How an Unpaid Sabbatical Can Boost a Career: One Marketing Professional’s Story

Tim O'Connor, his wife Treesah, and Dean Dipak Jain from Kellogg

When Tim O’Connor left his job as SVP Marketing for a $5B company in Atlanta, he chose to first spend six months serving as the non-paid Executive Director leading the renovation and relaunch of the EthicMark® Award for Advertising, an international advertising award that recognizes outstanding marketing, advertising, and public relations campaigns and communications designed to uplift the human spirit and society. Tim was featured, along with yourSABBATICAL.com, on Oprah.com in a recent article about sabbaticals. Here, in his own words, is his perspective on how the sabbatical made a difference.

As a businessperson and a marketing professional I know that marketers, communicators, advertisers and the media have tremendous power to shape social attitudes, values and behaviors.  We not only can and do create demand and pull for our company’s products and services; but we also can and do shape how we see and act in the world, and view our ourselves and each other.  In plying our craft, we not only reflect society, but we also shape the very societies in which we work in.  And so we have a great responsibility in how we ply that craft.

The Award’s mission is to foster a transformative shift in the advertising field by demonstrating the power of media campaigns to further the public interest while furthering legitimate private interests.  The media has tremendous power to shape social attitudes and values, and therefore to serve as a tool to empower individuals and society to find solutions to the pressing social, political, and environmental challenges of our times.

Dr. Hazel Henderson, the progenitor of socially responsible investing globally, conceived EthicMark in 2004 and nurtured it in conversations with Rinaldo Brutoco the President of the World Business Academy, Dean Dipak Jain of the Kellogg School, noted author Deepak Chopra, Professors David Cooperrider and Ron Nahser and myself.  However the award was languishing and it needed full-time attention to help take it to its rightful place.  I realized that my leaving my then employer offered me a unique opportunity to use my time and talent and treasure and devote it full-time for an extended period leading EthicMark®.  You can learn more about EthicMark® at ethicmark.com

Highlights during the last year included creating an alliance with the World Business Academy to supervise the awards on an ongoing basis.  The Academy’s Fellows include some of the worlds leading figures who are rekindling the human spirit in business, including Warren Bennis, Deepak Chopra, David Cooperrider, Stephen Covey, Hazel Henderson, Gay Hendricks, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Dean Dipak Jain, Jerry Jampolsky, Rosabeth Kanter, Amory Lovins, William McDonough, Greg Mortenson, Ron Nahser, Michael Ray, Dean N. Mohan Reddy, Lance Secretan, and Peter Senge.

We created an international jury of 30 marketing, media and academia professionals to vote on submissions, including Charles Firestone, Executive Director, The Aspen Institute; Joe Keefe, CEO, Pax World; Nancy Roof, Founder/Publisher, Kosmos Journal; and Simran Sethi, Host/Writer, Ethical Markets TV series and contributor of environmental segments to CNBC and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

We created a strategic alliances with the Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, to confer the 2009 awards which took place in June.  The Global Forum, convened by Case Western Reserve University, the United Nations Global Compact, with its 4,000 corporations from around the world, and the Academy of Management, with its 19,000 business school professors from over 90 countries, was the perfect place to announce this year’s EthicMark Winners.

This year, EthicMark received several dozen nominations from six countries.  The nominations were narrowed down to a group of five finalists in the for-profit category and five finalists in the not-for-profit category which were voted upon by the jury.  Pantene, a division of Proctor & Gamble, won in the for-profit category for its ad, “Chrysalis” (Thailand).  CARE won in the not-for-profit category for its ad, “I Am Powerful” (USA).  The presentation of the Awards at the Global Forum opening night reception included speeches by the Mayor of Cleveland; the President of Case Western Reserve University; David Cooperrider, Founder of BAWB; and Gunter Pauli, Head of the Zero Emission Research Initiative.  It was my distinct pleasure and honor to then announce the EthicMark® winners.  You can find the finalist ads at http://bawbglobalforum.ning.com/page/ethic-mark-nominees-1.

It was a special evening.  But even more so it has been a special and deeply transformative time for me during this sabbatical while I helped lead EthicMark® to the next level.  I believe business can be a spiritual calling.  And I believe inside every businessman and woman is a voice and spark that longs to apply their talents in incredible, remarkable, amazing and marvelous ways and create a world that is better than the one they came into.  A world which many generations forward will be honored and proud to say that their ancestors contributed to making.  And I also believe business, the most powerful institution in our world, can find solutions to the pressing social, political, and environmental challenges of our times and turn them into legitimate value-creation opportunities for their companies.  So business can do well by doing good.  I believe I’ve been able to practice that first hand during my sabbatical.

I asked Tim what he learned from his six-month sabbatical. Here’s what he said:

I learned how to lead a start-up from essentially scratch.  I also learned how to raise funding, and candidly I think raising money for a not-for-profit is harder since the “return” is not financial but rather “out come based”.  And I learned how to lead a team of volunteers; and this is key and the biggest most tangible lesson learned.  Too often in business, regardless of what says about empowerment, there is the underlying current of money and fear as the motivator, especially in these uncertain economic times.  So managers tend to talk in terms like I need you to do this for me, that is not important this is, why are you doing that, if you do this you’ll earn this more money, here is where we stack rank your performance (with the implied message that those at the bottom will get cut), we “took out” one-hundred head count (as if people were bodies in a war) ….  And candidly I’ve done some of the previous in the past.

But with volunteers the levers of money and fear do not exist.  So you really can only lead, you can’t manage at all.  Words like please, thank you, I appreciate your help, how can I help you, what do you think we should do, let’s work together on this … are in the conversation.  Understanding what your team is passionate about and helping them achieve that, making the experience fun and enjoyable, and building a healthy culture within the team become paramount.  And I would say these are all things that would make a for-profit team excel too.  I had to transform my leadership approach into one of servant leadership.  Now I don’t pretend to be an expert at it.  But I do recognize a good thing and know that in my work in the for-profit world again, I need to apply these lessons learned.  And candidly it makes my experience as a leader more enjoyable and fulfilling too.  So I’ve found myself to be more collaborative, inquisitive, appreciative and effective.