Unlocking Impact Through Care With Marcel Schwantes

Skot Waldron (00:01.25)
Greetings Marcel, it's so good to have you.

Marcel Schwantes (00:03.919)
Good to be here.

Skot Waldron (00:05.538)
So we are gonna talk about some, you know, like people will say this is a little bit touchy feely for me in the leadership space, you know? So we're gonna talk about the whole love word a bit, I think here, and I'm excited to talk about it because I love having interesting guests on that talk about things I don't talk about very often. Of course we should love some people, but you know, the topic of love and leadership, little bit, little bit different. So tell me.

Marcel Schwantes (00:31.695)
Right.

Skot Waldron (00:34.402)
Tell me about the premise of that. Where did that come from? Why are you talking about it in conjunction with leadership and what are you doing with it?

Marcel Schwantes (00:41.442)
Yeah, wow. That's a great rabbit hole to go down on. And then we're gonna like, once we go down the rabbit hole, there's gonna be about five or six different rabbit holes from there. But I think the starting point is to the definitions, right? I mean, we hear the word love, we throw it around loosely, and we hear songs on the radio, right, about love. And a lot of that speaks to the romantic kind of love.

sexual love. I mean, we're talking, we're so far away from that right now. Um, so yeah, the word love is, is very squishy, but we're actually finding it entering the business lexicon in the last maybe three to five years, uh, and even more so after the pandemic. And, and so when we speak of love, we're talking about love, the verb, not love, the feeling or the emotion of love.

You know, go back to your, remember your Greek high school classes. I don't know if you took your Greek maybe in college. There are zero. Okay. Well, the Greeks had, they, they defined love in several ways. And the one that really applies to leadership and the workplace is agape love. So agape love basically states that.

Skot Waldron (01:47.21)
I took zero Greek, Marcel. No Greek, no Greek.

Marcel Schwantes (02:08.798)
it. You love by elevating the other person, by putting the needs of somebody ahead of your own. And so in the leadership realm, we can see how that plays a part and how the best leaders operate. They meet the needs of others. I mean, if you want to borrow that from servant leadership, there's a lot of love going on in the servant leadership.

in the whole, you know, that whole philosophy of, of leading, right? So it's building someone up, it's developing them. It's providing for their needs and setting them up for success. Because at the end of the day, this isn't just touchy feely stuff. We actually have to have the hard side of leadership, right? We want, we need to have results. We need to have excellence and goals need to be met.

And so, but we do that, we love other people well and set them up for success so that they perform at a high level. And then you have all of the other benefits of leading with love for the other person and for yourself, right? That are more mental health and wellbeing related. People feel better about coming into work, feel better about having a purpose.

and having clear expectations and having meaning in their jobs, right? So they understand how the little stuff leads to the big stuff. It keeps them engaged. And then you have leaders that lead with love by providing a safe environment for others to experiment, maybe break stuff and not get in trouble for it. Because, hey, family is all about learning and we grow by failing forward. So that's kind of if you want that as sort of a

maybe a little bit of a framework for our discussion about what do we mean when we say love from a leadership standpoint.

Skot Waldron (04:09.166)
Okay. So you're talking about this idea of being for people, being, I'm for them, I'm helping them, I'm collaborating, I'm lifting up, I'm, but being for you, I don't have, you know, we're not talking about like, I'm for you, I'm your cheerleader, ha ha, rah rah, all that stuff, which is part of being for you. But I'm also helping you do hard stuff and pushing you to do hard stuff.

Because I'm for you. I want you to be a better person. So I'm also gonna challenge you to do those things.

Marcel Schwantes (04:41.71)
Yeah. And so when you messed up, there's going to be the tough love aside of love, if you will, right? Who's going to provide you with really maybe some hard constructive feedback to get you back on the right track, right? Just like as parents, if you're a parent, your kid messes up, you know, he might get a lecture, but he needs to understand the consequences of his behavior and how to correct that behavior.

