**Record a question for Amantha’s next Ask Me Anything here: https://www.speakpipe.com/howiwork **
It’s harder than ever to cut through in the workplace – whether you’re job hunting, leading a team, or simply trying to keep up with AI. In this AMA episode, I answer your questions on how to thrive in today’s world of work.
In this episode, I share:
- How to differentiate yourself in a crowded job market where AI is levelling CVs and cover letters.
- What really makes a high performing team today – from psychological safety to energy management.
- How to define and develop critical thinking skills in the age of AI.
- My best tips for stepping into leadership for the first time – from running one-on-ones to avoiding the trap of giving too much advice.
Amantha Recommends
- Loom: My favourite quick video tool for making job applications stand out and for capturing thinking in real time.
- Tella: A polished way to create video proposals or audition tasks
- The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier: A simple, practical guide to shifting from advice-giving to coaching with better questions. Grab a copy here.
- Glad We Met by Steven Rogelberg: Hands down the best book I’ve read on running effective one-on-ones
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What if your CV was perfect, your cover letter polished,
and you still couldn't get a foot in the door.
That is the reality many job seekers are facing right now,
and with AI making it easier than ever to create
flawless applications, recruiters are overwhelmed by a sea of high
caliber resumes. So one of the listener questions for today
(00:23):
is how do you stand out? Because in today's Asked
Me Anything episode, which, by the way, if you missed
part one, just go back to last week's episode in
your podcast feed, I am going to be diving into
listener Tony's question how to differentiate yourself in the job
market when everyone else looks great on paper. We're going
(00:44):
to explore what I think your secret weapon might be,
what manages like me really look for, and how to
avoid falling into the trap of AI slop. And also
in today's episode, we're going to cover how to build
truly high performing teams in a highrid world, why critical
thinking is more important than ever in the age of AI,
(01:05):
and my best pieces of advice for leaders stepping into
management roles later in their career. By the end of
this episode, you will walk away with practical, science backed
tools that you can use immediately, whether you're job hunting,
leading a team, or simply trying to thrive in this
very fast changing world of work.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, Doctor
Amantha Imber.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Okay. First question for part two comes from Tony. Tony's
a legend because he actually recorded a voice memo for me,
and I will put a link in the show notes
if you too are an awesome listener and want to
record a voice note for me for the next Ask
(02:02):
Me Anything episode that I release. I typically do these
about once every three months, sometimes more often. I get
a lot of good listener feedback for this, So anyway,
Tony or a legend, Let's listen to the message that
Tony left.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Hi, Amanda, this is tony super potential topic for your
How I Work podcast, and it's around It's around ways
of differentiating yourself in the job market in this environment.
And I've been looking for work myself, and what I'm
finding is that through AI, the level of CBS and
(02:39):
resumes is at an incredibly high level now and people
have become got some great tools to think look fantastic
on paper, customize tailor the CV very easily to job
descriptions and two roles. And from a recruiters perspective, from
what I'm also hearing is it could be getting thirty
(03:01):
forty fifty very high caliber applications. We're in the past
it was a lot easier to sit through to get
a shorter list to start screening and challenging environment. And
as I said, the question is really how do you
how can you differentiate yourself or what are some tools
(03:22):
you can do to do that with the goal of
really getting in front of a person face to face
or virtually but for a meeting, which is what you're
really after. So yeah, challenging time. And thank you. And
I'm just on a personal note, I want to I
(03:44):
really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'm doing the
GENAI course. I reached out to you not working and
you were really helpful and how I could get on that.
Thank you. It's been giving me. It's a great course,
learning a lot, giving me a really good purpose as
well as focus during this time. So I really appreciate
that too. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Oh Tony, that is such a great question. That is
such a great question. It's really hard to differentiate yourself
in the job market. And I also know from you know,
having done a lot of hiring over the years, it's
also getting trickier to really, you know, make decisions about
who to shortlist for a role because almost everything's AI generated.
(04:29):
Although having said that, I do find because i'm you know,
I'm very much in the AI space, I teach GENAI skills.
