Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Discover how AI is reshaping meaningful work and leadership in this powerful conversation with industry experts Bob Batchelor and Jackie Ferguson. Together, they provide practical strategies for creating self aware leadership, fostering psychological safety, and implementing AI effectively across organizations of all sizes.
Whether you're leading a startup or a Fortune 500 company, gain valuable perspective on building high performing teams through meaningful work and intentional leadership development.
Future-proof your leadership with High Octane Leadership, a place where business leaders—whether by title or aspiration—share cheat codes for unlocking workplace excellence, lessons learned along the way, and insider tips for future generations of next-level professionals. With a career rooted in building people and businesses, Donald Thompson is an award-winning CEO, speaker, and author who empowers leaders to scale with purpose. Over the last 25 years, he has helped startups and enterprises alike drive cultural change, unlock performance, and deliver exceptional results through strategic leadership.
Find him on LinkedIn, and listen here to learn how you can become future-proof too.
High Octane Leadership Ep. 175
High Performance Leadership in the Age of AI: Building Self Aware Teams and Meaningful Workplaces
With Jackie Ferguson and Bob Batchelor
[00:00:02] Jackie: I would say the real question for leaders is, are you connecting daily tasks to larger purpose? Are you recognizing contributions? Are you creating growth opportunities and inviting that employee's voice into the conversation for business? Because meaningful work isn't a perk. It's a necessity, and it's the foundation of engagement of well-being and ultimately business success.
[00:00:33] Donald: Welcome to High Octane Leadership with Donald Thompson. This season, we're diving deeper with more solo episodes, where I'll share the experiences that have led to recognition by Forbes, Fast Company, and others. Not as a boast, but as milestones on my entrepreneurial path. From growing multimillion dollar firms to successful business exits and building high performance teams with a global perspective. I'll reveal the insights and strategies from my journey and share them with you so that we can win together. Alongside these solo episodes, we'll have industry visionaries and thought leaders who will explore effective leadership. Ready to empower your leadership journey with real success stories? Let's embark on this transformational journey together. Let me flip this a little bit, Bob and Jackie. And, Bob, what is a question that you'd like Jackie to come in on? Jackie, what's a question you'd like Bob and I to come in on from the same topic? But why don't I'm gonna flip the script just a little bit. And and how would you, uh, frame the next phase of our conversation? And, Bob, I'll start with you.
[00:01:40] Bob: Jackie mentioned my kind of obsession with self awareness earlier. So I would love to dig in a little more on that because, Don, honestly, from my perspective, if we're being honest, and we always are, you changed massively from the day I met you to who you are now as a leader. That was based on the fact that you were self aware enough to, a, recognize that it was gonna improve the value of whatever you were doing and the self confidence to do it. And so I don't wanna be negative about it. Most people are not self aware. We don't teach civics anymore, so people don't understand how to act in public. We don't teach how to think critically, so people carry around the same belief system that they formed in their minds when they were 13 or 14 years old. Both those things lead to big problems when you're talking about 350,000,000 adults trying to hold up a democracy. So self awareness, we say it we say it, like because I think we're three people who find ourselves pretty self aware, but it's not universal. And so how do we is it even possible to manifest this? Maybe a great CEO who is not good at certain things could at least go out and find a champion who could they could surrogate that to them. A true chief people officer who could be transformational for a company or an organization's culture, just CEO just hands that person enough power to get that thing done. Maybe that's the answer, but I'd love to dig in a little more and get get Jackie's opinion and your opinion.
[00:03:18] Jackie: I think to be self aware, you have to be equal parts humble and confident. Because if I'm doing something that I can do better, it doesn't mean all of the things over here that I do great or not great. And I need to know that about myself and be confident in that, but also be open to where I can, um, grow and be better. For me, not everyone can multitask. I can. So I can hear what people are saying and also, oh, I'd have to remember to do this other thing and this other thing. That doesn't translate well when an employee is giving you an update on the work that they're doing and they feel is important, and you're writing notes to remember to do something else. So one of the things that I had to do as a leader is say, okay. This stuff goes down. You have my full attention, and understand how you come across to leaders. Now I don't feel distracted because I'm like, oh, let me remember and write this quick note. But the way that it's perceived by that employee who is very important, very much part of the success of the company is like, this must not be important to her. And so that's just one example of understanding that there are ways that we can grow and we can develop and we can listen better and we can react differently in situations. So understanding how we're perceived is the center of self awareness because we all think we're coming across as one thing. One of the things that I say is, well, you can't see your face. And so you have to really evaluate yourself and audit yourself and say, is the person that I'm interacting because that's part of relationship building. Is the person that I'm interacting with, do they feel like they have my full attention? Do they feel valued in this conversation? And I think that's important. So equal parts confidence and humility to be able to evaluate yourself critically and then also hear evaluation from other people, which is sometimes hard for us, but important for those of us who endeavor to really grow and be the best leader we can be.
