Getting Comfortable With Discomfort - Leading Through Uncertainty

Rachel Cossar: Wonderful. Welcome everyone to another episode in conversations in the future of work. I am your host Rachel Cossar, and it is a delight to welcome 2 very special guests on today’s episode where we’ll explore getting comfortable with discomfort. As many of you may remember, the word for 2, 2023 was authenticity. And oftentimes in coaching and when we’re pushing ourselves to grow, we can find ourselves feeling conflicted between the person we may have been attached to and who we actually are evolving into through some of that coaching. So I thought Given these 2 individuals and their experience in innovation, leadership, and leadership coaching, this would be a really interesting topic to explore. So without further ado, I would like to introduce our incredible guest Seth Regaletti and Ken Grady. So, Seth, if you wanna just share a few things about yourself and what you think might be relevant for our audience to know.

Seth Rigoletti: Thanks, Rachel. So great to be here. Thanks for inviting us. And, yeah, I’m I’m a leadership coach. I do work with executives and teams helping them to communicate more authentically, more clearly, and draw stronger connections between each other. So I’ll work individually on presence in in that. And then I also work with, groups on helping them coordinate. And I’m here today with, my co conspirator, Ken Grady, who, I’ve done, almost a decade work to work with in in with his team. And then also we started a podcast together.

Ken Grady: Can go ahead and introduce yourself. Thanks, Seth. Yeah. It’s great to be here. As Seth mentioned, he and I worked together quite a while, I’m actually I’m a, SVP, Senior Vice President And CIO of IDEXX Laboratories, which is a global animal health and diagnostics company leader. I’ve actually worked in the pharmaceutical, vaccines and diagnostics and development area on the human side for most of my career, but always in technology. And, are nearly always in technology, but leading IT functions, leading software development, leading new product development. And what I think is so interesting and something that really inspired Seth and I to, start this work on, on leadership in a different way was in the past few years, especially We’ve seen that technology is this constant source of change. It’s changed the way we engage with our customers It’s changed the way that businesses go to market. It’s changed the ways that we work with each other as colleagues and, and, and collaborators. And All of that has meant that we have to get very comfortable with change and leading change, and that’s really where a lot of come from is, that really unpacking and exploring, kinda how do we get comfortable with leading change and being changed herself as a part of that?

Rachel Cossar: Absolutely. So let’s, you know, you’ve you’ve laid the the foundations beautifully, Ken, for the first question, which I’ll I’ll pass over to you.

Ken Grady: So in your experience, right, and and and whether you wanna reference the past, like, 3 acute years of change or just in general, you know, what are some of the most powerful skills you think a leader needs to develop to meet today’s wild world of work You know, many years ago, when I started this role, as as folks do, when you’re taking on a new role, right, and I’d say 1, day 2, they asked me, get up in front of the team and and tell them stuff, tell them the vision, tell them to whatever. And I was like, I, you know, I just joined this organization, leading a few hundred people distributed around the world and sites, and literally in 1st week. And so I don’t even know where the bathrooms are. You all know more about the business and the team and the software we’re developing. But there’s a couple of things I do know. And one thing I know and again, stepping into a role leading the technology organization, I said, whatever you’re working on today, You won’t be working on that 3 years from now. Right. That’s just the pace of change, and that was almost a decade ago. Joining this organization have been in the role. It’s always gotten faster. And so what does that mean? What can we do about that? And one of the things we talk a lot about is designing for change, designing resilience for change, being open to an accepting of change, being curious about what’s possible next. And those are skills that that’s not like a technical skill. That’s not like a, you know, yeah, there’s technology and stuff that goes into it, but that’s a skill as a leader that just creating the mindset within the organization, that change is going to happen, and wouldn’t it be great if we’re the authors of change, and we’re designing for it. And so that’s that’s that resilience and curiosity between the two of them, those are things that I look for in new leaders or growing leaders.

Rachel Cossar: Right. That’s so interesting. And, I mean, especially as these organizations or the organizations you work for become more complex and larger and more distributed, I would imagine that building processes that allow for that resilience to change I mean, that’s gotta be a whole project in and of itself. It is.

