Caroline Webb on the Leadership Skills AI Can’t Replace

0:00 I'm Rufus Griskom and this is the next big idea. Today. The science of leadership. I have a mild allergy to leadership books.

0:35 It's not that I don't think the subject matters. Having founded and run four companies, I know how vital it is to become a nimble manager. Not that I've always pulled it off. The problem is that so many books in the leadership genre are written by would-be gurus who've never led so much as a little league team. Or else they're banglorious memoirs disguised as big idea books. Most of the time they're thin on evidence and long on anecdote.

1:00 Caroline Webb. doesn't do that. For her new book, Leadership Intelligence, which comes out next month, she went deep into the latest science, psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, and surfaced with tools you can actually use in a Monday morning all hands. We get into it in this conversation. How to make better decisions, how to build camaraderie on a team.

1:22 how to navigate uncertainty. And why human leadership still matters in the age of AI, maybe more than ever. As you'll hear, I've already started implementing Caroline's techniques at the Next Big Idea Club. I have a hunch they'll be as useful to you as they've been to me, whether you're leading a team of 10 or 10,000, managing a family, rallying a book club. We're delegating busy work to a small army.

2:00 Caroline Webb, welcome to the next big idea. Thank you very much for having me. Caroline, you've written a new book about leadership at a time of great uncertainty about what the world will look like in five to ten years. A lot of people are asking questions like what kind of work will we be doing? Who will We be leading, will it be humans or agents or some combination?

2:21 And this is really an incredibly comprehensive Bible for business leaders that you've written and and aspiring business leaders, which is all of us. How does your new book, Leadership Intelligence, help us address the challenges of the current moment? Yeah, I've been coaching leaders uh in one way or another for over twenty five years now, believe it or not. And What I've always noticed is that a little bit of understanding about how their human mind works makes it so much easier for them to bring the best out of their human talent, the human intelligence, we might say, in their teams. So

2:55 I've always taken an approach that's been rooted in cognitive and behavioral science, and I've seen it get more important. Because we're at a point where As AI becomes more capable. We as humans need to raise our game and we need to lean into our human strengths and our human intelligence. And you know, by that I mean

3:15 critical thinking and judgment and building relationships and so forth. And we need leaders who know enough about the human mind to be able to bring that best out of the humans. Cause I think we're still going to be in the mix, alongside the agents, most of us are still going to be managing some humans and Yeah, arguably a lot of the things that uh will help us be great leaders of humans uh might have a knock on effect and might make us a little better at managing agents, too. This pesky business of interacting with other Homo sapiens. There's no sign that that's going away. Thank goodness. It is a science of sorts, as you say. I would also make the case that In a world in which We really all have the possibility of delegating work.

4:00 Two AI or two agents. It's in in a sense made all of us business leaders, right? Business leaders of our own of our own lives. So I think in that sense there there's sections of your book about delegation and management of of complex systems that I think all of a sudden the like the audience, the relevance of that in my mind has has expanded. I definitely see that. I also see that it just sharpens your sense of well, actually, what is it that I'm good at? What is it that my people are good at? Oh

4:30 actually exercising judgment and when you see what an output is and it's saying you say, Okay, well how do I test this? How do I check that? Is this right? Does this fit? Is this make sense? Is this the right priority? We are going to be running these two strands of management alongside I think the huge opportunity that's on the table perhaps that leaders are not thinking quite so much about at the moment is that maximizing of human intelligence and potential. You know, it's that ability to Read the room.

4:59 And see what's going on. And adjust your approach. because of what you're sensing. And to be deliberate about that and intentional about that, knowing that if you shift your uh approach to being more attentive to what really motivates people or you know.

5:16 uh brings the best out of them in other ways, then you're going to achieve much more as a as a leader. So I I don't want that human side to get lost alongside all of the appropriate excitement about about AI and our teams. Yes, and I and I think we could make a case that that that hopefully in in in in the better scenarios The increase in efficiency and productivity of AI liberates us to be more mindful and attentive at About how we interact with other humans, how we empower them to do their best work, how we persuade them to do things that that matter.

5:50 Exactly. I I I mean that the sh our human interactions are maybe the single most powerful piece of leverage we have. In trying to do these endeavors that we care about. Exactly. So it's an imperative and it's an opportunity. The imperative is well, we better be good at the things we're good at. You know, let's not just half ass it and drift into The way we problem solve, the way we interact, the way we build trust. You know, let's actually know how to do that really well. Let's actually really maximise you know what what we can be good at as humans, rather than just hoping that we drift into it. So And then you know, the massive opportunity is as you say, well actually

6:26 We should have more time. We should have more mental energy freed up to do those things that actually so often do get chased out because we're, you know, thinking about admin or dealing with process. There should be more mental capacity, and that actually is important because we've got such limited working memory. Our brains are so limited in capacity. Anything that frees up capacity. to do what's the highest and best use of our intelligence is a very good thing.

