Ep 153 - Human Leadership in The Age of AI with Clare Spiers

Welcome to Korea and Leadership Realtor. The No Nonsense Guide for ambitious managers who want to have more impact and progress their career. I'm Pamela Langen, a job search coach and expert CV writer specialising and helping for straight-up professionals, land the jobs and pay rises they know they deserve. And I'm Jackie Jagger, a leadership and mindset coach, specialising and helping newly formatted and new-to-roll leaders to avoid the dickhead trap and lead with confidence. Between us we've helped hundreds of leaders and managers to find new roles, take ownership of their careers and handle the challenges that job searches and leadership responsibility inevitably bring. And now we're joining forces to share with you what we know has worked for our clients. Hello and welcome to this week's episode. For the first time in quite a while we have got a guest expert with us today which is Claire who we will introduce in just a moment. And Claire's background on the work she does is absolutely fascinating. So Claire works with leaders in a capacity that I will let her explain in just a moment. But we felt that this was an episode that was really relevant for those of you leading in organisations where there is this constant drive for people to be really efficient, really productive, to adopt AI, there's so much pressure and so much change happening for leaders at the minute. And Claire's work is in the area of some of the skills that just really support leaders to be able to handle some of those demands. So Claire, huge welcome. Tell our listeners who you are and what it is that you do. Good morning. Thank you for having me here today. So yeah, my name's Claire Spires. I'm the founder of Got Your Back Improv. So I've been in HR for over 25 years, specializing in talent management, particularly around that management and leadership development and executive coach, and I've very much recognised an opportunity, particularly more so now to bring applied improv into the workplace because I spotted a gap in the learning and development space from gauging, meaningful, like spiritual development, particularly for leaders, creating that safe space to experiment, make mistakes, play, and really stretch themselves. That's amazing. And so improv is probably something that people wouldn't normally think to connect with leadership development. So how did that come about? Great question. Absolutely. And I can imagine people think, oh, that's a bit of a left, a left field approach. So my background, I also, what I missed out of my intro is that I went to theatre school in my early days. And then I came back to improv. I lived a good five years ago. And through doing that and my work in HR, I've very much recognised that there is a space to really help leaders build their presence and that ability to build connection with their teams. And with each other, particularly as the world becomes more process driven from a technical perspective, their ability to really show up and be able to deliver the why and the how of leadership. And the how of their role is really where they'll begin to shine. And so by doing improv and how incredibly powerful that is, and giving people that opportunity to really give it a go, I think so much fun is whether gold is. Yeah, it just sounds so interesting. And when Jackie said you were coming on the podcast, I was like, oh my goodness, I need to know more about this because I love anything like this. But I think when a lot of people hear improv, like usually they'll think stand-up comedy. And I did think that myself, just for a second, I was like, is that what it is? And I was like, or is it more acting or what is it? So what is it that you actually do when you're working with corporate leaders? So in an improv workshop, it's a series of interactive games designed to build a particular competence. So it may be a case of presence or critical thinking or to build trust. And so there are short games where we create the framework, but then we allow people to play within that framework. So it's interactive, it's physical, so there's movement in there. And then there's a lot of discussion. And generally quite a lot of laughter as well. So it's not stand-up comedy. In fact, you don't have to try to be funny. The best improv is where you just step into it and willing to lean in to give it a go and be yourself. And actually, that's where the fun happens. Because one of the core principles of improv, and when you're doing these activities, it's loud, proud and wrong. So it's that safe space to make mistakes, to step into the moment and let down some of that, it removes the hierarchy, changes, flattens the status to allow people to see the real people they're working with. I really appreciate how each other thinks. So there's some real fun in there. I love that. And how do people generally respond to that initially? Because I can just see all of these leaders paling into the room and going, oh, this is what we're going to do today. So what kind of reactions are you usually get? So it really is about that positioning at the beginning and asking people to be open-minded. And to give it a go, we would never force somebody to do it. If they really didn't want to get involved, it's always, they always self-elect. But you always find that the one person that was grumbling at the beginning, oh, no, not sure this is for me, is the one person that has a really great time, that really froze themselves into it. I understand the trepidation because it sounds scary. But we do it in such a way that you're improvising before you even know you are. And we're off. And then you get, okay, now we can start to move into some of the more stretching activities where you are beginning to think on your feet and actually want to throw yourself into it because it's, oh, this feels good. This going outside might come for zone in this space. It's absolutely fine. Do you know what? I absolutely love that. And I feel like in terms of leadership development and training, it can be really stiff. But I think people underestimate the power of being able to think on your feet and to be able to react or respond in situations. So I feel like that is a brilliant way of doing it in a fun way, but also allow people to stretch themselves in that situation. And like you say, you know, where people are a little bit reluctant to join in and then they end up being the star of the show. That's like really interesting as well as a note. Yeah, absolutely. And it's really great to see people that often, or they walk into it going, I don't really know what to expect, which is fine too. And what we do is we take them on that journey. So with the end, they reflect. And we do a lot of reflection through the workshops and say, you know, what, what did we work on there? I don't want to do you recognise from that? What can you take back into the workplace? But when