Your Unicorn Is a Red Flag

[00:00:00] Desiree, Ashley, I'm so happy to be here and after reading all that bio that my mom would go and he's still single. Recruiters, turn it up. Recruiting has some explaining to do. And these two? Two industry vets, zero filter. Bringing in sharp guests and leaving the corporate script at the door. Make some noise for Talentless. For recruiters, by recruiters. Let's get into it.

[00:00:27] Welcome back. Welcome back to the Talentless Podcast. We are so excited that you're listening, watching whatever you're doing. I am Desiree Goldey and here is Ashley King. Ashley, I want the crazy question for the day. Hmm. Crazy question for the day. What is the, okay, what, this isn't really that crazy. What's the best movie that you've watched recently? Because I just watched one called The Housemaids and this lady just kills all the men and I loved it so much. I can't explain it.

[00:00:57] It really was. In its essence, they were all bad dudes. So like, that's what it really makes you root for them because you're like, ah, yeah, she's getting them. But all right. So what's the best movie? It doesn't have to be along the same vein. Well, I hope not. I'm watching a lot of movies. I want to do a lot of episodic stuff right now. I just watch Little Fires Everywhere with like Reese Witherspoon in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a good one. Man, it was like, I expected it to be like a Reese Witherspoon kind of show and I was like, what is happening in this show? It was crazy.

[00:01:26] It's a good book too. Yeah. Yeah. Ben, how are you? I just was in Lisbon about a week and a half ago and I got to go to a film festival. And so that's the most recent and I loved it. And it was the kind of pinnacle film and it's called Tangles. And it's an animated film for adults. And it's Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Seth Rogen, Wanda Sykes, Bowen Yang, like just like Brian Cranston, like all star cast.

[00:01:54] And it's actually, it's both an LGBTQ angle. So I was at a queer film festival and I'm LGBTQ, but it is about a woman dealing with her mother having dementia.

[00:02:32] Oh. Low grief, but at the same time allowing herself to live and not feel bad. So check out Tangles. I thought it was fantastic. That sounds like actually a winner. Yeah, it does. And Seth Rogen does a lot of work around the dementia and Alzheimer's group. So once she said his name, I was like, that's probably legit. Quick one, folks, before we get into this one, this episode is brought to you by our partners, pinn.com. So thank you, pinn.com, for sponsoring this awesome episode.

[00:03:01] Use code, use code TALENTLESS. It is 10% off your first three months. So please go do that. But let's get into our guest today. Our guest today is Ben Brooks. Let me read this bio, because I'm going to tell you. I was like, what? Oh, for God's sake. I have to listen to this. The whole thing. Every sentence. Can't you record this afterwards to save me the awkward pain? Or make some stuff up, Desiree, like freestyle a little bit.

[00:03:32] Victimless crime. Okay. Yeah. Actually, yeah. I think that every you should add one little thing they didn't put in just to be like, wait. It's kind of like find the fib segment, you know, and you're like, and Ben shucks oysters every summer and me, which I do not. I just eat them. But yes. I love it so much. Well, I am going to read it, though. He started his career renting cars at Enterprise Kids. Cool job.

[00:03:57] Then Lockheed Martin, then management consulting at Oliver Wyman, then SVP of HR, and Marshall McLennan, where HR executive named him a rising star and later put him on the cover. And then he did the thing every financial advisor tells you not to do. He put his life savings into his own company. That company is Pilot. Built on a slightly rebellious idea, executive coaching shouldn't only be for executives.

[00:04:24] Ben has been named one of the HR executive's top 100 HR tech influencers, multiple years running. He coaches senior leaders, and he hosts The Lift, a leadership podcast with guests like Helen Tupper and Sir Andrew Lickerman from London Business School. I should probably know that. Off the clock, he served on the board of Outserve, the organization that led the fight to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

[00:04:49] And he co-founded the LGBTQ employment group at his consulting firm. Welcome, Ben Brooks. Woo. The crowd goes wild. Desiree, Ashley, I'm so happy to be here. And after reading all that bio, then my mom would go, and he's still single. Turns out being a rising star is not a people's most beautiful list, right? So, yeah. I mean, it's always, the moms bring us back down to reality. They're like, don't get too big for your britches.

[00:05:18] You are still this small. A little familial humbling, you know? Literal bet. Yeah. You still haven't given me grandchildren. Literally. I want to jump into the resume a little bit. Oh, boy. Yeah. The resume is impressive, right? Whether we joke about it or not, it's pretty impressive.

[00:05:37] But I want to know, like, what that kind of, that resume, building that resume has taught you about talent and all of the things that are wrong with it or right with it that business school and all these other things didn't tell you. Like, let's jump into that. Let me take a minute because I feel like I'm at a six-way intersection. I'm like, which way do I go? Go all the way.

[00:06:02] You know, I think that there is broad recognition that leadership makes a difference. Talent is essential. I think, you know, it's the last, you know, the war for talent. I did McKinsey 20 years ago, right? And all of a sudden it was like your people are part of the competitive advantage, not just some other structural, you know, so the moat starts to become people and culture. So I think we've evolved a lot in the last 20 years to be like this is a more important thing.

[00:06:29] And now succession, engagement, leadership is a number one or number two concern of most boards. But yet when you look at organizational effectiveness and satisfaction around talent management and leader development, it's mostly a fail. People have succession pipelines that are got cobwebs and they're empty. They got a lot of spend without a lot of evidence. You got people leaving. You're doing a lot of education, but you're not seeing behavior change.

