Human Leadership in an AI World: What Machines Can’t Replace | #25

Welcome to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others, a podcast about inspiring leadership. We hope to bring you grounded wisdom, stories from real leaders and leave you feeling inspired. Let's dive in.

Welcome once again to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others.

This is a leadership unscripted episode where Rich and I are going to explore the business case for more human centered leadership in an AI driven world. So. Hi Rich, how are you today?

Hi, Dave. I'm good, thank you.

Now, Rich, you might remember back in podcast two, we explored what we called the the Perfect storm, which was a combination of technical transformation, social values shifting and economic uncertainty all coming together to create a really challenging environment to lead in today. I'd really like to tap into your experience of having been a senior IT leader and now laterally in your career.

A leadership development expert is how you think these two things are going to blend together. Leadership and the rise of interest could be interesting. Yeah.

So really, in terms of that perfect storm, really drill down into the technical transformation I think that we're all going to experience now. There is an assumption, rightly or wrongly, that this rise of technology, particularly AI, will solve a lot of our leadership problems.

I'm not sure that's the case.

What I'd like to explore with you is what's the case then for a more connected, emotionally intelligent and ethically grounded form of leadership that complements what AI can do, but really focuses on the human element.

Right, okay, sounds good.

So what's your thought then about the rapid change that we're now experiencing and how that is going to impact leadership?

Yeah, so I started work back in 83 and the world was very different then, I bet. And we think about the technology changes between now and then. The phone on my desk was, you know, just circular dial on it.

And one of the skills I was very proud of is I could, I could use a pen and dial a number really quickly. You know, that's. I had a little technique to do that. And you know, we had a mainframe computer that not all the people in the office had access to.

And we had the beginnings in 83 of 1 or 2 what you might call personal computers with like floppy disks and stuff like that. And I was involved in programming some of those.

But I mean, you know, the capacity and capability of those machines were massively, massively limited. So you know, from there, from there to now, huge technological shifts. I mean, I think about the social context in which I grew up in.

You know, I went to a boys only grammar school. Most of the boys were Whites from middle class sort of background.

And when you think of some of the banter in the playground and some of the banter in the office, you know, when I first started work, you know, things have changed so profoundly at the moment. It's almost shocking when I think back to some of the stuff that we were exposed to as children, because you and I are sort of similar age.

Sorry to tell our listeners our ages.

But I just look a lot younger. Unless you do.

Well, yeah, maybe. And I think, I mean, the world has also always been economically uncertain place in recent decades.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think, you know, just even in the last six months, with all the stuff happening in America, with the political shift over there and the political shift in our country, I mean, things are profoundly different here. And I think, you know, that's. It's made it a really difficult context for leaders to operate.

Yeah, I totally agree.

And I've seen some of the similar shifts that you've seen over the years, and you can't really compare the world of work that you and I first went into to the world of work now. It is completely different.

I mean, I've got younger children than you, and I see my kids growing up in a world that's completely alien to the one I grew up in. It's just so different. And not always for the better.

No, no, no.

But there are some obviously big advantages to the modern world, but I wonder whether sometimes we harness those advantages, because I think with taking the point about AI at the moment, it offers amazing possibilities, but it also offers a lot of danger.

Yes, it does.

And it's whether we as leaders harness it and use it for the right reasons, isn't it?

Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Right, yeah.

In your view, how many leaders that you come across really understand how AI could be beneficial to them and how it could really transform their leadership?

Frankly, I don't think many people do. I mean, if I think about putting AI to one side, just technology for starters, I'm 60 this year.

And when I think, you know, no insult to my peers intended, but I've come from a technical background, so my, my technical understanding of things like, you know, computers and that sort of stuff is, Is deeper than most people in my generation, I think it'd be fair to say you've worked with me, so. Yeah, so you understand that. So.

So I think, you know, knowledge of technology and how you can harness that, I think actually across all the generations in the workplace at the moment, that's challenging, I think. And then you add on top of that AI and becomes this thing that a lot of people really don't understand.

I remember showing my mum recently what ChatGPT could do. Right. And she had no frame of reference to understand actually what was happening in front of her eyes.

No.

And I don't really think even though I showed her, you know, what it could do, she didn't understand it. When we said to her, just ask anything. I think the question she asked ChatGPT was what did I have for breakfast this morning?

And I think that's true of a lot of leaders in the context of business is their engagement with technology has been on quite a superficial level. And then you layer on top of that AI, which is profoundly complicated, and it becomes, it becomes almost like overwhelming and disorientating.

