AI in Learning & Leadership: Why Human Skills Still Win with Priscila Bala and Michelle King

AI is transforming how we learn at work, but it can’t replace human connection or the practice it takes to turn knowledge into lasting skills. In this episode of The LeaderLab, LifeLabs CEO Priscila Bala and Facilitation Manager Michelle King share why people skills remain essential in the age of AI. They discuss the risks of relying too heavily on technology in leadership development and why live, human-centered learning is critical for building trust, collaboration, and resilient teams.

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• AI for HR Resource Hub
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Transcript

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Priscila 0:00

If you want to really And in a way, unleash the creativity that people need to actually discover what the best uses of AI is going to be. You have to get the humans to be excited about even tackling that challenge from the outset. And in many cases, you want them to be willing to do it together because that's how you're going to actually amplify all of the impact that that learning is also going to have.

Micaela 0:24

Welcome to the Leader Lab podcast. I'm Micaela Mathre, Chief Marketing Officer at LifeLabs Learning. If you're a senior people leader, you're navigating a workplace that's changing faster than ever. This season, we're exploring what it really takes to build resilient and adaptable leaders, managers and teams. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Leader Lab. Thank you. I am excited to have a couple of wonderful guests with me today, both from LifeLabs Learning. First and foremost, I'm thrilled to have Priscila Bala, who is someone I'm really lucky that I get to learn from every single day. She is the CEO and now six years the CEO at LifeLabs Learning. Before joining LifeLabs, Priscila was a venture capital investor, advisor and entrepreneur and held roles at Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Octopus Ventures. Now she leads LifeLabs with a mix of strategy, science, and heart, always focused on building high-performing, inclusive teams through essential leadership skills. Priscila holds her MBA from Yale School of Management, is a member of the Forbes Business Council, and brings sharp insight into what makes workplaces work from conflict and culture to innovation and change. Her leadership has been honored by Barclays, the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Management, Yale, and St. St. Galen Symposium. Born and raised in Brazil, Priscila is fluent in English and Portuguese and conversational in Spanish. Priscila, welcome to the Leader Lab.

Priscila 1:52

Thank you. Thank you, Michaela.

Micaela 1:54

I'm also thrilled to have Michelle King with us today. She is one of our facilitation managers at LifeLabs. She's also the founder of Own Your Career, where she helps individuals and teams grow through leadership development, career coaching, and work-life balance training. With over 15 years in learning and development and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, Michelle has led programs at companies like SAP, NetApp, and SuccessFactors. She's a certified leadership and mindfulness coach. She holds a master's in education in learning technologies and design from Arizona State University. And she is also currently earning her doctorate in leadership, innovation, and education at ASU. Michelle, welcome to the Leader Lab. Thank you. It's great to be here. Yeah, wonderful. Before we dive in, I do want to set the stage because we're actually filming this from a special event. that we are at right now, which we call Labapalooza. So Priscila, I'd love to have you tell us a little bit about Labapalooza and kind of set the stage for where we are.

Priscila 2:51

No, absolutely. So Labapalooza is our all company retreat where we take a week off to really gather all of the lab mates that are generally spread over 20 different states across the country together in real life so that we can collaborate, get together, build connection, trust, and really come up with all of the innovations that we're going to bring to market. So it's a really exciting week. packed full of lots of fun, but also really impactful work.

Micaela 3:18

Amazing, amazing. And how long has the company been hosting Labapalooza for? What's the history?

Priscila 3:22

So interestingly, we've, I believe, always have had Labapalooza in one form or another, though we coined the term, I want to say, about seven years ago. And the idea is that we now actually split. Some of our retreats are virtual, so we do two of these a year. One is virtual in February and then one in person in the summer. to really create that balance of stepping out of day-to-day work so that we can really be intentional about making a lot of progress and building connection and trust with one another.

Micaela 3:53

That's amazing. Any tips for listeners in terms of hosting a virtual onsite?

Priscila 3:59

Oh, interesting. So virtual onsites are, you know, can be just as impactful as in-person onsites, but it is really important to be deliberate about the type of connections that you want to create. So for us, one of the biggest tips is ensuring, you know, one person, one camera so that everybody really is on screen so that you can spend that time building a lot of connection. We also think that having a lot of fun, so either having themes, getting people to dress up, enjoying other opportunities to do things also outside of just being in front of a Zoom, like for example, taking walks on the phone with one another can be a way to shake up what feels like Zoom fatigue otherwise. I

Micaela 4:41

love it. Okay, one more highlight. everybody's talking about this OLLI Awards that are happening. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what are the OLLI Awards? Why are people getting dressed up? What's happening?

Priscila 4:54

Yeah, I know. So the OLLI Awards are a version of the LifeLabs Oscars. Not to be confused with the Dundee Awards from The Office, everybody. That is not where we're going to go. But it is an opportunity for us to really celebrate and get excited about all of the folks that really are deliberate about living our values every day the ones who are displaying the behaviors that we're teaching to the world also um and we also have a lot of other fun awards like the document diva or uh folks who are really creating other ways for us to have a lot of fun together it is all lab mate voted so colleagues submit um names of the folks that that should be getting all of those nominations and we're going to have a big reveal glamour lab mate lab life lab style later on tonight

Micaela 5:42

i love it thanks for sharing about that. All right. Let us dive into the Leader Lab. So we start every episode with the same question, which I'm going to pose to both of you. And that is, what is one small behavioral shift that you've made recently in your role as a leader? And tell me about the impact of that shift. Let's start with Michelle.

Michelle 6:04

Oh, wow. That's a really good question. You know, it's interesting because I think what I'm always trying to do is become more self-aware of my own presence in one-on-ones, for instance. So, you know, at LifeLabs, we teach coaching and as a manager, that is what I lean into is coaching. So cue stepping, things like that, where I'm asking a question first before I give any answers or support. But what I found is that it's not just the listening. It's really this personal, this personalization that happens from getting to know people a little bit better over time and understanding what they like. So it's not just asking questions, asking really interesting questions, posing questions that are thoughtful. So I've started developing questions that I ask when I'm going into these one-on-ones that, you know, spark a little insight from people and can let me get to know them a little bit better. And I feel like this is creating a closeness in a team that I'm dealing with that's virtual all the time. So yeah, it's been just this little shift, a little tiny thing, which we love at LifeLabs, just a small change and a big impact. But it's really making a difference in how we're connecting.

Micaela 7:18

Do you have any specific questions?

Michelle 7:21

Well, I ask sometimes I ask kind of silly questions, like one of my favorites, though, is just to kind of get where people are at, as I'll say, okay, if you, you know, you had to describe your mood or your how you're feeling today as weather, what would it be? And so I also have started asking this in when I'm facilitating as well. And it gives me kind of a temperature check for how people are doing before we go into the conversation So I can see where their energy level is at, which I think is helpful as well because it helps me to support them more effectively.

