Caring Leadership in the Age of AI with Germain St-Denis

What does it really mean to lead people well?

In this episode of Behind the Story, Jelani Gonzalez sits down with Germain St-Denis, author of Empowering People Through Caring Leadership, for a thoughtful conversation about the difference between managing tasks and truly leading people.

Germain shares lessons from his long career in technology, strategy, management, and executive leadership, including why leaders must train, equip, trust, empower, and genuinely care for their teams. He also explains why human connection matters more than ever in the age of AI, remote work, hybrid teams, and constant workplace change.

This conversation explores what happens when employees feel unseen, how leaders can rebuild trust, why succession planning often fails, and why younger professionals need leaders who help them grow.

If you care about leadership, workplace culture, personal development, or building teams where people can do their best work, this episode offers practical and human-centered insight.

Listen to the full episode now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
 Watch the full conversation on YouTube.
 Subscribe to Behind the Story for more conversations that go beyond the surface.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Yeah. I I'm actually titled the main title of my book is actually Empowering People Through Caring Leadership. And I wrote it as the creator of Architect and People First. So the idea of empowering people, as I referred to earlier, going back to service leadership, carrying leadership. So you empower people through caring.

SPEAKER_03 0:19

Jermaine, you've had a very long and extinguished distinguished career. And I'm curious what led you to putting out the book.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Okay. Well, first of all, I want to thank you, Delandy, for having me on your show. It's it's such an honor. Um, you know, you've you've you've done something amazing in a very short time, and I like to recognize that I love to be able to see people succeed. And um part of my mission now that I that I don't work full-time is I want to help people be their best. Um I grew up on a farm in eastern Ontario. I did have a long career. I studied computer science, and then I kind of migrated into strategy and the business side, because I thought that was more important than the technical side, or more interesting, not more important, but more interesting to me than the technical side. And then I moved into management. And let me let me ask you this question first before I go on. Do you remember your first boss? My first boss. Your first boss, your first manager. Yes, I do actually.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Vividly.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Good memories or not so good?

SPEAKER_03 1:20

Well, this would possibly qualify as child labor. I was eight years old, and my dad had a friend that had a toy stall. I'm from the Caribbean. I grew up in the islands, the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas. Um, and a friend, my dad's friend had a toy stall that she sold toys at the side of the Roll Road during Christmas. And my dad said, You're gonna go help my friend and make some money for Christmas. So literally at eight years old, eight o'clock every morning, I'd be out there on the high street selling toys to adults during Christmas time. And she was uh she was tough. You would not know that she was a friend of my dad's the way I was treated at eight. But it forged me. I look back on that experience with a sense of pride that from that moment on, there's nothing you can do. I can't be broken. I never tap out.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Good for you. Good for you. I mean, adversity does make us stronger, clearly. Good for you, you know. I haven't seen or experienced what you've experienced, but I've observed very quickly. I remember my first boss very well. Started working for Bell Canada in the computer communications that were new stuff at the time. Very tall, looked like a football player, gentle giant, if you will, firm. You knew what needed to be done, but very pleasant all the time. And we had a tech lead, he was kind of full of energy and got us to do a lot of work. That was great. There was a parallel group to us, and nobody liked the manager there. Nobody liked the manager. And we talked all the time. We interacted, we did some work together. The difference was that this guy didn't really care about these people. So I've noticed, and you've seen this too, I'm sure, but I learned very early on that the type of leader that you get, especially manager, director, vice president, that layer that deals with staff, the type of leader that you get will greatly influence your success or failure, right? And I've seen that repeat throughout my career, and uh we can give you some examples, but I've stayed in in management largely for that reason, because I knew that I could make a difference. And I I've seen a lot of really bad leaders, I've had bully managers myself, but I could see the difference a good leader can make. And for people, you could be changing their entire life, right? So it does matter.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

It certainly does. And it's funny because I had this thought with a this conversation with a colleague the other day where I said, you know, a lot of companies confuse management with leadership. They're not the same thing. And not every manager is a leader, and not every leader can be a manager. It's the really special person that can really do both effectively. And lots of times you've got people in leadership positions that they have no clue. They're in a leadership position operating as a manager. And the way I differentiate personally is managers, you think of them in regards to things and tasks and the leadership in regards to people. And there are some people I'm sure you probably are aware in your career, they have no business being around humans, much less leading a staff. So, Jermaine, if you had to sum up your leadership philosophy, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

