The New Generation Leader podcast hosts a live recording in front of the Leadercast Richmond audience. The panelists, Steve Perky, Bryan Berry, and Jerry Howard, discuss the impact of the digital age on leadership and stress the importance of human intelligence and connection in this ever-evolving world.
They emphasize the need for leaders to build trust with empathy and insight to have real influence in the digital age. The panelists also discuss the importance of self-awareness and inner peace in managing chaos in the workplace.
Show Outline
- 00:58 – Human Intelligence in the Digital Age
- 01:55 – Redefining Our Place, Relationships, and Time
- 04:01 – Importance of Tapping into the Human Side of Leadership
- 05:03 – Knowing Yourself
- 07:18 – Harvesting Chaos
- 09:16 – Making Decisions in Chaotic Times
- 10:06 – Tools for Managing Chaos
- 11:59 – Importance of Simple Language
- 13:05 – Leadership Transcends All Industries
- 14:40 – Human Intelligence in the Digital Age
- 15:37 – Creating Emotional Safety
- 18:22 – Hope and Accomplishment
- 19:15 – The Journey to Leadercast
- 20:16 – Importance of Trust
- 21:11 – Power of Together
Quotes from the Show
“Our human intelligence is going to be more and more important. As you look back at the industrial revolution or the time periods of generations, we’ve had these standard amounts of time those periods where 200 years the generation is about 18 years. But you look at the rapid adoption of ChatGPT compared to other technologies and you see how much faster things are changing and being adopted.”
“Going back to the basics is so helpful.”
“Being intentional is what you do on purpose to fulfill your purpose.”
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Episode 41 – Full Transcript
Aaron Lee 0:00
A new generation leader. There’s nothing artificial about leadership leaders worth following must upgrade their relational operating systems. Real influence will come from leaders who build trust with empathy, and insight leader casts. 2023 was all about human intelligence. And on Episode 41, of the new generation leader podcast, we recorded live in front of the leader cast Richmond audience panelists, Steve perky, Brian Berry, Jerry Howard joined me on stage to talk about human intelligence leading in the digital age, and what it means for you to lead in the ever evolving, always changing digital world. Let’s dive in. Welcome to the new generation leader podcast, we’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world ready to reach your true potential. This is the new generation leader podcast. So guys, we’ve been talking about intelligence today, there’s something about this new age, this new phase of living. So let’s see, I’m gonna come to you first, as a coach and consultant, in this digital age in the digital world, what do you see that’s different than the rest of your career, which has been in psychology, a field full of innovation innovation for a long time? What are you seeing? It’s different? And how are you approaching that? In this new era?
Steve Perky 1:28
Yeah, so it’s, it’s an incredible amount of change. We started out many of us in this room were born in what are referred to as the Gutenberg era, was highly influenced by the printed printed media, the digital age has really been coming to light in the past few years. But it’s been it’s started, you know, a few decades ago, especially in the past two, three years, it has accelerated immensely. And we really do live in a completely different culture than many of us were born into. But we didn’t get the pleasure of traveling to that new culture, we just kind of here we are. So it’s learning how to relate. Like to say, we’ve redefined our place. We’ve redefined our relationships, and we’ve redefined the time. So our place we are together with 1000s of people globally today, at this conference, our time, we can record anything and watch it later. A lot of things are on demand. So we can kind of shift that time and redo our schedules. But the connectedness that we are experiencing, has moved from a relational connectedness to more of a networking, connectedness. And so the human intelligence aspect, a lot of species becomes more accidental than it has been in the past. So as we move into deeper into the digital age, and we really have just really, barely scratched the surface of the beginning of the digital age. And moving forward, our human intelligence is going to be more and more important.
Aaron Lee 3:18
As you look back at the Pittsburgh era, the Industrial Revolution. Even thinking about trying periods of generations, we’ve had a standard amounts of time, those periods were 200 years, a generation is about 18 years. But you look at a chart that shows the rapid adoption of chat GPT compared to other technologies, and you see how much faster things are changing and being adopted. And I heard this once you go back to anybody, remember, or anybody still have a floppy disk around?
