Pod Insights Vision Pros Live Podcast Why Smart Leaders Are Failing in the Age of AI Ft. Michael de Lisser About this episode Most leaders think AI is the problem. They’re wrong. The real issue is how they think, communicate, and lead. In this episode of Vision Pros Live, Michael de Lisser shares why even smart leaders are falling behind, and what it actually takes to stay effective and relevant in the age of AI. You’ll learn:- Leadership habits you must unlearn to grow faster- From busy to effective: the shift that changes everything- Why communication is now the most critical leadership skill- The hidden damage multitasking is doing to your performance- How companies unintentionally set leaders up to fail- Why self-awareness is the key to career acceleration Follow and subscribe for more conversations with top leaders and entrepreneurs:https://www.youtube.com/@VisionProsLiveFollow and learn more about Michael de Lisser:https://visionproslive.com/vision-pros-podcast-episode-michael-delisser#Leadership #AI #BusinessGrowth #VisionProsLive
Transcript 10,490 words · 2 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 So we are going to dive in hot and heavy on why smart leaders, I'm talking about great leaders are failing in this age of AI. There's so much that can be done about this. I got Michael Delissier in the house to talk about it. We're going to hit hard and fast on this, Michael. Let's drop some bombs on it. Why are smart leaders failing right now in this new age of AI?
0:20 Speaker 01 Because they are not recognizing that the, there's been kind of a big shift in what's going to cause their success in the future. Right? And so AI is replacing a lot of what we do technically. And because of that, you are going to need to be stronger in communication skills to make yourself stand out. Or leadership skills or your ability to get things done through others. So all of those things that AI are not, is not yet capable of doing well. Uh, are the things that are going to make people stand out. So even if you were hired into your role and you've moved through your career because of your technical expertise. You have to, in your mind, expect that more and more of your technical expertise will be replaced by either technology advances or AI.
1:04 Speaker 01 And what's really going to make you stand out is your communication skills, your ability to, to make other people feel valued. And your ability to get results through others. And so if you don't make the shift to investing in yourself that way. You're going to set yourself up for failure. And I've seen that happen with many people where they, they, they peak out as high as their technical skills can get. And then they end up having career failures after that.
1:26 Speaker 00 Guys, this is huge. I want to drop one of the biggest value bombs that you can overlook very fast. The funny thing, you can solve this for yourself in such a big way and have a huge head start in the market because it's not a matter of the market not being able to do it. It's a matter of if you don't learn it, it's going to absolutely hold you back. So staying effective and relevant in the age of AI. You already have the ability. You just got to step into better leadership. You've got to step into better communication and figure out how do I communicate with AI well, but I feel so bad for the people who never get to hear this. Because there's, there's going to be people 10, 15, 20 years from now who feel like AI has undermined them. They've replaced them. They don't know what to do with it. They don't know how, guys, if you're in a
2:10 Speaker 00 Room full of people who are panicking and you happen to be the one who has a secret that oh there's false alarm. There's nothing wrong. Um, then you already have an amazing head start on everybody else. And that's one thing I want to give to you right now is you do have the leadership skills and the humanity within yourself to win. But let's dive into some deeper level aspects of that too. So again, thank you, Michael for being here. Um, we've had a fun time getting to know each other and our leadership backgrounds and different aspects about leadership. It was fun to evaluate you and your business and your wife's relationship too. And all the different things that made me go, you know what? Is this guy really a leader? Is this guy somebody I want to talk to? My friends, visionaries, he obviously is, otherwise I wouldn't have brought him in today. I wouldn't have brought all that up. But staying effective and relevant in the age
2:52 Speaker 00 of AI. Feel free to speak against my truth on that, Michael, or feel free to speak more to it.
2:58 Speaker 01 No, I'd like to add to it. I'll add one point to it. And that is that, uh, you know, there's a great quote that I love. It was from a Harvard professor. I can't remember the name of the professor, but basically the quote was you, your job will not be replaced by AI. It's more likely to be replaced. Sorry, let me rephrase that. You're, you don't have to worry about your job being replaced by AI. What you need to worry about is you being replaced by someone who's using AI better than you are, right? And so you have to acknowledge that AI is going to be part of our future. You have to leverage it as much as you can. And if you don't, you're going to be left behind. But, but knowing that we all have to do that, you, the, the differentiator is if you are
3:41 Speaker 01 working on your communication skills, because those are the things that the other people that are just focused on their technical skills will not be working on. And as their technical skills become less critical to their career success, that's when they get into trouble because they didn't work on the communication side.
3:56 Speaker 00 Huge. Guys, real world examples of this. The lumberjack who refused to put the axe down and pick up the chainsaw probably got replaced. The mathematician who refused to use a calculator and wanted to continue to stay with the chalkboard only. That's not saying you can't do old school things, but you've got to be aware of the tools that can help you be even more productive. Effective and efficient in what you do, AI is the chainsaw for being able to create content and learn things at a pace that we've never been able to do in human history. So, leadership habits that we must unlearn, this is one of the big, big things we're diving into right now. What are some of the leadership habits that we must unlearn in order to grow faster? And I'm going to say grow more abundantly.
4:41 Speaker 00 Sometimes growth fast results in a terrible plant, right? As soon as you want it to be abundant as well. So what are some of those things we need to unlearn, Michael?
