Episode 251: Why Authenticity Is Overrated — and What Great Leaders Do Instead (with Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic)
“Be yourself.” “Bring your whole self to work.” It sounds empowering - but what if it’s actually bad advice?
That’s exactly what our host David Green explores in this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, with returning guest Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic - Professor of Business Psychology at UCL and Columbia, and author of Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity is Overrated (and What to Do Instead).
Together, they challenge popular leadership tropes and explore why being real doesn’t always lead to being effective - especially in today’s fast-changing, AI-driven world. So, join them as they explore:
Why authenticity is misunderstood, and when it becomes a liability
The leadership traits that actually build trust and influence
How AI is transforming the employee experience
The risks of eliminating early-career jobs in pursuit of productivity
What inclusion really requires beyond buzzwords and optics
The three ingredients every AI strategy needs to succeed
This episode is sponsored by Valence.
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This episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast is brought to you by Valence.
[0:00:09] David Green: We talk a lot about authenticity and leadership, about being yourself, being vulnerable, being real. But what if that advice isn't always as helpful as we think? What if, in some cases, being yourself is exactly what gets in the way of leading well? My guest today, Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, has spent his career studying the psychology of leadership, what makes people tick, what makes them effective, and why so many of the wrong people still end up in charge. He's a Professor of Business Psychology at University College London and Columbia University, and the author of several brilliant books, including I, Human and his latest, Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity is Overrated (and What to Do Instead). And today, Tomas and I will unpack what it really means to lead with self-awareness in an age that prizes self-expression. We talk about where leaders should edit themselves, and where authenticity genuinely matters. We'll also dive into the changing relationship between humans and technology, from the dangers of replacing entry-level jobs with AI, and why productivity hasn't kept pace with our obsession with automation.
I must say, this is a conversation that really challenges some of the most off-quoted leadership advice out there and gives us a more grounded, evidence-based view of what effective leadership actually looks like in a world shaped by AI and constant change. So, without further ado, let's get the conversation with Tomas started.
Welcome back to the Digital HR Leaders podcast. It's great to have you back on the show. I can't believe it's been two years, actually, since our last conversation on the podcast, and hasn't the world changed since then? Back then, we were discussing your book, I, Human, and what it means to be human in a digital world, very prescient publication I think that was. And you've recently published, Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity is Overrated (and What to Do Instead). I've been reading the book. Thanks very much for sending me a copy of that. I saw you have endorsements, including from Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister of Australia, which is very impressive. What prompted you to write about authenticity?
[0:02:36] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, and first, great to see you, David. And thanks for having me back. It's always great to be here. I think you are sort of the David Letterman of the HR tech or people analytics. So, it's an honour to be back, and hello to everybody. Look, I think in a nutshell, I get really kind of carried away, and maybe the right term is I get really annoyed, when ideas that may have started as well-meaning or well-intended concepts get diluted or distorted so much in popular publications, whether it's the business management world or even the self-help world, maybe especially the self-help world, that the commonsensical or data-driven view on it has become heretical or controversial. Authenticity met those requirements. So, a much shorter version of this would be to say it's a bullshit idea and it's been annoying me for a while. By the way, you might be interested in this little factoid, that in an age in which AI is so good at replicating or imitating human content, including ourselves, for the average listener or viewer, it would be impossible to know if we are AI or humans right now, a good way to emphasise or even pretend that you're a human, even if you are, is to swear a lot. So, I'm going to try not to overdo it.
So, I live in the gap between practice and science when it comes to organisational psychology. When it came to authenticity, that gap was not just a gap, but it was an abyss. So, my attempt is to re-educate people and, if you like, offer a more nuanced antidote to this idea that you should just be yourself, you can bring your whole self to work, or you should always follow your values, or that you should just stop worrying and caring about what other people think of you, which, by the way, is the most narcissistic of all of the dimensions that authenticity has acquired. So, that's it basically. It bugged me for a while.
[0:04:40] David Green: So, obviously you're going a little bit against the grain, because I see so many articles and people talking about, "You must bring your authentic self to work", which actually I'm not sure I want to bring my authentic self to work personally. What does the science say and where should leaders maybe edit themselves, and where is unfiltered realness genuinely valuable?