I think my experience of talking to people about what they're doing with particularly AI at the moment is they're using it a bit more now than they were a year ago. They're experimenting with it, probably using it in quite transactional ways.

Yes, yes, probably not fully understanding, as you said, what sits behind it and how it works.

Yes, yeah.

Clearly as we educate ourselves and understand much more about how to use it for our advantage, that will change. But I don't know how many people are actually, actually asking those questions at the moment.

No, I think when you look at something like say ChatGPT, you know, one of the common sort of AI platforms that's out there, I mean, from a technical perspective, I mean, simply speaking, it's a large language model and it uses vast amounts of data and computational power and it uses statistical prediction and probability to problem solve.

It's really good at things like text generation, code writing, language translation, you know, summarizing, answering questions, pattern recognition, all of that sort of stuff. So it can process stuff and it produces stuff that looks good, but it doesn't really understand what is good. Does that make sense?

Expand that a bit more.

So, I mean, so fundamentally if you think about the difference between a machine and a human being, a machine is basically sort of problem solving in a sort of very process led, data driven way, using statistical prediction.

Yeah.

When we as human beings problem solving, solve, we intuit, we, we connect to Our context, we understand the context. So AI doesn't understand.

So the mistake a lot of leaders make, I think in the use of technology and particularly with AI is actually they use it as a decision making tool as to, as opposed to a thinking partner tool.

Yeah, no, I like that as a distinction actually what you just said there. Use it as a thinking partner, not as a decision making tool.

It might help you make decisions, but it help you make decisions without you putting in some input in there as well.

Yeah, well, it's important to realize AI can't do sort of real time reasoning. You know, it can't long term plan, it can't intuit from the context. It doesn't fundamentally it doesn't understand.

Right, it doesn't understand, you know, so that's why it's called artificial intelligence, because it looks like it produces some good stuff, but it, you know, fundamentally it doesn't, you know, it's not conscious. Yeah, I mean that goes without saying almost, but you know, it doesn't know, you know, what, what's right.

And this is my contention for this conversation today is that, okay, on the face of it, and I'm somebody who doesn't understand this to the level you do, I don't come from that technical background.

But clearly going forward, the use of artificial intelligence will allow us to do a lot of things that are quite transactional, probably quicker, more accurately, maybe even humans could do it. So it clearly in some industries will replace human jobs. I think that's obvious.

But in terms of leadership, which is what we're about, it doesn't replace leaders.

But what it might do is say to leaders, there's some skills that you may not have valued quite as much up to now that you might really, really need to start to use. I'm talking about the human centric skills. I'm talking about empathy, compassion, coaching skills, psychological safety.

Those types of things I think become more and more important. Would you not agree?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think also just, you know, let's just take this concept of intelligence and I like to think about intelligence from a perspective in this way.

So you know, we have iq. Yeah, you know, that's, that's the sort of the raw cognitive sort of fluid intelligence.

You know, our ability to, to read, to engage with numbers and data, to problem solve and all that sort of stuff. That's the iq, that's our cognitive ability. We also have emotional intelligence.

Yeah.

So that's our ability to empathize, to be compassionate, to be self aware and to self manage. So if you go from IQ to ei, no chatgpt AI model out there at the moment, it's not emotionally intelligent.

No.

Okay, so it might look like, if you ask it some questions, it might, it might come back and look like it's emotionally intelligent, but it's not.

It creates the illusion.

Yeah.

So it partners with us around the iq, the cognitive stuff, and it might help us with some of the emotional intelligence, EI stuff, but it's not emotionally intelligence. Now, the third component to intelligence from a human perspective is what I call spiritual intelligence.

Oh, go on. Yeah, go on.

So, so what I mean by that, it's not. This is not religious intelligence. So this is our ability to, you know, to create meaning, to connect with stuff beyond ourselves, to intuit beyond.

Beyond the physical. Yeah, to connect beyond the physical, you know, so, so things like love and virtue and ethics, I would equate all of those sorts of things with.

With what I call spiritual intelligence.

So I want to stress again, I'm not talking about religion here, I'm not talking about religion, but actually we want leaders across all of those three things that are both intelligent, emotionally intelligent, and spiritually intelligent. So leaders that are making ethical, compassionate, connected values, driven values, driven ethical decisions.

And no artificial intelligence model out there right now does that.

And there's no sense in terms of the current models, those large language models that we're currently using at the moment, they're not going to get anywhere close to that sort of thing, you know, so, so this distinction between AI being a thinking partner and us being human centric leaders, where we make the decisions based on that emotional and spiritual intelligence.