Micaela 7:50

Yeah. I love that. And maybe for our listeners that don't know, can you explain this behavioral unit of cue stepping? Yeah. That is something we teach in our workshops.

Michelle 7:59

Yeah. I mean, it was just a habit for us to say it. Yeah. But cue stepping is really about leaning into just always asking one more question than you would normally ask. Or when you start, so if somebody comes to you with a problem... asking a question before you start to give an answer, right? So making sure that you're clear on what's happening by just starting with a good question for them. And I think it makes a big difference in creating self-efficacy for your direct reports, letting them know that they actually can find and do know the answers to things. But sometimes they're just so stressed out, they can't get to it. And Q-stepping allows that moment to happen where they get to step back and think, oh, wait, how would I go about this? And then they get to see that they actually do know the answer. Or if they don't, they're almost there, which I love. So it's self-discovery for them as well.

Micaela 8:49

Thanks for sharing about that. We're going to talk in a little bit more about how people learn. And I think Q-stepping has also been very useful for me as a manager in the sense that if you have done the role before of one of your direct reports, your natural inclination is just to jump in and problem solve, right? They come to you with a challenge and something they're trying to solve before. And if you have been around the the block, you've held multiple roles, you've likely seen that problem before, and you want to just jump in and provide an answer. And Q7 is really a great way to help folks learn because you're pausing and helping them reflect. That's right. Yeah, thanks for sharing a little bit about that. Sure, yeah. Priscila, what about you?

Priscila 9:30

I would say that recently I've been leaning a lot into effective frequency. So I think that I tend to sometimes underestimate, you know, how often and how clearly a message needs to be delivered so that folks can truly internalize And, you know, research says that five to seven times is really kind of what you required. And, you know, throughout my career, many, many people have often coached me to say, you know, until you're sick of hearing it yourself, like you're not quite there.

Michelle 9:55

And

Priscila 9:57

I think that lately what I've found most exciting about that, that concept of effective frequency frequency is that in seeing it multiple times or in having to reframe or reposition the particular thing that I'm trying to get across to the team so that we can be aligned in a slightly different way. way, I end up discovering all kinds of other nuances or unlocking other creative solutions or other parts of the problem that I actually hadn't quite thought about yet. And so it's been really exciting to both create alignment for others, but also a lot of much more nuance and interest for myself as well.

Micaela 10:31

Thanks for saying that. All right. We are going to dive in sort of to the meat of the podcast now. We're talking about live learning. We're talking about AI. I want to kind of start there, and then we'll build on this. It's no surprise to anybody, AI is advancing faster than any previous technology. But we're here today to talk about how AI cannot replace human judgment. And we don't know what the future holds. That's not what we're sitting here and claiming today. But we are in the room as the people people. So we know people skills, and we know people management. And that's really what I want to focus on. So I want to think about this concept that in high stakes environments, having a human in the loop, even when you're leveraging AI to guide decisions, interpret results, and make critical adjustments is really, really important. Priscila, you've described AI as it's like having an intern. It's a useful analogy because it shifts the way that we think about AI more as augmentation, not a silver bullet, but really a teammate. And from our perspective, a teammate that could use guidance and management. So can you elaborate a little bit on this concept, how you think about managing AI well, and how that would require strong management skills.

Priscila 11:49

Yeah. So one of the things that's really interesting is that at the core of management is a lot of coaching and asking questions, as we were talking about the Q-stepping earlier on. And so much about it has to do with shaping and creating alignment around what does success look like? What are the obstacles that we need to overcome? What are the options that we're going to have to choose What are the criteria by which we're going to make those choices? And then what are the next steps that we're going to have to take? So a lot of it is about, at LifeLabs, we call it the soon funnel, which is one of the skills that we teach a lot of our managers. And so much of when you're collaborating with AI is really about creating that constraint set to truly understand what is the output that I'm really looking for and what are the constraints that are going to impact the best result for this output? So asking those questions and getting... an even greater sense of what can I delegate to AI? Like what are its strengths? Where is it that it's going to be very helpful? And where is it that I need to step in? So as we started talking about that discernment around who is driving the project, but then who might be approving the project and what are the kinds of things that need to be negotiated in between, all of those are skills that apply to when you're trying to prompt an AI to deliver, whether it is a draft for you of something that you're trying to do, or if it's going to be a more complex workflow. And the work of, again, being a manager is all about trying to support prioritization as well. Sort of in a world where you can literally ask AI anything, what is the question that's going to be most impactful right now? Or what is the thing that is going to move your project in the most efficient way forward when you have an entire world of opportunities and personas and possibilities for how you are going to drive this forward?

Micaela 13:40

I love that. And I think actually it Sam Altman, the CEO at OpenAI would agree with you. He was on a podcast recently with Adam Grant, and he talked about how truly, probably already today, but increasingly in the near term future, raw intellectual horsepower is not gonna be as valuable in the workplace as it previously was. But instead what he said is the ability to ask the right questions is really what's gonna be valuable. with Q-stepping. And I'm curious if you have thoughts on that as well. Like, how does this new feature where it's really more about the questions that you're asking and the prompts, how does that sort of play out?

Priscila 14:25

Yeah. Well, first, I think, you know, I just want to differentiate because I think, and I don't want to put words or interpretations into Sam's mind, but it sounds like he's separating out, you know, he's calling raw intellectual power the ability to say, I don't know, calculate or have really great memory for a number of facts or I'm not exactly sure. But to me, asking the right question, it actually requires a tremendous amount of kind of insight and intelligence. It's just a different shape of it. But we're very much aligned in that regard, right? Because asking the right question really means getting to the core of the issue or what, again, as we were saying, what does success look like? What are the things I need to consider? Who are the stakeholders? What are the trade-offs that I'm making? What constraints are we up against? And then being able to ask the right questions that are We're going to help whatever group of people is trying to achieve something to negotiate what do we prioritize when and how. And so I think that in that regard, I absolutely agree. Because it's true that, again, your ability to either remember specific technical details about something or calculate something really quickly, those are truly going to be replaced by a lot of what AI is trying to do. But I think that that judgment, the discernment, the taste making, the understanding of what the consequences of the choices that are being made is also going to be are going to be ever more impactful moving forward.

Micaela 15:49

AI is clearly changing how we work, but I want to chat about how it is also changing how we learn. Michelle, I'm going to read something that you wrote recently that really stuck out to me and my team about the emotional side of learning. You wrote, learning is a cognitive process shaped by emotional experience. In a world where AI can teach you how to do just about anything, we're starting to forget something critical. Knowing is not the same as understanding and understanding is not the same as doing. We can watch a video, read a manual, or ask a chat bot to explain how to give feedback, lead a team meeting, or respond to conflict. But if that knowledge doesn't connect to something within us, our emotions, our past experiences, our values, it doesn't stick. And more importantly, it doesn't show up when we need it most. What inspired this insight? And can you tell us a little bit about why this feels really critical in this moment.