6:53 Your book is so deply steeped in neuroscience, psychology, behвір економікс. It's really to some degree just about the the the science of of kind of understanding with and successfully interacting with other humans. I think of it kind of like, you know, if you're a carpenter, you have to understand the properties of the different types of wood you're working with, right? Like w whether you're working with the grain, against the grain, the weak spots, the knots, you know. And in business. You have to understand people. I guess we've had this really kind of a r revolution in

7:25 the intersection of cognitive science and business, right? So it it it it Would you describe it as a science? Yeah, I do think it's a science. You know, it can be a bit jagged around the edges. But there's enough there. If we just understand actually if

7:39 Few key principles, and this is where, you know, a lot of my work in the background has has focused is how do you take all of this work? And how do you create the most elegant system? So that the busiest leader can wrap their head around it. And it's also still correct, right? Because you can simplify science, but you can't. Right. So that's been a lot of the work underpinning the book that no one will see. Uh that that kind of Finding that elegant synthesis, um, which I hope

8:08 puts all the sort of research, the key points from the research in the hands of anyone who picks up the book. Of course, understanding our fellow humans starts with understanding ourselves. And so it was really a a a meaningful portion of the book that's about how we can better understand ourselves, manage our own time, manage our own Yeah, focus and priorities. Let's start there with with time management, which is something that we all struggle with.

8:33 How could how could we be more effective at at making time for our our top priorities? The way I think about this is that, you know, we're very patterned as human beings. You know, we most of what we do is on autopilot. And if we don't actually stop to look at the way that we're using our time, we often just carry on with Patterns that have served us I mean sometimes not just the last job, but the jobs many, many iterations ago. And so your calendar is not something that you've been really deliberate about saying, Well If this is really my priority as a leader or a professional.

9:06 Does this does this even bear any resemblance? You know, is is there any alignment here? And so I work a lot with uh leaders to help them get really clear on What I call the the yes grow no. Which is a little checklist for thinking, okay, what am I saying a positive yes to? Yeah. that's what your unique value add is as a leader, which is typically things like strategic thinking or bringing the best out of someone on your team is perhaps not firing on all cylinders.

9:34 And if you don't do that work, no one else is doing it. So that's gotta be your You're positive, yes. Then If there's anything else that

9:42 Okay, you're good at because you used to be good at it and so you quite like it and it's part of your identity. But someone else could do it. Even if not as well as you, which is the key phrase. That's what you need to let go and grow. Yes. That's that's that's often hard.

9:57 It's so hard. It's so hard. Because you know, we have often been very good at what we used to do. You know, that's why we're a success in you know some way. So letting go of that little piece of your identity is actually also pretty difficult to uh to to redefine yourself as saying, Okay, my job now is not to be the smartest person in the room. It's to make the whole room smarter. So Yeah. So you have to you have to be much more deliberate about that. And then the positive no is uh you know the the compliment for

10:29 Yeah, if you've got things you absolutely have to decline and pull yourself out of. A lot of us. struggle with doing that because we want to preserve our relationships. So there's a there's a technique that I teach, which is ways to do that warmly, but crisply and clearly. So it you know, you need a process because otherwise you're just always gonna have so much coming through the door. You need a really conscious proces.

10:54 So that you're using your tiny bit of conscious attention in the right way. Because we all have a very l small amount of conscious attention. And so th this subset of things that get a positive yes, right. So so these are the things that That only we can do to which we bring a unique value. I mean I I've always loved this phrase, the highest and best use of my time. What is the highest and best use of my time?

11:18 Which I think often overlaps nicely with the s the stuff we most enjoy, but but not always, right? Well that's the challenge. You know, I was coaching a CEO. who um is a terrific public speaker. And He loved it.

11:34 Meanwhile, he was frustrated that his team wasn't delivering things as quickly as they could and didn't perhaps have the ambition he wanted them to have. And this was the hard conversation we had, which was Okay. What is it that you're uniquely placed to do? In your role.

11:51 It's not public speaking. However much you like it, however much you're good at it. And What really is the only th the thing that only you can do is to develop your team. Coach them, push them, challenge them in the most graceful way, give them feedback, stay uh involved in how they're thinking about the work, so you're building their capability. Oof. That was a hard ship. But

12:13 Then he was thinking about well Okay. So who does all the speaking engagements? And it turned out he could let go and grow. Because

12:22 Although they weren't as good as him, he could delegate some of that to younger people in his organization. I mean we talked about how to get him comfortable with that and it turned out You can get training on being a better presenter. So he organized that for some people in his organization. who got great exposure as a result. Learned a lot.

12:42 Meanwhile, he was able to pull himself up to focus on the things that only he could do. And so you say with a positive no There's an opportunity. I mean, like we we basically we need to get more comfortable with saying no. Yeah. And maybe part of what can help us get more comfortable with saying no is is to find a way to say it. that is loving and appreciative. How do we do this? We're we're flattered by the offer. Yeah I'm I'm saying yes to other things. I would so love to do this. Yes. I mean you're yeah, exactly. I mean I think you've got the heart of it there. You start with warm.

13:15 Why bother saying that? Because when we're stressed about saying no to something, we so often go Oh I can't do it, I'm really sorry. So starting with oh That's a really nice request. Or That conference sounds fantastic or What a wonderful project.

13:32 It's gonna change the way that the other person is gonna hear what you're saying. Then the next thing, and this is really the core of it. And it's really counterintuitive is to start with your yes, not your no. So Right. I'm working on what I hope is going to be a really go to leadership book for, you know, the next um ten years and it's a huge project and I'm loving it. But it's all encompassing and as a result, I'm having to say no, oh finally you get to your no.

13:58 I'm having to say no to things that I would otherwise love to say yes to, and I'm afraid as a result I'm gonna have to decline your invitation. And then And with warmth. Also something we sometimes forget when we're stressed about saying no is Wish them well with the project. Um a bit like the CEO was just talking about, maybe there's someone else who could step up for whom this would be an amazing opportunity. Yeah, yeah. So that's your recipe.

