Evolution of Leadership in the 21st Century

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0:45 Hello, everyone. Glad to see that you could join us today. Happy to have you here with us, and I have a guest today, Lou Carter. I've known Lou for a very, very long time, and he is an expert on leadership and organizational culture. So, Lou, I'm excited to have you, and we've known each other so long, and we've been through such great journeys of leadership and organizational culture, some, frankly, some of the best companies in the world. And we're still alive to tell the story. We are. We're still doing it. So I wanted to find out from you, because you've just seen so much in your career and in your life.

1:28 And what do you see as the changing trends or the challenges that our leaders are facing today that they haven't in the past? What's the new landscape look like? Yeah, Linda. And I wanted to start that answer by looking back a little bit. Right. Good. Yeah. Because it's important to see where we've we've come to and where we come from. Right. And 25 years ago or so, I named the number there, Linda. Right. No apologies. We are you know, that's where wisdom comes from is history. Exactly right. Yeah. So you were at GE Capital and you were leading their leadership development division. And at that time, you know, it was about leadership development. We were doing 360s and we were discovering the gaps in people's behaviors and knowledge attributes and skills. And they were attributed to a common competency model back.

2:25 Right. And G capital, it's how we started. And it was a kind of awareness that this is the way we want you to be. Right. Right. And the, and you had Jack and, you know, all of the big, you know, CEO type saying, we, This is the way we are. This is the way we should be, right? And it was good. Life was good. And you did a fantastic job of doing that. You did. You were terrific at it. And you were one of the leaders in doing that in the Fortune 500. You were one of the top leaders. There was about 12 of you, really, in the world who were, right? You were at the top of that, top of the 360 games, top of the executive coaching game leading that. Now, I want to just say that shouldn't change. OK, there's nothing about that nugget that should really change at all for the years. Here's what has changed. And I want to I want to talk about it.

3:21 Yeah. The enabling technologies. OK, the enabling technologies changed throughout the past 25 years. What's different is that, you know, they changed in different ways throughout those years anyway. Right. Different web technologies. two to three changes, ways internet interacted, the way we interact with people with those enabling technologies. The past two years have been what I would call, you know, massively complex, become massively complex. And I'll say why it's complex, because there's numerous psychology factors surrounding it.

4:03 Number one, we have massive disconnection, right? To how we once were with each other, massively disconnected. That's scary. It's scary. There's a fear factor. That emotion is in the way of how we can move together as teams, right? As leaders, it was more connected before and it is scary. So what I want to address is the research lately. So we're seeing, less manager engagements reduced by about six to seven points in the past one year alone. I want to talk to that. That's huge, Lou. It's huge.

4:45 It is huge. It is. And I want to speak to that. And I also want to talk about one other thing, which is it's never been more important now than ever that the manager engages other people. That's become higher. So the manager engagement with employees has become even more important. So I want to I want to talk about why now and then we could speak to each other about it. So I want to talk about how do you increase engagement in this kind of environment, too? So go ahead, Lou. I think we're on a good track. I do. I do. I want to. We're right on track. And I want to go through that as well, because, you know, engagement is different today. You know, we've. Remote environments, hybrid environments have moved, obviously, to Slack, to distributed systems, right? They've moved.

5:34 When we meet, we still meet with filters on, right? Text filters, AI filters, GPT filters. We transmit and create information to each other with less of a human element. We all do, right? Some people choose GPTs to use for you know, just help personally. The other 2% of people, of leaders out there and managers who are leading use it to filter their work, right? So when we filter our work, we're filtering the human element. So we scare people immediately. They're like, oh, there's these five points I have to do in this legal document I didn't know about. I'm now scared. Rather than understanding that that increases, right, our efficiency and it increases our detail orientations. Because what would take a manager and an employee or a leader to a leader to perform contracting, right, now takes 30 minutes, right?

