Whole Wide Work Hall of Fame 2 [video]

PepsiCo Chair and CEO Indra Nooyi encourages her employees to bring their whole selves to work, and she spoke on this subject once again at the BlogHer ’11 conference in San Diego. Considering her organizational ideologies in the context of her leadership role, we’re very happy to induct her into the Whole Wide Work Hall of Fame. Congratulations Ms. Nooyi!

The WWW Hall of Fame distinguishes prominent figures who promote the ideals of revealing and engaging your whole self at work. In the brief clip below with interviewer Willow Bay of the Huffington Post, she says:

But most importantly, we want to create a company where every employee can bring their whole selves to work. The reason I say that, Willow, we notice that many people who live in communities, who live in the cities we operate in, they come and park themselves at the door. They come to the company, and they’re a different person. When they leave they pick themselves up and go out again.

That’s not how it’s supposed to be. We should be seamless. We want to create an environment in PepsiCo where everybody can bring their whole selves to work, so that we can get the best out of everyone. Taken together, it’s performance with purpose. It’s just a way of saying capitalism should have a conscience.

 Take a look:

We’d like to hear Nooyi describe more precisely how her employees can bring their whole selves to work; right now she relates the concept at a pretty high level.

Perhaps she’d like us to come and speak with her employees about the specific “how-tos” of this significant skill set?

To watch the full video, click here

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Indra Nooyi Speaks About Bringing Your Whole Self to Work

Bringing your whole self to work isn’t a brand-new idea, people have been talking about this concept for years. What’s often missing from the discussion, and which this blog addresses, is how specifically to bring your self to work. It’s a subject dear to our heart, and the title “Whole Wide Work” captures some of its essence.

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi often speaks of the concept of engaging your full self on the job, and at the 2008 Catalyst Awards Conference she dove into some detail . She says:

You absolutely have to bring your whole self to work. You cannot create a persona for yourself [at] work that’s different than the person that left the house. You just can’t do that because if you try to do that you’re living a lie and I’ll tell you from my perspective maybe it’s PepsiCo, I don’t know but I don’t believe that I walk in to work and sort of a shield comes in front of me because if I have an argument with my daughter at home, okay and I have lots of run ins with my older one, I’ll walk in to the office and tell everybody “half an hour decompression. I just had a blow up with my daughter. Leave me alone.” So they say fine…

It may be easy for her to proclaim these sentiments, because she’s the boss of everyone at PepsiCo! Yet her words feel genuine, and she makes a compelling case. From her story, we see that sometimes bringing your whole self to work relates directly to productivity, and other times it’s a prompt for support or accommodation. In every instance, feeling free to reveal your whole self helps keep you grounded in the present.

Does anybody in your workplace talk about the benefits of bringing your whole self to work?  How do their ideas impact your job?