And it's no different than leadership, right? We don't want the person to be doing the same thing and messing up again. So we allow them the space to make mistakes, but hold them accountable and show the way forward so that the same thing doesn't happen again. And that's tough love. They may, you might have to tell them things they don't wanna hear. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (05:36.302)
And ultimately, 10 years down the road or whatever, I can look back at that situation, whether it is my parent or whether it was a boss or somebody on my team that said, I didn't like it at the time, but I'm sure glad I went through that. I'm sure glad that they had that hard talk with me at that time because it's helped me be who I am today.

Marcel Schwantes (05:49.999)
Yeah.

Marcel Schwantes (05:54.936)
Exactly. And you might add that it's exactly what I needed at that time to get to where I am now. But you had to get over the hump and that caring boss helped you and guided you along the way over those humps.

Skot Waldron (06:13.034)
Okay. So tell me, tell me this. Um, I mean, you talk about this, you know, podcast, um, that where you talk about this called love and action. So people can go check that out too. When we talk about love and action, what, what's the premise of that? How are you making love? Not the verb, but the thing into this idea that, that creates action and momentum.

Marcel Schwantes (06:22.711)
Mm-hmm.

Marcel Schwantes (06:42.39)
Right. So it's caring with impact, right? If you just care and you're, you mentioned you'd be a, you're a rah boss. Um, but there are no results at the end of it, at the end of the, at the end of the day, or a person isn't changed by your leadership. Um, or somebody isn't growing at the pace they should. Um, then you're just a cheerleader, right? So.

We're talking about you have to have love backed with action. And the action part is the hard part of love, the tough part of love, holding someone accountable, maybe even holding their feet to the fire when they're low performing, right? Uh, but always never stop caring about the person. Uh, you know, we, we hear about a lot of other squishy terms that are more reserved for faith based communities. Like, let me throw a word at you, Scott. Forgiveness.

How often do we actually practice forgiveness in the workplace, especially as leaders?

Skot Waldron (07:48.898)
So what would that look like?

Marcel Schwantes (07:51.546)
That would probably imply that before you drop the hatchet on someone for making a mistake, you want to listen and find out what happened. You know, assume positive intent. Hey, we're all human. We're all going to mess up.

And so in forgiving someone, you're allowing the space for that person to be human and to say, boss, I messed up. And you're saying, don't worry, I messed up too. I'm human just like you, I forgive you. And then moving forward to make sure again that the same mistake isn't made again. But tendency in a lot of top down command and control structures of work is to act impulsively and...

and get rid of the person that may have committed an honest mistake.

Skot Waldron (08:43.246)
Yeah, I call it a moving from critique to curiosity. Um, you know, accusing pointing fingers, blame accusations, all kinds of things. And instead of backing up and going, huh, what was going on there? Kind of being inquisitive.

Marcel Schwantes (08:57.626)
Right, and getting perspective, right? We have to, there's various things going on in the workplace, you know, a lot of businesses, it's a moving target daily, right? Things are shifting, constantly evolving, it's messy. Business can be messy. And because human nature is involved, it's even messier. So you have to allow for people to be human and come alongside them.

And when they make mistakes, find out what happened before jumping into conclusion, you know what they say about the word assume, right? Ask you, me, right? So we don't want to go there and make the assumption that somebody messed up because they're just playing stupid or they are not deserving to be in this job anymore. You want to seek various perspectives. Use your emotional intelligence. Gather feedback.

find out what happened. Maybe it wasn't that person's fault altogether. Maybe some things happened prior leading up to a mistake being made that perhaps was a process-oriented thing or a systems thing or the person before in the previous role of that person maybe left things in a bad state or somebody inherited a bad work environment.

And, you know, things just kind of went south from there.

Skot Waldron (10:34.146)
So why do you think there is an uptick of the word love in the workspace now as opposed to maybe pre-COVID or even decades earlier? What's going on there?

Marcel Schwantes (10:45.094)
Mmm.

I think that you have enough brave souls out there putting out books and podcasts and having conversations where they're no longer skirting around the issue of love as being not suitable for a work environment. You know, you got Joe Mambe who wrote the book Love Works. This is the guy that led SeaWorld.

for a few years and Hershen Entertainment before that, which owns, if you're from the South, which owns Dollywood, right? So he wrote the book Love Works based on the principles that come from scripture and then he basically translated that into actionable business terms.