Unknown Speaker 3:56
Probably it’s a poster
Unknown Speaker 4:02
saying, shooting at them recently
Aaron Lee 4:08
bought the size of a floppy disk. And now up to I just ordered a two terabyte hard drive as an extra hard drive for my computer, you plot that how much data we can store. It’s scary how much data is out there. And I think that’s important for us to recognize and realize pay attention like I said to the human side of life changing around us outside of us, but look back in the mirror and realize hey, what’s what’s moving away wait things has been? So what would you say is if people to encourage them to tap into that human side?
Steve Perky 4:46
First. Think about it as concentric circles, where yourself is in the center. And then as it goes out, you get yourself, your family, your team, your organization in your community, to be a leader. Today and really connect with with people, it starts with knowing yourself before you lead yourself. Because if you if you don’t possess a knowledge of being able to lead yourself, you really can’t lead others. And that’s what it’s really going to take in the digital age is that intentional, working on yourself. And being here today is, is a huge part of that, right? Because you’re working on yourself, you’re investing in yourself. But working on yourself, knowing what your tendencies are, the lead to your actions that result in your consequences in your life good or bad. Because one of the things about the AI that is out there, and this is scary, you’re scrolling through your phone, you’re on social media, all of a sudden an ad pops up or something. The technology out there really almost knows your tendencies as good or better than you do. So if you’re not intentional about continuing to learn about yourself, and knowing what those tendencies are, and then proactively writing your story for the future, then you’re going to be a product of the digital age and steam instead of being a leader in the digital age.
Aaron Lee 6:17
I heard coach Kevin Eastman, yesterday morning, many of you here in from Brisbane know, Kevin, if you follow the NBA, you know, Kevin, if you don’t follow Kevin, or the NBA, perhaps you’ve heard some of the players. He’s coached like Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant. And he said something yesterday that I wrote down, he said, being intentional, is what you do on purpose, to fulfill your purpose. And I think that’s a great reminder, so often we don’t look at ourselves and what we can do for ourselves, because we think it’s selfish. So we don’t take care of ourselves, because we’re so busy taking care of everybody else. But it’s really important that we are held to a selfish level, but healthy so that we have something to give other people. So Brian, this is truly a chaotic period of rapid change happening all around us, that you go back to the 20s, the 30s, the 50s of the 1900s when people thought it was changing a lot, then it’s changing even more now. And your business brand name that’s heartlessly chaos. So how are you meeting people in those places of chaos, then helping them find clarity,
Bryan Berry 7:40
and maybe importance of explain how it came about that name to that was in the investment advisory practice for about 30 years. And if you manage other people’s money or do anything with the market, you do understand chaos, because that’s pretty much what happens. I sold that practice about five years ago. And so watching everything happened with markets these days, no longer affects my sleep, like it used to. Coming through that and dealing with clients to deal with business owners, as markets rose and fell. Sometimes, understandably, most times, there seemed to be no reason that was understandable for folks, but getting people to walk through avoiding panic situations was always important. For me, five years ago, before I realized I was ready to sell my practice and move into something else. I went through a medical issue which was extremely badly the for about a 65 day period, which the beginning of that was finding out one day that you had 60 days to live when all you had was a stomachache and you had diagnosed that day with end stage liver kidney failure. And it’s all like doctor that. Barring a miracle, you got about 60 days left. Now, that triggers chaotic thoughts in your brain. So in for a minute i I froze is what some sort of business leaders times do. And bad news hits them in markets. If interest rates go nuts, they can impact everything. What over the last couple of years with people and $100,000 above asking price for houses in the race and I was panicking over what to do. And I’m not gonna say they made bad decisions, but they made decisions oftentimes driven by bytes don’t make this deal. It’s gonna go away rather than just the financially right thing for me to do. I’m not knocking people doing any of that, but they were just faced with those decisions to have to make. This is just every day, whether it’s the employment situation, whether it’s turnover, turnover with employees or just an inability to fill positions, or just the fact that you can’t manage or treat employees the same If we didn’t manage 4050 years ago, when funds are because they have to, because they needed the paycheck. And so whatever the demand was from the boss, they would do it to keep the job. And nowadays, and most bills, people have options. They don’t like the way you train them. There’ll be somewhere else. So how do you face the chaos, the chaos in that as well. So what we do and what attracted me a few years ago to be concerned about three giant was the tools that they make available, to allow me to use simple pictures and simple concepts. So things that I’ve been working with for 30 years, managing client expectations, and small business owners, day to day, emotional roller coasters, the simple tools like this, know yourself to leave yourself or, or your your peace index. So what we focus on with people is getting them to become fully self aware, but also understand how they manage their inner peace. So when Facebook chaos, they know the steps to stay to step back, take a deep breath. I mean, literally, remember to do, the first thing you did when you were born, which is great. Which sounds so simple, but can be awfully tough to do at times when you’re faced with panic and can’t immediately see the answer and solution. And if you try to act without taking that deep breath, you can make a mistake. And a lot of times when you make that first mistake, it’s followed up by a second mistake, and then a downward spiral downwards. And it just gets worse, if you don’t have someone there or some tool to grab on to to help you just take a pause. So that’s how I work with clients to do that, and I mean, titles are great, because they do this to this. They’re not complicated. It’s very, very simple pictures that just allow somebody to do, okay, to the breath, I’m good, I can handle this, I know where to turn.