they reflect and say, actually, it's not scary, or I can do this if I don't overthink it because there was a lot in the improv that is about follow your feet. Don't worry about it. Do it. If you make a mistake, we've got your back, which is why we call it got your back in improv because that's what it's all about is actually with there to help and support each other. I'm really building that culture and environment where you're all on the same page and recognising we all make mistakes from time to time and that's okay too. And as I hear you describe that process, I think probably there's a couple of things that strike me about it and I'm reflecting on the client base that I typically work with who are in those leadership roles and doing battle with all of the challenges that come with those responsibilities. And I think the thing that really strikes me about it is so often I will have conversations with leaders about vulnerability and how that has to be been tandem and being true to themselves. And I guess what really strikes me about what you do is that kind of pushes people to, in a safe way, explore being vulnerable, finding what's true to themselves and finding, like you say, those ways to think on their feet. We talked a little bit about some of the skills and I just want to really delve into the specific skills that this can develop in people. And you talked about presence, which is a really big topic and one that we've done another episode on. What would you say are the real kind of core skills that leaders in today's world really need to focus on honing and developing for themselves, whether they do that through improv or however, what are those real core skills that UCR really in demand in today's workplace? Absolutely. As we find the world is really moving toward AI, we can't, you can't have a conversation in the work context these days without talking about it. And it's moving at pace. And the focus on capabilities has been around coding data, data skills. But as AI moves more and towards that, these human capabilities are just going to escalate and the need for them is going to escalate and particularly people in the workplace are going to want that from their leaders. So the world economic forum lists the skills for the future of work as things like critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, adaptability, which are four leadership skills. And you know, when we talk about historically, they were talked about soft skills, more and more now. We're beginning to talk about the power skills because they will be the skills of the future. The weird humans run to the world of work. And fortunately, they are a number of skills that improv can help you with too. Funnily enough. And so I do this. And as you list those, I guess what strikes me is that data and analytics and those are skills that are that they're teachable in a slightly different way, whereas those kind of soft skills or power skills, they're things that I think are really, you have to practice those skills to develop them. You can't read a book or go on a course and expect that you're going to come out the other end, more adaptable or more able to think on your feet or have you. So what does a workshop with you look and feel like? So you started to give us a bit of a teaser previously. Yeah. Talk us to it. For example, a client came to you and said, we want our leaders to develop their critical thinking. Yeah. How does that work in practice to give people those opportunities to applying that and build that skill? Brilliant. Absolutely. So the way we design our workshops is a whole series of activities around that topic. So if you came to me and said, we want to develop critical thinking, we would then say, okay, let's pull different activities together that really encourage participants to be able to view things from different perspectives and to be able to arrive and look at things from a different viewpoint because that's ultimately what critical thinking is. It's that ability to get under the skin of something without just having one train of thought. So what we would do is design the workshop and through a series of games and activities and reflections because that's a key part of applied improv so that then the end of the workshop, they'd be able to reflect on how they've applied critical thinking through those activities, through those experiences, because that's why improvets is experiential learning, which we all know is super effective. Yeah, and I love that as well because I think critical thinking is one of those skills that people know they need to develop, people know they need to do that or how because there's very little training on how to improve those skills. So I think this just sounds ideal in terms of put people in those situations and then reflect it, reflect it on it afterwards. So in terms of the result you get after those sessions, do you find that people have a better understanding or feel more confident with critical thinking? It's a real confidence builder. So people you can see the energy people have after a workshop because what we do is demystify what is often complex. So critical thinking in itself can feel quite a big words and right you say it is an obvious as to what it might be that you need to develop, but when you put people into situations and two degree replicate them, but with a different perspective each time is then they go actually it's not rocket science. I just need to keep developing it. I just keep need to keep trying it and that's what a lot of it is demystifying for people. Yeah, I think that's brilliant and I think it's definitely something that people should consider as a way of developing those skills because otherwise you just go through your leadership career and you know that you need to do it and you need to think more about it and but you never really know how much you are developing yourself in that area because like you say previously it was known as like a soft skill but actually it's a real core leadership skill now isn't it? Absolutely it really is and particularly when we think about AI is going to help us make decisions leaders rolling all of this is going to be thinking through what's the human impact of decisions yeah so what so AI okay this is the obvious thing to do because that's what it will do but as a leader their skill and their value will be all about being able to how does this impact my people and they would need so they need to know their people but they also need to think through those variables to help make a decision which is critical. Yeah and I like that as well because thinking about how AI is changing things like sometimes AI is generating an output and it seems like the logical thing to do but actually a lot of what AI does take out that human element so when we strip out the human element there's a real risk then of people almost becoming robots isn't that interacting differently and maybe not being able