Smaller Earth …
… builds balance that brings extraordinary resilience with the help of EB Centre.
Smaller Earth is a cultural exchange organisation that has changed the lives of tens of thousands of young people around the world. EB Centre has been its partner for more than a decade, helping it strengthen its leadership and management culture.
Smaller Earth has been facilitating life changing opportunities for young people since the Millennium. When its founder partners in the UK and US began operations in 2000, they helped 35 people. By 2019 it was sending more than 10,000 individuals around the world each year. Participants met people and learned about life in North, South and Central America, Asia Pacific, the UK, Central Europe and beyond.
Smaller Earth has always shown that bringing cultural exchange to life is not just a mission but a critical organisational success factor. It began to bring its global leadership team and best talent together almost from the start, so they could build relationships and understand different cultural perspectives.
Smaller Earth began working with EB Centre officially in 2010 and has since embraced balance in leadership deeply into its culture. It has deployed the full range of EB concepts to develop its leaders individually and as a global group, which sustained it through a pandemic that threatened its very existence. It is an exemplar of how organisations that invest in creating balance in leadership not only succeed but build vast resilience.
We spoke with its UK Co-founder, Dave Robinson, and Board Chair, Bastian Weinberger who shared some of Smaller Earth’s achievement and how the relationship with EB Centre has grown.
Coalescing around a people-centric culture
EB Centre has been actively involved in Smaller Earth annual global conferences for more than a decade, supporting leadership development sessions for the Board and Executive management, and groups such as senior women and business unit heads.
It introduced Qualities of Leadership cards at the 2014 conference, and they have been widely deployed ever since. They enabled leaders to explore different aspects of their personal and collective leadership, via a pack of 52 cards that is divided into more traditional business-focused attributes (coloured green) and more relational and human-focused traits (coloured purple).
Dave said,
“We bring every employee and stakeholder together around programme related content, not just around cultural exchange but also professional and personal development activities which are largely structured around the EB Centre ideas.”
The cards brought a fresh perspective to the discussions.
“The compelling part was realising that the more masculine green qualities can eclipse the purple ones, and that the purple style balanced incredibly well against a traditional ‘command and control’ kind of leadership. The EB Centre philosophy really resonated with us, it was a perfect fit for the business and where we wanted to take it.”
Establishing better balance in leadership
The Leadership and Management Development Programme (LMDP) has run almost continually since 2015. It is used not just to educate and develop current managers but bring on the team’s best and most committed talent. The cards help people explore how they work individually and as a group. Dave explained:
“The concepts EB Centre introduced were just incredible, and really became embedded when we incorporated them into our leadership programme. We bring together those in key roles and who really want a future in our business, in face-to-face cohorts of 16-20 people. Rosie Mayes from EB Centre facilitates the sessions which EB has helped to design.”
Bastian added that “Rosie really brought these sessions to life. They were intense workshops which our young and capable leaders have described as life-changing – and were so different from the usual business training. Allowing people to share so much about themselves unleashed incredible power.”
Smaller Earth’s staff are based within 6 brands spread across 14 countries. A distributed team brings its challenges, Dave explained. “People need to spend time working together and understanding each other. Our business is built around people, so we were originally far more relational than you might traditionally see in a business – almost too people-centred. Business results didn’t matter quite as much to us as people results. The EB ideas helped us find a better balance.”
EB Centre has gradually introduced other concepts including its Layers of Reflective Learning tree, which helps people explore and reflect on the deeper layers that often lie beneath the surface of everyday interactions and communications and significantly influence interpersonal relationships. Bastian recalled the power he perceived in one concept:
“EB Centre introduced the concept of situational leadership being like a flock of geese – flying in different shapes at different times, with huge flexibility and strength in flocking together. It is so powerful for young leaders to realise that they don’t have to be pigeonholed or static but can adapt as needed.”
Complementing and amplifying traditional ideas
The way that Qualities of Practice in leadership enable self-exploration and self-understanding that can amplify and complement traditional assessment and profile models such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and Belbin team performance breakdown. EB Centre ideas can help people to comprehend such classifications in new ways, Dave suggested.
“We have often used basic personality profiling, so people could start having a conversation about how they were similar or different. At conferences these are a good introduction and help engage people to think about who they are – but then you can build on that with the EB concepts. Qualities of practice help people consider personalities in different ways and think about why others often see a different side of them.”
