Sacha Connor v2: Self-Advocacy in the Age of AI | Work 20XX Ep42

Sacha Connor returns to Work 20XX and asks, how do you self advocate, make sure the right people see and are familiar with your accompaniments, skills, and potential, when the most important factor when being considered for that next promotion or fresh opportunity is an AI agent preparing a list of candidates for consideration.

Are you on the agent’s radar? What digital persona is assembled by the AI after consuming the knowledge management system data, presentations, actions plans, meeting notes, agendas, project summaries, IMs, emails, meeting transcripts, and more digital exhaust? How does it compare to others?

Please join me in welcoming Sacha Connor back to the Work 20XX podcast at Running Remote, 

As Founder and CEO of Virtual Work Insider, Sacha has long been a leading voice and resource for building distributed team success for years. 

In this episode, we explore how in today’s AI world, people must signal their value to not just their managers and people who make decisions, but the AI agents that create the nominations based on a wide swath of internal systems communications data. 

Recorded April 29, Fair Market, Austin
Special Thanks to Liam Martin, Egor Borushko, Ana Maria Bennett & Team Running Remote

Sacha Connor v2: Self-Advocacy in the Age of AI | Work 20XX podcast with Jeff Frick Ep42 at Running Remote

YouTube - Click Here 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLrTlErF3OU&list=PLZURvMqWbYjmmJlwGj0L0jWbWdCej1Jlt

Transcript and Show Notes - Episode Page - Click Here 

https://www.work20xx.com/episode/sacha-connor-v2-self-advocacy-in-the-age-of-ai-work-20xx-ep42

 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Check, check.
One two. One two.
That's yourwater.
All right.
So we are good to go
in three, their lining upat the food trucks.
in three, it’s going to startsmelling really good
in three,two, one.
Hey welcome backeverybody Jeff Frick here.
Coming to you from not the home office.
Not the home studio
I'm in Austin at Running RemoteWork 20XX on the road.

(00:20):
We're excited to work with the great folks at Running Remote
to come down and talk to, I don't know,
could be thebiggest collection
of remotework experts
ever assembledin a single place,
at least since Portugal last year.
And what's really critical hereis that these skills
are applicable whether you're fully remote,
fully in the office, hybrid or some combination in between.
So there's a lot ofgreat lessons,

(00:40):
and I’m excited to haveour next guest.
She is Sacha Connor
She is the CEO and Founderof Virtual Work Insider.
Sacha, great to see you.
Great to see you in person finally.
Absolutely it’s so fun.You know
so many of these people.
We have such a great community online.
So to actuallyget to come together
and meet faceto face is a real treat.
Yes, yes.
So one ofthe things is
as we talk about that

(01:00):
and being on LinkedIn,
and we often think about that in terms of
promoting our own personalbrand outside of organization.
We think about trying to make sure
everybody knows who Sacha is and who's Jeff is
and why what we say is maybe interesting.
You've talked about the challenges now inside,
how do people promote theirskills and development and blow

(01:22):
toot their own horna little bit
when they're in a distributed world
and no one's necessarily looking over their shoulders
it’s a little harder to,to promote your goodness.
One of the key skills,but hardest skills to get
when you are working ina distributed organization
is raising your profile.
So gaining exposure to other people
and then influencing others

(01:43):
because you don't get that organic, you know
running into each otherat the water cooler,
at the coffee machine, in theelevator, in the parking lot.
And so one of the skills thatwe teach at Virtual Work Insider
is how to build that exposureand influence across distance.
And I learned that firsthand
from my experienceat Clorox
in 2010,I went remote,
and I was in the remote minority at the time.

