Best Hits: Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic on AI, Leadership, and Why Authenticity at Work is Overrated

Speaker A: Welcome to the Edge of Work podcast. I'm your host, Al D. This is a podcast for leaders who want to make sense of workplace trends and are looking for new ideas about how to lead people and grow their business in a changing world of work. During each episode, I'll bring you the latest experts, researchers, founders and leaders to share new and unique ideas, as well as actionable advice around attracting and retaining talent, developing people, and building healthy and sustainable organizations. Welcome to the Edge of Work. My name is Al D and I'm the host of the Edge of Work podcast. Today, I'm delighted to have with me Dr. Tomas Chamaro Permuzik. Tomas is one of the favorite voices and thinkers out there that I follow when it comes to really thinking about the intersection of technology and humanity, particularly in the world of work that I am in, which is of course in talent management and talent development. And so I'm delighted to talk to Tomas today about a number of different things. And I guess just to start off, Tomas, I was thinking about how I wanted to enter in this conversation. And normally when I have these conversations I try to go as long as I can without talking about AI, because everyone talks about AI. So the way that I thought I would tee this up is perhaps a little bit different. So I read somewhere that you signed the book contract for your book I human in February 2020, which feels like an ironic time. And so you've clearly been thinking about this kind of intersection of technology and humanity for quite some time. So maybe just to start off, what were you thinking about back In February of 2020 that was top of mind for you at this intersection of technology and humanity?

Speaker B: Yeah. So first, thanks for having me. It's great to chat. And then really looking forward to this conversation. Yeah. So it was February 2020. Your research is correct and accurate. And that was probably the end of a six month period where my publisher, HBR Harvard Business Review Press, and I had been wondering, I had a contract, what do you want to do your next book in? This was the book that followed why so Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders, which did very well, but we didn't want to do a sequel of that. It was too soon. That was still happening and the explanation was still there. And so we had agreed to do a broader book on what it means to be human or how to be human at work, that was the original intent. And when I was looking around at what existed and I asked myself the simple question of if we're asking the question of what it means to be human now or planning for the next two, five, ten years. What is unique about the era that we are in or are entering? And so that's where kind of we thought, okay, it has to be something around technology. And already in February 2020, AI was emerging as the evolution of big data or kind of the sequel to us. So we said, let's do it around, I think how to be human in the age of AI. And of course a few weeks after I signed the contract, the pandemic explodes and starts to be the main concern everywhere, which obviously everybody knows about. But one of the immediate characteristics that we all felt to the effect was that uh, suddenly we were detached from social interactions, that we were actually at mercy of our own technological devices and interacting with AI more than we interacted with humans. And it's quite telling, it's all very coincidental, but the book then was published. It was a long, Took a long, it's a short book, but it took a long way time to write it and finish it. And then it was released on the exact week that OpenAI released ChatGPT. Right. So you could see like from inception to the end lots of things were happening. Of course we had a global pandemic and political, economic events as usual, but that's like, it was the final stage of incubation for AI, uh, to go mainstream. And one of the questions I've been asked the most is, oh, did you use Gen to write this? Like, yeah, unfortunately it came out just before Gen, actually. I was planning to include a chapter on the earlier version of GPT that had been covered by The Guardian in 2016. And it was so clunky, it was so like clumsy and inept that ah, my editor said we can't write about this. This technology will never be ready for us to call it intelligence. So here we are.

Speaker A: I'm curious as you were talking about the advent and launch of ChatGPT, and again, I know you were thinking about this for some time and I think you've been studying a little bit of AI, but more broadly about how technology impacts humanity and perhaps vice versa. I'm just wondering, as you thought about your own thinking and your own research around 2020 and where we are today and just what you've seen out there with all the consecutive ChatGPT, all launches and products and all the other things that are happening right now. We're recording this and fall of 2025, a lot of talk about agents, there's a lot of talk about MCP protocol, there's a lot of talk about just the launch of ChatGPT 5. I'm just wondering, is with what you've seen, is there anything that's maybe either had you update your priors on your thinking, or is this kind of materializing how you thought it would in some kind of way? Maybe you couldn't predict all of it, but is this kind of where you thought it would be?

