75. Lori Adams-Brown, Director of Global Talent Development

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Curiosity with Kristen podcast. Here you'll hear real conversations with everyday people making a difference, living their purpose, being parents, trying their best, and sharing their knowledge of life experiences, both professionally and personally. You'll also hear from executives about their companies and what cool things they're doing, plus how they're navigating their companies and their people forward. Each episode is unique and covers wide ranging topics that give my guests an opportunity to share what they've learned, are learning and continue to learn. Of course, along with wisdom, hope and some great stories too. I hope it gives you encouragement and strength to learn, grow and and be curious.

Speaker C: Today on UM Curiosity with Kristen, I have Lori Adams Brown. We're diving into the world of global leadership, cultural intelligence and the future of talent with someone who has lived it at every level. Lori's story spans continents and crises. She grew up in Costa Rica and Venezuela, later serving in Indonesia during the 2004 tsunami, where she became a bridge between international nos and local communities. Those experiences shaped her signature leadership philosophy. Listen first, understand deeply, and never assume your way is the right way. Now based in Silicon Valley, Lori brings that same cross cultural fluency into global businesses, DEI strategies and talent development across apac, Europe, the Middle east and Latin America. She's a champion for culturally intelligent leadership, the kind that avoids missteps, builds trust and creates real inclusion. And she's also on the front edge of AI and talent. Lori has evaluated AI tools for ethical recruiting. She's built her own AI agents and designed leadership programs that blend human centered development with AI enabled personalization. From trauma informed leadership to simulation based manager training. To her personal board of directors, Lori models what learning agility looks like in the era of AI. If you care about global leadership and ethical AI or building cultures where people can truly grow, you're going to love this conversation with Lori Adams Brown. Enjoy.

Speaker A: Well, welcome to Curiosity with Kristin. I have Lori Adams Brown here and uh, we've been friends for a couple years and I was on your podcast as well and you were so kind. When I listened back to it, I thought, oh, you're a great interviewer and uh, you definitely have a lot of insight that I uh, really appreciate. So it's really excited to have you on and to also share um, about talent acquisition, AI global, um, from that perspective as well. And I um, love your uh, early life and I want to also always start because our audience doesn't know kind of, you know, how you were, what you were doing growing up and uh, all the, what six languages that you have under your belt.

Speaker D: Yeah. And those, the majority of them came the easy way, just by living in a place for over 10 years where it was spoken. So, um, and then a couple of them, I learned school, you know, the hard way. Having to try to get A's in French and international school and that kind of thing. So.

Speaker A: Gotta do those too, right?

Speaker D: Yes, exactly.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, so tell me a little bit, uh, walk me through, uh, growing up. You grew up here in the Bay Area, is that correct?

Speaker D: No, I actually did.

Speaker A: I thought you started here, but then you moved. Or maybe you.

Speaker D: There was a moment of starting and moving. It's, it's, it's a lot to keep up with. I don't expect anybody to remember, um, because I've lived so many places. But yeah, I was born in the U.S. yes, but then when I was young, moved to Costa Rica as a child and then was in international schools. The majority of my schooling growing up as a child. So I was in Costa Rica. And then mostly Venezuela was where I mostly grew up. So my friends and my teachers were from all over the world. I'll never stop being grateful for that experience. And growing up in the, in Venezuela was during, you know, some really good years. Uh, it was a model democracy for South America during the years I grew up there. And, um, just a beautiful country. I grew up, you know, in the Caribbean, going to islands growing up. So it's still part of who I am culturally, I would say. But yeah, I grew up Spanish, English speaking. And then, um, when I came to the States for university, and then I did go to grad school in the Bay Area, and I moved straight out of grad school to Indonesia. I really wanted to work there. I'd been fascinated with Indonesia ever since. I was in international school growing up. And I did model un and even though I represented Paraguay, when, uh, I learned about Indonesia from the, you know, the MUN representatives from Indonesia, I became really fascinated with it as a country. Knew some Indonesians during my university, um, and grad school years. And so I got a job in a nonprofit in Indonesia working alongside the Ministry of Education right out of grad school, and then ended up working in a train the trainers program for the English teachers in the high schools in a province of Indonesia, which then I switched after a little while working there into a, um, a nonprofit. It was community development oriented. And I was just sort of new in that role when the tsunami hit, that which had also been in a civil war. There were a lot of wild things in my twenties, in my early Career. But I would say, you know, being a, uh, liaison with the UN efforts alongside the tsunami relief really helped me understand a lot about leadership and cultures coming from everywhere in a fast moving, high stakes environment and a lot of burnout and how to prevent that. There were just so many things. It was just like a crash course in international global leadership during that time. And then I moved to Singapore and work there, very diverse environment as well. And then moved to Silicon Valley a few years ago and have been here working most recently in a tech manufacturing company over all of our training. So I've owned all of training and then developed our key leadership program in multiple languages. Um, raised up an amazing team, um, and did some really great work to help elevate manager competence and manager satisfaction and a lot of other leadership traits within the business. And it's been a really exciting thing.

Speaker A: That's amazing. And I can't, you know, glossing over, oh, the tsunami we were. Wasn't there like a movie made of it as well?

Speaker D: There was and I don't know why, this makes me a little touchy. I've seen that movie. Um, I think I'm touchy about it because it featured Thailand, also a country I love. I mean my husband grew up in Bangkok, he went to international school Bangkok. And my parents ended up actually living in Thailand, um, after I moved out of the house and was grown. But, um, and my oldest son, I was living in Indonesia and we, I went to have my maternity leave and give birth to him in Thailand. I love Thailand. Nothing against Thailand, I absolutely love the place. But a lot of the attention, even that movie was featuring Thailand because a lot of the tourists, um, that were affected by the tsunami were in Thailand because it's a more tourist friendly place. But the epicenter of the tsunami was actually Banda Ate Indonesia, which was this province I'd been working in with Islamic law. Much more. Higher death toll. You know, when it's the epicenter and the waves are coming from both sides and you have ground zero. And we lost a lot of friends, my husband and I, but miraculously a lot of our friends survived. So every year it was definitely, it's, you know, definitely hard to put it all in a nutshell because it was all the things you could imagine. Um, but yeah, I would say every year it's been 20 years. But on December 26, I just take a moment and I just cry. And I remember, um, my friend Nana and her husband Aya, they lost their baby girl and she was a little bit older than my oldest at the time I had an infant as well, but he was a bit younger. And I just remember rocking to sleep at night during those early days of doing the tsunami relief and thinking, why, you know, why did my baby survive and hers didn't? It was a very hard thing. We were in my parents house in Chiang Mai, Thailand when the tsunami hit because it was Christmas, so we were there. We, uh, did feel the earthquake in North Thailand. And then we soon got news that the epicenter was where we had been living and working and m doing actually work with some IDPs, um, at the time from the civil war. And so it was. Yeah, I mean, I didn't experience it personally other than the death toll afterwards. And that lasted for a really long time. Just doing all kinds of wild things like body removal and building houses and desalinating wells. And I just, I learned an incredible amount of skills during that time. Being a medical director and helping, you know, volunteer doctors come in and do m makeshift clinics. And it was just, it felt, uh, like kind of if you've worked in a startup times 10 because the stakes are so much higher. Life and death is on the line, but everybody does everything. And yeah, I would say being a bridge builder between the Indonesian culture that I had been, you know, living in as an expat, one of the few expats living there when the tsunami happened. That's why being a liaison with the UN efforts was so important, because you get these big NGOs that come in and a lot of it's very splashy and big money. And although I was working for a nonprofit that did have a $16 million budget that, um, being in charge of was a lot of responsibility. But all that being said, budgets were much bigger with some of the bigger NGOs and helping them understand cultural intelligence matters here under Islamic law, under a place that's been isolated. So that was sort of the bridge building role that I played to say, hey, helping can hurt sometimes. And let's be curious and ask some critical questions around. Is this the best way to help? And let's really ask the local, um, villages and the local leaders, what do they need before we just start giving things like pork and beans to Muslims who are under Islamic law or cold weather tents to people in tropical environments. So the coordination and the cultural intelligence bridge building piece became really important in those efforts. And I would say that skill is something I use today in Silicon Val.

Speaker A: I was gonna ask that. So do they even eat pork and beans?

Speaker D: No, no, no, not at all.