I am very, very big on well, there's a principle called sermon leadership, which which I learned later in my life, but it actually turned out it was something that I was following all along. If you want your people to succeed, I summarize this this way: train and equip your people, trust and empower them to get the job done. And if you don't do that, then you're not a leader. That's just what it is. But I've I've taken that a step further, and I've turned that into caring leadership because not only do you train and equip them, but you care for them. And one of the main differences, and and actually I was blessed to have you know Marshall Goldsmith, I'm sure. Yes. Everybody knows him. I was blessed to have him review my book. And he put in my book that he says Germain's approach prioritizes both the well-being of the people and exceptional results. And that that is key. So that's my leadership philosophy. We will get work done. We will meet our objectives as reasonable as possible, but we don't have to do it by burning out our people. And so my philosophy has been in everything I do, I'm going to take this caring leadership approach. And over the years, because I have had a very long and very good career, I can't complain. I've I'm trademarked what I call architect of people first, which means that when you make decisions as leaders and especially as executives, think about the impact on your people. And I've been through, because I mostly focus on emerging tech and related professional services, I've seen all kinds of emerging tech transformations and innovations. And the difference, if you do think about the people and how they can adopt it, versus just saying, this is what we want, go ahead and do it. The difference is like night and day, success or failure really depends on how you get your people to adopt a new technology. And if we have time, we could talk about AI and how that it still applies to AI today, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Yeah. In regards to your book, especially the title Architect of People First, if I don't know that's a book, it sounds like maybe a cliche or a slogan, if you will. Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_01 6:39

What does it mean to you? Yeah, I I'm actually titled the main title of my book is actually Empowering People Through Caring Leadership. And I wrote it as the creator of Architect and People First. So the idea of empowering people, as I referred to earlier, going back to service leadership, caring leadership. So you empower people through caring. The architect of people first came up um probably five, six years ago, maybe twenty-nine. I was on a podcast with a gentleman out of California who works for one of the universities. And he had this very different approach to life. And it was very interesting when I was telling him about my story and everything else. And he said, So how would you how would you capture what you want to stand for? You do want to be the you know, the McDonald's of of leadership or something like that. And then that's when it dawned on me. I said, well, a lot of a leader's role is architecting people around the work to be done, right? So I said, I'm gonna be the architect, but the architect that puts people first in terms of getting things done. And that's how it came about, and I've used that ever since. And really, I think it really is a good encapsulation of what it really means to lead people.

SPEAKER_03 7:57

How does how does it manifest in your personal life? Dealing with personal challenges day to day, how does your leadership philosophy impact that? How do you put it into practice in your personal life?

SPEAKER_01 8:09

I tend to do the same. I look at things the same way in my personal life. But I must admit, in family situations where emotions are high, it can be very, very different and more difficult, I have to say, much more difficult. In a business situation, there are of course emotions are high, but and you may be very close to your staff or to your colleagues, it's a little bit different than to say you have issues with a sibling or a child or the child has issues with the parent. But I try to apply the same philosophy and um you know, even a simple example of you go to a store and you have some problems and you ask a clerk to help you, and and maybe they don't know, they don't have a clue. Well, you can start complaining or bitching and complaining to them, or you can just realize, okay, this person trying to earn a living and maybe wasn't trained properly. And, you know, let's let's look at their side of things before we make an overall judgment. So I I try to do that as much as possible.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Reflecting back in your experience on managing and leading people, and also with companies or or people you've worked with, what is what have you found is the most difficult conversation to have with direct reports? And how do you get through it?

SPEAKER_01 9:25

I think there are two types. The one type is the performance issue, if you will, or feedback where somebody's not doing very well. That is a big challenge. Very big challenge. And most people, most managers do reasonably well. But I think as you were saying earlier, a lot of leaders don't have any people's skills. They're in leadership roles because they were a very good individual contributor. They were specialists, they were top-top, and you make them a leader and expect everybody to perform like they did. But that's as an aside, to me, that's a flaw in our organizations, completely flaw. And I've discussed that with other colleagues in in senior roles. So the other type of difficult conversation is when there are serious health issues. And I've had serious health issues, but I've had staff who have had very serious health issues. And those can be difficult because I mean I can share as much as I want. That's my choice. Right. But they don't have to share. Yet it may impact their performance, right? So how do you find that balance? It's a little bit different. This is maybe funny, but not funny. I've had two of my staff over over the years who have had brain surgery. And in both cases, I in one I I knew fairly well, the other one was fairly new in my organization. But in both cases, I really took the time to understand what they needed from me as support. Nothing about how they're going to get treated, everything else. What do you need from me as support? Yes. And I would have regular calls with their spouse to find out what was going on. How is this person doing? And in both cases, this really, really, I think it really helped them understand. I'm I'm not alone. Once I get better, I go back to work and my boss, my boss will support me. Makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_03 11:12

