Accelerated Promotions AND Complete Flexibility?!

ADVICE FROM THE MASTERCLASS C-SUITE ON NAVIGATING CONFLICTING NEEDS

Let's Talk, People: Episode 20

[00:00:00] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Hi, I'm Emily Frieze-Kemeny, host of Let's Talk, People Where Leaders come to bridge humanity and profitability informed by a couple decades of work. As a head of talent and leadership development, I'm here to amplify leaders so they can exalt. Everyone and everything they touch. Are you ready? 'Cause it's about to get real.

[00:00:28] Let's talk, people.

[00:00:33] It is such a pleasure to have Mel Steinbeck on. Let's Talk, People Today. Mel is the Chief Business Officer at masterclass responsible for their B2B business. Their Chief People Officer Masterclass, for those of you who have not had the joy of experiencing it yet, it is an online learning platform that uses storytelling by celebrities and thought leaders to give everyone a chance to learn from experts.

[00:00:59] Prior to masterclass, Mel was the Chief People Officer of Cameo. She was the SVP and Chief People Officer at McDonald's USA and their global chief talent Officer. Mel is also an angel investor and serves on the board of directors of the Court of Master Sommelier's Americas, and on the Board of Stone Hearst Group for our episode.

[00:01:23] We are going a lot of places, and as Mel perfectly described it, leading can feel like managing Russian nesting dolls. It is layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. It really is about understanding the context in which we are leading. There is external realities that we're navigating through. There's team dynamics all the way down to individual needs, and those can include the complexities.

[00:01:51] Of people wanting to get promoted and to do that fast and furiously in their careers, and the reality of how much of that is realistic, while also juggling a strong desire and need for boundaries and work-life balance, which for many of us who grew up in organizations that wasn't even talked about or an option, this is a real, a real shift and it's, it's a real dilemma to navigate.

[00:02:15] So we're gonna, we're gonna jump into it. Mel, I am so excited to have you on. Let's talk people.

[00:02:24] Mel Steinbach: I am so excited. I felt like it was first day of school. Gi us couldn't wait.

[00:02:30] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Me too. All right. We got a lot to unpack and we're gonna start with your childhood. Well, I'm sure there are many, many stories. I wanna know, maybe just give us one thing about your childhood that you feel is a little window into who you are, the human today.

[00:02:48] Mel Steinbach: I feel like of my childhood, the identity that I connect with the most is that I'm a big sister. I have two younger sisters. When I was nine and a half, my youngest sister was born. I joke that I asked for a cabbage patch doll and I got a baby sister. Aw. I was 10 and playing with a little baby, and I was 14, and my friends would come over because we had to babysit my little 4-year-old sister.

[00:03:19] And I knew every word to The Little Mermaid because I had this. 4-year-old and she knew every word to the Indigo Girls because we had this older sister. And so just that identity of being a big sister, it helped me know so clearly that I knew I wanted to be a mom very, very early in my life. I knew that I loved helping shepherd people along, and I think it helped my career a little bit.

[00:03:48] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And then let's fast forward. Tell me about what you're up to today, what you're doing, what you love about it.

[00:04:00] Mel Steinbach: I have such an incredible job today. I feel fortunate to have the career that I've had. It has had a lot of twists and turns and ups and downs. Today I work for an incredible company called Masterclass.

[00:04:18] Masterclass delivers online learning for consumers and for companies, and to call it online learning is such a disservice to the art that our teams create. We really lean into several pillars, one that everyone deserves to learn from the best. So we have these world-renowned experts in their fields from singers and directors and actors to authors and race car drivers.

[00:04:54] And so it's just this diversity of experts telling you their stories. So my role at Masterclass, I have two jobs

[00:05:04] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: because that's how much energy and how amazing you are.

[00:05:08] Mel Steinbach: Sure. I am the Chief People Officer of the company, which is a real honor. And in that role, I tell people my job is to make our insides match our outsides.

