Essential Leadership Skills for the New Workplace
In this episode of the HR Leaders podcast, join Wagner Denuzzo, a pioneer in leadership development and organizational capability, as he discusses the essential leadership skills you need to be successful in the future workplace.
Wagner blends his rich experience as a Psychotherapist, Executive and Transformational Leader with a deep commitment to shaping the future of work.
Episode Highlights:
The top leadership skills you need to succeed in tomorrow’s workplace
The 3 leadership expressions required for a balanced life, integrating character, community, and career
The 5 D’s that describe the new workforce and explore the new framework for HR systems that guide organisations to people-first success.
Discover what emotional salary means – and how you can motivate employees beyond pay.
Great recognition is more than just a thank you program. By leveraging frequent and meaningful recognition, Achievers drives business results that matter to organizations like retention, productivity, and engagement. Our platform makes it easy for employees to recognize each other anywhere, whether in-office, remote, or on-the-go.
The Achievers Workforce Institute reveals that two-thirds of employees have one foot out the door in 2024. The top reason for job hunting? Better compensation. But money isn’t the whole story. Employees are seeking not only monetary salary, but emotional salary too.
🎙️ Automatically generated Podcast Transcript
Wagner Denuzzo 0:00
Avoid rescuing people. We learned these in psychotherapy training. You cannot rescue people ain't even detrimental to them.
Chris Rainey 0:14
Hi, everyone, welcome back to the HR leaders podcast. On today's episode, I'm joined by Wagner, the nguzo, a pioneer in leadership development, and organizational capability. Wagner blends his rich experience as a psychotherapist, executive and transformational leader with a deep commitment to shaping the future of work. Today, we're going to be talking about his new book leading to succeed essential skills for the new workplace. During episode Wagner shares, the top leadership skills that you need to succeed in tomorrow's workforce. The free leadership expressions required for a balanced life integrating character, community, and career. And lastly, the five days that described the new workforce and explored a new framework for HR systems that guide organizations to people first success. As always, before we jumped into video, make sure you hit the subscribe button, turn on the notification bell, and follow on your favorite podcast platform. But that being said, let's jump in the wagon. Oh, welcome to the show. How are you my friend?
Wagner Denuzzo 1:20
Thank you so much for inviting me, Chris, it is a great opportunity to talk about the future. So thank you for inviting me.
Chris Rainey 1:26
It's been a while how are you how things been?
Wagner Denuzzo 1:30
It's been like everybody else's life. My father different. I think everybody's rushing. But this time is a little different. I would say we are all rushing towards a meaningful outcome. And I think that's very important to note, we are not just rushing to get things accomplished. We are rushing to get to meaningful outcomes is different. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 1:53
In many ways, you're on a new journey. yourself a new path. You tell everyone a little bit more about that and what you're doing now?
Wagner Denuzzo 2:03
Yes, since I was the head of shooter of work, I left me last year, I finished my book, my book has been completed. And it came out. It's called leading it. And it's my life's work, giving the I'm combining my license psychotherapist experience with my executive experiencing leadership and future of work into being honest, Chris, this is my life's work. Because since I left corporate last year, it's been amazing how much I'm learning about the new workforce entering the workplace. I'm learning about the transformation, HR that's happening. We are across collectively and disagree moments for us to be thinking about the future not being stuck in the past. So I'm doing well. I'm speaking a lot in conferences. And this is a great time
Chris Rainey 3:02
sharing your burden the background. I do have a burden is amazing. No, no, no. Don't worry about that. I thought I was hearing things. In my head sounds like him. I was like, is everybody in our studio?
Wagner Denuzzo 3:18
downstairs for her to be quiet?
Chris Rainey 3:21
No, no, I love it, though. I grew up with. We had a pirate growing up in the house. So I was I realized, to your point you just mentioned though, do you think that when you're working in corporate, sometimes you're operating in a bubble? Because you mentioned that you're learning so much more. Now you've left Do you think that you're sometimes we're caught in a bubble that we don't really see what's actually happening outside?