[00:05:50] Donald: I think I mean, all of that great stuff. For me, self awareness became more of a pillar of my leadership style and being the more it was connected to where I wasn't going to be able to win without being better. And for me, I had to any significant change in my life personally or business is tied to an outcome I want or an outcome I don't want. If it's an outcome that I want, then that willingness to dive in because I'm a competitive learner and many leaders are, it just has to what's the motivation, is I wanted a team that could operate without me. And so, if every decision had to come to me, if every if nobody felt comfortable making a mistake, then here's what people will do. Everything goes to the top leader, and until that top leader says yes or no, nothing really gets done. A lot of things get discussed, but nothing really gets done. And, personally, I'm really allergic to that. I'd rather my team make three or more mistakes, learn from it, get to the right answer, and they're doing it, than wait, wait, wait, wait till I make what is a guess on my part anyway. Right? I don't have the answer. I'm just willing to make a decision. That's different. I don't have all the right answers. I'm just willing to make a decision. That's very different. So, because I wanted that kind of autonomous culture, then I had to create enough space for that to be real, even if it took time and effort in terms of years to get it there. The other thing that I think about self awareness, and the things that I don't want, is I don't wanna be perceived as someone not willing to change. Now, if I don't agree with you, I'll tell you. But if we talk and we have a point of agreement, because I'm gonna ask people that work for me to change a lot, to be better, be stronger, different things, I don't wanna be a hypocrite. I'm a lot of things that don't wanna be a hypocrite. If there are areas that I need to be better, and self awareness was one Jackie, I'll give a very specific example. It doesn't matter the meeting. It doesn't matter who was in it. But I was in this meeting, and I was getting the same question that I thought I had answered three different ways, and I was getting frustrated. And somebody sent me a little text, and I looked at it, and they're like, look, you need to be patient, because once all the questions are answered, this team will execute flawlessly. And you won't have to think about this again. It'll just be done. And I was like, word? Okay. Any more questions? And then I answered every question, even if it was the same question 10 times in different language, all the different things. And then, to Jackie's point, three, four months later, the prototype I got back for a new product we wanted to do. The way we wanted to market, it was good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. But the team was not going to act in an aggressive way without really fully understanding my point of view. And then they went off and did some good work. But, to Jackie, your point, and then Bob, your point on having somebody not as a proxy, I have at least cultivated team members that will tell me the truth, and will orient me real time. I respond to it, because I like directness. But I think meaningful work as a responsibility for a leader is something we have to reiterate that is a real time statically changing thing like the stock market. It is not something that you get right and it stays right. It is something that you're managing on an up or down level because there's so many dynamic factors, and that's one of the things that makes it really hard, but it's worth it. And Jackie, I'll flip the microphone to you. What question of Bob or or me, like, what would you wanna unpack? Self awareness was great, Bob. That was awesome. I'll give the mic to you, Jackie.
[00:09:26] Jackie: So I am interested in your thoughts on how the integration of AI affects meaningful work for employees in the workplace.
[00:09:38] Donald: Bob, I'll let you jump.