It is so obvious to me when someone has just
created their cover letter and their resume using AI with
no human critical thought that's gone into it, And to me,
that's a massive turnoff. But I don't think that is
(04:51):
the same for all people in recruitment and hiring, but
who knows. So my number one piece of advice in
terms of how to differentiate yourself in the job market
is through video like in this world, where anyone can
produce half decent content. Although please refer to my episode
(05:11):
on AI slop. I will put a link to that
in the show notes, because I mean there's a lot
of AI slop around and I think the key here
is that volume of content does not equal quality anymore
or high performance rather, and we you know, just need
to change our thinking on that but video. I mean, yeah,
sure you can get the AI to do video, but
(05:32):
it's still it's not at a stage where, you know,
certainly I would recommend using it for recruitment purposes or
like you know, job market purposes. So get on Loom
or use Teller, they are my two favorite video recording tools.
Or just open up your iPhone and record something on
your you know, on your mobile phone and communicate. Communicate
(05:53):
why why you have applied for this job. Why does
it match with what you're about and the impact that
you want to have. Why are you perfect for the job.
The applicants that I receive that have given me a
video stand out so much more so I would highly
(06:14):
recommend that. And just a note if you are a leader,
a manager, or a recruiter that is hiring, one of
the things that I have found really useful in hiring
people is, you know, we've used the idea of doing
job auditions for a while. Certainly, if someone is applying
for a job as a facilitator or inventiologist as we
(06:35):
call them at Inventium, we have a job audition where
they will actually come and run a virtual workshop for us.
But for people that are more behind the scenes, let's
say in a support or an OPS or an admin roll.
Something that I have recently started doing is giving people
a job audition task, but asking them to as they're
(06:57):
doing the task, record a loom video of giving me
their thought process of how they're approaching the task, because
I want to know how they think as well as
what they can do, but I really want to know
how they think. So that is a little tip out
there for people that are hiring. Okay, next question is
(07:19):
from Juliet. My question for you is to learn about
your techniques for developing high performing teams with the shift
to hybrid work, different communication mechanisms, workflow, new generations entering
the workforce. I don't think the old pillars work so
well now, or perhaps they do, but we need to
work on them differently. Would love to hear your thoughts. Oh,
(07:43):
I have so many thoughts on this question, Juliet. Okay,
So high performing teams well, Look, according to the research,
psychological safety is critical. This is where people feel comfortable
speaking up, voicing their thoughts. It might differ from other peoples.
They feel comfortable taking risks, they feel comfortable failing. Like
(08:07):
this is just critical. I feel like this has been
talked about a lot over the last couple of years,
and a lot of good outcomes flow from this. You
have better communication happening between team members, you have better
collaboration happening, and you also have better growth happening because
people are giving each other honest feedback rather than withholding that.
So certainly, like if you're looking for help with psychological safety,
(08:30):
my team at Inventium does a lot of this. Please
reach out for a chat. So that would that is
absolutely huge. Now the other thing, a few other things.
When it comes to high performing teams, AI fluency is key.
I just blanket would not hire someone that wasn't fluent
(08:50):
in AI. Although having said that, because we train people
in AI, you know there might be exceptions where they
are amazing at a whole bunch of other things, or
maybe I've worked with them before and I know that
through our training I can get them up to speed
pretty quickly. But for the average high performing team, you
need to develop AI fluency. Again, shout out to Inventium's
(09:11):
AI programs. We've had thousands of people go through them.
Please reach out if you want to help with that.
But if you have a whole team that is really
comfortable using AI, you are going to get better results. Okay, next,
energy management. I actually think that how people manage their
energy is more important than how they manage their time.
(09:34):
And look, I'm deep in energy management because that is
the topic of my current book, my fifth book that
I'm writing that will be out mid next year. And
you need to help people. It's not about wellbeing, it's
about how do you manage your energy? How do you
manage your physical energy, your mental energy, and your emotional energy.
You know, again, this is stuff that I've been thinking
(09:55):
about a lot. We're about to release some programs on
this at Inventium. Drop me a note that's of interest.
But you need to think about this because high performing
teams are often the first ones to burn out because
they don't have boundaries, and that is a very big problem.
Final thing that I will note here is that there's
(10:15):
a whole lot that you can do with the individual,
but you also need to look at the system. Like
if you've got people burning out, yes, we can help
them manage their energy, but also are they burning out
because there's like workload is not evenly distributed. You know,
that is an example where the system is just not
working or maybe there's you know, like a toxic culture
(10:37):
or a toxic person in your team that needs to
be performance managed. So please look at the system as
well as the individual. Okay, so we've already talked about
how to cut through the noise in the job market.
Coming up, I am going to share what critical thinking
(10:58):
actually looks like in the a of AI and how
to build your critical thinking muscle. Next question is from Kate.
