Speaking and Communicating Podcast

ou know, what's your real role as an executive?

Not in terms of the tasks you have to do, but what is your fundamental job in terms of bringing your organization forward and your people forward and developing them in a different type of way?

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I'm your host, Roberta.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to iTunes and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Let's get communicating.

My guest today, on his last episode, he was here to talk about his book, Adapting in Motion, preparing you for the future that you cannot avoid, but that is here, a future filled with a lot of AI and technology that we can no longer ignore.

He's here to talk to us today about his new webinar series, where he discusses with executives and the leaders that he works with on how to adapt in motion, not just for leaders, but for all of us.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him back for the third time on the show.

Hello, Roberta.

It's great to be back.

It looks like if I was an immigration desk, I would just let you pass now.

You've been here that many times.

Right, I know you.

Go right through.

Right.

I've seen you before.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So you've been very busy lately.

Very busy in a good way.

You know, the fun part of being an entrepreneur and having your own business is that there are no rules and you get to just kind of do whatever it is that you want.

And so I'm kind of taking that to heart and it's paying off.

It's paying dividends.

And so we've got the new series that I launched.

I'm tired of the webinars that we see.

Everybody's got a webinar.

It doesn't really mean anything.

You know, nobody tunes in.

So I was talking to my team about my frustration with all the noise that comes out and it's not very good.

And so we said, all right, let's make Not A Webinar.

Let's create an event.

And so now it's called Not A Webinar, Candid Executive Insights.

And it's going to be a series of eight executive interviews, handpicked by me, executives I know, who are really, really good at preparing for change, getting the organizations ready for whatever change is coming and have really strong opinions and really good insights that are particularly relevant.

And that was the big one for me.

I wanted something relevant, not just the typical corporate talking points and nonsense that comes out, talking in theory and all this stuff.

They talk about real impactful things that we can do to make sure that we're all prepared.

Here's the first thing I noticed when I was researching you the first time that you were going to be on the podcast.

When I watched your YouTube videos, you tend to be not having the usual, this is the way everybody thinks type of mode.

You always have your own unique perspective on things.

How is it that you don't follow the mold?

Because especially since the pandemic, everybody's just copied template, copied, let me just do what everybody's doing.

How is it that you are able to just step out of that and create your own trajectory?

It's a great question and thank you for that.

In the first couple of years in running my business, I'd gone away and reflected and was thinking about my year and planning and all that stuff.

And I had this kind of realization that I needed to unlearn almost everything that I had learned in corporate because it was really limiting what I could do in my business.

I want to do this.

Well, I can't really do that.

What would legal and compliance say and all that?

But I don't have legal and compliance anymore so I can actually take the gloves off.

And when I sit and I think about my time in corporate, and I used to write the corporate talking points, that was my job.

I was always incredibly frustrated with, and we've all done it as we sit at work and you hear the executives get up and they say rah rah and here we go and everything's going to be great.

We roll our eyes and we go back and say, what does it really mean?

Everything is so sanitized that it's not actually helpful.

And so now I work with people and organizations.

It's the same feedback everywhere I go.

It's the same thing.

Oh, here comes another coach.

It's not going to change.

Here comes another consultant.

They're going to give advice.

It's not going to change.

And I just got tired of that.

And so why don't we kind of take the gloves off and actually say what people are thinking.

If you want to be relevant, you want to develop your people.

Yes, there is a corporate aspect and the corporation needs to come up with their philosophy and their vision and all of that.

But there is a personal accountability that people tend to ignore and they don't want to have those difficult hard conversations.

And so let's just talk about what's actually relevant and real and is going to have real tangible impact.

Even though there are executive coaches, not many leaders are prepared or have the capability of having difficult conversations.

Right.

And most of the advice we get is theory based.

Right.

We hear a lot of coaches and they'll just say, well, if you just do this, be a good listener, be empathic and do, you know, whatever.

Doesn't mean anything.

And a lot of the companies I go into, they say we're firing all our coaches.

They're making zero impact.