Michelle 16:44

That's great. Thank you. Yeah. So I had been just reading a lot of things, particularly on LinkedIn, where I saw people posting things about, oh, you know, you got to get on top of this L&D departments because AI is really going to be taking over learning and development. And I thought that's really interesting. And I can see that that could be used in a lot of ways in learning and development for things that are very procedural or process oriented. And in fact, there was a recent study out of Stanford where they tested whether the AI increased productivity for people. And it did when it was very linear task oriented. So, hey, please reformat this email for me or make me a list of this. That, it was great. It did increase the productivity, did help people, you know, analyze this spreadsheet. And I will argue that sometimes it doesn't do a great job at that. But yes, but when it came to something that was more complex, something that required human experience or it required you to change or alter a behavior or as a complex thinking process, actually it lowered their productivity to use AI. And this is because we are really driven a lot by our emotional experiences. And when I say that, I think there are people who might say like, oh, you know, you're supposed to leave emotion out of business. But the reality is that's not how that works. And so what we're teaching at LifeLabs is behavior. And AI is not going to be able to teach you behavior. It can maybe give you a bunch of scenarios on this feedback conversation. But when you get into the conversation, you're responding to that person in real time. And you're not going to be able to go to your AI and be like, they're saying this. What do I say next? You have to know. And they're going to know it's not authentic as well. So it has to come from inside you. This is a skill you have to develop as a human being. And those types of skills, AI, I have no idea where AI is going ultimately. But at this point, AI cannot help you to learn as a manager how to do that, particularly because what we know for sure, particularly in behavioral training, is that you need reinforcement. You have to practice this. It's not something you can read and say, okay, got it, let me move on. It's not how to open a spreadsheet, right? I can read that and go, oh, now I know how to do that. I can repeat it. But something where you're practicing cue stepping, where you're practicing playbacks, things where you're playing it back to the person what they said, where you're helping them kind of figure things out for themselves that still requires human beings. And the things we're teaching at LifeLabs, these are behavioral skills. These are things that are going to help you to become a better manager. And that's just still human oriented and AI can't replace that. So that's kind of what prompted me to say, hey, hold on a second. I don't think we're quite at that place. And I also don't think it's to people's benefit for us to think that way about AI at this point and learning and development.

Priscila 19:44

And if I may, like, I think it's such an interesting point and I love kind of what you wrote there because it's something that we've often talked about, right? That the battle in many ways is not in the knowing, it's in the doing in the sense that, you know, this has been a conversation that has happened, you know, ad nauseum about business schools, for example, folks have always talked about how, hey, you can find all of the content of an MBA online. It's been the case, right? So you can basically learn on demand courses pretty much any other skill that you want out there but there's something very different about the experience of just knowing a concept in your head and it's very different when you have to actually practice it when your amygdala is getting hijacked and you feel like you're sweating and the other person raises their voice or all of a sudden they cut you off and someone else is getting very impatient and how will you actually handle because in those high stake moments and in those high stake conversations that's That's when you need people to rise to the level of those habits and those behaviors. And it often is the precise moment when he fails them or when people freeze or when it's challenging or when the conversation doesn't go the way that you want it. And I think that this is where this idea of creating social environments for learning is so important because you get to actually test and rub against one another a little bit and understand, okay, you know, are people with me? Do these people agree with the things that we're talking about? Is this Is this going to be an accepted behavior in the social space that we are collaborating in? Could I actually do this? And actually, will people look up to me? Or is this something that I'll be judged for in my organization? And those kinds of cues and signals are so important when you're trying to do social learning that then is going to become a habit in your workplace.

Micaela 21:33

Yeah, that's a great tie-in. Let's talk a little bit more about that and really setting the stage for what we think of as team-based learning. and like you mentioned before it's all over LinkedIn it's in a lot of the L&D conferences that we've been at everybody is talking about how are we leveraging AI what are you doing today what are you building so I do want to kind of like bring us back to the basics that a lot of the AI we're talking about today is solo learning so you are by yourself you're talking I mean right like we've seen some of this new technology out here and it's literally like you're having a conversation with the AI audio or via chat and I I want to think about team-based learning and outcomes. So maybe Michelle, we'll go back to you. Can you tell me a little bit about, from your perspective, how did team-based learning drive better outcomes than solo when you're just by yourself, you and your computer?

Michelle 22:28

Yeah, that's a great question as well. So one of the things I'll say is that we know, I mean, research shows us things like you learn the majority of what you're doing on your job from your peers. So it's about 20% So in any situation, you're learning the behavior. So if you come to us, you're going to get the 20% you need to be able to actually understand those behaviors. If you were doing that as an e-learning, that's all you'd get. But because you're in a facilitated learning, what's happening is you are talking to other peers and the facilitator, and we're having a conversation, a dialogue about things. This is letting you explore problems you may have, other issues that are coming up, et cetera. And so what we know is that we need social interaction to learn because that's how we've always learned. And also facilitating allows us to tell stories, which is also a really huge part of learning is storytelling. And so what happens is if you're not in these social environments and you're just working with this AI individually, you don't have anything that's coming into you other than your own thoughts and ideas. And when you're in a peer learning environment, you may think you know how to do something, but someone shows you at a different way, you have the aha moment, right? So one of the things we hear from managers and what I've studied in my research is that managers' biggest complaint about learning is that they don't have any peer interaction and they don't have time to practice. And so an AI isn't going to give you those types of moments for yourself to really put it into practice in a way that creates that social environment. And as Priscila was saying, we're talking about in organizations, these social social interactions have to do with the culture of the organization, the expectations and norms in the organization, your individual experience as a manager or as part of a team. So when you're talking about team learning, one of the things that's so important is to understand where everyone is at. And AI doesn't know that. It doesn't know where you're coming from. It doesn't know what your experience is or your background. But guess what your manager does? The other people on your team do. And this is how we help people to grow is by saying, hey, here's where you are. Here's where we're going to help you get to, right? But AI doesn't know that. It's just responding to whatever you say. And it's great. I mean, there's lots of wonderful uses for that. But as far as creating teamwork and collaboration and understanding how to grow people and creating moments for teams to become better together, only people can do that

Micaela 25:01

at this point. I can't stop thinking about how learning experiences in the workplace as well also create opportunities for connections

Michelle 25:11

That's right.