[00:05:19] Our mission is to unlock human potential by inspiring a learning lifestyle in everyone. And my job as Chief People Officer is to make sure that that feels very visible and real internally. My other job is that I lead our B2B business. So I am also our Chief Business Officer leading our B2B business.

[00:05:38] And in that role, I feel like my job is to make our outside match our inside, right? Mm-hmm. So I'm trying to bring everything that we know to our incredible clients.

[00:05:50] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: It's such a perfect combination that I think a lot of organizations miss on.

[00:05:57] Mel Steinbach: Yeah.

[00:05:57] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Who your identity is, is lived through in every aspect of how you show up in the world, and people can feel that authenticity.

[00:06:04] I.

[00:06:04] Mel Steinbach: It's a reason I've really always been drawn to consumer businesses who kind of feel like the line between what you sell and who you are as a company feels like a very thin line. We see it happening in just in all types of companies.

[00:06:21] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Not every place really does the work. Your job is just so perfect for you.

[00:06:26] It just makes me happy. Okay, so when we thought about the day in the life of a leader, what are they really being confronted with right now? While we all feel it's really hard to be a leader, I think that you have a really good way of articulating what are the dynamics that might be a little bit more acute right now than maybe even in the past.

[00:06:51] What's going on out there? How would you break it down?

[00:06:54] Mel Steinbach: Okay, so I am really big on analogies. So I really think that there are these two things that are confronting leaders right now. One, I call the Russian nesting Dolls of change, and that is, it feels like everyone is having to navigate these different sizes, but they're all nestled together of change.

[00:07:21] You have this massive geopolitical change that is impacting global businesses around the world. You have pretty widespread climate issues affecting huge parts of different populations. If you had employees in LA in the early part of this year, they were unable to work because they were so focused on their personal safety.

[00:07:45] If you had employees in Spain a couple of months ago. They were navigating massive floods, and they also were unable to work. And so for leaders, I think they're just constantly looking at where is this massive disruption coming from? Everyone is talking about AI and trying to figure out what it means.

[00:08:05] Is it an enabler or is it a replacer? That is a massive thing that is on leaders minds, and it's for sure on employees' minds. That's all the general stuff. Then think about all of the changes going on in your company. And so I think leaders are in this constant state of navigating the nesting dolls of change, and they feel at any given time, which doll you're navigating with your teams is something you have to be agile and flexing between.

[00:08:38] So I think that is one. The other one, and this, I give a lot of shout out to one of my longtime mentors, Dave Ulrich, who talked about one of the biggest issues or, or challenges or opportunities that HR people in general face is how to navigate paradox. And I think right now. All leaders with their employees are navigating this very, to me, it feels like a newer paradox that we have to navigate, which is this tension between, I need to be promoted all the time.

[00:09:13] I need to see this constant career growth, and I am intensely protective of my work-life balance. And those two things sometimes feel very oppositional. I hear leaders throwing their hands up and being like, every day it changes. Yesterday you wanted to get promoted, but today you need me to take work off your plate.

[00:09:34] What is it? And I think that we have to really think through why are they saying those things and how do we help them navigate those?

[00:09:42] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: So that's it. Even an interesting thing that you're saying that the newer generations of the workforce are challenging what we think high performing even looks like. When we think promotion, we think, well, that means more responsibility.

[00:09:53] But then they're also saying, I want more flexibility and. How do those fit together? So I think that's a really interesting framing change for us as leaders of how we look at individuals like that.

[00:10:04] Mel Steinbach: You're so right. We're around the same age. And so when I was a young mom, working mom, I canceled the family vacation because I had too much work.

[00:10:16] Mm-hmm. And I cannot tell you what I was working on, but I can tell you the family vacation that went, that I missed. So I've told that story as a, Ugh. It was awful. It was so bad. However, when it came time for my review, I was given a lot of credit for that. That was something that they acknowledged as being wonderful, and one of the reasons why I got a high performance rating that year.

