The Key to Campbell Soup’s Turnaround? Civility.

• Christine Porath
• Douglas R. Conant

OCTOBER 05, 2017

Based on our combined experience and research – Doug as the former CEO of Campbell Soup Company and Christine as professor who has researched leadership for 20 years – we’ve observed that the best way to truly win the hearts and minds of people, and generate huge returns for your organization and its stakeholders, is by leading with civility. This means spending a considerable amount of effort acknowledging people’s contributions, listening better, respecting others’ time, and making people feel valued.

To some, leading with civility may be intuitive or obvious, but it’s difficult to put into practice. Since we are often being moved along in a perpetual parade of tasks, projects, and problems, emails, texts, and crises, we often lose sight of the people whom we lead.

This is unfortunate, since prioritizing civility can lead to big payoffs. It increases performance and creativity; allows for early mistake detection and the initiative to take corrective action; and reduces emotional exhaustion. Most of all, it makes employees feel respected.

In a worldwide poll of over 20,000 employees, Christine found that employees who felt respected by their leaders reported 56% better health and well-being, 89% greater enjoyment and satisfaction, 92% greater focus and prioritization, 26% more meaning and significance, and 55% more engagement. Being treated with respect had a more powerful effect on employees than other more celebrated leadership behaviors including recognition and appreciation, communicating an inspiring vision, providing useful feedback — even opportunities for learning, growth, and development.

The research shows that employees desperately want to feel respected and valued by their leaders. Yet the majority of people polled reported that they don’t regularly receive the respect they seek.

Whatever your leadership role in your company, you can begin to close the respect gap by infusing more respectful behaviors into your work profile. You can shorten meetings in an effort to value people’s time and write personal thank you notes for jobs well done. But, in order to reap the maximum benefits, you’ll need to make a concerted and continuous effort. It can’t be an ad-hoc process; civility needs to be ingrained in everything that you do.

Based on our experience, there are three things that you must do in order to be successful. You’ll need to set expectations, identify practices to bring those expectations to life, and then measure and reinforce your civility initiative.

Set Expectations

When Doug took over as CEO of Campbell Soup Company in 2001, the company had just lost half its market value, sales were declining, and the organization was reeling from a series of layoffs. The environment was so toxic that a Gallup manager described employee engagement as “among the worst [he had] ever seen among the Fortune 500.”

One of the first things Doug did to address the dysfunctional, low-performance environment was to visibly set expectations for how he intended to create a more civil culture built on respect. He did this immediately by working with his executive leadership team to create The Campbell Promise, which stated quite simply, “Campbell valuing people. People valuing Campbell.” It was no accident that he led with “Campbell valuing people.” He wanted to telegraph that he was consciously putting people first.

Doug also supported that promise to the broader organization with a 10-point pledgeto the senior leadership, which laid out clear and succinct vows for how he planned to lead.  At the heart of the pledge was a guarantee that he would conduct himself with integrity and honor. He shared the pledge with the top 350 leaders at his first global leadership meeting as CEO. The first promise in the pledge was: We will treat you with respect and dignity. These words set the tone for how he intended to turn the company around and signaled to the leadership team that a commitment to civility was critical and urgent.

These expectation-setting actions provided a public platform to build a performance-oriented culture and were crucial in transforming the culture.

Identify Practices

Although it’s powerful to publicly name a civility initiative and set expectations, it’s even more important to bring those expectations to life with practices.

Practices can be seen both in the smallest of moments and in large-scale adjustments to company culture and procedure. Christine’s research confirms that even seemingly small behaviors, such as acknowledging others, thanking people, sharing credit, listening attentively, humbly asking questions, or smiling, can boost performance.

To start, Doug and colleagues made “inspire trust” as its number one leadership competency. They made it specific and clear to managers: we expect you to build trust with employees by honoring them, and by valuing them by living the Campbell promise.

Next, they identified practices and processes to support this expectation. One such practice is what Doug calls Declaring Yourself, which he developed as President of Nabisco Foods Company and still uses today. On the first hour of the first day Doug works with a direct report, he tells them exactly how he intends to lead, what he values, his thoughts on his industry, and his work and communication style. This method removes the mystery from working relationships and increases transparency and accountability.

The practice should also be reciprocal. At a subsequent meeting, Doug always invites the other person to share their own personal philosophy, beliefs, and work style.  The practice shows employees that working relationships are important and worthy of time and energy – and that mutual understanding is valued in the work environment.

Interactions should be fulfilling for both parties. At Campbell, Doug began calling the daily interactions he had with employees, “touchpoints.” Working with his close friend and ultimate co-author, Mette Norgaard, he developed a four-step process for dealing with them in the most respectful and productive way: Listen, Frame, Advance, Help.  He first listens to the other party, frames what they’re saying to demonstrate understanding, leverages his expertise to help advance the issue, and finally asks, “How can I help?”

The more you practice this approach, the better you can handle each touchpoint, helping employees feel listened to and valued.

Measure and Reinforce

To really motivate yourself and other leaders to be civil and respectful, you must hold yourself and others accountable. To do this, you should find ways to measure and reinforce it.

At Campbell, Doug and his colleagues surveyed the organization every year to see how leaders were performing against that expectation.  In performance assessment conversations, leaders talked about how they were using the Campbell leadership model, with Inspire Trust at the center, to increase engagement.

If the evaluations revealed leaders were falling short, the expectation was explicitly reinforced. In the early years of the turnaround initiative, hundreds of the top 350 senior leaders who could not, or would not, demonstrate their willingness to adapt their approach were let go or transitioned to other roles. Replacing those leaders with people who were committed to a more civil approach changed the culture and was instrumental in helping the company achieve its desired financial results.

To reinforce the importance of civility, make a public display. To this end, Doug introduced the Influence with Honor award — the highest award given out at Campbell during his tenure as CEO. Doug and his team selected people who modeled the behavior they were celebrating (be tough-minded on standards and tender-hearted with people) and who also were very high performers.

It’s helpful to note that part of delivering on this approach is reacting correctly when people are not civil in a public way. There will always be missteps and mistakes. No organization or leader is going to be civil 100% of the time. If you’ve declared your commitment to civility and you slip up – the key is to publicly address it and promise to do better next time. And then correct the behavior. When you address and remedy disrespectful behavior, it becomes clear that you are earnestly committed to improving.

Civility may take a lot of time and effort, but it’s worth it. Make sure to set expectations for how you intend to lead and verbalize those intentions. Identify practices that demonstrate your commitment to following through on this dimension including ways to acknowledge people, listen better, respect others’ time, and make people feel valued. Find ways to measure and reinforce your civility initiative. All of this will inject more civility into your workplace, fueling people and their work. And you’ll watch results improve and inspire others.