Why True Intentional Listening Drives Measurable Business Outcomes

It is literally giving us the opportunity to not only reinvent the entire HR function, but intentionally change, redesign, and reinvent the entire way that we work. Most HR teams are using AI for writing job descriptions faster, preparing training plans quicker. That's where they're stopping. But that's not what it's intended for. And that's not going to give you the transformational value. Value. Welcome to Voice Activated, the podcast dedicated to unlocking the power of employee feedback. I'm Sean Fitzpatrick, founder of Telemap and your host. In each episode, we'll dive into real world examples and best practices, as well as some lessons learned from employee surveys, Pulse checks, focus groups, 360s and more. If people are at the heart of your business, you're in the right place. Expect open conversations, practical advice, inspiring stories from companies that are getting it right, and some reflections from those who've hit a few bumps along the way. Tune in, listen up, and let's activate the voice of your employees. When people start to think about building leadership skills, they often think about, you know, maybe classroom training or executive coaching or you know, even stacks of competency models. But often the real power in leadership isn't, isn't around knowing the answers. It's really around learning how to ask better questions and really listen with intent and purpose to the people you're asking those questions of. And you know, today's guest has built a real strong career around those types of principles. Ken Finneran is a global HR executive and talent partner at Bright Star AI with a track record of just transforming fast moving companies like EMED and Kaseya in a way that brings together employees across different continents and industries and really building a culture of trust through curiosity, but also action and follow up on initiatives going forward. And this episode we really explore how to develop better leaders by shifting this sort of just results, results, results to how do they go about unlocking potential and maybe why listening might be one of the most underrated leadership skills in today's workplace. Ken, I want to welcome you to Voice Activated. Thank you very much for the invitation. I look forward to sharing as part of this podcast. Ken, I know some executives often think when you think about employee experience, employee engagement and the voice of the employee, those types of concepts, they might sometimes think about it as a bit of a soft metric. Finance guys, engineering guys, or gals, you know, I often think it's just a, it's just, it's not a real metric. And I guess, you know, what's your experience, particularly in tech driven organizations? How do you Connect that concept of having your employees engage the voice of the employees to sort of those measurable business outcomes. How do you go about doing that in your experiences that you had? Well, first of all, let me say I concur in a lot of organizations is exactly as you say. And in fact, some of that, I would say we in HR are partially to blame as we continue to refer to the skills that are needed by executives at all levels as soft skills. In reality, there's nothing soft about them at all. And in fact, we know, and there's plenty of research to back this up, that they are the true business drivers from those leaders who are engaging in those. So we've changed the vernacular, quite honestly, in the last three companies that I've worked at here at Bright Star, AI Emed and Kaseya. If you ask anyone in those organizations, they will tell you about the power of power skills. Why power skills? You may say? Well, because we know that the executives who exhibit what many others are calling soft skills are the ones who deliver on the key P aspects, the profitability, the people, the productivity, et cetera. And by doing those well, they're delivering on the P metrics, which are the key metrics. And so I've actually worked hard to change the vernacular, change the way that we're framing the whole discussion around those soft skills and encouraging leaders to even explore and reflect on how they got ahead. Which usually when they start down that process, they realize very quickly that while they might have initially progressed due to some technical knowledge or some hard skill, quote unquote, it is usually or almost always the soft skills or what we now call power skills that have actually propelled them to new heights in their careers. That's interesting. I like how you call the power skills. Tell me, like, how did you come up with that vernacular terminology, like what fits into this set of power skills or. I like that terminology. Help talk more about that. Well, you know, I'd like to say I came up with it in some moment of brilliance, but I don't think that's the case. I was probably reading and reflecting and saying what are the things that actually have the biggest impact. Impact on an organization? And as we help leaders reflect on those things, they talk about executive presence, about power. And many of the individuals are seeking power or think that they are seeking power, when in essence they're seeking positive impact. And so that positive impact about what are the things that drive the business outcomes that they want to be driving. That is what they often refer to as power. And so we just Change those to the power skills which are influencing and driving those positive business