I think the best piece of advice for leaders is how can you be that coach? How can you help make other people more successful, even if they are more successful than you? If you can do that and be that great coach, your value to the organization goes up tenfold.

Call them change makers.

Call them rule breakers.

We call them redefiners.

Join us in conversation with daring leaders who are creating extraordinary impact and driving change from around the globe.

Each episode gives you a fresh perspective on your leadership and career journey. I'm Hoda Tahoon, a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds.

I'm Clark Murphy, the former chief executive officer and a leadership advisor. And this is redefiners.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Redefiners.

Before we kick off today's episode, let's take a moment to answer a listener question that recently came into our Redefiners mailbox. The question is, how can technology and digital innovation be leveraged to enhance the customer experience and drive operational efficiency in the consumer industry? That is a perfect question, and I'll let you take that one, Hoda.

Clark, this is a really great question, and I'll tell you, from what I've been seeing and hearing from clients in the consumer industry, leisure and hospitality and retail and consumer digital, it's really nuanced. You've got to strike the right balance between what's going to be digital and technologically enabled, but what also is going to still be needed from a human interaction and human perspective. Not everybody wants to check into a hotel with a kiosk. There are some places where you may need a kiosk, you may need a real person. So it's that balance and that nuance. And how much technology do you need in order to make things better, more productive, more efficient, but without losing the fact that it's still a human business?

I think this is the complexities you say you need nuance. I think the rapidly changing nature of the online consumer, so many companies, particularly outside the US. Are either missing or not adapting fast enough.

I think that's right, Clark. And for all of our listeners, if you have a leadership question, send it our way by emailing redefiners@russellreynolds.com. Now let's get back to introducing today's guest. If your organization is like many around the world, you're trying to figure out how to better lead through uncertainty and change, attract and retain talent, increase employee engagement, and really get some direction on what the future of work looks like, well, in today's episode, we'll cover all of those topics and more. We're going to talk with a futurist, author and expert who has deeply researched these topics. He's interviewed hundreds of CEOs and thousands of employees to uncover the key insights and best practices that can help transform and improve leadership within your organization.

I got to say, I'm fascinated for this conversation. I was in the UK the last couple of days at a board meeting, and that board meeting was like many others, saying, what are you seeing in different parts of the world? How is the nature of leadership evolving under these uncertain times? What are people doing about hybrid? Investors are changing their tune with some things around sustainability, which affects the workplace. What do you see? What do you see? What do you see? So today we're going to ask the same questions that the board members ask us. We're going to ask Jacob Morgan. Jacob is a speaker and a best selling author of five books focused on leadership, the Future of Work, Employee Experience. His passion is helping create great leaders, one that I share as well as does Hoda. How do you adapt to a rapidly changing world now and win, not just keep up? His work has been endorsed by the CEOs of Best Buy and Mastercard unilever Nestle Cisco. Jacob, we are excited, and we're going to push you hard on what we should be doing and our listeners want to do and want to do better.

So welcome.

Thank you for having me. Push as hard as you want.

Awesome. Well, you've given us now the green light. Jacob, you have such a fascinating family story and what seems like a self made career. Let's start from the beginning. You come from an immigrant family from the Republic of Georgia. You started your career in marketing and SEO strategy and solutions. And then you seem to redefine your career path to move into consulting, writing, and speaking. I'm sure I'm missing some steps here. Please tell us your story of how you went from marketing to becoming a bestselling author and speaker on leadership and the workplace of the future.

Well, it depends how far back you want to go.

Let's go way back.

So you mentioned my family coming from the Republic of Georgia, and so in that kind of environment, you have to understand that the idea of work ethic and working hard and just giving it your all was very much ingrained into how I was raised. Unfortunately, that didn't click with me until I went to college, so I was never a good student. But then when I got to the University of California, Santa Cruz, it clicked, and everything that my parents were telling me made sense. I double majored in economics and psychology. I graduated with honors, and I was very excited to join the corporate world. And my first job out of college was working for a technology company in downtown Los Angeles. And I took the job working there because I was promised I would be doing all these wonderful and amazing things, traveling the country, meeting with executives and know, doing all sorts of cool stuff. So I took the job, and a few months in, I find that I'm doing data entry and cold calling and PowerPoint presentations. And then one day, the CEO comes out of his beautiful corner office in downtown La.