Ken Grady: And, actually, the distributed part is an area where I have an special kind of interest in coming out of, you know, COVID and lockdown and kind of the way we all change the way, the way we worked every day, becoming very intentional. About that part of the process and conversation and the resilience and and listening really hard to what the team needs to ensure we stay connected and and unified in purpose has become I think that’s the part where my takeaway in the last few years was we had to get really intentional about this. In a way that you sort of could be lazy about if you’re all in the same place together and you have a chance to catch up over coffee or stuff in the, you know, in the line or in the lunch room, you can’t do that anymore. And especially in the larger, you know, kind of more complex organization. So that, that creating some intentionality and talking about what that means how different people are going to receive that has been a big part of what Seth and I have been working on, this past couple of years.

Seth Rigoletti: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead, Gus. Yeah. I would agree with that. And I think that the intentionality piece is particularly difficult when we look at you know, a lot of times leaders don’t actually they have this clear idea of a process that they would like to go through, but they’re not always so curious about where people are in that process. So there can be sometimes this feeling of, like, you’re trying to you’re trying to drive all the cattle into a a a fenced in area and it and that works really well if all you want are cattle, but a lot of times what we want are we want people to actually be thinking independently, we want them, like, contributing. We want them actually, like, telling us what’s going on because we can’t we don’t have full visibility, especially with the distributed organization. So we need to do this, like, conversational quality to it, and it’s very it just we’re just terrible at it. Like, you know, even these situations now with the video stuff, we tend to be just talking at people and not really to making space for listening or for quiet.

Rachel Cossar: Yeah. Definitely. And I think so, Seth, like, there’s, even if you take something as simple as facilitating a video call or conversation, Right? There’s so much more that’s going on in each of our respective environments that the people on the other end are not privy to. Right? And so I think there’s something set to your point of, like, how do you find out where each individual is on their journey of being curious and being able to stomach some of that change or get on board with change, right, that, like, how do you, as a coach, how do you guide leaders in developing a skill set to not only being curious to where people are in their different journeys, but how to how to how to find out where they are? Like, what kinds of questions might they be go be able to ask? Yeah.

Seth Rigoletti: I I think what I what I tend to do with most of my leaders that I work with. And Ken and I talk about this a lot in our podcast is you gotta start off with being curious about yourself. You know, like, what is going on for you? What does actually have happening in your world right now. And then, you know, do some discernment about what about that you can share with the team. What about that? Because the vulnerability you bring to a group is going to invite vulnerability from that group. It’s not necessarily gonna be, 1 to 1, but it creates a safer space. And I think most leaders think of themselves as, like, these tabula erosas, like, these completely blank slates where they’re just there to, like, get information from everybody else or to extract information. And and that creates a a a power dynamic that doesn’t allow for that kind of interference. What do you what do you think about that, Ken, from your experience? Yeah.

Ken Grady: I think, it was making me chuckle a little bit because long ago and far away as I was growing up as a leader. You just gotta get this, I don’t know, this this thing where, okay, I’m gonna go to work now, and I’m gonna put my business on. And you become kind of this, this almost, like, 1 or 2 dimensional, kind of facade that you put on. And what happened during COVID when we all went home, right, and worked for from wherever we were. And it was challenging. Don’t get me wrong. Like, it was we were all white knuckled. Like, I don’t know if we all remember that. We were, like, trying to get through it and trying to keep together kinda, like, figure out what’s gonna happen is the world on fire. But suddenly, you got this glimpse into people’s worlds in a way that you didn’t before, and they got a glimpse into my world. In a way that they didn’t before. And, you know, I made a rule early on. It was like, my kids I had kids at home still. They were in school and doing homeschool, and they could come in any time. The printer was in my office they could come in any time and interrupt me. My dogs come in. You you happen I’m not in my home office today because we’re How to mix things up, but I’ve got like a music show musical show poster behind me because I’m big in a musical theater. You just got a sudden sense, and it was this accidental lesson for me in terms of, oh, well, if if they can see my messy world, then it’s not as, like, scary to share your mess as well and ask for help or get to know each other in a different way. It was the irony of the whole situation was actually by becoming more distributed. In that way, we actually became we got to know each other in a way that we never would have otherwise.