14:23 Oh I do try to put my down pat, yeah. I d I do really try not to put anything in my writing that I don't do myself. I do try and hold myself to that. So when we get to these our lists of things To which we've said a positive yes. Yeah. You say, and and we we've all heard multitasking doesn't work. You say at one point in the book, notice when your mind feels full of too many things at once. And I thought to myself, I feel that way all the time. I'm sure many people many people tuning in will feel the same way. Yeah, so so what's the case? I mean I mean I think the case deserves to be made again. Okay. Like why shouldn't we multitask

15:07 How do we single task? Well, your brain has a very small amount of conscious attention. and conscious processing capacity. And you know this because you know how that feels when your brain feels full. It it it y you know that it's kind of hard to remember a list that's longer than three or four things. And so that's the limitation of your working memory. And

15:30 You know, there are a few different theories on exactly what the problem is. But we definitely know that there is a problem with putting too much into it. Some researchers say it's because the switching costs are very high. Some people say it's no, it's just purely about capacity. Either way. Both seem to be true. And that means that when you do juggle more than one thing that's Requiring conscious attention.

15:53 You make between two and four times as many errors. You slow yourself down by about thirty percent. Some studies show you miss the kind of obvious analytical or creative solution. Yeah, it's not great. And so You feel busy but you're actually less effective at doing

16:10 Just about anything that requires Conscious attention. So you know, sometimes people say, Oh, but I can listen to music. Is it okay to listen to music? If it doesn't require conscious attention That's fine. Yes, and it for that reason I have I have like

16:24 Five albums that I can listen to. Right. Because they no longer trigger novelty. They're invigorating, they're relaxing. They make me feel serene. And sometimes I'm tempted to oh a friend just recommended this album. I maybe should try that, but but I know no, you can't do that because I'm gonna be I'm gonna be far too interesting. Right, exactly. So I have a I have a playlist that's hide and strength quartets that I've listened to a million times. I have a playlist that's uh

16:50 Instrumental Deep House. I know these playlists inside out and I have to be very careful about putting else anything new in, as you say, because as soon as it demands some processing, you're splintering your attention. If you splinter your attention, nothing gets the full value and v volume of your intelligence. The mantra that keeps coming back to me was from our friend Cal Newport, who we've had on the show a few times. Most recently, but his last book slow productivity. In which he said.

17:18 Do fewer things, work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality. And then this great counterintuitive notion that when we do fewer things and work at a natural pace, we actually get more done. Right. So it's it's actually it's actually this sort of beautiful discovery that I I've had in my own Work. that you can actually take more joy in the work.

17:41 Take more pride in the work. Combination. Absolutely. Now the challenge is Joy is in the mix, for sure. I'm a big advocate of saying leadership is wonderful work, right? It's noble. It's this opportunity to

17:57 Help everybody create and do more than they would otherwise. And when you're a leader, you have to really interrogate, okay, am I doing this because I enjoy it? Or am I doing it because this is what I'm uniquely placed to do for all my people? That's a little thing you've just got to keep on top of, and it might mean That you need to find more joy.

18:17 in those unique roles. You know, I definitely have leaders I work with who You know, loved what they used to do. Right. And you know, now they're in this role of it's all about managing people.

18:33 Connecting to the joy of that and rediscovering a new way of feeling. good about how you're using your time. Well, on the topic of some of the best uses of our time You have a wonderful section on how we come up with fresh ideas. And solutions.

19:04 The generating of new original ideas, I think is still an arena in which humans have the edge. But it's not easy, as you point out. There are a few challenges that we face in trying to generate truly novel original ideas and solutions. The better you can get at using your brain well In this particular setting, the more you can use AI intelligently to support you. So the model that I use is I call it Fuse.

19:31 So that stands for Focus, Unpack. shift and energize your mind. So the first is focus your mind. And that's about how do you Quiet the external environment. turn off your notifications and, you know, get yourself into a place where you're not looking at forty tabs, but you're a little bit more

19:52 Undistracted. But the focus is also about getting clear on what the aim of your little thinking session is? Because I think all of us have had the experience of sitting down saying, Okay, I've got to I've got to think about my strategy. I've got to come up with a solution to what's going on with that customer. And you sit down. You're surrounded by all sorts of things.

20:11 I mean, ten minutes have gone past and you uh you only had twenty five minutes. And you've done nothing. Right, right. Wait, wait, what was it I was supposed to do? So getting super clear on that and You know, I speak for myself, right? I I will use an app to block all sorts of things that I think are distractions. I use the Freedom app for what it's worth. I'm not on commission, I promise. Um, and then the question of what are the what's the real issue I'm trying to solve here.

20:38 And then unpack is where you dump everything. that's going round your mind. And you Collect it on a piece of paper, virtual or not. Mm.

20:48 And then you use your working memory really well by collecting them into four chunks, maybe three, maybe five, because your brain can better process that. And this, by the way, I love this detail that if if we just make peace with the fact that We really have if you think of sort of RAM on a computer or something, the like the short term memory, our working memory is really limited.

21:12 And making peace with this. Yes. And just saying, hey, you know what? I'm going to embrace these tools that I have. The simple of which is paper and pencil, but there are any number of other tools. But it's actually powerful, right? Just to again to to as you say, dump and chunk, like just Just Get down. All of your thoughts.

21:29 And then give them a little bit of a little bit of order. Don't use your work in memory for trying to remember what's in your mind. Uh and you know, the the role model in this chapter, because every chapter has a leader I know who's particularly good at this. He is someone who, you know, constantly has a place where he's dumping his thoughts so that he's not distracted. And He's chunking them throughout the day under themes. I'm gonna show you my very low tech.

