5 human signals AI won't replicate - Sarah McDevitt (Hubspot)

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Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Really think about what makes you uniquely human because that is your competitive advantage in the future. Relational intelligence, in my words, is the ability to understand people beyond the surface. Don't react to what the person says. You know, think about the context of why they're saying it. The five signals I'll just quickly say are awareness, presence, empathetic structuring, connection capital, and humanity, which is the obvious one. Surface communication. This is what people actually say. And AI is really good at understanding the words we use. Emotional context is so important. This really is understanding how someone feels, not just what they said. Connection capital allows you to build connection within organizations.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Is that really where you think this is going? That the defensible moat is humanity and interest in people, relationships.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

We need to celebrate the people who bring more of the humanity to the picture because they're our keepers for the future. Otherwise, we're all going to be just in ruthless automation, and that's just not a good place to be.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

I'm doing great. I've been looking forward to this. Uh, you and I had the pleasure of not meeting but collaborating a bit on the Maker's Manifesto, which uh we may chat about a tiny bit today. But through that, uh I got to know you a little bit and I heard about the book you wrote, and now I've read it and I really enjoyed it. So let's let's get into all this. I'm gonna ask you first to just introduce yourself. Uh, what are you doing for work these days? And how did you get into this whole world of digital stuff anyway?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Well, I love the question because actually, isn't life an um interesting path of you you don't know how you got here? Um, and it would be less interesting if I had a plan. But today I work in HubSpot in our partner ecosystem. And, you know, most recently, I guess, while we're talking is, you know, I've done some TEDx speaking. Um, I'm now the author of The Roundtable, but my background is kind of advertising, communications, um, and now technology, but none of them really explain how I got here, to be totally honest with you. I mean, the the real reason I think started much, much earlier in my life. And and so you've read the book a bit, and and so you know a little bit about this, but um I grew up a dyslexic, and you know, part of the reason that the you know how I've ended up here is is really what the book is about, which is the round table. That's that's how I've ended up here, right? It's really the place where children who learned differently sat, and that has very much had an impact on all of the journeys I've made through life and the decisions I've made career-wise. But today I work in SaaS.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

All right. So the book is the round table. It's uh how relational intelligence will become your human advantage in the AI age. So let's just jump straight into that. What is relational intelligence and what does the round table have to do with it?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yes, so relational intelligence, um, just simply put, in my words, is the ability to understand people beyond the surface. And so, you know, if we think about times gone by, it's it's really about building trust, you know, reading context, noticing things that are on said, you know, making good judgments and what I call like helping people re-feel understood. And so the round table was um, and I always tell this story in a humorous way because looking back, we can always, you know, we we can always laugh looking back, right? So when I was, you know, about seven, uh, I was in Ireland in primary school, and the teacher had a very interesting way of organizing all the students. So she would put the kids that she deemed the most intelligent at the top of the class at triangle tables. Um, she put all the average students at square tables in the middle, and she put the rest of us idiots, some might say, at this round table down the back. And, you know, I joke with people, um, likely because she didn't want us to hurt ourselves on the sharp edges. Um, because we were we were the kids that, you know, as Zoolander would say didn't read too good, didn't learn too good. And so, you know, the the the reason I call the book the round table is for me, it's kind of a metaphor for today, right, when it comes to AI. Because the kids at the top of the class with those really sharp triangle edges, they were learning very repeatable tasks, right? The education system teaches us to memorize things and to like learn how to do things over and over again. Whereas us kids at the round table down the back were a little bit like unstructured data, right? We were not learning, we couldn't, we couldn't learn in the same repeatable way. And so as we were down the back of the class, being ignored a lot of the time, because this is 1987, right? Different times, we were kind of entertaining ourselves and learning off each other and learning to relate to each other. And so the round table is very much about how I believe those skills will become increasingly valuable in the world that we live in today.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Let's be specific. What kind of skills are you talking about? What did you learn at the round table that maybe the kids at the the sharp tables were not uh picking up as much?

