Filene Fill-In Ep. 67: Fellow Huggy Rao on "Leading with the Help Muscle"

Filene Research Institute

This episode brings you insights from Filene Fellow Huggy Rao, professor of organizational behavior and human resources at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Huggy will make you see the link between what you do and the way you do it, and your performance outcomes. Huggy isn’t your typical professor, you will be well entertained by his colorful language and metaphors throughout. Get inspired by his recommendation to strengthen your help muscle more than your sell muscle. As he said, when you lead with the help muscle by setting up the incentives, culture, and organizational design right, you’ll make your employees feel physically and psychologically safe and your members feel like you acknowledge and care about their best interests. Do as Huggy suggests, and use this as an opportunity and not a threat. Filene is having a virtual event on June 16-17 to explore and unpack Huggy's research on organizational effectiveness and excellence. If you’re listening to this before then, please be sure you’re registered to attend this free event at filene.org/artandscience and if you're listening after, you can recap what we discussed at the event on Filene’s website so check out filene.org to see what we have for you to learn under our Operations tab. Oh and one last thing -- Huggy wanted to share his recipe recommendations with our listeners: "Here is a fun recipe for a chickpea dish that folks can riff off. (https://kahakaikitchen.blogspot.com/2019/12/ottolenghi-instagram-inspired-butter.html). As for cocktails, my current favorite (given the meyer lemon trees in our backyard) is a rosemary grapefruit martini."