And so that was a big influence on me when I read his book. I thought, wow, you know, this is a CEO of a major organization talking about love from a practical, actionable standpoint. Gosh, if you can do it, then it's like, let's open up the floodgates. And since then, other people have come out with books. Steve Farber, Love is, I don't have the right title, I'll come back to you, but.

I think it's Love is Damn Good Business, something like that is the title. And several others. Ken Blanchard puts out a lot of love related books. He's written over 60 or co-written. And so he always comes from the servant leadership angle. But most of his books are all about love, listening to others and providing for the needs of others. And so I think that...

Marcel Schwantes (12:36.282)
love is becoming less and less of, you know, being seen as taboo or a risk. And those that truly understand the power of love principles, they'll jump on board. Those who are threatened by the idea, you know, those bosses that lead with the iron fist, they're not going to be attracted to it because they're going to be threatened by it.

And those are hard mountains to move to begin with. I don't take clients on who are not even open to the idea of care and love and empowerment of people as the business solution to your problems. I don't, I don't, because I know that they're not there yet. Mindset related, paradigm shifting related, they're not there, they haven't arrived yet. So I always screen out.

those top-down type autocratic bosses from engaging in anything that we do related to coaching and training. Because I know that they're gonna have an allergic reaction and that's going to be really bad for our interactions, right? Moving forward.

Skot Waldron (13:56.382)
Yeah, considering that's your core ideas that you're rolling with. So what's so threatening about it?

Marcel Schwantes (14:00.549)
Mm-hmm.

Marcel Schwantes (14:04.342)
about love? Yeah, I

Skot Waldron (14:07.708)
Yeah. Why do people get so threatened by it?

Marcel Schwantes (14:09.858)
Well, I think because they like things their way, they like the power and they like the control.

You know, when you were

Skot Waldron (14:16.834)
But are you saying that I can't have power and control with love or. Okay. Hi. Uh, yeah. How does it jeopardize that?

Marcel Schwantes (14:22.03)
You can. Right. But some people.

Marcel Schwantes (14:29.614)
Well, if you lead from a standpoint of love and your tendency is to control others, love is going to get in the way of that. So if I hold on to all my power and don't give away my power, which is the loving thing to do, right? Give away your power by helping other people lead. But if I hang on to all the power and all the control, love is threatening.

a threatening force for that kind of leadership or that kind of management.

Skot Waldron (15:04.366)
Okay, and I can see that. I can see.

Skot Waldron (15:11.126)
I guess I can see the difference. Part of that is being the control and power being earned and kind of reciprocated and kind of shared versus I'm the one with the power and the control and I'm enforcing or I'm kind of dictating power and control over everybody else. And so I think.

I guess that's probably where I would see that. I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there, spitballing.

Marcel Schwantes (15:43.838)
Yeah. Well, you're convincing me even further because if my tendency is to dictate and not allow for other people to have voice, to make their own decisions, then I'm hanging on to all of the... Everything goes through me, right? And that's a very lonely place to be.

as well, right? So I think that love expands outwardly to include other people into making decisions and you assume trust, there's trust there, right? And sometimes even before trust is earned, love says, you know what, I hired you for this position. So I'm going to trust that you have the skills, expertise and talent to get the job done. So I'm going to assume positive intent.

and allow you the freedom and autonomy before you have to prove yourself to me that you can do the job. Hey, you know, hopefully all of your interviews and selection processes up front took care of that so that you are convinced in your mind this is the right person, right? That maybe you've done enough.

assessments or having the conversations to know that this person before that person is hired and hired and signs the offer letter on the on the x aligns his or her values with your organizational values so there's no problems with integrity and honesty down the line right so hopefully you've taken care of that to then when they come in during the onboarding process all you're doing is the caring and the loving part.

to make sure that they are right off the gates, engaged 150%, right? That they never feel like they're an island. How many people show up to work their first day, they don't even have a computer on their desk? Their phones aren't set up, you know? And so everybody's scrambling and forcing to put lunches on their calendars for the new guy, right?