So Kate asks, I'm a bit wary of the rhetoric
(11:18):
if we need critical thinking and people skills in the
world of work with AI. Every man and his dog
is coming out with that refrain, and it seems like
it's a revelation. But we're seeing a lack of specificity
or nuance in what critical thinking actually is in this context.
What does it look like? What are the teachable qualities
and how should they best be taught? What are the
(11:39):
applied skills? And how do we know when we're doing
good enough? Okay, here are a few thoughts I have.
I mean, it's a really big question, Kate and I
love this question, and here are a few of my
thoughts and observations. So, in the world of AI, like,
here's what really good critical thinking looks like it's where firstly,
(12:02):
you question everything that the AI spits out, treat every
output as a rough draft that needs fact checking. People
are not doing this. This is why we are living
in this world of AI slop and it makes me
so frustrated. I was meeting with someone for a potential collaboration.
(12:24):
This is a couple of months ago now, and I
was then sent three documents to look through about how
this collaboration could work. And I opened these three lengthy
word documents and they had not had a critical human
eye go over it. And then the ball was in
my court to actually go through these documents as a human,
(12:46):
spend hours and rework these thoughts when you know, really
the person that sent me these documents could have actually
just done the human critical thinking work first. So I
you know, I feel like when someone senyds AI slop,
it's a very selfish move. And you know, I think
more and more that will become a career limiting move
(13:07):
as well because of the frustration it causes. So when
the AI gives you something, challenge the output, like, think
about what are the biases that might be baked into
this response? What are the perspectives that are missing and
try to actively argue with the AI's suggestions to stress
(13:28):
test ideas. I've spoken on this podcast before about getting
the AI to play Devil's advocate. This is what you
need in the world where we're outsourcing way too much
thinking to AI. Then some are they just micro skills
that we can look to teach, so you know, really
prompt people to be skeptical, you know, learn to recognize
(13:52):
when your question is actually leading the AI to tell
you what you want to hear. Confirmation bias is a
dangerous thing where we're just looking for, you know, the
AI to confirm us and it will. It's prompted to
be a sicker fan. So you really need to approach
the output with some skepticism. And also context matters so much.
(14:15):
The more context that you can give to AI, the
better the output you're going to get. But also thinking
about the context that you haven't given it and using
that to think critically, and you know, just like when
like just as a little test for yourself, how do
to know are you doing this enough? Are you thinking
critically enough? Think about how often you catch yourself disagreeing
(14:38):
with the AI's output more often than nodding along, like
when you're using it consistently as a sparring partner as
opposed to the oracle of all knowledge. I do recommend
going and listening to the interview I had with Bobby Oohanson,
who's a Silicon Valley futurist an amazing thinker. He talks
about AI not as thattific'sh intelligence, but thinking about how
(15:02):
you can see it as augmented intelligence. So you know,
in this new world it is not you versus AI,
it is you plus AI that is going to get
the best outputs. The final question for today comes from Nerel,
and she says, I'm late in my career and after
a very long time and not the best experience, my
(15:22):
role has been uplifted where I will now have direct reports.
I'm quite anxious about this, but I also want to
do this. Well, do you have any tips, books or
podcasts that might be helpful? All right, let me give
you a few tips, Nerel. Again, I could do a
whole episode around this, but let me just stick to
a few things. Okay, Firstly, I think something that is
(15:44):
really helpful. We do this with a lot of our
clients that invent him and We also do this at
Inventium with the team is we have everyone create a
one page operating manual or OPOM as we call it.
So we actually have a template for this where we
get people to, you know, write down their strengths, their weaknesses,
or areas they're trying to develop the preferred way of communicating.
(16:08):
Are they someone that just prefers to pick up the
phone or text message or email? What are their pet
peeves or frustrations, and you know, how do they best
receive feedback. So there are a bunch of questions that
you can ask and what I encourage you to do
create one for yourself, but ask all your team members
to do this as well, and it will create so
much more understanding of how to get the best out
(16:29):
of everyone. My next tip is to schedule weekly one
on one meetings with all your direct reports. This is critical,
This is not an afterthought. This is really important interaction
and relationship building. I highly recommend the work of Steven Rogelberg.
Here I will put a link to an interview that
(16:52):
I had with him on how to get the most
out of one on ones. I also highly recommend his
book Glad We Met. It is the best book I've
read on how to do one on ones really really well.