[00:06:56] So I think that we've – and I'm into this stuff. This is like I'm pro. But I think what I've learned is that the traditional methods of just sort of educating people and giving them tools and tricks or really thinking about talent and leadership as a single-player sport, organizations, you know, management is the achievement of results through others. And yet we develop people in a very individualistic, single-player manner.

[00:07:23] And we typically are not trying to also shape the culture or the place that goes with the people. And that's really the one-two punch where I think a lot of the work is sort of siloed. You got your hypo list and you put them in a program and all this stuff. But we want innovative future leaders, but then you have an organization that's allergic to innovation. So I think this is back to kind of culture-y strategy for breakfast. You know, culture also eats talent for lunch. Right. Culture is full up. They get every meal.

[00:07:54] Culture, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting to me always that we talk – how long have we been talking about great leaders do great things and lead great teams and blah, blah? It's like a record just keeps going around and around in the circle, right? And, you know, I wonder, like for you, you know, what does that – what do we do differently?

[00:08:17] Like what now is the right thing to do or what should we be doing first and foremost that we aren't doing? Well, I think first we have to be very clear and explicit in codifying what we want and expect. I work with executive teams all the time. I worked with an investment bank last year and they had 22 people on their management team, their executive team. Spans of control. We'll talk about that later. But it spans and layers, you know.

[00:08:45] They need the old span-alyzer we had in consulting. But I said write down what a great manager is here. Write down what a great leader is. 22 different answers. So we talk about it in a way that we have this, you know, kind of connotative or individual definition, but we haven't typically broken it down. And you may say, oh, well, gosh, we have all these competencies, right?

[00:09:07] And, you know, the average leadership competency model that I see is about 14 or 15 competencies, which is about 9 or 10 too many. So part of it is codifying it, getting out of generic language that doesn't make sense for that organization, that culture, that industry, those demographics. But also prioritizing and standardizing and simplifying what these things are because we can't have an emerging leader or a senior executive be 15 things.

[00:09:37] We can't evaluate them against 15 things. So I think it's the prioritization, but also really sharpening and modernizing. I just was interviewing someone today about how you fail smarter, Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School. And I said, what are the cultural things? You can say you want to fail, but what are the things culturally that make that allowed? That's true. That's a good one. I will say that's similar. People who talk about like failing upwards, because to me, failing just means that you're trying, right?

[00:10:06] Like we're making the effort, we're going through it. But it's like, is that bringing us closer to the solution? And I think whenever we're thinking of like recruiters and talent in general, and we're thinking of like, how do you judge a good recruiter in that type of scope? I always think of like good recruiters give you better problems. So if the first problem was we have no one at top of funnel, we have no candidates, no this.

[00:10:30] A good recruiter actually changes your problem from that to, hey, we actually have so many good candidates that our manager doesn't know who to pick. Like we're in finals right now. They're torn between two to three different people. Like that's a way better problem to have. And so whenever we're talking about failing and what that looks like to me, I'm always looking at what did that failure produce? Because again, we still have problems like they're still now they still don't know what to do.

[00:10:58] But this is a much better problem to have than the problem that we had before. So whenever you were saying that, that's kind of where my head went immediately. Des, what were your thoughts? No, I didn't have any. I've done this for hours, right? Leadership to me is we're failing so miserably. We're sticking middle managers in seats because they were really great salespeople or whatever they were. Engineers, whatever. And we're like, go run and take care of humans.

[00:11:23] And I find that it's one of the most abysmal things we do, not only to the team that they're leading, but also to the leader themselves. Right? It's like, hey, go do this. And you were so good at running our sales team, our marketing, whatever you were. Now I'm going to give you nine humans and you're going to be responsible not only to lead them their lives and their livelihood and their performance and all these other things, but you have to lead your own.

[00:11:51] And we still want your department to be where you were at a top performer. And along the way, we're not going to give you any skills. We're not going to up-level you. We're not going to do any of those things. We're just going to stick you in the seat. It actually makes – logically, it makes no sense. And I don't understand why we keep repeating that. You know, I feel like we should have broken that method a long time ago, but we still keep repeating it. But then why do we keep repeating it?

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[00:12:50] No fluff, no templates just to say you have them. Just strategy, structure, and honest feedback that actually works. If you're tired of spinning, it might be time to do better. Head to dobetterconsulting.net. Good answer. You know, I think, look, if you look at consulting white papers about the secret to X is Y.

[00:13:14] Well, the secret to digital transformation, the secret to becoming a global organization, the secret to becoming inclusive and diverse, the secret to becoming innovative and customer-centric, they're like, it's always middle management. Because it's the rollout of the strategies, the implementation. Yet we still haven't fixed that or figured that out. And it was interesting, Ashley, when you mentioned about recruiters and what they need to go find, one of the tells about if we don't know what good looks like and we haven't codified those standards is a job description. Yeah.

[00:13:43] Because if it ever says the red flag, you know, unicorn, ninja, that is Latin for we don't know what the F we want, so we need someone to be everything and we're going to be disappointed. Right? So I think part of this is organizations haven't really made the tradeoffs because people say, well, you need to be this bold, innovative thinker, but you got to bring everyone along. Yeah. Okay. Well, sometimes bringing people along is like get up or shut up. Right? Right. But maybe it's the opposite.

