Compassionate Thought Leadership | Scott Shute

Peter Winick

Adding compassionate passion and wellness to thought leadership.

An interview with Scott Shute about introducing a compassionate mindset to Linkedin.

Today’s guest is Scott Shute, the Head of Mindfulness and Compassion Programs at Linkedin and the author of new release book The Full Body Yes.

Compassion is the #1 thing you can do to be successful in business and life. This philosophy is something Scott shared with the CEO of Linkedin. Scott used his history in customer service combined with his passion for wellness to create a position which introduced mainstream mindfulness and operationalized compassion to the company.

Scott explains how internal compassion involves a change from me to we thinking. If employers care about their employees, they need to have the tools and system in place to care for their mental well-being. This is similar to a gym that maintains and helps grow physical well-being.

Next. we discuss Scott’s recent book, The Full Body Yes. He explains how it benefits not only himself but those he works with at LinkedIn.

Finally, Scott suggests you find a way to introduce and practice compassion within your company. And if your organization is not be receptive, perhaps you need to find somewhere else that will embrace that passion.

This episode is a treasure trove of information about adding a gym of compassion and wellness to your company. So, grab your passion and start lifting up those around you!

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview

Having a real human element of compassion to your thought leadership can help you connect with clients in a deep and meaningful way.
Thought leadership bringing compassion to an organization needs to define how to care for employees while still meeting the demands of the job.
If you care about your employees, find ways to introduce thought leadership to care for the mental well-being of your employees.

If you need a strategy to bring your thought leadership to market, Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information. In addition, we can help you implement marketing, research, and sales. Let us help you so you can devote yourself to what you do best.

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on our podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Scott Shute, who is an author and a thought leader and an executive at LinkedIn who’s got an interesting background. So so let me just dive right in there. Welcome aboard, Scott.

Scott Shute Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Peter Winick So I think you have one of the coolest titles in corporate America today. So your official title at LinkedIn that I got off of LinkedIn. So I’m hoping it is head of mindfulness and compassion programs, though.

Scott Shute That’s correct. I do have the coolest job. I do have the coolest job in corporate America. I think it’s pretty good.

Peter Winick Yeah, I think it is, though. Is there do you have like the antithesis? It’s like the, you know, the VP of stupidity or something or.

Scott Shute Wow, I don’t know what that job would be, but I don’t want anybody to have that job.

Peter Winick So what does a head of mindfulness and Compassion program do?

Scott Shute That’s a good question. Well, first, I had a career before this. Yes. So for 25 years, I led customer service organizations. Yeah. So my previous gig was I was the VP of global customer operations at LinkedIn leading all of the customer facing non sales stuff. And I have but I’ve had a personal practice, like a meditation practice since I was a kid. And about six years ago I realized that LinkedIn was such a amazing place as a place I could bring this practice and it kind of grew. I started by leading a meditation session and grew and grew, and I know that there’s a bunch of other volunteers. We created a mindfulness program at work, and then for me there’s this tipping point where our CEO is giving the commencement address at Wharton, and he talks about compassion. And after volunteering for three years, you know, doing this mindfulness stuff, I was thinking, okay, it’s time for me personally to invest in this because I think I think there’s a I could make a living doing this. And I think it’s needed in corporate America. But it’s also time for us as a company to invest. Because if we’re saying, hey, compassion is the number one thing you can do to be successful in life and a business, and we send our employees back to their desks with that message, like, what does that mean? And so, I mean.

Peter Winick It’s not something you can have them go take a workshop on this for two hours and then come back to the grind and forget everything that you learned, because in practice it’s different.

Scott Shute You maybe. At the time we were doing anything, we was just it was just that message. And so I made a pitch to say, let’s, let’s make it real. So three years, two and a half years ago started this role with kind of a blank slate and two parts mainstream mindfulness operationalized compassion. The mainstream mindfulness is just to make, let’s call it mental exercise or meditation or things like that, just as ubiquitous, just as commonplace as physical exercise as we’re trying to build the wellbeing of our employees. And then, well, that’s interesting to me. Compassion is where the juices because this is how we operate, this is how we treat each other internally, but it’s also how we treat our customers, how we sell, how we service them, how we build products. And that’s a longer tale of things to work on. And so I’m.

