Barry-Wehmiller Chairman Bob Chapman has said this about the importance of listening:

Time and again, I've written that listening is the most important thing a leader can do. But it transcends the leader role. Listening is the most important thing we, as humans, can do for one another. It shows empathy, it shows you care, and most importantly, it shows the person you are listening to that they matter.

We are not taught to listen in our society. So much value is placed on speaking, but not listening. How many listening classes do you see in schools or colleges? They have "speech" classes and debate teams. The skill of listening is special and we need to be taught how to do it well.

Learning the skills to become an effective listener will not only make you a better leader, but a better human being as well

Listening is something we talk about often at Barry Wehmiller, and you've probably heard a lot about it on this very podcast. It's the foundational class of Barry Wehmiller University, our internal school for our team members. We call this class Listen Like a Leader.

It's also one of the most important offerings of our consulting company, Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute, as they bring Truly Human Leadership to their clients. And it was the reason Bob and his wife Cynthia created their non-profit, Chapman Foundation for Caring Communities, who brings our listening curriculum to municipal and non profits organizations under the name Our Community Listens.

On this podcast, we want to feature an interview with someone our listening curruculm has had a large impact on, Gregory Bulanow, a retired a fire chief in North Charleston, South Carolina. In 2014, Chief Bulanow was looking for training for the leadership of his department and heard about Our Community Listens through word of mouth. After he attended, the chief knew this was something that could make a huge impact on his department and on the North Charleston community.

In his retirement, Chief Bulanow is still a professor bringing our listening curruculm to his community. His story was featured in the revised and expanded 10th anniversary edition of Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia's book, Everybody Matters the Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family. This interview with Chief Bulanow was dome several years ago before his retirement and he talked about the significance of listening in his work, and he starts off talking about why a class such as this would apply to his department.

A few months ago, we were honored that Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, named the week of October 13, 2025 "Chapman Leadership Week." That week, their School of Business Administration hosted the inaugural Chapman Lecture on Truly Human Leadership, named in honor of Barry-Wehmiller Chairman Bob Chapman.

It was the culmination of a partnership our outreach team has had with the university to bring the principles of Truly Human Leadership to their classrooms, as well as their training of educators and staff.

The speaker at this inaugural Chapman Lecture was, fittingly, Kyle Chapman, Barry-Wehmiller President and CEO and Bob's son.

Kyle used this opportunity to talk about how Barry-Wehmiller is changing the game of business by showing that economic and human vibrancy can exist in harmony. And he issued a challenge to these future leaders at Gonzaga to demand more from their future workplaces and join us in our goal of building a better world through business.

So on this podcast, we want you to hear Kyle's challenge at Gonzaga and give you the opportunity to join us as well.

In addition to this podcast, which you can watch the the link in the header image or through your favorite podcast host, you can watch a video summary of Chapman Leadership Week through the video below:

Over the years, we've talked about the Harvard Case Study that was written about Barry-Wehmiller in 2016. It's a best seller, taught in over 200 universities to more than 30,000 students.

On an earlier podcast, we talked to the authors of the case study, one of which is our guest today, Harvard Professor Jan Rivkin.

The earlier episode kind of dealt with the how and why the case study was written, but on this episode, we want to go a little deeper.

The Harvard Case Study of Barry-Wehmiller deals with layoffs, a subject that is very prominent in people's minds today. So, on today's episode, we talk with Professor Jan Rivkin about this issue and we also dive into the subject of business education and how leadership is taught and how students are thinking about leadership and how they react to the Barry-Wehmiller case study.

It's a wide-ranging discussion, but one that is very pertinent to many issues we are facing today.