Rachel Cossar: That is such an that’s an interesting point. I I think, you know, I feel like Seth, you and I have talked about this in the past, but something about that I think there’s 2 things can come up for me when you share that number 1 is as a leader, people are looking to you to take their cues. Right? And people will only go so far as you go. Right? And so if that is in you sharing vulnerability or you showing up and show and and and sharing more sides of yourself, right, and with the virtual environment at home, you have the opportunity to put things in your background. Like, my cofounder has, like, 19 guitars because he’s such like a music buff, but it’s wonderful because that’s something you would never have seen. Just in the office. Right? And that’s I think that’s a really powerful thing. So let’s let’s move on to our next question here because now we’re talking about some of that change and, you know, especially Ken, to your point earlier, of people tend to show up in professional circles as this is me as a professional and I’m almost defacto leaving certain qualities of my other self out. So how do you navigate? And and Seth, I’d be curious, especially your perspective here as a coach, like, how do you help people navigate your comfort zone while still helping people stay true to that like that authentic, core.

Seth Rigoletti: Do you want me to answer that first, or do you want Ken to? Oh, yeah.

Rachel Cossar: I mean, what do you want to do with it?

Seth Rigoletti: So I I would start off by saying that For for me, I I don’t I don’t like to think of my authentic self as a as a fixed state is sort of like an absolute. I think that, you know, one one of the things that is authentic for me is when I’m outside my comfort zone, I I can get uptight and I can get a little fearful. And I think that that also is authentic. I think that the piece about what’s hard for leaders is that we have this idea in our minds that we’re supposed to be this absolute, this concept of all that Ken was just talking about concept of this leader, you know, I’m I always have to know the answer. I always have to know what to do. I always have to know how to how to handle the situation. And I think that there’s a, I mean, it’s gonna make it this distinction that one of the ways that you navigate that as a leader is to be honest about where you are, but not need the team to support you emotionally, not need the team to tell you that you’re doing a good job. I think as soon as a leader falls into that category, you trigger in everybody on the team some sort of caretaker role and then the leader lose, you lose your authority. But you can actually be authentic and say, like, hey, folks, like, I don’t really know what to do here. I’m really curious about what you all think is happening and what you all think we you would do in this situation. And we have a lot of, great examples of this. Over the course of the last 150 years about leaders who have been in terrible situations and have done this. But go ahead, Ken. You you chime in on your you have a good take on this too.

Ken Grady: Yeah. There’s this metaphor we talked about, in one of the early episodes of the podcast, it’s not personal podcast, around this this, what Seth was touching on around as a leader, how do I, how do I, continue to grow and not stay safe into my comfort time, because comfort is is static, and it’s safe, generally. It means you’re not learning and growing. And one of the things that I really, again, talk about a lot with my team is is to Seth’s point, none of us know everything, and none of us should expect that we have to pretend like we know everything. And so we’re gonna always there’s never anybody I’ve met or worked with. It hasn’t had something to teach me, every day. I learn stuff every day for my team, and the people I work with, it’s amazing. I always love working with smart people. And this metaphor we use is and you’ll appreciate this or maybe your cofounder would appreciate this because I like music as well, and and we talk about operating like a jazz band. And we’re all pulling in the same direction. Somebody sets the general tone. Right? But if you ever listen to a really good jazz band, any instrument, any musician, can be in the lead at any given time. And, in fact, you know, almost every one of them will be in the lead at any given time. And what it means for the rest of you is you have to listen really hard to know how to support them and know when it’s your turn to lead and step out of your comfort zone or step into the front. And know that you’re gonna have the support and the trust of the organization you’re working with. It does it does require Seth Point this high degree of trust that you’re working on. To, and again, share, like, I’m good at this. I’m good at that type of scenario. Not as good as this other type of scenario, and I’m gonna need your help with it. And when you build a level of trust, they know when to step in, your your colleagues, your your team knows when to step in to support you. And, you know, that’s why you surround yourself like, Hey, the best trumpet player in the world is probably not a great base player, right? That’s reality. Maybe they want to learn. Right? But that’s the kind of way that we operate in a way that allows to create the space, I think Seth mentioned earlier, to try something out of your comfort zone and know that you’ve got the support. Right.

Rachel Cossar: And so in that sense, Do you find that, like, part of that fear of leaving your comfort zone is, like, yes, one somewhat identity based, but then also rooted in in a fear of of taking that step and then failing Possibly. Absolutely.

