The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts Are Creating a New Human-Powered Leadership by Christie Smith, Kelly Monahan

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts Are Creating a New Human-Powered Leadership by Christie Smith, Kelly Monahan Amazon.com Discover and embrace the future of human-powered leadership In an era where the foundational elements of business are being disrupted, Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts are Creating a New Human-Powered Leadership emerges as a crucial guide for leaders navigating the profound changes reshaping industries and markets worldwide. This book, penned by a team of seasoned business and leadership strategists, offers a radical and necessary perspective on management transformation, emphasizing the importance of human-centered leadership in meeting the full potential of the technology age. The authors explain how to: Unlock radical management transformation, demonstrating how to lead with humanity at the forefront, addressing changing attitudes about labor, management, and organizational goals in a way that fosters growth and innovation Adapt to the new business landscape, leveraging insights about managing distributed teams and incorporating emerging technologies like generative AI without losing the essence of your organization's talent and skills Achieve immediate, impactful change with realistic strategies and actionable techniques backed by thousands of hours of original research and practical experience Improve the way we live by revolutionizing the way we work Essential is not just a book; it's a roadmap for 21st-century leaders facing existential challenges in a rapidly evolving global market. Perfect for managers, executives, directors, founders, entrepreneurs, and any business leader aiming to steer their organization towards success in a transformed landscape, this book provides the tools and insights needed to lead with conviction and humanity. Whether you're looking to redefine your leadership approach, adapt to the transformed market, or leave a lasting legacy, this book offers a compelling case for why now is the time for a leadership reinvention. Dive into this essential resource and begin your journey towards leading with greater impact and humanity in the business world of today and tomorrow. About the author Dr. Christie Smith has over 35 years of experience advising the C-Suite of Fortune 500 companies. Previously, she was the Global Head of Talent and Organization at Accenture, Managing Principal at Deloitte, and Global Vice President for Inclusion and Diversity at Apple. She is a highly sought-after speaker and thought leader on business strategy, leadership and culture, DEI, people analytics, and the impact of workforce technologies and AI.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, there are at least six of them. This is official. Welcome to the show. As always, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't loan you money, Welcome to the show for over 16 years and 2200 episodes.

Today, we have a wonderful young lady on the show with her hot new book coming out soon. It's called Essential. How distributed teams, generative AI, and global shifts are creating a new human-powered leadership. Christy Smith joins us on the show today. Her book comes out on, let's see, January 22nd, 2025. And she is a woman who has over 35 years of experience advising the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies. Previously, she was the global head of talent and organization at Accenture, managing principal at Deloitte,

and global vice president for inclusion and diversity at Apple. She is a highly sought-after speaker and thought leader on business strategy, leadership, culture, DEI, people analytics, and the impact workforce technologies and AI. Welcome to the show, Christy. How are you? I'm great, and it's great to be with you, Chris. Happy New Year. Happy New Year as well. For those watching 10 years from now on YouTube, on our 18-year-old YouTube channel, it's the 2025 New Year's, so if it's March, don't write me.

They love to do that. They're like, the price isn't the same. You're like, that's an iPhone 5 you're talking about. It's amazing the videos they comment on and I love it. So Christy give us your comms Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Sure. I you can find the book at Smith Monahan.com my my personal one is my company called the humanity studio calm So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book, Essential? Yeah, we wrote this book because clearly there has been a shift in the

world that's been happening and it's impacted very senior leaders in companies in the private sector as well as the public sector. And so what we sought to examine is how can we think about leadership fundamentally differently in a world that is being met with global shifts, technology that seems to be advancing every single solitary day, an employee base that is disengaged, where trust is at an all-time low for organizations, and where purpose is becoming really important. And this requires a different kind of leadership. And so we wrote Essential as a playbook for leaders to be able to step up to this time of unprecedented demands on leadership. Yeah, there's a lot of, it's been a wild ride the past, especially since COVID, remote working,

AI, of course, is advancing at such a speed that even I'm just trying to figure it all out. And, you know, now I guess remote working seems to be dying off and then, but somehow a lot of employees don't want it. And, you know, the new year has a lot of interesting things going on business-wise. And it's just crazy everything that's going on. And when you say human-powered leadership, give us a bit of depth on that. Yeah, we describe human-powered leadership as emotionally mature leaders. If you go back, and I'm sure you've had people on this show, Chris, who've talked a lot about EQ or emotional intelligence and what are the factors to emotional intelligence, those things like empathy and kind of knowing yourself.