[00:10:41] Today, I would be considered a toxic boss for doing it. Totally. For complimenting someone, for rewarding it. I mean, it would be, it would be awful. There would be a TikTok viral series about you if you did that, and yet that was the environment that I was raised in. As a leader and as someone who is advising other leaders, I find myself in this constant unlearning and relearning mode of what is the right way today.

[00:11:12] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I think what we forget is, as you said, there's these macro dynamics, so there's things that are bigger and beyond us. There's organizational dynamics, there's team dynamics all the way down to the person and the person's, a lot of things themself. They're the person who's working, they're the team member.

[00:11:28] Sometimes they're a leader themselves. They have their own personal lives. They're having their own feelings. It is so layered.

[00:11:35] Mel Steinbach: I always say leadership is a responsibility, and so if you can think about, I have to just concede that I can do nothing on these three things largely, but. How can I control the team environment that my team operates in?

[00:11:52] How can I help this individual feel like they have a little bit more control, guidance, plan, whatever that is.

[00:12:01] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Everything is figureoutable like it is. We're really smart people and we never have to do things alone. As leaders, we do it in community, colleagues. Your team, you have a boss, right? A mentor. This idea that there is a way through it, and that from your vantage point as you were saying, Mel, I.

[00:12:17] You have a lot of insight from wherever you sit in the organization. You get to see a lot of what's happening, and so from that place, you can help other people to move within the system.

[00:12:28] Mel Steinbach: I'm fascinated by people. I am fascinated by human behavior. My sister-in-law is a psychologist, and she told me decades ago, she was like, the most interesting thing about you, Mel, is your relationship to change.

[00:12:46] Oh, Mel, you are not only not scared of change. You in many cases welcome it and, in some cases, seek it. Yep. It really helped me when I am working with employees, leaders, friends, anyone, if I can't tell what their relationship is with change, I ask them if you are always going into change, as change is disruptive versus change is an opportunity for progress.

[00:13:18] Then I know what to say. Okay, if change is always gonna be disruptive to you, then I know that we should talk about certain things, right? Versus if you see change progress, there's another set of things. Just isolating that thing. What is your relationship with change, I think is something that, that people miss.

[00:13:35] Hmm. Um, and particularly given what we're talking about right now, I think it's something that is worth a conversation.

[00:13:44] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I love this, Mel, 'cause we know every single person needs to change their relationship with change. Yeah. Change is reality. How do I change my relationship to it?

[00:13:55] Mel Steinbach: If you know that you have a relationship with change where you're like, you don't love it, but if you're going into an environment of change, then you can, can fortify yourself.

[00:14:03] How do you pump yourself up for that?

[00:14:06] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I love that. That's great. Totally, totally. Feel that. Awesome. Abby, I'm gonna turn it over to you 'cause we have some, some questions.

[00:14:14] Abigail Charlu: These are some juicy questions, so let's dig into 'em. A leader shared the frustration that people on their team are myopically focused on promotion.

[00:14:25] They've heard things like, the only way I feel valued is through promotion. Similar to what Mel said earlier, how can leaders address this mindset while maintaining realistic career growth pathways?

[00:14:40] Mel Steinbach: I believe that social media is both a positive and a negative in our environment and in our world today.

[00:14:49] One of the things that social media has done that is, I believe, negative within the work environment is this whole picture, it didn't happen, is what the, what my 20 something year old children say. And that phenomenon shows up in our work social media platforms, which I won't name by name. But you can't show progress in your career on those unless it is a new degree or a new role title if you don't have a new job.

[00:15:23] How do people know I'm growing? How do people know I'm developing? Because you can't just say, I'm actually. Doing more in my current role, but you can't put that on these social media platforms. And so that has created this pressure internally with companies where employees are saying to their boss, no, no, no.

