Ai is a reality. It's being used as a productivity tool. But what we can't do is kate the human connection and human interface that goes along with Ai. And that is certainly what employees are demanding of their employers and of leaders, and they are making choices based on that human interaction base on organizations living up to its purpose and values. A lot of us are now working under managers that we might never run into at the office water cooler. So how can managers master digital communication and build a health community at the same time. Hi everybody. I'm Celeste He. Welcome to women amplified from the conferences for women. In this episode, I speak to Christy Smith, A writer, Hi and C suite advisor. You'll learn about the research in Christy forthcoming book, essential, and how it could impact the way you think about distributed teams, you'll also here about the ways Ai is being deployed in workplaces well outside of Silicon Valley and about the role managers play in supporting the humans at the core of every business. Let's get started. So the forthcoming book is called essential how distributed teams generative Ai and global shifts are creating a new human powered leadership. I wanna take each of those things 1 at a time. What is a distributed team? Is it as simple as a team that is all in different geographic locations? It's as simple as that, people who are working across the globe, different different time zones, and who need to coordinate their schedules and their work around the clock. And what is, generative Ai as opposed to any other type of Ai, work Well, it's a really good question. There 3 types of Ai. There's large language models, large action models, and now an emerging field of biotechnology technology that's driven by Ai. All of them build on 1 another to develop a database that gives us both data, analysis and information So is that... Is generative Ai something that is going to be pretty much always joined with distributed teams going forward? I think that Ai is part of our lives. It is a reality. Now how we use that Ai is still being debated and determined, and each organization in each leader needs to figure out how they will use Ai and what skills and capabilities, their teams need in doing so. So I think about it in in 3 parts. If you think about artificial intelligence, it is a past orientation. It is based on data from what has been. It's largely linear and it's thinking and sterile in its feedback. It absolutely identifies dominant discourse or those that are the loudest voice in the room, if you will, pattern recognition and such. The second part is human intelligence. What human intelligence brings to Ai is this kind of contextual orientation. Our ability to listen observe and take action is this notion of contextual comp, sp sp, an acquisition of ideas and thoughts. The combination the third part of the 2 is what really organizations circle grappling with and leaders are grappling with today, which is Ai plus human intelligence. How does decision making and strategy development begin to emerge when you use the technology and human intelligence? How do we govern Ai moving forward and machine learning? How do we bring the will risk management and security to to bear with these new kinds of technologies. See. And and this is what interests me about, your book, in that it's focused on creating a new human powered leaders. Ship. Because so far, the places where Ai really gets into trouble is when it tries to replicate human intelligence. Yep which it cannot do right now really great at shifting data, really great at meeting predictions as you say recognizing patterns, not great at nuance, not great at emotions and context. How do we guard against the the temptation to use ai to do what it's not good at, You know, I I've already read about people who are using Eye to, like, respond to emails, which is often a very bad idea, to respond to job Applicants, which seems to be even a worse idea. How do we resist that temptation? Well, I think it's less about resisting the temptation because, unfortunately, it is our reality. Ai is a reality. It's being used as a productivity tool specifically in the things that you just talked about. But what we can't do is ab advocate the human connection and human interface that goes along with Ai. And that is certainly what employees are demanding of their employers and of leaders, and they are making choices based on that human interaction based on organizations living up to its purpose and values that organizations insides match their outside. And so I think it's again, it's the combination of Ai and human intelligence that is a skill that needs to be developed and honed. And used an organization that that we don't see leaders being willing at this point to learn how to do. Okay. So how does a leader do this? And and and again, I wanna go back to the fact that answering emails, doing a human communication it at this point is not something Ai is good at. I mean, we've seen that no example after example of Ai really quickly descending into racist sexist inappropriate. Conversation with people. And yet, we are already hearing from leaders who want to use Ai to say act as their call center, or again, respond on masse to communications they get from consumers or or workers. So where is this line and how do leaders learn at at a point when many people are still learning about where Ai is capable of how do they learn how to do this? Yeah. I think let's take a step back and and I will answer your question directly, but let's stay talk about the unprecedented attended times that we're in. We are certainly, managers and leaders are experiencing a super cycle and tech and Ai. We're seeing and leaders are experiencing economic waves in the world, political instability, shifting demographics and a slowing down of lip workforce. Right? All of these realities point to a reflection for employees as well as employers are on how when where and if they're going to work. And so this is given rise to the things that are in the popular press that we've