21:57 What I'm holding up here is a whiteboard. Which is divided into various topics so that whenever I think of something I should be doing to take my book out into the world. I gather it and if it's a list of fifty things I feel quite

22:14 Upset. Overwhelmed. If I gather it under five chunks, I feel like oh. All right. Okay. I can manage to think about this. Yeah. So focus and unpack are a lot about making really good use of your limited you know, mental capacity.

22:30 And then shift is about saying, Okay, one of the things we can be really good at as humans is seeing things from multiple sides. But only if we're really deliberate about it,'cause we'll tend to look at what's right in front of us and focus on that. So I have three techniques I like for this. One is rubber duck.

22:48 Oh yes, I love this. Which is where you adopt the perspective where you're talking to someone else. And it doesn't matter if it's a rubber duck. Research being done to show that even when you imagine yourself talking to an inanimate object, you sharpen your understanding, you start to see different angles. The second is consider the opposite.

23:09 Where you flip your assumptions. and you know really say, Oh colly so you're assuming this. But what if it were not the case? And you just entertain the possibility and you see what becomes possible. Yeah. And then Two byte rule is where you shift your mind by literally walking away and then coming back.

23:27 Right. And then energize is just being really practical about the fact that sometimes New book. yourself 10 minutes, 25 minutes to think about something, but you forget to really crystallize what the next step is. And then You come back to it.

23:42 the next day and you're like, Where was that post it note that I was writing? Wh where did I get to? Where are my notes? We've all been there. And you can be kind to future self by being clearer about okay, what's the immediate micro step, as I call it. Right. So

23:57 If you do those four things, you can make quite good use of really quite small amounts of time. Yeah. And you're way more likely to come up with fresh ideas than if you just try and fit it in between writing two emails. I love it. So it so it's it it's fuse Focus your mind, unpack your mind. Shift your mind, energize your mind.

24:18 And uh I'm glad you came up with the E for energize your mind, turn things into microstuffs if something happens. Otherwise it would have been Foss, which is not really as good as fuse. Very good. Yeah, yeah. I want you to create a sense of a momentum from the thinking prices they're doing. This is this is critical. It's a step I often leave out. Um It is is to sort of define your next steps and then initiate them, right? Where put things in motion. I will say that actually. One of the most powerful uses of AI in my own life.

24:48 In the last six, twelve months. has been an approach to the dump and chunk Oh yeah. Action, which is that I probably now almost every day Will um create a five to fifteen minute voice memo. Just

25:03 Dumping out completely my thoughts on a given topic. It could be a challenge that one of my children has. It could be a business problem of some kind. It could be an entirely new business idea that popped in my head. Then I can copy and paste the text of that voice memo in my iPhone. Pop it into You know, GPT, Claude. And

25:26 We can organize those thoughts. You know, almost instantly. Yes, yes, yes. And and you can prompt it, I think, using some of your techniques around the The shift your mind, come at it from different perspectives. W what haven't I considered? Right. Check my thinking, test my thinking. Absolutely that. And then and then easily prompt it with like okay, what are the micro steps? How can I break this out into taking action? Yes. To me, this is actually one of the single most

25:54 Empowering uses of artificial intelligence. It's amazing how How effective it is. Yeah, absolutely. And I I love that example because I think it is exactly what we were talking about, the sort of the human and the AI alongside. And if you're much more conscious of what it takes to do good thinking, then you can see it almost becomes obvious where you can use AI in support.

26:17 Well so on the topic of our uh of our all too human brands. You have a wonderful section on how to make an important decision. Mm. And it opens with An overview of human biases.

26:29 And I've always been fascinated by human biases because I've always thought like You know, our brands are like an old car. that the steering wheel might pull to the left. And if you want to go straight down the road, you have to sort of pull the steering wheel to the right. You might have to pump the brakes, you know, to get the car to stop. Yeah, you know, and and Our brains are quirky old cars and we have to understand their biases there in order to

26:53 see the world more clear, right? Because we have we have all these biases, right? Your breakdown of of our cognitive biases is actually the best. overview of human biases that I've encountered. I think it's very useful. Thank you. I appreciate that. What I would say is Even that list is longer than the list you really need. I would say actually l let's imagine your brain is actually not an old car.

27:16 But it's an incredibly efficient car. Super efficient. Okay. Just entertain this for a second. And It's always looking to use the least gas. Your brain is always to a fault looking to be efficient and use the minimum

27:32 energy possible because, as we've said, you know, there's such a limited capacity So you need one process. that gives you a structured approach to thinking about decisions And you don't need four hundred of them to address every single bias. One process I've found again and again will will basically get you to a clearer outcome. Yeah. And I call it acorn.

27:56 after the steps. Um And it's a synthesis of so much science, so much decision science. Um And it's, you know, easy enough for I've seen leaders use it again and again, both for themselves, but also with their teams, with their boards. So I I'm gonna hopefully get a chance to run through those steps. Yes, yes. So Acorn I I happen to know I'm cheating here

28:18 The the the the A in acorn is aim. What's the objective of the decision? Yes. Right. What good what good things will happen if I make the right decision. It's often the case that we don't stop to say, what's the point of this? We so often evaluate the thing that's in front of us without taking two steps back and say, Okay, w what is the point of this again? Yeah. There's a recent study that um JP Eggers did with his students at MYU Stern. Where

28:47 They had uh students who were In teams, using AI, trying to come up with interesting new solutions for all sorts of things going on in New York City. And The teams that did best were the ones that spent most time Framing up.