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yeah, so I mean, we were learning to read the room, I think is the most important thing because you we had to read the room. I mean, this is it's a skill that you can develop, but not everyone has naturally. You have to be intentional about it. But at the back of the room, like we knew like when there were shifts in the room emotionally, so like we were very much able to read the room. We had presence with each other because to be honest, we didn't have a lot much else going on. So we had to kind of be present with each other. We were very involved in conversations. The interesting thing is that when you don't have the ability to like put words down on paper, you use your mouth. So you're using the spoken word, you're relating to people, you're conversing with people. So the things that we were learning to do down the back of the class while being ignored are the things really that create human connection. And I think that's the thing that um is so important today is that ability to connect with other humans, to listen to them and to really be truly present with them. And like, listen, we could debate all day about like the influence that technology's had on all of our ability to be present with each other and communicate because it's definitely evolved the way we do it. But this was old school person to person, how we related to each other.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

And what so what does AI actually have to do with this then? Because you did the book is about how our relational intelligence and artificial intelligence work in concert, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Yeah, yeah. Um, so what I want to do is write a book about the fact that we shouldn't be afraid of AI. It's a it's a multiplier of things that are, you know, human. Uh, it doesn't replace our humanity, though. I actually think that AI is not this, you know, the story of the decade. I actually think humanity is going to be the story of the decade. Um, but everyone's really focused on AI at the minute. AI is extraordinary. It's absolutely brilliant at processing information, you know, it's very good at analyzing huge amounts of data. I see that every day. It can even, you know, as you you have mentioned previously, generate, help generate ideas, maybe write like first drafts for you, but it it's automating repetitive work and it's helping us, I think, to become more productive, right? I think you'd agree with that. Like when you're not bogged down in these repeatable tasks or your life admin, you can be more productive. And I actually am very honest at the start of the book, where I talk about I used AI in the process of writing this book, right? Because as someone who's dyslexic, it helped me to express ideas that I couldn't get down a paper if I was writing. So um people always go, What AI did you use? So I'm gonna tell you what AI used, right? And so I use the memos, you know, the memo note on my phone. So I'd just be wandering around like a prick crazy person talking to myself and just letting it record. But that trans it translates your words into text, right? And you need text then to obviously make the basis of a book. So um it doesn't obviously replace my lived experience and it doesn't, you know, know about some of the stories that I talk about in the book, like you know, losing a parent or you know, building trust at the back of that classroom, but it it doesn't understand how humans can still create value. But the ability to use AI to extract my story out of me into the written word as a starting point, it kind of I shouldn't have the permission to write a book, to be totally honest with you, right? Like it's like, why is this lady writing a book? Like, she's not allowed to do that, right? But AI allows me to do something I've never been possibly, it's never been possible for me to do that before. And so for me, um, this book was really important as a message as well, a hopeful message. The book is a hopeful message, not a negative one, that actually AI can be a real amplifier for humanity if we lean into it in the right way.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

If I tell you that you're not unique in this approach, it's I don't mean it in a bad way, but uh, I talked to Barry O'Reilly, coincidentally, another dyslexic Irish fella from who a few weeks ago about his latest book, and he took a very, very similar tack. I think in his case, he might have used uh, or in the past he's used a journalist to interview him to do it rather than just starting with voice notes. But either way, generating uh blocks of text and being able to get it out of out of him, uh, and then being able to refine it is totally different than starting from a blank page and using systems and tools to to help give you structure. It's you know, the reality is if you give me a paintbrush, I'm not gonna turn into a fabulous artist no matter what. It is a tool, it's not a tool I'm good at using. If you give me something else where I can speak to it and help refine it, I'll get better. But my metaphor for this is I'm a total geek. You know, it's the the Captain America, you depend it's an accelerator for for people. If it's if you give somebody a super soldier serum, if you give them a superhuman tool, yeah, and they are able to use it well, then that's fantastic. But if you're using it the same stupid way that that you would have before, it's just gonna do the stupid thing faster. Yeah. So yeah, and the really interesting I thing I see is when I'm working with with uh an organization, you uh have the same people. You have the the dev, you have the designer, you have the product manager, you have the the marketing team, whoever, you give them the same tools, and you're gonna get totally different things because they're bringing their own thing to it and using it differently. The the AI, the LOM, whatever, doesn't it isn't magic, it is a very interesting accelerator.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