4:49 Speaker 01 Well, there's a couple of things that come to mind initially, and I'll start with the one that you have to do first, which is you have to learn to be present. And so more and more leaders are multitasking all the time. And as a result of that, they're not learning from each experience as much. They're not being present for the people around them. They're also damaging their brains. And what a lot of people don't realize, you know, after this podcast, if you go out and do a search for brain damage and multitasking, you will see a ton of research that's very disturbing. And basically, what the research will tell you is we are training our brains to reduce its ability to stay focused for long periods of time. Every time you respond to a text, every time you respond to a tweet,
5:31 Speaker 01 or whatever it is you're responding to, the more that you condition yourself to respond to your phone, or whatever it is, the distraction, the more your brain gets focused on spending less and less time being able to do one thing, you know? And then next thing you know, you have a project where you need to stay focused for hours, and it's hard for you to stay focused for hours because you're looking for that stimulation. Interestingly, the same stimulation that gets activated in your brain if you were about to be attacked by a tiger, is the same stimulation that happens when you see a beep on your phone that tells you you have an incoming message or something like that. It's the same part of the brain. And so we become conditioned to constantly respond to all the stimuli around us. And in the process of that, you're sending a message to the person right in front of you in the room with you.
6:16 Speaker 01 And that message is you're not important enough for my full attention. And so that's, that's a bad message to be sending. But in addition, you're, you're hurting your own ability to stay focused. And over time, you will get less and less able to do that.
6:28 Speaker 00 I'm gonna play devil's advocate, angels advocate on this one.
6:32 Speaker 01 Sure.
6:32 Speaker 00 I disagree. But I don't disagree in the extent that like, let's unfriend each other. Um, right. There's, there's an opportunity to explore this further. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take the time to do that study. And I'm gonna combine it with several other studies that create more nuance for all of us. Because I honestly, Michael, I think the rest of most of the world is stuck in singular mode. And they're not, they're not multitasking appropriately. Maybe they are multitasking this under, but I think no, I think most people are lackadaisically going through life too, too shallowly. And they could use a little bit of multitask. I am a huge multitasker. And so my friends in 15, 20, 30 years, maybe look back, maybe my brain is gone. It's, it's possible. I could be
7:15 Speaker 00 wrong on this. But my friends, there's a giant difference in like, I'm writing notes while I'm talking to Michael, while hosting a show, and preparing for different segments. That's multitasking. But it's intentional, purpose driven, and present. All, all of those activities. I can see how somebody who lackadaisically doesn't really want to listen to you. I think of a teenager, and he's like, on their phone, doing something completely different, and not really engaged in either activity of that could hurt. But I also know there's studies out there that talk about, and Vince Perry, just came on the show recently, he talked about how people who retire, oftentimes end up getting dementia
7:57 Speaker 00 more often than those who, who stay proactively involved in something because they let their brain relax too much. And they're not using the, the capacity, they're not exercising it the way that they were exercising it previously. So again, I'm gonna play devil's advocate. I'm gonna do some research on it to see what's there. Because at the end of the day, I think, I don't think, I don't think you're villainizing multitasking. As much as you're helping us again, remember to be present with a purpose. And I think this is gonna take a longer study than we'll be able to do on the show. But feel free to, to hit back on us, Michael. Go ahead.
8:29 Speaker 01 On that and so we all have to multitask in some cases it will make us more effective. You know, like to your point, taking notes while I'm talking to you is giving you an opportunity to hold on to something for later or remember it or even bring it up later. Right. So that's, that's, but it's, it's helping you towards the purpose of the podcast. Right. Right. What I'm talking about is the people that are scattered all over the place that, that are responding to weather alerts or sports alerts or whatever else on their phone while they're in the middle of an engaged conversation with others. Right. And when they're doing those things, what I'm an advocate for is shutting down all the multitasking that isn't value added so that your brain isn't constantly being thrown into multitask mode.
9:11 Speaker 01 You can multitask at times and, and look in our jobs, we will have to. Like if I'm sitting there and I'm, I'm doing a workshop, I have to be able to respond to the person, but be thinking about how I'm gonna go, you know, with what the next thing is on the agenda or getting back on target. So there's multitasking and look, there are some research that will show you that people that have ADHD actually have found that if they have like music in the background, it helps their brain focus more. It's the type of multitasking you do and the extent to which you're doing it. That's when it really starts to damage you and damage relationships more than anything. Because which by the way, the second point I was going to make is after multitasking is your ability to demonstrate learning agility is critical.
9:56 Speaker 01 Right. And so if you are doing all these other things, you're not in the moment. You're missing opportunities to learn from the experience you're in. And so what I challenge people to do is one way to slow down their multitasking or get themselves more focused is to go into every conversation with an intention of coming away with at least three things they can learn. And if you go in with that intention, you're, you're looking for the opportunities to learn as opposed to looking at your phone and, and looking at texts or whatever else. And it's hard to learn something in the moment if you're doing something else. Right. So, so if your multitasking is around creating an outcome that.
10:34 Speaker 01 That is going to be better for you. It could be beneficial. I'm just saying when you do it as a practice too much, it's going to hurt you.
