WorldBlu CEO Traci Fenton Underlines the Three Things Required to Create a Freedom-Centred Culture

What we teach is this model called freedom at work. What we have found is, in order to build a freedom-centred rather than fear-based culture, it takes these three big picture things. Number one: it starts with the freedom-centred mindset. And as we’ve worked with top leaders and top companies like Zappos and Groupon and Pandora and Hulu and WD-40 and all of these fabulous brands all over the world, what we’ve found is that their leaders have an entirely different mindset when they come to the table. They’re bringing a freedom-centred rather than fear-based mindset.

Now if you bring a mindset of fear, what do you want to do? You want to control, right? So when you have top leaders who are in this fear-based mindset, which most of us are and we don’t even realise it, they’re going to go and create these command and control management structures. But when we have a different mindset, like what Henry does at Happy, you bring an entirely different way that you design and operate your company to work.

The second part of the freedom at work model is leadership – freedom-centred vs. fear-based leadership. Because if you’re leading a company this way, you have to lead it in an entirely different way and there’s several attributes that we teach with freedom-centred leadership.

I’m not going to focus heavily on mindset and leadership today, but I will give you a tip – a tip on leadership that took us probably 15 years to figure out. The tip is in order to build these kinds of freedom-centred cultures that we’ve all been talking about today, the number one thing is that top leadership must have high self-worth. I’m not saying self-confidence, OK? A person can have self-confidence but not have self-worth. Self-worth is being secure with who you are.

When we work with companies, I will sit point blank with the CEO and say, on a one to ten where’s your self-worth? Because if they’re not telling me an eight or higher and aren’t willing to work on it, we’re not going to be able to transform their culture. Because if you’re not secure in who you are as the managing director or CEO, are you going to go create an environment where everyone else can shine? Are you? Hell no! If you’re not secure in who you are, you don’t want everyone else around to do great.

Has everyone ever worked for a low self-worth leader? Right, we all have. If you’ve got a crappy boss, I’m telling you they’re low self-worth. That’s just how it correlates, OK. So I just saved you a lot of money. Only hire high self-worth people. That’s what you want to go for.

And the last part is design. This is where the ten principles of democracy come in and we’re going to talk more about that in just a moment. But the problem is that most of the time we’re operating in fear at work. Now we don’t run around saying, oh I’ve got fear. Most of the time we say I have stress, I have anxiety, I’m sick of all this bureaucracy that we’ve got, command and control, analysis paralysis, perfectionism, bad communication, distrust. Anyone ever experienced any of these symptoms? Anyone ever worked in a fear-based environment? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So this is the problem and at WorldBlu we’re really committed to solving the root problem, because a lot of times when we’re trying to build great cultures we’re just focusing on the leaves of the tree and not getting at the root issue. The root issue that stops world-class cultures from happening is fear. It’s the number one thing.