You're absolutely right. In Amplify what's the worst as well. Um, that's 100% true. And to your point, it doesn't matter like how good the AI is as a tool is if you don't have anything to say and you don't have a story to tell, or you don't have like an actual strong opinion on things, um, there's not there's nothing there to tell. And that's for me, it was I feel like I have all this lived experience based on my own life and growing up, and now in a business context. And that's something that I I really wanted to share.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

So you've got um five layers that you talk about in the book that are, I think, the the basis for the RI, for the relational intelligence side of this. Let's talk about them. And uh, you have some really wonderful stories to share in the book. I'm hoping that you can talk about some of them as part of this as well. Uh so the first layer uh is surface communication. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah, so so in the book, I talk about the there's five signals of relational intelligence that humans have. And then as a as a step down, then I I like the fives. I have five more layers of of the communication. So the the five signals, I'll just quickly say, are awareness, presence, empathetic structuring, connection, capital, and um humanity, which is the obvious one. And then within that, I talk about you know how we communicate with each other. And so for me, there's kind of five layers of human understanding. These are not new ideas, um, you know, lots of people talk about them, but they impact the way that you display those signals. So the first one, for example, would be surface communication. So this is what people you know actually say. And AI is really good at understanding the words we use, right? If you think about, you know, you show up in meetings today, there's more note-takers in the meetings sometimes in Zoom than there is humans. And it it's very good at transcribing the words, but humans know that the words are only part of the communication, right? And if you, you know, you know someone, you know, as someone who's who's uh married to an Irish person, we have this great saying in Ireland when you when someone asks you to do something, you're definitely not going to do it. You say, Oh, I will, yeah. Now that you know, an Irish people as a as an we we have quite a lot of words like that that are kind of negative things. Now, one day the AI might be good at uh picking up some of your facial, you know, features and things like that, and it it already can, but it won't pick up that sense of the energy being sucked out of a room. We've all been in rooms where someone raises an eyebrow and it's unspoken kind of communication. Um but surf communication is just the words, and sometimes I'm fine, as many people will know with their partners, is the least truthful sentence that someone says all day. Um, because they are definitely not fine. So that's kind of the surface, you know, what you know, what what the AI can hear, but not necessarily what's being said. Then the next one is emotional. Yeah, you want to go into that one.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Yeah, but yeah, before you move on, just a tiny bit more on that. I love that you're bringing it up because there's there's two pieces to that that really ring true. One is the um the different context that people from different countries and different areas absolutely bring to it. And I've seen that over and over. But there's also the even two people who speak the same language and have the same context, there's a big difference between what you thought you said, what your intention was, what comes out of your mouth, what they hear, and how they receive it. And the AI is really, really good at reflecting back what you actually said rather than what you intended. Yes. It's not necessarily how it's been taken, but at least it's getting one part of that and taking away uh one piece of the potential misunderstanding there and reflecting back to you what what you know what came out of your mouth.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

What you wrote, what you wrote, what came out of your mouth, the actual factual side of it and a way that it could be read, especially when we're dealing with lots of people who are uh neurotypical who sometimes do to take things in a very flat way.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

I completely agree. The literal translation of that for for some people is is 100% true. I mean, will any of us ever truly not be struck fear into our hearts when someone puts dot, dot, dot at the end of a sentence? I mean, what does that mean, you know? I I often wonder, my mother might put that by mistake. But a friend means I'm annoyed at you, uh, someone else is like a suspense thing. So yeah, I absolutely agree that like intention is is something quite separate to that surface level um communication, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

