Wisdom and Compassion in Business | Scott Shute

Well, good morning, everyone. And I really just want, on behalf of LinkedIn, I just really want to welcome you. It's so exciting to be here. And guys, do we have a clicker? We're going to roll with that. All right. So you know, part of being mindful is living in the moment. So I'm going to live with the moment in my presentation. So thinking about new leader, right? We all see the news. We see the world around us and wonder, what does it mean? What does it mean for us to be a new leader? And so I find it amazing that there are some things that are happening in business now that seem to be ancient. In other words, old wisdom that are finally kind of making their way into the boardrooms and into every day. Sorin mentioned that I'm the executive sponsor. I'm the head of our mindfulness programs at work, at LinkedIn. The fact that I can talk about mindfulness at work is pretty amazing, right? The fact that there's all of you guys, I assume that you're interested in mindfulness and consciousness, and we're all together, is pretty amazing. And it speaks to there's this evolution that happens in every generation. We live in unique times. I think probably everybody thinks they live in unique times. And so I'd like to explore what that means. What are the things that we're bringing from the past? And what are the things that are new for us and our generation? This is where I would show you my beautiful picture. We'll imagine it together. So I'm a photographer. I was going to show off some of my photography. It's the universe telling me that my ego should not be a part of this whole thing. I'm totally cool with that. So you're going to have to imagine along with me my stories. I grew up on a farm in Kansas, in very rural Kansas, the type of rural where it's an hour to the nearest movie theater, an hour to the nearest fast food. And I lived in this place where you could see every star and you could still hear the wind blowing through the wheat and through the prairie. And my father was a massive influence on my life. Here's a picture of him. His name is Ed. My dad, Ed, passed away a few years ago. And at his funeral, my cousin gave the eulogy. And I thought my cousin did a beautiful job. And at one point, my cousin had come to live with us for the summer when he was 17. And he was about the same age as my two older brothers. And one day, my dad and my brothers and my cousin all went to town 10 miles away just to buy some stuff. They were just running their errands. And in the car on the way home, my cousin realized that the cashier had given him too much money, had given him too much change. You know, maybe he paid with a five and the cashier thought that he had given him a 10. So my cousin's in the back, and he's kind of gloating about this overage. And my dad slows the car, and he looks in the rearview mirror at my cousin. And he says, you're going to have to make that right. And that was it. It never came up again. My dad was not going to turn the car around and go make him do it. He was not going to lecture him on why he needed to make it right. He was not ever going to talk about it again. My dad held the tension between what is easy and what is right. And that tension stayed with my cousin for 40 years. Because I don't think he made it back to the cashier that summer. But over the next 40 years, he made it right. You know, he lived a set of values that were powerful on a one-on-one basis. And each one of those interactions that my cousin had with people impacted people. My dad was a leader. He never would have identified with that term. He had five kids. I'm the youngest. He had maybe one or two hired men at any given time. He wouldn't have said he was a leader. But at his funeral, when I listened to everybody who went by giving their condolences, every one of them had a story about how my dad had impacted their life. Now, this idea of you're going to have to make that right is built for my father in community. When the settlers came in the generations before him in the late 1800s, all they had was this bare prairie and each other. Do what you say you're going to do. Your word mattered, because that's all you had. And helping the community was all you had. That's old school leadership that we bring with us today. And I think finding our community and making the world a little bit smaller for all of us is really important. Today, sometimes we live in this anonymous community, and we feel like it's not so clear. We can just get away with it. We buy stuff online. Who cares if they overcharge us? I think we need to make the world a little bit smaller and get back to that. It was on that same farm in the middle of Kansas, an hour away from anything, that I learned how to meditate. You knew that was coming. Now, this was not where you learned to meditate. It was for me. But in that moment, my dad, my mom, my parents, they wanted to have my brother and I kind of deprogrammed. They thought that we had joined a cult. This was something very new for them. But it became a really important part of my life. And it's something that helped me through hard teenage years. And when I got to college, I even taught meditation. And deep inside of me, I knew that part of my mission in life was to help change the world of work from the inside out. But I didn't really know what that meant. And so I did my thing. I helped whatever I could do on a regular basis. But then I got to LinkedIn and came to this place where we talk about transformation, personal transformation, the transformation of self, the transformation of world. And it became a safe place for me to start thinking about, hey, maybe