(02:05):
There was, you know,
less than 5% of the companythat was working remotely.
And I realized that
one of the most important things I needed to do
on a daily basis wasmake my presence felt
across 3,000 miles,three time zones away.
And so in the workshop that we give,
on building exposure and influence,
we go through a five step process
in terms of building your own

(02:26):
personal virtual exposureand influence plan.
[Jeff] Okay.
So thinking first aboutwho are your key stakeholders,
who are those people that you need to
gain exposure to and to influence?
And a lot of timesyou might not know
who that whole, you know, map of,
of sphere of influence is
because you, you only knowyour known networks.
[Jeff] Right, right
You also have to think about that unknown network.

(02:48):
Who were the people that you need to get introduced to
in order to build that exposure
Do people even realize
maybe it's you just get older
and you realizethe importance of this.
But early on in junior peopleabout how important it is
to know who those people are,
not only not externalthat you don't know,
but even internal.
It seems like a lot of people,if you ask them,
you know, who are the 25most important people

(03:10):
in your business world,your business life?
They've never thought that through. So?
It's so criticalfor your career.
And we talk about in that five step process,
one of the stepsis the why
why do you need to gain exposure,influence those people.
And sometimes it's aboutthe career progression, right.
Who are the people that you needexposure to based on what
your careerobjectives are?

(03:30):
And sometimes it'sabout the work itself.
[Jeff] Right
How do you get exposureto other ideas,
innovative ideas, other function siloswithin the company?
But what is really interesting tome these days is thinking about.
You know, I used to frame it around the humans
that we need exposureto and to influence.
But now with AI,we need to think about
how we build our exposureto the AI tools

(03:53):
that our companiesare using to catalog our skills.
Because what's happeningas companies move into
this kind of skillsbased organization
is they're startingto catalog those skills
and are using that information
to consider for succession planning,
to consider for how they put people together on teams,
depending on what the team goal is.
[Jeff] Right.

(04:13):
And if you haven't thought about
what is the wayin which the AI
is now determining my skill set or
or empowered to editthat on your own behalf
[Jeff] Right
then you might be getting left out of opportunities.
So have they added AI aficionado
as an official category of skills
that people are being ranked on and judged cause

(04:34):
let's face it, a lot of peoplehave jumped in with both feet.
I interviewed this guy,Charles Corley.
He's used ChatGPT every daysince November of 2022.
He just decidedto jump in,
where other people have stillnever even tried it at all.
So I would imagine in termsof a specific skill,
being able to manage, work with,
understand and leverage AI

(04:55):
has got to be a prettyimportant one going forward.
I think that will becomeone of the things
that is being developed.
I heard recently that, Microsoft is launching
something as part of Copilot called,
I think it's calledPeople Skills.
Okay.
Where it is doing this cataloging,
and I think it's looking across
all of the communicationin Outlook, in SharePoint

(05:16):
in Microsoft Teamschats and channels.
It probably is lookingat the use of Copilot itself,
Right
and through what it's,
what it's viewing within thatthose interactions.
Then it is creating the skills profile for you.
Right.
Beyond just youruse of AI, but
you know, your communication skills
the different types of tasksthat you're working on.

(05:38):
And then, you know, Henrik [Jarleskog]
just posted on LinkedIn
his whole team
his 12 [member] AI team
which was classic, ChatGPT,
I mean, more I didn't even know
there was that manyAI applications out there.
So in terms of thinking aboutteam level agreements
a really key pieceto success here.
Where does AI and all my AI assistants
and my littlegaggle of people

(05:59):
that I bring withme now or my AI
start to fit in within team level agreements
and how that changes,
because I would imagine
you know different people are going to have different sizes of
of virtual staffs if you will,and then everybody else.
Yeah, this has been a really fun
and interesting thingfor me to think about,
because part of what we doat Virtual Work Insider is help
teams at mostly large enterprises

(06:20):
think about building theirteam working agreements.
So how dothey work?
Mostly in cross-functional teams and
and get to clarityon their team goals,
get to clarity on their communication rituals
and their communication norms.
But a piece of this, too is
what is the roleof each of
each of the team members on the team.
And so as you brought up,
we now needto think about
what is the role of AIas a team member.