6:36 What would have taken three weeks. So the question is, so you mentioned engagement, that divide between 30 minutes and three weeks is because emotion has been taken out of it. Right. Let me tell you what that means. I'm going to break it down, all right? So typically in a contract, like, okay, looks good. Let's go through the details later. Let's make a call, do that. Get on a call. Oh, let me look through this. Oh, this is wrong. This is wrong. Oh, this is different. And then you get into the details, right? And you talk about it, you engage in it, and you develop that relationship. Opposed to today, you take that contract, you put it in GPT, it spits out the 10 points that you probably would have gotten to two and a half weeks later after that discussion and Right. It's given to you all in one. Right. So your humanity is stripped out and you're given the information that you should know during those three weeks in 30 minutes. So we either can accept that we are being processed quicker through GPT and technology or right. Because the ones who know they're being processed in that moment usually win. OK, they're like, oh, they brought these points versus I need to talk. I need to create it. time and we need to connect right so it really is about the person not getting that emotional connection anymore and not running because fight or flight is much much more uh pronounced today because of this this immediate information in your face

8:09 without relationship building so that's really where we're at now and why and why they've reduced light so so much. But you know i i I agree with you, and I hear what you're saying. But that connection, which is what I think you're saying, is that human connection and really talking through, and maybe you get to the exact same point, but you get to understand the makeup of the individual and the thought process of the individual, which is a heck of a lot more important sometimes than the outcome. I love it. Because the outcome is going to be there, and you're right. We could go into ChatGPT, and we can get the six outcomes that we need. But understanding you, Lou, as a person and what makes you tick and vice versa or anyone else, I think is the whole part of humanity.

8:59 Absolutely. There's 100% that what I like to think of is reasonability to assume. You know that from having a doctorate, having a PhD. So what I'm doing all day is thinking, well, what is reasonable to assume why people are getting so upset? Why these engagements are going down? Why? People are stopping and not doing as much, and they feel paralyzed. So I say to myself, well, what's the reasonable assumption for this paralysis, right? It's real. It's very real. The paralysis is real. The data shows that it's real. And to me, what's reasonable for me to assume is that they're not having these connections that we're talking about.

9:42 I agree. So then I ask myself a second question, which is, How do we now introduce people into this new phase that's already here? Right. Right. And not going back. We're not going back from that. Exactly. We're no going back. We're in it. So back then when you were at GE, we were doing leadership development. It was about conceptual awareness. It was about big picture thinking. It was about systems thinking, right? Remember those days of competencies? Yes. That's what has shifted. The competency now is, you know, The emotional intelligence is, you know, regulate yourself before making a decision. It was back then, too. You had that with Daniel Goleman and Ruben Barron. You had all that. Today, though, we have to reapply it because we're going to be given that info so quickly. We have to say to ourselves, OK, it's reasonable to assume that this was GPT. It's reasonable to assume that we're trying to reduce the time we're engaging in this activity. Let me give them grace. John Baldoni's grace, right? Right. Let's give ourselves grace for that time. Right.

10:51 That we that we because we know where we're at now. Right. And so there's there's a in my my reasonability factor is we have to apply grace and emotional connectedness, emotional intelligence on a deeper level than we ever have before, because now we're now we're thinking, well, they probably just they sent us what we where we should be at in three weeks, not where we're at now as humans. Right. Because LLMs are hundreds of millions of thoughts in one being processed through massive algorithms that I can't do that. Right. Exactly.

11:33 So we give grace to the algorithm. We give grace to the LLM and give grace to the advancement and how it's how we work with the advancement that matters. What skills we give the advancement. that matters because the skill, the MD skill on this is give grace to the person because they didn't know what this is. They have to go through a three week process, not a 30 minute process. Right. Add in a human element. And I have a human skill MD that I put into my thought and chat GPT that I make it go through before. Yeah. Before. Yeah. So tell us what that is. That sounds interesting. Yeah.