[00:14:10] So I think we really set people up to fail because we're expecting way too much of them from the perspective of breadth and not enough of them from the perspective of depth. So it gets back to that, you know, and I think, you know, we have this, you know, managers could use freaking talent agents or a union, right? Managers are going to be like. I think they should have a union. I've always said, like, let's call a union. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you want me to do this now for compliance and this for finance and this for this and this for that and this for safety.

[00:14:40] So I think that part of it is we have, you know, increased spans, you know, reduced layers. We've got, like, player coaches, you know, people that have, like, a day job and the management job. And then no one is thinking about capacity or capabilities related to that. But everyone knows that our managers suck or we need better managers or our managers won't do it. Right? But at the end of the day, we're often then we're like, well, we need better leaders because we don't have good management.

[00:15:10] And then people don't know the difference between those things. And at the end of the day, leadership cannot make up for poor fundamentals on management. Leadership is a multiplier. But what are you multiplying? And so we then will focus on, well, we need to make people more visionary. Well, it doesn't matter if you're a visionary if you can't make a plan. Right? If you can't organize resources, if you can't overcome obstacles, hold people accountable, create a thriving environment, have the right talent.

[00:15:31] So I do think it gets back to what are we expecting and having a shared understanding and articulation that is crisp and communicable, that makes sense to people versus the PhD learning researcher that has a laundry list that looks like, you know, my dream boyfriend. Not your dream boyfriend. It's not Build-A-Bear. It's not Build-A-Bear. It's not Build-A-Bear. Right? Right.

[00:15:57] No, I think what you're describing is essentially that unbridged gap of like people who are the ICs that are great at what they do. And it's kind of this mentality of like the best players don't always make the best coaches. And there is a big difference between being able to hit home runs all day and then teaching someone how to hit home runs all day. Those are two very, very different skills. And we never bridge the gap from you are an excellent home run hitter.

[00:16:26] And how do you do that? And how do you teach it? And then one, half the time, those ICs don't actually even like teaching it. They miss being the home run hitter. They like the ball contact with the bat and they like that smack. And they're like, they don't want to be watching other people. They want to go smack the ball themselves, but the only way they make money or get status or feel like they have security or accoutrement is by getting into this thing. So we've created a game that there's one way to win.

[00:16:54] And we don't supply any of the necessities to bridge that gap on the way to win. So people are just fumbling their way through, trying to fail their way upwards with those good failures, hopeful, and try to, you know, mobilize themselves through the structure that we've created through our social norms. And it's play. Yeah, Ben, there was something interesting that you, I think I read it or you wrote it. I don't know.

[00:17:17] I do a lot of research for these shows, but it was talking about leaders being like candid and kind at the same time or some theory around that, right? And like most leaders always pick one. Where does that break in hiring, right? If we bring that back to hiring, is it the debrief? Is it like the candidate? Like where are we losing that actual philosophy as we talk? Yeah. Look, I know that you've got recruiters here.

[00:17:47] Recruiters are largely not set up for success because of all these structural things. It's a hard job, right? Whether you're in-house or you're external, I would argue recruiting technology overall has made things worse, not better, despite $150 billion invested in venture and recruiting. And I can just say that as an employer, right, was I try to go find talent. It can be quite challenging.

[00:18:08] I do think that both the candidate experience sucks because people don't know, like, did they do well or what's next or how it's sort of going, et cetera. But I also think that, you know, so often resumes get sent and then people pick people or there's these like interviews. And then it's like, well, did you like her? Did you like them? And it gets into some of our biases. It gets into like preferences without, again, that shared expectation.

[00:18:36] Rarely do I see people scoring people against the four major aspects in a job description that is like, we need you to do X, Y, Z, A. It's back to like, well, they talked about this and all these extraneous things. And I think part of the ability to be kind but also be rigorous is making sure that you keep the main thing the main thing.

[00:18:55] And I think that so often in recruiting, again, everyone has a different vision for what they're looking for and different preferences or different biases that we're actually not that aligned unless it's a super repeatable role that we've figured out. But in particular for roles that are about innovation or growth or a role that hasn't really worked out, then it's just like, well, let me just find another person. But it's like, but like if you're the screenwriter, we can't call central casting until we know who the character is.

[00:19:24] Right. And you're just putting putting actors in front of me and being like, who should be this? Like, well, for what part? Yeah. Like, oh, they're the villain. Well, is that capital V villain or lowercase V villain? Because there are different kinds of villain. How bad or nasty is that villain or whatever? If they're the hero, is that that? So I think so often it just gets back to organizations don't know what they want or everyone wants different things and no one has the conflict to work that out.

[00:19:49] So they just put people in a recruiting process and kind of hope that the process aligns that rather than not wasting candidates time and up front saying, let's get on the same page about what we actually want. Yeah. I also think and kind of a and comma, but it might sound like a challenge, but it's not. I also did my opinion. I think candor and kindness are the same side of the same pancake.

[00:20:12] Like, I think that the only way to be kind to you is to give you candor, which if that means on the phone with the recruit with the candidate, I'm like, hey, this isn't going to be a fit because you just explained why you're leaving your current role. And it's going to be that exact same thing over here. Like that is being rigorous to what the team needs, plus being kind to the candidate. And to be candid, most of the time that I have to tell, because a lot of people will not tell candidates on the phone that they're not a fit. They're just going to go all the way through the screen and just do it just to do it.