Be deliberate about them. You dedicate at least thirty minutes
per week, potentially sixty minutes per week. This is absolutely
(17:14):
critical time now in your one on ones. Another piece
of advice I would give here is try to resist
the urge to give advice. Instead, try to be a coach.
Highly recommend the coaching Habit. There's a book by Michael
Bungay Stanier who's also been on this podcast several times,
and it is a really simple but effective book on
(17:37):
how to coach and the great questions to ask. Now,
this is probably where I struggle most. I love giving advice.
I love jumping in and solving problems, but that is
not your job as a leader. Your job is to
help improve your team's ability to solve problems. So I
(17:57):
will always I'll pause before I have it advice to give,
and I'll ask my team, like, what would you like
from me here? Would you like me to help? Question?
Like you ask you questions to help you find a solution.
Do you think you know what that solution is and
maybe you want feedback on that? Or do you want
my advice? And sometimes I want advice, so I will
(18:20):
give it, but I always try to catch myself before
I'm about to jump in and give advice. The final
thing that I'd recommend is having some sort of daily
reflection technique. We know from research that leaders that reflect
daily or that journal daily are much more effective in
(18:40):
their leadership. So here are some questions that might help. Firstly,
asking who did I help today? By knowing that you're
asking this question, it just keeps at top of mind
because if you have to ask answer the question who
did I help today, you will be geared towards being
more helpful a leader. Then think about what do I
(19:02):
need to achieve tomorrow? It helps you start tomorrow with
more focus. And then finally, who do I need to
spend time with? This will help you stay really intentional
about where you are spending your time because ultimately your
time as a leader is limited, so really think strategically
who do I need to spend time with tomorrow. So
(19:24):
that is it for it Today's Ask Me Anything. I
hope that there were some helpful, helpful tips in here,
And if you have questions for my next Ask Me Anything,
either drop me a note. I'm very easy to find
on LinkedIn about the Inba or there is a link
to giving me a voice memo and gosh, I love
(19:46):
hearing the voices of listeners, so please do that and
I will see you next week. So there you have it,
some of my favorite questions from you answered. If you
found this helpful, I'd recommend going back and listening to
my episode on AI slot. It is a perfect companion
to some of the things we talked about today, and
(20:06):
you can find a link to that in the show notes.
And if this episode gave you something to think about,
I'd love for you to share it with a friend
or colleague who might need it. And it helps more
people discover the show, and I'm so grateful when they do. Finally,
if you've got a burning question, you can send me
a voice note. There's a link in the show notes.
I would absolutely love to hear from you. See you
(20:28):
next time. If you like today's show, make sure you
hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when
new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
On the traditional land of the Warrangery People, part of
the Cooler Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimba
for doing the sound mix
What if your CV was perfect, your cover letter polished,
and you still couldn't get a foot in the door.
That is the reality many job seekers are facing right now,
and with AI making it easier than ever to create
flawless applications, recruiters are overwhelmed by a sea of high
caliber resumes. So one of the listener questions for today
(00:23):
is how do you stand out? Because in today's Asked
Me Anything episode, which, by the way, if you missed
part one, just go back to last week's episode in
your podcast feed, I am going to be diving into
listener Tony's question how to differentiate yourself in the job
market when everyone else looks great on paper. We're going
(00:44):
to explore what I think your secret weapon might be,
what manages like me really look for, and how to
avoid falling into the trap of AI slop. And also
in today's episode, we're going to cover how to build
truly high performing teams in a highrid world, why critical
thinking is more important than ever in the age of AI,
(01:05):
and my best pieces of advice for leaders stepping into
management roles later in their career. By the end of
this episode, you will walk away with practical, science backed
tools that you can use immediately, whether you're job hunting,
leading a team, or simply trying to thrive in this
very fast changing world of work.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, Doctor
Amantha Imber.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Okay. First question for part two comes from Tony. Tony's
a legend because he actually recorded a voice memo for me,
and I will put a link in the show notes
if you too are an awesome listener and want to
record a voice note for me for the next Ask
(02:02):
Me Anything episode that I release. I typically do these
about once every three months, sometimes more often. I get
a lot of good listener feedback for this, So anyway,
Tony or a legend, Let's listen to the message that
Tony left.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Hi, Amanda, this is tony super potential topic for your
How I Work podcast, and it's around It's around ways
of differentiating yourself in the job market in this environment.