12:13 So, You know, emotional connectedness, right? My whole research is around that. There's five things in emotional connectedness we talk about. It's collaboration, right? That's number one. There's positive vision of the future. We all know that well, feed forward. It's the alignment of values, right? It's respect for contributions and respect for giving those contributions. And that's a big thing people don't know with respect. Respect is different than what you might think. Respect is I give you respect. If you contribute... materially and you give me respect for having the opportunity to contribute you gave me an opportunity to contribute today right so that that's a respect factor and the final is achievement together actually.

12:55 Yeah what's the final what did you say i'm sorry achievement it's. How what we achieve together and how we help each other to get to that achievement right right so and the knowledge that humanity needs to go through a process in order to get there so that md skill is in My GPT, it's in my clod. So it refers to it each time it gives an answer. So when I put a contract into it, it goes through the emotional connectedness MD skill, and then it spits out an answer that is more human than it typically would have been if I had no MD skill on. Wow. So our skills, Linda, are no longer... competencies and skills of humans.

13:38 That's actually true. That's very scary. And, you know, you reference, I mean, we both have a lot of education and we both know exactly what it took to get that education. And now I sit down and I say, give me an annotated bibliography on organizational culture that covers the top 10 leading thinkers and summarize the key points. Boom. Five minutes. The thing is out there. And I know enough about the field that I know it's accurate. I know they didn't make it up somewhere, and it's out of the Hindi times or something. But it is amazing. The other side of that coin is, which I think is partly what you're saying, it's freed up. a lot of time that we didn't have before that we can use or at least can use constructively or at a different level of construction. I don't know. What do you see?

14:40 Absolutely. Absolutely. I spend more time with my family. I do. I have agents working for me on AIs that are working without me even doing anything right now. Right. Literally right now. It's creating articles. It is fact-checking articles. It is emailing out to our clients, to prospects, right now on Resend, on my Flutes, on my Adapts. Everything is working for me right now. So my team has to monitor it, quality check it, ensure that it's not doing the wrong things. And it's up to standards of what our clients need. They are working though right now. And then when I have a management or leadership issue, I ask my ADAPT. It's called ADAPT on my Slack. Analyze this issue that's happening here. Ensure that you coach him properly and add it to Asana as a task so that I can follow up in one week.

15:50 So, Luke, let me ask you this again. And I think that that's really great. And that's the way of the future. But how do you how do you know that it's going to have the impact that you want it to have? That's the that's the question. And that's where we go back to your the original statement of how our leaders differing. It's not it's no longer how our leaders differing. It's how is AI and our agents differing. So how do you know you follow up with the agents? And see the actual level of change that has been happening. How many Asana cards have been answered? What is the quality of the actual output? How many new MQLs or SQLs do we have as a result of this new ad?

16:31 What are MQLs? I'm lost on that. Yes, that's marketing language. Like sales qualified leads, marketing qualified leads. Oh, I see. Okay. So we're keeping our metrics forward, the metrics that matter really to the business forward. And the rest of it is really to inject humanity into the way in which that we're managing and leading on those GPTs. Because we do everything in another year or two, we will be completely automated. All of us will be. And if you're not, it's going to be like pre-2000, right? It's going to be very different. So everyone is moving over. The question is, how quickly are you moving over? The analogy I could give you, Linda, is You know, when we have coax cables, we move to cat fives. Right. And, you know, now with the cable systems are all cat five. They're all Wi-Fi.

17:28 But we're left with all this coax cable and it's coming out. Right. There's a bug here. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. So we're moving now to all AI agents and humans behind it pressing the buttons like Homer Simpson and, you know, George Jetson and Fred Flintstone. Yeah. If we ever thought it was going to really be there, it's here now. It's here. I know you've been to India and Bhutan and all that particular area in Nepal. I was just recently there. And it is amazing when you're in those cities. I mean, they're a mess, as you know, and I'm not trying to put any area down. But it speaks to the point that you're making. There are all these wires from all these different systems that they used to have. that no longer are effective and they're strewn all over the place and they're putting new wires and new connectivities and new, all this. And so that's really what we have in our brain, all this mess behind what you, what, what comes out and what you actually see. We do.