Wagner Denuzzo 3:45
This is so timely yesterday I was in the Drucker forum, there was they're initiating a five year effort to discover what's next for managing organizations. And one sentence really was really important to me. They're saying they're moving from the enterprise to ecosystems. And that's essential for us to understand, like the boundaries within an organization, they have to open up to need different talent pools, different ways of working in partners, and independence, fractional workers are all coming in to create value for the organization. So yes, up until last year, I would say yes, the boundaries are set, and you had to focus on the strategic intent of your organization. That's why it's not insular, but it is much more focused on internal activity. Now, if you ask me, I think things are turning very quickly into an ecosystem of value creation. And I think that's a wonderful experience for everyone
Chris Rainey 4:52
is exciting. Name of the book, by the way, leading to success. Why did you name the book that I know Are you very well, you definitely thought about that a lot?
Wagner Denuzzo 5:02
I did. Because no, thank you, Chris, because I have been thinking about this for many years, why leadership is only reserved for managers, high potentials and executives, when the workplace is changing so dramatically, your managers might be your coaches for your career, but they're not seeing your day to day work, because you're working cross functional teams you're walking across, and dawned on me, why not talk about leading to succeed, because that's the only way you're going to succeed in the future of the workplace. Because cultivating leadership skills from the beginning of your career allows you to start doing self management. And that's a core belief of mine. Emotional Development is impacting the way you're acting today. If you're not aware, what I say aware, awareness, acceptance, and action, I think these are the three ways in which you can be successful, because awareness is not enough. But you have to accept yourself limiting beliefs, you have to accept the expectations that come to you and make you decide for things that might not be aligned with your values and beliefs. You need to start self management from the beginning of your careers. So you don't get into those workforce dynamics that become very negative and can impact your reputation, by the way. So leading to succeed is just that start cultivating leadership skills from the beginning, because you're going to be much more successful because they're going to be in teams, team dynamics can trigger emotional reactions. And I love that we are getting to this point where people are bringing their whole selves, but with their awareness of their emotional triggers. And I think that's an essential piece.
Chris Rainey 6:48
You said, just before we hit record, you said something, and I wrote down, which was work in the flow of life, to your point of bringing your full self to work, can you explain a little bit more about what you mean by work in the flow of life,
Wagner Denuzzo 7:02
people making decisions. One statement that I make on the book is about the new workforce, the five ds of the new workforce, they are distributed, no matter how you try to co locate people, you still have distributed skills, distributed workforce, they are dynamic, because they're thinking about months experiences that lasts one year, two years, they need to be dynamic, because that's how they're going to advance and grow their careers. They are digital, because they're digital natives. And they want a digital commercial grade digital experience at work. But they also are very diverse, because the demographics are changing rapidly, inevitably, we're going to be a much more diverse workforce, globally, we already are, by leaving the United States, we are going to be more diverse internally. And lastly, but not least is discerning. They're very discerning, that's when I say the the work now is in the flow of life, not the reverse, because they're making decisions about how to go about making a living being part of the economy, and not harm their personal well being in the experience they have. They're also discerning about what kind of work they are willing to do, and what kind of companies they're willing to work for. Because they're thinking about the planet, the climate. So it's a broader view of how do you go about getting a job? And I love that because could it be an independent job could be a fractional job, could be a decision to be a founder, we have so many founders now. But I think the workplace is becoming much more dynamic and much more exciting, to be honest.
Chris Rainey 8:43
Who would you who did you write this book for?
Wagner Denuzzo 8:48
I originally wrote to Gen z's. But what's happening is that is resonating with a lot of people. I just had direct reports from another organization that I worked with. He's a VP he said, I, I read this book, and I feel like you're talking to me. I said, if there is an eighth grade, because I don't think many people have been talking about leadership. And the level of emotional development and understanding what I call the lies learned helplessness is the idea that Martin Seligman talks about this in positive psychology, they teach studies, when you start trying new outcomes in trying to take action, but you are not able to change the outcome. You This is called learned helplessness. So we even stopped trying new things because you know, the outcome is going to be the same, then delays is the alpha learned helplessness, but it's also the imposter syndrome. We all experienced them. I'm normalizing them in the book, because once you advanced to a new experience, obviously, you're gonna feel a little like you don't know exactly what to do in the fraud, and impostor syndrome comes out up. The only secret here is not to allow it to derail your career. But it's normal and you should seek support, then the key is for the expectations that come externally external expectations, we have so many expectations come at us, we need to be discerning. And the last one is really important self limiting beliefs. As an immigrant, and I share my story, as an immigrant without English without money, without social support coming from a poor family in Brazil, num, high education was not that high. You started developing self limiting beliefs, maybe I don't have the education to become famous, famous. But to become successful in the US, I had a lot of self limiting beliefs about my ability to speak to to work. So those lies, we need to check them. Because the new generation is having a lot to deal with the world is really complex. So when I wrote the book was for Gen z's, but it's resonating across because I talk about leadership and emotional development in a way that is resonating with a lot of people.