10:41 Speaker 00 Huge. So some of you guys listening in, if you're, if you're short sighted as a leader, you'd think that I closed my mind to what Michael's talking about. But if you're more advanced as a leader, you realize, oh, no, I'm digging in to see how does this apply to my world intentionally. So I'm glad you mentioned that, Michael, because again, and I hope that I'm going to be team multitasking, like 100%. Like I don't see it as a have to, I see it as a get to. And it's part of, part of being a musician, as well as like not constantly doing stuff. But you were right. If we're not, if I'm not careful with that superpower, not only can it damage myself, it can damage my relationships, especially on the relationship side. As soon as you said that, I was like, crap. That's like a check move on your part for me. So I'm
11:23 Speaker 00 going to write that guide. I'm going to use Claude to help me do that. I'll ask for your response on it. Of course, I'm looking forward to collaboration. And then if you want to write like a guide too, to be like, well, here's his guide, but here's mine. Man, that would be so cool to see like, where can we go to the depths? Because this is about exploring perspective. And that's also one of the elements, my friends, that we have to unlearn the nasty trait of, and I hate this quote, it's, um, um, strong opinions loosely held. I absolutely hate that quote. I changed it. It's for me, it's strong opinions delicately held. I would never hold my child loosely, ever. I would never hold my opinion loosely, but I can hold it delicately. And I can allow other people to hold that opinion as well. And I can make space for
12:08 Speaker 00 others' opinions. So the un, the unlearning, the habit of, of overconfidence, of feeling the need to justify our beliefs and to say, you know what? No, I don't want to hear your perspective. I already have mine. Like, no, no, no, I, we, we need to be able to explore perspectives that are not our own. So let's move into another topic. We can come back to that if we want to, but I want to make sure we get through all of the, the depth that we can. And guys, if you want to connect with Michael Delister on LinkedIn or myself, by all means, connect directly with us. You can continue the conversation where we ended up leaving things unfinished. So from busy to effective, the shift that changes everything. Busy is broke, my friends. I love that quote. On the other hand, busy is broke. We've got to learn to be productive and effective at what we do. Michael, let's hear it.
12:54 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, one of the few things in life that I'm trying to live the most is living by the 80/20 rule, right? And the idea that, you know, of 100% of the things we could be working on, only 20% of them are going to have 80% of the results, right? And this, and if, you know, there's a lot of research that shows, you know, 20% of your products are going to produce 80% of your income, you know, and you could go down the list in all different industries. But to this point, if you want to be effective as a leader, you have to be constantly looking at how are you spending your time? And is it on those 20% of the things that are going to produce your 80% of your results as a leader, for your team, for your organization? And for me, I'm constantly challenging myself to
13:35 Speaker 01 look at how I'm spending my time and realizing, you know, is this the most effective way to use my time? Probably not, you know, so I need to be doing something else. But if we're not stopping and doing that, that's the value of having daily goals, right? And prioritizing them. So you focus on the two or three that have the biggest value as opposed to just working on whatever you, you know, feel comfortable working on.
13:57 Speaker 00 I want to take that to the next, next level. You crushed it. But instead of saying, am I spending my time on the most valuable things? Not only do I do that, I put my team involved in that conversation. I open my heart and mind to what do they say about how I'm spending my time? And I have to be ultra vulnerable to be able to do that. Dr. Peter Drucker talks about this in his book, Effective Executive, Chapter Know Thy Time, one of the most important chapters for visionaries to ever read and understand in their life. He says, before you assign your executive assistant to track your time minute by minute, you have to promise yourself not to fire them. Because you're going to be so mind boggled by how much time you waste on a daily basis by somebody tracking what
14:39 Speaker 00 it is that you're doing. It is so important to get third party feedback, because if I'm sitting here saying, oh, well, I think I can be better here and there, we are way too soft or way too critical on ourselves. It's very hard to balance that spectrum. But we can include other people on that, you know, not just a coach, but also our team members on that process. We can create the best life possible for ourselves by doing it. I'm not talking about grinding and hustling, my friends. I'm talking about Having an evaluation of am I getting the sleep that I need? Do I have the rest that I need? Am I showing up and doing the right types of work for the day? That 20% rule is huge and having somebody help us expose where our time is going. That's isn't that the one research we resource that we can't get back? The one resource that like no, nobody can buy my time.
15:24 Speaker 00 I'm sorry, I'm not an hourly, I'm not a prostitute. I won't, I won't put myself out there for business like that. Because why? If I'm giving you my time, I'm giving you the only resource that I'm not ever going to get back. And so it's something that I cherish that much. Michael, feel free to dive in deeper on this.
15:41 Speaker 01 Well, I early in my career, I worked for a couple of different management consulting companies that went in and helped organizations look at how they're spending their time. Right? And one of the, the interesting distinctions that people need to be thinking about as they're thinking about how they spend their time. There's obvious lost time and then there's hidden lost time. Right? So with obvious lost time, it's I'm just not doing anything productive right now. Or, you know, my machine is down or whatever's going on, but you're just not getting anything done.
16:08 Speaker 00 Watching the news.
16:09 Speaker 01 Right, exactly. The hidden lost time is the really challenging one to identify. For example, I'm sitting here and I'm creating a case study for a training I'm going to develop. And I'm creating it by hand. It looks like I'm being productive, but if I'm not using AI to create that case study and getting it done much quicker, then it's not productive time. It's lost, it's, it's hidden lost time because I'm using an ineffective means of doing it. That's where that 80 20 rule, it also comes into the how you're doing it. Are you doing it the way you've always done it? Or are you looking for ways to find more efficient ways to get it done so that you can take the same job and turn it into a half the time job? Right?
16:48 Speaker 00 Correct, I love it. And, and the double down yet again, can we, can we delegate that task out as well to somebody who may not be able to do? And I, I, I hear so many entrepreneurs say this, that they just can't do it as well as me. I'm like, cool, congratulations. You want a cookie? I'm like, why don't you teach them how to do it as well as you? Why don't you develop them and help them learn how to do it so that you can move on to other things? When we take that, that, that egocentric precedence of like, well, I'm the only one who can do it this well. Cool, stay that way for life if you want to, or learn to empower other people. And also learn like what Bill Gates said, I give him credit every time because I think it was him. But he said, if somebody's willing to give 5%.