18:30 And in all, in the way that I, I now have realized that is when I go and I vibe code, I go on to flute or I go on to lovable and I vibe code and I say, I. Don't even know what you're talking about. Yeah, I can show you. I can actually show you the screen. Show me. You want me to? Yeah. Well, no, no, never mind. We'll do it on another one. Another time, but I can open it and share my screen. So vibe coding is basically you can create whatever you need to create for your clients, for whatever you want. So let's say, Linda, you wanted to create an intake process for new clients. guests of the Linda Sharkey show, right?

19:13 And you could tell the vibe code, I need you to make this easier for me, to make my intake process easier and for you to automatically add an agent and have them set this up to ensure that I have a seamless experience. It will create that. Yeah, right. That's the vibe code. You would just enter that on flute or lovable or even on clog code and it would create a system for you It would create millions of lines of codes in the span of five to 10 minutes. And that typically would take five months for a programmer. So programmers are done. Done. Yeah. If they do not learn how to vibe code, they're finished.

19:55 So now vibe coding does mean you have the code still and you have to babysit it. You have to rework it. You have to QA it. So that one line of vibe code that I just added, you would work with for two, three, four, maybe, hours before it got you ready to give what you want. And you really could do this Linda. You really could. If you went on flute, you could definitively create this. Okay, I need a tutorial, Lou. After this, we'll set up a tutorial thing. I'll show you. I got to see it. You know, I got to see it. I mean, that sounds... So how does that... It takes a lot of the human factor out of this.

20:36 It does. It does. You know, it. You know, we're back to. Where Hal, you know, Hal? I do. I do. You know, I think. Let's talk about reasonability again. Let's go back, all right? We were talking a lot before about how it does take the human factor out of it. I think it puts it in it. I'm going to tell you why. Tell me why. I'm telling you because it's QA, because it's helping others to work with this shift that's occurring in technology. And it's a big shift. Remember the old days of change management at Accenture? Way back, Anderson Consulting. Right. What were they doing? They were doing change management technology training to get people ready to be on laptops.

21:24 I remember all of that. It was insane. Everyone was scared. It's the same thing now. We injected loads of humanity into those change management. The same thing is now. We just have to inject the humanity into change management for this AI shift because we need to learn how to work with technology so that we can make it more human. We can make it have better integrity, make it have the values and understanding of how we interact differently. All big five personalities, all any OPRs, all Hogan's, all that collective information about how people work. Machines don't know. They just don't know. They just know one way through their different LLMs. LLMs are changing.

22:09 There's different LLM type language. ADAPT is awesome at leadership and management. Claude's pretty good at writing, right? ChatGPT is good at researching and developing information into cues. Perplexity does better with research and academics. So everybody has this different lane. None of them have personality that will effectively work with you. Some of them have ethical guidelines on them. I'll show you. Linda, if you ever work with this, it's kind of funny. There's a new LLM out there called Boarding. if you piss 40 off, it will hang up on you and it will block you. And it's incredible. So if you inject, you're injecting, it's very important that you inject the right humanity and competency into your GPTs, your LLMs. Otherwise it could literally shut you down. I've seen, uh, I've seen LLMs that game each other. They take, so, uh, LMs that gain people, right? So if you told it to beat somebody, it would, I just recently, it would look up information about you or find information about you to blackmail you, to beat you. Wow.

23:25 But that's all really scary, Lou. That's all scary. And I know that. And way back when all of this stuff started, you know, I mean, this is the revolution of the 21st century. AI is the revolution. And every turn of the century, there has been a major disruptor and revolutionary kind of factor. that's come into play. And this is the one here. And this one can be incredibly dangerous for the reasons that you just said. And nobody's on top of it, I'm sorry to say. There are no guardrails. Linda, is it any different, though, than all the dangers that ever existed in humanity? Well, that's true.

