Can AI Make You a Great Leader?

Speaker A: Great leadership is defined in unscripted moments.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And you don't have time to go ask Claude, what should I do? It often happens in public or in a moment that deserves a response immediately. And that's when you rely on your values, what you aspire to be as a leader.

Speaker B: You want to be a great leader. There's no easy button for it. You gotta find it and then emulate it and learn from others.

Speaker A: Bob and I don't like to build, uh, organizations of followers. The 50 to 1 ratio, 100:1 ratio, whatever that is, that's a organization of followers. That's not what Bob and I believe ultimately wins. Can it be a short, short term victory? Yes, yes. Um, will struggle to scale and there will be problems. And Bob and I look at the longer term of how do you build a sustainable organization? And that requires leaders at multiple levels.

Speaker B: Entry music it's the Bob and Josh show.

Speaker A: Um, the question on the table today is, can AI make you a great leader? I say no. We'll see what Bob says and then we'll talk about it.

Speaker B: Is it my turn?

Speaker A: We've been doing this for like, uh, 16 years. I've done 99 of the opens.

Speaker B: I know.

Speaker A: I'm just checking what is going on here. Yes, Bob, it's your turn.

Speaker B: I mean, I, as we were talking in the, in the pre show. Oh, the pre show prep. Um, I, I think there's, I think my view of the world of, of a lot of things is tactical. I, I use the term tactical and strategic in my head. Uh, I know that it's not. There's, there's a tactical side, so management. There's a tactical side to management and there's a strategic side to management. Tactical, uh, stuff to management would be filling out, I don't know, uh, budgets, uh, annual reviews, stuff like that. Right. Paperwork reporting, uh, up, blah, blah, blah. Right. It's not, it's tactical. It has value, but it's just tactical stuff. Day to day stuff. The real beaten and potatoes.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: The real value is on the strategic side. Well, what are strategic things? Growing. And we harp about this here on the Medicare all the time growing. The team hiring. Right. Promotions, um, you know, succession planning. The softer stuff, uh, having hard conversation, radical candor. I always think Scrum mastery. I think of Scrum Masters as having a tactical side. Right. And a strategic side. Uh, and uh, most roles to me have that soft, you could say hard skills as a developer and soft skills as a developer. Right. Uh, the strategic would be some of the softer skills that that sometimes matter. In my mind they matter quite a lot, if not, uh, more sometimes than. Than what? Your elegance of writing code. And so I, I think AI is a tactical disruptor. Right? AI can replace tactical stuff. Can AI record things and fill out a budget for you? Sure. Uh, can it, uh, I don't know, do paperwork things, Hour crunching? Yes. Uh, can it do emails and responds and set up meetings? Yes. Uh, can it hire for intangibles and hire for diversity and look for potential beyond college degrees? I would say no. Uh, and if it can, it's probably got an error rate that's quite high and it would need some human intervention to re spin it or re qualify it. And I think that's true. That's where humans are differentiators. Uh, and I think leadership is the same thing. There's tactical leadership stuff, but the real value for leaders is on the intangible side of things. Uh, vision, storytelling, sharing a vision passionately. Josh, I've seen you passionately share a vision. I mean AI can I guess do it and then it can spin up some kind of gif and make it talk and. But is it really going to be. I don't even have the right language. Is it really going to be a Josh Anderson? I mean maybe visually it looks like we hope not, but I don't think it is there. So my short answer is I agree with you. I don't think it replaces leadership. But there's this half and half and I think folks where the misunderstanding comes in is a lot of folks are thinking of that tactical replacement side and I look at it holistically.

Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things that brought us here was we've talked about meta, uh, and their experiment and it's just an experiment. That's all it is of having a 50 to 1 ratio, 50 engineers to one manager because they're talking about how AI is going to operation. Take, take the operational load off of a manager. Of having that many people report to a single person because of all the whatever reporting mumbo jumbo they have to do that is not part of the real job of being a leader. That's all the management stuff. What Bob and I spend our time, why we do what we do, why we record these every week is great. Leadership is hard. Helping a person become a better version of themselves in a specific role within an organization is hard work. It's an uncharted path. There is no. Here's your roadmap from good to great for each person and it looks different for each person and it looks different for each person in each organization and the challenges that they face with their customer base, with their product, with the organization itself. So that's the, that's the hard part. And that's why Bob and I believe there aren't enough great leaders, because that's really hard work. And oftentimes you can get bogged down by some of the operational work. And yes, maybe AI will allow more leaders and managers to focus on being a leader versus doing the tactical bits, but just because there's time and you have the capability and availability to do those things, there's still. There's still a lot of hard, challenging, and sometimes scary work that must be done. And I don't see yet how AI can solve that. The only thing that I see it doing is I've had it help me when there's a difficult discussion and I'm unsure how to start it or how to frame it or how I want to, um, talk about certain things. And it can help me line things up in my brain of say, oh, this is how you could attack that. And then I still have to go do it. Just having a script and doing a thing is vastly different, um, because, you know, bullets are firing and there's lots going on and there's responses and everything. So it can't solve that. Um, but it can give you a little bit of support. But that's something that just requires effort and reps.

Speaker B: I mean, I think meta and companies like that are largely looking at management leadership at the tactical level, that the value proposition is the stuff tactically that you do, and therefore they're looking at, oh, AI augments that so I can squeeze more crap into the bag, right? I can give the leader. Uh, I wouldn't surprise me if that mindset continued, Josh. And as AI developed that you would have a leader that's leading 100 people, that's leading 150, then 200 or whatever. Now, as that scales again, timesheets, let's say time sheets, time validation giving, um, feedback, annual reporting, all that stuff, AI can do that for one to 250 people. So on that side of things, using my terminology, on the tactical side of things, it scales wonderfully. And you're like, oh, my God, look at the money I'm saving. But what's lagging is the, the leadership, the development side of things, right? The potential side of things, where real value is. Uh, and I don't, I don't. I don't think they see that. I think they look at managers as being commodities. They don't see. I would bet if you look at the organizational, you know, the meta organization, they're not valuing leadership. They're, they're actually devaluing leadership. And that's fine, that's their decision to make. They're like, okay, we're going to, we're going to automate this stuff. Uh, and, uh, maybe they're valuing leadership like there's a singular leader. I, um, think that'll come, I think that'll bite them in the ass. I personally think that will eventually bite them in the ass. Uh, it may take decades for that to happen. Uh, it may, you know, maybe they get acquired, et cetera, whatever, but I don't think, I think you need people. I think you need leaders. I think you need great leaders, visionary leaders. Show me an AI Steve Jobs. I know Steve Jobs has a lot of crap baggage associated with his history, but he's also got incredible, I think, brilliance associated with his history at Apple. Show me AI that can become Steve Jobs and I don't buy it. Show me an AI that can become Steve Wozniak at Apple. I don't, I don't buy that. I, I, that's on that, that human side of the equation.

Speaker A: Yeah. The thing that Bob and I, and we admittedly operate differently than many people, partially because this is harder, is we aspire to build organizations where there's leaders at every level and we are empowering people at every level to be leaders and to drive change. We. Whereas other organizations value one leader and everything follows that. Bob and I don't like to build organizations of followers. The 50 to 1 ratio, 100:1 ratio, whatever that is, that's a organization of followers. That's not what Bob and I believe ultimately wins. Can it be a short, short term victory? Yes, yes. Um, it's, it will struggle to scale and there will be problems. And Bob and I look at the longer term of how do you build a sustainable organization? And that requires leaders at multiple levels. And some of the hard parts there are. Where do you look to find a good leader? Uh, those are things Bob and I talked about. Pre show. That's our new word, pre show. Why we're talking about, why are we using that now after, you know, almost 20 years? But whatever, you know, for catching on, um, is becoming, uh, a great leader is just hard work and it's undefined and it's scary, which we try and close that gap a little bit with the podcast that we create here, but still, it's scary when you're in the room. And when you're taking the organization in a new direction and everybody's questioning you and it's, it's scary and people don't understand it yet and you explain, but people still give you the blank stares and you've, you know, gosh, did I do that wrong? Do I need to do it again? What's the right answer? And it's hard to find somewhere to turn to get support in those moments. And that's part of the problem. And so we attempt to be that. But also in your daily life, that's where things can regress back to, well, I'm just going to focus on being a manager. And that's what. AI can support you. But AI is not going to be there in those hard moments when you fumbled something or you tried to launch a new initiative and it didn't work. Um, and you're like, am I doing the right thing here? So those are the big challenges that we're after here today.

