Guild reposted this
Talent, Learning, & Culture Thought Leader | Author, "ReCulturing" | Innovative Strategist & Architect in Organizational Development | formerly Adobe, Twitter, WeWork, Udemy
Thoughts and a few questions on a Friday: I've been working with many leaders who are trying to lead through and with AI, and I keep seeing a sequential theme that I know you are all seeing (and maybe experiencing) too: AI fluency first, then change leadership. Why? Why aren’t we helping employees integrate technical and leadership skills together? It’s just as important to understand how AI works as it is to know why you’re using it, how it changes the work itself, and to have space to experiment with it responsibly. Last week’s PeopleTech Partners webinar with Alexei Dunaway, Helen Russell, Brandon Sammut, and Victor Arguelles, EdD, were a great example of how innovative HR leaders are doing both. Key takeaways included redefining hybrid as humans + agents versus office schedules; embedding AI versus bolting it on; and Helen's point about deeply considering upskilling leaders with core skills, while also identifying which skills need to be "unlearned". Then I read Guild’s article by Alex Cannon and Matthew J. Daniel (https://lnkd.in/gjE5jYBj) that I've been sharing with everyone on durable skills, which suggests that even the skills that we have been calling "safe" to humans are not really that "safe". Sure, connection, empathy, coaching, and critical thinking can go much further with humans than bots, but if you've tried interacting with an AI coaching bot lately, you understand that even those bots can come across empathetically. Some of the new skills they explored in the article include: * Interpretative thinking: making sense of mixed signals (If an employee says "I can't do that right now," a bot might pivot to another topic quickly, after hearing that, while a human might understand the deeper nuance of what that employee is trying to communicate) * Contextual fluency: knowing what matters in the moment (AI can handle scheduling at scale, but it can’t read the room; it doesn’t always know when not to send the invite, like when someone’s just been laid off). * Situational ethics: acting when the rules don’t cleanly apply. My friend Brenda Sugrue just spoke at a recent conference this week and calls these transversal skills--the ones that cut across disciplines and connect technical fluency with human discernment. I'm digging deeper into this topic and will be writing more about it in the coming weeks, but I'd love to hear how you are thinking about the skills that leaders and all employees need now to work effectively in, on, and ahead of AI. What skills are you seeing your teams need to develop or unlearn most right now? What about leadership skills? #fridayfieldnotes