seen quite footing or taking Pto while on the job. The rise of the gig economy. It's 1 of the fastest areas of, the economy in growth, quitting and women leaving the workforce is costing 2000000000000 dollars globally of Gdp. So these realities and the impact to managers and to leadership are immeasurable because they've never had to face this... Kind of headwind all at once in terms of managing people. Ai will help with some of this when we think about the capacity that it has from a data and an analytics standpoint from a looking back, what are the trends that customers and employees are emerging and that they can begin to make better decisions around, but let's be clear, consider what managers and leaders are faced with, moving from managing P l's ls, products and people to having to manage this disruptive environment as a whole. And the demand that they need to build new skills and new capabilities around data and analytics to do so productively, You're listening to my conversation with Christy Smith. If you're in Texas or Massachusetts right now and you don't wanna miss out on our in person conferences fall. Go online right now. Right now, I mean it and get your tickets because we are almost completely sold out. The Texas conference is bringing Julia Louis Dreyfus, Tabitha Brown and Sarah Blake to the keynote stage. That is October second in Austin, and you can register right now at t x conference for women dot org. The Massachusetts conference celebrates 20 years in Boston this December with a stunning speaker lineup that includes Oprah winfrey, Caitlin Clark and honestly, so many more incredible and history make women. Tickets at m a conference for women dot org. Now, let's get back to our conversation. In Okay. So let's go back to distributed teams because many of the forces that you're talking about, including people's desired to not relocate, for example, to, work remotely, come from the situation that we're in right now where the average worker is severely overworked. And it has been for some time. We've had you know, multiple economic disruptions where companies laid people off, assigned their work to the people who still remained and it never went back. So after wave after wave of that, you now have a workforce that's exhausted. And work life balance is at a a record disruption. So how can we use a eye to take to shoulder some of that burden. So that maybe we can relieve Some of the... Is some of the exact trends that you're talking about. Yeah. I think that you're raising such an incredible point for a number of reasons. 1 is you know, we haven't even acknowledged the fact that we have a silent... Pandemic. In some ways, equal to or greater than what we saw with Covid, and that is around mental health. We are seeing the rise of mental health issues among employees and among our populations, We're certainly seeing it from a generational standpoint, and the impact of that, to people coming to work or showing up for work is equivalent to coming to work with 1 hand tied behind your back So that is a distinct reality. What's that's what is leading and compounding that is the dis dis age and lack of trust of employees of their leaders and employers. So these realities are really having people consider, well, how are they gonna work how are they're gonna make their wage? And do they need to do it in the traditional way of landing a job at AAA big company and staying there for 20 or 30 years. My research would suggest that that... Those days are gone. Right? And so people are wanting to define and have agency to define how and where they work. You know, 1 of the the findings of the research for the book was to flip the question that we've asked for generations, which is what do employers require of employees. The the the question now is employees are saying, no, what do I require from my leaders in order to be in this organization? And there are 4 things that they require? And they are unwavering about. 1 is purpose. Again, this notion of do our insight, match our outside are we really living to the purpose and the values of the company. They wanna believe in something. They wanna trust that their leaders having greater, purpose in the world for their organization. Second is agency, which speaks to exactly to what we're speaking to now, which is I wanna be able to not only find how when and where I work, but I also were so wanted to find who I am in relationship to work. And I don't want that to find for me, like we see with many diversity programs. And then wellness, and My I talked about this earlier with a mental health crisis that we're in in connection. And how do we gain connection? Now Ai plays a big part in each of these, which is Ai can give managers and leaders the data that says who's disconnected? Who's not engaging on a Team's call or on a Zoom call. Who's, you know, who's loudest voice, who needs to give other people an opportunity, it can give us these behavioral and, really communication skills. Or or markers for us to understand what's happening in the engagement I have as a manager or a leader with my team. Okay. So then, when we tried to deploy that, let's say that you're using Ai to to analyze things like that in our workplace, which I think is a fantastic use of Ai. To to figure out whose projects are supported who's or not, who gets promoted who doesn't, who gets great performance review said who doesn't. All of those kind of things. So then we take it back to the leadership and we have to implement what we have learned from Ai. How do you do that? Yeah. I think that what we look at is the need for leaders to fundamentally shift from what we used to talk about as emotional intelligence to being emotionally matured leaders. Do I mean by that? There's a mindset, behavior and cultural aspect to being emotionally mature leader? There... The mindset is suspension of self interest. That I lead in service of the team that I have. Now this goes beyond the, elements of servant leadership or emotional... Intelligence because it is actionable. How do I have ins curiosity about