[00:09:40] Bob: I think first and foremost, I am kind of in an AI bubble because I'm a power user. I've trained myself. I work with it every day, and I know that that's not the consistent. I know for a fact. And not just in the business sense, in the personal sense. There are people in The United States who don't even have a solid Internet connection in their home. Lots of people. Thousands and thousands. So things are unfair and unfairly being rolled out. From a business perspective, I think that companies have to move deliberately, but with small successes to build on larger successes. And I think that I know there are people on my team when when I was running the global team at Workplace Auctions who were a little bit afraid to tell me that they were using AI because they would make assumptions about what I thought of their skill set or they were doing strange things, odd things. I don't know what people think, you know, when they're sitting in at their desk and trying to get their work done. So I think that meaningful work has to begin in the AI era with some transparency, some some guidelines, and some guardrails. So that's probably just good in the business world in general. It's probably good in most organizational settings in general. In my current work, I have to give out a syllabus at the beginning of the semester, and that is our contract. It has the guardrails and the guidelines, and we follow it. Maybe it could be a little more of that in the organizational world, particularly when it comes to AI. Like, here's where we're headed. Here's how we use it. Here's when we don't use it. And here's what we never ever ever do. So that's kind of my initial thinking.
[00:11:25] Donald: Wonderful question. AI in the workplace to me is this is a this is AI transformational change in the way work is done in every business. I'll use COVID, and then I'll come back to Aon. One of the things about the two and a half years in 2020 and into 2022 with COVID is everyone was experiencing it. Now, everyone experienced it different, country to country, based on your beliefs, were you for vaccines or not? I'm not trying to unpack all those things. What I am wanting to describe is everybody was experiencing it at the same time, which makes it very different than many other global phenomenons and different things. It was happening to all of us in real time. It's the same with AI. Only difference is people think they have a choice to participate with AI or not. And so there's people that are putting it to the side versus leaning into it, that it is going to decimate how they work, how their business operates, if they don't take it seriously as a new construct. The second thing with AI in terms of adoption, and Bob, this speaks to your point, just because it's important, doesn't mean you have to try to do something with it quickly. You have to have your goals as a company for AI, your guidelines, and then what are your guardrails to your point? Those come from the top in the leadership of how we're going to do it, then what tools are you providing? And the way I think about AI is very simple. You have to have an education phase for your team. You have to have an experimentation phase, where people are just playing with it. Then you move to an execution phase, which is some pilots in your organization, and then you start to chase the economic value of it. If you skip those phases, you end up putting a lot of effort into AI for AI's sake, not for the productivity of your employees. You're doing it for AI's sake, and now you're producing a lot of content that's garbage, that people can tell was written by a machine, that doesn't have a heart to it. And so, I think AI plus the human centric nature of winning in the marketplace of communication is a beautiful thing, and it will help you be faster, smarter, quicker. There was a paradigm years ago where you could have something that was fast, high quality, low cost. Pick two of the three. That was the mantra. In the age of AI, I want it all. I want it fast, I want it high quality, And I want it low cost. And in the age of AI, they want it all. And so we've gotta teach an employee base now how to integrate a new toolset that is afraid that AI could take their job. Great. That's one way to think about it. Let's just assume it will. And if something's coming to take your job, then you might wanna put up a fight. And the way you put up a fight is how do you become AI fluent and then learn how to apply AI to the things that you're doing in the work that you're pursuing. But, I'm a big fan of it, but I'm equally as afraid because there's so much knowledge that you can bubble up quickly that you really have to be talented and smart and innovative to now how are you gonna use this information to grow your employees, to grow your clients, to grow your business? Because the average things people used to get a lot of credit for, the machine can kinda do. And that's a really big shift in in everything we're working. That's a great, great topic. Jackie, on the same point though, I'm interested in your thoughts. I'll throw that question back to you in terms of AI's impact on meaningful work.
[00:14:56] Jackie: So I asked it because I don't really have a great answer. I think what's important is still centering relationship, communicating the real impact, the transformational impact of AI, and ensuring that you're providing the resources for your team to utilize AI without the impacts of what Bob alluded to earlier. How does how do does this leader perceive me in using AI? Because for women, especially, and underrepresented professionals, there's historically been a different level of repercussion for mistakes and errors, and it's tougher to establish real credibility professionally. And so those people that have experienced that don't wanna mess with that using a tool that could be perceived as cheating or doing something quicker, not using my own mind. And so there's historically and historically, just in the past year, been a little bit of hesitance in adopting AI. And so and the problem with that is now because large language models are based in what you can find online and also inputs, if the inputs are all coming from one type of demographic, then they don't get those necessary inputs from women, necessary inputs from underrepresented professionals that can create a more holistic outputs versus biased outputs. So there's there's lots of problems with people that look like me in particular not using AI. So I think it's important for companies and for leaders to say, this is the direction of the world. This is the direction of business. This is how I'm gonna support you in using it. Totally agree with Bob on here's kind of our operating system for how we use AI in our workplace to make people feel comfortable, but those are my thoughts about how we integrate AI. It's the leader's responsibility to create a level of comfort and accessibility in the workplace.
