Doug Conant, Founder & CEO of ConantLeadership
Introducing the third version of Doug Conant’s restricted management collection: EQ Solutions to AI Questions.
To My Fellow Leaders and Learners within the ConantLeadership Neighborhood,
Welcome to the third version of my new restricted collection, “EQ Solutions to AI Questions,” by which I provide considerate, human solutions to urgent management questions which have been generated by AI.
In our first version, I went into nice element about our duty as leaders within the age of AI, and detailed a few of my foundational beliefs about management.
Within the second version, I talked about a number of the commonest errors leaders make when driving change.
You’ll be able to learn the total introductory put up to get a deeper sense of my viewpoint and the pondering behind this collection—however I’ve additionally summarized a number of the key factors from the primary version beneath as a reference that will help you have interaction with this third version.
About this Sequence
1.This restricted collection references AI, however it’s not primarily about AI. Like all of my writing and educating, it’s in regards to the craft of management in the beginning.
2. It doesn’t matter what the futures holds, this rings true: The extra omnipresent machines turn into in our lives, the extra differentiating it is going to be for us to lean into our humanity as we have interaction with the world as leaders, academics, buddies, and members of the family.
3. As AI turns into extra ubiquitous, now we have a twin duty:
- We should faucet into AI’s energy to offer information, spark dialogues, and enhance our examine of our craft. We will’t be technophobes within the face of innovation.
- Concurrently, we should acknowledge that AI is just not a panacea. We should always lean into the vitality of actual, genuine self-reflection and interpersonal interplay—to be as humanistic as potential in our management life.
4. We can’t be “synthetic” in any means in our management; we should be genuine, true to ourselves, and true to the individuals with whom we dwell and work.
5. At ConantLeadership, my boutique management company which empowers trendy leaders with the tenets of “management that works,” we outline management as: The artwork and science of influencing others in a selected path.
- The “science” of management is primarily about enter: Studying what works, learning different leaders, staying up-to-date with finest practices, and gaining and honing information in your particular space of experience and so forth. AI might help with this half.
- The “artwork” of management is primarily about output: The way you uniquely metabolize your information, expertise, and values, and apply them to your interactions with the individuals with whom you reside and work. This half is as much as you. The “artwork” is the place the magic lies: It’s the way you, and solely you, present up for different individuals in a nuanced means, leveraging your distinctive relationships and abilities to attach interpersonally with the individuals in your crew and in your group.
6. AI has nice capability to deepen our dialog across the “science” of management. As Greg Satell just lately wrote in his weblog, we should always consider AI as “a software to create dialogues for ourselves.” AI might help us ask higher questions, and it might probably assist us enhance our management. However it’s nonetheless as much as us to reply the decision.
To progress from good to extraordinary, we should use our emotional intelligence (EQ), together with our purposeful (FQ) and mental intelligence (IQ), to guide individuals, make selections, act on our information, synthesize our knowledge, and construct relationships.
And so it’s inside that spirit that I’m scripting this restricted collection to speak extra immediately with you, the individuals within the ConantLeadership neighborhood.
EQ Solutions to AI Questions #3
You might have observed a function known as “collaborative articles” on LinkedIn. These articles immediate customers to reply questions generated by AI, primarily based on pertinent matters to LinkedIn customers. The AI helps formulate the questions but it surely’s the human customers who write the solutions.
Within the curiosity of utilizing AI as a software to spark dialogue, we’ve chosen a number of the most related AI-generated management questions on LinkedIn to reply.
Within the first version, I answered the AI query “What are some progressive methods to acknowledge and have fun crew strengths?” Within the second version, I answered the AI query “What are the most typical errors leaders make when driving change?”
This version’s AI query is: ‘How are you going to promote self-reflection and development in your crew?’
And right here’s my EQ Reply.
To advertise something in your crew or group, it should begin with you. Change begins with you. Whether or not the query is about driving self-reflection, development, accountability, efficiency, work-life stability, or some other desired conduct (and so they all are likely to overlap organically)—my reply will all the time begin with, “You first.”
The chief goes first and exhibits the best way: “Stroll the discuss,” lead from in entrance, and mannequin the specified conduct or initiative.
For instance, I created a easy six-step strategy to lifting your management profile, known as The Blueprint, with reflection explicitly baked into the method.
- Step 1: Attain Excessive – Envision
- Step 2: Dig Deep – Replicate
- Step 3: Lay the Groundwork – Examine
- Step 4: Design – Plan
- Step 5: Construct – Follow
- Step 6: Reinforce – Enhance
The Blueprint gives a framework that helps me apply what I preach. It exhibits that I champion reflection, not as a “nice-to-have,” however as considered one of six important steps in lifting your management. I don’t await others to come back round to the concept; I deliver the concept of reflection to the fore and take the initiative to advance it.
Constantly, I discuss self-reflection, have fun its significance, combine it into all of our management growth coaching and assets, and make specific that I count on the identical from my staff and colleagues.
Invariably, this strategy fosters a virtuous circle. The extra staff see me celebrating and advocating for the ability of reflection and steady development, the extra they undertake the behaviors in their very own proper, and all of us enhance collectively.
Reflection → Outcomes
Subsequent, it helps to tie the conduct to a selected final result(s).
The concept is: We’re not self-reflecting merely for reflection’s sake (though wanting inward does confer advantages to our well-being). Reasonably, we’re dedicating time to deep pondering with a purpose to search readability, increase our understanding of ourselves and our work, and to then apply that reflection to take significant motion.