[00:20:42] And then they'll send them the rejection letter later. I actually tell them on the phone, which I know is probably a no-no for a lot of companies, but it's something that I've realized. One, it saves the email. I mean, I usually follow up anyway, but still, it also there's a lot of mutual respect that's added whenever that happens, because then the candidate is like, you see me and you actually listen to what I was looking for. And I know you're not going to set me up with a bad thing.

[00:21:09] I can't tell you how many of those candidates I've had to say, this role isn't a fit. It's not going to be great. Lottie dotty. They add me on LinkedIn. They go work for a different company. And then they reach out to me and be like, hey, this company is hiring a recruiter, a talent manager or whatever. And you're one of my favorite. Like, would you be interested? So it's a weird circle. But I will also say that is on the same foot even with the hiring managers. So like me being kind is not going to be real if I don't tell the managers like, hey, you don't have your stuff in order.

[00:21:37] Like you don't really know what you want. On paper, it says three to five years. The person that we're backfilling had 14. What is your real expectation with this? And that's actually that's literally a situation I'm dealing with today. And so it's those conversations of like we need to really drill down. And so whenever you mention the job description and things like that, I actually have a layer even under that. I think a lot of other groups call it like a job analysis, but a task and a KSAC analysis where we're going through.

[00:22:05] And it's like I want you to tell me every single thing that this person does. How do they do it? What is the technologies that they use? Then I can line map your little competencies and your little cute lines and your JD that you're using. But we need to know the tangible of what this actually looks like. And nine times out of ten, especially if it's a backfill and that person's already gone, sometimes the managers don't really even know how to do that. They don't know. And so it's based off of either a previous person's profile.

[00:22:33] It's based off of a gap that they're trying to figure out what this person did the whole time. So I will say that Kander really cuts it all with a knife and just says, hey, this is what do you want to be successful? Yes or no. And if the answer is yes, I can get you there. But this is what we have to do. And there's no way to it, but through it or else we're just wasting a lot of time. Well, and I think kind versus nice are different things. Oh, yeah. Nice is package. We talk about it all the time. That's gift wrap, baby.

[00:23:01] Nice is about sort of looking good and managing social graces. Often it's inauthentic. That's viewing the full phone screen. Right. Yeah, exactly. Kind considers like good intent and the well-being of the other and is about sort of authenticity in it. And so taking someone out of a process where you're just going to like waste their time or the kind of the planned loser and you have to fill the slate. Don't get their hopes up. Don't do that thing.

[00:23:29] And I would say that as a recruiter, the best boundary I think you can set. If you want to be, you know, 90 plus percentile recruiter, do not give people resumes or schedule interviews. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200 until they prove to you exactly what they want. Because you are winning an unwinnable game. You'll just keep having to source. You'll have to align all these stakeholders that want all this different stuff. You won't be able to give candidates good feedback.

[00:23:59] The process will go on forever. But I see that so often the impulse is like, and maybe you're on a time to fill metric or something like that. But so often the impulse is just show them, you know, I have a client I work with. She's a realtor. She sold $5 billion in individual residential real estate. Right. And so she, you know, she says sometimes buyers are liars. Right. They'll say, I only want a three bedroom apartment on the west side of Central Park. But they'll be in Brooklyn if you want.

[00:24:28] So part of it is really that pressure testing. Don't put people, don't put candidates in front of them as a way to find what they want. That is a poor way to define what they want is by interviewing people. And if they don't know what they want, they shouldn't have a headcount open. They shouldn't because it's so expensive to undo a hire. There's brand reputation. There's operational risk. There's employment risk.

[00:24:52] So part of this is rather than hitting the gas, which is, I think, where a lot of recruiters go at the beginning of, oh, you got to open rec. You got to hit the brakes and be like, hey, before we get, you know, IT wouldn't go start building new features if requirements weren't defined. But if they did, it would look like recruiting. And that's what I mean, I think that that's accurate. I think that so many recruiters get wrapped up in the I don't want my manager to think I'm incompetent or don't understand. So I'm just going to say yes, yes, yes.

[00:25:21] But at the end of the day, that's not what a strategic partner is. A strategic partner, in my opinion, is someone that actually does push back a little, that does go a few layers deeper than what they're offering and doesn't just meet you on the surface, but says, hey, hey, this, this. And also in an example that we talked about a few weeks ago was like I had someone in our home that was helping us do plumbing and stuff.

[00:25:42] And out of all the vendors that we had, the one that I picked was the guy that pushed back on me the most because he was the one that was like, no, this wouldn't be this whatever compliant and this won't work because of this thing. And at the end, he was correct, but no one else told me those things. So that means we would have signed with them, got with them. And those people were the nice package. They were the packaging that was like, we can do exactly what you want and we can always help you versus the real guy who was like, I hear that they're saying that. But once they get their guys in here, this is a this is a load bearing wall.

[00:26:12] This is like it was just it was a very different conversation. And that's how I knew that person was a partner that I wanted because they were able to add texture and actually add feedback to what I wanted, not just tell me yes. And now don't get me wrong. I love being told yes, but I also love being told yes. And this is how we'll do it because I understand what you're asking and I'm listening. I have a question. Like, you know, one of my I've had coaches my entire career and like I believe in them.