Micaela 25:12

Like the Surgeon General last year came out and said, we have a major problem in this country with people feeling isolated and lonely. And like one of the spaces I do think in corporate America and in the workplace, the learning teams are constantly thinking about how do we create space for people to learn, which oftentimes when you're learning, you're vulnerable, right? And when you're vulnerable, that's the opportunity to create a sense of connection. That's right. I go back to, I'm always going to bring up Robert Putnam's work, the book he wrote, Bowling Alone, many years ago, I think is still very relevant today. But he basically breaks down these different types of connection. There's basically bonding social capital, which is kind of your like immediate sphere. It's people you know well, it's your family, it's a bit homogenous. And then there's bridging social capital. And those are people across different identities from yourself that you may not connect with. And I I oftentimes think that the workplace is a place where you can build a lot of bridging social capital. And specifically in L&D, these learning experiences are moments for that. And what I hear you saying, Michelle, is that in addition to that, you're going to learn better. That's right. So as you're building that social capital and you're getting context and you're really deepening an emotional connection with people, you're going to learn. And to Priscila's point earlier, when you're learning and it's really sticky and it's in your mind, going to be able to bring it up in the moments that you need to. That's right. Which is critical, right? So versus just learning something and then it's out the window in a couple of days, like it's those high stakes moments when you need to be able to sort of draw on that experience. Right.

Michelle 26:53

And this is one of the things I talk about a lot is Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, because most people know about the learning curve, right? But they don't ever talk about the forgetting curve. And so the forgetting, and when I read this, when I was in my master's program and I discovered this, I thought, oh my gosh, wow, we're really doing a lot of L incorrectly because essentially what Ebbinghaus's forgetting curves shows is that when you learn something for the first time, and this is where effective frequency comes in Priscila, when you learn something for the first time, if you do not have reinforcement pretty much immediately, like within a day, within three days, within seven days, those are usually the cadences, you, by the end of seven days, you will only remember 10% of what you learned. So think about how much cognitive process people are having to put into relearning over and over and over again. When you're in a social setting, that shifts because when you're working with teams, you are reinforcing that regularly. So you're remembering it. And then that also then creates a longer term memory for you that allows you to extrapolate that into other things. But without that reinforcement, you're not losing all of that great information. This is where I say AI is great, but AI is not going to show up a day later and be like, hey, remember that thing we talked about yesterday? Well, you need to practice that again, right? So this is where you get this. That's one of the things I love about our workshops is you get a lot of practice in the workshop. So you're not only, we're not saying, hey, here's all the information. Go, go, Godspeed. You know, go, go practice. We let you practice in there. You're doing this with other people who are in the same situations or experiencing the same things you are. So it allows for you to create deeper memory and connect to that better. So when you do leave the workshop, you can put it into practice right away and so that I just I love the fact that that's you know that's the part of being human that you can't replace with technology you just can't it's it's it's inherent to us it's our gift

Priscila 28:55

but I and I think that like so much of that social learning is also about learning about your colleagues right so the and I think that to me that is one of the irreplaceable values of that live social learning experience is that all of a sudden now my horizon gets expanded about who you are and how you learn what are the questions you ask what is your perspective and to me that's you know when I've been in those scenarios that's what's always exciting is to go huh they took it in that direction or that was what they understood from that particular point not in a judgmental way but in a curious way to go wow actually look at the variety of ways in which we can approach this particular problem and now I might actually get to the aha moment of oh maybe that That's where the conflict was coming from. Or maybe this is where the difficulty was. Or maybe when I say this, they could understand it in this other way, which I don't intend. So let me recalibrate that a little bit. So there is an opportunity to really gain a much greater sense of not just empathy, but real recognition for like, how do my colleagues, you know, face these challenges? How do they think about these problems? What do they tend to gravitate towards? And that really enriches your toolkit for how to best collaborate and build trust with them.

Micaela 30:09

True. Yeah. Because it

Priscila 30:13

has to be together. It has to be social. I actually think that we could program a bot that will come back to me and say, Priscila, these are all the chats we had yesterday. Let us repeat X, Y, and Z. But my universe is still so small, right? Because it's about me and it's about the AI that in a way is being directed or contextualized to be exactly what I expect. I think that what's important about the social learning experience is that it is about broadening my scope of perspectives and it's truly understanding how do I negotiate when I want one thing and Michelle wants a different thing and Michaela wants a different thing but we don't want to be siloed because ultimately we all wanted to be working towards a common goal and one of the biggest challenges in organizations is precisely the fact that functions or different roles can end up very siloed in what they're doing or they can make decisions that impact other departments without them meaning to and then you end up raising the level of conflicts or distrust, when in reality, if we were having a much more social conversation, the odds of us bridging all of those gaps, understanding where we were coming from and building the sense of us versus the problem instead of competing for resources internally really has a massive impact.

Micaela 31:28

I love that. Our head of operations, Tom, often says, work the problem, not the people. And that's something that really sticks with me when I think about, yeah, how do we collaborate and focus on truly what is at hand and the problem to be solved and not make it about each other but rather we're on the same team

Michelle 31:47

well so much of the time people really do want to solve the same problem they're just going about it from different perspectives and it's really not focusing on whether one perspective is right or not but like what is the problem and then coming up with solutions and leaning into curiosity around that that gets you to actual problem solving but again these are traits that you have to learn in as a human being and the social the the social environment allows that to happen. And we want people, you know, listen, we're programmed for survival. We need people to like us and be able to get along with us. So we're motivated to create that social environment and work in ways that help us to grow as well. And again, you know, to Priscila's point, yeah, I'm sure at some point the AI will wake up in the morning and be like, Michelle, you learned these five things yesterday and here's how you do them. But it's still not the same experience because all of, and I want to get back to something Priscila said earlier about, you know, in the moment you have to, Oh, this is happening and it's a high stakes situation. But what I, what I wanted to emphasize here is that decisions are actually emotional. And I know that people think, Oh no, I'm thinking about this and I'm going through all of the things, but ultimately you make the decision from an emotional place. And when you're removing that, it impacts things like decision-making innovation is another thing. I go into workshops. I learned something new from someone. a participant in any workshop I teach. They come up with something, right? And so we're missing that piece of it without having the social connection and understanding that where we're coming from is really an emotional place. And it's based on experience and knowledge and the environment and the culture and all of these other things that AI just can't understand right now for us.

Micaela 33:35

Oh, I love that perspective. How do you think the perception of emotion in the workplace has shifted over your careers.