17:33 Speaker 00 Don't push them to give a hundred percent. Allow them to give the five percent. It's five percent you wouldn't otherwise have. And so we've got to learn to be more appreciative of people where they're at. And back to relationships, if we don't, it rubs off on our personal relationships, too. Next subject, communication is now the most critical leadership skill. So it already said, why? I think most of us have, if we're listening to a podcast, we understand the value of communication for heaven's sake. But communication being the, um, the most critical leadership skill. Let's talk about three ways to improve immediately in relation to our, our communication. I might give an example, but I'd love to hear a couple from you as well, Michael.
18:14 Speaker 01 You know, I'll start with increasing your self-awareness is, is number one for sure. And, and I say that because, um, and you and I've talked about this previously, but when I was a teenager, I watched my dad coaching executives that had been fired from Fortune 100 companies. And almost every one of them had been fired based on communication skills or lack thereof. Right? And so, and, and throughout my career, I keep seeing the same thing over and over. People develop habits about communicating when they're in their families, growing up, you know, and they bring those habits into the workplace. If it's an effective habit, great, leverage the heck out of it. If it's an ineffective habit, you need to know that you're doing that because it's going to create different, it's going to cause difficulty for you to connect with people and have them feel like, you know, you value them.
18:57 Speaker 01 So, uh, a lot of the things I do with is helping people recognize what are the few interpersonal habits they have that cause others to be kind of turned off by what they're saying or not, you know, feel like they're being valued. It could be interrupting others. It could be finishing other people's sentences. It could be, uh, you know, multitasking.
19:16 Speaker 00 Guilty.
19:17 Speaker 01 Go ahead. Oh, you're guilty. Yeah.
19:18 Speaker 00 Guilty. Keep going.
19:20 Speaker 01 I have a list of about 15 that I've seen most common that people use. And I could easily say I, I've done all of them at one time or another. The key is, are you aware of the one or two, going back to the 80/20 rule, that are having the 80% of the impact on your relationships? If you can figure out the one or two things you do that if you stop doing those habits, then it can have a big impact on, on your relationships, uh, if you start with those two.
19:50 Speaker 00 I'm excited about if you can take your pen for me, Michael, like this real quick. And and just give me a mic drop moment. You won the battle on the three things. That was brilliant. I would love to have that list of 15 as well. That would mean the world to me. And so if you can, if you can share that with us after the fact or in the comments, feel free to. But like, yes, I want to see this list because I want to actively develop it. My friends. Self-awareness is not something I probably would have said about this reality, but it's like I said, mic drop moment like. Even though it's not direct communication with others, if you can't communicate effectively with yourself. You can't communicate well with others and self-awareness is one of those things where. We're all self-aware and maybe some of you are like, I'm already self-aware.
20:31 Speaker 00 That's not the answer, right? Anybody can see their hand is self-aware to it to an extent. Or it can fill your hand at least, but. What if you instead change your perspective, all of you right now, pause our podcast, can't pause it, we're live. You know what I mean? And go to AI and say, where am I not self-aware? Can you give me a little quiz? AI will create a brilliant quiz for you that can help you and I'm not selling you. Don't replace your therapist, don't replace your coaches. People are important too, but. This can amplify things in a new way for you. Make sure to tap into the tools and use it that way. How can we ask ourselves all the time, be vulnerable to say, where am I not X? Where can I improve with this? So, so helpful. So self-evaluation, all of that self-awareness. All of those my next level self-evaluation. Go ahead, Michael.
21:16 Speaker 01 Well, I was just gonna say that, I mean, there's a lot of research that suggests and I'm trying to think of. Tasha, I'm driving up, it's a, I believe it's a Harvard professor, but she had a great, great bit of research. She talked about how only about 95% of people, if you ask them, think they're self-aware, but only about 15%. 10 to 15% actually are. And so, you know, that in itself should wake up everybody and say, am I or am I not? And then the other piece of it is, how are you defining self-awareness? Because there's self-perception and there's self-awareness. Self-perception is what I believe about myself. Self-awareness is when you get other people to verify that what you believe about yourself is true. And so when you get that confirmation from others, that's when you get true self-awareness.
22:00 Speaker 01 And so a lot of times we're walking around with these self-perceptions that cause us to think we're better at something. Or think that we're not so good at something. When you incorporate the, you know, feedback from others, you start to realize that maybe your self-perception is off.
22:15 Speaker 00 Your intentionality is inspiring. I'm an extremely intentional individual, yet there's always levels where you can learn new things and see the connection. And when you can see the connection at that level, it allows you to start playing the game of communication that much better. And so, other, other, one other way that we can improve immediately in our communication model, we've made self-awareness, we've also talked about self-evaluation, and we now understand, now I understand self-perception as a difference from self-awareness. That is really cool and fun. What's one more? Let's go, let's go deeper.
22:51 Speaker 01 I would say another big one is learning to connect the dots for people. So in other words, a lot of times we spend time saying, here's what I need you to do, here's how I need you to do it, here's who I need you to do it with, but we don't spend the time on the why. And so, when you forget the why, you're missing an opportunity to help a person connect to purpose. So if you think about it, you know, I'm doing a job and you're saying, I need you to do this. And I'm like, all right, I'll do it. But I'm not very motivated to do it because I don't really understand. But if you say, I need you to do it, because when we do this well, this is how it impacts our customers. This is how it impacts our organizational health. This is how it does all these different things. And I find very frequently leaders forget to add
23:34 Speaker 01 the why. And the why is what causes people to give additional discretionary effort. It makes them go above and beyond, when you can help them feel like what they're doing connects to the bigger picture, and is having an impact on the bigger picture. So I would say, you know, more often than not, a lot of leaders get to where they are because they're very good at getting things done. But if they just slow down and take a moment to get other people on board with why we're trying to get that done, it can have a dramatic impact on people's excitement to even do it, and get more discretionary effort out of them.