Ken Grady: Yeah. No. I think this is the, sorry, sir. I thought. No, I think this is I’ve heard this referred to as, like, you know, the fear of the time, right? And, the first time you’re trying something, but you just gotta ground yourself. You’re probably not gonna be good at it. Unless you’re a Savant, you’re probably not gonna be good at it. And so that’s where I think just kind of that self conversation around, oh, oh, I see what’s happening here. Oh, I’m in a first time situation. You know, Renee Brown talks about this and, in some of her works, she does around vulnerability and, and authenticity. And, oh, yeah. Okay. I’m gonna give myself the grace ask for help, or give myself the time to, to, to find my feet before moving forward. But it’s, it’s something we should expect because we’re humans. Go ahead, Seth.

Seth Rigoletti: Yeah. I think I think it’s also true. We forget this that we’re our brains are we’re designed to kind of try to avoid difficulties. Like, we wanna we’re our brains are inherently lazy Like, we want to try to conserve energy. And so we have all these heuristics, these biases that we develop over time, some of them are handed down, but some of them are are things that we just, you know, we just do automatically. We think about the world through this lens of bias. And so when we once we’ve accomplished some level of success in our job, in our career, we, we naturally have an aversion to, to change to things that are gonna force us to be bad at it. And I think that, you know, there are some people in this world who, you know, they, they make a big deal out of the fact that they love change and those people God bless them, but they’re, like, can be very disruptive as leaders because you don’t want leaders who are constantly coming in just to change everything, just just to do it. You want leaders who are changing things really because because things have to change, right, because it’s if we don’t change, we’re gonna we’re gonna crumble or we’re gonna, languish. And and you want leaders who are not afraid of that. Right? So we, as as individuals, we have to cultivate a practice that puts us in a place where we are gonna be uncomfortable from time to time.

Rachel Cossar: Yeah. That actually teased me up perfectly for this next question because I find so in my experience having been a gymnast and a professional ballet dancer. Like, I definitely saw frequently people pushing themselves way too far out of their comfort zones. So how do you like first of all, yeah, like, yeah, like, have you seen instances of that where people Seth, you alluded it to it a little bit saying that sometimes leaders come in and they just wanna change and disrupt just for the sake of maybe the energy around it but like Seth, what do you think about Yeah. Like, how how might you know if maybe you’ve you’ve been in a zone of discomfort for too long?

Seth Rigoletti: Oh, I love the concept of ballet just thinking about this because ballet itself as an art form is pushing people, pushing human beings to do the most unnatural, right? They’re trying to they’re trying to create a very unnatural line with their bodies. So it takes tremendous practice, tremendous discipline. You have to, you you have to just work so hard outside your comfort zone every single day. To do things that your body really isn’t technically gonna do naturally. Right? The so we like, I I would start off just by saying, we don’t really know. Right? We don’t really know what that outside the comfort zone is. And and in dance, they talk about this wanting to push yourself to the point where you start to vibrate and acting, it’s the same thing. Like, you wanna push yourself to a place where you start actually feeling the vibration A good leader is somebody who understands that place with their with their team where they’re saying, you know, no, you go take this. You, you present this. You take on this project yourself and they’re delegating something that they know is outs and Kent, you’re great at this. So you’ll talk about this, but, like, you’re delegating something that, you know, outside their person’s comfort zone, but not so far outside of what they can do that that you’re you’re gonna caused a situation where they have to fail or that where it’s just they have to shut down.

Ken Grady: Yeah. I think this gets to the leadership skill because when you were learning ballet, you had a coach. Right? You had somebody that was guiding you. There is all of us in in every organization has a changed capacity. Hard to quantify sometimes, but you can actually see you can’t get from, you know, where you are today, you know, from a beginning student, all the way to, you know, the expert professional overnight in a single step. There’s a change capacity, and I like set what you said about pushing yourself to that point of vibration and kinda knowing where that is. Maybe it’s a little bit further than people thought they were able to do in terms of change. But you have a longer term view of where you’re headed, and then you actually plan change capacity. And and and this is where I like the as well, the being mindful of change for changes sake is just disruptive. It’s just noise. Change for impact. That’s what we’re trying to do. How are we going to measure this impact? What impact are we trying to create through this change? We want to improve the customer experience. We want to improve the development pace of our teams and how they’re learning or growing new skills. We wanna, and we wanna improve the capacity or automation Right? We there are impacts that we’re trying to create. We can measure those and actually then plan out the stepwise. What is our change total change capacity and what trade offs do we need to make? Because we can’t change everything at once. One of the changes that would have the greatest impact, right? That’s the leadership skill is to actually understand the relationship. Between the measures of impacts, the outcomes we’re trying to create, and the change capacity of our organization. And where do we start, or where do we apply that energy to deliver that that ultimate outcome.

