Chief Change Officer
#280 Greg Morley, Author of Bond: Building Belonging in the Age of Burnout
Tue, 8 Apr 2025
This episode dives into Bond, the new book by Greg Morley—former global DEI head at Moët Hennessy and veteran HR leader at Disney and Hasbro. Vince and Greg unpack the emotional undercurrent of modern work—how a broken culture can push people into burnout and how small moments of recognition can pull them back. With global insight and Gen X clarity, Greg shares what real inclusion looks like on the ground, from Asia to Europe to the U.S. If you’re ready to lead with depth, not just diversity metrics, this conversation is your blueprint.When Belonging Breaks“There’s a crisis of loneliness at work—and it’s costing us more than we know.”Greg shares why he wrote Bond and how companies miss the mark when they treat inclusion as a buzzword instead of a survival strategy.From Burnout to Breakthrough“Once that sense of belonging disappeared, I spiraled into burnout—and then depression.”Vince opens up about his own career-breaking experience with mental illness, triggering a candid dialogue about what happens when work becomes unsafe, and how fragile even top performers can be without support.Inclusion Starts With the Conductor“Inclusion isn’t HR’s job—it’s everyone’s job. Especially leaders.”Greg introduces the five “keys” from his book, including why leadership visibility, emotional presence, and shared stories are more powerful than any KPI.The Myth of a Global Template“You can’t cut and paste DEI from New York to Hong Kong.”Drawing from his years across Asia, the U.S., and Europe, Greg explains why inclusive cultures must start with listening, not imposing—especially in diverse regions like Asia where family and collective identity take center stage.Beyond the Culture Wars“Most people want to feel seen. That’s not woke—it’s human.”Greg offers a grounded perspective on how to lead through today’s politicized climate without losing sight of what DEI is really about: creating space for people to contribute, grow, and thrive._________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Greg Morley --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.15 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>150,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Greg Morley and what is his background in DEI and HR leadership?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, we are joined by Greg Morley,
a leader in the world of human resources and a master of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Monette, Tennessee, one of the oldest and largest wine and spirits conglomerates in the world. Greg has an amazing story to share, covering the unique experiences that have shaped his leadership style and his strategic approach to DEI.
Greg, let's start with you giving us a bit of an introduction to this book, as well as a brief background on yourself for those who might be tuning in for the first time. This will help the listeners understand where you're coming from. Before we get into the book's content, the lessons and the teachings you want to share.
Chapter 2: Why did Greg Morley write the book Bond and what inspired it?
Thank you for having me back. Really pleased that you and I met each other more than a year ago. And I'm really proud of you and the work you're doing and what you're bringing to the conversation about humanity. So thank you for that. Today, what we're going to talk about is this, the book that I've written called Bond Inclusion and the Keys to Belonging and Connection. A little bit about me.
So I've spent most of my life in HR as an HR business leader and, and a good part of the latter part of my career in inclusion and belonging and diversity. I did write this new book, which I hope is a guide to inclusion and belonging in the workplace.
I've had the experience and great good fortune of leading diversity initiatives in the US, Europe, and Asia at major multinationals such as General Electric, Disney, Hasbro, and most recently my experience with LVMH Moet Hennessy. And I wrote the book to share what I believe are really life-changing lessons I've learned
for how leaders and teams can be more inclusive and embrace company diversity to be even more successful in the companies in which they're working.
Chapter 3: What does belonging in the workplace mean and why is it important?
First things first, starting with belonging. What do you mean by belonging in the workplace? And why is that important?
Sure. It's a great question. And let me maybe start by why I wrote the book, what inspired me to write the book as a way of addressing sort of the belonging, inclusion, and connection terms of the book. Over the decades of experience I had, both in and in HR roles, but also in roles such as marketing, sales,
and communications and distribution, what I saw was there is, in essence, a crisis of loneliness at work for some people. And there's a very important role that organizations play in fostering a culture of belonging and inclusion.
And the fostering of that culture of belonging and inclusion is not just a nice thing to do and everybody feels good at work and we go and we have parties and we're happy and we have lunch together. There is data that reinforces that when an organization is diverse, inclusive, and has leaders who lead in an inclusive manner on many measurable aspects, those companies do better.