Speaker A: Right. It's like, oh, shoot, that's not good.

Speaker D: Yeah, no pork, no, uh, fingernail polish. Uh, no alcohol. I had to cover my hair, even though I don't. You know, it's not my values, but I did. So. Yeah. Very, very strict environment.

Speaker A: And, you know, it's interesting just thinking about, like, you know, the economy today and how hard it is right now, and it's not even close to having, you know, like, when you have so much going on and then you get a tsunami on top of that, and then the emotions and your friends and you can and can't do things. Our WI fi was different back then. You know, everything was. We didn't do things, like, we even do them now, but it would. It would wipe things out. And so just trying to. I can imagine back then, like, just trying to help, I think. I think probably the community coming together and the help part is the blessing part, the easier part, uh, you know, to just, um, save lives and get fresh water again and food and, um. I. I can only imagine. I know. Uh, you know, um, I. I saw some of the movie, actually. My daughter, uh, started seeing it, and she turned it off, and she's still. It's a nightmare that she actually.

Speaker D: Yeah, she.

Speaker B: She.

Speaker A: She'll say that. And I gonna show her this, uh, this podcast because, yeah, for her, she was. It was. It was too traumatic for her, and it gave her nightma think or something.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I couldn't imagine. Yeah, being in that epicenter. And then also just the skills. Uh, how did that change you after, like, before and after, did you have a clear, like, personally, professionally?

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, it's a line in the sand. I mean, that is a marker when. Whenever people interview me on podcasts or I speak globally quite a bit, um, I get asked, was there a moment in your leadership where everything changed? And I always talk about that time. I mean, it definitely. There was a pre tsunami and a post tsunami, and I. I say that was still just an incredible amount of privilege. There's some of that survivor's guilt that even comes out when I talk about it. But because I wasn't there on the day, um, and then, you know, I had people in a neighborhood where I'd been living, and when I heard their stories that so many of them didn't survive, it was a Sunday morning, so in the autonomous culture, a lot of people go to the beach on Sunday mornings. It's just very traditional to do that. And that's when it happened. Um, and there was actually a children's festival on the beach that day. I mean, there were just some horrible circumstances that caused the death toll to be quite high. Just the personal stories of the friends I knew before, it was a lot of, you know, secondary trauma. But I still, I say that and I feel so guilty saying it. Cause I didn't actually, I wasn't there. And the ones that were there, I just like have so much empathy and compassion for them because they were, you know, like I said, many of my friends survived, but some didn't. Most did miraculously, like the one car load from their village. I mean, just wild stories that my friends survived. And then I met a lot of people in the aftermath that I didn't know before and heard their stories as well. And so, yeah, I don't know if you have any sort of humanity at all or empathy at all, how that doesn't change you as a person. Yeah. And so, yeah, I did come out of that thinking, I think in terms of leadership, for sure, leaders have to be listeners. And I came out of that with a very strong, clear North Star on that one because of, you know, we saw things like, um, the Republic of Kuwait is one example. And it's just one example. I mean, you have these big government funding and so it's just like throw a bunch of money and like do something and make it look, you know, and not think through it very much. But it would just have taken a little bit of listening to understand Acehnese people live on the ocean and they donated riverboats. So there were riverboats all over the land in Banda Ace that were unusable. And on the side it was painted the Republic of Kuwait. And so it just began. It was actually very genius because vaccinese people are just very, um, uh, inventive. And they can be very creative with how they reuse things. And that's one of the things I appreciate about the society. But they just turned them into little businesses. So they just would flip them upside down on the grass and make little like makeshift shops out of it and start selling things. So it was actually, oh, there's another Republic of Kuwait riverboat that can't be used by the fishermen. So I just came out really clear that, you know, it does matter that you listen before you offer your help. Not just because of some of the white saviorism that's always embedded in big nonprofit NGO work, but also just because of. Every culture is different, every person's different, and every situation is different. People generally know what they need. They may not have all the clarity, but I think that's where Leaders should be coaches, listeners and not just go in and say, day one of a new role, hey, here's what I'm doing. You should spend your first 90 days doing some listening tour. And you know, just because you did it that way somewhere else doesn't mean it will work here in this work culture.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: And uh, and in terms of your career, you've been able to bridge that also with the global aspect of different cultures and different uh, people and, and carrying that how. Just curious how that's translated because most recently you were at a company that was global. How has that helped in terms of bridging uh, those um, you know, the different cultures together?

Speaker D: You know, I was in the past two years, seven months, have been working in a very um, global company that's across apac, um, you know, Europe, Middle east and latam. We have offices all across the time zones. People are leading distributed teams, including me, um, people that speak all types of languages and um, but even if you just took our Silicon Valley headquarters office, even there, there's all kinds of cultures in the office every day, which I love because like I said, I grew up in international schools with friends and teachers from everywhere and I've lived in a bunch of places and um, spoken on leadership in 11 countries. I've worked across three continents and lived on three continents. And so to me it's exciting. I love it. I have a master's in intercultural studies, so these are things I love. But I realized that even I, I only speak six languages. There's way more languages in the world and way more cultures. So for me, I early on did spend my first 90 days doing a big listening tour and I also got into our Glint survey data to see where our opportunities for growth here. And you know, incidentally my listening tour really matched up with the Glint data survey very nicely which was that communication was our big priority, um, that I kind of came out of that with and realizing that listening to understand and you know, understanding feedback and how that works differently across cultures and coming up with a model that may not fit everybody's culture, but at least we can agree this is how we do feedback here we could get into like I kind of nerd out on some of these things about how cultures are more egalitarian or hierarchical and others are more consensus driven and decision making versus others. An example of that would be Erin Meyer's book. The Culture Map has been just the bible for me and the work that I do. Many people in cross cultural leadership work in business also know this book. But, you know, she also wrote a Harvard Business Review article, I think it was like 2017, where she talked about how sometimes Japanese, um, who come to the US to do business or do, you know, business deals across the world between those two countries will often face huge differences in how we do business. For example, uh, high context, low context communication is polar opposite on Erin Meyer's spectrum in the culture map between Japan and the U.S. so in Japan, because it's historically been so homogeneous, you can have words in Japanese like read the air because people kind of know what you mean. But in the US we've had such a long history of immigration throughout our history that we have so many cultures and different ways of communicating that you have to be a little more direct. So in the US we're, we're known as being the most direct of all the countries for that reason. But at the same time, when you look at things such as, you know, there's this, um, Hofstede's cultural dimensions, which Erin Meyer uses as a part of the culture map, but she applies it specifically to business and her research. And so when you look at, is a culture more egalitarian or hierarchical? And in Asia where I worked, Indonesia, Singapore, and then countries surrounding it where I didn't live, but I was, you know, over the work in Malaysia, Brunei and other places, you have a lot more hierarchical leadership, um, in the culture and in the business world. Um, so in Japan that would be an example, very hierarchical. But when it comes to decision making, more consensus driven. And in the US we're more egalitarian. So you have in Silicon Valley, a lot of companies that would say we're more flat. You can email the president or anybody. You don't have to copy 5,000 people on their email. But consensus driven decision making is not as common in the US So you'll have a boss that makes a decision, may not ask anybody else or just a few people, and just expect everybody to get in line and not question it. Which can be confusing because in Japan, even though they're hierarchical, they're more consensus driven in the decisions. You places like Scandinavia, so Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, I mean, sorry, Sweden, they're going to be both egalitarian and consensus driven. So they're going to send, they're going to not need to copy everybody on the email because of hierarchical reasons, but they're going to need to copy everybody on the email because they're trying to get consensus before the decision is made. So all of that can show up in a workplace like Silicon Valley offices To say, well, how in the world do we communicate, you know, in this way? And, uh, if feedback is so different, decision making so different, then we just have to say, well, this is how we do it here. So I was brought in and able to sort of establish some of those things here. How we do it is we do listen to each other. So that was key core leadership competency that I implemented in just phase one of the key leadership program that I developed and partnered with the center for Creative Leadership as well, um, adapting some of their curriculum that, and then knowing that listening to understand is different than listening to respond. So just tried to set that into the culture with some trainings and, um, multiple languages that we rolled out a course around that early on.