outcomes. I like that. Yeah, that's good. You know, I know at our company, you know, a lot of the work we do is really trying to tap into employees and frontline staff and leaders at the front line. You know, this, this underlying philosophy we have that some of the best ideas come from those closest to the work. You know, just. Can you think of ways you use that approach or thinking with different organizations you've worked at in the past? Sure. You know, we talk a lot about the, the time value continuum. Most of us who have been through any leadership course have seen this. We recognize that oftentimes strategy is set at the top of an organization and there's nothing wrong with that. And then goals being cascaded and that strategy being cascaded through a waterfall concept. However, at the same time, we realize that those who are closest to the work that is actually done have the best perspective on how to best add value and improve the processes that ultimately deliver on the value and, and the strategy that the senior leaders are coming up with oftentimes in a vacuum. The question is, how do you bridge that gap? And I would go so far as to say the best way that I know of how to bridge that gap is by training, teaching and encouraging leaders within the organization to become leader coaches. A leader coach who isn't the one who is expected to have all of the answers, but rather is someone who is known for asking probing questions that focus on insight, growth, development and yes, accountability. But also they're the ones who are encouraging everyone in the organization to submit ideas and encourage an organization where the best ideas win. Not the ideas only of the leader being the ones that get to the forefront as the ones that get executed on. Yeah. So, you know, getting that culture right is often tricky, you know, because often when you, you know, think about employee feedback and I want to get over to AI in a few minutes because of your background at Bright Star. But often what you see is when you'll do a survey or do feedback or go out and listen to employees. It's something viewed as a one off event and not a view as this is an ongoing dialogue or ongoing process of listening, responding, improving listening, responding, acting. You know, what have you found works to really start to create that culture of ongoing, you know, whether it's creating managers or leaders as coaching type of leadership or creating sort of ongoing listening on a regular basis to really position staff as some of the input into driving the business forward, using their voice. What are some of the things you've done or seen that work better to just build it into the culture as a way of thinking. Yeah, it's a great question and I think it comes back at its very essence to a concept that we hear a lot about but isn't reflected in the workplace as often as we would, as I would like to see it for sure. And that's the concept of trust, regardless of cultures. And I've worked in Europe, I've traveled throughout Asia, I've traveled throughout Latin America. What I've seen is that certainly across all of these cultures, trust is built over time through repeated observance of human actions. So leaders just need to remember to be human first. What I mean by that is that people then trust leaders who embody what I refer to as the C suite, not because of the title that they have, but that they are exhibiting the following things. They're exhibiting care. They're exhibiting commitment. They're exhibiting strong communication, strong level of competence, consistency, and even managerial courage. These C suite activities, as I call them, are the ones that we know build trust and then also lead to the desired outcomes. Another way to reinforce those, however, is another C that I touched on briefly before is enhancing the coaching component. Allowing leaders to develop the skills and the competency to be leader. Coaches who are asking great probing questions in allowing ideas to surface, but not only surface, but to be explored. Not only to hear their ideas reflected through the comments of others, but rather ideas being surfaced from those closest to the work that is being done. You mentioned some of the companies, as did I at Bright Star, AI Emed and Kaseya. I want to be very clear. These are all high velocity, high expectation environments. What earn trust was never the rhetoric, it was always the follow through. Setting a high bar for performance, then being present, listening when it was easier just to push, push, push, making decisions transparently. I can't say enough about transparency. Giving constructive feedback that's part of a coaching culture, and then genuinely caring about the employees as we grew and prospered together. I like that. Yeah, that coaching component is critical and in fact it sort of brings me on to this sort of, you know, and you think about that. What, you know, what strategies or approaches have you seen of managers when they've used that coaching approach to help, you know, involve employees in the process? So part of, you know, listening to employees, of course, listening, processing the feedback. And then sometimes it's, it's, oh, here's what I've heard, let's clarify. Or it sounds like we've Got an issue around our communication or work life balance or whatever issues that pop up, then it's starting to involve employees and how do we go about addressing that? And that's where that coaching component could be very valuable. Is there sort of steps