That is, emotional intelligence has been a huge advantage to business leaders for a very long time, but it is a method in examining oneself, right? And you could take an emotional intelligence test or course, and you can basically stick it in a drawer. Whether you act on it or not, there's no real accountability. What we propose is there needs to be an evolution from emotional intelligence to the emotionally mature leader, which rather than being focused on oneself is actually focused on the humans within their organizations. And so the requirements of emotional maturity are a suspension of self-interest, insatiable curiosity of others, understanding the context in which people are coming to work in this very dynamic world that we live in with wars and family conflict and burnout

and mental health, all the things that we know. And really, how do we then focus on creating cultures of excellence and meet the human requirements that we talk about in the book. Yeah. I mean, the millennials kind of started to change the game of what they wanted when they showed up for the workforce. Gen Z is, of course, making their own dent. I imagine Generation Alpha is going to have their own standards of, I don't know, what they're looking for. But it does seem to be like we've moved away from that Peter Drucker stick sort of management mentality of, I don't know if I want to fully blame it on him, but, you know, this sort of stick mentality of, well, do it or get fired, to where, like you say,

we now have to have that emotional intelligence now as leaders and CEOs, where we capture the hearts and minds of people and lead with a carrot instead of the stick. Is that a good analogy? I think that that is a very fair analogy. We talk a lot about setting the table for this need for a new kind of leader in the book about the command and control style of management that we've seen for so long. And candidly, it's just not working anymore. If you just look at the facts that are impacting our economy, in the US economy alone,

we need 4.6 million workers to just maintain status quo right now. Wow. By 2032, we're gonna require, we're gonna be in a deficit rather of 6 million workers. Holy crap. Exactly. So the book is really pointing not just to, hey, this is a nice new leadership model around emotional maturity. We are headed for an economic crisis. And if we don't really examine what we need of workers, how we

need of workers, and engage them in that conversation, because they now have demands of us, as you indicate the younger generations do, then we are really going to be in a position where we won't be able to be competitive. Yeah. Now, is this because we have so many of the baby boomers that are retiring? I heard that basically with the boomers retiring, we're losing like seven experts for every one replacement that's young. But those seven people that were leaving, they were like journeyman experts. They were top of their craft and they're being replaced by someone who's very new, especially when it comes to the business of trades and hardworking. Yeah, I think that is

part of it, but let's look at the compounding factors around that, Chris. It's definitely that we're seeing a large swath of the workforce leave, but we're also in a place where our workforce, we are seeing, you know, burnout at incredible rates. We're looking at, you know, 54% of managers in the last year have felt burnout and 36% said that they have mental health issues. You think about one in five employees feeling lonely, and those are employees who are at work, by the way, in the office as well as outside the office. And 60% are struggling with engagement. So if you look at the amount of individuals and boomers that are leaving, and then you look at the wellness factor and the welfare factor of those who are staying, again, this is really a crisis that we need to address. And I think there are

many factors, those two just being very large and looming ones. So tell us a little bit about yourself. How were you raised? What were your influences? And what got you down some of the journey we talked about in your bio? And of course, what was the proponent that came forth for writing the book? Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, this book came to me very naturally, mostly because of the way that I grew up. I'm the youngest of eight kids. I grew up in a competitive marketplace. Our family disease was overachievement, and I had incredible role models in both of my parents and my brothers and sisters. I really, when you are in a family that large, you kind of brand yourself early. And I was