I always hear the I always hear the the the sound from a dramatic movie, you know, bum bum bum.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Exactly, and that's why the this you know the second layer, emotional context is so important because this really is understanding how someone feels, not just what they said. And you know, I tell uh a story in the book about this, you know, nurse that cared for me, and she knew exactly what I needed, which was reassurance. You know, I just needed someone in this particular situation of the book to sit quietly beside me. And, you know, that's not in the script for a nurse. They're they're like busy people, but it it was during COVID, but she understood, and like just after having a baby, she understood like that it was just that human presence that I needed to comfort me. It wasn't she didn't need to say anything, she just needed to sit there and be present with me because the you know, my loved ones couldn't be with me in the hospital at the time. Um, but she understood that emotional context of everything that was happening with COVID. I just had a baby, I was gonna be emotional. She she knew enough to sit and be present with me. And again, that's something that is happens through kind of awareness and getting out of our own. We sometimes can be very inward in our view of the world and we're thinking about ourselves. But you know, having that outward, like starting to pay attention to other people and their needs, allows then for you to pick up the context and react accordingly, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Yeah, and you talked about in the book about your father and your uncle and the way they they ran their businesses or their their professional lives and how they brought the that into this. Can you talk a little bit about one of those examples?

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah, um, so I tell a story in the book about my my father was uh a sergeant in a village in Leitram in Ireland. And he later on in life he told me lots of stories because I I was very much uh I love to capture personal history. Actually, I did my degree and and uh my thesis on familiar history. Um, and I think the spoken word and capturing those stories is so important. And so he was telling me a story about this uh old lady who was, you know, lived across the road from the pub, and she was always giving out that you know the pub was too noisy, and like she she really was on the war path, so to speak. And um, he was trying to figure out a solution to this and try and, you know, make everyone happy. And the more he listened to her, the more he was like, maybe she has, you know, there's there's other things going on, right? She's not sleeping. Why is she not sleeping? She was worrying about her son. And so once he kind of started to ask her questions about, you know, what was going on, why she wasn't sleeping, it was a worry thing. So she's lying awake at night, she has nothing else going on in her life. She was lonely, essentially, is kind of you know what was what was happening. And so he figured out a way to understand kind of her emotional context. But then he he organized this, you know, game for her with some of the local women every week then to distract her. So she would have not just to distract her, so she stopped complaining about the pub noise, but he he could see the person that she was lonely. And actually, once she had a social outlet and she had friendship and she was less lonely, that noise from the pub became quieter and quieter and quieter for her because she had other things to think about rather than just fixating on that. And so that's so important. And you know, my uncle as well, in his business, he had a haulage company and he understood that you can treat things as transactional and it's just a delivery, or you can really truly understand like the story behind the delivery, like the story behind the people receiving, maybe the business. Um, if there were struggles, how you go the extra mile. And that meant that he retained customers much longer because he built some a human connection with them. Um, he understood their families, their backgrounds, and they continue to come back because he had that context. And he also understood when, you know, maybe someone was not having such a good day, because as we all do, which is something we could all benefit from is don't, you know, don't react to what the person says. You know, think about the context of why they're saying it, because we all have uh we can all react very emotionally on certain days. And if you can understand that pressure someone's on in general, you can be a bit more accepting of that, maybe not take things as personally. So that emotional context for all of us is understanding there's other things going on in people's lives that you know make them react a certain way, and we can be more open to reading that particular context.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

So fundamentally, the most of what we're trying to do day to day in product development is around finding efficiencies, finding ways to be able to spur growth. It is about how many, how many more tickets can we close, how many more sales can we have?

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

So but the the types of things that your father, your uncle, that you've been uh prioritizing, they're not about turning that one sale faster. It's about spending time with the individual and seeing what does that turn into, making sure that you're not just meeting the spoken need but the unspoken need for this. And that's the type of thing that then turns into a long-term relationship, lots of referrals, repeat businesses. Yes. How does this work with with AI with the the the new world with AI tools as we're trying to go towards radical efficiency? Is it realistic or to do that and to build it into the tooling is the right way to uh make things as efficient as possible so that we can spend more time with people and do the relational thing?

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Where do we go?