And I've been looking for work myself, and what I'm
finding is that through AI, the level of CBS and
(02:39):
resumes is at an incredibly high level now and people
have become got some great tools to think look fantastic
on paper, customize tailor the CV very easily to job
descriptions and two roles. And from a recruiters perspective, from
what I'm also hearing is it could be getting thirty
(03:01):
forty fifty very high caliber applications. We're in the past
it was a lot easier to sit through to get
a shorter list to start screening and challenging environment. And
as I said, the question is really how do you
how can you differentiate yourself or what are some tools
(03:22):
you can do to do that with the goal of
really getting in front of a person face to face
or virtually but for a meeting, which is what you're
really after. So yeah, challenging time. And thank you. And
I'm just on a personal note, I want to I
(03:44):
really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'm doing the
GENAI course. I reached out to you not working and
you were really helpful and how I could get on that.
Thank you. It's been giving me. It's a great course,
learning a lot, giving me a really good purpose as
well as focus during this time. So I really appreciate
that too. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Oh Tony, that is such a great question. That is
such a great question. It's really hard to differentiate yourself
in the job market. And I also know from you know,
having done a lot of hiring over the years, it's
also getting trickier to really, you know, make decisions about
who to shortlist for a role because almost everything's AI generated.
(04:29):
Although having said that, I do find because i'm you know,
I'm very much in the AI space, I teach GENAI skills.
It is so obvious to me when someone has just
created their cover letter and their resume using AI with
no human critical thought that's gone into it, And to me,
that's a massive turnoff. But I don't think that is
(04:51):
the same for all people in recruitment and hiring, but
who knows. So my number one piece of advice in
terms of how to differentiate yourself in the job market
is through video like in this world, where anyone can
produce half decent content. Although please refer to my episode
(05:11):
on AI slop. I will put a link to that
in the show notes, because I mean there's a lot
of AI slop around and I think the key here
is that volume of content does not equal quality anymore
or high performance rather, and we you know, just need
to change our thinking on that but video. I mean, yeah,
sure you can get the AI to do video, but
(05:32):
it's still it's not at a stage where, you know,
certainly I would recommend using it for recruitment purposes or
like you know, job market purposes. So get on Loom
or use Teller, they are my two favorite video recording tools.
Or just open up your iPhone and record something on
your you know, on your mobile phone and communicate. Communicate
(05:53):
why why you have applied for this job. Why does
it match with what you're about and the impact that
you want to have. Why are you perfect for the job.
The applicants that I receive that have given me a
video stand out so much more so I would highly
(06:14):
recommend that. And just a note if you are a leader,
a manager, or a recruiter that is hiring, one of
the things that I have found really useful in hiring
people is, you know, we've used the idea of doing
job auditions for a while. Certainly, if someone is applying
for a job as a facilitator or inventiologist as we
(06:35):
call them at Inventium, we have a job audition where
they will actually come and run a virtual workshop for us.
But for people that are more behind the scenes, let's
say in a support or an OPS or an admin roll.
Something that I have recently started doing is giving people
a job audition task, but asking them to as they're
(06:57):
doing the task, record a loom video of giving me
their thought process of how they're approaching the task, because
I want to know how they think as well as
what they can do, but I really want to know
how they think. So that is a little tip out
there for people that are hiring. Okay, next question is
(07:19):
from Juliet. My question for you is to learn about
your techniques for developing high performing teams with the shift
to hybrid work, different communication mechanisms, workflow, new generations entering
the workforce. I don't think the old pillars work so
well now, or perhaps they do, but we need to
work on them differently. Would love to hear your thoughts. Oh,
(07:43):
I have so many thoughts on this question, Juliet. Okay,
So high performing teams well, Look, according to the research,
psychological safety is critical. This is where people feel comfortable
speaking up, voicing their thoughts. It might differ from other peoples.
They feel comfortable taking risks, they feel comfortable failing. Like
(08:07):
this is just critical. I feel like this has been
talked about a lot over the last couple of years,
and a lot of good outcomes flow from this. You
have better communication happening between team members, you have better
collaboration happening, and you also have better growth happening because
people are giving each other honest feedback rather than withholding that.
So certainly, like if you're looking for help with psychological safety,
(08:30):
my team at Inventium does a lot of this. Please
reach out for a chat. So that would that is
absolutely huge. Now the other thing, a few other things.
When it comes to high performing teams, AI fluency is key.