There's no measurable impact whatsoever.

And when I go back to the webinar and thinking about what am I actually going to put out?

I mean, I don't really put out much on social media or anything.

I mean, I put out the podcast and everything, but I won't do it unless I have something to say.

A lot of people were taught these entrepreneurs and these businesses, you have to put out content, you have to put out content a lot, five times a day and put all this stuff up.

And it's just noise.

And you just scroll through it.

Nobody's paying attention and they're just kind of filtering it through and there's no real relevance to it.

And so I decided a long time ago, you know, I've tried that whole thing where I'm just putting out stuff just to do.

And I'm like, this is stupid.

This is just an absolute waste of my time and it's a waste of everybody else's time.

So I don't create anything or put anything out unless I actually have something to say.

And you see the relevance of it and the potential impact it could have.

Because you're right, they have these.

I'll be a coach and I'll show you how you can have three hundred and sixty five posts for the next year of content on your Instagram.

They put these stupid quotes out or they'll use ChatGPT to just create fifty tweets and they just blast them out and they schedule them out for whatever.

And it doesn't mean anything and it's just completely lost.

And I think that's why a lot of people are so difficult to reach now, because they're just exhausted of being inundated with the same nonsense over and over.

And when I talk to my team and I talk about putting things out, I want a reputation for people to know that when I have something to say, it's worth listening to.

And it's not just going to be noise.

And I'm not going to say, hey, be yourself today and look in the mirror and hug yourself and whatever.

You're great.

Remind yourself that you're great.

Some people need to hear that sometimes.

That's fine.

But you're not going to get that from me.

What you're going to get is something you can actually use as you develop yourself, develop your teams, develop your organization into something that they can use and be tangible and build something and utilize.

Speaking of things you can use and given practical advice.

So in your book, which we discussed at the last episode, you were very clear on one with technological changes.

You need to be prepared in order to not be left behind because that's what all the fears kick in of what's going to happen to me.

Am I still going to have a job in 10 years at the way things are going?

Would you like to elaborate on that more?

Sure.

If you saw the first Not A Webinar, we had a phenomenal guest, Bess Freedman.

She's the CEO of Brown Harris Stevens, which is a phenomenal one of the top real estate agencies in New York.

And they've got a presence in other places as well.

But she talked about how they're utilizing technology for the realtors, utilizing it for the organization.

And what we had talked about is it's great that we've got this technology and it's going to fundamentally change everything.

But people are afraid to use it because they don't understand it.

And what many people talk about in terms of technology that's coming is are the benefits the organization is going to get and we can streamline and we can move faster and yada yada yada all this stuff.

But what nobody talks about is the person who's going to be affected by it.

It's up to us.

We have a responsibility individually to understand it and use it.

And nobody talks about that.

When I come into an organization, we're talking about all this technology that's coming in and that's great.

And how do we develop our employees?

In my little crystal ball, you will be left behind if you don't understand blockchain.

You will be left behind if you don't understand how to use AI.

Because when a company is going to lay off half of their people, they're only going to keep the top 50% who actually understand the technology that's being used within the organization.

If you don't use it, then that's table steak for your role and to keep your job.

So we have a personal responsibility individually as workers to at least understand it, become familiar with it.

Because the fears we have, there's a fear of being left behind.

But there are other fears too.

A fear of what does this mean for me if I actually understand it and figure it out?

Is this going to create more work for me because I'm going to realize that my job is irrelevant, I'm going to have to make a pivot.

We don't know what's behind door number three until we open door number three.

But if you're just a passive observer and somebody opens door number three for you, you're not going to gain entry.

And so we almost have to push ourselves towards that door to say, how do I get in there?

What do I need to learn so that I can make myself relevant in the coming years?

Get to know the basics.

You can go to YouTube, how to use ChatGPT.

What is that?

You know, basics on how to use it to not be so clueless about anything.

I don't think we have that luxury anymore.

No, we don't.

And it's moving so quickly.

I mean, ChatGPT from just a couple months ago is a completely different animal now in terms of integrations they have.

