that is shown through a light of dignity, kindness, and respect. And that's the People Dividend.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a really good point. That in all of this, you know, I want to give grace to folks and recognize again that that people aren't perfect. And but most people wake up in the morning trying to do the best they know how. And so often, the issues that we face, the challenges and the imperfections that we notice are, you know, also systemic. And it's not any one leader. But but there are problematic systems that can be addressed. And so be be soft on people, be hard on systems. We can we can make our organizations, our teams, the world, a better place. Let's let's make it a kinder place, dignity and respect.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Like you said, all of that's so, so important. Mike, it's been a real pleasure. I encourage the audience to reach out, to get connected, find out more about what Mike can do for you. Check out the book. And as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe. They can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day. And I hope you all have a great week.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe, and please join us again soon.