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah, I call this building relational infrastructure because um my personal belief, and and I can I can tell you my strongly held beliefs on this one is I do believe that investing in relationships causes a compounding effect over time. And so I do think the the where AI tools help us the most is yes, it takes let it do all of the things that are inefficient, like the admin side of things, let it take the notes in a meeting, let it do all Of those things, but let it be gather the context for you so you can have a more real human conversation. Now, in the future, my belief is that if you have two people and they are both automating the hell out of things, like something I call ruthless automation, right? And that's what we will have is this democratization of AI because everyone will have access to it. And in a way, then everyone's the same. The only thing that makes us unique is our humanity in that particular equation, right? If we all have access to the same tools, and me and you are doing exactly the same thing, and we're not giving any kind of human edge to it, then we're the same and there's not too much to choose from. But actually, inserting some of the relational elements and you know, um, yes, it's inefficient as hell. This is something we're going to have to like cope with a little bit, is the human interactions will be inefficient as hell, but AI can take some of the fat out of that, and we can spend more time with people. Because if you think about one of the things that powers AI really, really and is going to continue to power it in a way more proactive way. So today AI can tell us what happened a lot of the time, but it's not, you know, quite telling us what the next best step is just yet, right? It is in some cases, but not really at scale. One of the things that will help us to decide what to do next is the context that is gathered by humans. Something I call context miners. So if me and you were having a conversation here, if I asked you to fill out a form and there was a question about the form going, you know, what did you have for lunch or something like that? Like, let's keep it simple. And you said, you know, I had a ham sandwich, right? Um, and you just hit you would you'd enter that into the form or the AI and go, there you go. You ask me a direct question, I'll give you a direct answer. If me and you were having that conversation and I said, you know, what did you have for lunch? And you were like, I had a ham sandwich, and you'd be like, Doesn't sound like it was the best ham sandwich you ever had. And you'd be like, Well, it wasn't. And I was like, Where did you get it? And then we go down this you this thread of questions, and I start to understand, like, maybe ham is not your favorite sandwich, right? I'm learning what is you tell me about the best sandwich you ever had, like maybe it was in Italy, it was like, you know, faccia bread, like so, in those conversations, I am extracting so much more context from you. If I then embed that context into the way AI tools work, then it can make a more proactive suggestion to you and build a deeper relationship because and help me build a better relationship with you because it knows more about you and it can make better suggestions. And so human conversation and extracting that context is something I believe that only humans will be able to do based on the on the trust element.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

But if we're trying to do that ruthless efficiency, and I want you to find out from everybody in the room what they had for lunch, and you're spending 10 minutes on with each of them, that's not going to be a very efficient, it may pay off in the longer term. So, how do you how do you make sure to prioritize this and keep it as an important part of the goals of the system as a whole?

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Well, I think, you know, again, this is just my personal opinion. Is there is we people ask me all the time, Sarah, where do you have, you know, I've got four kids and I've got a full-time job and I've got all these things like Sarah, where do you get the time to do anything else besides that, right? We waste an awful lot of time in our lives doing things that we don't need to be doing, uh, but we don't prioritize the most important things. So, what I would say to you is what I'd be suggesting is that I think we waste an awful lot of time in life doing things that are not particularly valuable. So, in my personal opinion, the value of that interaction, even if it is inefficient, will be more valuable than the all of the small random context you would pick up that's very efficient, right? It's very efficient to pick it up that way. Um, but it won't necessarily be the most valuable context that will drive the biggest outcomes in the future. So, my imperfect answer to that is I do think that in the future we may have to realize that efficiency is not everything and all things to us, that there will be things that we will have to slow down and be inefficient to speed up again and maximize long-term value. And I don't, I'm just not a believer that this ruthless automation is going to um, you know, I I talk about the book about someone saying, Oh, you know, this is great. The AI just automated the hell out of everything. It's like so efficient, it's brilliant. And then they're losing customers. They're going, well, why are we losing customers? And it's because they've lost that human connection. And, you know, we've seen in in Ireland this week they just brought in a law about the right to have a human um in all of your conversations with financial institutions, right? And that's because I think where we will see AI do certain things, but I will I think we will see more of a pushback and in certain areas where humans are still important and people want that interaction.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

That's fantastic. I was wondering, but as you were saying earlier, if we all have access to the same tools and systems, if the same uh automation uh essentially as a baseline, you know, what is the defensible moat for you? What makes you special? And there's always been the businesses that get by on we have a personality, we have a relationship. Uh, is that really where where you think this is going? That the defensible moat is humanity and and interest in people, relationships?