[0:05:05] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, so the science is actually quite complex, but there are decades of research that I review in the book that tell us number one, that actually, it's really hard to objectively quantify authenticity. So, there are two approaches, right? You can rely on self-reports or subjective measures of it. So, you could ask me now, David, "Are you being authentic right now?" And the reality is that if I'm feeling good about what I'm doing, and I'm feeling good about my performance in this podcast, it's still a performance, and I see you nodding and celebrating what I say, I'm going to say, "Yeah, this is the real me", because we tend to find things that others appreciate as more authentic. And by the way, by the same kind of logic, when we screw up or do something that we don't like or that isn't valued by others, we say, "Well, I was just acting out of character. This wasn't the real me", and so on. Might be Bill Clinton after Monica Lewinsky or Dominic Strauss-Kahn, you know, "It wasn't the real me", right?
On the other hand, there's a much more sensible and useful approach to quantifying authenticity, which is basically not how authentic you feel or how authentic you think you are, which is as reliable, unreliable as how creative or nice or funny you think you are. Mostly people don't really know. The better approach is how authentic you are in the eyes of others. And that actually, there's a lot of evidence showing that, of course, it's advantageous or beneficial to be seen as authentic by others. But others don't really need to know who you are deep down or what you truly think about anything or themselves. What they need to be able to do is to predict you and to find that you are a safe kind of individual to collaborate with or to engage with. If they work for you and you're a leader, they need to be able to trust you. And if you actually look at all the individual personality attributes or individual character predictors that make somebody be seen as authentic and be seen as trustworthy, you realise that it's people who are deeply focused on others, not on themselves, who have emotional intelligence, who have the capacity to self-censor and self-edit, who know, by the way, not to broadcast their unsolicited views about the Middle East, Ukraine, Trump, Keir Starmer, or anything to others; and who fundamentally understand where their right to be themselves ends and their obligation to others begins.
So, in a way, if we're calling that authentic, that's fine, but that's very much the opposite of just unleashing your unedited or uncensored self on others, or bringing your whole self to the workplace. I would say my whole self isn't even welcomed at home. My wife and the kids are very much hoping that some aspects or dimensions of it, I don't know if this is the same for you, David, but, "Can you please take them out?" Preferably not to the workplace because it might harm your career, but take them out when you do that yearly vacation with your friends. And by the way, even your best friends can probably tolerate your whole or real self for the whole duration of that vacation. You still have to make an effort to use your own toothbrush and not theirs.
[0:08:27] David Green: Yes. Maybe it's good to people to feel that they're seeing the real you in certain situations, but I guess it also depends on the situation as well, when you might want others to think you're being authentic.
[0:08:37] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: You're injecting a critical nuance here because, of course, if you overdo it and if your political skills are so exacerbated, but actually not as sophisticated that you go from being seen as somebody with political skills to being seen as a politician, there is a price you pay. One of the oldest definitions of authenticity in social psychology is basically the reverse of total phoniness, which is a good one, right? So, if you're just smiling to everybody and telling, "Oh, you're great, I love your work. Yeah, this is amazing", etc, I mean you have no credibility. But there's a big, big range of behaviours that you can choose to display between that and just truly not giving a shit about others. And so, you have to convince others that you have their best interests at heart, and that when you're nice, you mean it to some degree, but people will still prefer inauthentic politeness and niceness than authentic rudeness. And by the way, even if your close co-workers or your employees and your friends come and ask you for candid feedback after they screwed up a presentation or an interview or something, what they're looking for is a little bit of comfort and warm fuzzy, "Oh, no, you were great". They know you're lying to them, but they must prefer that to radical candor.