And he says, jacob, I have a very important project for you. And so I run over to him, very excited, and he takes out his wallet, and he gives me a $10 bill and says, I'm late for a meeting. It's our bucks, and I need you to go get me a cup of coffee. Right. So he's late for a meeting. I got to go get him a cup of coffee now. And I'm sitting there thinking, wow, what the hell is going on in my life? I double majored, I worked hard in school, and now I'm getting this person coffee. And that was a pivotal moment for me that I became deflated, disenfranchised, disengaged in the corporate world. And literally that day, as soon as I got back to my desk, I started googling how to make money on your own, how to make money not working for anybody else. And I came across things like search engine optimization and affiliate marketing, and I started studying and learning about those things. And ever since then, I became interested in this idea of leadership and employee experience and the future of work. So looking back, I suppose I should be very grateful to that executive for making me get him that cup of coffee, because who knows where I'd be if I didn't do that?

Is that the redefining moment for your career, that cup of coffee and that $10 bill?

Yes. 100%. The most pivotal moment in my career was getting so disengaged with my company that I decided to go build something on my own. Honestly, I think it's easy to get upset with an organization. It's easy to get disengaged. It's easy to spot problems. But I think the big problem that we have, especially in a lot of organizations today, is very few people are willing to solve the problem at the company, and even fewer people are willing to leave the company and try to build something themselves that they think is better.

I think, Jacob, that's a great point. I think many people who would have been in that situation would have been deflated and perhaps just kind of gone back to the desk or gone to go get the cup of coffee. But in those moments that are redefining, there's chance for opportunity. So just amazing to kind of hear that that was a catalyst for you to then go off and do what you've gone off to do today.

Yeah.

As we talk about solving problems and doing something about it, we did a global leadership survey that only 55% of the C suite executives we surveyed felt prepared for the amount of change going on right now. So what do you think? What are the mindsets and skill sets to help leaders prepare for change now? And what is the way to say, we're going to keep moving, we're going to keep evolving?

Well, the core of the new book is about this theme leading with vulnerability. It's not necessarily a set of skill sets or mindsets. It's an approach to how to be vulnerable at work, which is what I've come to believe is the most important thing for leaders to do today.

Fantastic. So walk us through it.

A lot of people are familiar with the concept of vulnerability. Brene Brown has been a pioneer in that space. She defines vulnerability as risk, uncertainty, and emotional exposure. And I like to think of vulnerability as really doing or saying something that exposes you to the potential of emotional harm. Meaning you say something or you do something where somebody else can take that, use it against you and harm you in some way. Now, in our personal lives, we all understand the value of vulnerability. You know, why you should be vulnerable with your friends, your family members, your spouse, your significant other, because that's where a lot of the connection and the relationships and trust come from. But I really started to wonder, what about inside of a company? Is it really just that easy to show up to work and say, hey, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. Hey, I need your help. Hey, I'm going through a tough time. Hey, I have a difficult relationship with my dad, or whatever it might be. And it's clear that it's not the same because at work it's a very different dynamic than it is at home. At work, you have a boss, you might have employees who work for you.

You have customers, you have deadlines and projects. You have the issue of money. It's not the same. There's hierarchy. It's a totally different environment. Now, a little bit of a counterintuitive approach is I don't advocate for anybody being vulnerable at work. I think it's one of the worst things that you can do. And to understand why, you have to look at the relationship that an employee has with an organization. An organization basically says, we need help with something. You as a candidate, you say, hey, I can do those things that you need me to do, and I can do them well. So you get hired. Now imagine in that kind of a scenario, you bring somebody on and consistently they're showing up to work and they're always vulnerable. They're always talking about, I need help with this. I'm so sorry I missed that. I made a mistake here. I'm struggling there. I'm going through a tough time here. At a certain point, you're going to look at that employee and you're going to say, I'm confused. We brought you in because you said you are capable at doing these things and you're not. So this probably isn't a very good fit.

So if that is not the right solution of purely being vulnerable, then what is leading with vulnerability is adding leadership to that. So in the case of making a mistake, you might say, hey, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. Here is what I learned from my mistake. Here are three things that I'm going to do. Going forward to make sure that that mistake does not happen again. A CEO who is a vulnerable leader or somebody who leads with a vulnerability is Lard Freeze. He is the CEO of Aegon. It's a 22,000 person financial services group. So early on in Lard's career, he was put in charge of a technology implementation for a large part of the business. And of course, as a young 35 year old executive, he went into the team basically saying, I got this, I know how to do it. There's not going to be any problems. And people were warning him and saying, we're not ready yet, you should take a step back. We got to consider all these other things. And he's like, no, I know what I'm doing. Let's just go ahead. And of course, they went through this big implementation and it was a massive disaster, not just for him professionally, but also personally.