Speaker B: Yeah, great question. And so I would maybe split it into kind of three buckets. There's the bucket of the the tangible and concrete close examination that the book a human does or tries to do on the version of AI that existed back then, which I call AI 1.0. And it's mostly machine learning algorithms that curate and vet life decisions and life choices for us, by the way. Nobody's talking about that anymore. But mostly the majority of humans still today interact with that form of AI. We can't watch a movie unless Netflix algorithms tell us you can choose between A, B, C or D. If you want to disregard the algorithms, you will have a big fight that might lead to marital crisis or divorce with your spouse, because then you're going to debate for torch. You can't listen to music on Spotify or anywhere else, YouTube without actually being influenced by them. You can't buy wine, book a vacation, choose a romantic partner, a date, or make any decisions without AI 1.0 influencing and editing your life or making your life choices. That's still there. And I tried to raise awareness as to the dark side of some of these kind of tools on human behavior. The fact that they have made us more impulsive, they have made us more boring and predictable, they have made us less creative, they have made us more robotic. I talk about how this is wonderful paradox, or maybe concerning paradox, over the past 10 years, computers have managed to become more and more like humans. And in that process, we have managed to become more and more like machines. Because AI is a prediction machine. And the best thing, the best way to predict something is to standardize it and make it really predictable to begin with. And so if you think about it, I talked about an aspect of AI, simple aspect machine learning algorithms that we're dealing with ones and zeros that nobody talks about right now. It seems like as outdated as VHS or DVD players, but it's still really penetrating and impacting our lives. And now everybody, now we get to the second bucket. Everybody now talks about what I call AI 2.0, which is genai, you mentioned ChatGPT, but of course we have Gemini Cloud, Perplexity. All these kind of tools where AI, uh, isn't just a prediction machine, it's also a production machine. And that obviously you care a lot about talent and work. That has been really interesting because in the beginning we were told that we have this great opportunity to outsource or delegate all the boring and low value tasks and activities to this kind of AI so that we can unlock or unleash our creativity, our curiosity, and be make work and life more fulfilling. The first part is clear, but the second part remains a challenge. And at the end of the book I talk about that. What, how are we going to revisit or reexamine what it means to be human and in what ways we can add value not just at work, but also in society, when AI can more or less do everything we once thought was the unique kind of realm or product of human or capacity of kind of human ingenuity. And then there is the third one which actually spend a lot of time on now, I know you do as well. You mentioned agents. Yes, that's like an extension, multimodal extension of gen AI. It's still 2.0, but if we get to artificial general intelligence, AGI and artificial superintelligence, ASI, we don't know how far this will unfold and how quickly some of the challenges still remain. I think it will be amplified. And I think some of the questions, the existential or philosophical questions that I asked in the book need to be answered by before that happens, before that arrives.

Speaker A: I'm all for the existential questions, and I did enjoy some of those existential questions you raised in your book. And I guess maybe because I love those kinds of questions so much, I'm going to offer them back to you because you spent some time thinking about them. So the way I'll frame this up is that I think there's a popular refrain, and I'm sure you've heard it before, where people will like to say we should let technology and machines take care of all the drudgery work and then let us do the things that make us, quote unquote, uniquely human. And I think to a certain degree, on the surface, I think there's a world where some of that makes sense. For sure, there's plenty of things that we could list off, but I'm wondering in the context of something you highlighted too. First off, there are some things that it sounds like and we've seen examples of, and we'll see more in the future where technology can actually do some of these human things better than we as humans can. Do them. And ironically enough, one of those reasons is because we are in fact human. And so there. There's that thread where it's like, maybe just because humans can do it doesn't mean that we should because of our own biases and our own fallacies, because we're human. But the other thread of it is that I think is really interesting is that just because technology can do something doesn't mean that we should make it do something. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so I'm just wondering how you maybe tease that out of. Because I think it gets to the heart of what you're talking about. If is what. What does it mean to be human and what should we be doing? And I think there's. I don't have an answer to that question, but I think it's the question worth. The question worth exploring.