I'm sure you also know the radical candor movement or radical transparent movement pioneered by Ray Dalio and others. It doesn't work for most people. And even Ray Dalio, in his viral TED talk says, "Well, there are limits". If somebody just returned from their maternity or paternity leave and shows you a picture of their newborn baby, you don't look at them and say, "Well, they're pretty ugly". So, I think likewise, if somebody is going to the first job interview, truly thinking that an interview is an invitation to just be you and force others to adapt, or show your whole self to others, they're going to remain unemployable, not just unemployed. An interview, like any other high-stake situation or interaction, is an invitation to display relevant social skills, knowledge or awareness of the etiquette, and also display those aspects of yourself that have some pertinence or importance vis-a-vis that situation. If then, you work in environments where you feel comfortable to also bring other aspects of your identity, that's fine. But this idea that we need to push everybody to do it, particularly individuals who are part of the out-group or low-status individual, is hypocritical and dangerous, because the reality is that authenticity has always been a privilege for the elite, for the vital view.
Let me give you a hypothetical example. If you own your own social media platform, you can say whatever you want. And it doesn't matter if you're bullying or belittling others, nobody will hold you accountable or will fire you. Unfortunately, that's not a great leadership example or modelling of leadership skills either.
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Listening to you, Tomas, I see some parallels between your book about incompetent male leaders, where you really looked at the difference between people who are competent leaders rather than charismatic leaders. I mean, do you see there's a blend here?
[0:13:11] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, so for some time, and again, it goes back to trying to distil the signal from the noise. And when we started doing research on to what makes leaders effective, and we realised that it's often attributes that are quite different, if not the reverse of what makes people get to leadership roles in the first place, and you have that confidence-competence gap, and you have that humility versus narcissism, and you have that almost, to some degree, ruthless, aggressive, competitiveness and assertiveness versus an altruistic mindset, it was very clear that even in this context, it is better in order to emerge as a leader to understand how other people see you. But one of the trickiest things to do once you get to a position of power or influence is to actually self-edit or basically have some boundaries, which are not going to be imposed by others, they're going to be self-imposed. You know the old line, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"? That's because when you are really powerful and you get to be CEO or an executive, actually it's very easy to let go and to think that you can do whatever, not least because everybody is sucking up to you and telling you, "Oh, you're great, you're great". It's kind of like The Death of Stalin. I don't know if you watched the movie, but that kind of scene.
Now, I think there's a really additional layer of why being less authentic can actually help you be more effective and more talented as a leader. And here, I am borrowing from our friend Hermenia Ibarra at London Business School, because she always made the point very clearly and with a lot of data that actually, why should you limit yourself by your past and present self, if you could also go outside your comfort zone and almost broaden your identity? So, if you think about it, even if you're a leader, which means you're doing something well, at least other people think you should be in charge, and maybe even performing well as a leader, what got you here might not get you there. If you want to evolve, and I think a leader who thinks they are a finished product is finished, especially now, and we're going to talk about AI, right, with everything changing, new skills need to be acquired.
So, I think one of the most important or fundamental ingredients of leadership potential is coachability, the willingness to change. And what is the willingness to change, but the ability to go against your nature? Simple examples, "I hate public speaking, but now I'm in this world, which is very externally-facing, I could say not my authentic self doesn't care about public speaking, I'm going to put others, or I'm going to learn it". And it won't feel like the real me or my authentic self, because it's unnatural. But if you do it a lot, then it becomes part of your identity. So, it's almost like going against your nature is a pathway to diversifying or broadening, if you want, yourself, driving the evolution of you. Same for leaders who speak a lot and they don't listen. It might be good to actually learn to shut up. Same for leaders who think they have all the ideas, and suddenly they might learn that actually, listening to other people's ideas might be good, and so on and so on. So, it's interesting, right, because to some degree, if you are being coached as a leader, typically you have to learn EQ to some degree, you know, learn to manage yourself and others better. But I think also, you have to learn to evolve. And that means not being limited by your current self and in a way, being less authentic or less of your natural you.
It's a little bit like actors, you know. There are a lot of actors that play the same character over and over again. Okay, fine. But the truly talented ones, they have a broad range, whether it's Tom Hanks or Marilyn Streep or Marlon Brando, they have a whole range. And that's because they learn to identify with unnatural behaviours that then become deeply ingrained habits.