or processes that you know that are very tactical, that you've seen, that different companies have used, that you've been in, or frameworks that they've used to involve employees in the post process or post survey process? There are a few, and I always like to frame it first because I think a lot of times leaders feel that they're in what I'll call a compliance trap. If they are in an organization where they're being asked to focus solely on compliance, has this been done? They really don't have a leadership culture at all in my opinion. Rather, what they have is the business equivalent of a police state. That may sound very strong for some organizations, but if coaching is viewed by an organization as also something that's only done by external resources, while leadership is done internally, it's time to encourage them to shift that mindset because they need internal organizational culture culture supported by their own coaches. So now here's the tactical elements with that as the background. The best way that we've coached leaders to ask questions that unlock insight instead of just compliance is by replacing those directive questions with what I call curiosity based ones. And you referred to that earlier, that means teaching them to ask questions, to discuss, discover what they don't already know. You know, I think so many leaders get caught in the trap of just asking questions to reinforce what they already know. But this shift enables the mutual exploration of possibilities and growth for employees. This means shifting from questions, the type of questions that are why questions, which typically make people defensive, to the what and how questions, which open up critical thinking. For example, instead of asking why isn't this going to be done on time? Or why did this project miss the target leader? We would encourage leaders to instead ask what obstacles could prevent us from hitting the deadline? Or how might we approach the next milestone differently so that we hit the objectives, which then invites reflection and ownership rather than just blame and justification from the employees. I really liked how you talked about that because it is true. Often managers might go into maybe consciously or even not fully consciously already knowing what they want to hear. They're not going in with that open curiosity, you know, they're going in with, okay, I want to go in this direction. I just got to get them to answer in a way that is obvious that we're going to Nest and I look like I'm, you know, open, but I'm really not. I've already made the decision, you know, it's that, you know, some large organizations and I've worked in some of them, the pre meeting, before the meeting, you go in and you talk about what we're going to talk about and what we want to get out of it before you go in and have the discussion. And then you have the post meeting after the meeting to discuss did we get where we wanted to get? As opposed to truly open and curious. So tell me a little bit, talk to me a little bit about that because I think you unlocked something that's really interesting there. Well, maybe without the question being asked directly, I think there is oftentimes something that really gets in the way from leaders hearing what their people are trying to tell them. And in my mind, the biggest barrier is usually the leader's ego, which is then fed by their internal narrative. So despite training efforts, and I don't know that it's necessarily the quality of the training, but what we do know is that many leaders still don't listen to, understand, listen to respond, defend, or solve. All of which might have been qualities, quite honestly, that helped elevate them to their current level of leadership or their position within the organizational hierarchy in the past. But when your identity is tied to being known as the one that has all the answers, listening for many of them then feels like they're giving up authority. Alternatively, if we can help leaders understand that they don't have to be the ones with all of the answers, that intentional listening can then often uncover insights that lead to those answers, that different perspectives don't diminish their own perspective in any way. And furthermore, that they'll likely end up not only solving more issues successfully, but they'll have a more motivated team in the process. Practically what this means, and you know this from talking about active listening for so many years, this means things like putting away cell phones, something that for many leaders is a big hurdle for them to overcome, means stepping away from computers for a moment, not interrupting or thinking about a response so that they can focus intently on what is being said. I'd add one more element to this, which again can be a challenge for some leaders. If they can actually bring in an element of humility and, dare I even say, vulnerability to it, they might not have the answer. That too can go a really long way toward a fruitful discussion and a deep understanding of different perspectives that ultimately will likely lead to the best ideas coming forward. Interesting yeah, and it's just getting that awareness of leadership of where they're at in that journey. Because it's probably not a switch, it's something that happens over time as they learn to get better at listening, truly listening. Not just asking the questions in a performative way, but, but doing it because you know, there might be some really good ideas there and, and I want to tap