Speaker A: That's. And I know as, you know, global director, talent acquisition director, I know that that's a very big thing and a needed thing, I think, for lots of companies. And I know with dei, right, that that was probably very big. How did that, um, I'm assuming, I don't know if they had a specific person or you did that piece or how when that transition did that. Was that, uh, helpful with all of the DEI things for your role in terms of talking with your leaders or

Speaker C: did it make any difference?

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, this company I've been working in most recently, it's, it was very DEI focused company. It's actually one of the main reasons I wanted to work there because I really resonate with that, you know, where I worked in other people I've spoken with in Silicon Valley and across corporate America, is that sometimes it was just sort of a, a box to check. Um, I didn't get the sense that this company, as I was coming in was that way, that they were trying to go deeper. And that's what I appreciated because I'd seen some very surface level aspects of that, of putting like a token person in that role, but not taking it seriously. And that's not what I wanted. Um, especially because to me, I'm very deep in the cultural piece. Not just, just the cultures in the us, but the global cultures and how we communicate and that sort of thing. And so, um, no, I did not own that part, but I certainly did partner very closely with the dei whole aspect of the business, which was a huge part of it, and, you know, spoke at different things and then always was a huge champion of it. We had, you know, ergs, some people call them BRGs, ERGs, everybody's different names. Um, we certainly had those and then celebrated different places around the world. So, like When I went to the uk, part of my listening as a leader was I wanted to listen to how they were experiencing dei and they wanted to make sure that however they did DEI there, that it was very UK centered in that manufacturing location. They didn't have many Latinos, so doing a lot of the what in California, we did more with that. But there it made sense to focus a lot on the Eastern Europeans that were working and living there. And you know, uh, so just making sure it was very localized. And what it meant for each place wasn't that they were going to celebrate all the US holidays, but they were going to celebrate their own. And Black History Month is different in the UK than it is in the us so those things were really important to make sure they got emphasized. And although I didn't own it, I certainly partnered along it with, uh, the training aspect of it. And then I would say, yeah, we did make that shift, like many people did, to sort of change the wording to culture and inclusion. And I know many companies did something very similar. I think all of it to say, I think where we're at now is probably the AI conversation is what this comes into a little bit. Right. Um, a good time to mention that. I'm sure it'll come up at some point, but which is that on the talent acquisition side, even on the talent development side, as it comes to promotions, internally and career pathways, or however it works in everybody's company, that you're making sure that you do listen to people and get to know them as human beings. Staying human centered has been a real key part of the approach I have taken with AI. We can get more into the details around that, but I think that as that rolls out, we have to keep in mind AI is incredible, it's exciting, it's so fun to tinker with and learn. And I'm certainly there and have been for a long time early adopter on a lot of things with this. And then also knowing that AI was created by humans and we have our own biases. And so understanding the ethics around it is also something I've been really fascinated about. When it comes to very human centered approaches in partnership with AI around talent development and all that.

Speaker A: Absolutely. It's so interesting because, like recruiting for 30 years and um, you know, it's always about finding the best person for the job. Doesn't matter, color, race, anything. It's just about, you know, and having that, um, human connection that you guys can really work together, because that's pretty much it. Like if you have that it doesn't matter. It's interesting too because I even, I just touching upon this with talking with so many different companies about DEI and there's a lot of them that are kind of like you were saying, just sort of like, um, um, it's just check the box sort of thing. What we really need is just the right person for the job. And it's like, well, I think they're talking the same language. It's just not, you know, you know, having a bias towards. But then sometimes you can. But I definitely see even with AI there's a bias as well. Um, considering that we were, uh, we developed it and then all the information that it pulls to come up with a solution. I still am sorry in awe of how quick it can happen, you know, how quickly you just kind of throw all this info and then, you know, throw it in there and then it comes up with something that actually is pretty darn good. You just have to read through it, make sure it's correct. And I know you had talked a little bit, we, you mentioned uh, hallucinations that it has and um, I know with the Global Talent Acquisition and with AI, I'm assuming have you used tools to that kind of cross over that and, and how have you, how have you used them? Um, what tools have you seen are good and what kind of hallucinations have you found? And you know, also how do you work through those?

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean certainly, you know, it's not just a tech shift, it's really a work culture and leadership shift that's happening. So you know, companies I think that succeed will really be those that integrate AI into their people strategy, not just their tech stack. So I, I certainly have been partnering with our, you know, tech team, our AI experts and even around the ethics of it. So um, I think many are doing what we had done, which is developing an ethics committee around what tools are we bringing into our global enterprise. Especially some of us here in Silicon Valley, we work, um, currently and have been working maybe in the past in companies that have high security. So I think that was important. Um, as I began to, you know, look at different tools and then um, see their pitches and their demos and decide is this something we want to try on a trial basis or not? And so one important question began to be as a filter, well, who owns the data from this? I think that's an important question to ask early on. And so once we establish that, okay, we own the data, it's not going to China or somewhere else, you know, um, then it's like okay, phase one is complete. Now we can decide if this is still something we want to try. But that was always sort of a big litmus test. And um, and I know many will resonate with that too because I think data is a big conversation even in talent acquisition, um, which, you know, my area of interest is more talent development. But it, you know, I, I work across marketing, dei, I mean all these different parts of. When you're involved in talent development, it kind of, you know, partners with all the other parts. And so, um, and then certainly as I was recruiting my team, you know, use certain tools as well to help me just because I, I'm one of those leaders. I, I spend a lot more time making sure I'm getting the right person and then, you know, building trust from there. But it's, it's all making that effort ahead of time really matters because I've been throughout my career in situations where it's like, ooh, that we probably should have spent a little more time understanding, you know, who they are, character wise and skillset matters. But also who are you as a person? Those things are big, uh, long term. Like, are we going to work as a team or are you going to work against us? It's hard to know. But yeah, I think that I personally have spent a lot more time making sure we're getting good people so that I can build trust quickly and we can just go. I like to have people that are going to just be able to go and I monitor them and I give them what they need as resources as a manager and all that. But it just makes a huge difference when you get the right hire hire. Right. So I think that AI is able to help with some of those things. But once again, I think we should keep in mind I get a. I spoke at a talent management conference last week in San Diego. Two different times at this conference and a couple times on different panels, I heard people say things such as, well, AI is eliminating the bias from recruiting and I, I'm just not comfortable saying that. I think there are people who, their tools, they claim to do that. I'm just still curious and I still have my critical thinking skills hat on right who I am. You know, I'm cautiously optimistic about a lot of it, but I just, I know from what I've used there are little things and so, you know, AI does hallucinate sometimes. Any of us who've used such as tools such as ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, all these different models out there and GPTs that occasionally you'll, you'll be trying to write something up or maybe trying to, you know, make an agenda for your off site retreat and you want to make some extra resources and you're partnering with, you know, Microsoft copilot to do it and you'll say, hey, can you find me some articles I could link for extra resources? And sometimes the link will be wrong. So you always have to check those. The human oversight is key. You can't just outsource everything because it does hallucinate. And then also we see in some of the recruiting tools, um, even ATS machines. How is your ATS machine program? You know, if there's any kind of anything in there that would say the word woman is going to cause it to reject the, the application? Well, that's a problem because half the people, half the world is women. And so they might have the word woman in their resume for something here and there. And so, you know, just making sure you're staying on top of it. I think humans need to stay in the driver's seat with AI. That's kind of one of the things I'm saying. Um, I don't want to say there's two whole camps, but I think there's two major camps when it comes to AI that I hear professionally. One is this very excited, just use it all and don't, you know, don't think twice. Just, you know, go full force and don't look back and just use it all with AI. And then there's another very strong camp that says, I would never use it. It's bad, it's ruining the environment and we can't use it. Um, but some of those same individuals might use Siri on their phone or, you know, Netflix will recommend shows for them to watch. You know, they use certain Adobe tools that are using AI. They may not realize AI is involved. Generative AI is different. I would say there's some of us like me, who are sort of a blend of those two camps. So I've been an early adopter of a lot of AI tools that I've used both for my podcasting, such as Cap show, it's a woman owned company that I use to have my show notes. I've used it for years. I know the founder, she's incredible. And then, um, Riverside, I record on there and it uses AI to help with the editing and the clips. And then as far as, um, in the work I do outside of my hobby of podcasting, I've used many AI tools. Um, I recently met because, uh, we're working through how women lead and I sit on how women leads board and um, there's a portion that we have called how women Invest. And I got to go to one of our events in San Francisco where I met a lot of women founders. A lot of the founders now are AI companies. And so I met this woman, Katie, who uses a product called Naratize. I'm m not paid for any of this advertisement but she's a wonderful person. I had dinner with her. We've stayed connected. And her product really in manufacturing, goes alongside tribal leaders and kind of downloads their knowledge over time. And that's one of the things we see as a risk for business is that with talent development, if you don't have a succession plan and suddenly somebody just, you know, gets poached by a competitor, in two weeks they're gone. Or maybe they decide, you know, they want to take some time off and have a career break for a little bit because they're burnt out or whatever. You're at risk and your business if you've not downloaded that information of these tribal leaders, especially in a lot of our startups. So narrowitize kind of comes alongside with AI and just records the things they do. So there can be sort of a playbook of what they do. So there's all kinds of incredible tools out there. I could mention a hundred. I, uh, use AI all the time, every day. But I still keep my critical skills thinking hat on and I still say curious around, um, the ethics of it all. And I think that's important to do, uh, that you stay in the driver's seat.