the girl jock in the family. I love sports. I still consider myself an athlete, although it takes a lot of time to recover these days. But I still enjoy playing sports and being active in sports. But there came a time where I had to enter into the workforce. And I knew that the other thing that I was really good at other than sports was people talked to me a lot and told me their issues or their problems, and they felt safe speaking to me. And I didn't take that for granted, thank God, and went and got a degree in clinical social work because I love to not only understand what makes people tick, but how systems operate and impact that. And then fell into consulting after a stint working in a residential hospital and really fell in love with consulting because I felt like some of the same principles that I

learned as a clinician applied to a hidden workforce that wasn't necessarily seeking that kind of help, but that was trying to navigate their own potential within the workforce. And so my consulting career took off from there. And so when you decided to write the book, you wrote it with your co-author, Kelly Monaghan. Monaghan. Monaghan, I'm trying to remember. What made you guys get together on that and say, hey, we should write a book about this? Yeah, I think that, first of all, Kelly is a dear friend and an exceptional researcher,

and we work together both at Deloitte and at Accenture. So when it came time for me, after I retired from the big corporate world, it was time for me to write this book. I had had it in me for a very long time, so it became very easy to reach out to Kelly as a co-author, not only because of her research background, but we're from two very different generations. And having both of those perspectives and diversity of thought were really critically important. She and I have served leaders in the C-suite for, for me, many more decades than her, but decades. And we knew we had something to say because both the research and the qualitative data that I had in working with senior leaders, there was clearly a shift happening and quite a dramatic one in what was the requirements of employees and therefore of leaders. And so now the book is coming out. What were some of the other insights that maybe surprised you in the book as you did the research for it? Yeah, I think that there is a couple of things,

and it gets to a little bit, Chris, of what we were just talking about. It's the perfect storm of all of these major shifts happening in the generations that are at work, the pace of change with technology, the half-life of skills and the need for skills, and really the economic concern for thriving economies in terms of meeting the demands of people, having the right skills to execute on strategy, and having the right leadership to lead in a fundamentally different way because the requirements have changed. And what was most interesting to us was proving that hypothesis that it's not just one thing. We seem to love to focus on one big thing, demographic change or skills or AI, but we don't look at it cumulatively. And so this book really looks at what is the cumulative effect of all of these shifts that are happening, the new technology, distributed workplaces, return to office, the different demands of employees.

Yeah, return to office, man. It's crazy how much clawback is going. I read that the remote jobs now represent about 10% of jobs that are available in the marketplace, and there's 40% of applicants searching for it. So there's still a large swath of potential employees still trying to claw that thing. And it sounds like if there's only 10% left, it sounds like a lot of companies have said, no, we're not doing that anymore. I wonder if it's because they found that it just wasn't productive. Maybe I'm answering my own question. I'd be interested to know what their mentality is about that. Yeah, I think that, listen, it is not a surprise to me that many leaders are trying to find

the magic bullet to engage their workforce. I mean, engagement of the workforce and trust in leadership and organizations are at all-time lows in the world. And many of leaders are going back to the playbook that was run when they were coming up in an organization, and that was you swiped in every day and went to your office. The truth is that we have seen evidence that the return to office is not working. People are less productive. They are more lonely. I mean, one in six people feel highly connected at work. One in five feel psychologically safe and one in four feel like their manager cares about them. So clearly something's not working. And so I think

that there's been, if I can say, a failure of imagination in terms of how we look at engagement and what is needed. Part of what we talk about in the book is outlining exactly what employees told us after looking at hundreds and thousands of employees and research, we found that there are four requirements that employees have of leaders and thus, you know, being more engaged. One is purpose. You know, your insides have to match your outsides. Agency, which is I want a say in how, when, where I work. Wellness and connection. And those four pillars resoundingly come up in research even today that points to how do leaders then manage in this environment? You know, you've given me some new thoughts on this because one of the things I've been considering is, you know, how hard it is. You know, in my offices, I was always able to walk around and touch hearts and minds.