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Uh so my answer to that would be as much as I talk about ruthless automation in the book, I also talk about um there've been different quadrants, and and and another one is the relational refuge, and they're the people who sit up there going, we've got great relationships with everyone, but we're not bothering with AI. I don't think that's a place that you can be either, because you're not going to be able to scale and you won't be able to compete, right? Because companies are going to be moving into um using AI. I think this kind of amplified excellence of the future is um it's trust with tech, right? It's where we have AI that's able to amplify our ability to do things at scale, but relationships, I believe, and that relational infrastructure will still have a purpose. And I I personally believe that the humans that will get paid the most in the future are the people who can connect with the other humans that are ultimately like making the decisions, because the AI, in my opinion, will only go so far, and then we will fall into the space where we will. I think humans just another thought I will say is this. My own personal view is if in the morning I lost my job, right? And the AI took my job, and I know many humans that are like this. Um I'm pretty and it took all the jobs that you know I I could do. I'm pretty sure I would, and many people like me would invent a new thing to do because I believe that's the human condition, is you know, some humans for sure want to sit there and say, Oh, well, that's Grandis taking my job. Um, but I think a lot of humans are curious, we're innovators, like we want to find different things to do. And if AI took our jobs in the morning, there would be a whole new um industry um and economy set up based on human-to-human interaction. That's just my personal view, is that is what we would see happening.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

I think part of what I'm hearing you say in that is there is, you know, one of the things we talk about a lot is the difference between a performance metric and a health metric. So there's the efficiency side of the performance metrics. You need to be able to uh serve the customer and get the thing that they want done. But then there's the health metric of keeping them happy. Yeah. So if we take the performance metric as that's something we know how to do and do well, uh, you know, we can measure quantitative and fairly easily. But qualitative, getting the balance right on that. I mean, we're what's your approach? You're working with partner ecosystems, you must have ways of measuring the quality of the relationship. I'm hoping you're not going to say NPS.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Well, I mean, there is NPS, obviously. There definitely is NPS. Come on. Um listen, I, you know, there is relationship investment for sure. So trust definitely doesn't appear overnight. It compounds. Um, you know, for us, it's in every conversation. For me, it's in every promise kept. Like that's something that we see partners respond to. It's every difficult conversation handled. Like I do think that people respond to that. And over time, that becomes what I call connection capital. And it's the trust you build before you even know that you need it, right? And connection capital allows you to build connection within organizations. And it's one of the things that actually can help build referrals. So one of the things we look at is like, you know, partner-partner referrals. We also see that with sales reps. Like obviously, partners know who are good sales reps, who they want to work with because they do bigger deals, because they trust each other and they know how to work together. But the partners that I think do the best in the ecosystem that I work in are the ones that do spend the time building, taking the time to build on those big bigger deals. They're not as transactional. They do invest in time and they get upsell because of that. Um, if you activate customers and you spend the time getting them to use the tool correctly, really understanding their business and helping them to get outcomes, those partners are the ones that are the most successful long term rather than just transactional people.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

How are you using that on a day-to-day basis with the the teams that you work with when you're hiring, when when you're training people, when you're evaluating people for promotion? Because you know, you've got some some people are going to be locked into some great accounts, some people are on the tougher accounts. Yeah. It's not always, it's the numbers aren't always telling the full story on this. No, no. So how are you for people who are thinking about I want to use pay more attention to this and promote this more in my organization? What would you recommend to them?