Speaker A: No, thanks for sharing all of that. And it's interesting because I appreciated you saying talent development because talent acquisition versus talent development, two very different things. So there was someone else that did more of the ta, the talent acquisition side. And then you took, so it's like they hired, found the people, you know, got the culture higher and then you then took over and really developed and kept them there.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker D: Yeah. So from the moment of hire all the way through offboarding, developing our leaders and I work closely with our C suite president, founder, coo, all of our C suite leaders on executive development as well. So just developing leaders, a, um, manager training, um, that really was much m more robust than what we had had before. An eight week program rolling that out in our, um, Europe offices and then seeing great success out of that. I think a lot of managers don't get any training and they're, you know, you're an engineer one day and you're working on machines and then all of a sudden they say you have a direct report. They're completely different skillset, right. So that became really important early on as I listened in the beginning like what, what do we need here? That was a, a key part of our key leadership program that I developed. Um, and that my team, my incredible team, um, who are just outstanding, uh, all around the world doing this in multiple languages. And then I also would travel to our global sites and do leadership summits for our leaders and you know, get to listen to them, get to know them, but had these sort of courses around conversational skills, cultural intelligence, emotional intelligence. And I would say this, this sort of formed for me because I do spend a lot of time, I really nerd out on any of the articles around leadership development, talent development, especially at the intersection of cultural intelligence. So I spent a lot of time reading HBR articles, that type of thing. And my involvement with the center for Creative Leadership, I'm now on the advisory board. Um, so many people around corporate America and across the world, globally have done center for Creative Leadership courses, partnering with them and seeing what they're learning from the research. And then what I was reading is I began to realize in this era of AI, the future of work means skill sets are changing. So you need to upskill your global enterprise for the skills that are going to be needed to future proof your organization. And that means leaders are constantly having to evaluate things and um, including themselves. And I think that's a key piece of this, is that um, Harvard's research and also um, center for Creative Leadership has had the same research that some of the key skills going forward, two very prominent ones, I mean there's four that we emphasize, but two are self awareness and learning, agility. And so I really focus our key leadership program on enabling those because well, I think that I've heard Silicon Valley leaders say to me, I don't know many leaders that are self aware and that's a risk for your business, not just for you as a leader, but for your team and your business. Because how we show up, especially now and the geopolitical shifts and uh, how everything's changing so rapidly. Skills that I really honed in the tsunami, like it or not, that those are things I learned about resilience, that when things change so rapidly and you can't even decide what's going on in or outside of work, that self awareness and how you show up in the room, how people perceive you as a leader, it's, it's the tone of that is really everything. And then the learning agility piece that, you know, 50 many skills are going away that we used to rely on. And so uh, 50% of the skills will be obsolete in a few years. And so AI is going to replace tasks and create entirely new roles. So your ability to keep learning, I mean, I'm a professed learn it all. I think nobody likes to know it all, but I just, I love to learn and that's why I've learned about AI. I created an AI agent in our company that I put all of our, I was able to put leadership development from our key leadership program into it and it could coach people 24 hours a day. You know, my team was not available 24 hours a day even though they're distributed from Taiwan to the west coast of the U.S. but um, but this Abe has agent that I created was. I know many people out there have created AI agents and that's something that's happening. But I think that, you know, learning that was something I did on my own. I just, I like to learn things and continue to grow. And I want to set that as the tone in the leadership development programs that I develop. Like, let's keep learning. We can do this together in community and work on your self awareness, learning agility, those are key.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh. Okay. So you opened up a Pandora box. I definitely wanted to ask about those two, but also about the AI agent because what I'm seeing is that people don't have that. Um, and uh, then maybe it's just the companies like depending on if they're, you're in the Silicon Valley and you're a larger company versus so you may have um, tools in your tool belt that someone else wasn't. So I'm going to ask you that. But before that I thought I'd ask, um, more about the self awareness and learning agility for a leader who's maybe listening. Um, small business, mid business, medium sized business. What are the things that, that can help them with becoming self aware? Like what are the things that you're like, okay, if you're doing this, then you're not as self aware and here's some tools that you can do. Ah, also with learning agility too, which may be easier.

Speaker D: Yeah, no, this is a great question. I have been on my own self awareness learning journey for quite some time. Um, and so I am blessed to have people in my life that professionally are therapists. But I don't take advantage of my loved ones being that for me because that's just a Conflict of interest. But, um, but I do have my own, what I would say, personal board of directors that I developed years ago for myself as a leader. Because I do believe that leadership is a privilege and it's a responsibility. Leadership, uh, at the end of the day, is influence. It's not about title, and I'm very, very clear on that. Um, for myself and for others, you know, the titles change, but who you are is who you are every day, all the time. And so I do have people in my life. I have a therapist I've worked with for years. I mean, I think I describe it sort of like this. I drive a car. I have an electric vehicle, and I charge the battery. Um, I make sure it's got good maintenance. And, and so for myself, I want to invest in myself, like, where are my oversights, processing, you know, things that happen in and outside of work and making sure I'm showing up with my own self awareness. Because I was raised in a generation, um, and in a. A world where I built a lot of resilience. So I do have that piece. But resilience building can also be exhausting. And so. And it can also sometimes make us not aware of what we're feeling. So I have had, you know, sort of those personal tendencies. Just full disclosure and vulnerability.

Speaker A: No, I think all of us do. Honestly. We do. We all do.

Speaker D: Yeah. I think I admire people who just are more easily able to access their emotions and name them. And so that's. That's work I've. That's a skill I've had to build. It was not natural to me.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: Um, because of my upbringing, I had a lot of great things about my upbringing. Really incredible experiences and all of that. I loved the life that I had. But with everybody's life and childhood, there's going to be pieces that you're missing. And so that's the part I'm doing in self, you know, discovery. I have a spiritual director as well, who's older and retired, but still works with me. But she's just brilliant and has had a lot of wisdom and experience and speaks in tune my world of work and life in ways that I really value and, you know, have friends that I've known for years and people just in this board. And when I have a big decision, especially I go to them and say, what do you think? Because I don't assume I know everything. And so that's, you know, part of the self awareness is that we can be an Einstein, but even he didn't know everything. That's why listening to understand each other and our other perspectives matters. That's why I started my podcast, the World of Difference. I just love sitting across the table from people and hearing their perspective because I learn about the world and myself in a different way. And so I think self awareness, part of it is build your personal board of directors, people that will tell you the truth. I don't have yes men, yes women in my board of directors. No, no, not at all. I don't need that. There's the world. ChatGPT will do that for you. I don't need that. I need people to say, you're off on this, you know, and I need, and I, I want that in my life. That's self awareness.

Speaker A: On your board of directors, how many people do you keep it to? Is there a number? That's a good number. And then do you have like a finance person and attorney person, A spiritual person? Like, is it kind of. Did you build it out that way? Was curious. Uh, on that side.