It does. It does. I want to ask you how you mentor and develop people. I once had an opportunity to move to a higher position. And I I refused the position. And the manager I had worked with for about a year, he was he was very offended by the fact that I refused a position. And when um his manager asked me the reason, I said, because I don't want to work with that manager. And he asked me why. And I said, Because I don't think he's a good manager. And he said, Well, how do you determine whether he's a good manager in this case? And I said, Well, I've been working with him for a year, and I can't tell you one thing he's taught me. I can't tell you one thing he's helped me to improve upon. I can't tell you one thing he's helped me to develop. Everything that I've done has been at my own, just my personal standards on wanting to continuous to continually approve. And when he confronted me and he asked me the reason, I said, okay, you tell me one thing you've taught me. And when he's when he thought about it, he was he started apologizing. You've demonstrated to me that you're not qualified for me because you lack the mentoring and development abilities. How do you, Jermaine, in your career, how how how have you developed people and how have you coached other executives to develop people to make sure that they are progressing in their careers?

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Yeah, that that's a really good. I like your story a lot because I can relate to that. Many, many leaders don't realize that it's their responsibility to develop their people. And yet that is a key function of leadership. It's a key, Keefe, and it should be made mandatory. And I I'm a big, big proponent of leadership being coach, leaders being coaches. And as we go on with AI, I'm soon going to um publish an article about in the AI era, the coach as a the leader as a coach becomes even more critical because you can delegate the tasks to AI. Tasks are never a problem. But the people themselves and how they develop, people brag about everything they do with with AI. And as I mean now and then I ask, okay, well, what are you doing about your people? I don't even get an answer most of the time. Exactly. So so how how I I mentor, first of all, I think whether you have 20 or 100 people, or you have different levels of managers, manage you manage other managers, or you lead uh an entire organization. The goal of leaders of leaders is to make sure they know every individual, every person on their team as a person. Because you first have to ask what what makes them tick? What makes you tick, Jelani? Right? And obviously you're you're an ambitious ambitious person, you're smart, you you look very good, confident, everything. What makes you think, makes you tick, sorry, and what do you want to do over the next few years? What are your goals? And that will vary over time. I've had younger um, because I've actually led from Gen Z, Gen Z or Gen Z, as you would say in the US, to baby boomers, all at the same time. Or true, but all at the same time. So when I ask about the priorities, it'll be different. A 30-year-old would tell me, this has happened often. I have two kids, I have a family, I have a growing family, I have two kids, I don't want to have to work evenings, I don't want to have to work weekends, fine, fine with me. Now that I know, I understand, I will schedule you accordingly. And if the work's not getting done, we have to get somewhere else. Pressuring someone to work weekends if they don't want to, that's not right. So getting to know that, and then getting to know some people want to be recognized as as technical experts. For example, in the tech field, that's being recognized as a technical expert in the technology space is as important as getting a big raise or promotion to many people. Techies are like that, right? So if you lead a group of geeks, if you will, you have to understand what really motivates geeks. And being seen as the top person to go to is important. And what face when you look at it, every person, you walk in a room, every one of these people is someone looking to be appreciated in some shape or form. So when you understand your staff, do they want to be a manager? No, they don't want to be a man. I've one of the jobs I took one time, and I was interviewed by four team members before I accepted. He I said, You're as senior as me, why didn't you take this job? You'd be great. He said, I led people in the military, hated it. I don't want to do this ever again. Well, okay, fair game. But he was my one of my top people, and you know, I could rely on him, I could ask him questions, not so much on the people issues, he's just not interested, and that's very fair games. The way I mentor people is understand what their goals are, and you have to you have to update ask this regularly because it changes. And you have to meet them where they're at. That's another thing that people forget, or leaders forget. For several years, and I had to stop because of healthy shoes, but I was a coach in performance driving, very close to auto racing, but it's not technically not racing, so it's safer and you have insurance if something happens. And as a coach, people told me many, many times, I like the way you start. You're not pushing me. Well, I said, I'm starting where I can I believe you're at. So that's where we start. Now we'll work from there, and then I'll help you get better. So this is how I mentor people. And it doesn't matter if you're an individual contributor, a manager, director, executive, this is how you should mentor your people. Help them, first of all, help them realize and understand their goals because sometimes it's not clear to people and understand the options they may have. Because they may not know, hey, you have leadership potential. Oh, I never really realized that. So they may not know what they can do. So it's part of the job, and the higher you go, the more critical I think it is to give them more options. Because as someone progresses, you don't pigeon them, pigeonhole them into a specific leadership role. They can maybe go much broader. So help them understand that. And I'll summarize by saying this when I when I mentor people, caring leadership is about helping people to be their best. That's how I summarize it. Right. And it's pretty simple. I'll help you develop so that you can be the best version of yourself. And the acid test, as one of my mentors would say, the acid test is would that person do better under your guidance than they would have on their own? Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