[00:17:13] Donald: I've kinda guided the conversation, which I love doing with the two of you because I just wanna get those nuggets of wisdom out. What should I have asked that I didn't as we wind down this discussion? Like, what you know, Bob, I'll give you kick it off, and then Jack can give you the some space as well. What would you like to share on this topic that I didn't ask or guide us to, uh, as we land the plane for this conversation? This won't be the only one. This is really for our audience. The three of us are really unpacking this. We've got a upcoming book we're in the process of researching. We're gonna take the shared knowledge and perspective that we collectively hundreds of years of knowledge and and perspective and really create a blueprint for leaders to drive meaningful work in their organization. So in no way is this the last word. It is the landing the plane for this conversation. And so, Bob, I wanna give you some space, and then, Jackie, I'll pass the baton to you. And the thought is, what hadn't I asked that you'd like to share?
[00:18:11] Bob: I'd actually as we've all been unpacking this, Don, I think one of the things that I value when we talk is that you're getting into rooms through your executive advisory services. You're seeing the world from a different level. And so I'm thinking that if I were in the c suite of a billion dollar up, it could be a $1,000,000,000 company, it could be a $100,000,000,000 company. Am I gonna be listening to this and saying to myself, this is okay if you're in a 20 person business or a 100 person or even a thousand or 2,000? But what happens when you have a 188,000 employees? So I'd wanna hear from your perspective, is it actually possible in large corporations for leaders to do the kind of work that we are outlining or that we are advocating for strongly?
[00:19:07] Donald: I'm smiling because I am emphatically yes. And yesterday, I had a call, and I and I won't name drop here, but I'll get permission to leverage some of the learnings from this particular client. But I was talking to the CEO of The Americas of a billion dollar global brand and his senior VP of HR. And we were talking about training and education and the call was at from 05:30 to 06:30PM. So I wanna, I wanna unpack this a little bit. It was important, but this is when in the day, the CEO could get to this important topic with all of the other items, number one. But number two, here's the thing that was really powerful. Started working with this company three years ago, and the CEO was not on board with some of this stuff. Three years forward, we were looking at every single reply to a survey questionnaire that we sent out to the Director and Director level folks for his entire organization, and we were walking through every piece of feedback and had his undivided attention. He didn't agree with it all. He didn't like it all, but he was walking through it, and he was like, this is gonna be the my leadership team's responsibility. Alright. This is what I need to work on better. This is what, and I was so excited because this high octane leader, if you meet him, if I told you the company, but three years, he is now very, very open to feedback because he ties the feedback as a part of his formula to know how to win. And once we got over that hurdle, slowly but surely became more and more open, and now the team is more open of being very direct and clear on the things that they see working and not working. So, yes, but not without a very significant amount of effort. But the value will be significant. Second thing that I'll share on that now, now, Harsh, you want to hear from from from Tacky is I also think it is not really the size of the business. If you have a 200,000 person company, then that CEO's gotta make that mandate with their leadership team and their top 200 leaders. I have another client that I'm doing a one and a half hour seminar on this topic with their top 200 global leaders. So, that means the CEO thought enough of psychological safety, employee engagement, that wasn't going to flow through their organization of thousands. Think about how big this company is. The top 200 leaders is who I'm talking to. So, yes, it can be done, but it does require a CEO with the courage to look at the commercial impact along with the cultural impact and put those things together as a part of their winning strategy. So it's really, really important the relationship that the CEO has with their self awareness, with their really goal with growth, but it can happen. And I'm seeing a lot of leaders that I'm talking to work with that. And the reason that I'm able to be helpful, and then, Jackie, I'll give you the microphone, is I am very much like them. Now, I don't always deal at the scale there. I work with clients that have much larger businesses. But the perspective of how do we manage the bottom line and link the people stuff to the charter of the business is a problem worth solving. And I'm seeing a lot of CEOs wanting to dig into that as we all grow together. Jackie, I would want to hear your thoughts on kind of the the last word, the thing that I didn't ask, or if you wanted to comment on what I just said, I just wanna give you that space as we land the plane.