into them, you know. And one of the things, you know, leadership is hard and one of the things that's probably making it a little bit harder these days, or maybe a lot harder these days is, is the advent of AI. Because AI now is sort of bringing in this additional complexity. Like a lot of leaders right now, they, it's a tough job. Not only do they have to, you know, be coaches, like you're talking, listen really well, they've got diverse workforces they're working with, plus in terms of, you know, race, ethnicity, but also in terms of hybrid on site, not on site, like all types of things going on that maybe they didn't have to deal with, you know, 15, 20 years ago. So it is changing it and it's making their job in some way difficult because yeah, they have to be on site and legal and not get the company into trouble through HR programs or initiatives, but they also have to drive business performance and then AI sort of adding a real big layer of complexity. So I'm wondering about how leaders are thinking about AI and with your work at Bright Star, I would think you're getting a very unique perspective because maybe probably the best thing to do for this part of the Tell us a little bit about what you're doing at Bright Spot, how it integrates or how it. And what the reactions you're seeing with leaders, the good, the bad, the ugly. Because I would suspect it's all over the map in a way. Yeah, it's a great question. And Brightstar AI is a boutique consulting firm leveraging applied AI for transformation and value creation in mid market companies around the globe. And so, so you're exactly right. We're seeing the whole gamut of. I would say most individuals are excited about wanting to employ AI and yet they think AI is something that is a technical solution that they can just implement and that will solve the whatever problem that they are trying to solve. The reality is there's a technical component, there's a process component and there is a people component, all of which are need to be working in unison and have also change management components of them in order to be effective. And I would go so Far as to say, I don't think we've encountered a single company that, that we've worked with that at the initial stages, had that figured out. And so we, we are looking and bringing areas of expertise around technical AI implementation, AI engineering, how AI can help with process enhancement, productivity enhancement, etc. But that's not the silver bullet. There has to be a people component that goes along with that, a willingness to change, a training, an upskilling, a reskilling. And that part is something that some people are willing to go along with quicker than others. I'm the first one to acknowledge that there's always going to be a lot more first followers or fast followers, first movers. And if you get too hyped and excited that, oh my gosh, I love AI and I'm an AI optimist, so I could fall into this trap easily saying, ah, when we mention AI, we're the experts, people are just going to want to jump on board and we'll be on immediately. I can fall into that trap very easily. The reality is you need to find some of those champions, you need to work with those champions then. Because what we know about implementation of AI is that it does tie to processes, to people, and you need to generate and create this momentum that will help you be successful. The income can build very quickly. But don't expect that you're going to go in and all of a sudden have 50% or 70 or 80% of the people say, yes, I'm on board, I'm excited. That's not reality, because there's a change component that needs to happen, there are discussions that need to happen, there's an understanding that needs to happen, there's training and reskill that needs to happen. And when you recognize that, you can then come and approach these challenges from a much different perspective. In some ways it sounds like it's a big change management challenge or initiative, a component of it. Do you see it different? Is it different than other change management challenge? You know, you go back to, I don't remember all the big ERP system implementation implementations and all the change management go this 20 years or 25 years ago, plus all the change management wrapped around that. And then there's been different iterations of it over the years, but, but AI has sort of had this different thing about it. You know, it's been adopted so quickly. It's this, both fear and optimism about what it can do and, and then practically what can we do with it? Right? So you do lots of things, but what can we actually do make it do to be more productive in an organization. So do you see it as that just another change management or is there something different about it? Well, I probably have a different view on change management and success of change management or lack thereof than most people do. I honestly think that we as leaders have failed at change management since the concept of change management was even invented. Certainly the data supports that that saying that still today 70% of change management efforts fail. Directly to your question, I think AI has simply accelerated that failure rate. The failure rate hasn't gotten better or worse because of AI. It simply accelerated the pace of change that we are expected to be doing now. Why is that? We could have a whole separate debate and podcast about that. And it's one of my favorite topics because I do think the people component is one that is often