And it's becoming a platform.

And there's all kinds of different things.

And it's moving so fast.

I mean, I don't know anybody who could keep up.

Like, it's just going so incredibly.

But unless you toy with it, just toy with it, understand what's positive.

Create your weekly meal plan or something, just something simple to see how it comes out and then start challenging it and say, well, what else can I do with this?

And it's actually fun.

It's almost a new toy that you get to use.

But if you don't understand, it's a whole new way of thinking in terms of thinking and parameters and giving instruction.

And that's a new skill set that we have to develop.

It's more of, you know, if I need something quickly that can take care of this mindless work, processes that could get rid of it so I could do creative thinking, so I can challenge the business, so I can create more business within whatever company it is that I work.

You can be an accountant.

You could create more work.

That's going to be really valuable to the business.

But you have to understand how to use the technology to allow you to do that.

Speaking of Bess Freedman, when I was watching your interview, the one thing she said was because she's in real estate, people still want to buy from people because of the industry.

She said not from technology.

They want to feel the house.

They want to have a feeling of seeing themselves there.

But then also mentioning Chad GPT, she said her son did his assignment for college.

So is that a downside to it?

Does that mean college admissions, if they ask for essays on you on why you should go to Berkeley, you're going to ask just GPT?

Most people do.

But I think and what I would see in terms of education, this is going to fundamentally change education.

What's the point of writing an essay or a paper is to show that you understand, communicate that you understand the topic at hand and you want to present yourself in the best possible way and all that.

Every kid right now writing a paper in college is using Chad GPT.

Oh, my goodness.

Which is going to force education to say, all right, maybe papers aren't the way that we need to test whether or not you fully understand the information.

They're still always going to be, in my opinion, a role for human interaction.

And so while Chad GPT or AI or whatever you use, Bard, I think is the Google one, as you use that, it's going to be supplemental to the pure human condition.

What makes you uniquely human and how do you use that as one component in whatever it is that you're building or looking to do?

So as you're applying to a college or applying to a job, I mean, Chad GPT is writing people's resumes and it's doing all that other kind of stuff.

That's only one aspect of what organizations are going to be looking at.

It's a piece of paper that people are really looking, but are you actually a good fit?

There's more of the human interaction.

We could take a look at cognitive ability and thinking on your feet and decision making.

You never got that off of a resume, but organizations are catching up to say, you know what, here's a personality assessment.

Where does this fit in terms of the overall organization?

What's the way you like to think?

How do you think about things?

There's a role for different ways of thinking.

So it's just forcing our hand to move beyond the way that it used to be.

And the way that it used to be was incredibly outdated and incredibly flawed.

And there was a lot of judgment and a lot of cognitive bias and a lot of mistakes that we made because we are human.

And so if we can use the robot to fix many of these biases or at least lessen some of the biases, we can then as business owners or executives, then say, all right, how do I grab a human and make a human additive to my team who has this capability to understand this technology?

You keep mentioning human interaction and with your executive leadership coaching, what have you found are the main challenges of organizations getting a coach, dealing with the human element?

Because the technical they know that leaders are facing.

What I'm working on with clients now, much like universities are rewriting their entire educational approach, is rewriting the learning and development approach within the organization.

It's no longer doing these online courses about listening skills and what's the two positives and a negative.

Here's how to give a person feedback, like all these kinds of tools, right?

That sandwich, they're irrelevant, they're outdated.

What we're doing is, you know, when we understand humans and a human's ability to make fast decisions, we have to recognize that we have to focus on the individual and what they believe and who they are as an individual.

So it's individual personal development and getting them excited about self-development.

It's the purpose of life and all that kind of stuff is developing yourself, understanding a person's nature completely so that they are comfortable in their own skin to have the challenging types of conversations, to be curious about another person's perspective, to recognize that there are different types of beliefs out there.

One of the most popular things I do is go through this really deep workshop in terms of what is your belief system.

And everybody in the room almost creates what they actually believe.