to develop their skills because they're reliant on AI and what does AI say so well AI says this and this sounds better than something I come up with so let's go with AI rather than thinking for themselves so the whole subjective AI is so interesting because we're in such the early stages of it but how do you feel like with AI like the future of leadership and how things are going to work in the workplace with AI what's your view around that? I think firstly I find AI really exciting what it can do when it's capability it is changing everything we do need to be measured about some of its impact for the future but I think what it will do in the workplace is also super exciting when it comes to leadership I think the leaders it's really important to them to understand that culture the culture they say is actually absorbed through their behaviors yeah and what they do people it's that leadership shadow piece isn't it the people look to them what will they do and what do they do to show us what good looks like so AI is super exciting of removing that repetitive piece but in terms of their storytelling them sharing experiences their ability to study the room in a crisis their ability to be able to help people understand the why and who everybody is that's going to be the role of the leadership leader in the future you know it is now their role but it's going to become even more so in the future that's really needing to double down on those human elements I as I'm listening to that can think of about three or four conversations I've had with coaches this week yeah about exactly these topics and the thing that really occurs to me is that AI particularly in terms of some of the large language models and what have you it's incredibly intellectually intelligent yeah but if we go back to those word economic forum skills emotional intelligence is the bit that AI tools are lacking yeah and so that that's exactly the conversation I've been having of your role as a leader is to to almost to you've got to overcompensate for the lack of emotional intelligence yeah from where those that data is coming from where that information is being sourced from what's going on over here you have to bring that piece and I think almost there's been perhaps less of a necessity for that to be the case but emotion intelligence has always been such a factor and that's where the whole theory came from was this research into how to some people that don't have the intellectual intelligence yeah far whereas others who have huge amounts of it don't go so far in that career that was the background to the creation of the theories around emotion intelligence so I'm really interested in how that plays into the work that you do and how these things feed in when you're working with leaders over a period of time yeah absolutely that's a really great insight so this a leader's role particularly now as the world becomes increasingly digital and their role from an emotional intelligence perspective is going to amplify because they are going to need to be able to intervene and be able to recognise that human impact and the nuances on their teams of decisions that are made around them or things that are happening in the workplace and ensure we don't become overreliant on AR to do those things for us because I think that is the risk that we do hand it all over to AR because it'd be easy to do that but the great leaders will stand out where their ability is to say actually the human element is the most critical part of this decision but before we automatically just rely on that which I think will be the risk in the future when we talk about in an improv space it's all humans the whole all of that is about making connections building trust appreciating how different people think which is such a privilege in that environment to appreciate the different ways that people perceive things so you're obvious is not everyone's obvious which is something that we use in improv all the time to really encourage people to speak up to share their perspective because leaders got great leaders are the ones that make ensure their team feel seen heard and valued and this environment develops those skills of a real appreciation of how people contribute and enjoy it and there's no wrong answers as I mentioned earlier so there's no you can't get it wrong in improv and actually sometimes the getting it wrong makes it really fun and even funnier so that's part of the joy too and we also are one of our other principles as well is that everybody is a poet and a genius so it's taking that capability and just and celebrating that everybody is hugely capable and has got so much to offer and encouraging them to bring it to the table which is the whole human element of leadership yeah I love that because it is an often that you're going to get the chance to really practice that and make mistakes in a safe environment and learn from others and I suppose open up as well and from a team perspective you're probably going to get to see a side of people that you wouldn't ordinarily see in the workplace and I find that really fascinating because you think people and then I'm thinking some of the people that I've worked with over the years I'd like to see them in an improv workshop and see what comes out of that and how they respond and react to that so it's interesting it's not a bit you see people like expand their thinking in so many different ways absolutely and what is truly rewarding is seeing the really shy people the ones that don't say a lot that just could tend to keep it back a bit they've got a lot to say but they've just never been given that safe space before and actually to see them start to contribute and appreciate that their ideas are truly valued and recognised all of a sudden the people around them are going oh wow this person's got this real kind of shining about them and it's like they're very quick with or they've got this incredible imagination so it really does become a leveler and brings people's different qualities it celebrates everybody's different qualities and encourages people to bring them all to the table which is just gorgeous and that's how leadership should be isn't it yeah again a lot of conversations I have with leaders around different types and involving people and considering different preferences and how you can get people to bring their own contribution and how when you expect more of somebody you will get more of somebody and so it it sounds like there's such value in again it's that experiential piece of seeing that play out yeah I just want to come back to because I love that point of seeing people thrive and shine yeah but I would imagine there's probably a few specific types of people who would find this quite in certainly in the anticipation of these types of workshops we'll probably find it quite daunting yeah imagine that you're quite a shy of types would be one but also I would again I'm thinking of the