Unlocking the Future of Leadership: Big Picture Secrets, AI Awesomeness, and Trust Hacks with Jonathan Kirschner, the founder and CEO of AIIR Consulting and AIIR Analytics

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[00:00:15] Welcome to the YouTube, YouTube No Podcast.

[00:00:20] Today we have Jonathan on when we're talking about the 2024 leadership trends report that

[00:00:26] they've put out.

[00:00:27] And we're going to have a disproportionate level of influence within the system. And if we can help a leader be more effective, that has such a huge impact on so many other people. And so I get a lot of meaning from that. And a little bit about me, I'm a psychologist by training.

[00:01:43] So I will be analyzing both of you know That's your mellow time ice hockey sounds like okay That's something you're doing with your kids the kids are you're taking kids to ice hockey or maybe you got a team that you're following Oh, okay. All right. Who do you know? I'm I'm the captain of team Air Force. Oh

[00:03:05] Which is a team or I've been to a bunch of stars games. My favorite stars moment was the season that they won the Stanley Cup, which was 100 years ago. But somebody got me tickets down on the glass. It was a client,

[00:04:24] actually. They couldn't go. And they're like, here's the other edge of the sword. Very hard to see all the way to the other side. It's a treason of force analogy, right? Sometimes there's, you know, some marks on the glass smudged up, right? And so to me, that's like, sometimes I'm like, you want to know what leadership is like,

[00:05:43] or bad leadership, or ineffective got, and basketball's the same way. You have to have your eyes up. Like my 14 year old plays a U basketball, the I play, what we call a club or select soccer back then,

[00:07:02] you couldn't look down at your feet, would you dribbled?

[00:07:06] Like you had to look up, you had to know where the ball was And it's all about optimization of a leader. So I'm a leader, I wanna go from point A or where I am right now to point B. We do that in a couple of ways. One through executive coaching, which is our bread and butter service. So that's the one to one development

[00:08:21] of an organizational leader.

[00:08:23] We work with teams in tech teams, But that first step is assessment. And it's logical, right? If we want to change something. Got it, a baseline. You could actually dive right in. But a wise one might say, let's take a hot minute to figure out what we want to change

[00:09:41] by doing a valid assessment.

[00:09:44] So while we start with the Trends Report we deployed one of our products from Air Analytics called the Leadership Genome, which is, it takes our leadership model, which is three broad domains of leadership leading self leading the organization, 12 dimensions that tuck under those three domains, and then 45 skills. So if I gave you these 45

[00:11:01] skills, think of them as like ingredients for leadership. And it's like we're, it's really hard to keep pace one and two, there's just a tremendous amount of uncertainty that AI and the rapid pace of technological innovation introduces into the system. We saw that in 23, it's only going to accelerate in 24.

[00:12:23] Hybrid and workforce dynamics leaders have not nailed that of the reason why there's so much challenge in the domain of mental health and wellbeing has to do with this rapid pace of change that is constant at this point.

[00:13:41] So those are the challenges.

[00:13:44] As far as like, all right, what do we need to do?

[00:14:42] be amplified this year. Self-care, investing in yourself, taking that time out,

[00:14:49] to do your gardening, not just the hobby.

[00:14:52] It's essential that we find ways to nourish and replenish

[00:14:56] ourselves.

[00:14:57] As leaders, prioritization, there's

[00:15:00] going to be just like, you know, there's

[00:15:03] been just an influx of information. we have constantly comes up, trust within the ranks of the employees. What are you finding through either your conversations or in this, in this report, how can leaders navigate that change? Yeah. I think, you know, trust is interesting. Um, I mean, it's so evergreen and timeless, right?

[00:16:23] But, um, you know, one of the challenges with trust is, is like hybrid.

[00:17:26] attention, you know, immediately I had to go and say, Hey, I'm really sorry. There's a huge miss.

[00:17:28] Um, but anyone we're fine and trust is restored, but that's happening in so

[00:17:36] many different ways.

[00:17:40] Often times much more subtle than what I just shared.

[00:17:42] And I was, but say, we don't even realize it, because we don't see half of this organization right now. And so we're seeing that within organization. And then you have at a more macro level, like when you open up a Twitter feed or X feed, or you watch the news, it's like they're saying that, they're get your ass back into work. Right. And if you don't, then. Which is just a reaction. That's kind of a. It's taking a hard line stance. Yeah. Yeah. And I can appreciate the context for why some organizations are taking that stance.

[00:20:21] Right.

[00:20:22] But, you know, and that being self-aware? How do you know if you have resilience and or and or how do you build resilience in yourself and those around you? If you like swiping, then head over to Substack and search up work defined.