Speaker D: So I, I do have an attorney. I do have a finance person. I don't necessarily go to them with all my big major decisions, although it depends on the decision, you know, so if, like I'm, I'm making a decision after leaving a role, I have this money, I vested. What should I do with. I mean, definitely they get asked questions, you know, my tax person, I definitely have those. Yeah, it depends on the decision that I'm making. And then certainly I have women in this board of directors that are not in financial roles, but they're financially savvy. And so when it comes to that, I do trust them about these big decisions. I'm, I'm blessed to be and fortunate to be on, you know, several nonprofit boards. I'm on three at the moment, which is kind of maxed for me. I also, you know, full time work, but, um. And they're kind of more seasonal, not super heavy. Yeah. And so one of them is how women lead, which is how we're connected. There's a lot of women there that work in banking and finance. And so, yeah, there's always people in my life I can reach out to on specific questions like that. But I say, I think mostly it's, you know, people that I've built trust with. I respect them. Who they are, not just what they do. Like who they are matters to me. And as a woman in business, I often say this. With business, we have choices of who we do business with. And I would, I just prefer to do business with people that I trust and that people that have. Have ethics and good character and they don't have to be perfect. Nobody is. No business is perfect. No person is perfect. I'm not perfect for sure. And so, but it's. Who are you and. And how is your business run? Those things matter to me. So I make choices on who I partner with in business based on that and based on who I would have on my board of directors as well.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: It's like, I always think, like, uh, who brings. Gives you energy that you learn from, that you get excited to talk to, that you always walk away with good insights and good feelings. I guess so it's the kind of people you want around you. Um, and then learning agility. I always think curiosity, which is why I called this curiosity with Kristen. Curious. If you've seen where staff, especially in the. Where your group and the talent, uh, development, where you've seen clear where someone's missing the mark but then has the option to get back on track or not. Um, I think someone who's learning. Are there any qualities that stood out that, oh, wow, this person's fantastic. You know, just for, um, the audience who may want to implement that at their company or in themselves.

Speaker D: No. This is so great. I think that so much of what's going on for us right now geopolitically is showing up in business in ways I expected it on a certain level, but I don't think even I expected it to happen this quickly and this fast that you would see such culture change. I mean, I've lived. Lived around the globe in multiple countries. I was living in Indonesia when 911 happened, for example. So my experience of 911 as a US citizen is always going to be from living in the largest Muslim country in the world. And that's a whole different lens. Right. I mean, we did have, um, protests in the city where I was living in. Um, I'd been evacuated at that point from Aceh Province because the civil war was kind of heating up. So I was living outside doing work from the outside still the Ministry of Education of Indonesia just in a different location at the moment. And then essentially, uh, there were riots in the city where I was at Java in the city of Yogyakarta. And so, um, this group called Laskar Jihad was saying, we're going to sweep out the Americans. So we. All of the nonprofit I was working with had to be evacuated to Bali for a little while. So it was not bad. But we didn't. We were not complaining about that.

Speaker A: Right. But still kind of another traumatic experience.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, I, I, that I didn't even get that one. I mean, you've, that's another just, just a tsunami. It's kind of like a tsunami.

Speaker D: It's its own thing. Right. I don't compare it to that because it wasn't as bad, which just tells you the level of bad the tsunami was.

Speaker A: But the tsunami that happened in 911 in New York with the hours going was just as bad.

Speaker C: Just.

Speaker D: Oh, yeah, Location.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: Uh, and it's a day the, the U.S. obviously recognizes more so now that I'm living in the U.S. we just, you know, had a thing about it. But the tsunami is something people don't even sometimes know about here because it's 20 years ago and it was another part of the world. But, but yeah, I mean, that was certainly a difficult time. I think one of the things I learned in that time is that when stress happens outside of work, everybody processes it differently. So I think that's also part of even just for me, learning agility as a leader is to learn people and, you know, to individualize my approach as a manager. Everybody is experiencing. Some people might express that stress in their body differently than others. Some people might express it more verbally. And I'm not a therapist, but, um, from what I understand, you know, from my loved ones who are, and the one I worked with is everybody, even trauma. So I did end up getting a trauma informed certification after the tsunami experience, just so I professionally could be more aware as a leader about. As trauma shows up in the workplace and outside of work for people I'm managing and leading. But in that experience, one of the things that happened was there was a young woman on the team that I led, and her shoulders were just, just really tense one day. And we had not been given orders to evacuate yet, but it was an optional evacuation. So, uh, most of us were deciding we were going to stay until we just were told we had to leave. But for her, it was the right call to say, you know, if you need to go ahead and take some time off and go ahead and leave for now, that's okay. Because her level of stress from whatever previous traumas she may have had that were triggering, I mean, I don't know, I didn't know her story, and we don't always know that at work. Right. But, but it became clear that it was important to personalize that, that. So that's part of, um, just learning your people, learning who they are, how they operate. Um, and then I, one of the things I am excited about AI with I will say is that it does offer opportunities for personalization with learning like we've not seen before. And so that is pretty exciting. Um, some of the stuff with LinkedIn Learning are my team was in charge of the LinkedIn Learning aspect of what was uh, we were doing with our company. And so some of that, you know, even simulations that you can do. So there's a company in India called Risely and they have an AI agent called Merlin. I sort of did a test on that with my team as sort of an A B, testing um, for a few weeks to see what that was all about. It once again they do not pay me, I'm not being sponsored by them. But I thought it was a great product and it uses multiple languages so you could use Mandarin if you're a Mandarin speaker, to practice, uh, going into a meeting that you're going to have with somebody at work who's agitated, you could change the mood. And so, so if that was the conversation you're a little nervous about, but you don't really have anybody at work, you feel comfortable saying, would you practice this with me? You could do it with an AI agent. So there's a lot of personalization that's happening, personalized learning journeys on um, LinkedIn learning, for example. This is the trend in talent development right now is using these AI tools to be much more personalized. And I find that great because I've always been the kind of leader that felt like leaders who personalize what their team needs, each of their direct reports differently are really some of the best leaders. So now that AI is helping us personalize these journeys, it's upskilling talent faster. It's more relevant. Like I said, I've worked in design global leadership programs and spoken in 11 countries for like over 3,000 leaders. And um, each person is an individual no matter who you are and where you're from. And so that personalization I think is really important for C Suites to recognize and want to bring in this AI enabled human centered development. It's not really optional, it's really the competitive advantage for the future of work.

Speaker A: Absolutely. No. And it's, it's great and, and curious also from that side with the AI agent. Tell me more about that. You said you built one. How did you figure out which one to build, uh, that you wanted and did you create like the, you know, how, how, Tell me all I'm curious how, how that started and that journey and, and how it was to, to build it.

Speaker D: The idea initially started when I was at this talent Development dinner in San Jose, um, last year and there. And we were having conversations with people across Silicon Valley companies about talent development. You know, what were we doing, what were we seeing? And there was a woman, probably, I would say, like maybe 63 years old, 64. And she, you know, just said, oh, I just created an AI agent for our company and it's got all our leadership development in it. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm so far behind. Like, you know, and I'm not.

Speaker A: People listening to this may feel that they are on that.

Speaker D: I thought, wow, what am I doing? And then she just said, it's not hard. And she sort of just like verbally explained it a bit. And I thought, oh my gosh, I really should. I was curious. I want to know more about this. And then, um, I know I'm friends with somebody. Jenny K. Pollock, you probably know her too. On how Women lynch. She started Women Xai. It's a whole community for women and AI. And so I've met sort of a lot of women, you know, through her and through that community that do have created AI agents. And I thought, well, what's stopping me? This would really be great for our company. So I just went in and started tinkering with it. And I spend a lot of time on other AI tools. So I use those AI tools to teach me how and just figured it out through that tinkering of it. And, um, I created ours within Microsoft Copilot. That's, you know, some, you know, there's different tools you can use. But I actually, yeah, I used AI to teach me how to do it. And then it did. And it wasn't actually, for me personally, it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be because I just worked alongside it. And then I got my team to sort of like pilot it and said, hey, will you start to use this for a little bit? So I chose a couple people on my team and said, hey, will you look at this? And then it. It's. It's not a thing you set and it's done. You have to keep updating it. You have to keep. So it was just the initial amount of putting some of our initial leadership development curriculum into it, but then still waiting on putting the other parts in. And it wasn't doing any other languages yet. So obviously the Merlin was way better with that. Just for the initial creation of it, I actually, I found it quite fun. Like, I said, I'm gonna learn it all. And the process of doing it taught me so much. And Then it taught me how to look at other AI agents in a certain way. Um, I chose. I named it abeja because it's the Spanish word for be. Um, and the company I was working in, um, makes M data servers, so it looks like a hive or whatever. So bad.