[00:15:43] I gotta get promoted all the time. I need the signal. Yeah, external signal.

[00:15:49] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: How do we scratch the itch without, you are now vice president of everything in your three years outta college.

[00:15:54] Mel Steinbach: Yeah. Right. So I, I, I do think that you are seeing a proliferation of certifications and certificates across the world.

[00:16:05] Everybody's offering a certificate now, and I think it is a way to get at this. Earlier in my career, I would be told in my review, oh, you're getting better at this thing. And I was like, okay, great. I know that, and the person who is deciding my promotion knows that. So we're all good. Now it's, oh, if I'm getting better at something, I need to be able to signal it to the outside world.

[00:16:26] If I have learned a new skill, I need to get credit for it. And so I think that they're putting these things on social media.

[00:16:34] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: It'd be so much easier if we could just do this internally. You got an internal reward, you got a shout out in the team meeting. I sent an email after the client call about how awesome you did.

[00:16:44] But what you're saying is, is that's not enough, which really challenges us.

[00:16:48] Mel Steinbach: I mean, part of it is also giving people truly realistic expectations to say, listen, okay, in the early part of your career, which by the way is, let's call it the first eight to 10 years, you can act, you, you should be ascending a corporate ladder every, let's call it 18 to 36 months.

[00:17:11] After that, the pace slows down dramatically, and that is because it's a pyramid. There are less jobs, but I think we have this social media induced obsession with progression. Managers are the ones that are at the front line of this, having to have these conversations, and they're not always well equipped.

[00:17:34] That's a challenge that we're trying to really make sure our leaders understand. This is our philosophy on promotion. These are the requirements for promotion. You can offer your team's expansion without promotion. It's not that there

[00:17:49] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: is a withholding or a scarcity around opportunity. The math is these more senior jobs cost money, so you need to maintain a profitable organization for it to stay in business.

[00:17:59] And I think we don't talk to people enough about that. If I promoted everybody at this same rate and pace as how your career started, we would literally go outta business. It is not sustainable. It's not even practical. That's a really important educational piece. Back to you saying that the exciting expectations, I think that's huge.

[00:18:18] Mel Steinbach: If the organization is not growing, adding jobs, right. It's just adding more, more senior jobs. All it's growing is making its cost structure heavier. That's right. Which is not sustainable. That's right. Good. I think it's important.

[00:18:33] Abigail Charlu: So good. I told you these were juicy. How does a manager know what's the right level of workload for team members?

[00:18:41] Even for really ambitious team members who constantly want growth opportunities, there seems to be a tension managers have to navigate between new work opportunities and helping those team members manage their own overwhelm. That this requires a

[00:18:57] Mel Steinbach: deep breath. For me, there's no one-size-fits-all all. This is where clarity really, really can help people.

[00:19:08] Why is it that you want this promotion so badly? This is what the next role entails, right? Being really clear with them. You're doing right now, what is 70% of the role? To get promoted, you're gonna add this additional 30%. That additional 30% is actually gonna take up more time than an additional 30% of your time because you're gonna be having to learn it.

[00:19:32] And so it's probably gonna take up 50% of your time, which means it might take time away from other things. That could be the learning curve, right? And then it, it might stabilize. But I do think that sometimes people think. That getting promoted is I'm already doing the job of the next level, kind of in a lot of cases, they're doing a lot of it, but they're not doing all of it.

[00:20:00] And then this idea that they want more, but without more time. The thing that is making me a little hesitant here is we all have different work capacity. That's not good or bad, it just is. And so there are people who can take on a lot more without getting towards the edge of burnout or overwhelm, but there's some people who are like, I can only give you a little bit more.

[00:20:23] And it's really hard for leaders to know that unless they are really, really investing in getting to know their team members. I think we have in this remote world and distributed world, and Zoom and teams and Google Meet world, people are like, okay, let's just cover what we need to cover on our one-on-ones.