[00:26:41] I believe that they've gotten me to the next step of everything. And I think your philosophy of like not only executives need coaches, people need coaching and and, you know, I I'm I'm interested to hear like how does that how does how is your program and your coaching different than anybody else's? First of all, and why is it made for not just executives? Because I think people think that they need a coach when they're like at VP level or something. Right.

[00:27:11] Like, you know, but I've had one. I was a sales rep and I had one. Right. So like talk to me. Talk me through that a little bit because I'm really interested for our audience to hear because there are a lot of people who, you know, struggle and talent is a hard place. Right. It's like a hard place to work. And, you know, it looks like a hard to figure out your career path, the whole thing. And so I would love to hear your thoughts on what's different for you.

[00:27:36] Yeah, well, well, I think, you know, my company pilot, we do organizational effectiveness and that includes leader development, which includes coaching is one of the methods to do that. But we also help organizations define what's expected and how people work together culturally, operating principles, leader standards, manager standards. We've got training. We've got group coaching. We've got a variety of different offerings. We've got assessments. We've got analysis. And so I think my view is you shouldn't assume coaching is your silver bullet. I'm a big fan of coaching. Right.

[00:28:05] But you should also realize that coaching typically is around that individual single player. And often the performance is affected by so many things beyond their individual. So the recruiter can't make the hiring decision. Right. The hiring manager does. But the recruiter sort of measured on the hiring decision. Right. Or what finance needs to clear the headcount or what HR needs in terms of leveling or comp or what policy.

[00:28:34] So I think part of it is we take a more you need to look at both the people and that's the coaching part. But then you have to look at the place. That's the culture ways of working. And then sort of the practices like how we work together and our methods. So I think part of what we do beyond just coaching is we think kind of about all of that because we typically spend tons of time assessing talent. Not much time developing it. It's about 90-10 ratio.

[00:28:59] And we just have a talent review every year like it's Groundhog Day and put up a nine box and smack each other on the ass and say see you in a year. Right. And so I think Desiree related to kind of some of my – when I work with CEOs and C-suite people in my private practice, to what Ashley was saying earlier, there is something very kind in challenging someone directly. But if you've ever read Kim Day's Radical Candor book, you don't – that's step two.

[00:29:29] You have to establish every single time explicitly that you care personally and then you challenge directly. Otherwise, that's not radical candor. That's obnoxious aggression. And so part of a coach, when I look at it, a good coach isn't just someone who's going to ask you appreciative inquiry questions. You could have a bot do that or something, right?

[00:29:53] But it is someone that says, Desiree, we keep talking about this and you're really frustrated about it and everything about it is about other people. Where is your responsibility in this? Or what is the common variable here? And that sort of real talk where Desiree doesn't think I'm not on her team. I'm like, Desiree, I want you to have what you want, but you are blind to something, right?

[00:30:20] I had a client this morning actually, frankly, bitching and moaning about this job opportunity he had for a very senior executive sort of position. And he's like, it's delayed and it's slow and it's off track. And I said, according to whom? I said, you just don't like it because it's not going at your speed. They've delivered on everything that they said they would by the time they would. He's trying to throw the corn fairy person under the bus and everything else.

[00:30:45] And I'm like, I said, and I said, no, I said, did they promise or set an expectation on anything that they haven't done? No. OK, so you're mad at them, but really, you just can't take the uncertainty of having to wait. And you're assuming and catastrophizing you didn't get it because you're not managing your anxiety. So then that's the real talk versus them being like, why do all recruiters suck? And is corn fairy better than Spencer Stewart and blah, blah, blah. That's the wrong thing.

[00:31:12] And by the way, there's nothing you can do about corn fairy, Spencer Stewart, Russell Reynolds, you know, Hydric. That's out of your locus control. You got to clean up your own side of the street. So I think that's Desiree where I think a lot of coaching misses the challenge and the application where you have just people pontificating, talking stories about Pepsi 30 years ago and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or Nokia and all this crap. And it's like, let's deal with the now.

[00:31:34] And I think we are very focused on activation such that things get applied in the current environment versus having a lot of coaching around storytelling and never going to tell a story. Could I ask, because this is what I feel. Thank you so much. Do you feel sometimes like 90% of the candor conversation is typically about self or social awareness? Let me think about that for a second.

[00:32:02] I think probably I would add a third and say situational. So self, social, social and situational. Situational being the context. Right. Right. The candor is, hey, yeah, the hiring process is going slow because they just had bad earnings. And so the CFO is making everyone wait for two weeks before they open up headcount. Yeah. That's context and situational awareness. Right. But I do think that so often, you know, that person I was talking about today, I was giving him self-awareness. Yeah.

[00:32:32] Right. Because he's trying to put it on the relationship or the context. I'm like, it's actually in that. Sort of implicit agreement about niceness to each other. Desiree, I'm not going to call you on your shit. So you don't call me on mine. Right. That's the whole game. Right. Are you coming for me? Like you coming out?

[00:32:56] And so I think that's where a coach is authorized in a single hat role. And if you build the trust and you have that, that if I'm challenging you, it's not personal because we have a goal or set of objectives we're trying to achieve. Whereas if it's a fellow colleague, do you have lunch with? It's like, do I really want to be going to lunch with Ashley again if she's always like up my skirt about this? Always there. So, yeah, always. Always.

[00:33:25] So I think that it is about that self, that social and that situational. But the candor part is easier said than done because the social incentives are to be polite. And by the way, the research shows that the higher up you are in the organization, the less likely that you're going to engage in conflict, which is where the conflict needs to happen, is up top to get freaking aligned. Right. Mm hmm. Yeah. And so and there was another thing.