[00:22:41] Jackie: I think that the thing that is left to ask is how do leaders get started creating meaningful partnering with their employees for meaningful work for each individual?
[00:22:56] Donald: So, where do you get started? One is the ask. And so, I'll give it my perspective on two things. If you have a partner like us, if I'm coming in to help you, great, I will help you with a blueprint. But what if you don't? And you wanna do something tomorrow. Right? You don't have to have a formal three sixty degree, all the different things. You can sit with your leadership team, have everybody on your leadership team break out a white sheet of paper, and then do the magic wand exercise. And just say to your leadership team, listen, if I were going to accept your ideas to help transform and grow the business, what are two or three things that you would want me to know? And just write them down. And give your team a minute, let them jot those things down. If you were able to counsel me and I was gonna take that counsel, what are the two or three things that I am doing that are inhibiting our growth as a business, our culture growing in different things? Just write those down. And depending on the relationship you have with that team, they can pass them in to HR. You can consolidate it. It's anonymous. Or you can tell each one of those folks, our next one on one, I want to walk through what you wrote down on the sheet. You're gonna have my undivided attention. I I want you to think about how to present these things to me when we have thirty minutes together, and I'm gonna at least take one or two of them and try to be better and stronger. Now, that's not exactly how everyone should do it, but that's a way you can do it as a leader to just start communicating your openness and your commitment to being better and stronger and more collaborative. And then the second thing that is really, really important is getting outside points of view. Most of the time, things that you need to fix inside of your business, it's not that you're not capable of addressing them, it's that you're looking at the same data, people, personalities, all the time, that you can miss simple but powerful opportunities that are right in front of you. And so, I do recommend working with an outside partner to just help you and your other leaders think more about how creating meaningful work is meaningful to the bottom line, meaningful to building your culture, and meaningful for you to become more and more of an inclusive leader. And so those are a couple things that I would share with folks that needed some nuggets to get started tomorrow, and then maybe work with somebody to help them on a long term basis.
[00:25:15] Bob: I would say to the listeners, follow us on LinkedIn, send us an email. We'll send you a electronic copy of the Inclusive Leadership Handbook, which is filled with areas for people to start. I'll give it to you. There's your starting point, and then figure it out from there. That's a it's a great the Inclusive Leadership Handbook for for listeners who are unaware, a book that that we published a year or so ago that Don and Kurt Merriweather, who's now the director of marketing at Workplace Options, wrote. And it's a fantastic guide because it's it provides the insight, but also practical exercises that leaders and their teams can do together and individually to promote inclusive leadership. So it's a great resource.
[00:25:59] Donald: Jackie, final thoughts?
[00:26:01] Jackie: I would say the real question for leaders is, are you connecting daily tasks to larger purpose? Are you recognizing contributions? Are you creating growth opportunities and inviting that employee's voice into the conversation for business? Because meaningful work isn't a perk. It's a necessity, and it's the foundation of engagement, of well-being, and, ultimately, business success.
[00:26:29] Donald: I'll let that be the last word. Follow us on LinkedIn. We have a lot of free material we'd love to share with you. We're gonna be building out this concept. And so if you follow us, we'll probably have some polls and different things out as we do our research. But meaningful work to just restate Jackie's comment, how do you connect large task with your overall purpose is a really important thing to reflect on. And both, uh, Bob, Jackie, I talk to you all day. I could talk to you all and unpack these things all the time. I have a page of notes. And so I just wanna thank you all for being partners, for being friends, and we're gonna attack this and try to change the world and make work a better place.
[00:27:04] Jackie: Thanks for having us, Don.
[00:27:06] Bob: Thanks, Don.
[00:27:08] Donald: Thank you for joining us on High Octane Leadership with Donald Thompson. Today's episode is a step in our collective journey towards leadership excellence. Remember, every story we share and every insight we gain is a piece in the puzzle of our leadership journey. For more insight and detail, hit the subscribe button so that we can stay connected. For deeper information and more episodes, go to donaldthompson.com. Continue to lead with vision and purpose, and until we meet again, embrace your role as a high octane leader in the ever evolving world of business.