Interview With Marcel Schwantes: When Leaders Need A Coaching

by | Dec 18, 2020 | Interviews

marcel-schwantes

Farrelly-Caizzone & Associates had the opportunity to interview Marcel Schwantes, founder of Leadership From The Core, on the human-centric leadership concept to value people at the most.

“When employees are treated and cared for, it makes a stunning difference.”

Marcel Schwantes is a speaker, executive coach, podcaster, author, and syndicated columnist with over 20 years experience in leadership and organizational development.

Marcel is passionate about working with forward-thinking leaders intentional about the empowerment of people. His work has been featured on Inc., CNBC, Forbes, Time, Business Insider, Medium, Thrive Global, Chicago Tribune to name a few.

Marcel hosts the Love in Action podcast, heard in over 100 countries, where he holds conversations with the world’s leaders and leadership experts to discuss the powerhouse business principles of practical love and care that lead to competitive advantage.

He founded Leadership From The Core with one defining mission: to teach a new generation of leaders how best to inspire and motivate human beings according to how they are naturally wired to feel and experience work.  

Let’s discover with Marcel how human-centric leadership value the whole person, resulting in a high-performing culture.

Questions For Marcel Schwantes

1. Hello Marcel! Thank you for accepting our interview. You are the founder of Leadership From The Core, could you tell us more about your activity?
2. How did you come up with the idea of helping a new generation of leaders?
3. You had the opportunity of coaching many leaders: which personality traits do you usually find in them?
4. What would be the bad practices you most often find in a leader?
5. Talking about leadership, which features a good leader must have nowadays?
6. Could you explain the human-centric-leadership concept to us?
7. We are living in a time of uncertainty and disruptive changes. From your personal experience, are you noticing any kind of changes in leadership, and what’s driving the changes?
8. How does the future of leadership look like?

1. Hello Marcel! Thank you for accepting our interview. You are the founder of Leadership From The Core, could you tell us more about your activity?

Through years of research, interviews, and coaching of leaders, I found that the best organizations on the planet value the whole person — their emotional, mental, physical, and even spiritual well-being in order to achieve outstanding business outcomes. In essence, they lead and inspire others from the “core” of their beings, from who they truly are — that’s leadership from the core. 

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2. How did you come up with the idea of helping a new generation of leaders?

In my past life working up the ranks in corporate America, I saw some pretty bad stuff. Toxic management styles and some of the worst human behaviors you can imagine. Historically, as we look at what the workplace has become, most organizations see people as objects or functions…as a means to an end in a transaction.

Well, what if we chose to treat each other with kindness and respect and empathy, and saw each other as a real person with real hopes and dreams and fears as important as our own? What if one day I decided to connect with each other, as one human being to another.

If I’m in that frame of mind, the dynamic in the workplace is going to be radically different. This is especially true if you’re in a leadership or management role, from a founder of a 5-person startup all the way up to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

That’s the premise for my work — to take care of others. When employees are treated and cared for, it makes a stunning difference. It raises performance, it improves employee engagement, it increases value and loyalty across the organization, and it makes people arrive home at the end of the day and tell their loved ones, “I love my job and I can’t wait to be back tomorrow.”

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3. You had the opportunity of coaching many leaders: which personality traits do you usually find in them?

Personality is different than character. While many of those leaders display the perceived success traits of extroversion, confidence, and charisma, they are not sustainable. Those leaders that truly shine display the softer leadership competencies of humility, emotional intelligence, and empathy. 

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4. What would be the bad practices you most often find in a leader?

An oversized ego is the most detrimental “bad practice” you will find. Overconfidence is another, as is narcissism. These traits violently work against what make up great work cultures of openness, transparency, collaboration and cooperation.

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5. Talking about leadership, which features a good leader must have nowadays?

A good leader must subscribe to the practice of servant leadership, which is the course (now virtual) that I teach for leaders everywhere.

It’s the idea that you lead by serving others first — developing them and removing roadblocks from their path to set them up for success. Because when you do that, not only do you succeed as a leader, your whole organization succeeds.

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6. Could you explain the human-centric-leadership concept to us?

It’s basically servant leadership.

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7. We are living in a time of uncertainty and disruptive changes. From your personal experience, are you noticing any kind of changes in leadership, and what’s driving the changes?

Leaders are beginning to see that working from a more authentic place, not hiding their emotions, not “wearing masks,” and showing vulnerability in conversations and meetings in times of uncertainty make them more approachable and connect them better to their employees.

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8. How does the future of leadership look like?

Human. With the world now working remotely, the leaders who will truly separate themselves from the pack will raise their capacity to relate, communicate, empower, and engage with other human beings while leveraging the tech tools they use. Because in the end, no matter how you slice it, business and leadership is about relationships.

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We want to thank Marcel for this interview: we had the opportunity of discovering the concept of leadership in a more different, valuable and human-centric way.

Keep updated with Marcel Schwantes‘ socials and activities:

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