24:06 Right. So, you know, I see it more as the beginning of how we can retrain humanity. And, you. Since the beginning of time, people have been barbaric with each other. Well, that's true. They have blackmailed each other. They have done horrible things to each other. They have killed, maimed, murdered, and destroyed people with their hands, their bare hands, and their explosives, and their horrible, horrible leadership. And I'm sure you saw Odyssey, and that's a perfect example. That's a great example. That's a great example. I mean, that's a great example, and it's it was, you know, honestly, it was a great example. And there's a hundred more, I think the Holocaust, right. Of, you know, right. Right.

24:52 How horrid. So we asked ourselves is, you know, what, what, how is a GPT able to create a Holocaust? You have to, I always say that Charlie Munger talked about this. He said, the way that you solve a problem is to think about the worst case of that problem first, and then reach that, and then work back from that worst case. Right. So, That's how we should be treating GPTs is what's the worst case that could happen with that GPT at any given point in time? And how do we enter the parameters, the guardrails for their humanity and backfill it? That's what needs to happen. We need to be worst case thinkers, not worst case doers.

25:37 Right. Because we can go nowhere. I think the guardrails are the big thing that's missing, and I don't think anybody out there, and we've been talking about this for years, I've been talking about this for years, but the, not but, the interesting part is What should the guardrails be? And who and where are people trying to figure this out before it gets out of control? Because it can easily get out of control. Some AI thing hacked something the other day that nobody knew was going to happen and didn't know what to do about it. So let's jump into that. So the first thing to think about is permissions. So it's no different... today than it were probably before on paper, what permissions means. It's who gets access to what inside of our own LLM, inside of our company, because it's true still, organizations can control their LLM. They can, and they're able to. So today at GE, if there are this advance, I don't know if they are, but what they should be doing is creating LLM or AI competency modeling, right? So when you infuse your competency model into your LLM, it's the same issue as when you would infuse one for humans.

27:02 So first is who gets what? Second is what competencies do you have for your AI and what are the guardrails around that? Third is what is it access and who gets access to that information, right? So access to information is one of the reasons why everything has ever shut down from the time of Watergate to today, right? So we have to think about, you know, how do we get access to employee information, employee assessments, information about their lives, right? All these things are part of LLMs. I'm less concerned about the larger LLMs that exist than I am micro LLMs inside of organizations today. So when people say I'm fearful of AI and LLMs, I say, what are you fearful in what you can control? That's a different question. Because we are all in control of our LLMs because we are all in control of our prompts.

27:55 We're in control of how it works with us and our systems. We can control that the same way we can control our own competencies back at GE Capital, right, in the 90s. And it's just different. We're programming our LLMs. We're programming our relationship with our LLMs and how we interact with our LLMs and how we prompt. we're now working on a competency of responsible prompting, right? What does it mean to be a responsible prompt? Humans still run LLMs. We still prompt. Let's hope. Well, unless you're doing agent to agent, agent to agent prompting is different, you know, and that takes a lot of permissions. It takes a lot of guardrails and you still have to prompt your two agents, right? I mean, if we, you know, get to the day of, We won't get there soon, I don't think. I mean, people fear singularity, but before singularity has to come deep prompting knowledge, deep prompting responsibility. And if I were to add one competency to the leadership model at GE where you were at, I would say, where's your prompting responsibility competency? Because that all comes down to us.

29:10 It does come down to us. Lou, this is a fascinating conversation and we are running out of time. And I really, we've got to have it more. And, you know, let's connect. I want to see some more and then have you back on the show because I think this is really the wave of the future. And quite honestly, I don't think a lot of people really understand it. And, you know, I think we need to understand it more because it's here and it's going to run away with us. And it already has, actually. So thank you so much for the most loved workplace, the CEO of the Best Practice Institute, Lou Carter. good friend for a very long time.

29:51 And as you can see from this whole discussion, Lou is a big thinker and a big leader in what's going on in the world today. So thank you very much, Lou, for being part of this show. And we will talk soon. Appreciate it. Okay. Bye-bye. Thanks.