And that's my contention, really, I think as AI starts to really take effect, and it will, it will take effect really quickly.

I mean, goodness knows what the next two, three, four years are going to be, but I think any leader out there listening to this thinking, okay, I kind of get where these guys are coming from. If you want to be at the forefront of leadership going forward in any.

Develop your levels of emotional intelligence, develop your levels of spiritual intelligence, like you were just saying just now, lead in a different way. Lead with more empathy, lead with more compassion. Learn to coach people.

Yes.

Learn how to create that safe environment where basically you can leverage all of the. Where you can leverage all of the benefits that all your team bring.

Yes.

I think that's what Ann was talking about in a recent podcast about whole brain thinking, wasn't it? Actually, the leader of the future is one that can leverage the team.

Yeah, well, basically leverage your Human capacity. Yeah. And your human, Human capability.

I mean, a really good analogy that I came across recently is how we should view AI in relation to ourselves as human beings. So imagine a calculator and an architect, okay?

Yep.

So you can't give a calculator a plan of a skyscraper and say, build this. Okay. It's a dumb thing, but it does, you know, it can calculate numbers and stuff like that. You can give an architect a plan of a building, okay.

And ask it to build the building, but you'd want the architect to have a calculator next to them. And that, that essentially is the, the analogy of the relationship between AI and human beings.

It's a harness AI for what it's really good for, understand what it's really good for, but harness your human centric capabilities.

So do we think the way that leadership and the world of work has developed over the last 40, 50 years, there's been a danger that we default to control and efficiency and data obsession and we forget too much that leading is a human centric thing?

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, that's always been the case. It's always been a challenge for leadership to engage with the human side.

But the more we get to trust technology, the danger is we start to become disconnected from the human beings around us. And I think that is that it's that fundamental disconnection.

So if you think about the way, say, teams, we use teams in our organization a lot in most of our meetings because we're geographically dispersed as a team, you know, when the five of us sort of meet together, sometimes the four of us, you know, so there's great benefits in using teams to connect us together.

But actually, when we want to do our real sort of creative stuff, it's important that from time to time we get together physically face to face, build the relationships, chill out, you know, have a, have a meal together or whatever, building that human connection. And a lot of that stuff can get lost in the context of technology forcing a disconnect between people.

And I think when you think around things like social media and stuff like that and emails and stuff, it can almost force a very transactional way of engaging and communicating with human beings, I think.

So here's a little quote for you. If we only focus on what machines do, well, we forget what humans are for.

Yes, yeah, indeed. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, so harness, harness the technology. I'm a big fan of technology. You know, I love my gadgets, as you know.

You know, I'll buy every little gadget that's going. But you know, engage critically with technology and you know, don't forget and don't forget the human side.

And I think leadership programs, they need to develop the emotional intelligence and the spiritual intelligence in leaders.

So when we talk about connected leadership in Zentana, you know that virtue driven, ethical, emotionally driven leadership, you're going to get the most out of your people if you engage with them in that way.

Because they're going to want to work with you, they're going to be loyal to you, they're not going to see you as a cold, uncaring organization and leadership team.

So, Rich, if we can tap into your knowledge about how to use technology highly effectively, but also be a human centric leader, which I think is what you were talking about, and you're really good at balancing this. I definitely see that in you.

If we explore what AI can't and shouldn't do and what leaders actually should be doing, what does that look like for you going forward? I know it's difficult to go back 30 years because the world is so different, but what does that look like going forward?

So I think leadership is not about being a super processor.

No.

And I think you can harness technology to be your thinking partner in a very effective way. Okay.

But you know, what human beings really do well is to intuit, to make meaning, to give people a sense of purpose, to engage, to, you know, give them a sense of confidence, coach all of the, all of those sorts of things. That's what human beings do well. But I mean, there are shortcomings to AI and technology.

So if we talk about AI in particular, I don't know whether you've heard of this concept called hallucination.

I have heard of it, yeah. You're going to explain it to me in more depth?

Well, I'm not sure I fully understand it myself, but essentially AI can make mistakes. So I've talked about AI being a large language sort of model and it engages with lots and lots of data. And as we feed it data. Okay.

So we feed it data, we create like this little, well, it's massive ecosystem of data and it almost becomes like a self perpetuating little ecosystem.

Yeah.

Where because we're inputting into it and we make mistakes and we give it data that would be, you know, wrong as well.