The concepts of balance in leadership and qualities of practice have become part of the Smaller Earth lexicon and way of thinking and are deeply rooted in its management culture, he continued
“The EB ideas have become the language we live by – we’ll talk about walking leadership, the green and the purple sides of people, the tree, and the roots. The whole idea of creating the conditions for success is a framework that fits well with our people and is easy to work with.”
Maintaining balance as the world stood still…
By 2019, Smaller Earth had become a sizeable and strong organisation. Then, the pandemic arrived.
This business that depended on enabling young people to travel felt swift and deep impacts. There were tough choices, and the company reduced its headcount from 150 to a low point of 35. It worked to survive until international travel restrictions eased – which took an agonising 20 months, in the USA.
Its leaders knew that they needed a balanced perspective more now than ever before. Although global in-person movement had to cease, the team had to keep communicating and developing. So, activities to keep the senior team and key partners engaging with each other continued. EB Centre worked with them remotely using its tools to support them through a very difficult phase. Dave recalled that
“we used the cards in online sessions to help every office have a conversation about how people were responding. We explored the qualities they were displaying and those that were most valuable going forwards. Offices could then have further conversations about how to work together better. The EB concepts are never prescribed, but experiential. They are about encouraging people who do the actual work to understand each other better.”
“During COVID we recognised that we were able to articulate what was going on, using the EB ideas. It was time to be green and to work together on the business. We needed to build on the foundation we had built on the relational side, in creating the trust that our people had with each other. Everyone came at the current challenge from a green perspective, and it worked. We would sit down with the Qualities of Practice cards, and ask ourselves: what is it we need to get through this? People could articulate the green qualities that were needed and agree what to do.”
Any cracks in the company’s confidence could easily have discouraged the minimised team. However, its determination to succeed and investment in its leadership prevented this. Bastian said,
“A significant proportion of those who stayed throughout the pandemic and showed such resilience were people who had undergone our leadership training.” It was not only employees who stuck with them either – an as-yet-unsigned Joint Venture partner found that Smaller Earth’s communications and resolve did not falter one iota, and this relationship also continued without any disruption.
Creating a new mission with some old faces
When the leadership team found time to breathe again, they found the self-reflection techniques EB Centre had introduced invaluable as they began to replan, regain confidence, and rebuild the team.
“The legacy of the COVID years is that we now really appreciate the business-like green side of leadership as much as we do the purple people-focused things” Dave reflected.
The investment has had a profound impact on the organisation, and its people. "Every year we felt that investing in EB Centre was justified, because we could see people benefiting from the training, progressing and often going above and beyond. The value we feel each year grows and compounds as we invest in our people,” Bastian stated.
That investment wasn’t lost, even though many managers departed. “Although some of the people who did our leadership programmes left during COVID, we remain in touch, and all are doing well,” said Dave. In fact, unlike many businesses whose teams moved on, Smaller Earth is finding that many of its previous colleagues are now keen to return. Bastian told us:
“We had created a culture that created huge loyalty, but we also helped people ask ‘why’ they did their jobs, and always allowed people to move on if appropriate. EBC helped give us the audacity to hold open conversations earlier than in most organisations. That is paying back now, because it is also one of the reasons people want to come back.”
He continued “We keep working with EB Centre because we get phenomenal feedback. Some people have come from more traditional, hierarchical organisations who really embraced the ideas, because they allow everybody’s voice to be heard. In contrast, if we have people who don’t embrace them, we see that they listen less to others.”
Bastian also sees no reason a bright future for the EB Centre relationship:
“Rosie Mayes brings incredible strength in facilitation, and an ability to read the energy in the room and pivot the session in the blink of an eye when required. EB Centre brings such a broad leadership toolbox, and they are all true professionals.”
Smaller Earth emerged from COVID with its culture and approach intact. If anything, it seems stronger and more focused. It has roughly half the headcount, but is leaner, with a refined business model and smarter tech to use as it pursues its mission to be a world leader in international cultural exchange.
Dave summed it up perfectly:
“Our strategy was good, and the culture we created was amazing. COVID was a huge shock. But now we’ve come through it, this is not just a good place to be, but a great place to work, and productivity is better than ever. This has been the best year ever in the history of the business.”
- Dave Robinson