Chris Rainey 11:07
Yeah, because that was a surprise to me, when you said that you and that's why I went to AWS because they everything, even in the short amount of time that we spent speaking about it, it speaks to me, too, and I'm sure it speaks to everyone listening right now. And I wish I had something like this in my hands. Earlier in my career, you're
Wagner Denuzzo 11:29
not the first one to say that's exciting. Number five, that said that I just wish I had this book when I started my career, because
Chris Rainey 11:37
you kind of feel like it's being done to you, you don't really feel that you have any power, if that makes sense. When you first joined a company, you're kind of waiting to be tapped on the shoulder for opportunities, etc. Whereas now what I see is the people I'm interviewing, they're very, they're demanding the training and development. They're demanding that they want, they want to make sure that they work for a company that takes care of their well being all of the things that we we didn't, you know, they want to feel empowered, if that makes sense, to take charge of their career. And I love that
Wagner Denuzzo 12:14
you're saying this, because that is a sentence that I put on the book too. What senior leaders need to be accustomed to is distributed powers to distributed teams. So distributed power to distributed teams, will get to the outcomes that you desire. But for senior leaders, I'm very empathic towards them right now, I know people are saying they don't know the new reality in your workforce. But you can understand why executives are having a hard time managing this constellation of complexity in and outside the organization. So I'm very empathic, but they themselves have to realize that less control, allowing power to be distributing to self manage teams are going to yield the innovation, the outcomes that they desire. The problem that I see, Chris, to be honest, is that we are focused on efficiency. Efficiency, usually leads to perfectionism usually leads to silo thinking, because you have to specialize to be efficient, instead of broadening the experience of cross functional collaboration, actually, we are focusing so by optically, that we might lose the opportunity for innovation. So that's a preoccupation of mine. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 13:30
Why do you think that is? Is that fear driven? Why do you think that's the case?
Wagner Denuzzo 13:36
No, it's because think about this, this is a little deeper, but think about the human needs to feel in control and safety. Yeah, it's it does both.
Chris Rainey 13:46
That's what I meant. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know,
Wagner Denuzzo 13:49
ration doesn't innovation is can we try experiment? Now we are getting to curiosity and courage. I tell in the book, this is interesting. I told him, the book, leaders have to be comfortable with the three leadership expressions, because let's be real leadership doesn't exist if you don't express through behaviors, actions, and thinking. So the three expressions, one is consciousness, you have to be conscious about the situation, the context, you're in the people that have different reality than you. So consciousness becomes really important for leaders. Then curiosity, curiosity about all others, curiosity about new ways of thinking, working, and then the courage. I have this and I never forget, because it's on the book too. And it is for IBM. I think they're gonna be proud that I shared this. I used to bring Millennials at the time when millennials were coming up into the workforce. To meet with senior executives, there was my way of bridging the gaps. And one of the millennials turned to this highly successful managing director in Europe and said, but how much authority do you really have in this big company to make decisions? He just Look at him, he smiled and said, I have as much authority as my courage allows me to have. So I thought it was brilliant, because it's not about the authority that you have in the operating models of today. And yesterday, is like the operating systems of tomorrow. More called courage, curiosity, and thinking differently. So I love that. I think hopefully people are, are thinking that way. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 15:28
I think it took me many, many years to build that courage. You know, it comes over time as you develop in your career. But sometimes I see people do the opposite is that the more they did of developing the in their career, the less, they'd become more cautious. Does that make sense? They're kind of less, less risk taking. Whereas I wish now I wish now I would have been more I would have took more risks earlier in my career, to experience and taste new things and try things. Because then when you get a mortgage, and you have kids, it's, it's easier said than done, right. But
Wagner Denuzzo 16:08
that's the role of empathy. In the world, we talk about empathy, as if it was just something that you do every day. No empathy requires you to understand your emotional reaction to people who are not courageous people who are, you know, in the line of the hierarchical organization, let's be a little more empathic towards those folks, because they're humans like you, they probably would like to be more courageous, they just don't feel that they can. So let's start there, and start creating the conditions for people to be a little more courageous. And, you know, it comes with time, I wasn't that courageous, either. But let me ask you this. Isn't it true that courage always comes out of conviction and beliefs?