29:02 What is The problem we're trying to s what are we trying to do here? This aim Whether you've got AI in the mix or not, whether you're on your own or with a team is such a crucial step. Okay, so A, we've got the A and Acorn. This is how we make important decisions. And if you do nothing else, you'll improve your decision. Okay, but you better aim, by all means, right? Yeah. Okay.

29:25 And then C is for criteria, which is where you list out the things that would be the ideal criteria of a an ideal solution. Um This is what's known in decision science as decomposition. So you're listing out, okay, well, what are the characteristics of a good outcome? So it might be speed, it might be cost, it might be ease, uh it might be what customers are gonna say. And if you're really clear about that list. Again, studies show that if you do only this

29:56 You'll make better decisions. It could be energizing the team. Right. You know, uh benefits customers, you know, uh minimizes disruption. There's uh it's worth really thinking through. what the criteria might be. Yeah. Exactly. And the trick is to do it before you do everything else. So y you know, after sometimes people get started and then you think, Oh, hang on, what are we trying to do here? You go back up and you say, Okay, criteria. And then you think about what your options are. And we say options plural because You don't want to have default bias where you're just evaluating one thing in front of you. As far as possible.

30:30 You want to think about multiple options and you have to really work sometimes at saying, Okay, I know we want to do this. I know we think this is the right organizational design for our restructure. But What if we were to do a functional cut? And what if we were to do a geographical cut?

30:46 I know we don't think that's the right thing, but it just Yeah. Bear with me. Let's Let's do this.

30:52 And compare the pros and cons. That actually on its own, again. tends to increase the quality of the decisions that you make. And the more the better, I would think, when it comes to options, right? I mean I mean I mean up to up to a up to a point. I mean, yes, uh so you don't want cognitive overload. So, you know, you wanna think about a reasonable number of of options to compare. Three is probably better than two, ten is probably worse than three.

31:18 But then the next step And this is, you know, such a big payoff when you do it is rating your options against the criteria. Mm. And oh my goodness. Even if you just do this as high, medium, low.

31:31 But even better if you do a if you force yourself to say if I had to put this as one to ten. Where would I score it? Um, what you then get is so much Crispening. Of your thinking.

31:44 And you can add up the numbers. And you might say, Well, okay, I'm just making up these numbers. I don't know whether it's a five or a seven. But I will tell you that even if you're not yet sure, and you can go back and test this and improve your ratings. It just gives you so much clarity. And every time I've used this for myself in deciding on a major career move because, you know, I do try and

32:05 Use this approach for everything. It's given me an answer. I was A bit surprised by And not totally comfortable with. And then I had to do the next steps, which was to sit with it.

32:17 Test it a bit, kick the tires. Maybe do a bit of future back, you know, okay, in five years' time, if I look back on this, will this feel good? Is there anything I'm missing? But yeah, I mean it's you know, I it's and also and and the other version of the future back and the premortem is if I look back on this in five years and it proved to be a bad decision.

32:38 What will have gone wrong. Right. No, exactly. Yes. You're describing it much, much more crisply than than I was. Exactly that. And then the now forward, uh, so that's what I call future back. But now forward is, okay, if I take this decision. And then there's a there's a consequence tree. What then happens? And you you play this out. effectively you're playing your chess game, but you're kind of you you're really sort of l diagramming it and saying, Okay then you can really test what emerges as the as the lead contender from your rating stage. And then, you know, if you do need to go back and rethink, then

33:14 You know, you can But if you do these these these five things, you are so much more likely to I mean, I'm not saying it's gonna guarantee success in every single case, but your average, you're gonna get luckier if you use the acorn process. Do you and and Cabe ever use this in picking restaurants uh for the evening? It's like okay, where the the criteria we really want someplace close, some thinking of something savory. I actually have to credit I have to credit Cabe, my husband, actually. Because

33:45 You know, there was a time as many years ago we were we were trying to pick an apartment and um He did this. He made a grid and here are the three apart, you know, here are criteria, and then here are the apartments. We rated it and then we realized a criterion was missing. Okay, so we did um try to kind of be objective.

34:05 I thought, Oh my goodness. So you know maybe Lin even more, you know. You realize you had you realize you hadn't you hadn't just found an apartment, you'd found a husband. You found the right guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean I tell you what's interesting about that is yes, it helps you make a choice that you can stand by. It makes you feel in a world that's very Complicated and uncertain. Okay, at least I can feel proud of the process. I can't know what the outcome's gonna be, but I can feel like You know, the apartment we chose might have had some catastrophic thing we couldn't have predicted, but we made the decision in good faith with a good process and a good structure.

34:42 And the other thing that I would say is silly sort of personal example in a way, but you know It's really good to do it collectively. Because Especially if you're in a team where someone has a really strong point of view.

34:55 Okay. Is a really Perfect way of getting everybody on the same page. Right. Because people can see there's a fair process that's been used. It's something that scientists call procedural justice. Yeah, the other thing I would add to this is that I think that um Particularly in in digital businesses.

35:12 The opportunities to quickly, you know, I mean this would this would apply to a certain subset of decisions. is that having a bias for action and a bias for testing and testing things quickly. Yeah. that exist today that that didn't exist in the same way. You know, we we just had uh Mark Pincus that um Founder of Zinga.