Marcel Schwantes (18:01.09)
I mean, I speak from personal experience. Right off the bat, I was disengaged because they weren't prepared for me. Now, what's the loving thing to do for somebody that is coming on board, right? That first week, first day. It's just huddle around that person and show your culture, the culture of care. If you have a culture of care and love and you wanna see people succeed, is make them feel like they belong for the moment they walk in the door.

and show them this is who we are. This is how we treat each other. And especially those crucial, you know, first three to six months, because according to research, people aren't fully convinced that they will stay in their jobs. For the first six to nine months, they're still kind of like, hey, is this place really for me? So you wanna take that away from people by loving them really well and caring for their needs.

during that crucial onboarding stage. So that thought never enters their mind. You know what I mean, Scott?

Skot Waldron (19:07.598)
Mm hmm. Yeah. I think that when you look at that evaluation process, I think organizations think, Oh, I landed the person and we got the person in, we gave them what they wanted, we negotiated through here, whoo, done, you know? And then, Hey, get them on, get them going. Let's wrap it up. And then we're surprised when they leave three to six months later, and we just call them disloyal. We just say, ah,

We just can't find loyal people anymore. We just can't find good people anymore. The job, the job pool is too small and there's not good people out there anymore. You know? And so that mentality is, well, how much are you critiquing versus really self examining and understanding what could we do to create more of a culture where people want to stay?

Marcel Schwantes (19:59.874)
Right. And why is it that we don't do that? What's your take on that? Is it that leaders, senior leaders, managers are so busy that they can't think about culture because they got expectations to meet stakeholders, you know, and you got deadlines and all that, and the pressure is mounting. And so culture becomes that fuzzy term that's like, yeah, you know, that's kind of icing on the cake if we have it.

Skot Waldron (20:27.638)
I think for some people, sure. Like I think for some of those people that are like never really grabbed onto the whole culture wagon thing is that they think of it as the softy stuff, um, that, you know, that's a nice to have or whatever, but real numbers and real production comes from hard work and there's also, I think. A generational shift that is happening. Big time where.

Marcel Schwantes (20:52.454)
Sure.

Skot Waldron (20:54.526)
A lot of old school generations didn't grow up with this mentality. A lot of the owners of companies or those who are hitting the upper range of the workforce age never came from that mentality of love, of culture, of care and bracing, whoever. And you went on to a job, you landed the job and you were there for 30 years. And I don't, it's just not that way anymore. And

Now those are usually the people that are calling the younger people disloyal or not hard workers or et cetera, you know, and that space. So I don't know. That's just thought from my side.

Marcel Schwantes (21:35.534)
Yeah, no, and a few good thoughts to track with, gosh, you know, Gen Zers, like you said, generationally, Gen Zers coming into the workforce now, early mid-20s, I think they cap out around 26 now before they rub up against the younger millennials. But they're a different animal.

A lot of people say, well, yeah, this is the entitled generation. And they say that about every generation that is young. They said that about the millennials, when the millennials came into the workforce 10, 15 years ago. But I think that the point is that we have to adapt to the changing landscape and the changing demographics coming into the workforce. So it's putting into positions of leadership.

those that understand how to impact the human nature, how to elevate the human spirit. And yeah, probably less boomers are going to be in those positions because as you said, they grew up just collecting a paycheck, they're 30 years in, they're happy to just provide for their family and clock in and clock out. But this generation.

Skot Waldron (23:01.666)
Yeah. I mean, work was a central focus of their lives. I mean, if there's a, uh, there's a brilliant book, um, by a friend of mine, Tim Elmore, who wrote a new kind of diversity, um, that we just read. I was just looking at a few of the pages in here. And if you look at the, what he has, he has this, this really cool chart in here. I'm showing it on the video if, if you can see it, but he has this cool chart and it talks about the role of work. It has different things in here. Right. Two, but.