Michelle 33:43

But, you know, it used to be this thing where it's like, OK, leave your emotions at the door when you go to work, because it was like it was all about focusing on the high level thing, the cognitive process. You know, this is about reasoning and logic. But, you know, that's just not true. And I think I talked about in one of the articles I read about this, about Albert Damasio. And and I love his work. He's a neuroscientist. And what he did was he worked with patients who had had a some kind of damage or through surgery or something else where this disconnected the amygdala from their prefrontal cortex. So that pathway was either damaged or somehow, you know, not, they weren't able to access it. And what he discovered was that, you know, he had a patient, this was a good example, there's a video out, it's not good quality, but it's Daniel Goleman. So, you know, the father of EQ basically talking about this, but he had a patient that came to him and had had this surgery He had a brain tumor removed, and it cut that neural pathway. And he said, my life is falling apart. I mean, I feel fine, and I can still do my job. He was a lawyer. But things are just not going well, and I can't figure out what's happening. And so they did all these tests on him to figure out, well, what's going on? Maybe something happened to him neurologically beyond that disconnect. And they couldn't find anything. And he said, Damasio says, I didn't understand what the problem until we went to make the next appointment. And so he said the man could reason. He could say, well, this could be a good day for this reason. And this could be a day for this reason. But he couldn't decide what day was the best. And that's because our emotions drive our decisions. We sort of rely on, you know, all of these experiences we have, our understanding of our own lives, what's going on to kind of make that quick decision. And, you know, that's true because you think about like things where we, a car is coming really fast and you just automatically jump out of the way. Well, that's not, you didn't stop and think, wow, that car is coming really fast. I might need to move quickly all of a sudden. You just do. And that's where that's driven from. So, you know, some people, I know people feel a little weird saying intuition because it feels very woo-woo to them, but we do rely a lot on our intuition and decision-making is driven by our intuition about all of those things we've talked about in the social scope. So without that ability to connect to our emotions, we actually can't make good decisions. And we can't make good decisions. That means we can't actually manage people well or work well in a social environment. So, yeah, it's a big part of it. But we I think there's a lot more openness to EQ in particular and psychological safety. You know, once Google released their their study. But I you know, there's still I think there are still a little bit of, you know, don't get emotional about things at work. And I feel like if you're passionate about something, then I understand where that emotion is coming from. And it's more about understanding that than the emotion itself to me.

Priscila 36:45

There's been a great evolution in so far as like ignore it at your own peril, right? Regardless of the debate about what professional demeanor might be and what level of emotional display might be accepted in whichever work environment. I think that there is a much greater recognition to the fact that emotions are intrinsic to everything we do. And that if anything, when you want a workforce that's going to be based on, again, innovation, collaboration, and trust, emotion is going to be a key concept in any of those domains, right? So at Live Labs, often we talk to folks about, you know, if you ask people to raise your hand, and I'm sorry if I'm like out of the frame now, and then you go, okay, higher. The difference between my first raise my hand and the higher is that discretionary effort. Like if you want folks to really give it their all, They have to have an emotional connection, whether it is to a team, to the mission, to the values, to the meaning that the work gives to them on a day-to-day basis. And all of those are emotional commitments that you're making. In business school, it was funny because one of my professors actually talked about the fact that he's like, you know, at the end of the day, when you find the team and the group of people that you want to work with, it doesn't matter if we're making freaking toothpicks, like we're going going to have such a great time and I'm going to feel so fulfilled by this work because there's so much emotional resonance and meaning and validation and trust and enjoyment in what I'm trying to do. And even folks that, you know, on a way say, you know, I'm going to put my career first and I'm very ambitious and that other people might look at as unemotional really are coming from a place of feeling like they have something to conquer for themselves and whether it is the success that they want to achieve or what, those are all emotionally driven motivations. And so I think that workplaces need to be very aware of what happens when you try to strip away all of the things that make people really want to do a little bit more. And instead, you end up with folks that are feeling really disconnected from the day to day of what they do.

Michelle 38:57

That's right. And disconnection, as you know, drives disengagement, which is never a good thing at work, right? And we see this happening all over the world where there's a level of disengagement in organizations And, you know, this is why I am really passionate about what we do, because I feel like we have this, you know, this product, which I hate to call it that because it's so people oriented, but it is. It's our product of, you know, these amazing workshops that we teach and facilitators that care so deeply about these experiences with the participants. And what we're doing is we're putting into the world in that space that companies really need this, the opportunity for them to grow their managers because that's where the disengagement happens with people it's where what their managers feel about them or how they feel supported by their managers and in that social context the other thing is that we're always trying to build is trust right because if we don't trust each other then i'm not going to learn from you if i don't trust you right but trust is a combination of two factors which is how how much i believe you're competent and how much i believe you care about me so if i think you're competent i might respect you but i'm not going I'm not going to trust you. If I really think that you care about me, I'll have affection for you, but I'm not going to trust you. So you have to have both components. And that's what we do in these workshops is we're helping you to become more competent, but we're also helping you to become more caring towards the people that you're working with as well, right? Things like coaching them, the feedback conversations, et cetera. And again, these are things I feel like not only do we do exceptionally well and I think make a really huge impact, but ultimately that's how people learn. This is really the basis of how people learn. They have to have that care. They have to feel like, you know, you care about their learning. You know, just as we use in our workshops, we go into our workshops, we talk about, you know, I taught productivity and prioritization the other day. And the first thing I do is ask people like, what is your biggest challenge? And then throughout the workshop, I come back to them to talk about that challenge in relation to whatever we're talking about. So that feels, that's a sense of caring that we're creating while we're building competence in in the people that are in the workshop. That's

Micaela 41:12

such a great example, Michelle. And I think something oftentimes a lot of leaders overlook or don't think about, which is the two sides of that, you have to be both competent and empathetic.

Michelle 41:24

That's right.

Micaela 41:24

Right? And I'm curious, I'm going to ask this one as well, from both of your experiences, how does that play out across genders?

Michelle 41:34

I

Micaela 41:35

think for women in particular, what does it look like? like to be competent and empathetic in a managerial role?

Priscila 41:45

You

Michelle 41:45

want to take

Priscila 41:46

that? I can. Well, I'm not an expert in any way, but there's so much research that actually says that women and men are judged differently for expressing those same levels of behavior. And I think that, again, as humans who've been conditioned to expect that by default, women be very caring, very empathetic, very supportive, if women are not being overly displaying all of those behaviors, they tend to be judged a little bit more harshly. While in men, even behaviors that would be considered aggressive may be given the benefit of the doubt and instead be talked about as drive and ambition and a strategic certainty instead of you're just being a bit of a jerk and yelling at people. So I do think that that's something to be aware of. But what I... find most interesting is that in that whole conversation, what needs to come through is that there are different ways to express care and there are different ways to express strategy. And I'm much more interested in the fact that there are men who can also be penalized for appearing to be more empathetic and more caring, and that can lower their competence, which is a complete disservice to everyone on both sets. And I've always found it so interesting to see that even within, if you just look at it, male population, you know, there is such variety of behavior within that population that sometimes the difference is just as vast, if not vaster than the difference between the two genders as well. And same for women. You can have an entire spectrum of behaviors there. And, and I think that that concept we were talking about earlier about getting to understand empathy and sometimes like, what is it that it actually means? Or, you know, when we talk about how people even display, you know, affection or how is it that they give right recognition and how in some cases you know some folks you're never going to get a compliment out of them unless it's like the most spectacular piece of work that has ever been done while others are much more generous with their praise that calibration again can only happen socially and you need to be exposed to all of those different elements so that you can also increase your repertoire and not fall into the trap of making assumptions about well if she's behaving that way this is what she must mean or if he's behaving that way, this is what he must mean. When in practice, you may be wrong in both cases.