So you could check in with people. You'd be like, hey, Bob, how's things going today? How's the family? How's the family? How's the kids? You know, how are you feeling? You doing well? You know, it wouldn't quite be that direct, but that's usually what you're fishing for. You're letting them know that you care, that you're interested in them as people.

And that, you know, it's just not, where's your TPS reports, right? From Office Space movie. Where's your TPS reports? We're going to need your tps reports we're gonna need your tps reports you know and and and i used to call it touching the hearts and minds which is probably illegal at hr right now but i mean that's i mean that's virtually what you were doing you were you were you were trying to inspire them you know give them a little motivator you know it's just like a coach you're going around to your teammates and making sure everybody's pepped up and having that human connection.

And the remote working, you know, to me as a leader, it would be really hard because, you know, you've got to reach over and inspire that person. And there's a lot, you know, we've talked about it on the show. We've probably had hundreds of psychologists on the show. There's a lot of chemistry when we work within proximity each other i believe when men tribe up and do stuff together their testosterone goes up i i don't know about women because i've never been a woman yet i'm still working on that i guess uh there's still time but i imagine it's the same for women when they get together and they they do activities together you know they the estrogen maybe goes up. One thing I've had is

I started about a year and a half giant singles groups for meetups and I'm single. So what I tried to do was make these go back to the old world way of dating because dating apps have clearly failed singles and they're not really designed to get you in a relationship. They're designed to keep you on the hamster wheel of giving them your money and they're they're trillion dollar industries for a reason and so i started hosting these through meetup.com these in meetups where singles could come out and mingle just like you would say a bar or club back in the day and do stuff and what's been really surprising to me, shocking, is how much people have lost their social skills over COVID. And remote working, I'm sure, has been a part of this.

And I can't get people to leave the house. People are afraid to meet socially. They're afraid to interact socially. And these are young people. I remember when I was young, I was afraid of, I don't want to be in a big group of people. But these are people that are in their 50s, 40s and 50s. You should have learned some social skills by now.

And it seems like a lot of that's gotten lost. And what you made me realize is when teams are together, when people are together in a group in person there's a different collective of Brain power that they're gonna have them when they're apart and you mentioned to that people feel isolated They feel depressed and that's kind of what I've noticed with the group where these people are so isolated They're so depressed that coming on meeting people. They really need because you can see their suffering, but then they don't want to. So it's kind of, I think the same thing's going on with remote working where, you know, people mouth, that it's a necessary thing to just have companies have a

healthy sort of innovative environment where everyone's learning and growing together and working together. Because I'm seeing the side effects of remote working and alienation and unsocialization. It's not helpful to anybody really yeah i think that what you know what we get to in the book when we describe emotionally mature leaders is i think this combination of suspension of self-interest many people who are in positions of real power to make demands on return to office or hybrid work or whatever, are individuals because that makes it easier for them and they have a predetermined idea of what success might look like, right? And I think that is well-intentioned by many, many leaders, but might not be the right assumption. I think that when we suspend self-interest and then become, in combination with that,

insatiably curious about our employees, we begin to ask them what is the best environment for them to succeed. And I think that's what I mean by this idea of a kind of failed imagination or failed, as you're talking about, failed social skills that we think don't apply. We're divorced from those from the minute we cross the threshold of our workplace. We as leaders have to become so curious about what is the context in which an individual can thrive. And then what are the requirements around that within reason that an organization or a manager or leader can give? The idea of imagination around how you architect a team, right? And then how you architect when we need to be together and when we don't on engaging in how is best best way to get this done. X, Y, Z to meet our goals, whether they be financial or product driven. And how do we engage employees fundamentally differently at Deloitte is an incredible firm. And they, early on, started looking at this notion of predictability