24:08 Speaker 00 My friends, I'm a living, breathing example of this. I'm a huge fan of why. I don't agree with Simon Sinek to start with why, because I believe that to start with who empowers us to really maximize that why I wouldn't have cared about his book if I didn't care about who he was. But they go hand in hand. They're right there, almost the same note on the scale. The reason why I'm bringing this up, I'm not even something selfish. For those of us who are high nurture, high healer and big on whys, Michael, I find that there's some people that I would like to relate to better that hate when I dive into the why. Or they get antsy and they feel like, can we just get the work done? You know, like, and in the transactional business world,
24:49 Speaker 00 a lot of those people are so separated from the value of why that there's almost like a polarizing like we don't get each other. And so my next question for you on that, for people like me, how do we maybe let go of the need to talk about the why? Maybe inherently recognize that maybe they intentionally already value what that is? And what do we move towards in order to inspire somebody who just isn't feeling the why?
25:17 Speaker 01 You know, where we're going now is down the road of personality needs, you know, and when I say that is, you know, most personality tools are all based on the work of Carl Jung and it's, and it's, there's four distinctive types and it gets into those four questions that we talked about. If you're interested in the how, you're probably a more structured person. If you're interested in the what, you're probably more of a results driven person. If you're interested in the who, you probably lead with a people driven energy. And if you're interested in the why, then you probably really, it's important for you to feel connection between purpose and what you do, right? Now, what I tell leaders, all leaders are stronger in one of those four things than the others and usually weaker in one of the four. But I work with leadership teams all the time.
26:02 Speaker 01 People get to the top of their organizations because they're really good at the what.
26:07 Speaker 01 But if they want to be successful, if they don't get people on board, then they end up having more problems in getting the what done and getting it done the way they want it. Because they're so focused on the task, they're forgetting about the people's side of change. And that's why most changes fail is because people forget that it's not just about do you have a good plan? And a good way of getting it done, it's about did you get people behind the move? So if you lead more with the why, I would encourage you to say, okay, how do I focus more on the other three questions? To make sure, because for any good result, you need to engage all four questions to make sure that you're meeting all the needs of all the different personalities.
26:52 Speaker 01 And I will tell you, the teams that recognize and have self-awareness around where they're strong, if they're really strong at defining the what and the why, if they could just build up their ability to understand the who and the why, or the other pieces of it, they would be much better at what they're doing. So it's really about recognizing that we need to meet all four of those needs. And whichever one we're strongest in is important to tone that down a little. Whichever one we're weakest in, it's important to tone it up.
27:23 Speaker 00 That is genius level of feedback. My friends, you guys know, I've got over 2,500 guests on this show. And if you were to compare the visionaries who are articulated and helping us move forward with our visions to taxi drivers, Michael is like the most efficient taxi driver I've had on this show in a long time. And so I'm very grateful for it. Guys, we've read, two things have maximized my life already in this that are like, whoa, world changing. One is that self-perceptions versus self-awareness. I had not thought about that from that angle. And two, now he's just unlocked a super secret code for me, not secret, super unknown code for me though, on how to help my team members better relate and clients and prospects and everybody I'm trying to work with in my realm.
28:08 Speaker 00 I can now do some better research on that reality and unpack more growth for myself. I can also work as hard as I can to recruit Michael Delissey to be my partner. By my side as much as possible. That's the next level that all of us should be looking at. We're going to talk about how companies unintentionally set leaders up to fail. And how we, again, as the leaders, often do that to other leaders. If we can figure out where we're going wrong, and then we can figure out where we're going right with that, that's going to help tremendously. So we're going to come back from a little break. We're going to dive into how companies are setting leaderships up for failure on accident and how we can overcome that. All right. Welcome into Vision Pros Live. With Jackson Callum, I'm your show host.
28:48 Speaker 00 We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there.
29:03 Speaker 00 Guys, Michael Delissier is blowing my mind currently in this episode on why smart leaders are failing in the age of AI and what we can do to resolve it. My friends, everything that we can do to improve our ability to lead is going to help impact other people's ability to catch the vision of what we're up to, which is what this is all about. Before I bring Michael back on, I want to blow your mind a little bit further and give you other opportunities in the world as well. One of them is with AI Mavericks. I have been so impressed with Austin Armstrong and how he leads. And Scott Simpson, I personally purchased a membership to AI Mavericks because they are on the cutting edge of all things AI and they're constantly exploring new tools and new ways to use it. And I want to be on the cutting edge, but I don't want to have to wake up every day and be like, oh my gosh, I gotta figure it out. Like, I'm just not that obsessed, but they are.
29:48 Speaker 00 And so I pay 60 bucks a month to be part of this and I'd love to see you guys come in and join us, learn from some of the world's best experts. What is on the cutting edge? And my friends, be careful because when you go on to the cutting edge, there's a reason it's called cutting edge. You can put your brand in a very seriously dangerous position. So, yes, let's explore AI. It is the nuclear bomb of communication and nuclear energy, rather, of communication. You use it for good, you use it for bad. Let's make sure they're really into it as well as possible. And that's where the AI marketplace comes in. So our program is called the AI marketplace. We do compete with, if you want to say, AI Mavericks, but I see it more as a collaboration. That's why I put them up there as a sponsor. They didn't pay me for that. I just love it and I love to provide other visionaries what we use to succeed.