Speaker B: I don't think it provides the nuance that you need. Um, so I'll use a term like compassion. Um, compassion as a leader. Um, I'm coaching someone. Someone is on a PIP or approaching a pip, a performance improvement plan. Their performance is lacking. I have several sit downs with them. Um, I now determine that they have two aging parents. I'm just using something close to my heart. They have two aging parents. One they've had to recently put into an adult, uh, a long, uh, term, a senior l, uh, facility. One has park, the other parent has Parkinson's disease. And they're fighting through that and fighting through the care system. Uh, and their performance is lacking. And, uh, and I discovered this and I think what I'm going to do, I think what AI would do is discount that because it does not compute very well. And it would look on. What are the, what are the processes? What are the regulations? What does, what does a normal PIP look like? And how do I put that person in it? Bob Galen is going to be compassionate to that individual. I'm going to change. I'm going to immediately pivot, if you will. I don't know how much I'm going to pivot. Uh, I'm going to, I want to honor their space, but I'm also going to listen, I'm going to show compassion. Uh, I'm going to probably give them a break here and there and figure out what can we do to improve performance, but also what can I do to support them in their life as a leader. What I just described, I don't know if AI does that. I think situational, nuanced, human leadership decides to do that. Uh, and it has to be modeled. And I think if Josh is working for me in that organization, let's say I have a leadership team that reports to me. I may talk lightly about that in some way. Uh, or I may again, uh, there is privacy. But I also might share. Hey, there's some different dynamics here. Or I'm handling healthcare, I'm handling nuance. And that's how I would model for Josh. So it's not just me doing it individually. I would model this behavior to my leadership team in some way so that we're all doing that. Uh, because I'm setting the tone that that's important. Um, I don't know if this is a great example, but that's the kind of nuance that I expect from leaders. Uh, that's the kind of nuance in leadership. Um, and in different companies, I would do it differently. In different business contexts, I would do it differently. Right. There's shades of gray in there. But I am not going to. With this. I'm not going to follow the process. I do know one thing. I'm probably not going to directly follow the norm. What, uh, the norm of someone who's not. Who's. Who's in another situation. Josh, react to what I said.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Great.

Speaker A: Uh, leadership is defined in unscripted moments.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And you don't have time to go ask Claude or chat GPT. What should I do? It often happens in public or in a moment that deserves a response immediately. And that's when you rely on your values, what you aspire to be as a leader, the type of leader that you wanted for yourself or whatever it is when that moment catches you off guard. Great leaders are able to deliver well in those moments. Um, less experienced leaders that are not great leaders. Yet I have done this. There. There have been moments in my career where I've been disappointed with my response. And I made sure that when that moment appeared again in my career, I was ready because I knew I fumbled that and I was disappointed and I was frustrated with how I did that. And I knew I was a better leader, but I was caught off guard in that moment and I wasn't prepped or I just responded in an unfortunate manner that I was disappointed in. But that next time that happened, I established the resolve of, this is going to happen at some point again in my career and I'm not going to let it happen. And so I was ready when it happened again. And I was a better leader in that moment, but I was a better leader because I failed and because I resolved. I'm not going to let that happen. That's not the kind of leader I want to be. So I'm going to make sure when this happens again, I'm ready and I'm going to do better and I'm going to be proud of the leader that I am in that moment. So it's those moments that are unscripted and unplanned, maybe rehearsed from past experiences, that you're ready for that you, in that moment define leaders. And that's when people in that room understand the type of leader you aspire to be, maybe the type of leader that you are. And so that sets, that sets a new norm for them of, oh, so that's what leadership looks like. And so now they have that in their mind. And now when a moment presents like that for them in the future, they now have a model of, oh, that's how Josh did it. And I really appreciated the way he did it 15 years ago. Going to try and do the same thing.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: And that's. I don't know how to make that happen without living through it. I just don't. And it's experiential.

Speaker B: Yeah, you, you have to experience that.

Speaker A: Medications.