I could do meditation here. And it started for me. I was having this conversation with the guy who leads our health and wellness programs. I was like, hey, Michael, do we do anything with meditation here? He's like, yeah, we do some stuff. We do here. He said, wait a minute. Do you do something? He got really excited. And I said, yeah, I could probably do something. He's like, and he got really excited. Oh, yeah, you should totally do it. We'll set you up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He was on fire. And I went back to my desk after our meeting. And I was kind of excited. But you know that little voice, that little talk track, that voice that says, maybe they're going to want to have you deprogrammed if you talk about this, started to come out. And you know what happens, right? The fear. It's like the anxiety. What are they going to say about me? What does this mean for my brand? Like, I'm a VP at the company. Can I even do this? Like, am I going to get fired? Am I going to get deprogrammed? All of these horrible doubt and anxiety rushed over me. And I did absolutely nothing about it for like four months. But that tension was inside of me, that tension between my authentic self and how I was showing up at work. And I knew I had to do it. And so like a child, I went to go meet with the head of HR, ostensibly about something else. But my hand on the door question was, as I'm leaving, I'm like, hey, you know, Pat, I'm thinking about leading this meditation class. Like, what do you think about that? She's like, oh, whoa, yeah, that's awesome. You should totally do it. Let me know how that goes. I'm like, oh, Jesus. Now I'm on the hook for it. I got exactly what I wanted. Now I'm terrified. And so after another couple of weeks of waiting, I did it. I led my first one at work. There was one person there. And he was probably just as terrified as I was. I never saw him again. But the next week, there were three people. And the week after that, there were five people. And it just kind of kept growing and growing and growing, to the point where then people figured out that I was like the meditation exec. And so when they did an offsite, they're like, hey, could you come and do that thing, that mindfulness thing? I'm like, OK. Yeah, I could do that. And I became more comfortable in front of 60 people, 80 people, to the point where a few weeks ago at our company All Hands, in front of however many people showed up out of 12,000 people, I did a 90-second loving kindness meditation. Yeah! And over that same kind of three-year journey, myself and a bunch of volunteers have now kind of created a real program. We have meditation classes all over the world. In some locations, they are meditating twice a day, which I think is wild. We did a 30-day challenge. 1,500 people signed up for our 30-day challenge. We do weekend retreats, where for four hours in a giant LinkedIn conference room, we'll explore different types of meditation. In fact, we're doing one tomorrow, if you're really interested, 830 to 1230. Hit me up later. I'll get you in. And I tell this story because it's the story of all of us. For each one of us, your authentic self is probably being hidden a little. I know mine has been for a long time. That difference, that tension between who we really are, that purest part of ourselves, and how we show up at work, there's a tension there. And I think part of this new leader journey, the lessons I learned were about authenticity. We're about vulnerability. We're about new concepts, old concepts, like mindfulness and meditation at work. And so to me, this is the growth edge for all of us, being new leaders. There's the wealth of things that came before us, but it's this growth edge of new leaders. And I invite you, invite me, as we listen to the speakers today, let's listen for what does it mean to be a new leader? What is new about what we're doing that's different from before? And what can emerge in this world with our state of consciousness that could not emerge five minutes ago, last year, last decade? So talking about it is good, but practicing is better. So I'd like to lead you in a very short something. And so if you would, find a comfortable but alert position. And just take a deep breath, and just let it out. And close your eyes when you do. And just allow yourself to be fully present. Whatever happened before you came here, just let it be. And allow yourself to fully arrive. And maybe you go inside to that deepest part of yourself, that true part of yourself, the highest, infinite part of yourself. I think of it as soul. You think of it as however you like. And get in touch with that, with the real you. And as you breathe in, breathe in that gratitude that the world has to offer. And as you breathe out, just let go of anything that is not the real you. And from that deep seat of knowing, let it emerge. What wants to arise in you? How are you the new leader? And what gifts can you gather today? But also, what gifts can you share? And when you've got a sense of that, go ahead and come back to this space. Did you get a sense? Something new? Thank you. So this is our tribe. I had a good fortune to be at the event last night where some of us got together. And one person put it beautifully. It's like, there's no strangers here. Only friends you haven't met yet. So we're going to have some chance today to hear from some speakers. But look, we're all here to give and receive. We're going to have some great conversations. So use it as a time to connect with your tribe. And let's see what emerges between this group as the new leader. So welcome. Thank you very much. I look forward to learning from you.