30:31 Speaker 00 So the AI marketplace is designed for professionals and business owners to recognize your gaps where you're already great with AI. It's not about being basic with AI. It's about learning the fundamentals of using the tools and maximizing them for your growth. And most people think it's going to replace him. My friends, let me ruin the ending for you. It is not going to replace you if you learn to use it appropriately. And so come and join us on the AI marketplace. We've got the AI exchange on Tuesdays with it. We've got a membership fifty dollars a month or five hundred dollars. One time act, one time fee for lifetime access as a founding member. We're going to do that for the first fifty who join us. But you'll also notice that there's a button that says, apply for a grant. Get free access. I don't want anybody limited in the new world of AI.
31:16 Speaker 00 I want you all to have access to be able to move forward with us. So you can apply for the grant if you want it for free. You can invest in the membership level that will help us take things to even greater heights as well. You can tell other people about it. If you have friends and family that have been scared of AI or that don't know how they fit into AI or how to use it super, super well. For what is they do? It is time to help them find a resource that is going to help them. Learn to set their foundation the right way and build with AI appropriately. We want productive AI. We want profitable AI. I don't care how many images you can create with a banana. That's never going to help you win in business. We've got to learn how to use AI in a productive fashion. Then there's the water project. If I'm going to rock this mic and we're going to listen to these episodes, my friends. I hope that we take the time to make sure that our heart and mind is tuned in to the people who need it most.
32:00 Speaker 00 I'm talking about people who don't even have access to this podcast. People who don't have access to clean drinking water that most of us get to take for granted every single day. These, uh, these children, these families, you can imagine the time that it takes away from their ability to build their lives when they have to leave school to go find an unknown source of water for their friends, their family, their loved ones. Or the parents and how, how can they keep their jobs? If they have to leave and go find water, let alone food and everything else. The water project is one of the most transparent causes that I've ever seen, which is why I love and support it. I get to give to any community that I choose and I get to see the. Outcome of what I give, whether I give $10 or $20, or I give $2,000 or $2 million. My friends, these kids celebrate water like my kids celebrate Christmas Day.
32:46 Speaker 00 That is something that is so humbling that again, I hope I don't bring you to tears, but I hope we're bringing you to action. I hope that you will share this with friends or family. If you don't have the financial means to give back, that's okay. You never know who you'll share this with that might end up funding several of these cities for generations. So let's lean in and try to help with that. My friends, there's eight billion people who need help in this world. Let's join forces. If you know of other causes, drop the cause in the comments. I'll personally take a look at it. See if it's something that I can lean and support financially, or see if it's something we can also bring on the show as well and talk about. You never know how far the ripple effect will go of just sharing something like this with others. So I hope you join me on that.
33:24 Speaker 00 We're going to go back to helping every single one of you with your projects, though, and your visions. Again, Michael Delissier, it is an absolute honor to have you on the show, man. You've been crushing it.
33:33 Speaker 01 Thank you for having me. I love doing anything I can to help the world become a little bit better at whatever they do, whether it be, you know, improve their relationships and results is what I'm all about. So.
33:44 Speaker 00 I see it. I feel it. I love it. So how are companies currently, Michael, unintentionally setting their leaders up to fail?
33:53 Speaker 01 Well, I could, I can label it in two words or three words, the Peter Principle, right? But let me, let me give you some examples of, and this has been going on for decades, decades, right? The Peter Principle suggests that we promote people to their highest level of incompetence, not competence, but incompetence. And here's how it works. You have a team of people who are all individual contributors. They end up promoting a person from that team to be the manager of the team. Who do they pick? They pick the person who's technically best at doing that work usually, right? They look at everyone like, oh, this person is better than the others at doing that work. So we promote them to a leadership role. However, once they get to the leadership role, their technical expertise becomes less critical to their success because being a leader
34:39 Speaker 01 requires a completely different set of competencies. It's about getting results for others. It's about making people feel valued. It's about bringing out the strengths of others and giving everyone an opportunity to be heard and feel like they're valued. So what happens is you can get through your first couple promotions without really working on your communication skills and you might do okay. But essentially, the reason companies are setting up people to fail is they keep promoting them without providing them with the leadership communication skills training they need to be successful at each level. And with the Peter Principle, the higher you go in an organization, the more critical your communication skills become and the less critical your technical skills become because the people working for you are doing the technical work.
35:20 Speaker 01 So in a nutshell, I constantly see leaders at a very senior level that have hit a plateau and they're in danger of being fired because of something communication related. And it's because the companies did not invest in giving them opportunities to develop themselves. And if we're going to take responsibility for this, we didn't do it as well, right? If I got to that position and I didn't work on my communication skills, I'm just as responsible because I could have been doing that outside of work. But when companies, the first thing they do when they're having cutbacks, they cut training, you know, the first thing they do. So the challenge is companies don't see that communication skills as critical to success because it doesn't directly contribute to the what and the how, and it's more about the people side of it.
36:04 Speaker 01 So if companies can make that fix where they're making sure they're giving people the communication skills to be successful at each level, then they'll stop setting them up to fail.
36:15 Speaker 00 Oh, so, so powerful, so valuable. My friends, we all have an opportunity to lean into this. As Michael said, we don't need to wait on our companies to do the investment, but companies, holy crap, it would be wise to start investing in leadership development for your people. I'm going to use a very real world example of this. There's a debate going on about who's the GOAT in basketball. And you got LeBron James and you got Michael Jordan on this. Well, when's the last time somebody debated that, decided to showcase and look up, well, what about Michael Jordan's track record as an owner? How's he doing there? Let's go ahead and take a look. As an owner, where he is now no longer putting his technical skills to use. His win-loss record is 423 wins and 600 losses.