And some go crazy, you know, really heavy kind of stuff about God and everything else.

And that's okay.

And other people go a little more simple in terms of the workplace and everything else.

But everyone then, we go through the exercise of how do you articulate this belief system and give the space for somebody who has a differing belief so that you can find that there are different perspectives of different people and different ways that people approach challenges.

And everybody's hired for that cognitive dissonance, the different ways that we think about things, we bring them in, because that's the value that these different perspectives bring to challenge each other so that we can elevate the business.

And so from an interpersonal level, we're teaching people how to really be interpersonal with everybody that's really going to elevate the business.

But isn't that the very challenge you face, not just in the workplace, but as humans?

If you believe in God and I don't, wouldn't I necessarily think you're not going to be a fit in this organization because we're critical thinkers?

And my bias tells me that people that would believe in God don't know how to think critically, at least just as an example, because I think sometimes we have all these stereotypes based on what people believe, how we think they approach things and innovate in their minds at least.

The important thing to remember is that beliefs are not truths.

Say that again.

Beliefs are not truths.

When we do our workshops, a lot of the work is, you know, what assumptions do you have?

What judgments do you have as you're putting together this belief system?

You don't have a belief system until you understand why someone could believe something different.

And I've worked with some organizations who claim to be Christian organizations.

We are Christian organizations, and that is what we do.

And they've actually taken that out of some of their talking points because they don't want to eliminate the other perspectives of people.

I mean, someone who believes in God could also be a very critical thinker, right?

And there's different types of aspects to it where it's, you know, what's the judgment of someone who believes something different than you?

Are we pigeonholing them into the pure judgment around them to say, well, this person thinks that so they are not welcome at this table is detrimental to your business.

It's detrimental to productivity.

And there are so many more things to talk about than just whether or not you believe in God or what's your political standpoint or anything else.

You know, how do you find these other types of things and be curious about, well, what's your background and history in terms of what got you to that belief system?

Tell me more about you as an individual.

And we find so many other ways to connect.

And let's be honest, sometimes we just don't connect with people and that's OK.

And recognizing, you know, we're very different people.

We're probably not going to get along.

But I have respect for what it is that you believe.

Let's focus on the challenge at hand, because our two belief systems that are very different are relevant to getting this done.

What we have to get done today.

When I watched your webinar, there's a point where she talked about some of the major social events that have happened.

And one of the things she highlighted was as the CEO, she'll send out a memo and say, you know, to people who are closely affected by the event.

I see you.

I validate you.

For instance, let's take George Floyd's murder.

So if you're a person who's a minority, you know, I see you because she wanted to show empathy and say, I understand that you are going through something I probably may not fully be aware of as somebody who doesn't look like George Floyd, but you do.

And she said a lot of the executives said, stick to real estate, keep the politics out of it.

Would you think that somebody doing that is negatively impacting the organization's culture, or is that something that is necessary for the rest of the employees to feel seen and validated and say, I'm safe here, too?

I wouldn't say negatively or positively affects culture.

I would say that culture could be whatever it is you want as an executive.

So you have a culture, it's what manifests out of the people in the organization and everything else.

Well, I know a lot of the research is out there that creating a psychologically safe environment within the workplace, where people are able to talk about their challenges without fear of repercussion, they could say, this is my perspective and people are welcome, are incredibly better off than organizations that don't encourage that type of discussion.

What I think is very important, and I think the point the best was making is that we have, based on the judgments and assumptions that we make before.

I mean, I'm a white guy.

Ten years ago, if you said some people don't feel seen in the organization, I would have said, what are you talking about?

Right, because I feel seed, right?

That's right.

I'm a white guy.

That's how businesses are made.

So it's incredibly valuable and valid to say that I see you as a human being.

And I recognize that your perspective on this may be different than mine.

And I'm here to support for whatever it is that you need.

There are people who watched the George Floyd murder and were perfectly nonplussed.

And they said, wow, that's terrible.

And they moved on.

I don't know how they did it, but they did it.