Speaker B: I think that is a question that we must explore. And it is a $1 million question. I think first, although there still is, if you spend a minute on social media, on LinkedIn or other platforms, you inevitably see half of the polls being exuberantly optimistic and utopian about how amazing the latest version or releases of this large language model and how is like the smartest thing ever created AGI, SI or whatever. And the other half saying, this is so dumb. I ask it to write a little birthday card for my son and it's dyslexic. It can't even spell that. And we did it 15 times and it doesn't work. The sad thing about that is that we are actually clearly quite anxious and territorial about the prospect of having created something that is smarter than us, which by definition will mean we are really smart because we created it right? So it's not something that will make us less, but rather more intelligent. Also, when you have the ability to truly leverage the wisdom of crowds, minus the mistakes, the biases and the subjective inaccuracies, prejudices, et cetera, because it can actually create something that is more nuanced, more objective, and that, uh, ceasing from different perspectives, that is an amazing opportunity for us to evolve in how we make decisions. That fact, as most organizations embarked in digital transformation strategies to create data repositories that enable them to become more data driven. That's how AI entered the workplace. First we had a lot of data scientists that were able to do it. Then we automated a lot of data science by having algorithms or AI discover things, patterns, and produce insights, solutions, and even inventions that humans were not very good at producing at scale. So it's important to get that Kind of very clear. Then I will say that, yes, I mean, on the glasses, half empty side of the discussion, there has never been a single human inventor or innovation that humans created throughout human history that was created with the purpose of working harder or working more. Whether it's fire, the wheel, cars, the dishwasher or the microwave, and actually even AI, we always create these things to be more efficient, which is a euphemism for laziness. You know, I'm a big fan of the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett, who is a great neuroscientist with an amazing ability to communicate complex neuroscience to the wider audience. And in her book Eight and a Half Lessons about the Brain, the most important lesson is the brain is not for thinking. It evolved to economize energy. And because it's so highly caloric and it's expensive to run that every time you have to slow down and think and engage in like system two thinking, uh, it hurts. And most people don't want to do it. And that we are so smart that even if we're doing a complex job for a couple of weeks, we probably find a way to do it in autopilot and defaults. So that kind of worries me, because when you create something that can automate system tools and we can actually delegate, not just the drudgery and the boring and repetitive and mundane, as you mentioned, but also the creative, the intellectually complex. If. If when somebody tells you you should read a book, your instinctive reaction is to go to Genai and have five bullet points that summarize that. That is not the same as reading the book, as processing it. And it will be like replacing education with a pill that you can take. And then suddenly all these things, or maybe not even because the pill is outside you and it's a machine and then you. So that's the thing. The glass is helpful. What we need to optimize or govern or think and educate against on the other side. I still have faith in human ingenuity. And I think if you look at any technological invention, when synthesizers started, people thought, oh my God, this is the end of music. And the reality is you have elevator music, which is okay, but it's not the same as art. Like, even if YouTube and Spotify had such a powerful AI that they could automate all of their artists, all of their musicians, it would not kill musical creativity. It would force musicians to invent something machines can do. And the same applies to anything. I think most people in their working routines are already seeing the difference between an email that has crafted by AI and it's sort of the great perfect, okay, but it's not very human or the experience that they have when they sit down with another human and collectively think collectively create collectively. So I think just like streaming platforms haven't killed musicians and actually now people pay record prices to go to a concert and live that because we have to be somewhere and that's a luxury. I think there's already a premium for human to human connection and for something that has been crafted, produced or created by humans, even if they have used AI in the process.

Speaker C: Hi everyone, Al d here. Thank you so much for listening to the Edge of Work podcast. I, uh, hope you're enjoying this episode. I'm grateful for your support. In addition to this podcast, I enjoy working with organizations as a strategic advisor, consultant, and facilitator, solving business challenges related to the many topics and themes that we cover on the show. In case you're interested in working together, here are a few ways in which I work with organizations and leaders to solve some of their talent and leadership development challenges. First, I work with talent leaders and provide advisory services for these talent leaders to help them think about how they can become a strategic business partner. Whether you're looking to build a new talent strategy, select a new vendor, or relaunch a new leadership development program, I can partner with you to achieve these goals. Second, I also work with providers and vendors in the talent and leadership development and learning and development space. By providing advisory services and supporting vendors and providers that serve the leadership and talent market, we'll work together to improve your reach, relevance, and revenue. And finally, as a keynote speaker, I, uh, provide inspiring and energizing keynotes at internal leadership development or professional development experiences, external conferences, and anything else you might have in between. If any of these are things that you're looking at or are on your priority list for the year, I'd love to hear more from you about what you're working on and how I might be able to partner with you to achieve your goals. For more information, feel free to find my contact information in the show. Notes. Thank you for listening. And now let's get back to the show.