Yeah.

And it can only predict to make statistical predictions and connections because it doesn't know whether it's right.

Yeah.

You can start to create almost like these stories of myth hallucinations that inside the AI virtual world, you know, start to become facts. So it starts to cite, you know, scientific papers that don't exist. For example, that's what we call.

Yeah.

Hallucination. So, you know, so AI doesn't intend to lie because it's a machine.

Yeah.

Okay. But it can be factually incorrect, it could be misleading and entirely makes stuff up because it's connecting stuff together.

So what you're saying, basically, you know, in this really difficult world to get our head around, and if you're a leader, you've probably got a team that find this world quite hard to get their head around. We need to, as leaders, create some contextual judgment that's going to help us communicate more effectively with our teams.

But we can't rely on the AI to do that contextual judgment for us. It can help us sort our thoughts out. As you said, be our thinking partner. But that judgment's got to come from you.

Yeah, that's right. So as I said on a number of occasions, AI is our thinking partner. We are the decision makers.

So if we're the decision makers, we've got to be really careful about sort of overconfidence bias.

Yeah.

You know, so just because AI says something and it can say something and sound really authoritative so we can think it's right, but AI doesn't know it's right. So the verification burden is on us as leaders.

Yeah.

Okay. And there's ethical risks in this as well.

Absolutely.

You know, so AI can say something, you know, you can ask it for its, for its view on sort of sensitive policy issues, social, complex social issues, and it will connect to all that stuff that's in the, in the virtual world that we fed it. Okay.

And come up with some stuff that could actually lead to real reputational damage or misinformed decisions, you know, so we need to connect to our virtues and our ethics and our beliefs and all that, all that sort of stuff, and make sure we make human centered decisions using the data, using the data critically, you know, and so, you know, this can lead to real trust erosion because people are starting to get Cute now to AI generated content. Yeah, I mean, I go on LinkedIn now and I just get like, it's almost like a, like, here we go again.

It's just LinkedIn is just full of AI generated stuff. And you know, there's some people I see on LinkedIn I just know that's been AI generated.

Now we use AI to generate some of our content, but we never just take it on face value and we always finesse it and make sure that it's in our voice and add our stuff to it. But it can lead to real trust erosion, I think.

So adding that contextual judgment, being empathetic, making sure that you stay relational with your team. AI can't create psychological safety inside your team.

No, you do that only you can.

With the conversations that you have.

By having eye contact, by listening, by, you know, using a tone of voice that's contextual and, you know, connects with the emotional state that the person is in right now. You know, AI can't do that.

So this speaks to another challenge that a lot of people have been trying to get their head around in the last few years is since COVID Obviously, flexible working is now a thing that a lot of people have that never had before. But that actually makes it more difficult to sometimes do the human thing.

It does, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah.

And I'm not suggesting we should get rid of flexible working all come back to the office all the time. Those days are probably gone. But how do we use technology in the right way so that we can have a flexible working environment?

But we still have that human centric form of leadership as well.

Yeah. And it can be really difficult and challenging in organizations that are geographically dispersed literally across the world.

That can be quite difficult to do.

So you have to be really intentional in terms of how you engage with people over, say, teams or something like that, because not being funny, but in teams all you see is the top half of a person. And you missed all the other contextual stuff. You missed the smells in the room, you know, you miss the sort of fidgeting under the table.

You know, all of that stuff actually makes it really challenging.

So you, I mean, you can definitely build relationships virtually, but there's nothing that beats the sort of, you know, the human sort of connected approach.

No. I remember you saying to me after the first wave of COVID where we had to do all of our one to one coaching over teams because you had to.

Yeah, yeah.

And you said, well, I did all mine face to face before. I'm not sure I'll continue doing this. But actually, I mean, you're a highly skilled coach. You've got the skills to do it.

You've carried on doing virtually all your coaching that way because it works now. That's because I think you've got the skills to do it. If you haven't developed the skills to do it makes it much, much harder.

And that's my point, really. If we develop some more of these human centric skill sets like coaching like Psychological safety, like empathy, compassion, all of these things.

Emotional intelligence is massive in this.

Yeah.

Then there's no reason why we can't do a good job sitting alongside technology.

Yes, yeah, exactly. But also, you know, to recognize the limitations of technology. I think.

Yeah.

I came across a story. It might have been some people I know, actually. I'm just trying to remember the precise context. But it was this couple that they met online.

They literally lived across the other side of the world and they had a virtual relationship on teams. They got engaged. Okay. Across teams they'd never met face to face.