37:00 Speaker 00 He's got less than a 50% winning percentages. His playoff series record, he's 0 for 3. This guy was a phenomenal basketball player. I'm sorry, Michael. You're a great leader too, probably. But you're not winning championships. There's something that has not transitioned into his ownership status and those organizations. I'm not saying it's easy by any means. But my friends, the ability to transition from technically best to leadership best, that does not always correlate. You know, he's, his kids are never made it to the NBA. I don't even know if they really like basketball. LeBron's kid is playing by his side on the, on the Los Angeles Lakers. We'll see what happens when he becomes an owner.
37:43 Speaker 00 But I have a really strong feeling that that guy has mastered so much about communication and about leadership and about empowering others. Look at how often he's made fun of for his assists and not taking the last shot. But look at how many people he's empowered throughout that process as well. Again, the goat debate, whatever. You guys can already tell which side I'm on. But the point being, this applies to our leadership and our businesses as well. Are we actually developing our people? Are we investing in their growth? Are we giving them the time they need to develop? Are we holding their hand through the process of learning hard things? Are we allowing them to fail and make mistakes and celebrating the fact that they took the leap of faith to be able to do that? There are so many ways that we are unintentionally setting people up for failure.
38:28 Speaker 00 I'm going to lean on one more. The business world has become obsessed with quarterly expectations. What is expectations in the words of Shakespeare? The root of all heartache. No wonder why you hate going to the office. No wonder why you would dread going into work on Mondays and you're worried about what's going to come next. Because we're so obsessed with outcomes that we cannot control. And then we put people in a position where we say, well, we're going to give you 90 days on this or a whole year on this. And then we don't, then we are already start to undermine and question how well they're doing three to four weeks into it. We've got to have more grace. We can lean into aspirations without crossing the unhealthy line of expectation and entitlement.
39:13 Speaker 00 And we can empower leaders to realize that we've got your back long-term on this. We know success isn't going to be driven overnight if we're going to build long-term success. So be really, really careful and intentional with the word expectation. Because I see it eroding and undermining leadership from the start with almost every single new hire that companies are bringing in. Feel free to speak to that too, Michael.
39:36 Speaker 01 Well, and I'll go back to the Peter Principle idea, right? I mean, people are getting promoted based on their technical skills to a point, and then they're not getting developed the communication skills. Add to that, which has been happening for 50 years, super fast technology advances and AI. And it makes the Peter Principle happen much faster. Because it used to be you could get pretty high before your communication skills really hurt you. But now with your technical skills being replaced faster, it's becoming lower and lower in companies where people are really struggling. Because this whole thing about me not getting developed in the areas that are going to be success, lead to my success at the next level. Or me not taking ownership of doing that, that's what's really going to burn people.
40:21 Speaker 01 And it's happening at a faster rate now because technology is replacing a lot of the work we do much faster than it used to.
40:30 Speaker 00 Absolutely. Guys, we.
40:33 Speaker 00 We've got so much opportunity to lean into this. The reason why we're leaning in so hard is because almost nobody's leaning into leadership from a practice standpoint. They lean into it from a performance standpoint, but it is, it is a process of exercising. There are statistics that show that for every dollar that you spend on leadership development of your team, you get a $7 return, a 7:1 ratio would do so much for your business rather than just worrying about what are we organically posting or how are we marketing or advertising our brands? If we're not leaning into strengthening our leadership, we're missing the opportunity to lean into one of the most important ROI factors of our business. And it's not as simple as just saying like, okay, well, I'm a leader and you're a leader. Let's just put titles on people's heads.
41:17 Speaker 00 It's more, it is a daily practice opportunity. So there's ways to lean into that through what we do. There's ways to lean in and bring in people like Michael to help facilitate that. We're going to go back to the idea of self-awareness. We get is so important. There's so many angles that we can always be learning about it and why it's the key to career acceleration. Let's dive into the why, Michael, but let's also dive into a little bit further of the how. How can we dive further into self-awareness and help inspire our team members to do the same?
41:47 Speaker 01 You know, it's, it's really interesting that most people, to answer your question quickly, the, the single most important thing to increasing your self-awareness is to be constantly looking for feedback, right? And the, the challenge we have is that our egos get in the way, right? And so when I, when I think about what really allowed me to make a jump in my career, it was coming to the realization that the ideas I create on my own are never going to be as good as ideas when I incorporate the ideas of people that think differently from me, right? So I, I mean, I, I wrote a book recently and in that book, I know that I'm really good on the people's side of things. I'm really good with the why and the who.
42:29 Speaker 01 But I'm not good at structure and I'm not good at the results-driven piece as much like staying focused and minimizing the amount of information I'm giving. I went out of my way to find people that were strong in structure and strong in results-driven, you know, personality types. And they gave me a ton of feedback that I was not able to see because I had my blinders on how I see the world. That book became much, much more effective because I went out of my way to seek feedback from people that I knew would see it differently from me. And so when we go through life thinking, oh, I came up with an idea and I need to protect that idea. I will tell you in my lifetime, I've never once created a training that was as good as a training that I incorporated deliberately input from people that thought differently from me
43:14 Speaker 01 and people who were going to be in the audience, because those are the people that helped me break out of my own blinders. So if you're not constantly asking for feedback and you're not able to hear the feedback objectively, because a big piece of this is our egos get in the way and they, and they start to say, oh, well, you know, that's, I need to defend myself. No, actually, all feedback is a gift if you choose to do something with it to improve what you're working on. So it's really critical that we, we never lose sight of the fact that our self-awareness increases through continually asking for feedback, doing something with that feedback. And even if you don't agree with it, you can learn from the fact that the other person perceives it that way and you could still take action to overcome that perception.
