The Heart of Leadership: Kindness and Culture with Mark Cuddigan of THIS™

DESCRIPTION This week, I am delighted to be joined by Mark Cuddigan, CEO at THIS™ a leading plant protein business. Mark is a serial CEO, having transformed and built a number of businesses in the food sector. He leads with the heart. His key messages include the amazing transformative effect of focusing on culture and freeing up employees to be part of something great. Mark felt he wasn't really ready for ceoship, but thanks to great mentoring, it turned out that he was. Mark explains how he discovered that kindness is the most important quality for a transformer CEO. KEY TAKEAWAYS For Transformer CEOs, leading with kindness and genuinely caring about people and how they experience work, creates the psychological safety and loyalty required to deliver the hardest transformations. When a CEO relentlessly prioritises culture by resetting the mission, values and behaviours, they take businesses from low trust to a place where people feel proud and energised. Freeing people beats directing people. When leaders stop seeing themselves as chief problem-solvers and become chief liberators, they give teams autonomy, clarity and purpose and create something far bigger than any one CEO. Mentoring is the multiplier of transformation. CEOs that actively build internal talent and grow their successors create sustainable change. When you are kind and empathetic and see your people as humans first, employees second, performance improvement follows. Tying the business mission to a cause that genuinely matters, e.g. improving children’s nutrition turns ordinary jobs into life-changing work and employees into people who are passionate about their roles. BEST MOMENTS "The fact that Ella's (Kitchen´s) core mission was around children's health and nutrition. It wasn't to make money, inspired me." "Noone's ever ready to be promoted, and if they are, they're being promoted too late." "What is better in business than promoting someone and then seeing them shine?" GUEST BIO Mark Cuddigan is the CEO of THIS™, a leading plant protein B Corp business. A purpose-driven leader with over 30 years’ experience scaling food and drink brands, he is a former CEO of Ella’s Kitchen and a passionate champion of the global B Corp community. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-cuddigan-87575421 PODCAST DESCRIPTION If you're a CEO, Chairman or investor this is a destination podcast for you. At some time, all companies get out of step with their consumers, fall behind the competition or lose their top talent – or all three. The financial fallout can be severe. The Transformer CEO podcast meets global leaders who have taken on the brief to transform their company from ugly duckling to swan. It explores their corporate and personal journey, their leadership values, their challenges and successes along with their mis-steps and learnings. It inspires those about to start, re-assures those already underway and offers a benchmark for those who feel they have concluded. If you want to know what it takes to succeed in tough environments, you'll not want to miss Transformer CEOs. HOST BIO Erik is described by CEO and Chairmen as "exceptional", "undoubtedly one of the top global HR leaders" and "a strong strategic thinker and amazing change leader". After 35 years working with some of the most successful companies on the planet including Diageo, GE, LEGO, HSBC and Pandora, he focuses in the podcast on sharing the unique character of corporate leaders who take on some of the biggest challenges and win. This is also a critical topic in his consulting work where he partners with CEO’s, Chairmen and Investors as Founder & Managing Director of Erik Schmidt Consulting & Advisory (erikschmidt.co.uk) to help companies achieve out-performance. LINKS https://www.erikschmidt.co.uk/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-erik/ This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/