Speaker A: One of the things I think about, because I think you've probably spent part of your career thinking about this idea of individual potential and individual capabilities and the like. And I think there's a world, and this is often cited as perhaps there's a world, where AI and machine learning end up becoming something like the Internet, where it's just everywhere, right? And just like today, where you can say our. At an organizational level, our competitive differentiation is that we are on the Internet at some point as an organization. You won't be able to say our competitive differentiation is artificial intelligence. And so I think about that in terms of how that flows down to the individuals inside of the organization and their potential or their ability, where everyone will just be using AI in some capacity. But if Tomas, if you and I work in the same organization and we want to be able to differentiate, we actually have to maybe think eventually about a different kind of ability or a different kind of capability that we have to be able to. For Tomas to say, I am actually ready for this next position versus Al or vice versa. And so I'm wondering maybe this is the aspirational case of the humanity piece, where we may actually have to start thinking about, oh, my ability to just prompt ChatGPT to give me a summary of five books that may be helpful, but it's not necessarily differentiated per se. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And I think this is where kind of the 1.0 and 2.0 aspects of AI kind of collide and come together first. You're absolutely right. AI is already like commodity, or at least it's at the business or organizational level. It's almost a hygiene factor. Yeah. And at the individual level, that is true. You don't go to an interview and say, okay, what are, uh, give us some of your strengths or skills or whatever, whether it's a daft interview or a good interview. You don't say, I know how to use the Internet. And you also don't say, hey, I know how to use Gemini, or I know how to use ChatGPT or Amino, because let's face it, you don't require. No skills are required for that is a given that you will use it. Having said that, both of the business and especially at the individual level, how you interact with the same tool still reflects your level of creativity, curiosity and expertise. There's a reason why you know now, as has been said many times very often, the English language is the main programming language, uh, in the world right now. And the same, obviously, if you go Chinese, it will probably be even bigger.

Speaker A: Whatever.

Speaker B: But language, English, English kind of. People who have studied literature in any language and who has spent a lot of time in the humanities are probably now better and have an advantage at prompting and at working with large language models in these platforms. Likewise, people who are curious and experiment and have that mindset with interactive. If you think about even consulting or advisory roles and jobs that are probably now Undergoing a big uh, seismic shift and disruption because of AI. But people are still paying humans to interact with gen AI in an expert or specialized way. So you know, and you use it, I use it. Everybody uses their field expertise. But there's a difference between somebody. It's just like before with Wikipedia, like it's there, but if you don't know anything about medieval history and you read one article and suddenly you think you're really knowledgeable, then you're deluding yourself. If you have spent years or decades studying medieval history and you spend five minutes on Wikipedia, you will know what the mistakes are and you will know what to copy paste and what to use. And oh, this part is really good. So I think expertise now is the delta that humans at over and above AI or is the ability to leverage AI better than other humans. Now it might be that even that changes because if AI continues to evolve is like, can basically predict our prompts and give you what you need before you even know that you need it or before you want it. And I think at that stage, if we get there, the human kind of differential, or USP will be using our eq, our influence, our political kind of negotiation skills to persuade other humans who do not want to be persuaded by AI or in an irrational way. And then of course it might be that even the diamond industry might be an odd and unlikely kind of parallel flood. There's no way to tell if a diamond is natural or synthetic, like liter, the best machine in the world can tell. Like I think in some areas it's impossible to tell if something is an essay or a book has been written by AI or a human. But I think because of sheer snobbery, we will still pay more and enjoy it more if we think it's created by humans or there is a human in the loop. And so I think those who already have social proof and have a name and a reputation are probably and hopefully using AI, but they need to add something. If not, it's all just going to be the illusion or the perception that the human has done something, even if they haven't.