[00:33:55] So because Des had kind of asked about the people and you had mentioned, you know, the practice and also the culture, the environment itself. And to me, that triple threat ecosystem is the most important because you as a talent professional can find the best, the most qualified individual on the planet. If you're putting them in an environment that doesn't honor that doesn't care for that and the culture doesn't actually adhere to that, then we've just screwed everybody over.

[00:34:22] And so it is that situational awareness of like, I can find you the perfect candidate. But if I'm putting them in this environment, like what is that going to actually do for them, for you? It kind of it honestly reminds me of whenever the big DEI kick happened in 2020 and all of these people were hiring great talent for these places. But those places were not ready to actually do what they were pledging to do. And it created a lot of turmoil for all people involved.

[00:34:49] So how do you work through that, assessing the culture, assessing that actual ecosystem and then having that conversation of like, y'all really aren't ready for this. Y'all are looking for change agents to come in here and y'all are the most resistant. And this is just going to be a big waste of time and money. How do you how do you walk them through that? Well, I think that is working with a great realtor. They're not going to go have you buy a home that ain't going to work. Right. Hopefully. Hopefully. Right. Hopefully.

[00:35:18] You won't work with them again or refer them. And so I do think that there is the balance of can the can the host not reject the organ? Right. You have an organ transplant. It's like, wait, what's this new liver kidney doing here? It's like, well, it's here to save you. But it's like, I don't know you. Right. And then that's the body's natural defense. Organizations will want change. But rather than change themselves, they're like, let's bring in a superstar. Let's hire someone from Anthropic.

[00:35:46] Let's bring in someone from Salesforce. Let's write Amazon. Oh, my God. We got to get some Amazon. Oh, those Amazon people. Right. And so there's this expectation that we're going to change the place by changing the people. But we're only going to change a couple of them. And then, you know, it's like, you know, even in politics, what do we want? Change. What do we want now? And then you start to get the person gets elected and they drive changing. Who the F is this? And what are you doing? Right.

[00:36:13] And so it always sounds great. Right. And to your point around diversity, there were studies that boards that brought in diversity performed more poorly than before when they were more homogenous if they didn't manage the inclusion and to find the way to be interoperable and to like have healthy conflict or different perspectives or understand those things. So I think so much of this is you have to whether you're partnering with your organizational

[00:36:40] development or, you know, talent management team, whether it's you got a transformation officer or something else. Who's the person who's that steward of the culture and the structures? How do you bring them in? So it's not just because you say so. Right. Because that's also hard. It was like, well, Des says we're never a person who's super innovative is not going to be happy here. Right. Well, instead of saying, hey, what's all the evidence we know, whether it's from engagement

[00:37:05] surveys, exit interviews, missed service reports, and you kind of paint that picture and say, well, what would we you know, what would happen if this person didn't succeed? Right. You kind of almost do a premortem. Right. And then you're like, are we really ready for that level of a, quote unquote, change agent? Because I think we often will give the new gal or guy a real pile of crap to deal with. You know, I had an executive that that he knew he needed to clean out a couple of VPs on a team, but he was hiring the SVP.

[00:37:34] And he's like, well, I'm going to let them come in and assess. And I said, why the hell? I said, why the hell? Back to challenge track. I said, why the hell would you do that? You know that they're not good. You've worked with them for a year. You don't want what are they going to do? Tell you that they're good. It's like, no, then the new person is going to come in and then they're going to need 90 days. And then they're going to want to give them feedback. And maybe then they give them a coach and all this rigmarole. And then we put them maybe on a pip and blow.

[00:37:59] And we're a year out versus saying, let's not have that change agent have to clean up my mess. Right. Let them move into a clean apartment. Right. Give them, set them up for success. Set the groundwork for that change. If you haven't done that, the onboarding is just someone swimming upstream for something the organization hasn't agreed to or doesn't want. And so I think that's the risk for a lot.

[00:38:25] That's why you see a lot of failed lateral hires at senior levels, you know, is they're brought in to symbolize some change, but the organization is not aligned that they want the change. So instead, they're like, what's wrong with Sheila? Right. Yeah. All the time. Because Sheila's got problems, you know? Yeah. Like Sheila, I can't believe we hired Sheila. I thought Amazon was this. There's a smile on that, you know? Absolutely.

[00:38:52] I cannot let you get away without talking about AI, unfortunately. So I'm going to equate it back to, and I have my own opinion about this, but I'm going to let you answer first, Ben. You know, what is AI doing to organizations culturally and leadership-wise? What is your general feeling about where we're headed with bots talking to bots and everything going on? Well, I was talking to a CMO yesterday, and we were talking about work slop at their organization

[00:39:22] and lack of intellectual ownership in terms of cognitive ownership or curiosity. And I joked that I heard someone said that they were the API between Claude and their manager. Like that. Right. And their manager was the API between their co-pilot or their chat GPT and your Claude, and you got these two people in between. So one, I think, largely AI, despite its incredible promise, as well as all of the complexities

[00:39:48] and second and third level order consequences to the world, is largely an individual benefit right now. Yeah. Right? So it's back to that single player, right? And if you were just playing singles in tennis, that's different, right? But you're playing soccer in the World Cup, right? That is an organization. So everybody, and you can see it even in a meeting. We had a guest on my podcast, Rebecca Hines from Stanford, and she ran Asana's work lab for a long time.

