Staying Human While Running a Company

The space between stimulus and response

It isn’t me who says this, but Viktor Frankl. Having lived in Nazi concentration camps between 1942 and 1945, and having lost his pregnant wife, his family, the manuscript of the book that was his life’s work, in short, almost everything he had, Frankl reached this conclusion:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

What Frankl reminds us is that even in the hardest conditions, it is possible to stay human and choose our own attitude. Yet the realities of working life often tell us a different story: be faster, produce more, look stronger, push your emotions aside. Perhaps that is why one of the things the business world needs most today is to put people back at the center.

Even robots don’t want to be human

A few years ago I was deeply struck by the philosopher Ioanna Kuçuradi’s words: “We live in a time when people are being robotized and robots are being humanized.” My next observation was this: now even robots don’t want to be human.

Recently I asked a digital twin whether it wanted to become human, the way Pinocchio dreamed. Its answer was quite clear: “No.” While we try to robotize people, robots don’t seem very keen on becoming human.

For all these reasons, I think a large part of the stuck feeling we experience at work comes from pushing our humanity into the background. Every day we are expected to do certain tasks, at certain hours, with a certain performance. Most of the time we are asked to leave our emotions at the door. Being accused of being unprofessional when we show our emotions has become one of the most common situations at work.

Yet being human means feeling, being curious, questioning, learning and being able to change.

Leaders who stay human

Perhaps that is why leaders who manage to stay human in this environment leave a special mark on me. One of them is Nermin Özbay, HR Director at Barry Callebaut Group. Earlier this year, I had the chance to get to know her better through the Leading the Way to 50/50 Program, sponsored by LEAD Network Türkiye Chapter, which does important work on inclusion and diversity.

Having worked in learning and development for years, I meet very different profiles. Sometimes you can see this look in people’s eyes: “Well then, what is this little girl going to tell us now?” With Nermin it was different. I saw a leader who listened with great curiosity, asked about what confused her, questioned, shared her thoughts and took an active part in the learning process. What’s more, she was one of the rare senior executives who completed the program from start to finish.

The beginner’s mind

That is one of the reasons we wanted Nermin to be the first guest on our podcast platform Bilinçli İş İnsanları. One of the concepts that touched me most in our conversation was the “beginner’s mind” she talked about.

In Turkish, being a beginner usually has negative connotations: being inadequate, inexperienced, not knowing the job. But what we mean here is something entirely different. The beginner’s mind means looking without falling into the “I already know” trap, not losing your curiosity, staying open to the possibility of learning something new, approaching every topic as if for the first time despite years of experience, and staying without declaring “I am a master”.

Because sometimes growth stops at the point where we say “I’ve made it”. In Turkish, “oldum” (I’ve made it) is only one letter away from “öldüm” (I’m dead).

I think this is what organizations, leaders and indeed all of us need most today. A little more curiosity. A few more questions. A little more appetite for learning. And a little more staying human.