neglected. And certainly when we talk about AI, there's so much talked about and the daily iterations, what's the new release of AI or anthropic or whomever it is. Claude, whatever tool you're looking at, large language models, small language models, custom GPT agents, agentic AI, all of these things. And yet what we're oftentimes forgetting is the people component. And so when you ask about change management and how AI is either accelerating or helping, I think it is definitely accelerating the pace of change. I think we're all seeing how these iterations happen much, much quicker. And yet I don't think most organizations have effectively figured out the intersection of technology, process management and people management, change management that has to intersect in order for this change to be effective. If you think about human resources and the function and where it's sort of at now, you're getting quite a bit outside of, you know, now you're touching across the organization. You've got technology which is new and a lot of people are still trying to wrap their heads around it. You've got the process stuff, which is often operational logistics type of stuff, and systems stuff, depending on the type of firm. And then you got the people side where the HR feel more comfortable. But, but if you think about what's happening, change is a part of the hr, but you've got. It's outside of their realm of, of comfort zone, definitely. If not, if not their expertise. So how do you, how do you, how would you suggest HR professionals to think about this? Because I suspect a lot of them are starting to face these challenges. I know when we started implementing HR or not hr, AI rather in our software, about two years ago, when we started working With a company, they had no clue on how to deal with this. They're like, yeah, no policy. You know, some of the issues had to go up to the board of directors for them to get a group together and figure out, you know, can we use this? Can we not? Because it was a real benefit. We. The data we collected was, you know, employee comments and thousands and thousands of comments. And the value of being able to use AI to summarize and extract it just was night and day over what any previous solution. So the value is there to clients and companies, but the structure. And it's the first time I ever ran into it where they're like, we don't even know if we can turn that feature on, Sean. Like, we gotta go. And not only that, we gotta go to the board of directors to find out. It's not like I had to go to my boss or my boss's boss. So. So it's a real challenge for human resource departments and all departments, I suspect. But I guess with your background, what can they do? How can they think about it? How can they frame it so they can sort of adopt it and feel more. They can wrap their arms around it to some extent and sort of some of the challenges they're facing? Yeah, I'll give a tactical response to that, and then I'll give maybe a broader response. And let me start with the latter, because I think as we talk about AI, if we're only thinking about AI, whether it's from an HR standpoint or a general leadership standpoint as a technology to implement that's going to increase efficiency incrementally, we're doing ourselves a disfavor. What I mean by that is it is so much more, and certainly from an HR perspective, it is literally giving us the opportunity to not only reinvent the entire HR function, but intentionally change, redesign, and reinvent the entire way that we work. That's a very big broad statement. That's a big statement. Yeah, yeah. And yet I firmly believe that. And now to the tactical elements of what that can look like. You mentioned some of the ways that it can. It being AI, can help organizations. You can put in the engagement survey data and it can very quickly pull out recurring themes, items to work on, etc. Things that would normally take weeks, it's going to do in a few minutes. Now, the reality is we hr, in my opinion, we're looking at the wrong things at the wrong time. And so what AI is going to help us with in the near future is becoming embedded in the Actual work rather than part of a solution that we deliver once a year or twice a year, such as an engagement survey. What I mean by that this already exists. There are tools that tap into where work project communication actually happens. Not relying on a once a year survey to try and think back about how well Fred or Sally did a certain job, but rather it is tapping in and linked to your emails, your slack channels, your teams channels, your productivity channels, think Jira or ServiceNow, any project management channels such as Monday.com or whatever channel, Microsoft Project, whatever that is, and extrapolates the data in the communications from those in real time so that at on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, or whenever you want to do this regularly, you can see in real time how was Ken performing? If Ken said he was going to deliver this report to management on Friday and didn't do it till Tuesday, was it because he was busy? Was he engaged in other high priority activities? Or is this a recurring theme? And you see that in real time these are tools that already exist with AI. And so not only are we changing the outdated HR means of gathering information from exit surveys to engagement surveys and others, we are actually getting better at being talent architects. What I mean by that, an organizational architect that maximizes the talent