and flexibility in the workplace and partners working with the team to say, okay, what nights do you need off or mornings do you want to go to yoga or whatever? We will have a coverage strategy on the team so that people can get what they need. Or we would have zip code dinners where partners in different locations would take out, just open it up to say, okay, here you go. And Deloitte provided the allowance to buy pizzas or what have you. So I think that there's this idea and it's hard work to be able to engage your employees in what makes them thrive. You know, it's leading the hearts and minds, as I like to call it, and finding out what motivates people. And everyone's kind of different. So, there's kind of an application there of

trying to find out what motivates individuals and get them to work together. But yeah, I think i realized just have an epiphany in talking to you that you know we need to go back to the old way because i'm i'm seeing a lot of depression you know a lot of a lot of a lot of issues people have a social anxiety and you're just like you know i've had people say we don't want to come out because we're going to meet strangers i'm like you you hang out out with strangers at Walmart and the gas station like every day. You used to be in the office and, you know, a lot of the people in the office might be strangers, depending on the size of your company. But what the hell's going on?

I mean, it's almost a loss of skill set. Yeah, I think that there is a lot of lost opportunity for learning and development and for building skills, both social and technical skills in organizations. We've almost dismissed that as a right for an employee to grow their own career. All skill development has mostly been done now on the web rather than really investing. Companies are asking people to adopt AI and not providing the time or the direction on how do you use these new technologies. The other part of this is a reality, Chris, which is that in the world, mental health is costing us, or low productivity due to employee burnout is costing us $322 billion. Now, on top of that, and this is even more staggering, is that lost productivity annually due to low employee engagement is costing $8.8 trillion. Now that is Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft combined on an

annual basis. So the notion that you're talking about of root cause of psychological safety, of investment in me, my work, creating an environment where I can thrive, asking my opinion. All of these things really are critical to building the society that exists within our companies. I live in Seattle. If you go downtown Seattle, Amazon has done a spectacular job at investing in Seattle, investing in community. It is a society unto itself, the campus down there. What you need in thriving societies is both this idea of bonding capital, being able to have something that binds us purpose and living up to that purpose and then bridging capital how do we create innovation across our differences yeah i mean you've got to have a purpose and people have to be bought have

to buy into that purpose as well. Leaders need to live up to it, right? And they're being examined very closely. Yeah, it's, I mean, what's the old line? But basically people look to the leader for representation of how to behave, you know, a lot of companies will do the PR thing and they'll be like, we're a moral, trustworthy organization. And then the leadership will act in a complete opposite of you. Like you can't PR your way to morals and ethics and, and you know, people see, people see stuff. It's kind of amazing how sometimes I'll be like, I'll be like, wait, you do as I say, and don't say as I do, you know, that sort of thing.

That's right. What are some other aspects of the book that we should tease out to people? Yeah, I think that we, a couple of other things certainly around the, you know, it to grow your career and because we have this great purpose and mission and that attracts you to us. And to your point earlier, most companies' insides don't match their outsides. They have great purpose and goals and strategies, and yet they're not living up to those. And so the disillusionment of employees is something that really has surprised us. And which is leading to this they simply don't find purpose in the work that they're doing because the organization isn't living up to its purpose. I think that this notion, again, of agency is critically important. Agency in two forms. One is, you know, I would

like a say in how, when, where I work, make it project-based so that I can get the work done wherever I can and fits within my life. And the other is agency and defining myself in my own words. And I think that that's a really interesting one. Many organizations, especially with this backlash of DEI, certainly in this country, which is, in my opinion, offensive, but is that we don't allow, we categorize humans at work. We categorize them either by their job title, by their competency set, the color of their skin, their gender, or their sexual orientation. Many people, and you probably feel this way as I do, I don't like being put in a box. What I would like is the agency to define myself in my own words and not have a bunch of assumptions

made around that. And so this notion that people talk about of agency is important. Yeah. I mean, people need to feel fulfilled. They need to feel like they're a part of the big game. And I can now see why remote working needs to die. I've been shocked at how hard it is to get people out to events and people telling me they're afraid to come out. And I'm like, it's not a prison yard you're not going to get shanked and and they're they're telling me they have social anxiety and you're like you go you go to the mall with 5 000 people and you go to the you go to the you know you go to the grocery store you're with 5 000 people you get shanked there if you you know i always get

