In Jan. and Aug. 2025, Gallup released surveys that frame the current state of the workplace in the U.S.
Of the people surveyed:
- Only 32% feel engaged in their work, a ten-year low
- Only 32% feel strongly connected to their organization’s mission or purpose
- Only 28% strongly agree that their opinions count at work
And here’s one that I feel is particularly appalling:
- Only 39% of workers feel strongly that someone cares about them as a person at work.
My work to share our message about the power of Truly Human Leadership has never been more important.
This October, it will be ten years since the release of Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, the book I co-wrote with my friend Raj Sisodia. The book shared my journey as a leader, the revelations that inspired the concepts of Truly Human Leadership, and the journey and hard work of the people at Barry-Wehmiller who brought it all to life.
It was the culmination of our efforts to share that there is a better way to lead and that business can be a force for good. It began with my TEDx talk and continued as I shared our stories through my writing on my blog and in speaking engagements to other organizations.
But the work didn’t stop with the release of Everybody Matters in 2015. It had only just begun.
We formed Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute to bring our learning to other organizations and give them the tools to help cultivate cultures of people and performance in harmony.
The non-profit my wife, Cynthia, and I founded, Chapman Foundation for Caring Communities, expanded its efforts to partner with municipal and non-profit organizations to bring our transformational empathetic listening training to communities.
We began to work with universities to transform business school curriculum to help create citizens of the world who have a unique blend of academic skills and human skills before they become the leaders of tomorrow.
My speaking engagements tripled in number from what I had done before the book’s release. More often, I was addressing global audiences. Not just audiences in manufacturing, but in the health care and hospitality industries, global CEOs, the US military, the US Congress, and leading academic institutions like Harvard University, Fordham University and Washington University in St. Louis. In 2022, I gave the first of two speeches to the United Nations, a crowning achievement of my career.
Our story and message have been featured in countless books, articles and podcasts. Harvard Business School wrote a second case study on Barry-Wehmiller that is taught in more than 70 universities worldwide.
Meanwhile, over the last decade, Barry-Wehmiller has doubled in size, from a $1.7 billion company with 100 acquisitions to a $3.6+ billion company with more than 140 acquisitions (or as we say, adoptions.) More proof that you can care for people and also perform with excellence.
However, most importantly in the last ten years, we haven’t stopped learning. We have continued to gain new insights on how to combat the crisis of leadership in the world.
And clearly, what we’ve learned and observed since 2015 has been significant. We felt we had plenty of new lessons to add to the book. And, given the success of the first edition, our publisher agreed. I am immensely proud to share that the new revised and expanded edition adds 75 pages and will be released on October 21. It is once again published by Penguin Random House, but this time it will be on my friend Simon Sinek’s imprint, Optimism Press.
The first part of the original book, The Journey, was about my journey and the inspiration for Truly Human Leadership. The second part of the original book, The Playbook, was about how to actually bring it to life in an organization. This new third part, The Future, is about the deep impact Truly Human Leadership can have on the lives of people every day. It contains our further learnings from the past decade and details how Barry-Wehmiller has evolved internally over that time and how this legacy will continue on through my son, Kyle Chapman’s leadership. It shares how Barry-Wehmiller is doubling down on our efforts to build a better world, through all of those whose lives we touch through the course of our business operations and also through our growing outreach efforts to communities, school and universities, and other businesses. We believe a better future rests upon better leadership,
On the back cover of the book, we include a phrase that encapsulates the message of Everybody Matters: The way we lead impacts the way people live. It’s a phrase I carry with me every day to remember the importance of our message and why it is crucial that we continue to share it far and wide.
I think this new, expanded edition of Everybody Matters, is more powerful than the original edition and my hope is that it will become a definitive resource on leadership. That it will be read, not only by leaders currently in their roles, but a textbook for educational purposes for future leaders.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll share plenty of video, podcast and written content about the new version of Everybody Matters. Make sure to follow me on LinkedIn to see and share everything we’ve created to help spread our message. We invite you to explore the book’s website and share it with anyone who might be interested. There is an excerpt from the book you can download as well.
Ten years ago when announcing the original version of the book, we started with this statement:
Why?
Because seven out of eight people believe the company they work for does not care about them.
Because everybody should have the opportunity to use their gifts and talents toward a shared vision.
Because people should not be merely a means to a company’s financial success.
Because people want to be led, not managed.
Because everyone deserves the chance to return home from work each day feeling fulfilled by the work that they do.
And I’ll add this one to 2025:
Because the way we lead impacts the way people live.
Watch a video of Bob Chapman talking about the new revised and expanded edition of Everybody Matters in the header above.