Rachel Cossar: Right. Yeah. So it’s it’s actually I mean, it’s it’s a little bit of a of an intricate web between some of that, like, foundational, psychological safety, like, safe space, environment that you as a leader can create, that you as a leader can rise to with your own behaviors. Right? Acknowledging failures of your own in front of your team and then also, like, understanding, like, the why behind any of these changes and trying to find a helpful get there. Right? Yeah. Seth, go ahead. Yeah.

Seth Rigoletti: I was just gonna add in, Rachel, that it’s important to also recognize that people have to know you care about them. Right? They have to know that you actually there’s a, thing. I used to be a school teacher. I used to teach English, and there was this joke about, like, you know, English teachers only like the papers where there are lots of mistakes. Because then we actually know what to do. It’s like we don’t like papers where everything is, you know, where things are well written because we don’t know what to say. You know, there’s a sense of, like, we, we can sometimes as managers become excited by failure because then we know exactly what to do. We can tell people what they did wrong. We can critique you know, whereas a leader who actually sets people up for success and says, I care about your success and I’m not afraid of your failure. Is someone who’s gonna create a sense of psychological safety and growth in that. It’s very exciting to be with a leader who’s like, I I’m gonna get you up. I’m gonna set you up with this thing. I don’t really know if it’s gonna work. And also, I trust that you’re gonna do what you do, and we’ll see what happens.

Rachel Cossar: Yeah. No. I love that. I, right, because there’s a a certain element of the unknown and experimentation that has to kinda come hand in hand with that. So that’s that’s fantastic. Switching tracks a little in from this perspective of change and leadership and and getting out of your comfort zone, you know, AI and and to your point earlier, Ken of things are evolving so phenomenally rapidly. Like what what are you actually most excited about when it comes to different applications of AI within within your industry. Ken, go ahead. Oh, gosh.

Ken Grady: So I I’m fortunate. I’ve worked in pharma and and and development diagnostic etcetera, where we we actually have, many years of experience of leveraging AI, approaches, to help build algorithms that can advance, you know, diagnostics, can recognize things in an x-ray, can say this heart’s too large, could recognize bacteria. Like, there’s all kinds of things, both in human and other, you know, life sciences where we’ve been applying what, and it’s funny to hear it referred to now as traditional AI. Traditional AI. But we’re that far along. And of course, now we have the excitement of generative AI where we’re we’re taking it to another another step forward And there’s a lot of applications. Now we’re early days, and we’re gonna see a lot of advancement in the next 2, 3 years, but I think this is the ultimate assistant in your pocket, right, where I can actually, and I’ve got some great prompt engineers that I’ve worked with, both inside and outside, you know, the companies I’m in. And, who were saying, Hey, I need you to write this email for me, putting in a friendly tone to Seth, offer him three times that we could meet next week, connect this other person or copy this other person, and you’re just giving it general instructions, but it learns your style and saves you and then you get to look at it and it’s go, yep, or I wanna edit something that saves you time. So this is where I think that the near term next year or 2 years applications are gonna be. These kinds of things, that save us time that allow us and I talked to one lawyer again outside the company, but he’s like, look, I’m I’m able to review five times as many contracts in the same amount of time because it summarizes for me, and then it tells me kinda where to go look. He’s like, I’m five times as productive as I was. Now that might be an extreme example, but it’s an interesting one. What’s also interesting is where it’s not a magic wand. And so we’re all still finding how to leverage these tools in a way where we’re still responsible for the output, but it’s an assistant is kind of, I think, the best way to think about where generative AI these op opportunities are is it’s helping us accelerate the creation of content that otherwise we would have had to. I mean, I’m saying this in software development with tools from Microsoft and GitHub and others, where, Amazon, where it’s writing the a lot of the junk code that you have to generate, to write a bigger program. And it’s just freeing up developers who’s like, okay. I don’t have to declare variables or create tables because it does that for me. I can review it and then work on the stuff that’s really hard. And that’s the thing is if it takes out away some of the drudgery from us, that’s where I think the assistant kind of model, gets really interesting. Yeah. Right.