[0:17:39] David Green: Very good, Tomas, and I'm sure we can all think of examples of good leaders, and good leaders have to deal with similar situations differently, I guess, depending on who they're interacting with. And so, then you might have to temper your authentic self to actually get to the outcome that's best for the company and the personal people that you're in that situation with. So, yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me. And then, there's inclusion. Not a popular word in some places at the moment, but I think it's an important word, as always. We all want people to feel that they belong. Research tells us that leads to positive outcomes for individuals, teams, and businesses. But how do we protect space for different identities and styles without accidentally rewarding the loudest, most performative version of realness, whatever realness is?
[0:18:37] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, that is the quintessential question. And I think, first, it's important to understand that you're right. Now, D&I or Diversity and Inclusion seems out of fashion. It's weird, isn't it, how the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other? But maybe it shows that actually, it never was that much in the other direction anyway, right, because you can't go from really pretending that this is a top priority to now saying, "I don't care at all about it". By the way, a lot of organisations, including some of our listeners perhaps, they still care about inclusion and they are now calling it fairness or equity or meritocracy, whatever. In a way, I have less problem of people doing it if they're pretending not to than pretending to do it and they're not. And intentions and outcomes are not always the same, so intentions can be good.
So, I think it's important to understand some basic principles here that diversity is easy to measure. It's a numbers game. If you define the category, whether it's race, gender, age, and of course you end up saying, "You're diverse", because there are so many, right? And it's social class we usually don't talk about, but it's one of the most overarching categories. But it's a numbers game. You define what percentage you want to have at what level, and then you can measure it. But inclusion is a leadership challenge. And of course, one of the tricky issues is that diversity without inclusion backfires. By the way, it works the same at a policy level. So, governments might say, "We want more immigrants", and you can alter those statistics, measure it. But if you then don't remove the barriers for those people to be successful, people are going to be more prejudiced, more racist, more discriminating. And the same happens at the organisational level. You can say, "I want more women in leadership roles". Let's use gender since it's a universal category. And they're actually not a minority, they're a majority. Well, getting more women to leadership roles is not a difficult part. But removing the conscious and unconscious biases that then make it harder for them to be appreciated or add value is the hard part.
Here is where authenticity comes in. I feel like, unfortunately, authenticity, much like the lean in or just be more confident kind of side of the arguments, unfortunately has resulted in throwing the ball at the out group, at the low-status individual, at women, let's say, and, say, blaming them because they're not bringing their whole self or they're not being themselves or they're not being you. And again, if you have to tell somebody that they can be themselves or that they can be authentic, it's safe to assume that they don't feel that it is safe. So, I think organisations are much better off creating safety. I'm still a huge believer of the potential that analytics and even AI have for quantifying inclusion, very simple things like, do people respond to you faster if you're a man than if you're a woman? Do people, if you use natural language processing, do they use more positive words if you're a man than if you're a woman? Perhaps it would even actually help us make incompetent leaders, whether they're male or female, more competent because they say, these are the things that team appreciated, these are the indicators that correlate with team engagement, team morale, team productivity, team performance, and so forth.
So, again, I think data and AI have a big, big role to play. We all hear of the horror stories when AI breaks bad or goes rogue, but the potential is still there, not least because humans are always going to be biased. But we have the ability to create systems and machines that can de-bias decision-making.
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And I guess one of the best examples of that at the moment, Tomas, is around coaching, how we can democratise coaching through digital assistance and stuff like that. So, as a leader, yes, you get your leadership development courses and everything else, but it's usually just the top 100 or 300 within an organisation that gets an executive coach; whereas with AI, potentially you can open that up to everyone in or every people manager in the organisation.
[0:24:08] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think you've seen and shared, in your wonderful newsletter, an article that actually came out twice in HBR. One was maybe a couple of years ago on one of the most common use cases for, let's say, generative AI, and then they revised it with new data a few months ago. We should mention the fact that ChatGPT alone has 700 million active users. It's pretty crazy, right? I mean, if you think about it, it's mostly a productivity tool or a thinking partner or thought partner or copilot, whatever you want to call it. But the number one use case is basically therapy, coaching, self-help advice. And yes, sometimes you have these crazy and moral dilemmas or stories where somebody is suing the platform or the company because their teenage son committed suicide after interacting with it. When you have that volume, it's inevitable. But the point of that data is to demonstrate that the appetite is there.