Micaela 44:16

Right, right. And you need that context in the social setting to really understand. Very true. Yeah.

Michelle 44:20

Yeah. Our assumptions get the worst of us. And we're story, you know, we are storytellers. So we'll start to tell ourselves stories about these things based upon stereotypes or, you know, what we've been told about how certain people should behave. And I think here's the key to me about creating care is understanding that the basis of care is appreciation. So yeah, I don't have to, you know, you don't have to necessarily celebrate every single thing everybody does, but it's this recognition that you're doing something of value and you're appreciated for that. That is actually most of the time what people are looking for. Yes, there's empathy in that if they're having a hard day, et cetera. But I think it's really important to understand that it's the appreciation that really helps them. And it's actually also the easiest human emotion to feel is appreciation. So it's great. It's an easy one to tap into. So leaning into that to say like, how can I appreciate these people that I'm working with and demonstrate that? That's an immediate pathway into demonstrating care. So it doesn't have to be like over the top or that you're doing everything, you know, every day you're like, that's a great job. You did this well. It's really appreciating what people are offering and the value that they bring in

Micaela 45:37

the organization. Can you give our listeners like a couple couple examples, like what does it look like to be a leader who really leans into appreciation and is capable of doing that and giving that? Sure.

Michelle 45:48

So at LifeLabs, I'll give you an example from our work. Our facilitators get evaluated by participants and they receive scores on how well they did on the workshop and they receive feedback comments. And one of the things I do every month is I download the feedback comments and information from the workshops for each of my directory And then I go through them. And when I go in to give them their review, I write this entire thing about like pull out quotes and say, here is how you're impacting our learners. This is what they're saying about you. And then I also summarize it into like keywords that I'm hearing about what's in the feedback. And then also if there's areas for them to optimize, I'll say, hey, you know, and then I saw this a couple of times, maybe think about this into going into your next workshop. And I can't tell you the number of people that are in my team that come back to me and say, gosh, this is so meaningful to me. Thank you for taking the time to do this. And so see, now we have mutual appreciation for each other around this. And I'm doing it because I do appreciate them. And I want them to know that. And I could go in and just say, hey, great job this month. And you did well. You met all your metrics. But it's more important for them to see that I see what they're doing.

Micaela 47:05

And I think you show people that through getting specific. That's right. So that's specific feedback is much more impactful and makes people feel a lot more seen than you did a great job in that workshop. Right, right. I think this will be really relevant to listeners because we're hearing it more and more on client calls. Everyone is asking, how are you leveraging AI? What do you have for AI? And they don't even necessarily take the same form and shape, but it's very top of mind across the workforce. I want to go to this place where we're talking about the risk of outsourcing too much. So too much of your L&D strategy or even implementation to AI. And Priscila, I want to start with a recent client deal that we actually lost where they decided that instead of bringing on life labs and doing live facilitated workshops, they were going to do AI learning paths, individualized for each of their employees. Can you tell me a little bit about that? little bit about what happened there and then maybe use it as a bit of a cautionary tale for other companies that may be looking to do the same.

Priscila 48:15

Yeah, I think that, you know, as in all things, like I'm super excited about the potential of AI and at the same time is let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's been multiple examples of organizations that have gone out and said, you know, AI is going to replace this and like customer service or all of our coding. And then they're like, ah, just kidding. We're actually going to need some more humans because it turns out it can't achieve exactly what we thought it could. Of course, it's going to continue advancing. And I think that we can't even imagine the kind of use cases that's going to have. But I think that, you know, the heart of the conversation that we're having is that when it comes to learning in the workplace, half of the battle is what you know, but half of the battle is what your colleagues know. Do you have a shared vocabulary? Are you using the same norms? Have you built sufficient trust with each other? Do you understand how to negotiate those trade-offs? Do we know what the choice set that my specific organization might be optimizing for at this moment in time? What are the kinds of things that I need to prepare for because, as we mentioned, since people are emotional, who here is going to respond best to data? Who here is going to respond best to stories? Who here is going to require outside credible support? What type of research is going to be most convincing in this space? What is our risk appetite? Do we actually go for the MVP or does it need to be more buttoned up before I put this forward? Those are all the kinds of things that you're not going to learn in an individualized, personalized path. Now, whatever gaps you may have in your own knowledge, whether they're functional or even sort of understanding of the company that could be helped by AI creating a path for me or helping me get more examples of the type of thing I'm trying to achieve, by all means, we should be doing that all day long. And I think that there's a great place for that. But trying to say that that is going to replace the dialogue that exists, then it's all for naught. Because at the end of the day, when it comes to organizations, nobody cares for training for the sake of training. We care for training for the sake of outcomes. I know that every single one of our clients would rather they didn't even need to do training. But training, particularly the live and social kind that we're talking about, is the most effective at getting outcomes because it gives you a safe space to build that dialogue and to really learn to negotiate and understand your colleagues so that when it's time to actually put the functional deliverables in front of them, or when it's time for us to make a decision together, we can do that. So for me, it's never a question of, or it's more of a question of end, right? Like, can we figure out what are the best applications? And why is it that if I'm trying to, you know, create a shared vocabulary, calibrate across my my team, have a standard set of norms and cultures that we want to drive forward, align everybody behind my vision, ensure that the level of collaboration builds enough trust that there aren't passive aggressive behaviors happening in my team. Those things are going to be best solved by a social scenario. If I really want to give people, you know, different question examples, if I want them to stretch out and play different scenarios, if I want them to evaluate what impact this could have on different personas by I mean, have AI be supporting them in doing a lot of that work? But I think that the best outcome is actually going to come from a combination of the two, not from trying to solve everything with a one-size-fits-all that isn't fit for purpose.

Michelle 51:54

Yeah. And I mean, that was such a great answer. But what I want to talk about a little bit, and I want to do this comparison because I think it's really important, is all learning in organizations used to be facilitated learning. I'm old enough to tell you that that was the case. And then what happened was organizations realized that learning needed to be continuous and there was no way to hire that many people to facilitate. So, you know, this is what burst companies like ours, but they started deciding that what they were going to do was e-learning. And the thing was that e-learning is not as even remotely as effective as facilitated learning. It's sort of like, and I'm going to do this because I'm going to compare this to AI. It's sort of like an AI in that sense, right? I can go to this course and I can take it and I can watch the videos and I can do the things, but I'm not doing this in the context of a social environment. So I'm just as the individual doing this. So what happens is the Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve comes in again. So now I'm going to forget it because there's not the reinforcement. I have no one to talk to about this. And again, this is one of manager's number one complaints. Who am I going to talk to about? Who do I talk to to say like, ooh, I tried this, but it didn't quite work. What do you think? They don't know, they don't have any pathway to do that. So what it does is it doesn't create stronger neural pathways for people. And I will say the same thing is happening with AI. Essentially, AI can tell you, but much like the example we were talking about as a manager, the reason I want a Q-step is because I want that person to develop self-efficacy. You're not going to develop self-efficacy because you're not building neural pathways through that type of learning. But in social learning, you are building neural pathways. And so this is the difference. If you want people to learn at a deep level, like I can remember it, I can apply it, I can now innovate from that. I tried this and now I've gotten better at it. I've become better as a manager over 15 years because I've practiced it, not because I took a course and it said do ABC. So I think when we're talking about leaning very heavily into AI, we have to remember that if we're not creating strong neural pathways in learning through the social experience and through the practice, then you're investing in something that isn't going to net you what you think it's going to net you. You're going to have to keep repeating that over and over again, or people are going to take it, check the box and say, well, I took

Priscila 54:21

it.