And there are people very quick with their talking points in terms of that was inappropriate and yada yada, but nothing changed.

A lot of organizations really didn't go the full step to say people are hurting right now and your perspective is incredibly valid.

And one of the things I learned after George Floyd was that we hear the same things over and over again and things don't change.

And we make assumptions before people finish their sentences.

But if we were to pause and say this person is complaining about this again, it's the same thing we've been hearing since Frederick Douglass.

Maybe there's some validity to what they're saying.

How can what they're saying be valid?

How can I see their perspective?

And that was one of the, you know, I hate to say something good coming out of tragedy, but that was something I think that people started to pay attention.

I think we still have a lot more work to do.

But recognizing that someone's perspective is valid is incredibly helpful to the culture of the organization beyond just that particular moment.

It bleeds into so many other areas to say that your opinion, your perspective, your view is incredibly valid.

I want more of your perspective because it's going to be good for everybody here in this office.

I'm trying to play devil's advocate and look at the other side.

If I'm a leader, I have a ton of work on my desk.

Wouldn't I say, you know what?

I'm sure that they're in pain and everything, but we have work to do.

Can they take that at home instead of bringing it at work?

What I would say to executives who say that there is no work at home anymore.

There is no compartmentalizing your, you know, I'm just going to, you know what?

We're going through a divorce or my kids have problems at school or we bring all of that with us to the workplace and to all of our work.

And it affects our work.

But it goes back to just basic fundamental people strategies.

What do you want out of your people?

You want the best out of your people.

And to get the best out of your people, they need to be seen and validated.

And whatever challenge they have probably needs to be addressed in some kind of way.

Because what people really want from their company is to understand the company has their back.

And I come in, I'm spending a third of my life, if not more here, half of my life here.

I want to make sure that this is a place that supports me and I will give everything.

If you support an individual, they will give everything back to the organization.

Yes, an executive has a lot of work to do and so does everybody else.

But if we were to take a look at your role as an executive, what are you really fundamentally responsible for?

If you manage people, you're responsible for those people.

That's one of your key components.

And you will not hit your targets unless your people are addressed and taken care of.

Is the data that proves that leaders who do that do hit targets or even exceed them?

Absolutely.

There is a lot of research in terms of diversity in leadership.

It's why D&I programs are so important in organizations, the differing perspectives.

If you want someone to just sit down, put their face into a book and just kind of do their work and look at their things, we have AI to do that kind of stuff.

What we're looking at now is we have human beings in the organization.

What makes you uniquely human?

That's what brings value to the workplace.

How do you create something as a human being?

And in order to do that, you have to understand your nature perfectly.

You have to feel comfortable with your nature perfectly.

If anything at work is hindering your ability to bring your whole self to the workplace, you're not bringing the value that you actually got hired for.

And so there is a significant ROI in addressing what your people need and meeting those needs from a human perspective to benefit the business and drive productivity and all of those different aspects.

Speaking of getting to know your team, I had a guest recently who talks about get to know the individuals in your team.

And she says one of the downsides of the talent management system is, oh, just because I've checked that Jim can do this and he's still a weapon progress in this, then I know him.

Right.

How is he supposed to know to step out of that in addition to the stuff on the computer to feed into HR and the rest of the organization systems?

We think about our people's development as a task that needs to be done.

At the end of every quarter, at the end of every year, we got to fill in all of our reviews and we type it in and it's process, process, process.

And what we do in terms of developing executives is, you know, what's your real role as an executive?

Not in terms of the tasks you have to do, but what is your fundamental job in terms of bringing your organization forward and your people forward and developing them in a different type of way?

Once we understand the fundamentals of managing someone, being curious about where they want to go and the advice they need and the feedback they need in terms of mentorship and coaching, we use all these words all the time.

You'll realize that once a quarter for a review isn't enough.

There should be an ongoing conversation where there's homework in between the discussions in terms of, all right, where do you wish to go?

How can I support you?

Saying, yes, you are doing this well or not doing it well, it really misses the boat in terms of what you can really get out of your people because they're being assigned work.