So he realized after going through this project, which took many, many months, he was taking time away from his family. He was headstrong in his way of doing things. And after everything was said and done, not only did the team want to fire him, but his wife also wanted to leave him. So he was failure on all fronts. So what he did in this situation, number one, the vulnerability piece, he went in front of his entire team and he went in front of the executives and he said, you're right, I screwed up. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done things the way that I did things. But then he also went back to his team and he said, I don't want you to fire me. I want you to demote me and put me on of the team that was responsible for this project that failed, not as an executive, but as a team member. And as a team member, I myself want to work with everybody to fix the problem that I helped cause. And he did. And he spent years, years, not weeks, not months, but he spent years working on this team, rebuilding trust, rebuilding confidence, showing everybody that he wasn't doing this because of his ego, but because he genuinely cared about the people who were involved and because he genuinely cared about the project.

And it's only because he spent years doing this that he was eventually able to become the CEO that he is today. So I love that story because he has this dramatic failure personally and professionally. And his wife gave him another chance. They're still married today. So that's one of my favorite examples from the book of another CEO that leads with vulnerability.

Jacob, it sounds like you're also tying the accountability piece into the problem solving as well.

Yes, accountability is very important. That's what leadership is all about, right? I mean, it's demonstrating that you are trying to become more competent at whatever it is that you're doing. And the big theme of the book is that there's no substitute for competence. It doesn't matter how vulnerable you are. At a certain point, you have to be able to do your job and do it well. Yeah.

I think you got to be careful here. I've been in meetings, we've all heard speeches, particularly in COVID. There wasn't enough empathy or vulnerability as a leader. And they come off as silly. They're like, too rah rah. So where do you wrap decisiveness leadership and vulnerability? Because I don't think authenticity and vulnerability are the same thing, and I think we got to be careful.

Yeah. And authenticity and vulnerability are not the same thing. And you can argue somebody like a Jack Welsh or a Steve Balmer was very authentic. They were who they were. They had no problem cursing you out, screaming at you, throwing things across the room. No issues with that. But would you say that they're vulnerable? No. Did they do or say things that open themselves to the potential of emotional harm? No. In fact, I interviewed Jeff Immelt for my book, and he was the successor after Jack Welsh, and I asked him, what has been the biggest mistake during your leadership career? And he said, I wish I would have said I don't know more often, basically. Meaning, I wish I was vulnerable more often. And it's not something that was expected or respected or allowed to happen inside of organizations. It's a very unfortunate thing that I think we're working on getting better at now.

Can a leader be too vulnerable?

Yes, you can be too vulnerable. You can be too empathetic, you can be too anything. The reason why this happens is because you don't know the intention of why you're being vulnerable. So when you treat your organization like a big therapy session and you don't think through, what is it that I'm saying and why am I saying it? You become too vulnerable. There's a framework that I have in the book. It's called the vulnerability wheel, and there are five concentric circles, but at the very center of that vulnerability wheel is intention, and this wheel is meant to be a framework. What is it that I want to share or do? And what's the purpose behind it? Am I sharing something because I want to create better rapport? I want my employee to view me as being human with my own challenges and struggles. Like, is that the reason for it? Am I trying to create a culture of innovation? Am I trying to make it so that when my employees make mistakes, they can feel comfortable coming to me sharing? And oftentimes when we talk about vulnerability, what people forget is what is the reason for it?

I get that you have something that you want to share. Why, and what's the purpose behind it? And when you don't have that, then you find that people just start you get them going and they just don't stop. And they will tell you their deepest, darkest secrets, their life journey, and they're just sharing everything to you. And we've all been in those situations because they don't know why they're doing it.

Yeah, the oversharing piece.

Jacob let's talk a little bit more about employee experience and engagement. So if we're going to look at what's the most effective model, do you have one that you have in your mind around employee engagement, physical space, apprenticeship, et cetera? I would give you an example. At Russell Reynolds. We're an apprenticeship business. We learn from those who have more experience than we do classic professional services. I have three daughters in the mid 20s. They want to be in the office. They want their bosses to be in the office, who largely are not, and they are. I think it's the opposite of what the people think. So how do you look at physical space and culture and going forward and give some examples?