43:59 Speaker 00 Oh, I love that. The, the blind spots that you just helped us see, you just helped us diagnose our own blind spot on it. And that's if we are resistant to feedback or we are not eagerly seeking feedback. Both of those are signs that we are not really stepping into our self-awareness, which is also a sign that we are going to join the ranks of the smart leaders who are failing in the age of AI. The beautiful opportunity is, my friends, when, and I will, I will add one caveat to this. I understand we've got, got to be careful to be, to have people around us who aren't just beating us up. And a lot of us grew up in societies or we have families or friends that are toxic in nature that create a sense that we have to self-deprecate in order to, to feel valuable.
44:43 Speaker 00 There's so much toxicity that exists in the world and most people aren't able to dive into a dynamic constructive feedback conversation.
44:52 Speaker 00 And so, looking at how can I start to dive into dynamic constructive feedback conversations? How can I find a room of people around me who will support me? And provide feedback in order to better my outcomes, in order to improve my life? Not people who are trying to destroy me. As Michael talked about, even the worst feedback that we receive from people can be a gift. If we're in a position to humbly and with strength receive it. But friends, look at, look at the leaders who are going to nurse you forward and that are going to give you feedback for the right reason. And lean in as heavily as possible, adopt them as new family members, if you will. But we've got to lean into feedback if we're going to maximize our self-awareness. And we're going to maximize visions that are going to help others.
45:36 Speaker 00 Michael, this is one of the most brilliant vision prose episodes we've ever had. As we wrap up, if this was your last chance to talk to a visionary audience about how to, and give them counsel or advice or wisdom? What would it be?
45:52 Speaker 01 It would be to learn as much as you can about your own strengths and weaknesses. And really focus on leveraging your strengths in particular. And why I say that is I've, I've done, I've been involved in giving 360 feedback for a number of people where they're getting feedback from their bosses and their peers. And to your point, you have to have variation of feedback. You can't just count on one person because if that person is perhaps toxic, then it could be hurting your ego, right? But for me, if you are really focusing on, I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought there. What was the first thing that I said?
46:28 Speaker 00 That's okay. You leaned into, we need to maximize our strengths and our, our knowledge and our strengths and our weaknesses.
46:35 Speaker 01 Yeah. So, so where I'm going with this is more often than not, when I get feedback, give, give people feedback in a 360 environment. The first thing they do is they focus on the weaknesses. Oh no, I have a weakness. I need to do something about it. No one in their career ever became the best at what they do by focusing on weaknesses. What they do is they leverage their strengths to get them to a whole nother level. And so I could tell you, there's a lot of research out there. One of them is in a, there's a Harvard Business Yard. Talk about making yourself indispensable. And it gets into how when people, when leaders have one outstanding strength, where everyone in the organization sees them at the best of that, they almost evidently get, almost always get ranked in the top third of all leaders.
47:17 Speaker 01 And if you have zero outstanding strengths, where nobody sees you as particularly great at one thing, you almost always end up in the bottom third of all leaders in terms of rankings. And if you have two, three, four outstanding strengths, it will put you in the top 10%. So the key is knowing what your strengths are and leveraging the heck out of them. And then whomever's on your team, knowing what their strengths are and giving them opportunities to use those strengths. If you are doing everything you can to make sure you're aware of the strengths and leveraging them, that's when you get great results from teams. And if you're just focused on helping people work on their weaknesses. I mean, if you go to, if you get a development plan and it says, here's three things you need to work on, they're all weaknesses. Why would you be excited about working on that development? It's, it's going to make you feel bad about yourself.
48:02 Speaker 01 You can work on one of them if it's a really, one that's really holding you back. But you need to always make sure that you're helping people develop strengths because that's what makes great teams stand out.
48:13 Speaker 00 Guys, I was second in state trumpet. I was a phenomenal athlete. I went to a private university and my inferiority complex was through the roof. I served it to your mission and Uruguay as well. I got to help people. I came home from that mission and was so blessed to come across the book, Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath and the Gallup Group. It changed my life for the better instantly. It hit home exactly what Michael was talking about. It's a phenomenal resource, but lean into as many resources like that as you possibly can that are uplifting, Michael being one of them again, I'm going to stay close to his side. He references Harvard a lot. Harvard used to be that awesome. I will, I will also double down. Yes, those past references, I don't know about today. We'll leave that where it's at.
48:58 Speaker 00 But my friends, again, let's take the good out of all situations and all opportunities. Michael, you've helped us so much on our visions today. I can't thank you enough.
49:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, which by the way, I'm I'm endorsing individuals and their brilliance, not necessarily.
49:12 Speaker 00 I know. I had to I had to cast a little shade because of all.
49:16 Speaker 01 No, you're good. You're good.
49:18 Speaker 00 Realities with it. But my friends know I I think we need to learn how to that would be my final piece of wisdom for you, my friends. James James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, one of the greatest leaders of all time, way back before all of the books that have come out on personal development, said that we that the virtues lead to our abundance, our vices lead to our struggles and our consequences. And every single person and entity on this earth has both virtues and vices. If we can learn to appreciate the virtues of all human beings and learn not to implement their vices in our life, we can have that much more of an abundant life. It doesn't matter if it's Donald Trump, if it's Kim Jong Un.
50:01 Speaker 00 It doesn't matter who it is or what institute or or organization it is. If we can always look for the good and learn from that and build our own presence around the good, our leadership is going to go through the roof and we won't have any worries about being successful in the age of AI. We'll see you guys in the next episode. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a.
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