Yeah.

Then they went to meet each other in person and the relationship fell apart.

Yeah.

So I know that's a small anecdotal example, but I'd be really interested in whether any of our listeners have come across some research around the degree to which we can form relationships using technology and what the potential limitations of that is. But I think it's interesting. I think it's just, I think just be intentional and treat technology with a healthy sense of skepticism.

Yeah. And it goes. And I want to move the conversation on now. We had a podcast recently, Richard.

We talked about the five disconnections that we believe are affecting leadership. And I think that was a really important conversation.

So what you're saying here is the leader of the future who is going to have technology as its thinking partner.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The key is we've got to stay connected with our teams and our people. Now, there's various ways of doing that, and that's really why you and I created what we call connected leadership.

This framework for leaders who want to thrive in a very high change, tech rich world, which is the world we live in now. And we've talked in that podcast about the key connections we have to be connected to self.

We have to really work on understanding our values, our emotional regulation, how we can be resilient in really tough, challenging times, how we can create clarity of thought. All of these things are really important.

Yeah.

So if you think about our connected leadership model, we've talked about it before, but at the heart of the model, there are the three concentric rings that overlay the connected leadership compass. I'm not going to go into the details of the compass, etc. But three concentric rings are self, others, or people, and organization.

So a connected leader, they're self aware, they're emotionally intelligent, they operate from a value based perspective, so they understand themselves. And then from that place of their connected center, they then build really powerful, deep relationships with the others around them.

So they use their empathy, they use their relational skills to create trust, they collaborate. And then beyond that, they're sensitive to the political and organizational context in which they're working.

And they, you know, they work within that highly complex, ambiguous context in a very skillful, connected way. So they're, they're attuned to the political ebbs and flows of the organization, and they use that skillfully to navigate those challenges.

And then beyond that, beyond the three concentric rings, this is what we call sort of, you know, if you like the spiritual intelligence, connecting what you do to stuff that's beyond yourself.

So the ability to think ethically about what you're doing, the ability to create meaning and a sense of purpose and connect what your organization's doing that connects yourself to the wider context and engages ethically within the social context that you're working. You know, I think really good leaders do that really well, and AI and technology is your thinking partner in that, and it can't replace that.

No, but what it does mean, as we have a thinking partner that become more and more useful to us.

Yes.

Developing these skills, therefore even more important.

Yeah, exactly.

I'll make a bold statement. Not enough leaders that I see have the levels of emotional intelligence that I think we need. And that's something.

It's not our challenge for all of us. Yes, for all of us. We're not taught that stuff in school.

No, no, no, that's right. Yeah.

So. But actually, all of us need to be, and I include myself and you in that. Yeah.

We all need to develop our levels of self awareness, of self management and self regulation, our ability to read social situations and the world around us, our ability to work in a complex, you know, quite ambiguous world, but still build effective relationships and to connect all of that, as you said, to some kind of purpose and meaning and think not just short term, but long term and ethically and sustainably. All of that is the challenge we've all now got, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if we are. If we are driven by data in a non critical, non reflective way, we lose the soul of leadership.

Absolutely.

And what we don't want is what we've got often now, which we talked about in that previous podcast, is the contrasting disconnected type of leadership where things are brittle, they're very, very reactive, and they feel quite transactional. That's not what we need going forward, is it?

No, definitely not.

Okay, so in terms of emerging good practice, let's talk about what really good leaders can do in this space. That's being created by the rise of artificial intelligence. So you've talked about inviting AI as a thinking partner, a lot of decision maker.

Yeah, yeah.

What else would you suggest is good practice?

I think linked to that and goes back to the point I was making earlier about the hallucination that, you know, that we can experience with, particularly with AI, I think is stay curious and stay humble and invite a healthy level of skepticism to all the stuff that you engage with online.

Right.

You know, and actually, you know, know your limitations and, you know, use the tools out there to help you address some of those limitations, some of those blind spots and stuff that, that, that we've talked about.

It's interesting you say that because, I mean, I'm naturally curious, as you know, but one of the things I found myself doing more and more in the last few years is asking more about what I don't know and being really curious about not what I do know, but what I don't know. Because there is so much around me that I don't understand.

Yeah, yeah.

And why would I?

I.

But I'm actually quite interested in understanding how it's going to help me.

Yes.

And you could apply that across not just your business life, but your private life, your health, your family, whatever it might be. I think that's really important. Don't get wrapped up in your own ego. Be very humble that there's a lot you don't know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But actually, curiosity is a really important thing, isn't it?