Chris Rainey 16:53
Yeah, 100%? Yeah. First, you
Wagner Denuzzo 16:56
need to understand what are your beliefs, your vision of the world that's yours? No, your parents know your communities. It's your beliefs, the views of the world? And then you activate corage? Before that's possible, you do
Chris Rainey 17:11
you have to kind of the cheesy line of you knew you need to believe it to achieve it. Is, is very true. And that's one of the things I think for me and Shane, that we always have this very strong mentality of, no matter what the world says, or our friends, family, we believe that we can do it. And that's all that matters.
Wagner Denuzzo 17:34
Right? It was so
Chris Rainey 17:35
easy. No, no, everyone told me when we started this company that we would fail. Every single person. Yeah, yeah. Don't do it. Don't risk it, you're gonna fail, companies fail, you know, startups fail, you know, don't risk stay at your job. You know, the society, parents, the everyone said, Don't do it. But we had the belief in ourselves, that we could do it. And that's all that mattered. To your point. We like,
Wagner Denuzzo 18:01
Oh, that's wonderful. That's why I liked you so much. I think you guys are doing a fantastic work, because HR is transforming to let's not forget that, of course, leadership is transforming. The workforce is already very diverse. So it's time for us to start taking bold moves towards something because just being cautious in doing what's expected of us, is now going to lead to a very positive outcome. 100%
Chris Rainey 18:28
What do you think about the Miskin? The the misconception? Or do you think is a Mexican section? We hear a lot on LinkedIn and articles about Gen Z being lazy. I keep like, I see a lot, right. I'm sure you see similar comments. What are your thoughts on that?
Wagner Denuzzo 18:46
I love to see that. Because that gives us an opportunity to have a dialogue. Because I prefer that people are transparent and openly voicing their opinions, because then we can have an opportunity to respond. And I mentor a lot of Gen z's. And I have to say my experience is so differently, different. I mentored people who are carrying the burden of their family, age 25, I mentor somebody who is the head of their internal consulting their universities, they're presidents of their class, they're trying their to maximize their time to have a positive impact. And let's not forget the five ds that I mentioned, they're more discerning, because let's be real, what they're saying is, don't promise me that I'm going to use all my skills, you'll demand so many skills on the job description. And then I can mean you just use 30% of them. People are not willing to do that because they are now growing. We know this for many, many years already, that we over exaggerate the skills that we need, and then we bring people When to use just 20 30% of the skills, they're not going for that. So it's not that they're lazy. They want the assurance that they can maximize their time and maximize their skills. Because I say Master is in the moment, you only learn in the flow of work by being stretched and challenged. So that's what they're saying. But it's far from lazy, I would say, I think what we are confused is there, we didn't have the choice. Your generation now has a choice.