Let let's follow up on that. Um, because one of my pet peeves is with with companies, is that I feel as though companies as a whole completely miss out on one of the most important resources that they have, which is the people. And I find, especially from a personal perspective, people are constantly underutilized for what their capabilities are relevant to their responsibilities in the company. And what I mean by that, for example, is I use myself as an example. My jobs have never been challenging. The reason is whatever job I'm qualified for, once I have it, I commit to learning one new thing every week about my job to increase my value for my employer. So that way I know that the person they hired in January is not the same person in June. That person is much more qualified, much more experienced, much more knowledgeable because I've spent the last six months adding to my expertise. And what I found is, and and I've had a coach say you should verbalize it, but I what I found is my manager never know, never know that. Never never knew knew that. They have no clue because in their supposed one-on-ones, I don't remember any questions about how's your development going? What what skills do you have that is relevant to the job that we're not using that could benefit? I mean, that that that can be an entire notepad. I could say, well, here's what I do on a day-to-day basis to maximize this task and do this and this, this, because I'm one of those people where I'm being on systems. And I say all that to say, how do you advise companies and leaders to not miss out on the benefits of the resources of the people that work for them that are constantly elevating their game to increase their value? And the company's not really benefiting from it because if I'm increasing my value and my expertise, but I have the same responsibilities, I'm being underutilized. How do you coach companies so that they do not miss out on maximizing the best efforts of their employees?

SPEAKER_02 19:52

I can coach the ones who want to listen. Obviously. Bring a horse to water, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:01

You can't make them drink. That that um coaching, the more senior the the executive or the executive or the leader, the more difficult it is because they don't think they need coaching. That's one of the things that I they don't think they need coaching, but the the um your individual, your particular case, I would make this, I would label this as unheard, unseen. That's the type of and I've seen this many, many times. And I've considered myself in that boat too many times because I was passed over for promotions. And um sometimes I moved and I got a great job somewhere else, and they couldn't believe it. Sometimes you have to, sometimes change, and that's what I advise people like you when they tell me I'm not being recognized. Well, sometimes you have to consider uh a job change. Now, I'm not suggesting that to you at this point, don't know enough about it, but obviously it's a big miss. But the leaders who do want to listen, there's a huge amount of untapped potential in people like you and in people who are actually what I call the quiet ones. Susan Kane has a terrific book, which she calls Quiet. But the quiet ones and um you might call it inclusive leadership, but don't just work with the high performers, the ones who are more vocal, the A-types in in your team. Too many executives do that already. They don't only want to deal with A-types. So work with the people who are also quiet and give them an opportunity to talk because sometimes they have something to say, but if you don't ask them, they won't jump in. Or they might know a lot about a subject that you want to cover. So what I would do often is I would go to one of my quieter leaders or quieter team members and say, I would like to explore this topic. Can you look into it? And of course they would. And they love it because you're giv you're trusting them to do something, right? And then when you ask them to speak, they're knowledgeable, they're a bit more confident because they're prepared. And it's amazing what what you can get. And in cases where we talk about promotion. Opportunities. I can tell you succession planning generally in the corporate world is broken and absent. There's hardly any of it. Nobody I was I was in a job for a while in in 2020, working with an SVP during the pandemic to help with things. And I proposed twice to HR leaders that we should talk about succession planning and leadership development. Bang. Both times I said, no, no, we don't want you to do that. We have something in the works. It's not ready, but it'll be ready probably next year, but we're not touching that. And so my boss, the SVP, so okay, well, try this person, maybe same answer, not interested. Because, first of all, it wouldn't have been under their control, maybe, but it's not a priority. And even today, developing people, unfortunately, is not seen as a big priority. And developing leaders is not seen as a big priority. And when a job needs to be filled because someone leaves, or if not long term they know they're going to retire, that's fine. But when there's a change at a leadership level, there's been no succession planning and development done. At the development part, I'd say it's planning and development, because the development part is as critical. Before I left, because in in just to say this as an aside, after I was treated for my cancer in 2015, uh the beginning of 2016, my wife and I decided to resign our corporate jobs, take some time off. When you're told you have cancer, you never know how it's going to turn out. Because cancer is kind of threatening. So, but I told my boss years before, I told my boss, maybe I'll do something else later. So I want to train someone to take over. And I trained two people to take over. When the time came for me to tell my boss I'm not coming back, it wasn't a big issue because someone could take over. Someone had been running things while while I was off. I was off for nearly a year. However, when I did hand in my resignation and the higher-ups looked at this and they said, Oh, do we really need such a senior person in charge in Canada? No, we don't. They just reassigned resources, they spread them out amongst other leaders. So what happened? The people I trained didn't get to, didn't get a chance to feel that opportunity. And the people left were saying, okay, now we gotta go work for someone else. We gotta start all over. So you understand what I mean. So it is a big, big challenge, and and I really feel for people like you who are not recognized, and that's why I say unseen, unheard. Maybe if I wrote another book, that might be the title.