[00:20:48] The most important question to me that a leader can ask in their one-on-one is, how are you actually doing today? How are you really doing today? And then take note. Hey, for the last three weeks when I've asked that question of my team member. I have read that they've been really struggling in our next one-on-one, I really need to spend time understanding their workload, what's behind that, what's going on, so I can really understand that more deeply.

[00:21:13] We are glossing over that too much these days. So final answer is it depends on the person's work capacity. I think the leader really has to be the at the front edge of figuring out what that work capacity is for each person and what they can do to really help and enable that. The reason

[00:21:33] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: that this is complicated is because we encourage, in terms of our philosophy, shared philosophy, Mel’s, we don't want people to be robots.

[00:21:42] We're gonna have plenty of those in the future. So you have to have a real appreciation that people process in different ways. People think in different ways. People solve problems in different ways, but as you said, that could. Change the rate and pace at which they produce, what you would say are visible deliverables, evidence that this person got stuff done and how it felt for them.

[00:22:04] If you throw 10 things at me, I'm like, Yippy, let's go. But for another person, that would be holy hell. Right? So they would want one thing to go deep on and focus on and then move on to the next nine things on their list. This, I think, is the skill for leaders, and I wanna build on what you said. I love, and I do think we.

[00:22:21] Underuse, the real, how are you? Not the light? Gimme your fluffy answer. So that's spot on. I, I think that's more powerful than we believe if we really continue, as you said, just like holding the space after that question for the truth to, to surface. I think the other thing that you are getting at, which I think is really important, is getting really curious about how does that person operate?

[00:22:43] How does their mind work? How did they approach solving the problem? How are they managing their work? How are they staying organized? How are they dealing with some of the team dynamics? It's being equally curious at that next level down of all the elements that make somebody effective and productive.

[00:23:01] Versus I'm now concerned about you. 'cause you either are saying you're overwhelmed, or I'm not sure you're doing as much work as your colleagues over there because I haven't unpacked yet who you are, the human and how you work for me to be able to diagnose and help solve for it. So I think that is back to our shared passion around human behavior.

[00:23:18] Every leader has to get curious about human behavior. If you want more productivity without more complaints about overwhelm.

[00:23:26] Mel Steinbach: I'm often asked, what is the leadership trait you think is gonna be most important in the future? And I say curiosity. I always say curiosity a hundred percent of the time. I say curiosity because of exactly what you said.

[00:23:41] You're gonna have to be curious about the people that you're working with. Your curiosity is what is gonna fuel all of this generative ai. So you're gonna be curious there, but I think we don't connect enough curiosity about the people working with you as a leadership trait. We need to do a better job of really connecting that for people.

[00:24:04] That is a leadership trait that's not just a strategic leadership trait, right? Because we talk about curiosity in the market and your customers and blah, blah, blah, as a strategic leadership trait. But I think we need to do a better job of connecting curiosity as a people leadership trait. I used to work for McDonald's corporate, and our leadership model had three different main pillars, execution, strategy, talent, leadership, but then we had these building blocks, the essential behaviors that informed all of them.

[00:24:36] Curiosity was one of them. Because we believe curious people, they were better at continuous improvement. Curious people were better at strategy, development, and evolution. Curious people were better people leaders. But too often I think we don't connect those things. Maybe the two of us can make that our mission.

[00:24:59] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Okay. We're gonna talk more on this 'cause it's teachable.

[00:25:02] Abigail Charlu: Hmm. So good. Curiosity as a trait and the ability to ask questions as a skill that it's totally teachable, having care for your employees and relationship building as a skill. This whole conversation reminds me of one of the people management workshops we, uh, deliver at a Rose group, where we help managers diagnose levels of commitment, capacity, and capability, which.

[00:25:29] Requires really knowing that person and demonstrating care for that individual. Such a good conversation. Our next question, we've heard from some very capable managers that they actually don't want to get promoted because of the sacrifices they need to make. Are you seeing examples of leaders in high profile roles who prioritize their own wellbeing and have healthy work-life balance without sacrificing results?