35:34 on the show recently. He told the story about how they would When they had new business ideas, they would actually put links in the margins of all of you know, you think it was reaching hundreds of millions of people through Facebook, you know, social gaming. And they would actually put links up for these new business concepts. And if somebody clicked on it, they got a four oh four error. But they were able to test how much appetite there was from their own audience in this new business concept. So opposed to simply having a big meeting and saying, We are going to all decide to, you know.

36:06 Uh take six months to build this game, they could just very quickly test appetite and so yeah. And I I do think that's uh you know, the other part of great decision making is being Open to testing and learning. And so, you know, what I call stage track pivot. You know the not You know, being very transparent with people that You made the decision you could.

36:27 Based on the the information you had. And then you're gonna get more information. So you need to stay alert to what you're picking up. And if you normalize that right at the beginning and say, we're operating under uncertainty. We made the best decision we could. And then what we're gonna do is in two months time we're gonna check the data and then we're gonna see what we're gonna do and we're gonna pivot if needed. It's so much easier if you flag that up, um, you know, right at the beginning and say, Okay, good job. We made this decision.

36:54 And we're going to be nimble and we're going to you know we're going to adjust if needed. Moving on to group dynamics, how can we get people aligned behind a goal? I I really like this section. You say there are two core things people really want to feel they want to feel confidence.

37:25 And connection. If you're thinking about motivating people. You really want to Have an instinctive understanding of the brain's reward system because what you're doing really is the brain's reward system is the engine of motivation in the human brain. It's what makes us want things, want to do things again, want to repeat them, want to try hard and and so forth. So you really want to know, well, what does engage the brain's reward system

37:50 I'm Yes, money does. Yeah. Short term. And it's limited. You can't give everybody a bonus every day, otherwise you'd you wouldn't have a business for very long.

37:59 Yeah. Um, so what is more lasting, what is more durable And what is more meaningful, it's competence. and connection. This is what the research clusters around. Do I feel good about what I'm doing? Or if I'm not feeling good just yet. Am I on the path to it? Am I learning? Am I being given space to to

38:18 To learn and to grow. And then connection is do I feel useful? Do I feel like my work is useful to other people? And if you can understand that these are the big drivers of motivation Then

38:34 You want to think differently perhaps about how you um how you create uh how you create and set goals. Because all been in situations where you're dealing with Maybe a goal that feels pointless.

38:47 You don't feel particularly connected to like the point of, you know, helping other people. You're just like, why are we doing this? Or they feel muddled. So you don't feel particularly competent because you g you can't really sort of see how everything fits together.

39:01 And so if you set goals with confidence and connection in mind, you you approach it in a kind of different way. Seems to me there are a couple of things. happening in the competence category there. I mean one is that people really love to feel that they're good at what they do, right? We we all want to feel like you nailed it. We wanna develop mastery. We we we wanna feel like we're we're we're learning, we're getting better. But w we also wanna think, and this is sort of adjacent to it, and maybe they both fall under competence. That our efforts have an effect. You're not pulling this lever that's flapping in space. It's actually connected to something that makes a difference. I think of like the um

39:38 The button you can push to try to change the traffic lights. And I'm thinking, is it they should just call it the hope. button. Like it doesn't it does does that button actually do anything? Is that a but so we so we want to feel like I I always love the word feckless meaning having no no effect. We we want to be feckful. We w we want to have an effect, right? Yes. Yes, exactly. So you want to make people feel like you're you're you there's a purpose to what you're doing. There's some kind of coherent path so that you feel like everything is It's pointing in the right dire you don't have things that are pointing in different you don't have a goal over here that conflicts with this goal over there. You wanna feel like you have a hand in shaping the goals, ideally. So that's the the

40:25 the people side of things. So the more that you involve your people in setting goals, the more they'll care about them. And and you want to show people evidence that progress is being made towards that goal, right? And that's like This in in decades of building s small digital media companies I I I I did find that, you know, you you can give pep talks all day long. But really what the team needs to see is that we are incrementally making progress towards the goal. We can see it. And we can celebrate it.

40:52 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so I think the best goals are you know, eagle eared listeners might uh have noticed that we said purpose, path People and pace. Which I call the pillars of possibility.

41:06 And four P. The four Ps, right? And if you bear those in mind. Whether you're thinking about what you're getting your team to do this week or whether you're trying to tackle an enormous, you know, um new strategy, you will find it a lot easier to get people on board and excited and keep them on board and excited because you've got that motivational engine of competence and connection running through it all. And so the The path P, how do we get there, right? Use side are are I think a really wonderful technique.

41:37 From Darcy Verhoon, I think CEO of Canadian Diagnostic Centers. Who talks about KPIs that ladder up. Yes. Right. Which you describe as a joined up plan that links top to bottom, long term to short term. We we we need a plan That links each individual contributor, each person on the team.

41:56 Yeah. To the broad goal. Each member of the team helps to find their own key performance indicators, right? Like the these are the things that we want to be able to measure. At the end of each quarter, whatever it is.

42:08 to assess like are are we making the progress we want to make? On your individual tasks. And these are the key performance indicators for our entire business, and here's where they connect. I have to think that that is um It's satisfying everybody's contributing to it. And it helps.

42:23 formalize a process to show people that yes, their efforts are having an effect. We're moving the ball forward. That feels good. Exactly. And it it gives you that sense of competence. It uh gives you that sense of oh we're moving, we're we're making progress. That is so crucial to feeling like your work is worth it and that, you know, there's a there's

42:44 There's purpose to what you're doing. But it can get a little bit lost, especially when you're growing fast. And Yeah, I think it's always worth saying, Well, hold on. How does this all join up? You may don't have to do it every week, but you might do it every quarter. Yeah. Just to keep people on s on on track and in sync.

