3 Leaders Share How We Can Use Our Power As Individuals to Create Meaningful Change

Have you been keeping up with me on my LinkedIn Live conversations? If not, what are you waiting for? As many of us continue to work from home and shift working styles due to the pandemic, I’ve been interviewing practitioners and thought leaders about how we can adapt and continue to show up as our best selves in our roles. I’ve spoken to leaders in a range of industries, and they all have had incredibly useful things to say about how they’ve been working through these uncertain times.

Below, I’ve gathered key takeaways from my interviews with brilliant guests including Brian Solis, Simon T. Bailey, and Patti Phillips. I also encourage you to listen to the full interviews to discover more pearls of wisdom from these thoughtful leaders. Enjoy!

Some of the quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.

Brian Solis, Digital Anthropologist

Brian and I had a great chat about the convergence of the digital world and humanity. We discussed the effects that an increase in technological use has on companies, their employees, and the customers they serve. Here are insights from Brian on what he calls, “the novel economy:”

“The novel economy is something that was born at Salesforce. As I was looking through some of the work that I had to create for different organizations, and also different events that I was still speaking at (now virtually), and you think about digital transformation for customer experience at large, like we had been over the years … it just didn’t seem to really resonate at this moment. What was deeply impactful in my work, in my life was the understanding that here’s something that is deeply disruptive that’s affecting our entire world. The best we could give it was the new normal? That wasn’t really hitting.

I wanted to take a very proactive, very positive approach to what we needed to do moving forward because otherwise, we’re going to get caught in a reactive cycle.

So I wanted to break out the novel economy into three phases, which was: survive, alive, and thrive. Looking out between now and over the course of 18-24-36 months, and breaking out into different stages where of course, yes, we have to react, stabilize, ensure business continuity, but with COVID, instead of calling it a ‘new normal,’ it’s the interim normal, right? […] It’s an interim period, and it’s the time to think about business continuity. What’s next? What can I learn from all of this so that we thrive, so that we innovate, we iterate for the future, which gives us a sense of purpose.”

What can I learn from all of this so that we thrive, so that we innovate, we iterate for the future, which gives us a sense of purpose. -@briansolis #leadership #innovation Share on X

Simon T. Bailey, Author, and Life Coach

Daily Dose of Optimism with @SimonTBailey https://t.co/5UrZ51Eo0r

— Jeanne Bliss (@JeanneBliss) August 3, 2020

In this inspiring conversation with Simon T. Bailey, author of “Be the Spark,” we talk about customer and employee experience and recognizing the power that we have as individuals to make a difference. Simon says that to “be the spark” is “recognizing that men and women have the ability to transform the experience in the moment. And they recognize, ‘I’m not waiting for the tap on the shoulder for my leader. I have the ability to be the spark for this customer.'”

Here’s a snippet from our conversation in which Simon shares how we can find those moments in which we can be the spark in our personal lives and go above and beyond for others:

“I think we are experiencing what I would call moving from customer service to human service. And being a person of human service, it’s not so much what I can get from you, but it’s about what I can give to you. What can I do to be a better human being? How do I open the door for you? How do I say please, thank you? How do I practice physical distancing? Not social distancing, because we are social beings by nature.

How do I respectfully engage you from afar in a way that lets you know, this is a human moment? So I’ll give you a prime example: I went to one of my favorite restaurants, and it’s Houston’s (which is Hillstone in some parts of the country), and I went to pick up takeout food. And it’s not might not be a big deal, but I’ve been going to the restaurant for 20 years. And do you know not only did they give me my food, but they gave me dessert for free and I didn’t know that. And they said, ‘How’s your family doing? How are you doing?’ I was like, that’s a human moment.”

Be the spark! Recognize your ability to transform any experience at that particular moment. — @SimonTBailey #bethespark Share on X

Patti Phillips, CEO

In my interview with Patti Phillips, the CEO of Women Leaders in Sports, we spoke about the overall importance of women in leadership positions, and the impact it has in the sports industry—where it’s most certainly needed. When we started talking about COVID and its impact on Patti’s organization, here’s what she had to say:

“I do believe there are systemic changes that we were even seeing with the COVID crisis, right, you know, and the demographics that it was hitting were worse than others and so there are changes we need to make. […] And so you know, we’ve been doing a lot with our organization. We’ve had a women of color initiative for years. We believe we position women of color in all of our programming. So it allowed us the space to double down even more now. And it’s not that other people aren’t doing ; we all need to do more. Quite frankly, what needs to happen now is a systemic change.

I hope people will get involved in organizations working on systemic change. I say ‘systemic change’ but it’s long term. So as we’re working with women in the industry, that’s one piece. That’s only one system, right? There’s all these pieces that we’ve got to get at. Quite frankly, everyone has to commit to wanting to be part of the solution in the change. And I do think, I do think that is happening.”

We all need to do more. Quite frankly, what needs to happen now is a systemic change —@PattiPhillips10, CEO @WomenLeadersCS #leadership Share on X

I encourage you to follow me on LinkedIn so you can watch more interviews with industry top leaders, and if you don’t already follow my podcast, click on the link to get new episodes delivered right to your inbox!