Michelle 54:21

Absolutely.

Priscila 54:22

And I also think that there's so much, I mean, we need to remember that at the end of the day, AI is an averaging engine, right? What it is trying to do is just come up with the probabilistic models of what's most likely to happen in the next thing here, but it is using data that really come from all of the information that all of the humans have been putting in there. And in many ways, it is a perpetuation of the common practice. If there's something that you need to do that's new or different or that's going to be, you know, a best practice instead of just the common practice, that curation needs to happen and it has to be intentional because, again, there will be consequences about whichever path you tend to choose and the AI won't be doing that on its own. So this idea of also trying to just do it by yourself means that yes now you have access to all of the data sets of the world which actually average out to all of the things that we've put out onto the internet some of which are amazing some of which are not and we shouldn't be touching and so I think that even that idea of let us be intentional about which are the practices that we want to perpetuate which is why there are so many questions now also about the responsible use of it when it comes to not perpetuating bias Or even as we were talking about discussions of emotion in the workplace or gender stereotypes, like AI is basically just taking sometimes all of the nonsense we've put out into the world and regurgitating it back in different ways. And so, again, that isn't the full picture because there's lots of greatness and amazing stuff in the fact that you can do research really quickly and you can find all of the articles that are really vetted and that you can actually get to very robust data sets also is super important. But again, It is not a panacea that is as easy as let us just decide to create an asynchronous path for somebody. And also to our experience with asynchronous learning, both completion rates and adherence rates are abysmal because at the end of the day, there is no motivation to just simply learn in a vacuum. Like some of us and some humans are super highly motivated about like getting to the core of this particular topic. But the skills that we are talking about and when we think about leadership and And people skills in the workplace, a lot of that is about applying it in context. It is not just about what I know. It is about how I do it with others. And that requires that kind of social practice for you to really get a good sense of it.

Michelle 56:54

Reminds me of the book. I think it's Daniel Kahneman. I apologize if I get it wrong, but it's Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. And so when it comes to AI, I think that's a thinking fast thing. Like, oh, I need a quick answer. But thinking slow are all related to behavior. Because we're not going to learn a behavior just by going to AI, right? We have to learn it, embody it, practice it, repractice it. So there's a learning and unlearning and relearning that goes in with that. And so I think of these as like slower behavior, like slower learning in their slower thinking, because you have to stop, you have to pause and say, hold on a second, let me just take a bit, a moment to look at the situation. And now I'm going to react to this, right? So it takes a little bit of time to develop a behavior. those types of skills and you have to practice them regularly. So AI, thinking fast. But when you're talking about something that has to do with humans and evaluations and decision making, that's a totally different way of thinking. And that's what we're, I don't think we're necessarily creating that nuance when we're talking about AI and L&D. True, true. I really had to leverage

Priscila 58:00

it. And even when I think about success in the workplace, right? I think, Michelle, when you were talking about appreciation, what I loved was the intentionality behind like, let me curate That's right. then now I want to push forward. What is the right timing? Like how many examples do we have of like, okay, this idea has been marinating and these conversations have been happening with the team, but when do you know, okay, now is the right time to strike. And now there's sufficient momentum that, okay, this is the bet that we're going to make. Those are all the leadership skills that actually determine whether folks are going to be really successful in the workplace and how do they navigate even labeling and naming that process for folks so that they can bring others along.

Michelle 59:07

That's right. We just, started, we're piloting a delegation skills workshop. And one of the things that's really interesting is like delegation skills are always a challenge for people. So I'm super excited that we're doing this. But it's also interesting because to Priscila's point, these types of decisions she's talking about, these are like senior level decisions. And when you're delegating, if I'm a manager, I'm delegating tasks. But when you're at a senior level, you're delegating decision making. So you're saying, okay, I need you to go make a decision about That is a much more complex process in how you decide who's going to make that decision, what you're going to ask of them, what level they're at, et cetera. So the other thing is the higher up you go in an organization as far as what's you're responsible for, that changes the nuance of all the things that you do, again, from where you might've been as a manager. So that's another reason I think building these skills in a social context is really important because if you were learning all of that from AI and now, okay, now you're a senior level, I don't know how to delegate decisions because I have to go to my AI to figure out how to make a decision, right? So we're missing that opportunity to really grow ourselves and to help our organizations make the best decisions and put the right people in the right places without having that experience, the social experience and the opportunity for learning from that perspective.

Micaela 1:00:26

Absolutely. Thanks for that. All right. Let's look ahead. I want to provide some truly sort of advice and synthesize some of what we talked about today. So at LifeLabs, we're known, as we've discussed over the course of the podcast, for these live facilitated learning experiences. And I want to come back to basics here and ask you both. Priscila, I'll start with you. Why does this approach still matter in the working world today?

Priscila 1:00:58

You know, short of if you're going to be a solopreneur and you're going to build your entire company on the back of all of the AI interns you're going to have, in the matters because as we you know we've been talking about how at the end of the day the success of work is the success of collaboration is how do I make the sum of the two of us coming together been bigger than just you know the units that we could bring and I think that you know it starts with that recognition that at the end of the day the reason you need a team is because you can actually get so much better output by ensuring that people can collaborate well together and because they end up being more than just the sum of all of the individual parts, right? I don't think there's been a single kind of like idea or proposal or conversation that I've had at LifeLabs that didn't come out 10 times better on the other side after I put it through the paces with a group of really exciting colleagues that wanted to engage in that particular conversation. And truly at the end of the day, that's where the magic happens, right? If you want to really, in a way, unleash the creativity that people need to actually discover what the best uses of AI is going to be, you have to get the humans to be excited about even tackling that challenge from the outset. And in many cases, you want them to be willing to do it together because that's how you're going to actually amplify all of the impact that that learning is also going to have, right? When you think about an organization, yes, it is beneficial to me that you as an individual employee become more upskilled, but it's way more value if now you are a champion for that skill and others are learning from you as well. And now all of a sudden I have an entire group of people that started with, you know, you may have role modeled those skills to me, but now I have an entire group of people that is much higher capacity and upskilled and capable of delivering at a greater level. So what I want as a leader in an org is not just to have, you know, a hundred individuals that are all learning into their different learning paths, What I want is a flywheel engine of folks that are displaying those behaviors to each other on an ongoing basis. And in order to do that, that social validation and calibration and recognition is super important. And this is where I think that the live events are still the most powerful.