Aaron Lee 11:56
And it goes back to the basis is so helpful. There are things that either we learned, or maybe we didn’t learn, or we should have pondered. And going back to some of those basics, having a simple picture or illustration that we can bring to mind helps make it so simple. And helps make it I saw this comment, just this morning from another coach, another giant in the country. He said, I got this feedback from a team leader today, who said, I just heard this tool of reference in everyday conversation five times, just today around the office. And that’s when we know the simple language has become part of the everyday vocabulary. We’ll link to those tools and images in the show notes, and new generation leaders.fm. So everybody can download those. Jerry, one of the things we’ll be talking about as giant in the hope is the vision to see every sector in every major city in the world. Liberated is our way of bringing out to the highest possible good. Our focus is here in Richmond. So how have you seen that in different sectors you’ve been working in? How have you seen liberation come to life for those leaders?
Jerry Howard 13:16
Well, the first thing I’d say is liberation, transcends all industries. Leadership transcends all industries. We’ve got a number of industries represented here today, not only on the panel, but also in the audience. And that’s what I found is that when we speak the language of leadership, we speak the language that everyone wants to learn. Everyone wants to know, everyone wants to work war, and be led by a leader one following. So when we talk about the giant tools, and how clickable they are, they really do transcend any industry. For example, I have a background in healthcare, I used to run small hospitals, I own a small construction company now with I don’t operate, but tools are effective in both of those areas. So I tend to hang out those areas. And what I’ve found is that when you become a leader worth following, it doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert or extrovert, it doesn’t matter if you are detail oriented or not. You are somebody that can lead ups. And so that’s really what what I’ve seen in all areas with the language of leadership is that we’re liberating people that, hey, well, I’m just not an extrovert. So I can’t do whatever. Believe it or not, I’m an introvert. And I had to take a deep breath before coming up here because I was eating my salad thinking that I have salad in my teeth. So Brian says take a deep breath. I’m like, That’s right. I agree. Right? So that’s what we do. We help leaders stop in the middle of that chaos, like Brian described, take that deep breath and say, Okay, what’s the right decision? I don’t know that AI can do that. Quite frankly. Like you think about healthcare. For example, can AI see that the patient has a what we call a flat effect. A flat effect is a sure sign of patients declining probably quickly and expensive. gets nourished just like Andy Stanley said can pick up on, and how much experience goes into building a building or doing construction that hey, I probably won’t be able to pick up on. So those are the questions I like to ask when I’m hearing about those things. But also looking at how transcendent language leadership is, across all those industries is people leadership. I think that’s the future.
Aaron Lee 15:19
So this is a little bit deeper into health care. A scenario that has been part of lawsuits is the tension between health care providers, not certain as to whether they can speak up and speak down about a patient’s care and medians. Jerry, how do you see that with leaders? Because it’s not just the nursing dynamic, it’s people dynamic. And we see it in every sector. How would you encourage team leaders to make sure they’re hearing from everybody
Jerry Howard 15:52
on their team? Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s a big topic, I was just speaking with someone back there about that in our table about what we call creating emotional safety. And even as the administrator, the hospital says, about essentially stops with me, I still didn’t have emotional safety, because I wasn’t sure it really would react to what I said, in all cases. So even me being the administrator, I still didn’t have the emotional safety to always speak up. So how many people are sitting at that same table, having that same challenge? Well, if we implement a language of leadership and understand everybody’s strengths, their tendencies, we really start to build relationships around that trust. And trust is the key. So if that certified nurse’s aide or nurse has kind of a quiet personality, but they feel empowered, now they’re going to speed up when they do see that flat effect on that patient or that patient’s decline. Whereas before, they might not have spoke up, because maybe their manager is a little more of a loud voice, as we say. So the louder voices, then we’ll kind of subordinate themselves a little bit to the quieter ones and ask for that input. And when we can create that, that that liberation, say, inside the healthcare, how many patients lives we can say and how many problems we can, we can mitigate. It was interesting to do highlight liberation. This was something else that I was thinking about this week. Kevin Eastman talked yesterday about truth and the power of truth, through AI, and as we talked about it, challenge are kind of synonymous. Support is something, the encouragement and motivation that we can give, alongside that clarity of that truth. That’s what gets us the liberation. That’s what helps us have the human intelligence to overcome AI.