SPEAKER_03 24:34

Can you give some practical advice for a leader on how to rebuild trust with their team after people feel maybe overlooked, overworked, or or let down? How how would you advise them practically on how to rebuild trust with their team?

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Rebuild assuming that there wasn't trust there before then.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Right?

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Building trust in the first place is a challenge. I was asked when I worked for Oracle years ago, they asked me to develop something for for part of a leadership webinar. And they said, talk to us about how you establish trust. And this was not that long after we had been acquired, so I was a bit surprised. Well, okay, I'd be happy to do that. You establish trust, and number one, I think, is by leveling with people. First of all, you gotta be honest, you should be transparent, and sometimes you gotta be a bit vulnerable. And so if you're if you need to re-establish trust, because let's say I pass over Jelani, I'm not gonna offer you this promotion, I'm gonna offer it to this other person. So you're mad at me for a while, and I don't blame you. So we need to work on that a little bit. But I could say, well, you know, the reasons why I chose the other person is this, this, and that. And the other reason, and there might be something very different that I couldn't control, but I could say, Jelani, there was no support for you as a candidate by someone else in the organization. Therefore, I couldn't continue to put you forward. And that's happened before. That's happened to me one time, actually. I everything was done. All was left was a little signature. It came back down say, no, just like that. No reason. So what I took so I call this being vulnerable because you have to tell a little more than you would normally tell. And if I told you, well, someone else didn't wouldn't support it, because giving somebody a promotion requires more than one level of approval, generally. Yes. Not at the technical level so much, but any other level, clearly at your job, you're in talent management, talent acquisition.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

You deal with deal with senior people all the time. So you're you're visible, right? And but that should be a plus. I think when you're visible like that, you should be going gangbusters. So anyway, I don't know if I could help you with that, but anyway, being vulnerable is one of them. Re-establishing trust after you make a mistake, for example, is just to own your mistake. You just have to own your mistake. Listen, I'm sorry, I goofed. I'm sorry it impacted you. I goofed one time, I'll give you an example. I was sending out information about staff bonuses, and by mistake, I sent the wrong information to one person, and I didn't know that person well, but I sent the wrong information to that one person. Immediately told my boss, number one, because if you you're gonna hear about a problem, you might as well hear it from me than hear it from someone else. Immediately told my boss, then I immediately contacted the person and explained, listen, I'm sorry, this is this is totally wrong. I made a mistake, I goofed, please just delete that, don't ever bring it up again. You can't, it's confidential information. He did. I I have no no reason to doubt, even today, that he he did. But I had to do that. You have to own your mistakes, number one. And trust is a two-way street. I'll trust you to a point if you're a trustworthy person. It's a two-way street. So I hope that answers your question. It does.

SPEAKER_03 28:05

And and I want to follow up by asking, because you mentioned a few times earlier in the conversation about AI. Um, and I wonder what does in the current workplaces that we have, remote, hybrid, and so forth, and AI, what does the human connection actually look like in the workplace now?

SPEAKER_01 28:24

The human connection is more critical than ever, actually. And there are attempts to do away with managers completely, do away with middle managers completely. Some companies are thinking they can do that, right? Because they can use AI to assign tasks, schedule people, worse beautifully, sure, why not? But the human connection, to me, the heart of leadership is human connection. And unless there's a person to talk to, the people on different teams, it doesn't matter what level, and even different levels of management, sometimes you need a person to talk to. There are many, many issues and concerns that AI would never be able to help, at least not in my lifetime and probably the lifetime of my children or grandchildren. AI is great, it can do a lot of things, but the human connection is absolutely necessary. But the problem is that it's some people try to take it away and it worries people. It worries people a lot. And I recently published an article called The Signals That Set. Signals That Leaders Send in a Time of Chaos. And we are in a time of chaos right now. AI is not creating chaos by itself, but the acceleration is so fast. Even at the World Economic Summit in January, some leaders have actually expressed that AI was moving faster than society can absorb. And AI is moving faster than the leadership can adapt. The leaders can't keep up, right? So it's fine to automate everything, but you can't leave the people behind because you still need the people. So in the world of AI, the I think the managers, the leaders who will succeed are the ones who still keep in touch with their people as individuals, as people. And you can only automate so much. And it's a bit like what you referred to your one-on-ones earlier. When I have one-on-ones, I always always I would always tell staff, send me your technical stuff, send me your reports ahead of time so that we don't have to deal with that. I want to talk to you as a person. How's it going? What are your challenges? And I would do the same with my boss. Sometimes discussions with my boss would go way over time because we'd talk about all kinds of things, none of it related to the issues at hand, because we dealt with that. And I loved it, and she did too, because we made the best of that time to develop ourselves. It worked better. So you can't take that away with AI. And people are concerned, I think they're rightly concerned. I'm big on AI um because I worked in in emerging tech all my life, as I said, and I'm not against it, but I am gonna push back and I do against anything that treats people just like you know, another thing uh to be automated. I do push push again, you know, push back against that.