and deploys capabilities at scale across the organization. Now those two are big statements, they're ones that we could go very deep into. But it's an example of most HR teams I would say are using AI right now for writing job descriptions faster, preparing training plans quicker, and they should be, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. But if that's where they're stopping and most individuals are using ChatGPT to write better grammatical emails, that's great, they should be doing that. But that's not what it's intended for. And that's not going to give you the transformational value. And so it's encouraging, reskilling, upskilling, asking the right questions, encouraging ideas, looking for those niche providers, experimenting, failing, but failing. Forward fast in terms of then moving forward with the support of AI, you touched on something completely changing the way we work. Do you have like, you know, and you refer to sort of things happening now or the tools are out there now? Can you give, you know, listeners some examples of something that they could. Because conceptually what you're talking about. Okay, I understand, but I'm still trying to picture it right in my head or my mind's eye. If you have something that'd be great to hear, sure. So there are A number of tools that are out there in, even in the, I'll say common, whether it's ERP or HR systems such as a daily check in. And that daily check in can be like a five smiley face or sad face check in. What that does in real time is allows HR teams to get a better sense of how are. Now that's self reported, but the deeper version of that is tapping into the other communication. So let me just say that. But even that, that simpler example of tracking smiley faces versus super smiley versus sad or super fat gives an indication as to an individual's current engagement or disengagement as well as over time their propensity for likely leaving an organization. Those exist now. If you see multiple sad days, you can say, well hold on, this person's been a very positive influence. Otherwise what's changed? Are they going through something in their family? You can touch base with them. It allows HR to be proactive rather than just reactive and managing six months down the road or after that person has handed in their resignation. So that, that's one that's. And again that's somewhat automation. But certainly AI has allowed us to go a little bit deeper in that. I think there, there are a few other examples that, that we see right now of how we can personalize learning, personalize development. So there are systems out there on the learning front that, that if you like golf and you're learning about a mathematical concept or an engineering concept, the examples that will be shared by the learning system with you will be golf examples, the arc of the ball, etc. And maybe I like wine, which I do, but the, for me the examples may be. Imagine you're in a winery. What the examples it gives me is then the circumference of the bottle, the content, et cetera, the shipping, the logistics. It may be customized to something that interests me. That then piques my interest more in what we know is that that micro customized learning then triggers something that allows me to remember it more than if I am just using a one size fits all solution. That's another great way that AI has really benefited us is allowing for mass personalization. The one size fits one rather than a one size fits all solution. Yeah, I like that. And it's, and it's actually, you know, just as you. And now you're explaining that's a good idea because it's very doable, it's achievable with today's tools and technologies. And it's really relevant because yeah, you're right. If you put it in terms and I do like golf. If you put it in terms of an activity, I'd be like, I'm probably much more interested in just any. I'll still learn the stuff but in a much more enjoyable way. Probably faster, more effective, all that. I like that. That's very, very interesting. That's good. Yeah, it's AI is. What about. Do you see leaders changing in terms of their competencies or behaviors or how they have to. Is AI going to be shifting that or is is leaders? I know there's core elements of leadership I don't expect changing. Like trust you talked about and communication and all these things are all critical. But are there elements of leadership that either have to be more emphasized or de emphasized as AI takes more of a center stage? It's a great question. I think the one that I probably get the most pushback on is also related to listening, but is the concept of speed versus listening and how do you help leaders slow down enough when there's a perception that speed and scale are always the priority And I think there's a misconception quite honestly that in high growth, fast paced, hyperscale environment that speed is always the answer. I've worked in PE backed hyper growth organizations for the last 15 years and that's not always the answer. Even in high pressure environments, listening in communication are not luxuries or nice to haves. They are indeed the the performance accelerators and value maximizer. And it's not until leaders understand that that the organization can truly perform and outperform others, meaning performing to its maximum capability. So you know, I, I oftentimes share a a story, maybe a funny antidote that I remember from my childhood that my mom had a sign above our phone in the kitchen. Back when people had phones in