Aaron Lee 17:34
And truly bring something unique to the table. Right, Steve? I’m gonna come back to you. And then we’re gonna go down the line. I’m going to ask you the question that Andy asked all of us this morning, and then we asked this crowd to talk about it our first break, what are you hoping to feel as you walk away from today,
Steve Perky 17:54
I hope you feel that there is hope for tomorrow. You listen to presentation from Dr. Burks about AI. That can be scary. They can be extremely scary. And I think rightfully so. But hope to know that. As humans, we still are controlled. By identifying what we can control. We can be intentional. And so just having that hope to know that it’s gonna work out I mean, be intentional. And don’t be accidental
Aaron Lee 18:30
hope is a good word. It was a tool for them. There’s still
Bryan Berry 18:35
so they’re thinking about this since we heard that question this morning. Well, this is gonna sound but I think the word is accomplished and what I mean by that is that we will have accomplished bringing this to a group of people with intention you know, we we didn’t know we had this opportunity until late December of doing this. Some of you all of you have heard us mention the five voices today. My foundational voices in my name, so I don’t like to wait for stuff so I was waiting around to see if anybody else is going to pick up this license because I wanted to bring I wanted to bring it to a crowd that I want to help so I basically bought these guys these guys aren’t gonna buy the license I’m gonna do what you got to come out and help me bring this so so going through that really really rapid four month period which doesn’t sound like you’re trying to put an end together like this I think accomplished and ready to sleep through the night but I’m just I’m excited with all of you here and I hope you’re I hope you’ve enjoyed it if you have then you can help people
Jerry Howard 19:48
you can help him by clapping say Brian been excellent job and did probably the lion’s share of the work. I just said Hey, let me know if you know. And you know, well, that’s
Unknown Speaker 20:07
your cell phone.
Jerry Howard 20:10
I mean, I like it up here, but I think it looks good. So the word that comes to mind for me, and I think he goes along with Andy Stanley said, and the reason why is my wife and I are facing a couple of pretty strong decisions, like she’s considering changing her job and has asked for my input on that, which is actually kind of a miracle. Because, you know, it’s just usually the stronger personality, with trust comes to mind. And so she’s intuitive. And it’s what we call intuition, signals about whether it’s right or wrong. And so I hope to feel trust, walking out of your trust, and not just the people around me, but my own intuition. That’s very
Aaron Lee 20:55
well, I think my angle is, and if the noise and the chatter around your table was any indication, as we started this recording, and this conversation, is the fact that you have, hopefully made a connection with somebody else, I think my bio visit, we all have a connection to know that we’re not in this alone. No matter where you are, no matter what you do, if you came here by yourself from your company, you know, now that there are other people in the region, who you can connect with, who you can link up with. And follow up on his these conversations about human intelligence, about leadership, about bringing your best in whatever industry that you’re in. Leadercast has been going on in Richmond for quite some time. A couple folks in here who are part of the earliest days, I was part of the last those that have liter gas four years ago. And at that point in time, I was the only person using giant in central Virginia. And so far together for me is getting to do this together with all of the giant coaches who are here. Now we’re up to 20, I think, across the Commonwealth, and half of that security in central Virginia. And so the Power of Together is strong. It’s exciting. And it means that we can, I always say we can do more together than we could ever do on our own. As a pioneer. Like Brian, I spent a long time in my life, trying to do the love, but as much better together. So that’s my encouragement to each of you the rest of the app this afternoon. As you connect around the table, make sure you get to know those names, schedule a follow up, and make sure you put some of these insights into practice. Well, that’s our conversation, we’ve got to get back to Leadercast live.