SPEAKER_01 32:22

You know, many years ago, uh, when I used to hire interns, I used to um get them to present on why their family liked them. And the reason I did that was because sometimes we give people a brief and they come in and you know they get something wrong. You immediately kind of hate them because you're like, well, that's wrong. And you're like distracted by it. Um, but you can't be wrong about something like, you know, why your your family likes you. And you know, some people would come in and they'd say, like, here is a chart of all the pictures my mother took of me versus the chart that she took of my sibling. So you'd kind of get a sense of whether they were analytic, right? You get a sense of whether they were analytic, right? Or you get some people coming in and they'd tell a story about, you know, some childhood memory, and that's why. And so they were storytellers, so you could tell they're really good communicators. I think, in the kind of um modern sense, I think, you know, hiring qualities in the future, it's definitely going to come down to curiosity. We will look at their curiosity, we will look at their judgment and the way they make decisions, definitely the way they communicate. I think, you know, empathy will be a big one. I think already we're seeing like the ability to learn and be agile, and your learning is so important because it's kind of you know interesting that AI can can fill your knowledge gaps, but it definitely can fill your humanity gaps for sure. And I think what's really interesting is what we're seeing with Gen Z. You know, Gen Z are like resisting AI, where it's really interesting to see the kind of Gen X and you know, millennials are embracing it. Now, I think that's to do with resilience. Like I think there's an element of resilience in those generations where they've maybe had some things to overcome. They obviously adapted to things like the internet coming on board. So maybe they've had to, they've had more evolution. Um, but when I think about hiring the future, it sounds really fluffy. And I'll be honest with you, it sounds really fluffy to say those things, right? But the most important thing for those people in the future is they will not be performance-driven people, they will be about building culture, they will be about creating a sense of belonging for other people within the organization. They will be culture carriers. If we think about the way we have traditionally measured success, right, even from a human intelligence point of view, right? We tend to look at IQ and maths and those types of things. But EQ or my personal relational intelligence viewpoint is it will be how they relate to each other, and the organization will become the most important thing because they will become networkers who can move within an organization that connect people. Um, AI will be able to do a lot of like, you know, I always joke that like, you know, Dave, the technical guy, used to come into the room and he had no personality. And Dave would just go, I'm Dave. I don't need a personality, I'm the technical guy, right? And this is true. We all, everyone, everyone knows this person, right? The problem is Dave needs to get a personality now because the AI can increasingly do more and more of that work. And so, you know, you can't sit there anymore behind a knowledge that is going to be replaced by AI. You have to show up with your humanity because, again, the difference between someone who's technical who could speak and relate or, you know, speak sense, and I don't mean, you know, all neurotypical people. I think rooms are very different. I think the way people read rooms is very different as well. But I think, you know, the way that we show up, we can't hide behind the knowledge we think that we have anymore. Um, we have to show up in a more human way.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

So I was one of those people who sat at one of the sharper edge tables, but uh I took something from the book. And, you know, I think of myself as someone who works primarily based on relationships. I'm a consultant, my work tends to come from referrals. Uh, so if I'm not investing in relationships and working well with clients, then I'm not going to get any work. Um, and there was something in the book about uh uh a 3-2-1 system, about um how you uh keep in touch with people. And I realized I have post-notes all over my desk and up on the wall and everywhere else. And I was doing this in a very ad hoc way. I've you know was solo per uh consultant. I don't haven't invested in a proper CRM and never seemed to make sense, but realized this is something that of course this makes sense. I have any number of deals in flow, and sometimes they've gone cold because I just forgot about them. Nothing's been going on for a couple weeks, and it wasn't interesting or shiny and in front of me, so I wasn't paying attention, and then I never really followed up the way I needed to. Um, so I've got my my now homebrewed AI chief of staff system, and I said, take this and let's put it on top. So now I have a tracker page that just shows the status of all my the people I've been working with and all the people I should be working with, and how often have I been in touch with them. And it doesn't force me to do anything, it's just a nice reminder of here's some people you probably want to be in touch with, you haven't, or the ball's in your court versus in their court, what's going on? So it's just a really nice um to an uh I think it was Amber Case who talked about ambient awareness versus versus direct awareness. So now I can just go to this page and just say, Oh yeah, I should be talking to them. Yeah, and I've built in a few other little workflows in there to say, uh, here's a bunch of interesting content and just for it to ping me and say, here this might be interesting to one of these three or four people that you're prioritizing. It's an excuse to get in touch with them. Yeah. Uh things like that. So I'm curious. Uh, that's how I am using it right now, using these tools to enhance my humanity rather than it replacing what other types of things would you recommend? What are you doing or or seeing people do that you think is worthwhile?

