What Makes a Human Leader Worth Following in the Age of AI with Allison Howell

So it, this is, this is what's hard about this, is that it really comes down to the processes and the norms that we have in place for doing all of these things because they're...

You know, as a leader, and I think there's a, there's information that you can take from, from our research or even as a, you know, a head of HR, for example, you can take a look at this and say, "Okay, we really need to start training more on communication skills or training, uh, on integrity," however that might look.

Um, but it's really difficult to make big changes b- at, at the individual level.

And so the, when you can start taking a look at the processes and saying, "Okay, on the selection side of things, if you look at our recruitment processes, our hiring processes, are they designed to look at the characteristics of a person that actually matter, or are they designed to attract the people who are really good at selling themselves?" And most of the time, even when you try to fix it, there is this bias towards the, kind of the charismatic leader or the political leader, the, somebody who's got the really great social skills and can present themselves really well.

And so it, it does take a, a pretty rigorous look at how those decisions get made to say, like, "Is the, is the data the right data that we're looking at? Are we looking at the right criteria? Do we really know what is important for this role?" That type of thing.

And so that is where it gets a little bit more difficult because, uh, changing processes, especially in big organizations, can be very effortful and time-consuming.

Yeah, and you're right.

Um, and I think, but if we step back for a second from implementing this in big organizations and think about if we had a list, right, of leadership expectations, a- and you're right, a lot of that shows up in, um, for example, in, you know, the world of meetings, right? How people showed up to meetings-

Mm-hmm

... and how they, how their, um, the, the next layers up perceived them.

And even we started talking about this back in COVID when suddenly the meetings were different, and suddenly everyone was a box on the screen, and, you know, suddenly what showing up means changed, right? So I think now, I'm thinking doing the work with agents, uh, there's, there's some of these skills and, and the way you show up, they're not going to work the same way.

If we had leadership expectations, um, in a perfect world, right, do we know how we're shifting from where we were to where we need to go?

I think yes, but it's not maybe as, uh, apparent or even as, that kind of information isn't as readily accessible as...

You know, you can go on online and find thousands, millions probably of, of white papers around, like, you know, what makes for a good leader or, you know, what leadership development programs should look like, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, there's, there's just so much information there on, on leadership.

And so it's really easy to find information that kinda confirms what we've always been doing.

It's a lot harder to seek out, uh, strategies that maybe haven't been fully tested or maybe have been tested but haven't been made as, uh, you know, as visible.

They're not the frameworks that McKinsey and Deloitte are gonna be working at.

But, uh, you can look, actually, uh, like, there's, this is kinda, it's an interesting line of inquiry, but looking at some of the, um, cultures that tend to be a little more, um, I'm gonna say matriarchal.

I don't necessarily mean, like, women-led, but tend to be less of that hierarchy, uh, patriarchal type of work, where it is more, like, circle based.

And so hierarchy has, like, the leader and people following up to the leader, and that's all our, our system, especially in the US, is very much geared towards that, of finding, like, who's gonna go at the top and who's gonna follow under.

When you look at some of the- Like matriarchal frameworks, it is much more about, uh, kind of gathering around to the task and finding who can kinda chip in and do things like that.

So it's harder, right? Because there's just not nearly as much information, and it's not been proven out in exactly the same way.

But when you start looking around, there are all sorts of different scenarios where you can say, "Okay, actually, like, this, this could work, and maybe now is the time to try something a little bit different, even if it feels a little bit riskier."

So I wonder if we go back to that report that you issued that had the zero overlap between what people wanted and w- what, um, the characteristics displayed by the leaders we have.