They do better in terms of innovation. They do better in terms of avoiding risk. They do much better in terms of getting profitable products to market. And they do much better in terms of what would be obvious, which is keeping good people and attracting good people. So there is a business imperative to being good at these things.
And what encouraged me to write the book was I saw all of these sort of good and bad practices over my career, both within the companies I was working with and with others that I had become associated with. And that's why I got to the point of, okay, there's something to be talked about.
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Chapter 4: Why is it difficult to develop a true sense of belonging for employees?
And I think finally, what was a driving factor for me was I believe in my core that these things I just talked about are important to individuals and to businesses. And what I saw was we were in the world of diversity, equity and inclusion getting too far away from what I believed was the important
Part of diversity, actually, and inclusion was diverse workforces working well together and creating great business outcomes and great outcomes for individuals. And so that's how I got to the point of writing the book.
I agree with you 100% when it comes to belonging versus loneliness. Early in my career, I was immersed in big organizations, and it was all about work and climbing the corporate ladder. Belonging was seen as more of a soft feeling, something you didn't really think about much. You worked hard, made your boss happy, and got along Maybe you'll get promoted faster and better.
Some would call it luck. Others would call it politics. That's just a normal corporate life. But when you talk about belonging in the workplace, especially now that you absorbed it and you've been involved in different cultures, I'm curious, why is it so difficult to develop a true and sustainable sense of belonging for employees?
And how can we nurture that sense given all the complexities of corporate life?
There are many aspects to this, but let me focus on a couple of them. The first is that the world is changing in terms of the work, and especially since COVID. And I just read an article this morning which highlighted this. The arrangement or the agreement that employees and employers have has flipped.
It's a buyer's market in a way now for employees to go and work places where they believe they're going to be recognized, they're going to be rewarded, they're going to be heard, and they're going to feel like they belong. Now, that's happening in a time when individuals are more and more isolated because of things like social media.
And social media has this double-edged way of impacting people, which is it makes us much more connected, but much less connected. And when we talk about belonging in the workforce, what we're talking about is an individual coming to work and feeling like they can do their best work there, that they're going to be recognized for what they do, that the workplace is a safe place.
Many people don't have safe places outside of work, and it's a responsibility of employers to create a place that's a safe place to work. And why is all of this important? It's important because we want people on our teams and ourselves to do the incremental effort. We all get hired and we get a job description and it says all the things that have to happen.
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Chapter 5: How can managers nurture a sense of belonging among their teams?
As you were sharing. It reminded me of an incident from about 20 years ago when I worked at an international financial institution. At that time, I was a store employee. I received a lot of positive feedback from clients. I was sent to the headquarters for special training, first of its kind, and my boss rewarded me for all the hard work I put in.
My clients recognized it, and I was working incredibly hard, 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. I genuinely enjoyed the work. In your terms, I felt a strong sense of belonging to the role, to the company, and to my clients. The pay wasn't anything special, even under industry standards. But I was so motivated and invested in the work. Then something changed.
my boss left, and her replacement had a completely different style and approach. I wouldn't place blame entirely on this new person, but we didn't get along the way I had with my previous boss. The entire culture and team dynamics shifted the vibe The chemistry, the sentiment, everything fell off. That's when I lost my sense of belonging.
I kept working hard and professionally to serve my clients. But there was an internal conflict with my new supervisor. This eroded the connection I had felt to my work. The result? I quit the job, and it came as a surprise to everyone, clients, colleagues, even those at headquarters. They couldn't understand it because I had been such a hard-knocker, talented analyst. For them, it was a real loss.
For me, the damage was deeper. That's when I experienced my first episode of mental illness, what we would call now burnout. And that burnout spiraled into depression. I'm sharing this now because it ties back to what you said about the sense of belonging or the lack of it.
When that sense is lost, especially in a role where I had thrived and found purpose, the consequences were severe for both my career and my health. It was a perfect example of how critical belonging really is.
It's a case study, which makes the point of the lessons of the book. And I think it's important. I want to recognize you for sharing that story because many people go through those kinds of episodes. And oftentimes the loneliness occurs because we don't believe other people have had that experience or are going through those things either in the past or people that we work with.