I just blanket would not hire someone that wasn't fluent
(08:50):
in AI. Although having said that, because we train people
in AI, you know there might be exceptions where they
are amazing at a whole bunch of other things, or
maybe I've worked with them before and I know that
through our training I can get them up to speed
pretty quickly. But for the average high performing team, you
need to develop AI fluency. Again, shout out to Inventium's
(09:11):
AI programs. We've had thousands of people go through them.
Please reach out if you want to help with that.
But if you have a whole team that is really
comfortable using AI, you are going to get better results. Okay, next,
energy management. I actually think that how people manage their
energy is more important than how they manage their time.
(09:34):
And look, I'm deep in energy management because that is
the topic of my current book, my fifth book that
I'm writing that will be out mid next year. And
you need to help people. It's not about wellbeing, it's
about how do you manage your energy? How do you
manage your physical energy, your mental energy, and your emotional energy.
You know, again, this is stuff that I've been thinking
(09:55):
about a lot. We're about to release some programs on
this at Inventium. Drop me a note that's of interest.
But you need to think about this because high performing
teams are often the first ones to burn out because
they don't have boundaries, and that is a very big problem.
Final thing that I will note here is that there's
(10:15):
a whole lot that you can do with the individual,
but you also need to look at the system. Like
if you've got people burning out, yes, we can help
them manage their energy, but also are they burning out
because there's like workload is not evenly distributed. You know,
that is an example where the system is just not
working or maybe there's you know, like a toxic culture
(10:37):
or a toxic person in your team that needs to
be performance managed. So please look at the system as
well as the individual. Okay, so we've already talked about
how to cut through the noise in the job market.
Coming up, I am going to share what critical thinking
(10:58):
actually looks like in the a of AI and how
to build your critical thinking muscle. Next question is from Kate.
So Kate asks, I'm a bit wary of the rhetoric
(11:18):
if we need critical thinking and people skills in the
world of work with AI. Every man and his dog
is coming out with that refrain, and it seems like
it's a revelation. But we're seeing a lack of specificity
or nuance in what critical thinking actually is in this context.
What does it look like? What are the teachable qualities
and how should they best be taught? What are the
(11:39):
applied skills? And how do we know when we're doing
good enough? Okay, here are a few thoughts I have.
I mean, it's a really big question, Kate and I
love this question, and here are a few of my
thoughts and observations. So, in the world of AI, like,
here's what really good critical thinking looks like it's where firstly,
(12:02):
you question everything that the AI spits out, treat every
output as a rough draft that needs fact checking. People
are not doing this. This is why we are living
in this world of AI slop and it makes me
so frustrated. I was meeting with someone for a potential collaboration.
(12:24):
This is a couple of months ago now, and I
was then sent three documents to look through about how
this collaboration could work. And I opened these three lengthy
word documents and they had not had a critical human
eye go over it. And then the ball was in
my court to actually go through these documents as a human,
(12:46):
spend hours and rework these thoughts when you know, really
the person that sent me these documents could have actually
just done the human critical thinking work first. So I
you know, I feel like when someone senyds AI slop,
it's a very selfish move. And you know, I think
more and more that will become a career limiting move
(13:07):
as well because of the frustration it causes. So when
the AI gives you something, challenge the output, like, think
about what are the biases that might be baked into
this response? What are the perspectives that are missing and
try to actively argue with the AI's suggestions to stress
(13:28):
test ideas. I've spoken on this podcast before about getting
the AI to play Devil's advocate. This is what you
need in the world where we're outsourcing way too much
thinking to AI. Then some are they just micro skills
that we can look to teach, so you know, really
prompt people to be skeptical, you know, learn to recognize
(13:52):
when your question is actually leading the AI to tell
you what you want to hear. Confirmation bias is a
dangerous thing where we're just looking for, you know, the
AI to confirm us and it will. It's prompted to
be a sicker fan. So you really need to approach
the output with some skepticism. And also context matters so much.
(14:15):
The more context that you can give to AI, the
better the output you're going to get. But also thinking
about the context that you haven't given it and using
that to think critically, and you know, just like when
like just as a little test for yourself, how do
to know are you doing this enough? Are you thinking
critically enough? Think about how often you catch yourself disagreeing
(14:38):
with the AI's output more often than nodding along, like
when you're using it consistently as a sparring partner as
opposed to the oracle of all knowledge. I do recommend
going and listening to the interview I had with Bobby Oohanson,
who's a Silicon Valley futurist an amazing thinker. He talks
about AI not as thattific'sh intelligence, but thinking about how
(15:02):
you can see it as augmented intelligence. So you know,
in this new world it is not you versus AI,
it is you plus AI that is going to get
the best outputs. The final question for today comes from Nerel,
and she says, I'm late in my career and after
a very long time and not the best experience, my
(15:22):
role has been uplifted where I will now have direct reports.