Most people can't afford an executive coach or even a coach. I would say even most people can't afford a good one, because everybody becomes a coach and the world of coaching, I have a lot of very good colleagues and friends who are reputable and sound coaches, and they always get defensive when we're talking about the potential of digital coaching tools to either complement, and in some instances supplement, some level of coaching. So, I think it's going to happen. Right now, you probably have three layers. You have the basically the most common one, which is for those who still manage to be at the recipient end of nice, cushy, corporate budgets for having access to a great human expert coach, executive coach. They're enhancing the services or the coaching with AI working in between the sessions, no different from my Oura Ring telling me about my sleep and my activity, etc. By the way, I know when to look at my data and when to not look at the data. When I have a bad night's sleep because I'm jet-lagged, I don't want to disappoint my Oura Ring app, so I don't look at it. But there's like basically intertwined digital AI coach intertwined with human coach.
There's a one that we're going to see more and more in the near future, which is AI immersed in real-time coaching sessions. So, if I'm coaching yourself now, it might tell me, "Hey, David looks a bit sad, so can you cheer him up?" or, "Oh, David looks like he's nodding, but he doesn't really agree with you, so why don't you stop talking and ask him a question?" Imagine coaching tools, AI tools that boost the EQ or the social awareness or perception of the coach and the coach-ee, and so we can both look at that, it doesn't have to be intrusive. And then, yeah, you get to the point of having a fully-automated digital or virtual coach. That might seem far-fetched if you want, like, Scarlett Johansson, her coaching or companion or wife or husband, which seemed really far off when it came out in 2013, but now actually it's very, very close.
But again, if you look at the current version of generative AI, large language model chatbots, they're not bad. People are asking them how to negotiate their salary, how to approach an interview, how to deal with a difficult colleague. I would say, let's at least accept that it can help us see different sides of things and understand other people's perspective. Oftentimes, that's why we don't like it, because if we hear that our boss, who we hate, actually might have a point when they criticise us, it's like, "Oh, I'm not going to use this platform, I'm going to go and use Grok now, which is going to tell me, 'Screw your boss, and quit'". But I think it's probably also true that these platforms, like real coaching, help those who need it the least most. Because if you're already open-minded and curious and want to learn and want to improve, you probably didn't need that much coaching. Whereas if you don't want to be aware of or even open to any feedback and you don't want to change, you really need coaching, but you're un-coachable. I think AI won't change that. Ideally, AI would make un-coachable people better, but I don't think we're going to get there.
[0:28:48] David Green: Staying with AI, Tomas, obviously you're a prolific writer, not just in books, but in articles as well. And you recently co-authored a thoughtful piece with Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School in Harvard Business Review on the perils of using AI to replace entry-level jobs. I think you cited a recent study by Stanford. What's at stake here if we rip out those first rungs of the career agenda?
[0:29:09] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, and which as you know, people are actually doing right now, because not so long ago, people were talking, "We want to augment, not automate humans." Then, companies got a little bit of FOMO or anxiety, and it's like, "Why am I not getting the ROI, the productivity gains that I should be getting?" And now, ironically, they're saying, "Well, if we have to right-size or smart-size or not grow", and a lot of companies are definitely not hiring to the same pace they were, it's not just AI, but I think AI is a part of it, they're actually eliminating entry-level jobs. I say ironically, because between a 20-year-old who's just starting and a 70 or 60 or 55, anyway, a senior executive who has been there for a while, who do you think is more likely to adopt AI and use the tools? No prizes for guessing. In general, right? But obviously, the turkey doesn't vote for Christmas or Thanksgiving. So, people are saying, "Well, let's cut the entry-level jobs". And the temptation is there, because if you are looking at a paralegal or an entry junior intern doing consulting or some basic data analyst, all of those things, even software developers, could allegedly be done or outsourced to AI. But that's playing the short game.
The point we make with Amy is that how are you going to develop future leaders if you don't have people going through the ranks? Some of the companies that were really the most influential in shaping good, effective corporate leadership, I mean McDonald's, probably the most famous one, people who became the Chief Legal Officer, maybe the CEO, at some point were flipping burgers and working in a shop. And I think you I think there's a huge benefit to doing that. Then also, there's been already a lot of studies and data showing that one of perhaps the most fascinating but also concerning paradoxes of generative AI as it is now, even if it doesn't evolve to the point of AGI, artificial general intelligence, artificial superintelligence, is that the more you use it, the more productive you are. But the more you use it, the more vulnerable to automation you are as well.