Chris Rainey 20:32
That's true. We we did have a choice. Right, but I didn't feel that way. You mentioned skills. In your opinion, what are the skills required to succeed in this new world of work, you know, in 2024, and beyond? Yeah,
Wagner Denuzzo 20:50
as I said, Before, I believe I there is a mechanism of practice that you can take for anything that you want to develop. Awareness is not enough. How many diet plans we have in the plan anything programs to lose weight, if it was that easy, what to do we know, but how to do it. It requires a process of reflection, introspection, self acceptance, because it's so hard to accept our flaws is in itself is so difficult to accept as a natural piece of life. Because we are imperfect, we are imperfect, but self acceptance, will give you the free way to take action and accountability for doing new things and the skills to develop. So that the mechanism, however, I talk about the cards cognitive mastery, for example, is the ability to understand how you're being triggered let's be real nobody's immune to emotional triggers, I am You are we have emotional triggers, is just a cognitive mastery is the ability to understand that you have a reaction, you can pause, just like Frankl said in his in his quote about the you have the moment of pause, that you can reflect and respond. That's your freedom in your power in the power of pausing and responding. So cognitive mastery is exactly that. How can you see the situations differently, you can be authentic, but not be rigid the way you do things everywhere you go, because you need to be part of the situation. So cognitive mastery is this whole thing about being conscious where you are unconscious of your reactions, and conscious of how you should respond, then you have the, you know, alignment, that's really important. You have to be adaptive in your resilience, because resilience is not about, oh, I'm resilient, because I'm tougher up. It's not great. It's not being tough. Adaptive resilience is being exposed to situations that are really difficult, overcoming them, managing emotionally, then going through the process of understand different situations differing in being witness of people having difficult times. One thing that I tell managers that's really helpful nowadays is being that we are pushing managers to take care of the well being of their people is kind of an unfair ask. But managers need to know they don't need to solve for anybody's problems. What they need is to witness and be caring and empathic. But avoid rescuing people. We learned this in psychotherapy training. You cannot rescue people, and it's even detrimental to them. They
Chris Rainey 23:44
don't yeah, you're taking away that opportunity from them to is quick to learn and grow from it. So
Wagner Denuzzo 23:51
that's another excuse that you need. And then there is the reciprocity. I think we forget about the reciprocity alignments. Like it's not, oh, you're given an opportunity to come to your podcasts or you come to my workshop? No, it's about the one do I add value to you, and you add value to my life. And the reciprocity is about the value that we're creating each other's relationships. So this is going to be really critical, because I think that social capital is power. And you need to think how to use it. And the last one, I say is this ability to, to being discerning and being much more aware of how you come across in sense making sense making to me it's very important because imagine all the signals that we are capturing, seeing around the corner, you have to distill the and synthesize and be concise about how do you understand the world. So since making I think, is the skill of the future,
Chris Rainey 24:52
I've never even heard someone say that before. sense making. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that? No, that's just Son of one I haven't heard come
Wagner Denuzzo 25:02
in. Because we have been saying this to senior leaders most often, you need to understand the market, you need to understand your customers, you need to understand the dynamics in the business, you need to understand the efficiencies, you need to understand everything, right? We ask leaders to understand everything. And by the way, this is important for everyone. Self confidence has nothing to do with your knowledge. Being Self confidence is having the belief that you can learn what you don't know. And then you can solve for problems that come at you. That's self confidence. You have the burden of knowledge, that's not self confidence. That's the burden of knowledge. You don't need to know everything. So what you said is true. Since making people don't know what that is, it is exactly that. Absorbing the data, data driven, informed decisions required data in analytics. So it's using your critical thinking, understand the signals, sometimes you have signals I did in my career, I had the signal of the downturn financially in 2008. And I stopped my private practice, I went into IBM. Because I saw the signals I saw that people are avoiding confirming contracts and all that. So you have to send signals, you have to synthesize, imagine the amount of information that comes to you, you have to synthesize the information. And that's love that. That's, that's a really important concept. How do you synthesize all this? And then the next step is sense making How do you make sense of all this and translate to your people? Because last thing I say is, clarity creates capacity. Nobody has capacity to stretch, we can stretch time, we can stretch capacity, all we can do is to be clear about the direction we take increased capacity through clarity. And I think that's an important concept as well.
Chris Rainey 27:00
Oh, I love that. What you just threw that in there. I love that. I love the book. No, no. I love that one. Now. You mentioned that around the self confidence has nothing to do with knowledge. Yeah. Is it the application of the knowledge which builds the self confidence? Is it the x? Is it in the execution? Because as you said, everyone knows how to do a diet. But how many people actually do it? Yeah, no,
Wagner Denuzzo 27:29
I understand the application of things. But I think I go farther into the universe of the individual is self acceptance. If I accept that I feel guilty because I didn't make to the anniversary of my my spouse, I didn't make to a personal commitment because I was working. All this creates a lot of insecurities because he started feeling guilty, shame, guilt, shame, all this creates a lot of fear of being seen as somebody who is not valuable. That's let's be real. We all have that. So I think we need to reverse that, you know, self competence comes. I'm aware of my flaws. I'm aware that wasn't perfect. Being aware that you're not perfect gives me so much more self confidence, because, yeah, I'm not afraid of being exposed.