So it's very powerful that you share a story like that that's personal and that can give encouragement to others. There are, you made this mention about you were working hard and you were loving what you were doing and you were getting recognized. but you weren't necessarily feeling like you were being well paid.
At some points in our career, maybe all along our career, people will feel like they're not being well paid. But the payment that you are getting in terms of satisfaction, encouragement, self-worth and the longer term development in your career far outpaced what you believe maybe you should have been earning. And there are two critical people in the organization. It's us and our manager.
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Chapter 6: What is the difference between diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)?
And ultimately you left the organization in a probably quite fragile state. Was that second manager, my guess is didn't spend the time to get to know you and understand what was important to you and make you feel that regardless of who you were working for, you were still important and you were still valuable even at your low salary that you felt.
So I think that part is maybe the advice I would give coming out of your very heartfelt sharing is that managers need to get to know the people that work for them. And in a way that you can understand what's important to them, what's important to them in their life, what they need to be successful in their jobs.
And those are the conversations that oftentimes we're not training managers to have, but they're just human conversations. They're just born out of curiosity. And I think that those things are much more important than we give time for.
We've touched upon belonging. Let's move forward to talk a bit about inclusion. How would you define DEI? Or what does DEI mean to you?
So when we define DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion, most people think of diversity, equity and inclusion is relating to things like gender and skin color, perhaps because they're the most visible forms of diversity.
And what I would say is also critically important, and I've seen this in my experience, is it's just as important to understand what experience both life and career experience somebody brings to their job. You know, what generation they come from, what languages they speak or understand, who, do they have any disabilities? Do they have any exceptional abilities?
Those are all things that are important in determining how you build a diverse workforce. The reality is most of the diverse elements that we bring to work are unseen. Now, who I'm married to is unseen. Do I have children or not is unseen. Do I have a cognitive ability or disability is unseen in most places. So this is why we have to get to know the people that work for us.
And when we talk about then why is the word inclusion important or the concept inclusion is, to me, I always imagine the image of an orchestra. So in an orchestra, there are many different instruments and they all have their own role. And at some point they come together in a piece to create a beautiful piece of music and experience a feeling.
And it's the job of the manager, the leader, to understand which pieces they need to bring to different projects, different work streams, different situations to create a beautiful piece of music, which can only be done in an orchestra by an incredibly diverse audience. field of instruments, which is also what we see at work.
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Chapter 7: How does Greg Morley describe the role of leadership in creating inclusion?
So the manager is the conductor.
Yes. So the manager is the conductor, but also think about the conductor as a rotating role. If you're project managing, then you could be the conductor. If you're running a business or employee resource group, you could be the conductor. It's just a matter of appreciating the differences in the workforce, trying to get the best out of the people so that they feel included.
And then what does included mean? It means that... When I'm at work and I'm doing work, I feel like my... voice is heard, I feel like I'm respected. I feel like I am in a safe place. I feel like I'm recognized for the work that I do.
And all of those things get back that point about incremental effort, which is when those things happen, then people will do more work harder and feel a real connection to the organization and ultimately a responsibility for the success of the organization and for the person's colleagues.
All these ideas sound great, but when it comes to implementation, things get much harder. Like many great concepts, as and when they are put into action within big corporations or even small teams is the execution that often derails the original intention. From my experience, how can those listening, whether they are managers, CEOs, or others in leadership roles, effectively implement good ideas?
I know this might be a big question, but I'd love to hear more about your perspective from an execution standpoint. Are there certain things a CEO or a leader should focus on to set the stage for success so that when they delegate the tasks to others, the implementation stays true to the original vision?
Yeah, great question. And my belief is that it's easier than it seems. And it's easier than, than we make it out to be. If you're trying to change the culture of an organization, it takes time. Let's say culture change of cultured organization takes three to five years really to change one. And that's with everybody working in alignment and understanding.
To change the culture of a team, like you experienced, can happen almost overnight for better or for worse, depending on the leader. In the book, in my book, Bond, I identified five different keys to inclusion, which we called them. And I'll just highlight a couple of them because you talk about example CEOs.
So there are a couple of things that I picked out from my own experience and in the interviews I did with others, which I think are critical. The first one is that leadership matters. So inclusion starts with the CEO or the most senior person in the organization or a manager. and assume that your own team is a company, the manager is the CEO.
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