Peter Winick Happy to stay on the Passion piece for a bit because in this. Almost post. Still in the midst of Covid world that we’re in. Right? That compassion piece is interesting, right? Where early on there were some companies that were incredibly compassionate. Hey, if you’re having trouble, you know, call us or software company. We’ll give you more license. Whatever. It was just sort of doing that both internally and externally. Right. And I think that internal piece. Let’s start there. Yeah, I think a lot of organizations do this faux compassion externally because it looks good. And if it’s not, if it doesn’t start inside it, it doesn’t stick. So any. Sure.

Scott Shute So internally, look, I think I have a more formal definition, but compassion is essentially when we’re moving from me to we thinking. Right. So selfish versus all of us, including ourselves. And so internally, think about that balance. Yes. You have to be you don’t have to be It’s great to be compassionate towards your employees. And there’s a point where you still need to get the work done. So it’s a balance of those two things. But I think I think you’re seeing more companies really looking at their selves in the mirror and saying, okay, what do we need to do here? Because we ourselves as employees are struggling, you know, and what would we do if our brother or spouse or son or daughter or grandma worked at this company? And so you’re seeing companies do a better job with the benefits or how they’re talking about employees or the value that they’re placing on these employees. And then the flip side of that, the I’ll call it the dark side of compassion is you still have to get stuff done, right? And yeah, and I think there’s also.

Peter Winick Steve here for a minute because compassion doesn’t mean we throw all our KPIs out the window. And. That’s right. We just sit here cross-legged on the floor and think, ponder deep thoughts and all that. That’s right. How do you have compassion in the constraints of a business, which is we have shareholders to serve with, customers to serve. You know, we have to get stuff done really profitably. So how do you thread that needle? Because that seems to be the magic.

Scott Shute I think it’s being real with each other, right? We sometimes talk about business says, we’re family. Well, so sometimes that’s true and sometimes it doesn’t feel like that’s true. Or sometimes you find out it’s not true when the rubber meets the road of the financial part. But if you really are open and trusting with each other, you can have those conversations. It’s like, Hey, look, we’re struggling right now as a business like and it’s probably going to take more work. And I know that you also are struggling and I’m also struggling. But what can we do together? Like, let’s try to solve this together instead of just moving from like a command and control. Yeah, they’re just, hey, just get it done or whole totally hands off like, it doesn’t matter if you get it done or not. Like, it’s, it’s like you said, it’s threading the needle.

Peter Winick So, so I also, I think that if you layer on top of that, we’re living in an age right now. My $0.02 were the lines are the boundaries are changing right We’re entering the workforce. The mantra typically was check your bags at the door. I’m paying you. I got you for eight hours. Do you know, make the widgets or whatever, whatever that is and that’s it. You know, you can pick your baggage up on the way home and whatever, and that doesn’t work. Right?

Scott Shute But we’re realizing that as employers, we need to be aware of the person as a whole. Right? And of course, it’s a lot easier to manage in a command and control environment. I’m paying you to do what I say. Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Theoretically, I’m paying you do what I say, but that doesn’t work either, right? Because.

Peter Winick But where I was going is so pre-COVID. I mean, just in the last whatever year and change and whatever, there are things that are open for conversation. That was a big a huge sense of that sort of as a manager or leaders responsibility around mental health of their employees. And they used to be like, Whoa, we don’t really go there unless it’s if it’s extreme, obvious or typical. Our operation is, Hey, I’m a manager, I got ten people working for me. Scott’s having a tough time, a divorced parent with Alzheimer. I have a little compassion right now. It’s like. Like, how do I manage this now and what is the role and what is not the role? I don’t know that we know the answers to those things. You know, then it’s changing.

Scott Shute I think you’re right. I think we’re collectively trying to figure it out. I mean, before ten years, for sure. 20 years, we weren’t talking about mental health in the workplace at all. Right. Not like maybe in your benefits team there was the emergency line. Right. So we offered the equivalent of the E.R.. Hey, we have a suicide prevention.