I think it depends on the organization and the culture that they've created. It's very hard to say that everybody should do this, but to me, flexible work means exactly that. I don't believe that everybody should be working from home full time. I don't believe that everybody should be in the office working nine to five, five days a week, full time. We talk about working from home all the time in terms of productivity. And I think that's a mistake because if you're just focusing on productivity, sure, you never need to come into the office. Like, if I just have a big checklist, a big to do list, I can just mark those things off of my to do list and never have to see anybody and never have to talk to anybody, that's fine. But we have to understand that a company is not interested in just being productive. Companies are interested in growing. Companies are not interested in the status quo and just keeping their heads above water. They want new solutions, they want new customers, they want new products. They want to figure out unique ways to do things. And in that kind of an environment, it's very hard to just do everything when you're behind a screen.

Microsoft did a study for their employees and they found that, yeah, sure, a lot of employees could work from home and be productive. But when it comes to innovation, when it comes to collaboration, communicating, getting employees to work together to brainstorm things, we as a company were struggling. And that's where the next multi billion dollar idea comes from. For a company like Microsoft, it's not from everybody sitting behind a screen. Similarly, as a speaker, how many talks could I give staring at a screen, looking into a camera lens? I could probably do, I don't know, like five to eight a day. That could easily be considered productive. Or I could do one talk in person. And which talk is going to have more impact? Is it going to be the five to eight that I do sitting, staring at a camera? Or is it going to be the one where I'm on stage, where people can actually see my entire body, where I can make eye contact with people, where I can meet people before and after and grab coffee and engage and interact? It's obviously going to be the one where I'm in person.

Jacob as we think about the impact and the innovation and all these things that you're describing, we're also in an era on the other end of the spectrum where some countries and cities around the world are shortening the work week, fridays being optional or three day weekends, et cetera. How do you think that plays into the workplace of the future?

Don't believe in it?

Tell us more. Tell us more. Tell us more.

Okay, here we go.

I think a lot of that stuff is insane.

Okay.

You hear stories about this, right? And I get that there have been some tiny studies here and there. The whole concept of I only want to work three days a week or four days a week, maybe in some utopian world, if that's the law for everybody, it's somewhat of a level playing field. I mean, in your industry, right, you have a lot of competitors. Your competitors want to rip your head off. Your competitors want to take market share from you. They want to take your clients. They want to do everything to just dominate. We live in a very competitive world. We work in a very competitive world. Do you think somebody like a LeBron James or a Serena Williams is out there saying, you know what? How can I be great, but I'm going to train less than everybody else. I'm not going to put in the time that's required. Meanwhile, everybody else does. Nobody cares that you want to work three days a week or four days a week, right? And it's hard for me to say that because I wrote a book on employee experience, but at some point you got to say enough is enough.

Of course you can work as many hours as you want. You want to do 3 hours, great. But guess what's going to happen if you're up for like, a leadership role and you're working one day a week and somebody else is working four days a week. You really think you have a chance to get that position when somebody else is putting in the time and the effort? No. I get the sense that a lot of people in the world want more. They want to become leaders. They want to make an impact. They want more responsibility. They want more pay increases. They want to accomplish and achieve more for themselves and for their families. It's very hard to imagine a world in which you do that by doing less.

We'll be right back with Jacob Morgan, but first we'll hear from Laura Montora, a managing director in our Stanford office. She'll outline why understanding Employee Experience Should Be a Top Priority for Boards ensuring.

Your employees are engaged is a critical way to boost performance in a fast changing world. According to research by Gallup, highly engaged employees help drive 23% higher profitability and 18% higher productivity. It's just one reason why executive teams the world over have made it a priority to track and improve the employee experience. But now our research shows that boards are also looking to deepen their understanding of the perspectives, interests and needs of employees. In fact, when we asked directors which functions their board had wanted more exposure to, their number one response was human resources. The benefits are wide ranging. One director explained, for example, how partnering more effectively with human resources helped the board navigate social and economic uncertainty with an employeecentered perspective. To help boards take meaningful action in this area, we work with State Street Global Advisors and the Ford Foundation to create a board and employee Engagement Maturity model which categorizes the level of employee engagement into three buckets reactive, proactive and integrated. To learn more about where your board sits on this curve and the actions you can take to better integrate employee voice into your organization, click on the link to the article in the show.