everyone in my team so that I understand deeply what their challenges are, what motivates them, what their skills are, which Ai helps us identify with much more precision than ever before, and how do I match them to the work that they find per purposeful? This is critical. Both of these things then leads to building a culture in which every member of the team can see themselves in the purpose of the organization, can see themselves contributing to the values of the organization. This does require a ability to have contextual competence. Beyond just I'm looking at a white woman, or I'm looking at a black man or so on and so forth. It means being able to have conversations that deeply or are rooted in the others success. And we we don't have time today. You said it at the at the beginning of our conversation. Our calendars are booked from beginning to end with meeting after meeting with productivity challenges with outcomes we have to drive. We are not making the time to be emotional leaders to be ins curious to ago over what kind of culture we want and to understand the context in which people are coming to work. Okay. So then let's take it back to these distributed teams, because 1 of the difficulties was distributed teams at least that... Heard from managers is that they lose these human connections that they're not able to, you know, look at someone's face in person across a, a meeting table that they're not able to stop by someone's desk that they can't check to make sure that their employees are actually working the whole time that we're working. There was, of course, a recently an incident in which Excuse me, Some bank employees were fired for pretending to type on their keyboard while they were on the clock. So how do we use Ai in a way that actually lifts up and empowers workers. And as you say, is not focused on selfish needs, but on the needs, of the workforce, but not in a punitive way. Yeah. Well, listen, I I think that, again, this goes back to this concept of of human intelligence Ai. They have to sit side by side. I think that where Ai helps us is to determine because we can read this whether it's through email or through, again, a, video clip form like teams or Zoom, it can begin to gather for us the behavioral cues to say if someone is engaged or not engaged. Right? It begins to tell us with great precision, who's who's absent. Right? Not absent in a negative way, but who's really not engaging. And why are they not engaging? This should then fuel for managers, a conversation. Now, there's enough evidence to say conversely to what you are commenting on that in some ways, research is telling us that through the medium of working through teams or Zoom or any other Webex platform that it is a more safe environment for employees through to talk to leaders about what their needs are and maybe what's going on. And so there's evidence on both sides that says in person or remote are better. I think what we have to get to is the realities both will exist? They're gonna continue to exist. So how do we change our behavior as leaders? To be ins cessation curious as I spoke about before to engage in conversations and make sure we're taking the time and perhaps more time for those curious distributed workforce to be engaged with them, on phone, on video, even through an a message. I I remember recently, I sent a note through Teams to, colleague of mine and employee that said, hey, how are you doing? I haven't touched base with you really lately. The response that I got back of her feeling seen, heard and valued was remarkable. It it does not have to be grand gestures. It just has to be. Hey, I see you. You know? I miss you. Like, what's happening in your life? And putting the effort into that is critical. And also restructuring your day and the way work gets done, so that managers and leaders have the time to engage with their employees. So before we go, what is the first step? I mean, as an author, I would imagine you're... You would say your the first step is to reach book. But, for leaders who are kind of overwhelmed, by a sense that Ai is changing constantly that remote teams and distributed teams are a little bit nerve rent They they would like to go back to the way things were before when they felt comfortable and sure pure and knew how everything was. What's the... What's your fucking first suggested step, accept the reality. And also, have enough courage to admit that you are leading in unprecedented times. Leaders are overwhelmed, the majority of leaders that we talk to and the research, from the book suggest to us that the majority of leaders know that they have to do something different with the advent of all of these pressures at their door step, but only 23 percent are even thinking of doing something. So, you know, like in many things, the first step is to accept the reality of today, and the second is to ask for the help that they need to and to yes, in some ways, read this book because it will give you a blueprint on how... To lead fundamentally differently, but in a way that meets not only employees expectations of you your expectations of your organization and of your people. Chris Smith, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate you too. Thank you. But We hope you enjoyed this conversation with Christie Smith as much as we did. We also hope all of you, and especially those of you in management roles picked up some new ideas for balancing the tech and the humans that keep your workplace coming. If you want more good ideas and who doesn't. Right? Don't miss Martha Stewart at this year's Pennsylvania conference for women. It is November seventh in Philadelphia and you can learn more and get your tickets at p conference for women dot org. The conference for women is the largest network of women's conferences in the Nation. They draw more than 55000 women and men to annual events in Boston, Philadelphia, Austin and California and now Online. I'm Celeste Hadley. This is women amplified from the conferences for women. Thank you so much for listening. Be kind and be well.