Speaker A: I've got maybe one more question before I want to shift gears and talk a little bit more about what you've got coming next. But maybe the last question on this. So if we do end up in this world within the next five to 10 years, where we do see some organizations perhaps maybe holding line on their human headcount, but perhaps introducing more and more machines, I'm wondering if you could talk maybe for a little bit just around how you see the, how you see the shift potentially happening in terms of the way that an organization might think about attracting or developing quote unquote talent with talent being individual humans. But in some cases it could also be machines, particularly knowing that with things like reinforcement, learning or other types of protocol where when it comes to learning and developing as a machine, some of these machines can be pretty, pretty good. Where humans can be good, but not all humans can be good. And so I'm just curious if you've thought about this at all.

Speaker B: Yeah, so let me start with the first part. Right. Because the first time, the first part of will humans be displaced or to what degree? The jury's still out. I think at this point in time it certainly looks like some short term displacement is happening or will happen or at least that lots of organizations, certainly for profit corporations, because they think or they assume that some big immediate gains in productivity must arrive, are like getting a bit of FOMO or at least perplexed, bewildered. There's clearly no direct ROI between deploying technology. AI, uh, is no exception to do the same thing faster in the same way with the same people. You're not going to see big innovations there. Of course this is not new. When Friedrich Taylor published his book on scientific management and started to work with assembly lines and Fordism, um, and other kind of big factors at the time a hundred plus years ago, those technologies had been there for a while from the second industrial revolution. But it's only when someone and organizations then reimagined work and how to fix work that they started to actually see the benefits. This by the way, is still how we're organized today. We probably need the equivalent for the AI age. Now the good news is that whenever something happens, even when the short term is displacement and is problematic, then there is a long term period of prosperity after that. I don't think we can get to those amazing gains of trillions in GDP added in productivity without some initial kind of movement, compromise, disruption. Now to your point, we know that we are not leveraging human potential in the way we should. According to science, even before AI entered the picture and made things much more complex, also increased the opportunity on that we knew that people, ah, organizations were focusing too much on hard skills that were outdated. That uh, their approach or method of promoting people was too focused on what they had achieved in the past and ignored what they could do in the future. And I think AI has actually re energized an important aspect of this conversation. The fact that many organizations are now deemphasizing credentials and shifting from credentials to skills is really good. The fact that we might be going from skills to potential and actually focus on the human aptitudes or abilities that, uh, AI won't replace even if it can emulate or seem to emulate. I think it wouldn't surprise me if in the near future organizations maybe had fewer employees, but treated employees more people with portfolio careers who jump from one project to the other and mostly focus on hiring and promoting people based on things like curiosity, learning ability, empathy, integrity, people skills. We all talk about these things when we discuss leadership, but mostly we realize the majority of leaders don't even have these things. So I think it's an opportunity to really bet or double down on potential. And of course we also need to think about org design issues, target operating models for this era. I think there's big pressure on big companies from AI native companies that are starting and they're not replicating past organizational charts or models. And of course all this discussion now on when we're going to have a unicorn, a $1 billion company in revenues with an N of 1, with one individual. This all might happen. I think in the long run there'll be a better place for our skills and our potential. But it might be that the way we get there isn't going to be very tidy and is going to be a little bit traumatic or a little bit painful in the short term. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I think that might happen. Yeah.

Speaker A: So the one point I would just add to this, and I do want to transition after this, but there's no doubt in my mind that this, the transition period that I think we're going to enter is going to be really hard. And particularly, I am not a neuroscientist, but I've studied enough of it to know that these things can be really jarring for people and because it really cuts at the heart of their survival and safety. And I've also worked in the workplace enough and the work I do enough to know that it's not like our workplace is perfect today, particularly with how we even talk about things like assessing potential or developing talent. It's not. We've got rainbows and butterflies for that matter. And to your point, I could very much see a world where, and I know many stories, and I'm sure you've come across many stories of people right now who are trapped in organizations that aren't enabling their, some of their people to, to rise to the abilities of their potential. And so I do wonder sometimes that the Positive of this, acknowledging fully that there will be challenges, is that you might have some people who really blossom because of the potential future you just outlined.