people that I work with you know that there's a lot of people who like to have that very put together professional image who are very planned who are very organised who like to have things yeah you able to anticipate things yeah and not have things go off-piece yeah how do those types of characters tend to experience what you do we ask that people come with an open-minded and enthusiastic that's all we ask them to bring so people that come with that very kind of guarded approach to the workshops I'd like to say we ease people in gently so they're doing it before they've realised they're improvising is the once they are in the swing of it and just going actually this is okay they're not asking me to do anything that is embarrassing myself because that's not what this is about this is not about putting people in a position where they feel humiliated this is about putting people in a place where they shine yeah but allowing them to shine in a real human way in a real kind of authentic way and it's still professional authenticity this isn't tom full rage yeah this is about giving people the platform to say okay we're gonna we're gonna encourage you to relax in this space and have some fun and recognise how that plays to your strengths rather than we are going to put you in a situation to purposely make you feel uncomfortable this is about we want to stretch you but we're doing it with you not to make you feel embarrassed yeah I think that's brilliant you know where you're saying come with the open mind because with something like this to get the most of it you do need to come with that open mind don't you and I can imagine that people have got all kinds of different thoughts and fears around coming into something like that as well and I suppose for all listeners this might be the first time that they've heard of this style of leadership development so what is something that people could do with their team so if they wanted to do like a bit of an improv style experiment and see how it might work with their teams what could they do to get them started and give them a bit of a flavor really simple and it's important they frame and they say this is it's just have a bit of fun but try having a conversation using questions only so two people at a time just ask each other questions only and this is about this would be really good for a session where you're wanting to be creative or brainstorming and get people involved and the idea is just try it it's really hard to begin with once you get the flow of it it's an awful lot of fun but the idea is it's just to start easing yourself into trying things in a different way yeah I like that so in terms of asking questions so would the questions lead on from the questions asked or is it just like whatever comes into your head yeah absolutely so you could say okay to this topic is about you could make it work place relative so it could be about leadership so you're going to start having a conversation using questions only around leadership and see how you get on with that until people run dry the idea is that you do it between two people until one of them makes a mistake and then one of those people stays until another so another person comes in and they have a conversation until somebody makes a mistake because you usually very quickly somebody makes a statement by accident so it's no longer a question and then another person comes in and they can continue but you can keep changing the subject if it starts to run out you may even want to put it in a context so you might say okay where are these two people so it might be they're by the coffee machine or they're in a meeting so you then you might want to actually put them in an environment that can help the questions flow a bit easier yeah that's interesting putting them in a different environment as well to help the questions flow yeah so that'd be a great thing to get started and I suppose you could do that at the start of a team meeting or anything really and get a little bit of energy flowing yeah yeah absolutely it gets energy flowing people are it also a liar was for a bit of that vulnerability but I've tried didn't get it it's okay low risk yeah and it builds that connection just gets people enjoying the space and connecting with each other so it's a nice quick and easy one to warm a room up yeah I like that and if you were going to do that how would you suggest that people kind of position that because I can imagine if somebody's oh I like the sound of this and I like this idea of building the skill of getting people thinking on their feet yeah how would you suggest people position that if they were going to take this away and give that a go I think it's being really honest with your team I want to try something new yeah this meeting is about coming up with new ideas or brainstorming and really positioning why you're using it but I want to try something new and this is called questions only so we're going to start to use our brains in a different way just try and get some of those creative juices going so the way the game works is that two people start so I will be asking for two volunteers to have a conversation so you'll buy the coffee machine but asking questions only and then when one of you makes some stake or gets it wrong I'll make a funny noise one of that person sits down and somebody knew we'll get in and we'll keep going and the idea behind this is to just have a bit of fun to connect with each other and just improvise to see how we get on just using our minds a little bit differently love that frame in so if people are listening to this and recognising the value of this type of work where can they find out more about you and your work? Absolutely so they can find me on LinkedIn class buyers and also we have a got your back improv page so please connect to be lovely to keep in touch on also our website got your back improv and we will pop those links into the show notes so that you can follow the links directly and connect with Claire or find the page so as ever it's been a really episode Claire we've loved talking about it and certainly I would imagine Pam's the same I feel like I'll be like oh I want to go and do one of your workouts I'm sure like we'll be the case for our listeners as well I just think that element that we've talked about of that kind of real human connection and also that kind of vulnerability and developing that willingness to not be perfect all the time our topics that I know we've talked about many times previously on the podcast so I think hopefully there will be some great food for thought for our listeners from today's episode. As ever if you are listening and you found this episode valuable then please do share it with someone that it could help and if there are topics that you would like us to cover in the future then please do drop us a message and let us know and as ever thank you for listening and we'll be back next time with another episode