Rachel Cossar: I that that’s fascinating to hear. I think that’s pretty consistent with with some of what I’ve heard other people say is that there’s almost this level of task oriented rote repeated nature of certain behaviors that just take time. Right? Like a human can only go so fast.

Seth Rigoletti: And if the AI can help, like, be trained and then be accurate and always have that human level supervision and that that helps, Seth and I have discussed this when it comes to coaching, right, because at virtual sapiens, you know, we’re very careful to only bite off the types of feedback that we know our AI with confidence and identify, and provide feedback on so that we then free up the coach like Seth to go in and provide some of the more nuanced level feedback and coaching without having to worry about things like, well, this person is not gonna come across very well because they’re not framed properly and they’re, you know, not using their hands or whatever. So, Seth, like, what what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, they probably have a somewhat controversial take on it. Just not not because I know AI or I’ve I work with it. It’s just more just a question of, like, things that things that I’m I’m skeptical of technology that speeds us up and and supposedly saves us time just because I think historically in the last 100 years, we’ve had a lot of technology that theoretically saves us time and yet somehow we’re busier than ever before. So I don’t really, I’m, like, I’m, I’m actually quite concerned that we’re just gonna use ai to do more, but not necessarily to, be more fulfilled in the work that we do or create better work. I think about email, just as a great example, like email was an invention that seemed like such a time saver, you know, I don’t have to write out a memo and put it in someone’s mailbox. I can just shoot off an email and I I mean, I I don’t get the kind of email that Ken gets, but, like, I like, I know people who spend their whole day, like, doing email. Like, that’s all they do. And it’s and and I don’t know if that’s actually efficient. I mean, from a communication standpoint, I worry that, like, we we would use GPT in in in different types of AI generated creative endeavors to to to almost like take away the thought process that we we would the questioning that we would ask about, like, well, why are we doing this? And what is and what is the value of this? And, like, what is the value of our time, you know, and I think I don’t really, you know, I don’t I’m not a I’m not a luddite. I don’t I don’t not against technology. I just feel like we are getting over our skis a little bit and not really asking the question of like, what are we actually trying to accomplish here, is speed and efficiency? The only thing we’re interested in, or is there something else?

Rachel Cossar: It’s like my little my little soapbox. There you go. No. I mean, I think you bring up a a great point in, like, paying attention to not getting ahead of our skis and also not getting ahead of where the technology’s at because, like, I I still believe that to your point email, like, and as Ken mentioned in his answer, if we can have AI help us get through some of the emails that, actually do just take time and require just a little bit of prompting and intentionality that could help free us up to do some of that more you know, whatever work. Sorry.

Seth Rigoletti: Go ahead. Yeah. Let me let me just say one more thing. Joseph Heller, who wrote Catch 22, he has a a great example of this. Not not of AI, but of, like, this thinking, like, like, what happens when AI is communicating with other AI in emails. And, like, we, like, like, so the the example he uses in the army but there’s a a man who’s like, we know who knows who he is. He’s just wrapped up in bandages, and he’s got 1, like, one drip thing that’s like clear liquid and it’s dripping into a hose and it’s going into one arm and then it’s got another hose coming out of the other arm going into another jar that’s filling up with with other liquid, clear liquid. And they’re all like sitting around him and they’re like, this seems really inefficient. We should just eliminate the middle man and just have the jar go from that jar to that jar. Like, like, there were like and this is the way that I think efficiency thinking sometimes happens is we we forget, like, why am I actually emailing anybody? Like, what am I trying to communicate? And and what is so hard about this? Like, rather than, like, make it more efficient. Maybe we should actually ask ourselves, like, do we need all this communication? Is this really actually helpful? And I I know that’s a big question.

Ken Grady: That’s a hard question and not one that we’re gonna answer today, but, that’s just my thinking about it. And I’ve seen plenty of examples of technology where that’s actually the case. Now, not with AI yet, but I’ve seen things digital systems speaking to each other that actually creates this kind of inefficient inefficiency, of all things. And there’s lots of reasons for it, but I think it is a a space that we’re all gonna watch, and I I don’t disagree with all such points, of course, about you know, we’re we can never I mean, this is the art of leadership, is to really be asking ourselves the question about, again, the impacts. What are the, I’ll go back to that. What are the impacts we’re trying to create? And is this the best way to do it? And speed and efficiency might be one of the impacts, but probably not always the only, and sometimes not even the primary. Right? We want better outcomes. Well, it’s defined better. Right? So we get into those questions, and that’s where the human brain, at least to date, can’t be replaced.