their kitchen and not I remember ours in the kitchen. Okay, very good. Well, she had a sign in there that, that said the hurrier I go, the behinder I get, which for me maybe in this new world that we live in is slowing down to listen now prevents you slowing down later to fix and rework what you missed earlier. So inevitably, however, when I bring this up to leaders in training classes or even just in conversation, someone stops me to comment stating something to the effect of slowing down to do that will simply take too long in this environment. You may have heard that from leaders that you coach as well. To which I ask, somewhat provocatively, I admit. Oh, okay. So what was the response from your team when you tried this? Followed then by a suggestion after a usually quite uncomfortable Silence that they then try what I refer to as the 92nd rule, which is something really simple that certainly I didn't come up with on my own. It's something that's been out there that when someone comes to you with a concern, an idea, a question or a challenge that needs to be solved, give them 90 seconds. I'm not asking you to give them a half your day. Give them 90 seconds of your undivided attention without your cell phone, laptop or other distractions. And what we know is that this brief moment of clarity and alignment has been proven not only in the companies I've been in, but there's multiple studies showing the same has been proven to accelerate decisions, not delay them, while simultaneously increasing the quality of those decisions, reducing the amount of rework and increasing engagement and motivation levels of the team members of those employees in the process. Interesting. So that just giving that time to slow down, listen, reflect, and just sometimes silence for that period of time or let someone to respond and giving them that space, you know, that 90 second space seems like a long time maybe when you're doing it, but, but I think it probably would. I've never tried it, but I really like it because it would probably bubble up all kinds of interesting ideas and suggestions and, and maybe from a V that you may not hear talk all the time because, yeah, they might fill in. This has been really good. There's been lots of good. You talked about power at the beginning, about the challenges with AI, that it's not just a technology, it's, you know, a process issue and a people issue. And it's just marrying those, those all together. You know, the importance of how we're going to be changing the way we work, that we're not really adopting AI the way we could be adopting. There's a lot more where to go. There's a longer trail way out in front of us. And I could see it really transforming the way we work in many ways. And it'll probably come in various fits and starts as you suggested, but it won't happen overnight. But boy, if companies get up and ahead of that curve, it probably will really accelerate them. I'm just going to ask you one closing question. I think it's helpful for the readers if you can leave, you know, you know, hr, a lot of the HR professionals, you know, if you could give every leader one habit or a strength or ability to, to listen and, and lead through change better, you know, what would you, what would you suggest based on the experiences you've had over the years? Yeah, that's a, It's a great question. I should have asked you this one before you told me the 92nd rule. Well, that was a good one, by the way. To that, I guess. And you know, one of my favorite authors and one of my favorite books is the one from Carol Dweck called Mindset. And so one habit I would give every leader is to strengthen their ability to listen and lead through change through a mindset shift, namely by remaining in problem solving, in action oriented mode as a leader, but shifting from feeling answer focused to being curiosity and inquiry focused. And if you think about that, just as most HR professionals would never hire a candidate at any level who failed to ask questions at the end of an interview, when facing shared challenges or even concerns, leaders should, in my mind, resist the need to dictate an answer and instead they should ask one or more clarifying questions. And that can be something as simple as if you don't know what question to ask, what question should I or we be asking that you haven't heard yet, that could give a different perspective or clarify your idea. These are all things that I think remaining in inquiry mode, curiosity mode versus answer mode, that would be the habit that I would encourage leaders to adopt. That's a great, that's a great closing. That, that idea of, of just keeping that open mind, that truly curious mind that you're not coming in with the answers and that some of the best answers are sitting there in the room and just being open to accepting them. I like that. Perfect. Well, we'll wrap up there. Thank you very much, Kent. Thanks for listening to Voice activated. If you've heard something that got you thinking, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, talk about it, put it into play. That's how better workplaces get built. When you're ready to move from insight into action, head over to telemap.com you'll find tools, resources and strategies to help you lead better with clarity, empathy and impact. And make sure to follow or subscribe so you don't miss any more real conversations with leaders who know that some of the best ideas for change don't come from the top, but from those employees closest to the work.