Speaker B: And I think everybody always talks about the example of. In the, I think in the 60s there was this famous article in the New York Times on how elevator operators were disappearing. Nobody misses elevator operators today. Of course, if you go to some really high end hotels in LA or New York, you still get them as kind of decoration, they're not needed. And in that process, the elevator industry, with all its kind of safety and collateral or related kind of industries, employed many more people than those who were displayed displaced from being elevator operators. I think of course there has to be a societal, an economic, a social and a political system that ensures that, uh, people are not left behind. But if in the end this creates more progress, more values and more prosperity in the long run and actually gives people who have been. This is the thing we need to understand that AI actually might emphasize the importance of trades and skills possessed by people who historically have been unfairly overlooked and neglected. Just because you don't afford, you can't afford to go to an Ivy League or to have a top education or because you don't have a network of people that can refer you to. It's a bit like saying, maybe AI recruitment tools sound cruel and brutal, but should we go back to a time in which who you know and where you're born to determines how far you go in life? Because by the way, that happens for the majority of our life, if your parents are wealthy and well connected, you will do well, and if not, you're screwed. Of course some of that is happening still now, but what I'm saying is that I could become a tool that is put to the, in the service of meritocracy and that makes organizations and society is more talent driven, not least because humans are much more biased than algorithms.

Speaker A: I think that's a good segue, particularly as it relates to the choices that leaders in organizations have to make. And speaking of a choice that leaders often have to make, one of those is how do I show up at work? And I think that a lot of times there's a lot of well intentioned advice which usually comes in the form of a famous, uh, phrase that I think people hear before they enter an interview, or maybe even for that matter enter a first date, which is just be yourself. But your latest book might actually encourage people to maybe think differently about that. And so the book itself is called Don't Be Yourself and why Authenticity Is Overrated and what to do instead. And I'd love to have you maybe start by just saying where. Where did this emanate from? Why is a book about the nuance of authenticity something that you wanted to dig into, given where we are right now?