Speaker B: Ah, let me give you another example. Um, I'm, I'm sort of trying to do some pattern matching here. Uh, there was, uh, years ago, I was working. I was a leader of managers, so a director or whatever, VP level. And uh, one of, one of the managers that reported to me, senior manager, very experienced, ah, that I recall was, uh, putting an employee in under their group on a pip. I don't mean this to sound, I don't mean the examples to be too PIP focused.

Speaker A: Yeah, man, Bob's just.

Speaker B: I know, firing them all. So, so. And uh, he, um, and he was doing that. And my style was, you know, I trust you. You know, you got it, you got it. I, I mean he, he gave me the, he gave me the case, if you will. And if I had concerns, I'm like, oh, I think you're over being overly picky or you're you or uh, why, you know, why did it take so long? I would have given comments, but I was feeling pretty comfortable and I was like, yeah, fine, thanks for the heads up. Make it so, you know, I trust you, I trust your judgment. And a few weeks later and the PIT process, there was, uh, weekly meetings twice a week, lots of feedback, lots of writing, documenting the process, et cetera. And I remember before maybe a few weeks in, uh, he came to me and he's like, you know, I'm feeling really uncomfortable with this. And um, I really, I've not done this very often. And uh, can you help me? And I remember how rare that was for someone to ask me for help. One, because I'm, I'm gonna ask, but Josh never asked me for help. Confirmed. Confirmed. So, so I was like, you know, so I was, I was taken aback by how positive I looked at it as positive. I was like, I know he was looking. It's like, oh my God, I'm weak here. I can't, you know, I'm so weak. Do I expose this to Bob? And so he looked really woeful. And I'm like, well, of course I can help you. What, uh, do you think that looks like? Uh, I said, what idea? What? We could pair. We could do it. We could pair. Uh, and maybe, uh, the first couple of times when we're delivering messaging, I do some of the messaging, uh, or I do and I model some of that. Would you be comfortable with that? And, uh, and I don't, how, I don't do that that often. I. And uh, but we did that and uh, did a couple of these sessions and made sure that the person knew that we weren't trying to overwhelm them with numbers or anything like that. And um, and I remember, you know, after a few, he was like, you know, this has been really helpful. You've shown me what good looks like. Uh, or you've shown me, you've given me. Because I didn't have the experience. I've read books, I read, I read the PIP process. I've heard other people talk about it, but I didn't feel comfortable experientially. And you gave me some models and experiences. You showed me sort of your style and I got it, uh, and I got the ball. Uh, and it worked out really well. But the point of that story is how do you get that? You don't get it in the books. You need to get it in your own experience or you need to be humble enough or open minded enough to ask people for help. And I was proud of him, not of his skill of asking for freaking help, particularly with something as important as managing that process with a human being. They're not employees, they're humans. And we need, we need to take, we need to take that seriously. And I was, I was very proud of him. Josh, any reactions to that?

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I was thinking about my journey as a leader. And I'd say 15 years ago I had a choice and it was do I go get an MBA and study leadership that way or do I get really aggressive with my career and join some startups where I'm forced to put on a bunch of hats and forced to do things that I would not do at the company that Bob and I are. Bob and I met, we were at a $2 billion company, um, in revenue, right every year. So big, big organization. I could grow there and I could do that. But I knew I wanted more for myself and there were two paths and so I knew there was the book path going, getting mba. I went down and evaluated all the options around me and there are some really good options around me. And I thought about it and um, the choice I made that I'm happy with, um, them is I'm going to go figure it out the hard way. I'm going to go join startups and be in over my head and try and figure it out and um, stumble and fumble and eventually come out on the other side a better leader. And I felt like that experience was a shortcut. Even though it was harder. It was a shortcut to me learning rather than having all of the book smarts of I know what to do. There's lots of things that I know what to do that I've watched on YouTube or I've read a book about. But then you go and try and do it and it's not as simple as they make it look. You know, golf, uh, golf is one of those things, right? There's lots of YouTube and lots of, you know, magazines and books and all those things. And you know, it's easy to see what a great swing looks like now going and, and executing that every time. It's uh, that's a whole different world and you have to learn by doing there. And so that's the path that I took and I'm proud of that because it forced me into the situations that I needed to be in to become an experienced leader. Not a studied leader.