They're not being creative and creating the work that's productive for the business.

And as we rethink our people strategy, rethink why we hire people, it's not to sit in a cubicle for eight hours a day or 10 hours a day.

It's to create work and create value.

You reported to me, Roberta, it's what are you doing to create value this week?

And as they think about it and get used to having this and articulating their value and talking about what's possible and what they're able to do, all of a sudden it's a very different type of conversation that evolves over time.

I hate those people management systems.

It's almost like we have to check a box in order to do it so that we can prove to people.

I mean, legal departments and HR departments force us to do it so that we have an excuse to fire people.

That's really all it is.

It's not a development system.

Let's be honest.

It's not a development system.

Everybody gets the feedback and says, oh, this is really tangible feedback.

I'm glad I got that.

Right?

Yeah.

People who get the fine, we put it into the system.

But I've got employees who would go do it in the system, have their one-on-one with the executive, and get so much out of a really good executive who could say, this is what I'm seeing.

What do you want?

And have the person bring what they want from a development perspective to the table and asking them to take control of it by doing that, rather than just kind of checking the box and say, yep, well, I had the conversation.

They're not hitting it.

So the bottom 50 percent, we can let them go.

Check that box.

It's defensible.

It's not a way to develop your people at all.

If I'm responsible for my own development, one of the things you mentioned that the webinar was mentorship.

Do I get to decide that I need a mentor and when?

Or should my leader say, you know what, you're doing great.

But there's this one area you need to work on.

I think this person in the organization or pick a mentor who can guide you through this.

Whose responsibility is that one aspect of mentorship?

Ultimately, your development is your own responsibility, period.

And oftentimes we look externally and we blame our boss for not giving us the feedback we need, or we blame the team for not supporting you in however you want it to go.

But to be honest, we never articulated our own expectations or desires or where we want it to go.

So if you need a mentor or if you want a mentor or a coach or something like that, a mentor can't help you until you ask the mentor for help specific or advice in terms of where you want to go.

So it all starts with you as an individual.

I could go to a mentor or a coach or my boss and say, hey, how am I doing?

Nine times out of ten, they're going to say, you're doing great.

And it's not helpful.

It doesn't mean anything.

But if you were to switch it and say, hey, I'm an executive director now.

I really want to be a manager director in, say, the strategy department in like the next five years.

That's where I want to be.

I see myself maybe on a path to like a chief strategy officer, a chief marketing officer, whatever it is.

What advice would you give me to work on this year?

Who should I be talking to in order to move closer to that?

You can have a fundamentally different conversation versus just saying, hey, am I on the right path?

Yeah, you're on the right path.

Good job.

It doesn't work, right?

You're going to look at it.

And then you get frustrated after five or ten years saying, I'm not where I want it to be.

But you never define where you want it to be yourself.

You never told anyone where you want it to be and nobody could help you.

You ultimately lie in the bed that you make.

And so if you want to go somewhere where you can say, look, I want to be chief executive in ten years.

And people are going to say, you're not going to be chief executive in ten years.

Well, why not?

You say, well, I would expect someone else to be this and someone.

So you want someone you could trust to kind of give you the real honest feedback.

But if you say, this is where I want to go, then what's my step today?

And people are happy to give you advice.

The majority of managers don't really know how to manage people.

And if you're not the people that they have queued up in their succession plan are having conversations about succession planning.

If you're sitting there waiting, say, I'm going to put my head down, I'm going to do good work.

Someone's going to notice it and they're going to give me a promotion.

You're going to be waiting a very, very long time.

So you have to dictate what your next role is going to be.

But you also have to be open to the fact that you may not be ready for that next role.

You may not be good enough for that next role.

That's where the advice comes in.

That's where the feedback comes in.

That's where the mentors come in to say, look, I want this to be my next role.

They would say, here's what you need to do next.

This might be a big gap for you or go meet these types of people and who are you surrounding yourself with?

Who's your social network?

You can find these different types of roles and you can say, I want that, but you have to be a learner in order to be ready to do that.