Peter Winick Right? Right, right. Well, if you have an addiction problem. But those are such the outlier extreme, they’re the real problems. But. Exactly. That’s not the day to day stuff I’m talking about.

Scott Shute And so now we’re realizing that if you think of that as that as the we have the healthy vitamins along the way and the healthy vitamins is you really as a manager, learn to check in with your employees. Like you ask them not just how they’re doing, but a question that gets at it like, Hey, Peter, how on a scale of 1 to 10, how are you doing today? Right? It’s like, okay, that’s different. Because if I just ask you how you’re doing, you’re always going to say, Yeah, okay.

Peter Winick Right, right, right. If I say six and yesterday I was a nine. Then you go, Yeah, look at that.

Scott Shute Six. Okay, well, what. What do we need to do? Or what would need to happen to get you out to nine or what’s going on or how can I be of assistance? Yeah. And, you know, so just being human and showing that we care about our employees is step one. And then I think we’re all kind of learning the okay, where’s the boundary like? You know, there’s all kinds of issues that we are just not prepared. And it’s probably not our job as managers to take care of.

Peter Winick Yeah, we just don’t know what those are. No. If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcasts, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

Peter Winick I’m going to pivot for a moment and I was scribbling some notes, getting ready for today, and then I put you in the category of sort of the internal thought leader. So you have a functional role at LinkedIn, yet your thought leader with a book that just released Full Body. Yes. And your own sort of platform and all that. So that’s an interesting place to be. And we work with a lot, a lot of folks like that. But when I say a lot, the universe of folks like that are not in the billions, right? So how did you create not only the coolest job, but ultimately, it is an internal thought leadership role. How did this get created? And sort of I kind of get what’s in it for you, but like what? Tell me about the benefits to LinkedIn and the other employees of having.

Scott Shute Sure.

Peter Winick Having you there.

Scott Shute Sure. I mentioned a little bit about how we created it in this journey with the CEO and kind of my own personal expertise. So it’s kind of, for me, the right place, right time, right need. But the what’s in it for LinkedIn? You could think of it as two parts, the mindfulness part, what’s in it for LinkedIn employees? So therefore, what’s in it for the company is. Look, we LinkedIn and many companies in the information age don’t have hard assets. Right, Right. So we have employees and we realize and we and we really strongly believe that employees are our number one resource. And it’s by a long ways. And so if we do everything that we can to maximize that resource, you know, so employees are at their best, then we’re going to get better results. Now it just happens to be at a time when we’re struggling with a global pandemic and the pandemic’s, not just the pandemic, but it’s a pandemic of loneliness, a pandemic of mental wellness and struggle and challenge. And so what we’re finding is that employees need this. And by this, I mean the mindfulness Compassion program more than they ever did, because we’re more than just teaching about meditation, which is a great practice, but it’s not it’s not for everybody. We’re teaching about mindset, about growth, mindset, turning every challenge into an opportunity and just building a better, a healthier way to live. So that’s what the employees get. And also what. Well, so.

Peter Winick So let me stop you. So if we didn’t have Covid, which would have be nice. Yeah. How would one go about sort of selling this internally in a company? You would need some level of paying the same way for something.

Scott Shute So as an example, I start with something. This line of questioning. Do you care about your employees? And I don’t mean it in a smartass way. I mean, like, seriously, because some companies, if you sell a commodity, you could say, well, look, we just buy and sell whatever copper, wool or whatever. Like, our employees are interchangeable. That’s probably not true. But that’s the other end of the spectrum. So most people are going to say, yes, of course, we care about our employees. All right. Well, look, have you yourself ever had a really terrible day where no matter what happened to you, like you were a three out of ten on the productivity scale or on the mood scale? Well, yeah, of course. And have you, as a person ever had a day where you were ten out of ten, where you were just at your best? Like no matter what happened, you were ten? Or what’s the difference between those two days? Well, it’s all the stuff going on between my ears, right? It’s all how I deal with it. All right, well, what if you were able to then offer something to your employees, which moved them from a three towards a ten, And it’s not the magic eight ball that gets you everything. But what if you were to improve 10% or 40% or 60% of the way? Like, what’s that worth? Like, well, that’s worth billions of billions of dollars. Right. The other kind of more when I’m a little more annoyed when I talk about it is, Well, do you care about employees? Yes. Do you offer a gym at work? Well, yeah. I mean, a lot of companies do. Like why? Well, we want employees to be healthy. Why? So the very best. Okay, great. How much of your employees job is spent, like lifting boxes and moving stuff around the office? Like you need them to run right code? You need them to run a sub six minute mile. Like, is that important? Like, no, we’re. We’re information workers. Okay, great. Well, why not offer them something that allows them to be mentally sharp, that allows them to focus, that allows them be better relationship. And it’s like once you go through this process, it’s such a no brainer.