Micaela 1:03:26

And I want to zero in on something we think and talk a lot about at LifeLabs. Really, the whole company was founded on this concept that the manager is a multiplier. That's right. And we We oftentimes say at LifeLabs that we firmly believe no great company was ever built without great managers. Priscila, can you expand on that a little bit for me? How do you think about the role of the manager in the workplace today?

Priscila 1:03:53

Yeah. So I think that a lot of management, when well done, is really about creating that alignment, right? So if you think about the entire world of where could I be deploying my skills or what kinds of jobs could I have? Like any one of us has a multitude of options and opinions about what was going to be a possibility for me. But when it comes to best fit, that's really about identifying, you know, what are the things that energize me and where are my talents and skills versus what is going to really create value for this entire organization and fulfill this mission. So in a way, managers are almost like the first line of defense to really allow folks to calibrate on, are my values aligned with where I'm at? You know, is this mission motivating to me? Do I want to cooperate for this vision? And then what are the kinds of things that we internally tend to value? So they really are barometers and or a compass in a way to help people kind of, again, calibrate where should my efforts be? Because we could go in a multitude of directions. And in some organizations, it will be expected that, you know, you move as fast as you can, regardless of cost. In other organizations, they may say, absolutely do not break any of the things that are working. You know, we are in very regulated or complex environments that require attention to detail, move slowly. And like that calibration is absolutely critical. The same human could be massively successful in one of those environments in a bull in a china shop in the other one. And getting that match to be really productive is a critical work of organizations because we often have limited time and limited resources to achieve something. And you have to ensure that you're getting as fast as you can that calibration of are we going in the same direction? I think that that is another critical element of management and leadership, right? Is are we actually all rowing in the same direction? If you think about vectors, if I'm going this direction and I'm going in this direction, we could actually cancel each other out, right? It might be counterproductive. It's exactly counterproductive because now there's so much energy and time that's getting spent just in that negotiation and that doesn't work. And so being able to clearly delineate Where is the path in getting folks excited and motivated about going in that in that direction is an absolutely critical task. And then I think that the sense of as we were talking about, like the the sense making around what is the value that I actually add to this organization? Because no human wants to feel like a cog, even if we may have commentary around, you know, late stage capitalism. All of us want to do things that are meaningful and impactful and feel like the work that we're doing every day. is bringing us closer to something that's bigger than us and that it's going to matter to someone. And managers have a unique position that enables them to be able to do that for people every day, which I find is an absolute privilege and super exciting for how you can actually drive folks forward by linking whatever their day-to-day work is to something that is much bigger than just their specific role or function.

Michelle 1:07:01

Thank you for that. I want to go back a little bit to the question you asked previously about live learning, and I'm going to connect to this other question that you asked. So I want to give you an example of why live learning is so important. Because if I'm working with an AI, for instance, the AI doesn't know what questions to ask me unless it's been programmed to ask me those questions, right? But when you're in a live learning situation, the facilitators are taking off of questions you're asking, things that you're saying, and they're making adjustments or explaining things in a way to try to help make sure that you actually understand it, right? Because if you're getting it one way, there's no one size fits all. This is the benefit of live learning. There's no one size fits all. So that's why e-learning is such a miss because it does not work for everyone. But live learning does because it's moving in the moment. I'm going to give you an example. I used to teach this class that was helping people to understand how to set their team up for success. And we start with, you know, things like setting expectations and understanding why setting expectations is really important. And I have a thing that I used to do with my teams, which is a team SOP, which is like, here's how we operate as a team together, right? And so I was teaching this class. And the thing is, in the class, people can ask questions that help them to understand it a little bit better. So you're explaining it and you're giving different versions of it or helping people to expand at a deeper level. And one of the classes I taught, I had a person come back to me and say, you know, I work at a start And I went to the owner of the company and I said, I think we should do this, which was do the SOP, these expectation settings, et cetera. And he told her, you know what? I think you're right. That's really important. So I'm going to let you stop doing the job you're doing. And for the next three months, I want you to just work on this. So that's the change making that happens from live facilitation that you are never going to get from an e-learning or from AI. And that's the benefit of it. So how that connects to, you know, the expectation settings, et cetera. experience or what the importance of managers is managers operate at this level where they are sense makers. As Priscila said, we are taking these high level organization goals, the mission, the vision, our values, and we're trying to create a situation where managers can help every person understand how that connects directly to their work. Again, from the Google study, what's the meaning of it? Do I have purpose? Do we have a shared understanding, right? Creating group norms. That's what the a manager is supposed to do. And when you're not getting the skills that are necessary to do that, it's like, you know, going uphill, you know, in the snow with bare feet. You know, you're not equipping this manager to be able to handle these situations as they come up. And that's what creates that disengagement that we often see through like the Gallup poll, right? Where people say they're, you know, 17% of people in organizations say they're disengaged. And I always like to use the analogy that having seven So it's like 30% of people are engaged, 17% are disengaged. So I always tell people, and this is how it hits home for them, is imagine you have a team of 10 people and their job is to pull a boulder up a hill with ropes. And so if you apply those statistics, three people would be doing this all the time. They would be constantly working. Five people would be doing it sometimes and not other times. And two people are cutting the ropes. That's the impact. So the importance of managers creating the meaning and purpose through through the experiences that they're having in a live learning situation and kind of meting out and working out these problems that they come to the workshops with, this is what starts to create those behavioral changes that reduce disengagement in companies. So it's imperative, in my opinion, that the two things are interlinked and are vastly important to making sure organizations run smoothly. I love that analogy because it

Micaela 1:11:02

paints such a great picture of like, either you're going to get the boulder up the hill and reach... Success or you're not. Right. Right. And how

Michelle 1:11:10

much effort is everybody having to make if this is going on? Right. And that's what people get burned out or people get disengaged. Then more people become disengaged. So we're helping managers to create meaning and purpose for their teams. And they do that through collaboration. But they also do that through learning something in a space where they can practice it. Thank you

Micaela 1:11:33

both so much for joining us on the Leader Lab today. What a pleasure. What Great conversation. I'm sure we'll be hearing from you both again. And we'll also have a bunch of things linked in the show notes that we referenced today. Everything from the soon funnel that Priscila brought up to the concept of queue stepping. You can find that all in the show notes. But really appreciate you both sharing from your background and your experience. I think you brought a lot of value to our audience today. Thank you for having us. Thank you. It's really fun. Thanks for joining us for this special Lavapalooza edition of the Leader Lab podcast. We will be back soon with more tools, tactics, and conversations that will help you build better managers and stronger teams.