43:01 One activity that you make reference to at some point in the book, I don't remember where it was. was actually working together on a sharct. And for many of us who work remotely these days, We've started to do this more and more with our team at the next big idea club, where we'll Well just, you know. Got together on a on a on a Zoom or Google meet.

43:20 Share the screen. and work together through a given task. And it's it's amazing how um Both effective that can be and You know, it's all also a bonding exercise. Yeah, I love that. And you'll get to a much more robust answer about what you should be doing. Um, you know, one of the things that I was always

43:39 Gob smack by McKinsey was I thought I had a good idea. Sit with the team. And the idea got better. It was just never never failed. And you know, that you've brought this collective intelligence together. But then also, as you say, you you've actually

43:57 bonded the team. The the biggest way to bond a team is actually to do collective work together. It's not to go bungee jumping. Necessarily, at least. Um it is to do real work together. You know, it's it makes it more robust if you're deciding on what the change program is, you know, what the culture is, if you can make it a collective effort, because we're all much more attached to things we've had at hand in shaping. It's Actually known as the IKEA effect.

44:24 Forgive me for saying, Caroline, that you were not always I happen to know that you were not always quite as proactive in seeking out collaboration and input from the team. And this is the perfect segue to how to give and receive uh good feedback. Um you you you had an experience many years ago, right, where you got a little tough love from your boss. Uh how can you tell us about that? So this is from the incredibly wise and wonderful Suzanne Haywood. And I was working with her on a leadership development program that was

44:55 uh for every government department across in the UK, as you can tell from my accent, that's where I'm from originally. And uh it was a fantastic leadership uh development program. It's for high potentials across all government departments. And I was loving the work. I was also trying to impress Suzanne. And I thought that the best way to impress her was to be incredibly self sufficient and in really just, you know, power ahead and get the work done.

45:24 Without really asking for any help or input. And We were walking back one day from uh a meeting for at the cabinet office in London. Walking back to our office.

45:37 And she did what I would say is just a beautiful job of giving me feedback. I mean she first of all told me about the things that I was doing well and the way that you know the client was clearly delighted and how to you know how I was engaging them and making them feel heard and so forth. And then she said, You know, Caroline I care about you as a person and uh you know, I care about your career. So there is something I want to share with you. Okay.

46:06 That's you know, the clear intention up front. This is a development conversation, okay. And she said, I've noticed that He is not actually asked me for my input. And this is interesting.

46:20 Because I actually know quite a lot about government. She'd actually worked at the Treasury and you know, she knew a Yeah. And she said It it concerns me because I think I've got something useful to offer, and you know, I think that you know, together we could make this even stronger.

46:40 And I was so taken aback. I was thinking, gosh. Did I not ask f for her input? No, I didn't ask for our input because I thought that was a good thing. Hmm. And then she said, So tell me what was going on. And so then I I start to share. Oh actually I believed that it was, you know, the right thing to do. Not to ask for help.

47:00 And then she said, Okay, so what can we do differently? And we agreed that we would work together in a way that was um drawing on all the all the inputs and all the intelligence in the team. I mean the deeper shift for me was oh my goodness. It's not actually the best thing to do to just power ahead and just work on your own and and not ask for help or input. So that was a deep shift for me. But it was also just this gorgeous illustration of what I call the factual feedback model. She went through everything in a way that

47:34 meant that I wasn't defensive. She wasn't saying You're uncollaborative. She was homing in on a very specific observation that couldn't be argued with. And then she was taking ownership of how it made her feel.

47:47 Which also couldn't be argued with, it's another type of fact. Mm-hmm. And then she took the time to surface the facts for that, you know, what was going on in my head. Why was I doing this? And it it really set me on a different path.

48:01 And it's also happily the example that I use. Twenty five years later to illustrate factual feedback in my book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, well it is I mean it it it is a skill. to give feedback effectively. And it's also a choice to actually give the feedback in the first place, which many m many of us avoid because it's, you know, It feels uncomfortable. And so it's it seems it seems like a really important uh Skill to develop. One of the things you say is You never lash out. If you lash out, that's not feedback, that's a complaint.

48:32 Real feedback is fundamentally infused with a desire for To help someone improve, and I think that's Palpable in the tone of voice. Right in the choices. Yeah.

48:47 See, it seems to me that's half of it, right? Exactly. It's absolutely. And the other principle is specificity. We often think, oh, I wanna make a more general point because that's more interesting than to make a specific observation. The risk is that if we start to say, Well, you never involve people Well actually it's not entirely That's not entirely true. It can be argued with.

49:08 And it's also just harder to wrap my head around than you actually didn't ask for my input at any point. And that's more specific, and it lands more in my mind. Um I think that's you know, everything that we know about Information processing says that people are gonna take on board what you say is so much more of its specific.

49:30 And it also stops you when it's developmental feedback. It stops you from unintentionally making an ad hominem attack, you know, and saying you're not a collaborative person, you're a terrible person. It stops you from doing that. And that keeps you in much safer territory. Well finally let let's talk about how to build Healthy resilience as a team. Mm. And

49:51 You talk about what happens in our brains when we process thrats. Uh-huh. And how this can cause us to slip into defensive mode. What's happening here and and and Why is it important?