You still have to say, this is what I want.

Yeah, you're ultimately responsible for where you want to go.

It was my problem in corporate too.

I never took a job because I wanted the job.

I always looked at jobs and I said, oh, I could do that.

I'd apply for the job and I'd get the job.

I never really wanted to do it.

I never took the time to want.

When I look back to all of my feedback, I'd get 360s done in corporate and I would have straight 10 out of 10 or 5 out of 5.

Everybody loved working with me, except for one person always.

And it was my direct manager.

Never gave me the best scores.

And then I found out afterwards, I'm probably hostile to authority.

So I was probably doing something subconsciously to them.

But as I reflected on it, I never told my bosses where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do.

I never gave them a chance to give me the feedback.

I remember the president and one of my businesses looking at me and said, look, you can run any business at this company.

I will make it happen.

You just tell me what you want.

And I said, whatever.

I don't know what I want.

And so he couldn't help me.

He really, really tried.

He said, you've got it.

You could do it.

I know you could do it.

I didn't know how to say what I wanted.

And so we have to learn how to say this is a risk I'm willing to take.

It's a difficult conversation to have with ourselves.

We have to admit that we don't know something.

We have to admit that it's going to be difficult.

We have to admit that we have to learn a lot.

But until we articulate the expectations we have of ourselves to ourselves, we can't explain them to other people to get them to help us.

Do you think that the existence of AI is going to make us less creative and innovative because we're just going to ask the answers and it will give us the answers?

Or we can combine both?

I think that's the idea, the second part, in terms of what can I automate?

And there's comfort in automating work, right?

The kind of pushing papers around and the mindless kind of Excel work and you just kind of go away somewhere in your mind and you just do it.

The people who are successful within the next ten years are the people who can automate and create, who can use this as just one aspect in terms of thinking up something new about why are we doing things?

Let's change the process.

Here's potentially a new business avenue.

Let me create a business plan for this new business avenue and present it to the CEO.

What are the different things that we can do?

Because when we're stuck doing the same thing over and over again, it's incredibly limiting to what's possible.

Say, oh, I have to do that.

And any entrepreneur knows that.

I got to do the administrative work this week, and I got to pay the bills, and I got to do this, and let me do the feedback for people.

These are task, task, task, task, task.

Where if you scratch that record and pause it and say, what am I actually supposed to be doing?

90% of the work that most of us do as executives or entrepreneurs, a lot of it we shouldn't be doing.

It's not really bringing value.

It's just kind of pushing papers and get this person to do this and get that person to do that.

When we think about the human aspect of developing people, of creating new ideas, of challenging the business and elevating the business and taking a look enterprise-wide beyond what it is that we're just supposed to do this week or this month, that's the real value.

And the people who are really successful are gonna be the ones who are gonna be able to look beyond just what's present in this moment to what can we do today that's gonna be exponential down the road.

Is this a valid fear?

So when Chet GPT became more popular and does all this for you, some people say, you know what?

It looks like everybody's job is gonna be an old and maybe we should bring back politicians who talk about basic universal income.

What do you think of that?

I would say every fear is valid because it's an emotion we feel.

And so any emotion you feel automatically is valid, right?

A fear is valid.

Yes, Chet GPT is gonna be incredibly disruptive.

AI is gonna be incredibly disruptive.

A lot of the normal kind of basic jobs, there will be a lot of disruption and there's gonna be a lot of layoffs, but more businesses will be created based on it.

It's not gonna upend everything in the next five years.

It will be disruptive primarily to white collar workers, college educated who think they're incredibly good thinkers, but they actually don't know how to think and have a lot of these assumptions.

There are going to be plenty of jobs out there for people as humans that AI just can't do and never will be able to do.

And so what I would say is, let's have realistic expectations in terms of what's possible and what we're able to do.

And if you don't like where you think you're going to be sitting, then you better start doing some work to change your trajectory to make sure that you're going to be sitting where you want to be sitting.