The role of work for like the builders and the silent generation, the role of work was a means for a living, right? It's the people that were in scarcity. There was great depression and other things happening. So it was a means for a living. They needed it in order to live. Boomers came into it as a central focus of what they were doing in life. It was kind of, do I gave them identity and gave them status in the community, the Busters or the Jenna Jen Xers. Um,

It was all about, it was kind of an irritant. It was kind of this necessary evil, but it was about this kind of like, we were also in this rebellious phase of like sticking it to the man and trying to not really trust you that much and kind of being this bridge. And then with the millennials, it was a place to serve. Where can I serve? Where can I build things? And then with the Gen Zers, it's a hobby. Now work has come this mentality of.

I want to have fun and I want to enjoy what I'm doing. And I'm going to surf until I find it. And I'm also wanting that instant gratification that I've been trained in through my life, whether that is Amazon Prime, or whether it's I get instant results on my tests that I just took in my class, we had to wait for Scantrons to come back, right? So there's just this mentality shift that I think we all need to take into account, but this was really the Gen Zers with the.

Marcel Schwantes (24:31.364)
Right.

Skot Waldron (24:54.846)
It's my hobby means that they don't feel a sense of loyalty to the paycheck. Sure. Everybody wants to get paid, but that care, the love, the Europe person. I value you is going to take on a huge role there. So I know this is my show, but I'm talking a whole lot. I want you to share what your thoughts are.

Marcel Schwantes (25:12.782)
I love it. I love it. I mean, and yeah, and Dr. Tim Elmore, I had him on the show too. So tell him hi for me next time you see him. He should know. That's his area of expertise right there, all the generational stuff. And it's interesting that you said, I did not know about the hobbies, like work becomes work is a hobby. And that's true because, you know, during the great resignation, and I don't think we're fully out of it.

Skot Waldron (25:21.938)
I will, Tim's awesome.

Marcel Schwantes (25:42.442)
Um, yeah, if you came into work environment that did not, well, that wasn't fun. And it was a pressure, Kirk, or you're out of there, you know, the second day on the job and you're okay with, you know, driving for Uber and delivering food part-time and making that a full-time income, you know, and bouncing around until you find the right atmosphere. And I think that speaks to Jen's ears is.

Yeah, they are looking for care and they want to feel valued. Right. And they're going to bounce around until they find that place.

Skot Waldron (26:18.286)
Tell me.

I think it's so true. Tell me, um, how did you, when did you make this shift? Because I don't, I don't know. Was it always there? I mean, when you started your business, you started doing what you're doing. When did you notice that, you know, as you're coaching, as you're consulting, as you're speaking, as you're doing other things, that this care love piece was something you wanted to hang your hat.

Marcel Schwantes (26:33.679)
Mm-hmm.

Marcel Schwantes (26:46.334)
It was 2003, working at a hospital, and the environment became the most toxic environment I've ever worked in. To the point of one day stepping out of the shower, I went straight down, faceplant on my bathroom tile floor. What happened?

Well, I had so much cortisol and adrenaline rushing through my system, says the ER doc, two hours later, that stress had caused a literal breakdown of my back. So I was on disability for two months. The first month is I could not, I was paralyzed. I could not move.

Marcel Schwantes (27:45.454)
Elbows moving and sure I can move but from the waist down, no movement at all. And as I studied what happened is that when you're in a prolonged state of stress and fear, it has obvious physical consequences down the line and the health issues down the line. Even some research.

point that links it to heart disease and heart attacks. So I look back at those days as sort of the epitome of not love. So here's what happened, Scott. I leave that job. The very next job is for another hospital working for another executive.

It was a complete 180. We're talking night and day. He spoke truth into me, spent time with me, was always available, came and checked on me, said, what do you need? How can I help make you better? How can I be a better boss to you? And then he just poured into me, just kept pouring into me and pouring into me. And I was more engaged in that role than I had ever been.

prior in my young corporate career at that time. And so what was it about that guy? Where did that come from? What's going on here? How is he leading this way? And I had never experienced it up to that moment. And so as I dug into the literature, I found out that his name is Bruce. He was a servant leader.