Speaker B: Yeah. So first there is a connection with I, human and with AI Because I started to think about this book as I was finishing my previous book, the one we just discussed on AI, when I thought about this incredible paradox, but very kind of, uh, intriguing and fascinating phenomenon whereby as AI becomes more and more like humans, and already if you think about deep fakes and the fact that you can send your digital clone to a meeting and nobody knows if it's you or not, or even more simply, I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn and it's very hard for me to know if I always say, are you a human? And that's no, no certainty that actually I will get a genuine or authentic response there. And of course, all of us on a periodic, maybe weekly basis, have to endure these dreadful tests where we have to demonstrate our humanity to cybersecurity protocols asking us to click on the traffic lights or the wheels in a bicycle, etc. And are you a robot? So I think the inception, or the kind of seeds to this book started still thinking about in an age in which AI, ah, becomes almost indistinguishable from humans, it's almost like we have to go out of our way and behave in unnatural ways to persuade somebody that we are humans. Actually, I was speaking to a friend of mine recently who also has a podcast and say, apparently there was a study showing that swearing and using bad language is now one of the key signals people look for to see if actually there is a human on that side or not. And of course, people are now formatting their resumes and their application letters with AI, but then adding deliberate grammatical mistakes or typos so that the recruiter thinks that was made by a human. And actually, as I thought about authenticity more broadly in the realm of leadership and careers, yeah, I encountered. I always get really hooked on topics or questions where I see a huge gap between what has become the popular belief or, uh, conception or kind of the mainstream view, certainly in the business world or in the management world, and juxtapose that or contrast that with the actual science and authenticity is really interesting because since the 70s or 80s, born out of the kind of rise of positive psychology, there has been this, I think, intended idea, um, that, you know, the secret not just to job satisfaction, but also happiness And a successful career was to ignore societal pressures to behave in a certain way and was to not worry about what people think of you and was to just be true to your values no matter what. As ah, if the secret to career success was to impose your values on others and just be totally intolerant and narrow minded when other people see things in a different way. And of course more recently this notion that we should all try to bring our whole self to work society has spent a long time, many centuries, if m not millennia tried trying to harness pro social tendencies in humans. Any society, pretty much since medieval or barbaric times has increased its pro social tendencies because it has persuaded people to act according to a social etiquette, by the way, a uh, collectivistic etiquette and fundamentally help people understand when the right to be themselves ends and their obligation to others begins. So this is a book that is an attempt to reclaim authenticity as a logical concept and challenges some of the misconceptions out there. In essence, it's also applied to leaders. As you said, to impose your uncensored, unfiltered or uninhibited self on others is pretty much a recipe for disaster. If you are a leader, you know what you need to do if you're a leader is of course ensure that you are running and maintaining a high performing team. And that involves editing your emotions, leveraging your emotional intelligence which by the way is negatively correlated with the absence of self control and the impulsivity that we found in people like Elon Musk, who might be a genius, is probably a genius, but unfortunately is put often in this kind of role model position of leader and only people who are the status quo. The entitled elites have managed to neglect or ignore what other people think of them and behave in this unfiltered and antisocial way. If you're advising a young person starting their career that they can just be themselves to an interview, they better be a genius like Elon Musk because they're going to have to start their own business or be unemployed and unemployable for the rest of their lives.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's one, it's one thing to do this and be Elon Musk, but if, if you're short of a couple billion dollars and uh, CEO of a couple companies in your name, it's, I ah, think it's going to be a little bit of a harder uphill climb. I was in preparation for this, I was reading your most recent HBR article. I think that accompanies this book which is Leaders.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Why leaders should bring their best self, not their whole self to work. And I think that's a, that's a, that is like a nice nuance and frame of this. And I think on one hand, uh, going back to our conversation before of what makes a human uniquely human, um, in, in theory, a company wants to hire you or you want to perform in a way that is aligned with who you are and, and what you uniquely can offer and can bring. But at the same time there is this kind of reality, I think, that we live in a context that is bigger than just like ourselves. And to your point, your own personal values and your kind of beliefs and for that matter the follow on effects when you not only have to do that, but you're also a leader and you're effectively having to model that for others. And so I guess the question back to uh, on this is one of the things I think about is one of my friends is, and someone who I admire very deeply is Dr. Tasha Yurich, who has done a lot of research on self awareness. And one of the things that she always reminds me is that if you're wondering, uh, or if you think you're self aware, the best self aware thing to do is to think you're a lot less self aware than you actually are. And I'm wondering with respect to authenticity and what to bring to work, the question's around how do you know? How do you know what is your authentic self and what would be your best self and so that you can bring that into a broader set.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a big fan of her work as well, especially around self awareness. But look, it's a little bit like with restaurants, right. If you travel somewhere, a city or a country that you haven't been and you're there and it says authentic Mexico, Mexican food, you can for sure assume it's not authentic. If it says authentic Chinese restaurant, for sure it will not be. Right.