Speaker A: Oh, that's great.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: So tell me, what tools did you use in order to learn? So, because. Because just for someone who would be interested in getting started, is it like a chatgpt? And you just said, I want to create an AI agent through copilot. Tell me how kind of that simple, or was it something else? And what tools were better, uh, at giving you what data to help you create it?

Speaker D: Yeah, I used a mixture of ChatGPT, um, outside of work, because that was not a tool we used at work. And then at work we had Microsoft Copilot with licenses and that kind of thing. And so as far as, for me personally just learning on my own time, I just spent time asking ChatGPT, like, how do you do this? How do you do that? Um, but then when I created it within Microsoft Copilot, it showed me how to do that within that particular model. So, yeah, honestly, I don't want to make people think that I'm just some genius at AI, because I'm not. I really just figured it out. And I will say I've been given a lot of learning agility throughout life, and I do enjoy learning new things. And.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: Um, but I just say go for it. I mean, this woman literally was like, I just did it for my workplace. And that inspired me. I thought, well, any person, any age should be able to do this.

Speaker A: Right, exactly. And then what's the data that you have it that it learns? And then is everyone able to access it or be able to ask it questions? Kind of like a chatgpt? Is it. Does it look like that?

Speaker D: So, I mean, I think you'll, uh. A lot of people are creating agents for various things these days. You know, some people might have, for example, a website for their business or just a personal website or for their podcast or anything. And so you can just feed the information to it and then also tell it how you want it to be. You know, so you can give it all these print as much as you want. So. So the less you give it, the less personalized it's going to be for what you want it to be. Like, what kind of voice do you want it to have? How do you want it to. You want to have more of your voice or a different voice? I mean, you can put those parameters in it and then you can over time just start using it. And I think that's the uh, why I asked a couple of my teammates, it was just kind of piloting it, uh, in the initial stages with that. Right. So can we start using this? What do you think when you're interacting with it, what's happening? And then so, you know, when you feed it more information, how you should say, make sure when you answer this question you do it more in this way. And so yeah, you can just. That's the thing about AI is it's, you know, with these GPTs and everything, you can just tell it what you want it to do.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: So cool. And now, uh, is it live at your previous company and so people can use it and ask questions and what type of questions, uh, were you seeing that were helpful for folks to be able to create and then, you know, to use, use it? I know there's like customer service bots. I know when I'm trying to. I was trying to do something uh, yesterday actually with the fire system and, and safety system for my four plex. So I, I had bought some things and so I was chatting with their, their bots to try and get questions answered. Is it something like that or, uh, something a little different?

Speaker D: Yeah, it's certainly, you could ask it, but it's only related to the leadership development piece, so it's not going to answer of that. So it's specific to that. And I think that, you know, that does bring up probably the, the point that we're going to start having multiple agents within businesses. So the way people are at least, uh, when it comes to HR and AI, I think one of the spaces where it's really, we're seeing a lot of AI tools be created is in the talent development piece, the leadership development, the executive coaching, all of those parts of the talent development, um, executive development piece of it all and leadership manager training, all that. So there's a lot of tools being created and so people, you know, you have choices right now in your company. Do you create your own agent or do you purchase one from the outside where they're maintaining it, they're making it better, their whole team is working on that. Or you have your tech team constantly being up, you know, helping update it, making sure the parameters and it's just a choice, where do you want those hours spent, do you want to outsource that with your money towards someone else who does that full time and that's their job, job, or are you going to Take part of someone else, someone's job that's doing something else and add that on. So those are the questions I think global enterprise is starting to ask. And um, and probably it's affecting more like medium sized businesses where those, those questions might be more important as far as the, the amount of people they have on a tech team that can dedicate to that aspect of it. Um, because that tech team will be obviously partnering with the talent development team because you're going to be going back and forth and just, you know, that type of thing and set. So um, but yeah, I think it also brings up some of that ethical and strategic lens once again that we already mentioned. You know, AI should augment human decision making and not replace it. Um, so companies are going to keep asking who benefits from this? Who's left behind? I am hearing a lot of people ask the question because even for things like Microsoft Copilot that many companies use, um, and then you pay for licenses. So then, then it's been a question of who gets the license. And then suddenly you're starting to realize there's the haves and the have nots of who have the license and who don't. And maybe those decisions weren't made on this person at this um, decision making level should have it, but it was more who wants it first and you just sort of disperse it and suddenly they're all gone and you're thinking we should buy more licenses and maybe we should think through who gets them some of that as AI is rolling out really quickly and people are busy, I think that, that keeping humans in the decision making driver's seat is something I keep saying. So you know, I advise boards and executives on how to apply the business judgment rule to AI deployment sometimes. And I get asked that question on boards where I sit on. Um, and balancing innovation with our duty of care I think is important. Um, so yeah, that. But AI enablement strategies, they do improve retention because in the talent development piece we do see increasingly, I think it was several years ago the main reason people would leave their job as a manager.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: But we're increasingly seeing that people are leaving their jobs because of a lack of career development. So me owning that talent development piece has been really exciting because especially Millennial and Gen Z generations, there's just an expectation that when I come here, you're going to help me grow as a leader. Like I have aspirations, ambitions and I don't want to stay at you know, engineering level one for the next 20 years. You know, I expect to learn New skills to be to able upskilled. I expect to be mentored and have talent development so that I can grow in my career and you tell me what I need to do to get to the next level. But a lot of those conversations don't happen unless you have somebody leading talent development in your, you know, C suite especially. And so that's been really exciting for me because I. There's nothing I love more than to see leaders grow and to see them developed. And I think that getting to do that and getting to watch leaders grow even surpass me. I think that's one of the greatest honors for me for somebody who mentors a mentee or who has developed somebody as a leader is that they, they grow in brilliance and in levels of leadership beyond even, you know, your own expectations. And I think there's no greater thing to watch than somebody just to really soar in their leadership. And so I think that when companies have that culture, people want to work there, you attract the top talent. Right. So I think companies that aren't focusing on talent development right now, they're going to be left behind, unfortunately, I think it's really risky for the business is to not have somebody with the talent development hat on thinking through that, you know, and creating these strategies and programs in partnership with AI in the future of work.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Is there a tool, an AI tool or recent tool that for the talent development side that you recommend, um, for companies to purchase or look at?

Speaker D: Yeah, M. I mean there's several. It'd be hard to choose. I mean, I've certainly mentioned several so far. The, the Neritiz I think is one and then the, the Riseley Merlin agent has been really impactful. Once again, I think that Merlin is their agent. M E R L I N okay. And Risely R I S E L Y okay. Just like they sound.

Speaker A: Okay. I wrote Merlin and I wasn't sure if it's just that.

Speaker D: Okay, yeah, they're doing some pretty cool things, some pretty innovative things. There's so many things around. You know, I think within LinkedIn learning you're seeing a lot of this. You know, simulations I think are becoming a bigger deal. Even Percipio is um, one thing we use and then we stopped using it so that we would do LinkedIn learning, um, this year. But, but um, Praecipio even had some simulations in it. And what that looks like is I'd say probably the most popular thing I ever created in this most recent role I was working for the past over two and a half years. Is something called manager meetups. I began to realize managers not only needed more manager training, which we did end up developing an eight week program in our UK offices that were just, um, really incredibly successful and then bringing it um, to here on the west coast and our headquarters as well in Silicon Valley. But, but also, um, the manager meetups became something that people really look forward to and I got a ton of great feedback on. And I just sort of created these to give people a little skill training in the beginning, something very simple, one thing, and then break them up into small groups. This is virtual. So You've got over 200 people globally joining these calls. Right. And so then they would break up into peer groups and then have questions that uh, me and my team had prepared for them to discuss. And then we come back to the big group group and they could share as a big group. You know, culturally, you're gonna have some people that speak in the big group, others who don't. Introverts, extroverts. Now there's this third option, I can't remember between introvert and extrovert that this recently, I can't remember, it's outrovert, something like that. Um, um, yeah. Which is super fun. So, you know, not everybody's gonna speak in the big group, but some people really love that. And we all learn when we listen to people's perspectives. So it became this peer to peer learning. And then outside of the manager meetups, I would encourage people to reach out to each other and share what they learn with each other. Maybe have a virtual coffee. So just kind of helping some of the interactions. Um, especially coming out of COVID where that was important. But yeah, I would say in the, in the manager meetups, I began to learn from them. It was a chance for me to hear from them in the meeting. And then some would reach out to me outside of the meeting because of the meeting to let me know what they were going through as leaders. So it was a great opportunity for me to just keep listening. The listening tour wasn't just the first 90 days. It was throughout my entire. It's. I'm always listening because things are always changing. And so I began to hear from them, you know, what are they using so we could hear from each other what tools we were using. And I did one manager meetup where I just showed, um, that there was this simulation within Percipio. So if you are a manager and you're about to come pitch to a group of other managers or you're pitching to our C suite on Something, and you want to practice walking into that boardroom and doing your presentation. Precipio had this little simulation last year that we use where you could go in and there would be a person in the boardroom that you would be interacting with in the conversation. And then you would get an evaluation from Precipio afterwards about how you could have done that better to upskill. You want some things to work on. And then you could switch roles and you could be the person in the boardroom listening to a presentation and learning how to ask powerful questions to challenge and support that person, uh, with what you were. You know, like if you sit on a board, I think being a challenger, but, uh, also cooperative are two keys you kind of have to hold together. And so you could be that boardroom person as well. It gives people chances to practicing. So I think any of those tools where you're doing these sort of simulations right now are really big and a lot of companies are embedding them into their learning and development and talent development tools, because it's. Everybody needs those right now, right?

Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. Oh, this is super helpful. Thank you for sharing that. Because was there anything that was a surprise to you? Was it pretty much the standard answers or the solutions, or was there anything that was different? Especially nowadays, I think, with. With the changing landscape.

Speaker D: Yeah. Well, this particular tool that I just mentioned, I used last year, before the landscape changed. I mean, yeah, it's only been, what, a few months, but it feels like dog years. Like every. It's been a wild ride out there. Yeah. Some people are calling it the new normal, and I just don't know if I love that. But it's definitely what happened.

Speaker A: The new normal. Now, it's just now, Right? Exactly.

Speaker D: It's just we're in crazy times. But I will say, um, because I. I'm. That particular simulation with Precipio that I'm referencing in the boardroom I used last year. It wasn't. If I did it this year, I think I would have experienced it very differently. I think that, yeah, when I did it as for myself as the presenter, I remember thinking, oh, you know how, um, like executive presence and gravitas, it looks different in the US Silicon Valley context than it would like in our office in Taiwan even, or in China and our offices there. And so. And just my experience of working in Southeast as. As an expat for so many years, you know, that whole hierarchy and way of speaking to one another, it's just very nuanced. There's a lot more. Read the air. It's a lot less direct and that kind of thing. So it was definitely, I would say the Precipio simulation was more of a, uh, corporate America, America centric type of feedback. Yeah. Um, so it didn't necessarily have the cultural intelligence piece. But all that being said, I myself have been sort of learning that. So even though I sound like a US citizen, and I am a US Citizen, I always have been, but I've lived most of my life abroad. And so I have all these different, different cultural context, you know, that I experienced. And so it sort of helped me to understand, oh, that's what an American expects in the boardroom and the way they would say it. So even I learned a few things and it was helpful for me. Um, and I think you just always have to keep those things in mind. Some people get frozen when they think about the cross cultural piece because it's like, well, I don't know all the cultures of the world and I don't know all the languages of the world, but no one does. But any of the people out there training, like Erin Meyer and Siad and others that are involved in this one work will often say, you don't have to know everything about every culture and every language, but what does set you apart is your ability to observe body language, to listen, to understand. You know, one of the things I trained on with our key leadership program and our foundational piece of learning to listen to one another instead of just respond, but really to understand each other was Dr. Albert McRapian has this seminal study on communication. Um, and it talks about how 50% of our communication is body language. And that's shocking to a lot of people because only 7% is words. And so words matter. I speak a lot of languages. I do believe words matter, but incidentally, they only matter in about 7% and then about 33ish percent. And there is our tone and inflection, but really, you know, body language is huge. So if you're just observing body language, you're going to pick up on a lot of cultural nuances. So I often will say to a trainer, if you're in the US and you're a very direct, you know, communicator, and you go to train in Taiwan, for example, or Japan, you know, don't expect people to just raise their hand in the training room, that's not going to happen as often. But look for the bright eyes in the room because they're indicating to you with their body language that they have something to say. And so call on them. You know, and that, you know, just learning those nuances and picking that up. And then I also always recommend, uh, if you're doing a business trip overseas and you're not familiar with that culture, find somebody in the office that can sit with you, next to you in the meeting and just nudge you or give. That's going to help you and say, oh, I think you missed that, or whisper in your ear, so can we talk outside? You know, have somebody that don't assume that you're communicating well, have a cultural guide with you and always try to find that person and give them the opportunity to really give you some direct feedback. Um, and just give them that open door and say, maybe you're not comfortable with that, maybe you want to tell it, do a third person. But I need to know if I've done some big cultural faux pas or if I've missed something huge because, you know, billion dollar deals get left on the table all the time from cross cultural miscommunication. And that's why this matters for business is learning to read the room, learning to understand each other.

Speaker A: Right, Exactly. And you can go on YouTube and say business meeting in, you know, whatever the country is. What should I know? What shouldn't I know? I mean, I've. YouTube has been a fantastic source, never ending encyclopedia. Anything you ever want to know.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker A: Which is great. So I think that, that that's, that's fantastic. Well, and I was going to mention one other thing that you were talking about, um, oh, when you said Dr. Albert. What was his last name again?

Speaker D: Mehrabian. He's the, he's a seminal study. If you're googling anything about communication, his, his study will come up.

Speaker A: The biggest thing I was going to say when 50% body language, 7% your words, and 100% of how you make someone feel, that's depending on. No matter what it is, it's when they walk away. Because it's so interesting with, uh, your kids, anyone, you know, they may not remember what you said or the way you said it, but it's, it's what, what they took from that. And uh, years later, you know, that, uh, it makes a big impression too. So I think, yeah, body, just engagement, eye contact and, and then like you said, looking at their eyes and reading the room, I think is so important as well. But, uh, you know, having important things to say, that's meaningful for them, for their career development, which I think is great that you're in the talent development side. Um, and I can see why you're so valuable with uh, just the experience and the way not only your past, um, but how you approach things and your learning and you're very approachable, easy to talk to. I think that uh, any company is very lucky to have you on their, on their staff and um, how neat that you helped build an AI agent. So you've got like a little legacy there.

Speaker D: I would like to think my legacy is more than that, but that every person I interacted with over any industry or organization I've worked with throughout my career, I always say you're a successful leader. If people kind of what like you mentioned, if people felt more themselves how they felt around me, if they felt they could do more, if they felt like um, they had hope for their own leadership and their own company and how, if they felt optimistic, even cautiously optimistic about who they are and how they could lead. To me that's a successful leader. The last thing I want to do is be around people and act like I know everything. I don't. And we all need each other and leadership, leadership is a ah, co creation and it is now more than ever like that teamwork ability. Not just if you sit on boards, which really important but it's also in the C suite. You know, you're in this together and your team, it's. You need each other both to prevent burnout in these fast paced cultures but also to weather the geopolitical shifts, the tariffs, the. It's wild out there and so you, you need each other. And so I think to me that that's what I hope, if I could say uh, a legacy I want to leave. It's that people who've been around me have felt more, they could be themselves and they felt hope about who they could continue to be as a leader and continue. The AI agent was certainly cool but I think for me the cooler thing would be that.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Uh, well thank you so much. This hour flew by. I think we're over an hour now. But I so appreciate all of your insight and is there anything, I know that you're also looking um, uh, for your next position. What is, what would be that ideal thing and what kind of company, like uh, where you've seen like this is the niche that I can really help this type of company that would be a really good match for you.