(06:43):
[Jeff] Right.
And each team is goingto be at a different stage
in where they arein terms of using AI.
And so a lot of the teams that we’re working with
in large enterprises
haven't yet thought about this at all.
They're usingAI very tactically,
you know, maybeto help them
on the side with, you know,
writing an email or, you know,some sort of marketing copy.

(07:04):
But now, like,
if we start to get really intentional and say, okay
What is the role of theAI on this team?
Right.
It gets really interesting.
So anything fromfor example,
when I work with a team,
I have someone on the cross-functional team
who becomes the team effectiveness lead,
the person who is responsible
moving forward
for the effectivenessof that team

(07:24):
based on the agreementsthat they've made.
Well, now you could use AI, a GPT, or an agent
as you think about,
feeding it the information fromthe team working agreement.
[Jeff] Right
And using itas a coach.
So a team effectivenesslead coach
for the team based on the normsthat they've co-created.
So that could be one example of how
they're using AI as a teammate

(07:45):
So one of your favorite topicsis talking about bias,
because one of the big challenges with remote is
it's all information sharing.
And JJ [Reeder] shared on the keynote this morning
that we spend somany hours, you know,
trying to look for information
and with remotethat used to be
I could just tapyou over the shoulder,
over the top of the cubeand say, hey,
you know, Sacha,I have a question.
Are you seeing kind of the

(08:06):
the way that the teams interact
Because I don'tnecessarily know,
maybe I'm going to go to AI
for that quick tap on the shoulder answer first?
So it starts to changewhat those interactions are.
Or has it not really percolateddown that far yet
I haven't seen itpercolate that far yet.
But it could be useful.
And what you're bringing upis there's distance bias,
our brains natural tendency

(08:27):
to put more value in the people,and things that we’re closer to
than those that are further away.
Or recency bias.
The, our brain’s natural tendency to put more value
on the peopleand things
that we've heard from orseen more recently.
[Jeff] Right.
And what you're bringing up is interesting
in that if we're in different time zones and we
I can't Slack youvery quickly
or tap you on the shoulder to ask a question,

(08:49):
what can I do instead?
Well, if you have putthat knowledge base
into an AI, GPT for example,
FAQ, create an FAQ,GPT on something.
I could use that as myfirst line of questioning
before maybe, you know,
you wake up in your time zone
and can answer me back.
That is probably an applicationof where this is going.
Right, rightOkay.

(09:09):
So you're leadinga star filled panel,
tomorrow called

Roses and Thorns (09:15):
Practical advice for work across distance
for the folks that aren'tgoing to be able to make it.
For our audience that’s not here today.
What are some of the little, tips and tricks
you look forward to sharing tomorrow?
You have Darren [Murph], Lauren [DeYoung], Karrah [Phillips]
It's a pretty good, panel.
Yeah, we have a great panel.
So I love talking aboutenterprise distributed work.
And so we have, from Allstate, 50

(09:36):
over 50,000 person company, 93 year old company
to Airbnb and Zillow
7,000 employees each about, you know,
20 year old companies.
So we're goingto talk about
what they've learned,the good, bad and ugly
around, communication, collaboration
and creating connectionand trust
and also accountabilityand decision making.

(09:58):
So they're going to share with us
the experiments that they've done
and what they'velearned so far,
because I lovehow they’re
iterating and sharing with the community.
Yeah, it should be great.So don't miss that one.
Well, Sacha, it is super to, to finally meet in person
and catch up andreally appreciate the time.
Thanks so much.
All right.
She’s Sacha.I’m Jeff
you're watching Work 20XX

(10:19):
we’re coming you from Austin,Texas at Running Remote.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.
See you next time.
Hey, Jeff Frick Here
big shout out to the podcast audience.
Thanks for listening in.
You can get show notes and transcripts at Work20XX.com
And that also has links to the videos as well.
Appreciate you listeningin on the podcast

(10:41):
Do reach out
say hello, like subscribeand smash that notification bell.
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.