What else in the Not A Webinar series are you looking to share with listeners, viewers and everybody who tunes in?

My problem with Not A Webinar is that I can't announce all the executives yet.

And they're really, really good.

I'm so excited.

Be in Netflix, wait until you do the next episode.

I know, I know.

It's when you look at the roster of these eight, you're going to be like, holy cow, this is outrageous.

We've got CMOs, we've got Tony nominated playwrights, we've got chief executives.

I mean, I'm hitting different aspects, everything from how to bring creativity to the office to personal branding.

And how do you really do that amid so much change and cultural understanding?

I've got the CEO of a cultural understanding firm, which is very different than D&I, you know, the way he talks about that and working across continents in different countries and how do you do that?

So this is going to be really, really everything I do about Not A Webinar is going to be relevant.

Every guest I have is an incredible guest who has good opinions and it will not be noise.

It will be something that you can actually use and it will be helpful.

That's what I'm excited about.

And that's why it's only going to be eight episodes and not a whole hundred just to feed, feed, feed the internet.

That's right.

No, we don't have to do that.

I'll do eight and we'll see where it goes.

And maybe I will do another eight maybe next year.

Who knows?

I haven't really gotten that far yet, but I went, I sat down, I looked at all the people I know and I looked and I'm like, these are eight that are worth it.

These are eight that are going to be really, really good.

And there was a lot of thought that went into picking these eight for very specific reasons and they'll all live right next to each other.

It'll be a nice series.

It's almost like a free masterclass to look at these executives and what they're doing and they're timeless.

What they're talking about is timeless.

This isn't something just caught in a one day thing.

These are insights that will be good for many years to come.

We are certainly looking forward to the free masterclass and envisioning it.

So if anybody, all the fears we have covered today, the technology, et cetera, what would you tell them in order to calm those fears and make sure that they take the necessary steps to know that they'll be okay no matter what the changes that are coming?

Yeah, there's a reminder that we're all adaptable and we've been dealing with this already.

I mean, if you were to think just 20 years ago, Google Maps was barely even a thing, right?

So we've been using AI.

We'll evolve and we'll use it and we'll adopt certain things.

There's a big fear of the unknown and the only way to address the fear of the unknown is become familiar with it so that it's known and we're all adaptable and we're able to do it, but we just have to take the time and the effort and the focus in order to make sure it happens.

Right.

Because when flying cars are here, we're the first ones that are going to be excited.

That's right.

I'll be in the first flying car, man.

I'm so excited.

I tell everybody, I'm looking at my daughter and say, you're never going to drive a car.

Right?

Yeah.

Maybe.

Yeah, probably not.

She probably won't, but I think that's exciting.

I mean, it opens up so much possibility of all of these changes of what's possible, not just what can we be afraid of what's going to happen, but what's possible thanks to this.

There is so much more that we can do as humans.

If we keep the right kind of perspective, there's a lot, a lot of good that's going to come out of it.

And last words of wisdom from you.

I'm doing a Ted Talk this week.

Which is going to be soon.

Congratulations.

Oh, please share it with us once it's published.

I will do that.

Flying to Ireland to go do it.

And it's on how do you thrive amid constant change and its personal accountability.

But I'm ending it with a quote by Oscar Wilde, who wrote in the picture of Dorian Gray, the aim of life is self-development.

When we talk about purpose and everything else that we want to understand one's nature perfectly, that's what everyone is here for.

And so AI change, technology change, whatever it is, is almost irrelevant because it all ultimately starts with you.

And we're afraid of ourselves.

We're afraid of ourselves today.

And we've always been afraid of ourselves.

But until we address ourselves and get comfortable in our own skins, then AI is just going to be a fun thing along for the ride.

Words of wisdom from Jim Frawley, the CEO and founder of Bellwether in New York, and executive leadership coach and host of the new Not A Webinar series.

Thank you so much for being back here again for the third time.

It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

I love talking to you, Roberta.

Thank you so much.

Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review, and we'll be with you next time.

Thank you, Jim.

Thank you.