[00:25:56] How are they doing it?

[00:25:58] Mel Steinbach: I do see examples of this. I think that it is. It's actually been really, really interesting. One thing that I always used to talk about when I was talking about my own career journey was that at different points in my career, sometimes I would just stay the same. When I was having children, for example, I was not promotion seeking at all.

[00:26:23] Same with me. I was like, I've got so much change happening over here. I need a little bit more stability here. And I think that's something that we have to talk about with leaders too often we do that. Only in these very specific conversations would you relocate, right? And we find out, oh no, they've got a sick parent, which is taking a lot of their time.

[00:26:49] They can't consider relocation across the country or whatever. Again, going back to our previous conversation, if we are staying curious and understanding what's going on in their lives, then we would say when the conversation came up in whatever room it came up, that we need so and so to relocate. We could say, Hey, listen, I think that's probably a long shot because they have this parent that they are caring for.

[00:27:10] I will give a shout out to my CEO at masterclass. He is so protective. He gives a lot during the week, but he really tries to say The weekends, I need you all to recharge. I have to let him know it is an emergency for him to respond to anything to me on the weekends and that kind of boundary setting and example, setting and discipline in a leader.

[00:27:40] He will not write to me on vacation. I have said to him, listen, there's some things going on. It would actually be helpful to me when he was like. Mel, you. You work really hard. You need to recharge and go away and enjoy this trip. I will not be reaching out to you. I will keep a note and when you get back, we'll discuss everything, but you've got a good team.

[00:28:02] Go in and recharge. So that to the question of have you seen people do this balance? Yes, but if the CEO and the executive team are not doing it, it's really hard for a VP underneath that to be like, oh, I'm gonna just do this. I do think it has to be a culturally acceptable across the entire company.

[00:28:24] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Yeah.

[00:28:24] Because culture's a shared personality. We take on more characteristics the longer we're out of place, and especially for those of us who are like attuned to that interpersonal dynamics. You pick up on that stuff and you kind of know what's okay and not okay. I think we have done something very harmful historically that is taking a lot of work for us to unwind, which is this feeling that to be a successful leader, you are alone.

[00:28:51] You are the most responsible. You are the most capable, and you don't ask for help. You don't show vulnerability, you don't show cracks in the armor. That was the archetype that we all were taught, and I think it still is there. And, and so the thing that was coming up as I was listening to you is you need role models.

[00:29:11] You need role models of people who are now starting to show us No, no, it is okay to have boundaries. I am setting boundaries, and I'm going to expect you to set boundaries because I care about you, the human, and I know you're gonna be a better performer if you take a break, right? I mean, it's not, it's not just kind.

[00:29:24] It is also performance-driven.

[00:29:27] Mel Steinbach: Would you ever not charge your computer? Like would you ever not charge your phone? No, of course you would. You rely on. And so you need them to be fully charged, right? That's

[00:29:39] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: right. And I think for me, the biggest lesson, and part of why I feel like I had to go on my own wellness journey to now teach it as a, a part of what I do is we get signals from ourselves all the time of what we need.

[00:29:55] We need rest. We need to hydrate, we need to step away for a moment. 'cause we're having some feelings that are feeling hard to contain and you know what we do? We override them once we start having a better relationship with ourselves. I think that's the skill part, right? You can teach curiosity. I think you can teach wellness as a leader, but it requires you to do what we have almost taught to not do, which is to actually pause and listen.

[00:30:20] The other thing that I think is the secret to success that we don't talk about enough is back to this archetype of I got it all. I can handle it all. I'm the firefighter hero. Right? It is the power of your team. I. If you create a, a dynamic where you know each other's superpowers in the team, where you help each other out and the leader helps to build that.