[00:40:13] She said, you can tell AI is not being used for collective good if there's more than one note taker in a meeting. Oh, that's the worst. If there's multiple, it means that this isn't for us. This is for me. Right. Right? Right. My notes. And so I think that it's exposing a lot of things. So one of the things we hear from a lot of customers in the market is, well, now that AI is making things production faster. Oh, we need to go build a spreadsheet. We need to do this research. We need to draft a policy. Well, that may used to take two weeks or two months.

[00:40:42] Well, now what's presenting is actually decision-making is slowing down the org far more than the execution or the production of the work. Because the AI is accelerating the production, but AI doesn't make the decisions. It shouldn't at least. Hopefully, yeah. And so what it's uncovering is that when production or execution was slow, it was very easy to have a check-in with the executives or the steering committee or the task force. And they'd give some feedback and they'd want another version.

[00:41:12] Instead of option A or B, they want to see a hybrid approach. All of it Latin for punting. Right? And so what's happening now is they're like, okay, you want a hybrid approach? We'll get that to you tomorrow. And then it's confronting that actually people are unclear about who's authorized to decide. People are afraid to be the one that does in case it doesn't go well. Job hugging and all that sort of thing. So I think AI is changing a lot of things culturally. And people are... You got compliance and safety things.

[00:41:40] And I've invested in that space as well, personally. And I believe that that's an important thing. But we're so worried about teaching people to prompt engineer or putting their connections together. We haven't really thought about how AI is probably going to make a lot of things that were already problems worse in organizations. Not that it's going to generate new problems. It's just going to make it more... When you solve other problems, it's a little like when you stop growing as a company. Growth cures a lot of stuff. You're growing.

[00:42:09] Growth papers up a lot of bullshit. And then you stop growing. And all of a sudden, it's like the fog lifts. And you're like, look at this mess. So I think AI is a bit of the fog lifting on organizations. And the nubby, persistent problems that they had are more visible and pronounced because the structured work is getting done better. It's the unstructured, undefined that's the bigger mess. That's my take. Des, what do you think? No, no. I definitely think so. This is my philosophy.

[00:42:34] I think it's giving us such efficiency and productivity and doing all those things as individuals. And what it is definitely doing is exposing all the things that were already wrong and culturally, whatever they are, efficiencies, procedures, process, whatever, and saying, OK, guess what? Now you got to fix it, right? Because there is no excuse for why it's not happening. Everybody's producing at rapid speed. So why not? Why aren't we?

[00:43:04] Why haven't we changed this? Why haven't we moved it? This is the right thing to do. Why are we waiting, right? And so I think it's actually confronting people in a weird way. And I think a lot of leadership in a lot of these companies is like, whoa, back it up, right? Like, you know, like, hold on. I ain't ready. Yeah. And it's here and it's happening and they're just not ready for it yet. And I think it's shocking to see some of the turn of events that are happening over and over again. You know, they hire a bunch of AI. They get rid of everybody because of AI.

[00:43:34] Then they hire people back because of AI. And they do all these crazy things because nobody knows what the hell is going on right now. Right. And so I find it fascinating. And, you know, I have a deep love for AI, as Ashley knows. And so I find it, I find the whole thing just really, really fascinating. And it's going to be quickly. We're going to see where it ends up very quickly because it's moving at rapid pace. Right. And so the super intelligence is coming, as they say.

[00:44:03] Well, and I think just like when I was a management consultant, you know, we'd come like the, it's like a corporate going down to the division and the biggest two lies in business are, I'm here to help. And the other person says, and I'm glad you're here. Right. Like, so, so I think that we come in as a consulting team and look, we did great work at Oliver Wyman and we were, we were the nerds that got into it and executed compared to our competitors. I felt very good. But there was this thing of, well, if we bring you all in, you're going to expose our inefficiencies or the poor decisions, or do we have to fire Jimmy, even though we really like Jimmy?

[00:44:33] Jimmy is so fun, but you're like, Jimmy's also incompetent. So, so, you know, that, that I think that's the thing is whether it's consulting 20 years ago or it's AI today, it is a bit of an x-ray, right? It is a bit sort of exposing. So that is part of the resistance. There's a lot of societal backlash. It's got a pretty bad brand. Young people really don't like it for a lot of reasons. And so I think that there's, there's a whole, I think AI is kind of the limiting factor

[00:45:01] of AI is humans, right? Which is the case for all technology. You know, people were adopting e-commerce in the United States, I believe at about a 1% rate per year based on a category you're in. So like if you're ordering pet stuff and you normally go to PetSmart, well, you move to online to Chewy, right? So then the pandemic happened and I think it moved at about 20 percentage points. It took a black swan global pandemic killing millions of people to get them to buy shit online. It was more convenient, right?

[00:45:28] So if that's what it takes when they have immediate personal benefit and autonomy, I think, you know, you ask anyone who's bought a CRM, anyone who's implemented Workday or SAP or anything, and I'm not going to, I'm not making a comment about their quality of their products, but at the end of the day, the people will be the limiting factor in AI rollout, not the models. Yeah, I agree. I completely agree. Also the water. Just to throw that out there.