Via reflection, we will probe three evergreen questions on each our life and management:
- What’s working?
- What’s not?
- How can I/we do higher?
After which we will make a plan to construct upon our successes, deal with or handle our shortcomings, and forge a path in the direction of higher outcomes. As leaders now we have to color the image—to attract the road between reflection and outcomes.
“The chief goes first and exhibits the best way.”
For instance, earlier in my profession, after I was President at Nabisco Meals throughout a difficult time within the years after the hostile takeover by the leveraged buyout agency KKR, I felt it was essential to advertise studying and development amongst my crew.
As an avid reader, I knew that books helped stimulate a spirit of curiosity that might apply to pondering critically in regards to the enterprise. It could have been one factor to counsel to my crew that they learn extra and hope they observe my recommendation. However mere options are far too simple to disregard.
As a substitute, I took the initiative, began a guide membership, and gave everybody books they had been inspired to learn—first month-to-month, after which quarterly. Then I adopted up, requested questions, listened to crew members’ reflections, and used it as a possibility to make progress on three fronts.
1. It was a tangible and approachable motion that was laborious, if not inconceivable, to overlook or ignore.
2. It was a straightforward solution to explicitly join the worth of studying to our development agenda as an organization.
3. These conversations had been a welcome alternative to deepen our skilled relationships and study extra about each other.
Win, win, win.
Push and Pull
When main by instance, it’s helpful to use a push/pull precept (and this concept is additional developed in The Blueprint within the “’Develop or Die’ Mindset” chapter on pages 257-270).
To Push: Make expectations round self-reflection and steady enchancment clear to your entire crew. Maintain them accountable and clarify how their adherence can be measured. Be particular. Articulate that you just count on members of your group to embody the specified values and that you really want them to even be championing them with their very own stories.
- Maybe you would come with these expectations of their evaluations
- Otherwise you would possibly add them to the corporate scorecard
- Perhaps you’d set up particular reflection and development benchmarks
Regardless of the standards, this half is a “push” as a result of it challenges individuals to alter their conduct in a means that’s aligned with group expectations.
To Pull: Have fun reflection and development in order that individuals are impressed to pursue it and need to do it. You’ll be able to entice individuals by creating optimistic penalties for achievement and celebrating those that do it proper. There are lots of methods to pursue this creatively.
- For instance, to embark on a studying and development initiative that expressly consists of self-reflection, you would possibly announce you’ll be educating a growth course and invite members of the crew to take part
- Otherwise you would possibly create room within the finances for crew members to spearhead their very own studying initiatives
- Otherwise you would possibly share your personal optimistic expertise with self-reflection by means of private tales and ask the crew to share in type
The sky’s the restrict. First, present the optimistic worth of the specified conduct with your personal actions. Then, publicly acknowledge those that are doing the identical. This all quantities to a “pull” as a result of it beckons individuals in the direction of the specified conduct with optimistic reinforcement, main by instance, and recognition.
“The extra we honor others’ humanity, the higher all of us do—collectively. “
Make It Actual
After I was turnaround CEO of Campbell Soup Firm, we established 5 core methods to enhance the corporate. Considered one of them was “Construct New Enterprise.”
On its face, “construct new enterprise” is simple but it surely made specific the prevailing spirit we had been making an attempt to domesticate. The message was: We’re dedicated to creating new merchandise and producing new concepts, and finally, as an enterprise, we are going to both develop or we are going to die. Innovation was non-negotiable.
The ”push” half was easy: It’s simple to difficulty an edict from on excessive that the management crew expects innovation. However leaders have a duty to take concepts from the summary into the fabric world.
The “pull” a part of the equation is how we made it actual. On our firm portal, we celebrated each single win, each single day: Every new piece of enterprise, new account, new product, new concept bought a shout-out. I additionally wrote private, handwritten notes to individuals all around the world, thanking them for particular contributions in assist of our core methods. And we didn’t cease there. We held a “Proud Efficiency” awards ceremony the place we honored extraordinary achievements in entrance of your entire firm.
Importantly, we additionally publicly celebrated the teachings from issues that didn’t go properly, making it clear that we valued each efficiency and studying from our errors.
Repeatedly, we deliberately created methods to emphasise our technique by means of the magic of optimistic reinforcement and human connection. That is how you’re taking desired conduct out of the theoretical realm of PowerPoint displays into the bodily realm of actual individuals and actual efficiency.
This all connects again to the theme of AI.
Know-how instruments might help us generate good plans. However we nonetheless want individuals to execute these plans. And it’s our job as leaders to encourage the people in our group, to offer them the vitality and path to succeed. Machines can’t do it for us. It’s about managing the human spirit within the enterprise. The extra we honor others’ humanity, the higher all of us do—collectively.
So keep in mind: Change begins with you. Tie self-reflection to outcomes. Push and pull individuals in the direction of development. And discover distinctive methods to make it actual. Management is all about individuals.
Sincerely,
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Do you’ve got an perception so as to add to the EQ reply to this AI query?
We need to hear from you. Drop us a line together with your ideas and we could function your response in a future ‘EQ Solutions to AI Questions’ letter.
Concerning the Creator: 
Doug Conant is Founder and CEO of ConantLeadership, Chairman Emeritus of CECP, former CEO of Campbell Soup Firm, former Chairman of Avon Merchandise, and co-author of two bestselling management books, TouchPoints, and The Blueprint.
This restricted collection is written in partnership with Amy Federman, Editor in Chief and Director of Content material at ConantLeadership.
(Header picture by KOBU Company on Unsplash)