And so I began my investigation on servant leadership as the sort of the consummate way to lead to get the best out of people for high performance and creating a high performance organization. And, you know, 15 years ago, I wasn't dubbed anything. Now people call me the servant leadership guy, you know, and that all has to do with that, that sort of that

Marcel Schwantes (30:06.074)
that before and after that, you know, the toxic top down fear based to all of a sudden I meet, I meet Bruce and I see the exact opposite in the model that we should aspire to be as a leader. And it worked for me because I experienced it. And there was a whole lot of love involved. And was Bruce still large and in charge? Heck yeah, he was the boss. Of course, I had, I had to meet

Marcel Schwantes (30:35.742)
Yeah, all that is all part of the deal. Right? Bruce demanded excellence in me as well. But man, did he build me up to get there. And, and yeah. So that's, that's the story.

Skot Waldron (30:49.311)
That's cool. You've had some pretty head honcho people on your show. I mean, when I look at, you know, Ken Blanchard, Whitney Johnson, Marshall Goldsmith, Steven M. R. Covey, some of these people, um, I, I'm looking at these people going, well, these are the kind of people that are preaching this type of stuff. And probably these type of people that lead their organizations with love.

Marcel Schwantes (31:16.282)
Right. And write books. Absolutely, and write books about it and speak on it. So I just wanted to jump on the bandwagon. And it's been a blessing that they have joined the conversation. Or maybe it's me that joined their conversation, and they were gracious enough to pop in as a guest. So yeah. And the more voices.

Skot Waldron (31:16.938)
in that sense too. Is that what you gathered from having them on the show?

Skot Waldron (31:40.942)
That's powerful. That's awesome.

Marcel Schwantes (31:44.218)
the more voices that are shouting for the mountain. And that's why I accept invitations like yours to come on the show and talk about this. Is that more people need to hear about it. There's too much suffering in the world right now.

Skot Waldron (31:58.542)
There definitely is. And, uh, whether that's from, you know, culture wars, physical war, workplace battles, all kinds of stuff that's happening in the, in the planet. Um, we all just elevated with a little bit more love, whatever that is and whatever that means in the way that you lead and communicate, uh, I think it'll go a long way because I think.

Marcel Schwantes (32:11.163)
Hmm.

Marcel Schwantes (32:17.806)
Yeah.

Skot Waldron (32:24.486)
One thing that you talked about in the aspect of love is the listening aspect. You've mentioned that a couple of times and I go, how much can, how much more can I tell that I'm for somebody than just by listening? No, just taking that moment to just listen and digest and just be present with somebody. How much do we really spend time? Do we spend doing that versus just immediately solving their problem? Because we either want to look competent.

or we want to look smart, or we want to get them off our plate because we have something else to do.

Marcel Schwantes (32:57.422)
Yeah. Do you have time for a quick story related to that?

Skot Waldron (33:00.623)
Oh, please. Yeah, let's do it.

Marcel Schwantes (33:03.946)
So, in a lot of my workshops, I've even done this actually in a Zoom setting. I have a little exercise where I ask people to get into dyads, right? Find a partner and so the exercise goes like this. I say, all right, you have two minutes, partner A, ask these three questions about partner B. And your only role after you ask questions is to listen.

Do not be distracted, don't interrupt. Just sit there and listen so that you can learn about partner B, right? And questions are around, you know, relationships and how did you meet that person and what do you like best about them? Because you wanna test that, the listening skills. So the second half of that is now the partner gets to hear so I task partner B with, tell me,

You know what, go ahead and no, partner A, I tell partner A, go ahead and kind of regurgitate back what you heard to your partner that just spoke for two minutes, right? So partner B will say, yeah, I heard she said that I, you know, I'm married to this person and he likes to do this, da da. And then I go back to partner B and says, was that accurate? So interesting array of.

answers there, right? But the bigger lesson is that because we are constantly bombarded by interruptions because of these devices in our hands, some of the participants in a two-minute listening exercise have told me this is the hardest thing I have done in a long time. Being able to just sit there, park your thoughts and focus on the other person.