SPEAKER_03 31:12

In regards to the the the work environment, hybrid, remote, and now we've got a lot of RTO policies being implemented, and it's created a lot of tension in in the workforce. And I think part of the problem is the generational gap where there is a generation where they didn't play outside as much as, say, my generation, that we were outside all of the time. They were more inside, they were at the internet. So they are my opinion, obviously, is that they are more apt to want to be remote because they were inside throughout their formative years anyway, you know, on the computer, on on playing video games and whatnot. So they're more conducive to a hybrid environment where they don't want to go into office because that's not what they're used to, where my generation, we were outside all of the time, playing football, you know, soccer or whatnot. So for us, yeah, going back to the office sounds like it makes sense. What what do you think um is missing from the conversation in regards to the the the new um environment that we are currently in as far as working?

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Yeah, that that that's part of the chaos, I think, that that's impacting leaders' judgment these days. I I think chaos clouds judgment. And I don't think it's particularly hybrid or remote or we turned off as policies that are the issue. It still boils down to me to be a leadership issue. As I said, I've I've led generations up to five generations uh at one time. I've never felt there was a generational issue. Um and some Gen Z, yes, you're right, they they're used to. I mean, some even had to go to school remotely, at least here in Canada during the pandemic, right? Yes. And that was not very good for learning, I think, because you'd fall asleep at the end of the day. Or have right. But I worked remotely started in 2008. After the company that I worked for got acquired, I had an office before. They gave me an office in in their new headquarters. My staff were never in the office, and I didn't expect them to be because they worked at clients. My boss was in in the U.S. and I was in Toronto, and my the sales team were seeing clients. I had this office, but nobody around to talk to. And I spent most of my time on conference calls. So I contacted the facilities management people and I said, I don't need your office, I'm gonna work from home. Well, they said, okay, then and enough people did that starting in 2008 that they could let a whole floor go and release that space. And it was never, never an issue because working remotely did not mean that you work in isolation. Because I met staff, I met clients, I met my boss, right? We met regularly. And the pandemic, when that happened, we had to work in isolation, and that is what spoiled really the understanding of remote work. So fine, it didn't work that well during the pandemic because you couldn't meet anybody. And 100% always remote is not good. Absolutely not. You need a human connection. And I had staff that I'd never met, some in the US, some in Canada, but at least we talked on Zoom regularly. And when we could, you know, I would try to meet staff in person. Some of my managers I'd never met. That it's a mentality in a way that some managers say or some leaders say, well, you you can't work effectively if you work remotely. I don't know what you're doing, or I don't think you're productive. That's a trust issue. Right? Number one, and you should understand what your people do. Not in technical detail, but understand what your people do. You know what they're assigned, you know if they get it done. It's a matter of trust if you say that you can't let them work remotely. I don't know if it's the same in the US, but in Canada, a number of companies still let their people work remotely. Public sector, on the other hand, have a bigger push on having people return to the office. And it's in part driven by the empty office space in downtown areas and the businesses that are struggling, they're hurting. Yes. I understand that. Yes. And you know, sometimes they look at converting a building, an office building, to residential. Maybe that's a great idea. But the reason that they want people to come back to the office is not always the reason that they claim it is. Agreed. I've talked to a number of leaders who are not comfortable leading remotely at all. They don't know how. Even one person I was coaching, he was leading uh leadership development team globally. And he said, everybody's so quiet on the calls, I don't even know if they understand. But I said, What kind of how do you start your calls, right? Well, I go right into it. I go right into my material. Of course, of course they they they're quiet. I don't start any call like that ever. One person or twenty, I'd never start a call like that. I start a call by asking, you know, Gielani, how are you? Robert, how are you? And and by the way, I got to know many of my staff's um family, not because I'm a nosy person, but just by asking, how was your weekend? And then someone says, Oh, well, we had a party for my my nine-year-old, or or we went to this ball game. That's how you get to learn about people. Then you can have a much better uh rapport when you're when you're remote, because it you know it's just it's that connection that you're building, right? And it still boils down to that. Then the generational gap. I have a whole chapter in my book on leading multiple generations, and I have a whole chapter on future of work, and to me it's not that difficult. I don't think it's rocket science because there are tons of differences between one, uh, a Gen Z or a soon to come, the ones behind them, Al S for I think they're gonna be called, and the baby boomer. But in the end, I think if a leader can adjust how they interact with them, and all the leadership levels adjust how they interact with with people, it's a mindset, I think, to say, well, if if I'm talking to a 25-year-old, obviously I'm not gonna talk about the same things as I would with a 50-year-old. And I'm not gonna ask the same questions.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