Speaker B: Exactly. And again learning, and Josh and I have talked about this too quite often. It's not just, you're not just stuck learning from good examples. I learn more from the bad examples, uh, or equally well. And I'm more motivated like what not to do. So go we. How do you develop, how do you become a kick ass leader? It's not the books, it's not, it's a start. It's not the videos. Those are good starts. But you Got to get in the trenches. And you have to do. You need a mentor or mentors, you need a coach or coaches, you need role models, positive and negative. Uh, and you have to do it the hard way. It takes time. There is no short circuiting. And you gotta, I mean, I can't tell you how many mistakes I've made. You learn from those mistakes, but you learn from them. The key is learning from them and not repeating those mistakes.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so in a job I have, have, uh, a weekly one on one with the person I report to and very nice notion form about what went well and what didn't. And I noticed a trend that in every, every time I fill out that form, there's more in the what didn't go go well. And so in that meeting yesterday, I'm like, listen, I just want you to know that I aspire for this what didn't go well list to always be longer than the what did go well. Because that means I'm learning, I'm trying things. And you know, these are, these are the things I'm working on. And that's just how I'm wired. And even in annual reviews, um, I always skipped over the good stuff because that, I couldn't use that to get better. I couldn't use that to grow. Um, yes, the good stuff's the good stuff. Yes, I'll keep doing that. But what are the things I need to work on? So always craving the feedback of what am I doing wrong? And going and find things that are new challenges for me to go figure out and add a new skill into my m. Tool belt. So that's, you know, but that's scary and that's hard and uncomfortable for many people. But if you want to be a great leader, I don't know any other path than that. I really don't.

Speaker B: So. Meta casters. One of the things Josh and I were talking precast, uh, is about how few great leaders there are in the world and how many not great leaders there are. They're great people, but they're not necessarily great leaders. And I think the key gap is what we've talked about. They've looked at leadership and management, but leadership as being something they can learn from books and videos, etc. Uh, and they can do it academically, they can do it, but they've missed the experiential part. They've missed the hard knocks part that we're both talking about. They've missed the humility part where you ask for help and you have a role model and you work with them to become a great leader, and you challenge yourself and reflect on yourself. And I think that's what separates, um, the great from the rest of them. It's not anything other than realizing that leadership is something that you have to learn experientially. You have to practice your craft, uh, and you have to learn from other great leaders. That's the key is you have to look. It's like, look. And I'm sure there's. Josh could pull a sports.

Speaker A: I've got a couple ready to go.

Speaker B: But you have to learn from those great leaders and finding them and really getting under their wing and working. And a lot of people don't want to do that, find excuses for that, are too ego based to do that, etc. Etc. But that's. That's the key. Uh, and. And that's what we hope to invite you to and to inspire you to. To look for that if you want to be a great leader. There's no easy button for it. You gotta find it and then emulate it and. And learn from others. Josh, take us home.

Speaker A: Yeah. The sports thing is you look at the coaching trees and the great coaches that came because they were a part of a staff with other great coaches that they learned from, that they came up from, and they talk about how hard it was in those moments to learn and to figure things out, but they stuck to it and they. And they became great leaders because they were surrounded by great leaders. And so as you look at in the NFL and you look at where all the coaches that are currently head coaches, where. Where they came from, it's a surprisingly small group of leaders that they learned from that helped spawn these other great, great leaders. And that's rare and that's difficult. Which is, um, what we hope to overcome a little bit here.

Speaker B: All right, so meta casters become great or aspire to greatness. It's worth it. It's hard. And, uh, hard work. Now everyone tuned us out. It's hard work. But. But it's absolutely achievable. And, and, uh, and. And leap just aspire to greatness. So from beautiful downtown Cary, North Carolina,

Speaker A: and beautiful downtown Fuqua Arena, North Carolina,

Speaker B: I'm Bob Aspirational Galen.

Speaker A: And I'm Josh. Always chasing Bob Anderson.

Speaker B: Shake and take care, y'. All.

Speaker A: I got to do better with this. I'm always so disappointed.

Speaker B: You start with. I think you start with disappointment, and that's it. That it's like, you get this little sad look right away.

Speaker A: Ah. Because it starts coming out and I don't like it.