Yes. The other thing I would say is I make a distinction between faster communication.

I think so many organizations are obsessed with faster communication and things like email.

And then particularly with the advent of teams, that's just created this almost like always on sort of culture, which brings with it certain benefits. Agreed.

But I think there's a danger that some of that deeper communication gets lost, you know, that deeper relational sort of stuff gets lost and almost seems like soft and fluffy stuff, you know, so, you know, make sure your team meetings, even if they are over teams in some way tries to engage in that deeper level of communication rather than just these transactional meetings where you're just going through a series of the tasks for the week and then that's the end of your meeting.

No, I think you make a brilliant point. I think that is the challenge going forward. Communication is getting faster. The ability to do it is getting faster. That won't change.

But what needs to change is we need to keep that depth of communication human depth of communication. And how do we do that? In a world that's moving so fast.

Yeah. And linked to that is creating an environment with your team that's psychologically safe.

So in other words, it's where people feel that they're listened to. So that requires the skill of listening actively and deeply, asking really skilled questions and using the coaching approach.

So people feel that their ideas are being listened to and their capability is being used.

Yeah. Okay. So Rich, let's just pull all this together in some final reflections. So we've talked here about technical advancement without humanity.

There's a risk to that. We've talked about what AI should and shouldn't do for us. We've talked obviously about the case for developing what we call connected leadership.

And we've talked about some of the good practice that allows you to bring that to life. So I just like your sort of final reflections on that conversation for anybody listening.

Yeah, I guess I would say just keep stuff in balance.

I think, you know, there's a danger where we become sort of tech evangelists and, you know, we think, you know, technology is the answer to the world's problems and it's not. So balance that with healthy human skepticism.

So we need to balance human leadership qualities, embed those in your leadership programs and your leadership development programs and focus on your leadership development on stuff that machines can't replicate.

Yeah, I think that's a good one, isn't it? Make sure that however you develop your leaders, it actually complements what the AI can do.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. So have a think about. Remember I talked about iq, emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence.

Think about the degree to which you're bringing emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence into your leadership and how you harness in those aspects of what it means for you to be a human being. In other words, your unique leadership fingerprint.

I think it's a brilliant summary for anybody listening, thinking. Yeah, they're still talking that soft and fluffy nonsense. Yeah, they're talking about spiritual leadership.

They're talking about the emotional intelligence aspect.

What would you say to those people listening now if they don't get on board with this, if they don't understand why that's important, what's going to be the likely outcome?

Well, this has a bottom line effect, I think.

You know, we were talking with somebody the other day at one of our workshops last week in Stanbrook about the level of engagement, the research around the level of engagement in. I'm not sure it's UK industry. It might have been UK or more globally.

And they said something like it was only 5% of the the UK workforce, fully engaged, are fully engaged.

One in 20 people.

Yeah. So, you know, things like quiet quitting and all that sort of stuff and people leaving organisations because they're, you know, really cheesed off.

You know, it's a bit of a cliche now, I know, but, you know, people leave organisations usually because they're being poorly led or they're on the receiving end of poor. Poor management.

Yeah, agreed.

So if you get.

If you get leadership right and you get management right, and people feel safe, they feel listened to, they feel connected with in the context of all the uncertainty and ambiguity of out there and they then get more engaged, you take that level of engagement from 5% to 10% to 20%, that impacts your bottom line, people become more productive, they perform better. So this stuff creates pound notes.

And that's the most important bit, isn't it? Yeah. This is actually very important for the bottom line of your business.

Because if we can't recruit the right people, if we're constantly having to re.

Recruit because we're not looking after the ones we've got, if we got people sat there taking a salary, but then I not really giving you their L, that is going to have a massive effect on your bottom line. So this, this isn't soft and fluffy at all.

No, no. And I said pine notes, of course. Dollars or euros or whatever, whatever your.

Domination is wherever you're listening to this podcast. Yeah. Thanks, Rich. It's. I think it's a really important topic and there's no doubt one we'll be coming back to.

Yes.

Over the months and years, because this is not going to go away, is it? But maybe in a year's time we'll have a better view of how AI is affecting our lives.

Maybe.

But until then, next time, Rich and I'll be back with a couple of podcasts on one of Rich's favourite topics, which he's got expertise in confidence.

Yes, looking forward to that.

Yeah, that'll be great. So in the meantime, thank you for listening.

Yeah, thank you.

Bye bye.