Obviously.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

It's a mindset, it's an approach. It's too bad that all of that is getting kind of a bad rap in a way, because it people with the issue that people see is not the real issue, in my opinion, anyway.

SPEAKER_03 37:46

I think you alluded to part of the problem earlier when we were talking about leadership versus management. People tend to assume, well, you've been doing this for 10 years, so you are you can be a leader. Time has nothing to do with leadership ability. And I think a lot of time the companies presume that the person that they've put in a leadership position knows how to lead, and they do not. I I had reflecting back to during the pandemic and post-pandemic when we were all still working remote, I had a manager that she had this brilliant thing where every Friday, either every Friday or every other Friday, 30 minutes, we had um a meeting where it was just sort of a meeting just to catch up on how the week went and talk about what we've got planned for the weekend. Nothing to do with work. It was literally just so how was the week? This, this, this, and this, this, this, and this. What are you doing this weekend? Anything interesting. We all got to know each other differently to where I'm still friends with some of those people to this day. It's four or five years later. And I I hold them close because we got close in those Friday meetings. And I don't know that was her reasoning for doing it to get the team um closer and more cohesive. But I wonder whether or not she knew how well it worked. Because we some of us still talk to this day, even though I no longer work for that company. But and the conversations were very casual, but we connected, you know, connected. We talked about everything that was not to do at work. Just interesting things. And we we we got to know each other. But again, that's a skill. You know, that that that's not something you could take for granted that somebody knows what to do. They've they have to be taught how to lead. They're anomalies, right? They're outliers, they are natural-born leaders, they they exist. I think I know a few of them. But for the most part, I think leadership has to be taught and worked on and developed. And I think that's where a lot of companies fall short. Let me ask you this: if you were leading your team and you started to implement AI in the team uh in the team, how would you uh lead from the perspective to alleviate the tension and the worry that maybe the teen would feel that you're bringing AI in? Like how would you address that from a leadership perspective? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

The um I love your story about the Friday afternoon window, if you will, or whatever. Yeah. I think that's terrific. And and I hope that that person, that leader knows how effective it was because we did some of that too. When we when you have a small team in the same office, it's easy. You can even go in a boardroom and chit-chat. But you could still do that remotely, right? And and just meet for virtual coffee Friday afternoon or Monday morning or or whatever. Those are great examples. And it goes back always to people need that interaction. We need that human interactions. Implementing AI is that is the first, first thing that you have to communicate. You have to say, we're gonna implement AI to do things for us, to do things that are repetitive, that we know that we can automate, but we will never remove the interaction between the people. And that has to be mandatory. And if they're gonna have metrics about how AI is helping and everything else, there should be metrics that relate to the interaction between leaders and their staff, between the different levels of leadership and between the staff themselves, because AI, even though you implement AI, you still need collaboration between the people. And you still to be able to trust that something that someone is gonna do with their AI will will do what you expect it to if your world depends on it, right? So again, it kind of goes back to my architect of people first. If I'm gonna implement AI, I have to be conscious and really thoughtful about what is the impact on the people. And if we say, make sure we say, we we have to maintain the interaction, even improve the interaction, make more, make sure there's more of it. And and maybe a Friday afternoon window is you know is one way to do it. But it has to boil down to that. You can never replace the human interaction, and even people who say that they don't need it, I think secretly they they would miss it. They may not want to admit it, but everybody needs it. As I said, everybody everybody in a room is someone who wants to be appreciated one way or another.

SPEAKER_03 42:09

I can tell you I missed it. She was promoted deservedly so, and then once she was promoted, she cancelled the meeting and because obviously the the new person coming in would would have do whatever they wanted to do. And I can tell you I missed it. It was glaring that we did not do it any longer. Because people would tell stories. It would be, well, I you know, there was one time I it was just stories, really getting to to to know each other. So I could tell you it was missed once it w once it once it went away. In your opinion, Jermaine, what do younger professionals need most from leaders right now with what's going on in in the workplace?