50:04 So when your brain uh scans the environment and picks up that there's a potential possible threat that's about to come your way. It could be a physical threat, though in the workplace it's usually not. uh it could be more likely a psychological threat, some sub something that's going to undermine your your sense of well being, your sense of competence or connection, perhaps. your brain says, Okay, well, there's this potential threat. I'm gonna launch uh into a mode that Amplifies vigilance, so it

50:31 Activity in your brain's salien network tends to rise. And then Depresses. Deep. reasoned thinking that takes a lot of time and is a little, you know, uh more complex. So depresses activity in the central executive network. So you've got this rebalancing

50:48 It makes you jumpier and it makes you somewhat less smart. And That's the challenge of when ever we feel at all a a threatened, even if it's uh unconsciously, and even if it's really not a big deal, and even if it's not actually going to happen, but you think you might be running into a situation that could be a a a threat to to your psychological

51:10 well being then your brain launches this uh launches this this shift And We really want as leaders to keep people out of defensive mode this defensive stress response. We want to keep ourselves out of it because of that effect on cognition. And the effect on behavior.

51:28 And so that's really, I think, a a deep and powerful skill for any modern leader to have to understand the mechanisms around that. And then to have a playbook for helping people to get out of um that sense of a defensive stress response. And it to do that, it really helps to know that uh situations that tend to trigger that stress response Are both demanding Uncontrollable.

51:54 And unpleasant. And That's an interesting combination, right? Because if You take any of those away, it's not that stressful. Mm.

52:04 If something is controllable, it's not that stressful. If something is pleasant, it's not that stressful. Right. So this is where the room is as leaders. If we can help people feel that something is Okay, not controllable necessarily, but manageable. At least to a degree. Yes. And if we can help people feel okay, we can't say an unpleasant thing is pleasant. But we can help them feel like maybe it's at least meaningful, there's a point to going through this awful stretching

52:33 Strength. Then you're much less likely to get that defensive stress response. You're better able to keep people thinking clearly and creatively, solving problems. So that's the skill. And it's i it's a real leadership opportunity, isn't it? Right, because I mean it's it's it it's a it's this reframing. That's so powerful. And uh it seems to be not only can we make things more manageable and more meaningful.

52:55 But we can also make people feel more connected. Right. That it strikes me that these times of crisis or challenge are opportunities for connection For bonding. And it's i you know, it's a it's the old saying, there's opportunity in every crisis.

53:11 You know, where's the opportunity? And it always strikes me that one of the opportunities, I mean, they're opportunities to to see your business challenges differently, to identify Maybe there's a there's a silver lining, there's a new opportunity somewhere, but it is certainly an opportunity. to bond the team. Absolutely. And and I think that's part of making it feel meaningful, actually. You know, anything that you can do to make it feel like you're pulling together. Um

53:38 Okay, you know, w we we know this is really h awful, this is really tough, you know, maybe there's something dreadful that's happening in uh in your company, you know, m maybe you have a pandemic, maybe you know, there are all sorts of things that we can be facing as a uh as leaders and teams. But if you can help people feel like, okay, we got this, we're pulling together. m you've got your manageable and meaningful right there. And if you keep these top of mind, you can help people navigate even the tougher toughest of situations with a little bit more uh of their intelligence fully intact.

54:15 I love your observation when you talked about how to lead through uncertainty and upheaval. That there is also An opportunity to Befriend the worst case scenario. Mm. You know, and this is this is something that I've always throughout my life kind of done. I've always thought like when when I've really felt

54:32 Deeply stressed and at a loss. I thought okay, well, how bad is the worst case scenario? Let's let's sort of map this out. En las will you make peace with it and embrace it. And say, Okay, well that's it. You you you can declaw in effect the worst case scenario and the whole world looks a little brighter. Exactly. You you give a little bit of controllability back because you think, Okay, well I I understand what this could look like

54:56 I can at least uh make the outlines of a plan. And actually the story that I tell in the book is exactly that, that the team did uh bottom out the worst case scenario. The leader, Vivek, uh Bapat was extremely good at helping the team home in on what they knew for sure. uh what they were as a team and were gonna continue to be. and what they could do. And this was a team that was under threat of being disbanded, and he helped them navigate that in a way that um led to their work having a lasting impact in the in the organization. And that was, I thought, um just you know, a wonderful, realistic story because, you know, they did actually get disbanded. Mm.

55:40 And so it's not that this is saying Oh, bad things don't happen. But the way that he equipped people to move through that and find new roles, um, but also do amazing work while they were still, you know, together as a team by helping them wrap their heads around, you know, the worst case scenario. Uh I thought it was really inspirational.

56:02 I love it. Well Карла, юрбук Лідершіп інтеліженс. Is inspirational and will have a lasting impact, I think, in any number of organizations, certainly ours. And so thank you so much for this book and um and for your time today. Thank you so much, Rufus. And that's our show.

56:26 Leadership Intelligence comes out September eighth, but you can pre-order it right now on Amazonbookshop.org. Or wherever you buy your books. You won't be disappointed. This is a real Bible for business leaders. If you want to hear Caroline's Focus Play lists. Check out the Spotify links in our show notes.

56:44 If you enjoyed this one, we'd love it if you'd be so kind as to leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. You may be tired of hearing us say this, but it really does warm our hearts. We read everyone. So thank you in advance. Today's episode was produced by Caleb Bissinger. Our associate producer is Ira Dashmok. Our audio engineer is Mike Tota and our video editor is Maxi Frenny. I'm Rufus Griskom, see you on Thursday.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 10 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.