[00:30:44] Like, I don't have a, don't come to me on everything. I'm not even the best at that. Go to Abby, go to Mel. Right? Once you start to train your team to see how helpful they all are to each other secret, they come to you less, which is

[00:30:57] Mel Steinbach: fantastic. I'm a plus a thousand on that comment. It is the thing that I tell my teams.

[00:31:05] All the time I say to them, I do not have all of the answers. You are better at those things than I am. 'cause that is your job and I rely on you to do that. And then I also tell them, I don't like to be the bottleneck to decisions. That is something that I cannot stand. I like moving forward. And so here all of the decisions that I'm telling you you should make, they can make better decisions on that thing than I can.

[00:31:30] 'cause they're closer to the work. Leaders who don't enable and get their teams to do what they are meant to do, actually shouldn't be leaders. And here's why. It's not because, oh, you don't deserve, it's because the whole purpose of having a team is leverage. Right. You are not leveraging them then. Don't, don't have them.

[00:31:53] We don't need them. Yep.

[00:31:55] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Yep. Go be a solo wolf out there doing your own thing.

[00:31:59] Mel Steinbach: Seriously. Can I just say one thing real quick on the other point that you made on wellness when you were earlier in your career? How often did anyone talk to you about wellness?

[00:32:10] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: A negative zero.

[00:32:14] Mel Steinbach: No one talks about wellness and the idea of mental wellness is Oh, yeah.

[00:32:18] A very recent phenomenon.

[00:32:20] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Right. To be able to talk about it. Oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean, it was a biggest secret,

[00:32:24] Mel Steinbach: right? And so I do think that this is a really positive change in my opinion, but it is one that we can't just expect people to be like, oh, great. Well now this is important. We now understand how important mental wellness is, and here are the things that we're telling you are the new expectations employee.

[00:32:43] Here are the new expectations for you, leader. Hey, here are all of the benefits that we're now gonna offer in support of that. But we can't just expect people to flip that switch without giving them a little bit more of that information. That's right. Totally.

[00:32:59] Abigail Charlu: Rounding up our, our trifecta conversation on ambition, overwhelm, and ai.

[00:33:05] A leader asks, my team is still quite slow to adapt AI tools and fearful of the impact AI will have on their job. How do I help prepare and empower them to shift their mindset around AI and start experimenting with it?

[00:33:23] Mel Steinbach: I. Have been on this journey myself, so let me just share with you very personally, here are the things that, the ahas that I've had on ai, so there are two frames that have really helped me.

[00:33:37] The first is think about AI as an intern. Think about AI as the intern that you have year round that does the things that they're not the most important things in your job. They're the things that are a little bit more routine that you can teach them how to do and, and they'll be able to do that repetitive thing over and over, and so.

[00:34:05] When we have interns, we don't tell them, please write the company strategy. We have them work on specific smaller tasks. They, we give them things that they can complete in a specific timeframe, and the first time we give it to them, they're gonna be pretty bad at it. We're gonna give them feedback on it.

[00:34:22] They'll get better by the third time, they're pretty good at it. Right? And so if you have that mindset for me, when I've had that mindset with ai. It is gotten really good at certain things for me, writing certain things for me, responding to certain questions, and so I think the number one frame is, think about it as, as an intern, I.

[00:34:44] The other frame that I've used is AI can take tasks away from you versus taking your whole job away. And so what we encourage people to do at Masterclass is think about the tasks in your job that you hate. Everybody has them. Even if you love, love, love your job, you really love 90% of it, there's 10% that you don't love.

[00:35:08] Think about those things and think about how to give those to ai. AI's not gonna complain about those things. So those are my two frames on how to get people to be more embracing of this change known as ai.

[00:35:23] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Make a healthy relationship with it that serves you. I think that's really important. And then for the people who are like me, like I'm not an early adopter type, I think that, again, back to the power of colleagues and the power of a team.