Peter Winick But it’s so it’s for some organizations there’s a leap of the physical. So they’ve moved the employee cafeteria from serving, you know, fried chicken cutlet to having Danette Kale. And that’s already happened, right? Yes. Why? Because we know, you know, people are sluggish in weight loss and all this stuff. And then we’ve got the gym because people want to work out whatever. But the whole mental piece, you know, and it started at Google with your.

Scott Shute Search inside yourself.

Peter Winick And inside yourselves. So it’s starting to happen. And it always seems to start on the West Coast for some reason. Right. If these things don’t start in Indiana.

Scott Shute So it’s on the same journey. And there are people meditating in Indiana and cultures and other places, by the way. But you’re right. You’re right. I it’s on the same journey. Our grandparents did not exercise right. They worked hard, but they didn’t exercise. They went jogging for fun. They might go for a walk. In fact, I a funny story. I was with my mom a few years ago and we were at an antique store. I grew up on a farm in Kansas, so wasn’t a lot to do. So into this antique store. And I wanted to buy that these old magazines and I wanted to buy a magazine from the year I was born, 1969. I was turning 50 at the time. And in this book, because I wanted to see what the consciousness of the people was like. Right? And in this magazine, there was this article among articles about, you know, there was an advertisement for tobacco with a doctor, a literally medical, the wife.

Peter Winick The white lab coat. Yeah.

Scott Shute You get in that same magazine, there’s this article, there is a midwestern swim team that had won a couple of championships. So the reporter goes to find out what their success was, and the headline in huge font was Get this athletes subject themselves to self torture in order to win and my daughter is working out.

Scott Shute Well. Yeah. I mean, what do you think that like I was thinking about electroshock therapy or like starvation diet. You know, what they were doing? They were lifting weights.

Peter Winick I was going to say. Right, but pull ups or something. Right, right, right. Yeah.

Scott Shute In 1969, The strangest thing in the world were these guys lifting weights. Okay. You fast forward 50 years and not everybody does it. But we all know the benefits of lifting weights and strength training for our health in the same way. Mindfulness is on that same journey of normalization where there’s some early adopters, but there’s still people are like, What are these guys doing? But the science is there. 6000 reviewed papers, peer reviewed scientific papers about reducing stress, reducing anxiety, all that good stuff?

Peter Winick No. And it’s you know, 10 or 15 years ago, those conversations were happening in the workplace, but not often, and only at certain, quote, types of companies. That was probably an extension of the founders philosophy or, you know, think Ben Jerry’s or, you know, whatever sort of outliers. Now, it’s not totally mainstream, but we’re probably maybe a standard deviation away. We’re close.

Scott Shute To getting close to.

Peter Winick A date. You know, we’re around the corner.

Scott Shute And I think what’s really important is we take religion out of it because probably the early adopters. Yeah. You know, in the 70s or 80s or 90s or five years ago where people came at it from a spiritual bent and that’s probably where they discovered it. And so probably that created a lot of tension, tension or division. You know, if I’m a Christian or a Muslim, can I do this? Like, is it going to I’m going to go to hell or something if I meditate at work. And now we’ve made it more secular. It’s more it’s more about mindfulness and more about breathing. It’s more about inclusion and using inclusionary language that everybody can relate to. And it just is. I just think that’s a good.