Two minutes, Scott. So if we can't listen for two minutes, imagine what's going on throughout the day and the week, when our minds are split in 10 different directions, when we're multitasking and not able to focus on one thing. To be able to sit down just to listen to someone talking about their lives for two minutes is a hard thing to do these days.

Skot Waldron (35:28.49)
Wow. Yeah. Do you think about, you think about that? You think about your own tendencies to want to jump in and why those are there or your tendency to drift somebody's talking and you're just going, whoo, what about that email? Oh my gosh. I wonder if that thing came through. Oh, I went at like, it's all of these things that are going out because we're so reactionary to everything that we're doing. Um, that, that attention span is.

Marcel Schwantes (35:42.15)
Yeah.

Skot Waldron (35:57.951)
is a problem.

Marcel Schwantes (35:57.954)
Yeah, our brains have become acclimated to interruptions. So we are seeking it. We're addicted to being interrupted. How many times the day will you pull up your phone and look at it? Even though you didn't get a text, even though you didn't get a notification, you just pull up the phone to look at it. Right. It's like, so we're, our, our brains have become addicted to that.

And even so we have lost the ability the human ability to be able to listen and be present with someone for the all the reasons you just stated and sometimes We're distracted by our own voices, right? We're listening to someone but we're already forming an impression or rebuttal in our heads about oh This is what I'm gonna say next and then we have lost the listening part

because now we're listening to ourselves.

Skot Waldron (37:01.91)
You not only have the podcast where you're talking about this, um, the love and action podcast, but you're also in the early stages of writing a book on this topic, um, to join the ranks of all the others that have written books on these topics. And, and so you're hitting on these ideas for that. That's supposed to come out in 2024. Uh, what sparked that? Why, why are you, I mean, I'm assuming it's the things we've been talking about here, but,

Why write another book about servant leadership and love space? Where are you going with that?

Marcel Schwantes (37:39.118)
Yeah, as I, full disclosure, I come from Christian tradition. So in scripture, there's a very small passage that talks about love being different things. And so I started to break that down and patience, kindness, and a lot of it speaks to humility and selflessness, right?

um, and advocacy and being able to believe in others. Okay. So that's what my book is about. But the reason I chose that is because I wanted to validate the science because it's a business book. I wanted to validate the science behind what faith based communities have known for two millennia and does it cross over into the leadership realm? And sure enough, as I looked at the literature, it does because

those that lead with patience, kindness, humility, selflessness make really good leaders. And we've been talking about a lot of those things already and books have been written about it. But nobody's actually put it under the framework of love from that sense, right? Borrowing, if you will, even though it's not a Christian book, borrowing from a faith-based tradition and then putting it into

business application. So that's basically the book.

Skot Waldron (39:10.642)
Ah, love it. I love that idea. That's really cool. Okay, I can see where you're going with that. I dig it. Okay. Well, you do a lot of speaking. You want to continue doing that. Your coaching business is there and it's thriving and growing, podcast is all there. Where do people get in touch with you if they want to engage with you on any of those types of platforms or inquire about any of that service?

Marcel Schwantes (39:12.048)
Ha ha!

Marcel Schwantes (39:39.174)
Sure, best place to go is MarcelSchwantes.com. And then I'm on LinkedIn. I do a lot of stuff on LinkedIn as well. And if you type in the Google Love in Action podcast, you'll pop up as well. So those are the best places to find me. And yeah, speaking is great to kind of get the word out about how to lead with love, whether it's on site,

on a physical stage or in a virtual stage. I always welcome those.

Skot Waldron (40:15.522)
Beautiful. Well, you've got a lot to share. Um, and I love this idea. I think that while we sit there and look at this idea as soft, I think the idea is that it leads to growth and opportunity for everyone in our lives and it leads to results and that's what we're here for. We're here on this planet to get results personally, professionally in every way. And, and I love the argument that it starts with that.

So appreciate it, man.

Marcel Schwantes (40:47.087)
Yeah, thanks for your time. It's been a great conversation. You've been very gracious to give me this platform. So I truly appreciate it.