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And somebody, if a human tells you, hey, my style of readership is I'm really authentic, they may for the hills. Yeah, they may have bullshitted themselves into thinking that's which by the way. And Irving Goffman, who is the father of sociology in the 50s and 60s, actually pointed everything there was to point out about this discussion decades before. My book is all human interactions are in essence consequential to the degree that there is an element of acting involved.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And by the way, you could say when you're at home with your husband, wife, kids, that's not it. I would actually say there's probably an element of interaction and faking good or social desirability that is needed or divorce is around the corner. So I think even when people say bring your whole self to work, I m think my, my whole self isn't even welcome at home. I have to leave some. They would love for me to take certain parts to the office. So to leave them somewhere else. And even if you go on vacation with your best friends, you probably still have to make an effort to edit it. But I think what I want to say is in essence that uh, what Govman said is that uh, it's always acting. It's just that there's two different forms of acting. There is what he called surface acting, which is you're clearly trying to fake it. That's you're asking me how did I do? And even though I think you are not very competent and I don't like you, I'm saying, you know, it was great but it's not believable. And then there is how I answer when you ask me are you a good human being? 99% of people would answer yes to that question, including by the way, some of the most brutal dictators in history. So I think that's the key about self awareness is actually, and my friend Rob Kaiser said it many times, like how much do you bullshit yourself about? How much you bullshit yourself is a kind of non technical way of framing it. In a way, if you have imposter syndrome and you question yourself or you are not seeing deep spiritual or psychological connection with your work self, you're probably not bullshitting yourself. You're aware of this. But that's also not good. Right? It's a bit like watching a movie and not being immersed in it because you know that they're actors following a script or a score. That's not the end of the world. I think, I think there is a way to try to attain a certain level of balance and moderation. And that certainly doesn't require us to be a total fraud or a phony and make choices where we don't identify at all. We're not trying to go back to a Marxist state of alienation where people clock in and out of the factory and maybe they only find themselves when they meet their colleagues at the pub or the bar or when they do other activities. But we're also not trying to digress to where a lot of modern discussions in society has digressed to, which is this idea that if you think you're great, you Are. And this sort of like, very narcissistic, accidentally narcissistic take on authenticity. In the book, I tell the story of a coworker who came to ask me for career advice once, and he was wearing this T shirt. Lovely guy, by the way, but he was wearing this T shirt that said something along the lines of, just be you. They will adjust. And I couldn't let go. I think my authentic self came out. And I said, you realize how narcissistic and selfish that is because either we all wear it and then we have total anarchy and we don't have society. I just finished watching season five of Fargo and has this great interaction between one of the characters, this woman millionaire business person, and a very kind of, uh, a violent and toxic sheriff. And she says to him, the only people who want, um, total freedom without any responsibilities are babies. Grownups should reach a stage where they know that they need to be compromises, right? So I think either we all wear that T shirt and then society doesn't function, or for some bizarre reason, some individuals think they're the only person who should wear that T shirt and the whole world should adjust to them. And this might sound a bit extreme, but it happens a lot. There's a great book I recommend called Infantilized, where this, the author, who is the Danish anthropologist, can't remember his name, starts with this anecdote, true story of somebody who's having her performance review. And the manager of this woman says, you've been great. You hit your numbers. I'm very happy with you. But if I can give you some constructive feedback, it'll be great if you pay more attention to your spelling because you make a lot of spelling errors in your emails, and a lot of clients might think it's, um, unprofessional or whatever. And she said, what do you mean? For example, you know, when you spell this? And she was giving examples. So following the good rule of kind of guidance and code on how to give feedback. And the employee's reaction is to say, but this is how I spell it. When she gets home, um, complains to the parents, and then I think her mother calls the boss and says, how dare you talk to my daughter like this? That's how she spelled it. Unfortunately, society doesn't function like this. And of course there are huge cultural differences. You can talk about Eastern collectivistic societies where it's so hierarchical and so other oriented that maybe you suffer a little bit, you can't express yourself. Okay? But I think the other extreme is not very healthy either. And we're trending towards that. Uh, I would say Los Angeles or LA mindset, since you're there. I had to say this.

Speaker A: Tomas M. This has been, this has been such a lovely conversation. We covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time and I'm sure we could talk for even more. But before we head out for the day, the, uh, your book comes out October 7th, and that's super exciting. But where, if people want to find out more about your work or hear more of what you're up to, where can we, where can we point them towards?

Speaker B: Yeah. So first on the book. Amazon to connect both books. If they search on Amazon for authenticity and my name, Thomas Chomoro Premzek. Or the book is called Don't Be Yourself, why Authenticity is Overrated and what to do instead. We managed to actually influence the algorithms and make my book publisher happy. So that's connecting the AI side with the authenticity side. And then to find out more about myself, they can go to my website, which is www.doctor Thomas. That's D R T M. So Dr. Thomas with no age dot com.

Speaker A: Hi everyone. Al D here. Thank you so much for listening to the Edge of Work podcast. If you like what you heard, encourage you to share the episode with a friend as well as to head over to Apple Podcasts to leave a review and let us know what you think. I would be forever grateful if you did that. I would also love to hear directly from you about what episodes you're listening to or any suggestions you have for how we can make it better. You can find me on LinkedIn.