Notes.

And now back to our conversation with Jacob. Jacob, you talked a little bit about the leader who can envision the future and then lead their company to what they see in the future. The role of technology today, machine learning automation, of course. AI every topic there is. How do you think about preparing or spotting leaders who will adapt?

Well, so I would be looking at a leader who is great at connecting with their team. I would also look for a leader who's good at their job. And you need to have both because if you're not good at your job and you're only vulnerable and somebody were to say, what do you think of working with Jacob? How is he as a leader? Somebody would say, oh, Jacob's a great person. I like hanging out with Jacob. We got great chemistry, he's a great know this and that. But I'm not sure Jacob is the right person to lead the team because he hasn't demonstrated that level of competence. Similarly, if I'm only good at the competence, I'm only good at the leadership's piece. And somebody might say, what do you think of working for Jacob as a leader? Somebody's going to say, well, Jacob's really good at his job, he's able to bring in a lot of money, he's able to bring in a lot of business. But I don't get engaged and inspired and motivated by Jacob. We don't have that chemistry, we don't have that relationship. It's hard to collaborate. So you need both.

And taking risk innovation revolving around vulnerability. I'm sorry. I think action orientation with a dash of vulnerability works. I don't buy the wrap it all around vulnerability because I think the world can't wait for me to understand that you're being vulnerable, and then I can follow you. I won't follow you when it's so competitive. As you said, people are trying to rip your head off. I think you need to balance more action orientation and decisiveness.

Yeah, action orientation and decisiveness and competence, all of those things fall under the leadership category. So again, sure, you want to be vulnerable, great. But sprinkle in leadership in there. So, for example, let's say you're a first time leader, and somebody says, okay, go talk to your team for the first time. And the first time leader says, hey, my name is Jacob. I'm a first time leader here. I've never done this before, but I'm super excited to be leading this team. And I'm sure that working together, we're going to be able to make amazing things happen. Now, on the surface, it sounds like a great message, but in the eyes of the employees who just heard that, they're probably thinking, I'm sorry, what did you just say? You've never done this before. And we're going to kind of hope that everything's going to work out here. That's not a good message.

Hope for the best.

Yeah. Hope is not a strategy.

Yeah. A lot of people are probably going to be thinking, well, I could do that job better than you. So leadership in that situation might be, hey, my name is Jacob. I'm a first time leader here. I acknowledge I've never done this before, but here's what I'm going to do to make sure that I'm going to be the best leader that you've ever had. One of the top executives at this organization is actually going to be overseeing some of the work that I'm going to be doing. I hired an executive coach who's going to help me and coach me, as well as my being able to coach you. And here are three leadership books that I'm actually just starting to read. I encourage you to follow along with me as well so that you can see some of the new practices and approaches that I'm going to be bringing into this team. Now all of a sudden, you take a step back and you say, wow, okay, I get it. You're maybe not quite there yet. You're not a top executive. You're a new leader, but you're clearly taking steps to close the gap. Like, I'm good, right?

I know that you're working hard to do whatever you need to do. You've demonstrated that competence in my eyes, and there were a lot of CEOs that I interviewed, especially during the Pandemic, who were vulnerable, but again, they had to add the leadership. One of them was Fleetwood Grobler, CEO of a south African energy company called Sasol. $13 billion in debt. When he became the CEO, pandemic almost obliterated the whole business. He also had to address his workforce. He also gave a message, I acknowledge the. Company is going through a tough time. The economics are not in our favor. I'm not sure exactly how we're going to get out of this, but I have a vision of where I think we can go. I know we have an amazing group of people here. I know that we can rebuild trust in our employees and in our customers. And if you come with me on this journey and help me figure out that path forward, I'm sure we'll be able to turn things around and become successful. And guess what? That's exactly what they did.

As you think about the clients that you work with and partner with, what are your clients asking you for advice today?

I'd say a lot of the themes now are primarily focused on two things, right? One is companies want to know, how do we create a great experience for our employees? What should we be thinking about? What should we be doing? What does employee experience even mean? And the second is around leadership. And that's probably even the slightly bigger category where I get a lot of organizations who come to me and they say, can you teach our team how leadership is changing? What should they be doing to be able to lead more effectively in this new world of work that we're all a part of? And I like to bring in a level of both quantitative and qualitative data so that people know that whatever I'm saying isn't my opinion. It's backed up by either a survey of thousands of employees and actual CEO interviews. They can hear directly from them.