SPEAKER_01 42:46

In your opinion? Young young leaders need young uh workers need a leader who's gonna help them grow in the job. That's what they want. And I know that for a fact. I've asked, I I ran uh my own mini survey, if you will, but any of the young generation that I asked uh Gen Z or Millennials, the key key criteria for them, for their leader, is to help them grow. And it makes sense because they're they're recent graduates or recent on the job. They're ambitious. They know, and some of them are too ambitious and expect promotions right away. You have to manage expectations. I mean, I've I've had I've had Gen Z ask me almost every week, how am I doing? Well, I'd have to say, well, you're not doing anything that different from last week that we're gonna talk about career development, but keep doing what you're doing. You know what I mean? It's it's um they're ambitious and they're at the stage where they have so much to learn. In your first job, think about how much you have to learn, about how work gets done, how work gets assigned, how you interact with peers, how you interact with with other managers that that are maybe involved. That's all part of learning. And young leaders, young managers, or I'm sorry, workers want leaders. That will care enough for them, care enough to help them grow in the job.

SPEAKER_03 44:05

That's number one. Let me ask your opinion on this. Being in talent acquisition, I I look at CVs all day long. One of the things I notice with the younger generation is that every two years, every few years on average, they're changing jobs. That's the average. It's a different philosophy where two years is time to move on. I've noticed that a lot. And then I have managers who would say, Oh, this person has jumped around a lot. That may not be somebody I want to look at. And whenever that comes up, it's usually an older manager. And I have to have the conversation of, well, you know, in the current environment, that's not jumping around. That's actually the norm with the younger generation. Two years and they're switching jobs for whatever reason. The reasons are always, always different. But a lot of the reasons is that they just feel like they want to change. Whether it's just changing companies or something like that. How do you view that? What's your opinion on that?

SPEAKER_01 44:57

And I think it's perfectly normal, perfectly fine, perfectly normal. Actually, sometimes I even encourage it because at that stage in your career, you learn a lot. Most I've mentored University of Toronto students doing their masters of engineering and students who take management consulting courses, I I know the professor, and he would ask some of us in the management consulting industry to mentor them. I was so impressed at how sharp they are. So for them to say that, you know, after two years, they say, okay, well, I think I know this job well enough now. I'm gonna, I want to do something else. I want to try something else. Fine, I encourage it. It's good. And I did some of that too, because when when I worked and started working in tech, there was so much demand. You could land a new job and almost whatever you wanted, as long as you were, you know, any good. But yeah. I think it's fine. And any older manager or leader that pushes back on that, I think they're really missing the point. They're really missing how people grow. You don't stay in the same role forever. And if you do, I think you would fall behind. You would fall behind because you learn a lot more. Now you have to be careful, change jobs. It's not always the right move that happens. And I, you know, I I had as an example, I had a millennial, I believe, yes, millennial. She was really great, really good in her job. She moved to a different company. And then she pinged me and she said, Oh, can I talk to you? I need your advice. And then she started to tell me that it was awful. Why is this so awful? Well, I like what I do and I have lots of autonomy. The work is interesting, but I hardly get any feedback from my boss. Okay, but how is that person in terms of regular meetings? Oh, yes, but regular meetings, well, he's pretty good or she's pretty good at telling me what I need to do and everything else, but I'm not getting the what the usual feedback of you're doing well today, this and that. She was used to getting lots of feedback, regular feedback from a different kind of person, different kind of leader. So I said, Well, look, maybe it's not really anything that wrong with your leader, but your expectations of having what you've had before, that's not the right expectation. You're moved now to a different environment and in a more senior role. So in a more senior role, don't expect to get a lot of feedback unless you goof, then you're really gonna get feedback, right? So you see what I mean? It's it's but jumping around, if it's jumping around every year, I would say that that is too much. That's not right. But two to three years is is a pretty good time, I think, for young people to go and want to try something else. And for the most part, I think they will benefit. And we have to recognize that as a as a society, that that you know, that's just the way it is. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 47:47

Um, Jermaine, before I let you go, tell me the name of the book again.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

So my book is called Empowering People Through Caring Leadership. Empowering People Through Caring Leadership. And go ahead. It's available on worldwide on Amazon, basically.

SPEAKER_03 48:05

I was gonna ask you, what's what would you say is the biggest takeaway from the book?

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Biggest takeaway from the book is that if you care for your people, they will perform well beyond expectations. That is absolutely the key. You really have to care for your people. Because when people know that you care for them, and even if it's a difficult situation, they will do their absolute best to do what needs to be done. Well said. We'll leave it there. Jermaine, thank you for stopping by. Thank you very much, Lenny. I really appreciate the opportunity.