Rachel Cossar: Yep. Yep. Absolutely. I think to I think it was was was Seth you you said earlier. Right? Like, the human brain is is built to be, like, efficient and lazy. Right? And so we can’t allow that to be the reason that we’re just employing these technologies. And you see it with a lot of startups in particular, right, that are just like and now we’re an AI company and we can do all the stuff with AI and right and you’re just like going back to your point kind of like, okay, but like, like, why? Like, what value is this actually adding for people? Right? So very much have to be thoughtful of of all those concerns. So to to wrap up if there’s one one thing one takeaway our listeners can do to help face, you know, this uncertainty for themselves And then also as leaders for their teams, like, let’s let’s start with Seth. What if you can share your, you know, biggest takeaway and then would love to to end with Ken.

Seth Rigoletti: Yeah. I think what I think the first thing to recognize is you wanna get really clear about how you feel about uncertainty. I mean, I don’t I know for myself, uncertainty is uncomfortable, and, it brings up a kind of, fear that I I have. Like, I don’t know. Am I gonna be able to handle and then remind myself that I have handled uncertainty before that this is gonna be okay that I’m gonna be okay that even if things fall apart, I’ll be okay. And that if you can tell that to your team, if you can remind your team that, like, the goal of facing uncertainty is part of what makes life interesting. If everything was certain, life would be very, very boring. So if we can remind ourselves that that not knowing is the fun of it and you can create an environment for your team and for yourself where that is something you embrace, then, you know, people will will will be more in a growth mindset.

Ken Grady: Yeah. I wanna build on that and just maybe restate it just in my own how I’ve seen it. The most the single most effective thing you can do in leadership when you wanna bring your team through a time of uncertainty. Talk about it. Talk about it out loud. Tell them what you’re uncertain of. Tell them what questions you have. Listen to the answers. Often, there’s no company where all the good ideas come from the top and go down. No company exists like that. Talk about it out loud and give space for the answers and the dialogue and the conversation, and be curious about what you’re going to learn from it. It’s amazing. And that was really, again, just again, take it back to COVID when we were all white knuckled. The thing that we did talked about it, shared whatever information we could share, right, checked in? Repeatedly, don’t just do it once. Make it a practice. And it really is that’s, I think, the heart of creating that psychological safety to get through these times. And it really is. It does require a level of vulnerability and authenticity as a leader that here’s the other thing. You’re gonna find that the more you talk about it and the more comfortable you get with it. Just like anything else. It just takes practice.

Rachel Cossar: Yep. Building building those new those new muscles and new habits. Right? Wonderful. Thank you both so much for sharing your insights and your thoughts and your experiences with us today.

Seth Rigoletti: I’d love it if, one of you, maybe, Seth, if you wanna just share a little more about how people can get in touch with with you and, with you both, but also specifically with your your podcast, which I just think really explores, in in great depth, some of these topics. I’m actually gonna pass that to Ken. Ken is expert at at listing off all the ways.

Ken Grady: Yeah. So you could find out more about it. It’s not personal. It’s the name of the podcast. The podcast about leadership and creating a more, ironically or coincidentally human workspace by taking the ego at a leadership and the conversations we have explorers. Rachel said, many of the the topics that we touched on today and a bunch more with a lot of examples that we’ve both seen in our work our lives and our teams, that are a lot of fun. So we’re welcoming to you. You can find it wherever you find your podcast, goodness, Apple, Spotify, etcetera. It’s also at www.it’snotpersonal.nets. You can find it as well through Seth’s website, sethregaletti.com. Where you can find more about his recent book that he published into the Wolf. I can’t help but brag a little bit, which is some great stories about leadership and and really finding your own voice. In that space. So we love feedback. We love, emails. You can email either of us. All the links are on the websites. We love questions, and actually he brought a lot of that into the discussion, of the podcast.

Rachel Cossar: Awesome. Thank you again so much and, thanks to our audience. Great.