This guest blog post comes from Ashli Blumenfeld, Co-CEO of Standard Meat Company, partner of Conscious Capitalism, and member of our Senior Leader Network.
At Standard Meat, you are one of two co-presidents. With two people sharing the responsibility of that role, how can collaboration bolster the ability of each of you to show up every day as a Conscious Leader?
My brother Ben Rosenthal and I serve as co-presidents of our fourth-generation, family-owned company. We are equally dedicated to the goals of Conscious Capitalism. We show up every day aware that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, and we are dedicated to using our business platform to elevate humanity, giving purpose to our lives and the lives around us.
Although Ben and I are aligned with our business strategy and goals, we are very different people with different strengths and skill sets. I am high energy and somewhat intense: a passionate person, energized by the people around me. Ben is calm, rational, and thoughtful: an amazing listener with deep empathy. Our leadership tasks divide naturally between us. I manage sales, marketing, and innovation functions, while Ben oversees operations and finance.
Our unique points of view have always been part of our lives and our relationship. While many people allow their differences to tear them apart, as brother and sister, we have learned to leverage our differences to our advantage. We share our wins, own our failures, and deliver constructive feedback with brutal aplomb. We are lucky that siblings can say hard things to each other and still come out as friends in the end, because when we do, we make each other better people and more conscious leaders.
Working together at Standard Meat, Ben and I make the company better — much better than we ever could leading alone. With neither ops/numbers nor sales/R&D running the show, Standard Meat benefits from a comfortable collaboration between different but equal points of view. The sum of our efforts is truly better than our parts.
The sum of our efforts is truly better than our parts.”
I realize that the same level of comfortable and equal collaboration might be difficult for more typical C-suite occupants, but I encourage everyone to try. Instead of being intimidated by other people’s differences, consider how they can make you a stronger leader. When people with unique points of view work side-by-side, looking through different lenses to find creative solutions, wonderful things can happen.
As Ben and I say to each other whenever we can: nothing should be so sacred that we cannot rethink it together.