I'm quite anxious about this, but I also want to
do this. Well, do you have any tips, books or
podcasts that might be helpful? All right, let me give
you a few tips, Nerel. Again, I could do a
whole episode around this, but let me just stick to
a few things. Okay, Firstly, I think something that is
(15:44):
really helpful. We do this with a lot of our
clients that invent him and We also do this at
Inventium with the team is we have everyone create a
one page operating manual or OPOM as we call it.
So we actually have a template for this where we
get people to, you know, write down their strengths, their weaknesses,
or areas they're trying to develop the preferred way of communicating.
(16:08):
Are they someone that just prefers to pick up the
phone or text message or email? What are their pet
peeves or frustrations, and you know, how do they best
receive feedback. So there are a bunch of questions that
you can ask and what I encourage you to do
create one for yourself, but ask all your team members
to do this as well, and it will create so
much more understanding of how to get the best out
(16:29):
of everyone. My next tip is to schedule weekly one
on one meetings with all your direct reports. This is critical,
This is not an afterthought. This is really important interaction
and relationship building. I highly recommend the work of Steven Rogelberg.
Here I will put a link to an interview that
(16:52):
I had with him on how to get the most
out of one on ones. I also highly recommend his
book Glad We Met. It is the best book I've
read on how to do one on ones really really well.
Be deliberate about them. You dedicate at least thirty minutes
per week, potentially sixty minutes per week. This is absolutely
(17:14):
critical time now in your one on ones. Another piece
of advice I would give here is try to resist
the urge to give advice. Instead, try to be a coach.
Highly recommend the coaching Habit. There's a book by Michael
Bungay Stanier who's also been on this podcast several times,
and it is a really simple but effective book on
(17:37):
how to coach and the great questions to ask. Now,
this is probably where I struggle most. I love giving advice.
I love jumping in and solving problems, but that is
not your job as a leader. Your job is to
help improve your team's ability to solve problems. So I
(17:57):
will always I'll pause before I have it advice to give,
and I'll ask my team, like, what would you like
from me here? Would you like me to help? Question?
Like you ask you questions to help you find a solution.
Do you think you know what that solution is and
maybe you want feedback on that? Or do you want
my advice? And sometimes I want advice, so I will
(18:20):
give it, but I always try to catch myself before
I'm about to jump in and give advice. The final
thing that I'd recommend is having some sort of daily
reflection technique. We know from research that leaders that reflect
daily or that journal daily are much more effective in
(18:40):
their leadership. So here are some questions that might help. Firstly,
asking who did I help today? By knowing that you're
asking this question, it just keeps at top of mind
because if you have to ask answer the question who
did I help today, you will be geared towards being
more helpful a leader. Then think about what do I
(19:02):
need to achieve tomorrow? It helps you start tomorrow with
more focus. And then finally, who do I need to
spend time with? This will help you stay really intentional
about where you are spending your time because ultimately your
time as a leader is limited, so really think strategically
who do I need to spend time with tomorrow. So
(19:24):
that is it for it Today's Ask Me Anything. I
hope that there were some helpful, helpful tips in here,
And if you have questions for my next Ask Me Anything,
either drop me a note. I'm very easy to find
on LinkedIn about the Inba or there is a link
to giving me a voice memo and gosh, I love
(19:46):
hearing the voices of listeners, so please do that and
I will see you next week. So there you have it,
some of my favorite questions from you answered. If you
found this helpful, I'd recommend going back and listening to
my episode on AI slot. It is a perfect companion
to some of the things we talked about today, and
(20:06):
you can find a link to that in the show notes.
And if this episode gave you something to think about,
I'd love for you to share it with a friend
or colleague who might need it. And it helps more
people discover the show, and I'm so grateful when they do. Finally,
if you've got a burning question, you can send me
a voice note. There's a link in the show notes.
I would absolutely love to hear from you. See you
(20:28):
next time. If you like today's show, make sure you
hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when
new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
On the traditional land of the Warrangery People, part of
the Cooler Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimba
for doing the sound mix
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