Speaker D: Well I'm really excited to watch and be a part of helping companies scale globally obviously because that's a big experience of mine. But even if you're in a company where you have multiple cultures in your workplace and I think These days, so many of them do. And you're working to try to figure out how to develop your talent both for, you know, attrition reasons. You want to keep that retention because if you leave, if somebody leaves your company and they make $200,000 a year, it's going to cost $300,000 to replace them. And if they're a tribal leader, even more money, I would argue, argue. And so, you know, retention strategies are really key right now. Um, because you can have a competitor poach your top talent and if you're not really cultivating them and helping them grow. Um, so that's, that's what really excites me. A company that sits at the intersection of tech and innovation and creativity is really exciting for me. I've most recently been working in this tech manufacturing company. Um, you know, they working with, making servers and for data servers, but also liquid AI cooling. So I have really strong opinions about the liquid AI cooling as well and the vapor that comes into the atmosphere. In case you're looking for a business to create somebody, make that business, trap that heat and use that energy, I think somebody's going to make a lot of money and help save the planet. But if you are working at the intersection of tech and innovation and creativity, I do believe that having different perspectives around the team, not just present but fully activated to work together, um, is really where innovation gets unlocked. And so I'm interested in going to a company where you're wanting to help cultivate that psychological safety for people to bring their opinions, not just be there, but to really share their perspectives and challenge and support each other going forward. Um, yeah, that's what I'm looking at. So I live in Silicon Valley. I love this area. It's very exciting. A, uh, lot of different perspectives around me. So if you're in a company with uh, those sort of pain points that you're trying to solve going forward, the future of work and AI and partnership with human centered leadership, talent development. I'd love to talk to you.

Speaker A: Isn't it interesting to win and someone, you know, you have a safe to fail environment and failing is a, is a celebrated thing, uh, in the sense of learning and having each other's back where there's no finger pointing or blame, how amazing that culture can be. Um, talking just over all the years I've talked with so many people and there was one company in particular just recently I was talking with that started pointing fingers because it was so stressful. And then I kind of challenged them to have some different kind of conversations and then did some research, uh, as well some old references of someone that I'd place to and just kind of like understanding where someone's, you know, not expect, not having them think it's, it's why me and what's going, you know, and then shift that to a partnership and seeing just in two weeks actually it's completely changed and now they're all working together and they're all good. So it's just like amazing, right? You just kind of have uh, when you have that you can conquer anything and it's just then your energy is put in the right direction to really make something beautiful than have it really frustrating where you come home and you're thinking about all the time outside of work.

Speaker D: For sure. No, for sure. I mean uh, so the, the neurological aspects of leadership are also kind of trendy right now where you're understanding how the brain works. And that was something also I brought into our company, but in partner with some outside vendors on it who are neuroscientists, which I'm certainly not, but I love it and I nerd out on those things. But how our brain gets activated with psychological safety to innovate. That's why Google's project Aristotle identified psychological safety as the key to successful teams. And um, their project Oxygen identified that coaching as opposed to what we think of as managing that. You're actually coaching people instead of telling them what to do. But you're asking these powerful questions to get your direct reports to share their perspectives. That's when all this innovation thrives. And innovation is the core of what we do here in Silicon Valley. So if you're trying to cultivate that in the future of work, there's something some skills that are changing around it and I think they're really important to keep having those conversations. You can't let it slide if people start finger pointing. And we're seeing a lot of incivility on the rise in the workplace. According to the SHRM research, we're seeing a lot more bullying in schools. So we've got to continue to hone these human centered EQ and cultural intelligence approaches. And the more we do that, the more our businesses are going to soar into the future and we won't be left behind. For those who are actually doing that work, work, it's really important.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Well, thank you so much. And I always like to end by, you know, the name of the podcast is Curiosity with Kristen. And uh, boy, I am very interested to ask you specifically based on this conversation and Just knowing you, uh, is what are you curious about today? Professionally, personally? Whatever you'd like to mention.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think one of the things I'm curious about is how we are going to continue to, in Silicon Valley, build that resilience. I think I mentioned earlier, resilience building can be exhausting. How we're going to continue to build that resilience when the culture lends towards such individualism as opposed to collectivism. So collectivist cultures like the ones I was raised in, in Central and South America, the way resilience gets built is you do it together as a community. So I grew up in a, in a community that's like, well, one person in the neighborhood is suffering while people bring them meals and they, you. And so that's how you like when somebody needs a little help, which we all do at different times. You help each other. Yeah, but in a, in a culture where everybody seems to be suffering on a certain level because of how wild things are in the culture right now and geopolitically and then an individualistic culture, um, I'm kind of curious to see will we see some natural shifts that must take place where we begin to really be more cooperative, collaborative, collectivist and caring for each other. My personal lived experiences, I have, have incredible friends that have helped me and um, even here in the United States, in this individualistic culture, in times where things were hard, you know, we, you know how to somebody that gets sick in the family and people will bring meals and I have a book club that meets in my home on Tuesday nights with a bunch of people that work all around. You know, we've got people that are engineers and you know, all different tech companies around here and aerospace engineers and people that went to Stanford and Penn and all these folks, places, people have different experiences. Some people worked at Tesla. All the conglomeration of those around, any book that we're reading has also built community and it's built human centered. Just care. So somebody gets married, we show up, somebody is, you know, like we just were there for each other. Go to Stanford football game together, my husband goes backpacking with a bunch of the guys. And when you show up for each other in hard times, it does build your resilience. But I really am curious to know, will the US culture and its history of individualism start to shift? Because it has to, because I don't know how we weather the storm otherwise as a culture.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely. Oh, that's great. So on Tuesday you have a book club. How wonderful. What book are you guys reading?

Speaker D: Right now, yes, we're reading a story, a uh, book by Adam Young. He's a therapist up in the Seattle area and he has something around the narrative method. So it's about your story. And so we're all different decades of life. We've got people in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, their 50s in the group. And basically we're starting to share our stories with each other. And in the premise of it is it's what stories do you remember? So we recently, on Tuesday night, all shared our earliest memory. So you got like three and four year old, five year old memories that people are sharing. And you know, it's people we've known for years and I never knew those memories that they had. And you get to know each other because some of the neurology I mentioned, like this neuroscience around leadership and how humans work is the. Adam Young, as he writes about this in the book, says some of your earliest memories as a child start to form your filter. And so I did train on this globally when I trained, um, in our listening to understand course, is that we all have filters. So that happens at work when somebody says something. Your filter is unique to you. And our filters are as unique as our fingerprints. So it's formed by your personality, your life experiences, your birth order, the languages, your mother tongue, uh, you know, the teachers you had. It's, I have twins. And their filters are completely different, even though they were born six minutes apart, raised in the same family, same schools, because their bodies and living in the world have been different experiences and personalities. And so he talks about how that filter gets formed by some of your earliest memories as a child because you start to see the world through those stories and you start to, to right or wrong, see the world that way because that's how you see it. And so in sharing our stories with each other, we're starting to get to know each other in a much more intimate, deeper friendship level. And it's just, it's really beautiful. I think especially because of how I see in our culture right now a, uh, huge lack of curiosity and a huge lack of critical thinking skills that caused me great concern for our culture as a whole. But when I have groups like this where we're continuing to be curious about people ourselves, the self awareness is being increased. We're learning about each other and it deepens that bond that we have each other. It's more than just a book club, it's just, it's a community. So it's been really great.

Speaker A: Oh, that's great to Hear it's, it's yeah. So interesting because we're in our own bodies so we only have our view. And if we think not negative or positive, uh, you know, and you can only think one, you can either think negative or positive. You can't do both. And just whatever decisions you make make out of that lens like sunglasses or glasses that you're wearing will determine that, uh, as well. It's really fascinating. What a great book. That sounds good. I'll have to wrote it down, so I'll check that. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much Lori. It was so great to have you. Lori Adams Brown, thanks so much for all you do and you're putting out in the world. A company is going to be very, very lucky, uh, to have you. And actually I'm thinking another company. I'll text you on the side that I think it's a pretty big global company that may need some help. Um, I'll ping you and ping them.

Speaker D: I love it. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation and thanks to all your listeners for listening. I think listening, like I said, is the key to leadership. So.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you so much Lori. Absolutely. And everyone. Okay, have a great day Lori.

Speaker D: Say bye. Bye.

Speaker A: Um, bye.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening to Curiosity with Kristen. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. You you can find me on LinkedIn at Kristen Revelle. That's K R I s T N R E V E L L if you'd like to be a guest or have any questions for me, your feedback is essential and helps to improve the show. If you have any suggestions, comments or questions, feel free to email at. Ah, Kristen, the Revelle Group.com that's K R I S T N at T-H-E R E V E L L G-R-O-U-P.com Little long but it works. Thank you so much. Have a great day and stay curious. Mhm.