[00:21:41] WRK defined and subscribe to the weekly newsletter.

[00:21:47] Yeah. Yeah, yeah Yeah, it just it seems like that would be something that came out of war

[00:23:01] Right, let it up rub some data on it go ahead run around it run around the track a couple times you'll be fine. It's a concussion

[00:24:03] leaders just do this. Why do they take a vaccine to being vulnerable and sharing

[00:24:06] that with their employees?

[00:24:07] I think we're used to seeing, you know,

[00:24:12] to William's point about, you know, kind

[00:24:15] of like the great male leader who is

[00:24:20] perfect and strong and charismatic and

[00:24:23] authoritative and has everything figured Invincible father, right? You're gonna be the role model that could do no wrong. Oh, you said I did because they let me know every day Right I am You know like they're very good at that. I set the expectations extremely low So like my wife my wife read every book and babies are us and she asked me she was you gonna read them?

[00:25:43] They were having babies in the Nile

[00:26:44] to have a voice and I think that's the same as with employees when I when I started I I would never even think about actually there was a time I walked in

[00:26:51] where I told one of my my girls is the couple weeks back I was late I was late

[00:26:56] for work it was I don't know maybe 20 minutes late I'm not lying like I

[00:27:03] literally had to iron my shirt that's why I was late but he asked me why where that you want to see in other people. And then you've got to allow them to win that happens and they break down on a call or they, you know, have a mishap in their life and they're just off. You've got to be able to not freak out, which is a normal, I think, for all of us. You've got to be able to give them space. Say, you know what, you're going through a tough time.

[00:28:22] We're compadres. Don't team, etc. Well, you've got to have you got some new ingredients, you have to know to work through very strong and certain areas to forward. Now you're not as strong there. Okay, how do you build that back up? I can see that. And you know, as we talked about,

[00:29:41] no leader is perfect. No employee is perfect either. And don't trust men that can't say, that's a good idea or you're right or I'm sorry or I apologize, like they can't be vulnerable. For whatever reason, they can't be vulnerable. If they can't be vulnerable, I don't want them in my life.

[00:31:00] Yeah.

[00:31:01] I've just, I jettisoned them because I'm like,

[00:31:03] you know what, if you're not to that place,

[00:31:06] I can't spend time around you because you'll drag me down. Where is it touched for you? Some of the skills that leaders need. Where it is, I'm sorry, the question is. AI, where is it? AI touched some of the skills leader. It's a touch also. I think that's the question we're all scratched. I mean, of course, there's some like technical skills, like prompt engineering and like knowing the various contexts to use AI and how to use AI ethically.

[00:32:25] There's a whole set of technical knowledge around that. And that's going back to the kitchen. Why? It was perfect. Why am I sending it back to the kitchen? Because it's not real. So that's going to be a challenge. When the CEO is writing a heartfelt message, but not writing it, and it's coming from chat GPT,

[00:33:40] I don't know what to do.

[00:33:46] I mean, this brings us into uncharted territory.

[00:33:48] 100%. How does a company navigate that? How does a leader navigate that? What do you find in there? I think it starts with the most important thing a leader can do right now is continuously remind their people the why. This is like invoking Simon Sinek, the purpose

[00:35:06] of why we are working together. kind of covered 50% of it because in the end of the day, people are thinking beings and they're able to kind of put together the other pieces as long as the major piece is there, right? But you know, beyond that, I would say that, you know, we need to be intentional

[00:37:22] because we like sports, all the sex sports.

[00:37:26] In sports, sometimes what you see is you see

[00:37:33] a coach that's a system, they have a system, and then you put talent into that system,

[00:37:35] and then you see a coach.

[00:37:36] Are you referring to the Eagles again?

[00:37:37] No, definitely the Cowboys.

[00:37:41] Or you see coaches that are based on a talent.

[00:37:45] What do I got here? So we're huge fans of using assessment, not just for like a leader to gain self-awareness for themselves, but also for an organization to understand the landscape of their talent. And that same process, that leadership genome

[00:39:01] process that I shared that we did for upon. It doesn't mean if you don't have those skills, you're not going to be successful in the environment. But if I have to choose who my successor is or come up with a talent pool for high potential leaders, I'm probably going to want to choose people that are most congruent with that profile.

[00:40:25] But it's an awesome point you wrap it up. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the show. We could talk for hours and we need to schedule another call because I have a bunch of questions around experiential learning that I'd love to take on.

[00:41:42] So we'll schedule another time to do that bit.

[00:41:45] Thank you.

[00:41:46] I'm all in.

[00:41:47] I would love it.

[00:41:48] Thank you so much.