--- title: "Steven Bartlett: Why Empowering People Beats Power Every Time in Building a Modern Company" url: "https://authoritymag.co/articles/steven-bartlett-why-empowering-people-beats-power-every-time-in-building-a-modern-company" publisher: "Authority Magazine" author: "Krish Chopra" authorUrl: "https://authoritymag.co/authors/krish-chopra" interviewee: "Steven Bartlett" company: "The Social Chain Group" category: "Business" datePublished: "2018-07-12T22:19:32.393Z" dateModified: "2026-11-12T17:10:06.032Z" tags: "Business" --- # Steven Bartlett: Why Empowering People Beats Power Every Time in Building a Modern Company *The 25-year-old CEO and co-founder of The Social Chain Group shares how eliminating hierarchy, instilling trust, and prioritizing employee mental health built a thriving workplace culture.* > There is a lot of emphasis on entrepreneurship and the perceived glamour of running your own business. That is fundamentally incorrect. I see this image of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur really guiding a lot of people astray but also leading people who aren’t fully equipped or aren’t aware into this kind of lifestyle. --- Recently I had the opportunity to interview Steven Barlett from [The Social Chain Group](https://www.socialchain.com) for the ongoing series: **CEOs Share Leadership Strategies To Improve Your Company’s Culture.** Steven Bartlett is the 25-year-old CEO and co-founder of [The Social Chain Group](https://www.socialchain.com/). The Social Chain Group consists of over 20 companies within Marketing, Media, Commerce, and Technology based worldwide. He was recently awarded Entrepreneur of the year by Natwest and the most disruptive in the industry by 100 peers at Econsultancy. --- **Krish Chopra: What are the 3 most important values that your company’s culture is based on?** **Steven Bartlett:**The three most important values that our company culture is based one are simple but integral; first, fearless, ever-changing. **Krish: Managing millennials can often be a polarizing topic. Can you elaborate on your advice for managing the “millennial mindset?”** **Steven:**The most important learning from running a business and more specifically the people is really instilling trust into our environment. A large proportion of our workforce are millennials so establishing this trust in the workplace is so important to our culture. Social Chain employees have complete freedom, whether it be flexible working hours, unlimited holidays or our ‘see the world’ policy that allows people to go travelling for extended periods and have job security. Through this freedom we have established real trust with everyone who works here and this trust is reciprocated back to us. **Krish: What are your “3 Ways to Improve Your Company’s Culture” and why.** **Steven:** · Care, but for the right reasons. Caring in itself isn’t enough, you must show that you care, just saying you do is no real use. One of the most important things we do for our employees is provide an onsite therapist to ensure mental wellbeing. · Create an environment where people enjoy spending time. At Social Chain we provide a home from home, allowing people to bring their dogs to work, have food on site, a slide and speaking pods all of which provide the optimum working environment. This means our space has become one people love to be in. There’s a great difference in productivity when people feel at ease in their environment and it doesn’t feel like you’re sat at your desk all day long. · No hierarchy. Ever. We pride ourselves on our decision making process, which involves every single person in the company. There is no top down approach when it comes to important decisions which impact every individual. Everyone gets a say in the company’s decisions. An example of this would be a recent enquiry from a potential client which would potentially be divisive in terms of opinion. Everyone in the company was asked their opinion on whether we would work with said client, even if they were completely far reached from the campaign. If we can’t agree on something as a company, we won’t do it. **Krish: Strong company culture is something that everyone likes to think they have but very few have it. Why do so many organizations struggle with creating strong, healthy work environments?** **Steven:**We never created a culture for the sake of having it, the culture was created by each individual that works for the company and we now work to maintain that above all else. People are hired here based on whether they’ll work with our existing culture, we hire people for who they are as a person. > Leaders become great not because of their power, but their ability to empower others **Krish: What is one mistake you see a young start-up founders make in their culture or leadership practices?** **Steven:**There is a lot of emphasis on entrepreneurship and the perceived glamour of running your own business. That is fundamentally incorrect. I see this image of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur really guiding a lot of people astray but also leading people who aren’t fully equipped or aren’t aware into this kind of lifestyle. You have to learn. Quickly. There is little time to focus on yourself or how you’re perceived and you have to be prepared to make immense sacrifices. Alongside this, the biggest mistake young start-up founders make is believing that you can do everything. Behind a great business is a great team, and I’d say the key to building a great business is hiring people that are better than you are. Leaders become great not because of their power, but their ability to empower others. **Krish: To add to the previous question, young CEOs often have a lot of pressure to perform and often wear many hats. What’s a simple time efficient strategy they can start doing today to improve their company’s culture?** **Steven:**The one thing I did when building the company is create an environment where I personally would like to work. When I was younger I spent time working in call centres in dingy offices around manchester with dictatorial bosses and hierarchical structures. With Social Chain, I just wanted to create a space I enjoyed being in every day. The culture was then created out of this. There comes a time within a startup where you begin to take on more staff and retaining this culture becomes more and more essential. The best step I took to do this and probably the single most important hire we ever made was our Head of Happiness. Their role involves retaini **Krish: Success leaves clues. What has been your biggest influence in your leadership strategy and company culture?** **Steven:**I think the biggest inspiration and learnings I have acquired on my journey is from my personal failures and mistakes. There is no blueprint in business, no rules to tell you how to run your company. Only trying and testing the methods you believe will work. I have taken inspiration from a wide range of literacy throughout my journey too, travelling so much between our New york office and the UK offices allows me time to spend a lot of time reading. **Krish: What advice do you have for employees that have bad bosses? How can they take control and improve a bad situation?** **Steven:**Leave and come to Social Chain. Joking. It is difficult to comment, as in our environment it would be such a simple answer, that person would just talk to their colleague about the issue. But I recognise this is not as simple in all environments, where people’s bosses can seem impenetrable and there is not as fluid communication structures in place. My honest advice would be never to suffer in silence and talking to people in person is the mos. **Krish: Okay, we made it! Last question — what’s one unique hack you or your company does that has enhanced your work culture?** **Steven:**This is perhaps not a hack, but through our culture we have developed an employee life-life balance, meaning that we make working at Social Chain an enjoyable experience for everyone involved. The happiness doesn’t start and end in the office, it also gives the team skills they can take home with them. Every Tuesday there are yoga and meditation sessions and on Wednesday’s there is a Lunch & Learn, with topics ranging from self-defence skills, confidence building, mental health awareness and drop in therapy sessions. Self development is at the forefront of priorities for Social Chain which has in turn greatly enhance our work culture. --- **A note to the readers**:*Improving company culture happens at any level in an organization. If you learned one thing in this interview, please share this with someone close to you.* A special thanks to Steven Bartlett again! Stay in the loop — Follow me and get updates when I post new leadership articles and interviews — check me out here: [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/krishchopraofficial/) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishchopra/) [Instagram](http://instagram.com/krishchopra27) --- Source: https://authoritymag.co/articles/steven-bartlett-why-empowering-people-beats-power-every-time-in-building-a-modern-company (Authority Magazine, Business). Interviewee answers are first-person statements of the guest. Index of all pages: https://authoritymag.co/llms.txt