Chris Rainey 28:25
Because most people that they won't try something because of the fear of being seen as a failure, ob OB, I suppose. Right? And they have a unhealthy relationship with with failure. And I think that what being human have been one of the one of the things I see with high performers and people that I've had many incredible guests on the show is, many of them have a very healthy relationship with failure. In fact, they love it. I would go as far I would say, Me and Shane, we love delving into the unknown, making mistakes, failing, or failing often, and we have it that that's our relationship. And when we learn something, we only we we do our we're not perfect, but we do our best to immediately try to execute on that learning whether whether it works or not.
Wagner Denuzzo 29:18
When something fails, what's your first reaction? How do you guys react
Chris Rainey 29:24
our first, our first first reaction probably is what can we learn from it? That's probably you know, because we all like depends what you mean by failure, right? Because when something doesn't work the first time, I don't even I don't even think of that as failure. I just think that's the price you pay. Like that's just, that's just a part of the process, if that makes sense. I don't even see it as a failure, if that makes sense, in the sense in the traditional sense that you're referring to, I just see that this is the process. Let me give you an example. I've said this before, like I grew up skateboarding right now. And if I want to learn a trick I've got this probably take me 1000 attempts to do a kickflip before I land it, I don't want the first time I try it, and I don't, I don't land it, I don't see it as a failure. Exactly, I just see that as part of the process that I've got, keep doing it until I succeed. So you just kind of learning, okay, maybe if I move my foot a little bit to the left, you know, and the same with business, right? Maybe you pivot, maybe we just take a pivot this way. And try this angle, right. So I don't even see as failure. I don't think there's such such thing in our in that sense. You know, we learn from it. And we, we just keep going. And the momentum is where the confidence comes. If you keep doing it, and you build the momentum you built, you become more and more confident. Along the journey. Beautiful. Yeah,
Wagner Denuzzo 30:51
you do need to have an emotional, stable emotional life. Because when you're highly stressed, when you're highly anxious, the reactions come up, don't they?
Chris Rainey 31:07
Oh, I haven't I am. I am definitely not perfect. In that sense. I've had panic attacks, have I struggled with my mental health, I've gone too far in one direction. So that one of the things that Shane helps me is to stay, I go too deep. I stretch myself too much. There is a there is a point with breaking a breaking point in there as well. And I'm still learning where that point is. In myself. Isn't
Wagner Denuzzo 31:37
it amazing? Where we can see there without shame or guilt? I feel that way too. I went to therapy, I had panic attacks, being immigrants with no social support wasn't easy. But I overcame so many things. I learned so many things, creativity was part of living in the United States. So no regrets there.
Chris Rainey 31:57
You know, you can't having regret doesn't serve you in any way. You know, I just kind of one of the things I look at is like, is what I'm doing, saying thinking right now getting me closer to my goals? If the answer's no, just forget about it.
Wagner Denuzzo 32:16
But how do you transition that to HR? If we have a minute? I would love to hear because you talk to so many HR leaders who are trying to transform. Do you think somebody's doing the right thing? What do you think is the right thing to do?
Chris Rainey 32:30
I don't think anyone would say they're doing the right thing. Right? The good thing, the leaders, I see that doing really well are ones that that give themself grace, that don't put this on unachievable expectation on themselves, that they can do everything and succeed at everything, they are willing to fail forward. So rather than creating a plan, a three year plan, that's let's be honest, never going to it's going to change 1000 times, they're willing to experiment, take risks. Be be be wrong, and and say, Hey, that was a mistake and with a team, that they're very adaptable and a highly resilient. And those are the deals that I see during the pandemic, they really rose to the occasion. During that time, if that makes sense and the time that we're in now, as well. So, because this thing about when we first started to HR looks almost nothing like what it did 10 years ago, when I started almost, if you if you said if you say I'm getting you're getting into HR, because you enjoy working with people. That's that's not the reason to get into HR in my opinion. Where is that? Well, that's that's what used to hear right, you know, 10 years. Oh, wait, oh, yeah, I got I love working with people. You know, that's no longer you know, yes, that's part of it, of course. But it's much bigger than that the the impact that you're having, both internally, externally to societally is huge. The impact? Yeah. And that's why me and Shane stayed in this space, because we realize the conversations that we're having, and the content that we create, is impacting the lives of millions, of employers of people, not employees, people all over the world. That's way beyond what people think when they think of HR.