[00:35:37] If you are not gonna be the one to go out there and start finding all the tools and playing with them, I bet you have a colleague who does. Find the people who are gonna do the experimentation and are gonna learn it and then ask for help patterns. We need to break. 'cause there's so much shame of not knowing how to do something and it is a little embarrassing if everybody else is playing around with AI and you're like, I haven't even touched it.

[00:35:59] Find the person you feel safe with and say, Hey, this is something that maybe it could help me with. What have you used, how is it working? That's a way to get yourself unstuck from the fear of the newness of it maybe as well.

[00:36:10] Mel Steinbach: Can I give a little tip on this, Emily? I greet AI every morning. Good morning, Chat GPT.

[00:36:17] How are you? Thank you so much for your help. You're such a great helper to me. I love

[00:36:22] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: it. You're building a relationship with a support tool. Yeah. Yes, and it, it has humanistic characteristics as creepy and weird as that may be. It does. I get it.

[00:36:33] Mel Steinbach: So that's one little tip that makes it a little less weird for me, even though that practice might be a little weird for your listeners.

[00:36:40] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try it. I'm all in. Amazing. Thanks Abby, for giving us those questions and there is a lot in them, as you said. Let's wrap it up with a question that is really important to us. Mel, which is, we all have a purpose as a leader and we look at it as there's patterns to break and we all play a role in, in change, as you said.

[00:37:06] What is the pattern that you feel you're here to break as a leader?

[00:37:11] Mel Steinbach: I know that there are two main lessons purposes in my life. One is to really explore the different forms of power. And the other is to really be a teacher. And so the pattern to break for me in. Leadership, I think, is to help people understand all of the different forms that you can be powerful in your work.

[00:37:38] That it is not just the bombastic tyrant, but it is also the quiet voice. The person in the back of the room, who is the wise observer, the person who's always willing to help every other team member, even though sometimes it means their things might be a little bit slower. It is all of these different ways that we can show power in our work.

[00:38:04] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Amazing. I feel that, and you're a model of that, which is one of the reasons we wanted to bring you on and share you with our audience. So thank you so much, Mel, for being you. For the leadership you're putting out there in the world for what you're teaching, both within masterclass and to all of us, and I feel lucky.

[00:38:24] I feel lucky to know you and to be able to shine a light on you.

[00:38:28] Mel Steinbach: Thank you. It is incredibly mutual.

[00:38:34] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: There was so much meat and as Abby said, so well juiciness to this discussion about leading. The takeaways for me is there's a number of things that are essential to being a successful leader that are teachable, but I'm not sure we're teaching them enough. Things like curiosity, how do you teach curiosity as a skill to be able to really unlock greater performance and business results?

[00:39:01] How do you encourage and teach how to lead as a team, as a team sport versus all the pressure that we feel as leaders to, to go it alone and to have all of the answers and to hold space for everyone? How do we really continuously provide clarity and clear expectations? It's, it's so essential for people to be set up for success.

[00:39:21] And how do we demonstrate care and take an interest in people at this relationship level? Like Mel said, how do we really ask the, how are you doing and get really present with someone? These are skills that we can and need to learn for leadership success,

[00:39:43] and let's talk people what we love to do Most. Is help you unpack your toughest people management challenges. So send them in. Send in the situations you're struggling with, questions that you have about leading your teams, and we will anonymize them and give you answers and our advice on an upcoming episode.

[00:40:02] You can write 'em an email or attach a little audio message with your scenario to Abigail. At arose group.com. That's Abigail, A-B-I-G-A-I-L at arose group A-R-O-S-E-G-R-O-U p.com. Thanks for joining today's episode of Let's Talk People. I. For more info and insights, visit a rose group.com and find me Emily Frieze-Kemeny on LinkedIn and Instagram.

[00:40:34] If you're enjoying the show, please follow share on social and leave a rating or review in your podcast app. It helps other listeners to discover us. Well, that's a wrap, friends. Until next time when we come together to talk people.