Lots of companies had the free food and free happy hours and all these things to get people back in the office. What are the two or three things that engage employees the best?

Now, those free perks and benefits are not a strategy. Those things are an adrenaline shot. And so what I mean by that is that whenever we see and identify that employees are not happy, right, we do our annual employee engagement surveys. We find that we get low scores. The solution has always been a temporary short term fix. And so what do we do? We give employees something like free food on Thursdays, hot yoga on Fridays, massages on Tuesdays. And what happens is we get these temporary spikes in employee engagement. I remember actually talking to one chief human resource officer. I believe it was from Cisco. Francine quetzutas. And this was several years ago when I was working on a previous book, and she told me, if you want a very simple boost in your employee engagement scores, one year, measure the employee engagement on a cloudy, rainy day. And then next year, measure your employee engagement scores on a beautiful, sunny day, and you can easily get a ten point boost in employee engagement. And I think a lot of organizations think about it in that way. They pay attention to the number not in terms of changing to the workplace practices.

So if you want to simply boost your engagement scores, keep giving your employees free stuff. And there's a concept in psychology called the Hedonic treadmill which basically states that as human beings, we're good at adapting to stuff. So if you purely focus on perks and on giving me stuff, what's going to happen is I'm going to get used to it, I'm going to adapt to it, and I'm going to expect more from you. And that means that the entire relationship that we've created is I work with and for you, not because of a value exchange, but simply because of things that I get. And what's going to happen when you stop giving me those things, which eventually will happen because it's not a sustainable way to run a business. I'm going to leave and I'm going to go look for a job elsewhere. The analogy I like to use, it's kind of like changing the paint on a car instead of changing the engine. You don't just want to keep focusing on changing the paint because the engine is the same. Employee experience is about changing those core workplace practices that focus on your people.

So one of my favorite examples of this, look at an organization like a Microsoft. You can compare Microsoft under the reign of Steve Ballmer versus Microsoft under the reign of Satya Nadella. They used to be, as Satya Nadella famously said, a know it all culture. Now they became a learn it all culture. They made very substantial changes to their corporate culture in terms of how employees are evaluated, how they're seen they're no longer doing stack ranking. They made changes to the spaces in which they design. They made spaces to the tools that employees are able to use to get their jobs done. And I think there are a few really good examples of organizations that have done that. And even at American Express, they're very clear about demonstrating how they're not just giving employees stuff, but changing workplace practices in terms of the voice that they want to give to their employees. I believe they call it the colleague experience. Cisco has something called The People Deal, which maps out what those workplace practices are, what that relationship is going to look like. They've identified moments that matter in the lives of the employees who work there, and then they create experiences around those moments.

Those are companies who are clearly taking this seriously instead of just doing their engagement surveys and trying to give employees free stuff after they get a bad score.

As we think about AI and automation continuing to get a ton of attention and continuing to rapidly change how we all work, IBM even announced earlier this year they would replace about 8000 jobs with AI. And some customer service and call centers are using AI and Chat and Chat, GBT, et cetera. How are leaders looking at using AI and how do you think that will impact employee experience?

I'm fascinated with it. I use it all the time in my businesses. And it's interesting because Chat GPT alone isn't replacing anything, because you still need to know how to use these tools. You still have to be able to give the right prompts to something like Chat GPT. If I give you a bulldozer but you don't know how to drive it, what's the point of having a bulldozer? So we've given people access to Chat GPT, but we forget that you need to actually learn how to use the tool. And in this case, it's giving Chat GPT the right prompts. And that's how a lot of these generative AI platforms work. But if you don't know how to give it the right prompts, you're not going to get anything useful and valuable that you can potentially use. So, for example, you can ask Chat GPT, hey, give me some leadership advice as a first year leader and you might get some kind of generic insights that may or may not be useful for you. But if you learn how to give Chat GPT the correct prompts, I'm in tech. This is the geography that I'm in, this is the work that I'm doing.