[00:45:56] That might be limiting it as well once we run out. We'll hope those chips get a lot more efficient with compression or things. We'll see. But yeah. Yeah. And audience, this is the time of this episode where we talk about the cognitive and psychological side of the topic we've been talking about. And we've been talking about a lot. So we'll want to let Ashley King take the floor. And I actually have two things. So one, just to add on before we start telling outside the box, just to what they were saying,

[00:46:22] I think one of the most important questions you can ask in your recruitment group whenever implementing AI or using AI is going to be, at which point is a recruiter allowed to override this decision? Meaning that if a recruiter reviews these things and AI reviews these things and they come out with two different responses, yes, I want to move this candidate forward. No, I don't. Who gets to actually take that and run? Is it the AI? Do we stick with it? Because all the candidates went through AI.

[00:46:50] And so we have to have our process. And do we say to the recruiter, actually, we trust AI more than you? Or do you say, yes, recruiter, we can run with your analysis. And then now we've circumvented a process that we've just created. The solution to this, just for everybody listening to give you the quick takeaway there, is to have the recruiter intervention embedded. Meaning that if you use it, it needs to be a part of the process that they can intervene. And then that allows for that, not necessarily circumvention, but we've added it as a step, right? Yeah, humans in the loop. Yeah. Correct.

[00:47:20] But to the extent of, because I think they think humans in the loop also, because I mean, it should be a part of the decision making. But so many people use it top of funnel that it's just not, especially because of mass applicants and things like that. So anyway, so that was just something that as we were going through in our head, I think a lot of people, whenever we're talking about fractures in the system and how AI puts a spotlight on that, one of those is people's inability to allow to create structure as far as decision making goes in general, let alone whenever AI is in it.

[00:47:48] And I will make one really quick point. Do it. I've had so many friends apply for jobs and fill out a detailed application and they get a rejection email in about one minute because AI did that. And they are so pissed at the brand. They're like, oh, I didn't meet the AI scan. And it's like this immediate gong sort of thing. So first of all, if you're going to have AI do it, maybe wait 24 hours. So at least it seems like someone looked at it. Slow down your automation. Right.

[00:48:17] But I think that it's also, it's like you second guess the company a little bit. And yes, you have, you're going to have people that are a truck driver applying for a CFO position and you got to weed out some of that stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think that, I think just think about whether the human does it or the automation, when you do it and when you say it and why, right? Because so often if you're ever on the receiving end of some of this, if you saw what the system

[00:48:42] sent or what the recruiter sent, you'd be fit to be tied or disempowered or anything else. And so really thinking about how we do that with that kindness. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Also, I definitely think the delayed email is a necessity because otherwise we're about to get 47 page resumes because it's all going to be based on hot words if all AI does is the filter for that first round. So let's not change the whole industry, please. I don't want to read 48 page resumes. Okay.

[00:49:09] Talent outside the box today is actually a little bit about some things that we talked about whenever it came to self-awareness. And so this is a little bit about research on when we as humans in behavior attribute things to the self or the situation. So example, what we're talking about today is whenever we fault others versus faulting ourselves. So the example here is whenever you're driving through traffic and someone cuts you off and you're like, wow, that person's a complete asshat. How rude.

[00:49:37] And you have now attributed this person's behavior to their actual self and who they are intrinsically as a person. However, whenever you are driving through traffic and you had to cut someone off, you're like, hey, man, I'm in a big hurry. I have things I've got to do. And now the attribution is to the situation. And this is a chronic part of human behavior to where a lot of times people can do the same things.

[00:50:02] But we as individuals versus us versus the other person tend to attribute it versus the self or the situation. And so today, the main thing that we would talk about as talent outside the box is how to create a structure around that. And the fact of whenever you immediately want to attribute something to the person and say, oh, this is a bad recruiter or this is a bad whatever. Think about that situational context. What could possibly be the reason that someone might cut you off in traffic?

[00:50:31] What could possibly be the reason that the recruiter would do X, Y, Z activity? And then you will start giving that person the same amount of human behavior respect that you're actually giving yourself. And that is one way to achieve social and situational awareness. Desiree, cut her off in traffic. All right. You know. He's attributing that to you as a person, which honestly, same. It's been so lovely to have you. A wonderful guest. But I want our guest to know how to find you, your company, all the things.

[00:51:01] So plug away, sir. Well, I am on LinkedIn, believe it or not, folks. Talk about that sexy battleship of a platform. So you can find Ben Brooks. I'm on Instagram. You want to get me there, Ben Brooks and why. And then my podcast every week, we talk about a lot of these things that I think could be things that are not just helpful to recruiters, but for recruiters to influence their clients and stakeholders about what do we mean about accounting? You want a person who drives a lot of accountability. What does that mean? Right.

[00:51:29] And get them to sort of be activated and educated. So the lift pod dot com or you can look for Ben Brooks or the lift on any podcast app that you choose. But we'd love to hear from y'all. And look, recruiters have a tough job out there. And, you know, just say no. Stop. Don't give them resumes. Pull a little Nancy Reagan on them. Problematic. But do not give people resumes if they are not ready to know what they want. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. They need to hear it over and over again. And thank you, everybody, for joining us.

[00:51:58] So we are super excited to be there. Please follow us on YouTube. Subscribe. Do all the things you know how to do and listen to us. My book is also out. Leadership is a practice, not a personality on e-book and fully on paperback and hardback. So go buy it right now. Like I said right now. Okay. Immediately. Yes. Everyone have a great time and a great week. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.