Peter Winick Point because in many companies and there’s still some today that spirituality is branding, right? So this is a, you know, a company that thinks in a certain way based on their principle, whatever. Right? And I guess in some private companies, it’s still kind of sort of may be appropriate, although not really. But if in order for it to go mainstream, it needs to be unbranded from a spiritual perspective, right? It needs to be universal needs to be all inclusive in all, you know, interesting. So if somebody is out there now and they’re sitting at a large company and they’re passionate about some sort of thought leadership, but they see a separate separation between church and state in terms of their job and not their job. How would you advise them to say, you know, the thing that you did, the thing that you’re really into, that you love, that you know, could be helpful to your colleagues and your organization and the teams around it? What might you suggest to them to start maybe planting seeds or thinking about that one day could be on their business card as their title, not just their passion?

Scott Shute Sure. I’d say start. You know. So this whole thing started with me leading one meditation session six years ago, and there was one dude there, and he was just as terrified as I was because I never saw him again. That’s how it starts. And I volunteered for 3 or 4 years, just like following my nose, following my passion. And it just grew and grew and, you know, opportunity met. Skill. And here we are.

Peter Winick So this thing just starts. So you put it out there. But was there a boss or two or whatever that was more encouraging? You just saw. Yeah, it has to. Okay.

Scott Shute For me, Yes. Like I’m saying, I had the benefit. I had the luxury of the CEO talking on stage at all hands about his own meditation practice. I see. Our CEO was giving the commencement address at Wharton talking about compassion. That’s about as public as you get. Right, Right, right, right. So I wouldn’t be able to I could have done some things, but I wouldn’t have been as successful without Jeff creating this umbrella of safety for the topic. But even if you’re work in a place that is the antithesis of the skill that you want to bring, I still say start because here’s what happens. The more you do it, the more it becomes your identity, the better you get at it. So if I lead a meditation session every week for three years, I’m probably a lot better at it after three years than if I don’t.

Peter Winick Right, Right. So the forcing mechanism of nothing.

Scott Shute Else, it’s a forcing mechanism. And at some point, even for me, I got to the point where four years in, I’ve gotten to the point where like, I had to do it full time, I was going to quit my job and go do it full time somewhere.

Peter Winick Might as well be Replace your love.

Scott Shute It might as well be at the place I’m at. And turned out that was exactly what they wanted and what I wanted and it totally worked.

Peter Winick And the flipside of that might be, Hey, if this isn’t the place and it doesn’t resonate here culturally, go try it somewhere else.

Scott Shute Exactly.

Peter Winick And then you can choose, right? Like screaming of, Hey, I was doing this anyway, and I’m just thankful that I was able to do it at a place, you know, that I already knew and love.

Scott Shute That’s right. That’s right. And this is what I tell you know, when I was a kid, when I was 18, I thought maybe instead of getting an engineering degree, which is what I ended up doing, maybe I’ll move to New York and be a singer. Right. And try to make it on Broadway. And my dad, I grew up on a farm and so hard earned money. Right. And my dad and I had that mature conversation about, you know, this whole thing and the practicalities of it. And he was right. And I didn’t want to hear it, but he was right. And the advice that I give to young artists, you know, if you’re going to go make a living as a rock star or as a poet or as a writer, it’s like, you know, that’s not very practical. But if you are so on fire with it, like if you can’t do anything else, not that you’re not skilled, but you internally, you can’t write, then you should go try it. But if internally you’re like, I kind of think I want to be make a living as a poet, right? I’m going to tell you, like, now you got to be it.

Peter Winick Even when you’re in it 500%, the probability of success is low. And I think any doubts move on now. That’s great. So I want to I want to thank you for coming on board and sharing your story. And definitely an interesting stuff. I’m going from I like just start. Right.

Scott Shute And just start.

Peter Winick I mean, you’re where you are right now because you just started you got the book and this is now your passion is your day job. Like, what’s better than that? Like, that’s pretty damn good.

Scott Shute It’s pretty good, man. I’m going to do it. Thank you for having me.

Peter Winick And my pleasure. Thank you. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. To reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.