This is the scenario. Give me five pieces of action, that's when it becomes a useful tool. So I think that's one area that we're going to see a lot of emphasis and focus on over the coming years is not just the tools, but how do we give employees the right prompts so that they know how to take advantage of these tools in the best way. Second, I think AI is going to make it very abundantly clear who the good leaders are and who the bad leaders are, because bad leaders typically focus on command and control, on delegation. It's just do this and leave me alone. And I think going forward, a lot of AI and technology platforms that we have are going to do a better job of decision making and telling us what to do and how to prioritize than any human being will. So if you're a bad leader and that's all you do, then what value do you have to the company? But if you're a good leader, meaning that you also focus on unlocking the potential of those around you, you also focus on coaching and mentoring others to the point where you can help them become more successful, even more successful than you.

That's where a lot of the value gets unlocked. That's something that no technology will be able to do. So I think the best piece of advice for leaders is how can you be that coach? How can you help make other people more successful, even if they are more successful than you? If you can do that and be that great coach, your value to the organization goes up tenfold.

I think when you look at some of the great companies right now that have beginning with COVID and then coming through supply chain issues, inflation, changing balance sheets, interest rates, cash flows that are developing their people more hands on than WatchMe hierarchy. Jack Welsh GE you look at Heineken or LVMH or Accenture that say, we're going to make you a better leader or not, and if you're not, then you leave. But we're going to give you tools to your point. We're going to have a program for you to take risk. We want you to try and we'll find those who are good at leading others and moving teams forward. I think this concept more so than I would have imagined of leadership development and pushing tools and trying people. That's where companies breed great leaders. So I think you've got something there that tech can't do, that leaders actually lead by using tools and leading people and finding the best in people, which I think gives them confidence to stay in a great company or make a great company.

Yep. Couldn't agree more. Very well said.

Well, listen, Jacob, we like to finish each podcast with some rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

Yes.

When do you do your best thinking? Morning, afternoon or evening?

Evening.

What is one important skill every person should have?

Communication.

I agree with that.

What books are you reading right now?

Right now I'm actually reading a book on American history because history is one of those things that I wish I would have done a better job of paying attention to, and I didn't, and now I'm paying the price for it.

What do you wish you had learned earlier in your career?

Earlier in my career? Probably leading with vulnerability. I wish I did a better job of combining those two elements much earlier on in life.

What is your favorite way to decompress after a long day at work?

Chess. Oh, very cool.

Define what success means to you.

A few things. So financially, it's obviously you want to make sure that you can pay for your bills and save for retirement and do things with your family that you want to do. And on the personal side, success means being able to have the time to spend with my kids, to not have to sacrifice spending time with them to do work, which inevitably at some point happens, but it's rare. And that to me, I think is a good measure of success, that I'm still able to be a dad, which is the most important job that I have.

Wonderful answer, Concur.

Well, listen, thank you very much. I think we all learned a fair bit not just about being vulnerable, but about how to engage with people, how to engage as a leader. When you were disengaged, you said, I'm going to go build something on my own, and that if you can leave to build something better, you should. But don't just talk about the problems and think the grass is always greener and as we talk about vulnerability, as you said, you have to tap into it in the right way. You've got to be able to say, listen, I may have missed something, I've made a mistake, I may be wrong, I need help. But then align that with leadership, and leadership competencies around decisiveness, as you said. Close the gap on accountability along with showing vulnerability, and then it becomes an action orientation. As a great leader, you can be too vulnerable, know the reason why you're being vulnerable, and know the intention so that then there's an effect to this merger of leadership and vulnerability. And as we talk about employee engagement and great companies, it's not just about productivity that we're confusing in this post COVID world, productivity and profitability with engagement.

If we had people who want to work 32 hours for 40 hours of pay, competitors will roll you over. Great athletes who win don't train less, they train to win. And this sense, finally, about leadership as the world is changing quickly to employees who want to be engaged to have more engagement. Don't change the paint, change the engine. We do need innovation, both as companies and as leaders. Don't be afraid of AI or machine learning or these problems with supply chains. Great leaders coach and mentor and show leadership and technology can't do that. It doesn't do that. It's a tool. So as leaders, if we in fact can lead others to greater success, that will engage them, that will create a long term, fantastic company, as you have created in a long term role is writing books and helping people become better at what they do. We thank you for helping us think about these topics today.

Thank you for having me. And we made a special URL, which is leadwithivulnerability.com, so if people go there, they'll be able to see some more information about the book and hopefully grab a copy.

There you go. We like that.

Amazing. I can't wait to get my copy. Thanks, Jacob.

Thanks for chatting with us today. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Redefiners. For more compelling insights from leaders across industries and around the world, listen to Redefiners. Wherever you get your podcasts and to.

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