Wagner Denuzzo 34:31
I totally agree. In 20. You said that because the other day I was doing the future of HR webinar. And I have to say, I believe in this, let go of the fixation of completing tasks. We are focused on policies, processes and programs. First of all programs sometimes delayed people's advancement, because you put like women you put in a program, because they're not ready. They're already because you didn't give them experience. So take a bet on people and just put them in place and support them. So the three P's, right policies, processing programs, let go of that a little bit, because they're not yielding the results, focus on connection, co creation, and capability. Those are the processes in HR, as we know, but process to support what our capability, the capabilities to support the business, like how do you create critical organizational capabilities, that's a capability of HR, organizational design, work, design, all these capabilities, but we are not there yet. So focus on capabilities, not on the process, because that just makes you feel a little better. Because there is research, MIT just did a research. And this is interesting. Ai, why CEOs are upset because people are not adopting AI. Because psychologically, humans prefer to have a sense of agency and contribution by seeing completed tasks that they did it themselves. That's what the research shows. So even when you can automate a task you prefer to do and complete it, because you have a sense of completion contribution, because more tangible. So we need to understand that, you know, it's not that people don't adopt, they they don't feel what's my role if I don't do this? They don't. Yeah, knowledge workers should be focusing on knowledge. It teaches abstraction of reality. They can create value through ideas, to communication to connection, co creation, there's so many ways to do it. But we are in a good place, because people are opening up to all this. So this is good. Do
Chris Rainey 36:45
you think that given all the advances of technology, with AI, large language models, that a lot of what you're talking about becomes even more important? Now?
Wagner Denuzzo 36:55
Yes, it does. Because if you think about the capability, so let's talk about capability, how amazing to have the opportunity to build capabilities, then you don't need to be an engineer, they don't need to be a coder you don't need, what you need is to understand what is the capability and how does that capability can be deconstructed. And how that does construction can be rebuild and re engineer an organization with less hierarchical roles with rows that really add value. And leave this large language models and all the AI Jen AI to help you in the process. All this is a partnership. So I'm loving what the capabilities can do for us. It's just that human beings have to feel comfortable, not have tangible results at their fingertips all the time. We are very analog, we are in a digital world, but humans are very analog. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 37:56
never really thought about it that way. So it's going to be even more important that we will think about things like curiosity and creativity voted, because we because we can get the AI to do the technical work. So having someone who can be more creative and chat and to challenge the status quo, those those kind of skills that we didn't really highlight as to critical skills and organizations are now going to be no much more important power skills, as we call it, right? As as we move forward. This and I could talk to you forever, we've got to save some for people that actually have by the book. Before I let you go will be your sort of parting piece of advice. And then where can people connect with you and then grab a copy of the book, where's the best place? Look, the
Wagner Denuzzo 38:45
book is called The leading to succeed is on Amazon, please go ahead is free now to go there and get it. Now. One thing I have a website, of course, Wagner denodo global, I'm doing a lot of speaking, I'm focusing on speaking because you have is the one to many is broader the impact that you have. So I'm doing a lot of speaking. And if you want to bring me to speak, by my books, I come to speak for free, because I want and really to make these messages be exponentially more impactful. So that's my goal. Amazing,
Chris Rainey 39:21
amazing. As always, anyone anyone who's listening right now or watching the links are below or so whatever platform you're listening on, make sure you grab a copy of the book and a gift a copy of the book as well. I think this is something really interesting. We can gift our children and the people around us as well. They're entering the workplace and our employees in general. I think this would be a great like something that a book for someone to give employees who are just entering the workplace. think that'd be super interesting. If I got a copy of the book on my first day. I think I would have been felt a lot more empowered and in my career a lot more engaged in the process. I've listened. I always appreciate you joining the show and all of the work that you do. I'm really happy for you. You're clearly living your purpose, right and having an impact and I wish you all the best until next week. It's a pleasure.
Wagner Denuzzo 40:13
Thank you so much, Chris. All the best. Thank you
Steve Degnan, Advisor, Board Member, and former CHRO of Nestlé Purina.