shanked in the pop aisle for you know know, a pack of Snickers or something. I think it's different, Chris. I think that, you know, I think that when I go to the grocery store or if I go to a mall, I'm in control. And I am in control of my surroundings. I know what I'm going for. I can go right there. The question I think that's most important to ask is, and this is where insatiable curiosity comes in, is what's really going on for this person? Rather than we tend to

jump to a set of assumptions or judgments because we're not feeling this way or that's not our experience. I mean, this happens all the time. And the reality is that that judgment does nothing for a human being other than further entrench them in feeling ostracized. What we need to do is lean in and learn as much as we can in terms of what that individual is willing to share with us and feeling safe to of what's really going on and how can we help them. This is where the whole narrative around trust becomes so critically important between managers, leaders, and their employees. I mean, trust, like I said, is at an all-time low. Only 62% of people around the world trust their leaders. Now, 62% might sound very high to you, but put in context that the makeup of that 62%

includes China, UAE, and some other countries where you cannot not say that you don't trust your leaders, right? So when you look at, you know, European or Western countries, that number drops to the 40s. Wow. And listen, if I don't trust you, I'm not going to come out and hang out with you. That's true. And like you say, you're under control. You know, it just seems like people have social anxiety, a fear of coming out. And I can see how that's probably impacted because they're also not going to work.

They're staying at home. And there is a lot of depression that comes. You know, I've been working from home since, what, 2004? There is issues you deal with, especially, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, you know, you deal with depression. I was counseling an entrepreneur last night on, you know, being alone, depressed, being an entrepreneur, the isolation, you know, it can be hard to deal with. That's why you develop six personalities and you talk to yourself. You know, as I said earlier, the, you know, the evidence is irrefutable in terms of what you're saying.

I mean, one in five individuals feel lonely. Now, I think that that is, you know, we learned to be lonely and the fear of war or polarization or extreme judgment or, you know, just fear in being in society with the tremendous addiction to violence that we have in this country, certainly, it is scary to go out and to be vulnerable. And so, I think that's real. Now, that doesn't mean, though, Chris, that people who are, you know, at work or working at home can't be incredibly productive. You know, I mean, listen, I, you know, was a survivor of 9-11. I was in the buildings after 9-11 and I suffered, you know, terrible PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Those were probably the strongest producing years I had as a consultant afterwards. The 10 years after that, you know, because I compartmentalized it

all. I just put that all in a little box, shoved it to the back of my head, acknowledged it when it came out, but boy, did I work hard through that. Now it wasn't until somebody said, and there was a circumstance where I, you know, couldn't keep it compartmentalized anymore. And I talked about it and that was very freeing for other reasons. My point is that we can't assume because people are working at home and having struggles that they're not productive or engaged at work. But what we, what we do have to do is have the awareness, empathy, and, you know and it's our obligation as leaders to have enough conversations with people who aren't sitting next to us to really understand the context

in which they are working and what can we do to help. Definitely. I mean, it's a changing environment, changing world. Not all the old stick stuff works anymore. You got to have the carrot. You got to, you know, inspire hearts and minds. You got to move people and make them feel like you mentioned, the four pillars there of the purpose, the agency, the wellness, the connection. Make sure they do it.

Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot coms, Christy, so that people can find you on the interwebs. Sure. So for the book, you can go to smith-monaghan.com and you'll be able to purchase the book through your local bookstores or bulk buys there as well. And then my company's name is called thehumanitystudio.com. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Christy. We really appreciate it.

All right. It's been a pleasure, Chris. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Chrissy. We really appreciate it. Alright, it's been a pleasure, Chris. Thank you so much. Thank you. And order of the book, folks, wherever fine books are sold, it's called Essential. How distributed teams, generative AI, and global shifts are creating a new human-powered

leadership. Thanks for joining us, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfast, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfast, chrisfast1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the Internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out.