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Um, so one thing I'd say is I do think that we should, yeah. I think note takers are a great example, right? You know, sometimes we're very distracted trying to take notes and like catch everything. We should just go deep in conversations, like be curious and like let the AI extract all of the notes out of it. Because actually, in that conversation, you can hear like multiple business opportunities, right? Multiple business opportunities because you're saying, Oh, they said they were having a problem with this. Now that wasn't the content of the conversation you were having right now, but over here you heard they have another problem that you can help them with. So you can then start to uh mine opportunity in that. I like the the idea of non-transactional check-ins, like I talk about, because you know, if one of our friends sends us a message, a text message to say, hey, thinking of you, or I saw this and I thought of you, we kind of go, Oh, wow, they were thinking about us, right? So, in a business sense, actually, like sending, you know, a piece of information or I saw this article about someone, it just creates that connection of, you know, oh, I actually thought about you. Um, maybe you didn't. You have like a personal system that tells you, like, here, you should send something or this might be of interest, right? But I'm using it definitely to be more curious because when I'm going deep in these conversations, it is like really helping me with that. And it's also helping me to maybe listen twice before I offer an opinion. Um, so not jump straight, you know, back in there. Um, I put my phone away and my technology, like I've definitely been more present and I've caught more myself in that. But you know, something I talk about in the book as well is empathetic structuring, which is accountability. And here's the thing I'd say to people is if the AI messes up, the AI is not lying awake at night going, oh wow, I feel bad about that. I should maybe do everything I can to put that right. It's not going to do that. And actually, one thing I'm finding with, you know, customers and partners is they want someone who's accountable because they want someone who's lying awake at night going, I have to make this better, right? And accountability and human accountability is a pretty powerful thing. So um I think you know, they're there's some of the ways in doing it. But I'm also, you know, celebrating colleagues who are bringing you know people together. I think that's something we have to do as well. Um, I've noticed that actually we should celebrate the humans that are bringing some of these deeply human things into the into the forefront because we have rewarded very, in my opinion, repeatable, very focused on, you know, as I said, the the old idea of the IQ. And I think we need to celebrate the people that bring more of the humanity to the picture because they're the they're they're our keepers for the future. Otherwise, we're all going to be just in ruthless automation, and that's just not a good a good place to be.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

So this has been a fantastic conversation. I think I've got time for just one more question with you. So aside from going out and buying the book and reading it, which I definitely recommend. I really enjoyed it. Um, what's one thing you want people to start doing tomorrow? Something that they can do to enhance the the way that they're approaching their relational intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

I think it's um asking yourself what makes us valuable. Like I do think you need to start with that question is what makes us valuable? And believe the answer isn't competing with the machines or AI. It's definitely found in being more intentionally human. Um, so that's the thing I would say to people is tomorrow, like really think about what makes you uniquely human because that is your competitive advantage in the future, is you. It's it's not about um, as I said, Dave, poor Dave, but whoever the Dave's out there, the technical guy is. What I would say is don't hide behind a particular, you know, thing that you think is is what your superpower is. Like really start to understand. Um, and I say to people like, do uh do a relational intelligence assessment, right? Yeah, what on my website, just to help people understand like what are they good at? What are they developing? What do they need to grow? Um, that's a that's a good place to start, is to start understanding where blind spots are and then maybe lean more into some of the signals.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

And we'll have a link to your website in our show notes. So if anyone's interested, uh please go there. Sarah, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

Thank you for having me. The product experience hosts are me, Lily Smith, host by night and chief product officer by day. And me, Randy Silver, also host by night.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

And I spend my days working with product and leadership teams, helping their teams to do amazing work.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Luron Pratt is our producer, and Luke Smith is our editor.