The Way We Lead Impacts the Way People Live

This article was originally shared as a blog post on the website of Barry-Wehmiller, a US$3.3B global capital equipment and engineering solutions company, and is the eleventh in a series on "The Principles of Truly Human Leadership". It draws from the revised and expanded 10th anniversary edition of Bob Chapman's book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family.

 

BOB CHAPMAN

 

While working on the 10th anniversary revised and expanded edition of my book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, there was one phrase I wanted to make sure was placed on the outer cover: The way we lead impacts the way people live.

 

If asked to sum up the entirety of the book’s message, that would be the phrase I would use. It’s something I carry as a reminder of the awesome responsibility we as leaders are bestowed. It’s something I was never taught in my education. It’s also something I didn’t realize in my early career as an executive. It’s something that came to me much later.

 

And the fact that this is not more widely understood shows. Statistics I often quote is that 65 percent of people would rather see their boss fired than receive a pay increase and 58 percent of people say they trust a stranger more than their boss.

 

Leadership is about the stewardship of the lives we have the privilege to lead. But traditionally, we don't prepare people to accept the mantle of responsibility to those lives. We often award people positions of leadership because they are a good accountant, or a good manager or have a prestigious degree. But leadership requires more than technical skills.

 

The way we lead impacts the way people live. When they feel cared for and energized by their time at work rather than drained by it, it positively impacts the way they treat those in their spans of care—their families, their friends, and their communities.

 

More Important Than Your Family Doctor

 

In 2016, I heard one of the most affecting and startling things about the impact of leadership on the lives of the people within our span of care. Someone told me about research that showed that the person you report to at work can be more important to your health than your family doctor.

 

I was floored. How could that even be true?

 

It turned out that the statement comes from the research of Dr. Casey Chosewood, retired Director of the Office for Total Worker Health at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Chosewood said this when interviewed for our Truly Human Leadership Podcast in 2020:

 

Very few things will make you pick up and move far away from family or friends, leave behind all your social support systems, and move to a brand-new community and put yourself down to set up a new life, but a job will do that. A job is so powerful when it comes to all of the other choice-making around the trajectory of our life, and for those reasons, that, along with some of the emerging research about how the work we do is linked to chronic disease risk... for those reasons, we really think that the influence of your supervisor, who controls so many aspects of your work, is a more powerful influence for most people than their experience at the doctor's office once or twice a year.

 

As recently as 2023, a Forbes article cited new data that said for almost 70 percent of people, their manager has more impact on their mental health than their therapist or their doctor — and it’s equal to the impact of their partner.

 

Dr. Chosewood’s research sums up something we have found to be true: Most leaders understand their influence on team members’ lives during work hours, but often enough, they don’t think about how their leadership affects team members outside of the workplace as well.

 

'My Wife Talks to Me'

 

A Harvard Business Review article from a couple of years ago documented a long-running study: “How a Parent’s Experience at Work Impacts Their Kids.” The study followed more than 370 low-wage, working-class families over more than ten years, from pregnancy through their first several years as parents.

 

One of the participants in the study was a father who worked at a company that forced him to use a monitor that tracked his every move. He felt that his company didn’t trust him, and that sent him home spent, dejected, and frustrated to the point that, as a result, it affected his parenting. He said, “I just don’t have the energy for a needy baby.”

 

“From a corporate social responsibility standpoint,” the article went on to say, “it’s clear that if work impacts employees’ children, employers have a responsibility to ensure that the impact is as positive as possible. And from a business standpoint, it’s also in companies’ best financial interests to pay attention to the effects of work on their employees’ families. After all, when workers face challenges with their partners or kids, this stress inevitably spills over into the workplace, leading to lower productivity, more sick days and personal time off, and an unhappier, less motivated workforce.”

 

Many years ago at our Green Bay, WI company, one of the leaders suggested that I invite a group of our team members into a meeting to give a report about a project that led to significant performance improvements. Steve Barlament was one of those team members.

 

They reported on all the usual metrics, but when they were finished, I asked Steve, whom I’d never met before, a simple question that just popped into my head: “Steve, how did it affect your life?”

 

This group wasn’t prepared to walk in and speak in front of all our presidents, but without missing a beat, Steve said: “My wife now talks to me more.”

 

It was unrehearsed, it was spontaneous, and it was the truth. He said:

 

Do you know what it’s like, Bob, to work in a place where you show up every morning, you punch a card, you go to your station, you’re told what to do, you’re not given the tools you need to do what you need to do, you get ten things right and nobody says a word, and you get one thing wrong and you get chewed out? You ask questions and it takes a week to get an answer back. They complain about your salary or your benefits. Do you know what it feels like to go home at night to your family? You feel pretty empty.

 

I realize now, in hindsight, that when I wasn’t feeling good about myself, I wasn’t that nice a person to be around. That was basically every day. But since we began this program, I’ve been part of making things better. People ask me what I think; they listen to me, and I actually have a chance to impact things, including my own job. The way we set up the new assembly flow really works, and I can go home feeling that I’ve done a good day’s work, not wasted the day chasing parts or feeling resentful. When I feel respected and know I’ve done a good day’s work, I feel pretty good about myself, and I find when I feel better about myself, I’m nicer to my wife, and you know what’s amazing? When I’m nicer to my wife, she talks to me.

 

What a difference it made in Steve’s life when he felt like he mattered! When he felt respected and fulfilled instead of dismissed. This is the difference that our leadership can make.

 

More Than Just a Job

 

Story after story from our team members reveal that the environment of care within Barry-Wehmiller improves their marriages, enhances their parenting, enriches their friendships, makes them better neighbors, causes them to want to volunteer in their communities more often, and so on.

 

Erica Uribe, an Executive Assistant for BW Packaging, said: “I've done other corporate jobs where you get home and you're just tired and you want to do nothing else, but just be quiet and spend time, and that's not the case. I am able to leave this job where I feel I've had a successful day. I go home, I volunteer at the church, I take our kids to sports, and I don't feel drained at the end of the day. I still have a lot of energy and motivation to still do what I have to do the other half of the day.”

 

When our team members feel fulfilled by their time with us, when they feel like they matter, they go home and leave a positive impact on the lives of those in their own corner of the universe.

We leaders bear the responsibility for creating the conditions of an environment of care in our organizations.

 

The way we lead impacts the way people live. When they feel cared for and energized by their time at work rather than drained by it, it positively impacts the way they treat those in their spans of care— their families, their friends, and their communities.

 

 

Editor's Note: We were saddened to learn that Bob Chapman passed away on March 19, 2026. He served as CEO of Barry-Wehmiller for 50 years, taking the post in 1975 and passing leadership to his son Kyle, the current president and CEO, in 2025. Under Bob's leadership, Barry-Wehmiller had become a US$3.6 billion-plus global powerhouse with 12,000 team members and a portfolio spanning industrial and packaging automation, professional services, and life sciences technology.

 

Over the past two decades, Chapman had developed what he termed Truly Human Leadership—a people-centric approach where his team members feel valued, cared for, and integral to the company’s purpose. He shared shared his transformative approach as Keynote Speaker at CorrExpo 2023 and again at TAPPICon 2024. 

 

Chapman was also a guest on TAPPI's Better Together podcast, where he spoke with host Jan Bottiglieri about the transformative effect this unique approach can have on the pulp, paper, and packaging industry—and how caring about people is not just successful, but absolutely necessary.

 

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