For sure, we might be so smart as a species that we invented a machine that can do all the thinking for us. But I think there's a real risk in having organisations and even leadership roles where the individuals in charge don't think at all.
[0:31:46] David Green: But obviously, this is a podcast that's mostly listened to by HR professionals and HR leaders. And I know, and I'm sure you know, Tomas, many of them are dealing with this situation at the moment and getting pressure from their CFO, their CEO. If they're feeling that pressure to cut junior roles, how do HR leaders help convince CFOs that redesigning these jobs with AI is a much smarter move than eliminating them?
[0:32:12] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: I think if they got to that situation where they're feeling pressure and the CFO is on them, it might be too late. I have to say, it might be that a lot of the work to prevent that or to avoid that wasn't done before and should have been done. I think in general, when people ask me, they were asking this before and they're asking us now, "What are the key characteristics that HR professionals and even a CHRO or HR Director should have?" it's like, a good line into their CEO, that needs to happen first. So, I think the CFO will likely listen to the CEO, not to them, even if they're the CHRO, or the Chief People Officer. And I think they need to try to engage the CEO on all of the other unintended consequences, like the ones you named, that we listed with Amy, but fundamentally help them understand cultural implications, even PR implications, internal employee engagement implications.
I think we almost, again, swung from one extreme to the other. In the beginning, CEOs may have been too fast to tell everybody, "Don't worry, you're all safe, we're going to augment you". And now, we're like, "Well, we have to be accountable to our shareholders and we have to cut costs". So, they went from creating a false sense of positivity and calmness to a general stand of anxiety and paranoia. I think, again, it's important to find middle ground. And it might be that they need to reduce jobs. I still think that probably, it's not so clear to me that entry-level jobs are the obvious target. I would imagine that it's more around looking more holistically and broadly what are the jobs that the organisation thinks should still be there and must be there in the future, and basically be more holistic. Look, I'm a big fan of the work by John Boudreau and Ravin on kind of work without jobs. And I often point out that one of the problems that we have right now is that AI is exposing the fact that there's a lot of jobs without work there as well. So, I would start there. And I would say just an awareness or realisation that it's very easy to target young people, because they have no power, they're just entering and that might be the most convenient and politically less controversial thing to do. But then, you're harming yourself.
Look, if we're talking about a football club, you could see it very, very easily as well. Even Barcelona, who used to be really good at creating all these young players, Busquets, Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, at some point they sold Neymar and they spent big and they almost had to sell, they almost went bankrupt. So, investing in the future, whether you're a football club, or a soccer club for American friends, a military organisation, a public sector organisation, or a for-profit corporation is really important. And what happens if your main competitor within your industry doesn't cut entry-level jobs, and suddenly assimilates and acquires a lot of the top talent for the future and bets and nurtures potential well; and then you realise, like many companies already have done, when they were very quick to cut customer service jobs, etc, and then they realised, "Oh, my God, NPS goes down. Customers are unhappy. We have to rehire humans".
So, mistakes can be very costly. And I think the big price you pay is cultural and really moral, if you like, or ethical, but also you can lose on the war for talent for the future, which it's very hard to recover from these kinds of mistakes.
[0:36:08] David Green: We'll come to your article with Alexis in a minute, actually. I've just got one thing, while listening to you, Tomas, you're almost issuing a bit of a clarion call here for the CHROs and HR functions to get on the front foot, to be proactive, to not wait for these conversations to happen, but actually drive these conversations with CEOs and CFOs. And it seems that this big transformation that we're going to go through from the workforce, how we work, is something that should be in the sweet spot of CHROs. Our mutual friend, Katarina Berg, previously at Spotify, now On, I think she's, for a number of years, been saying it's time for HR to be bold. It really is time for HR to be bold, isn't it?
[0:36:52] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, absolutely. And I think within HR, you have now this treasure of a function, which is the people analytics function, which actually has all the data, all the facts, all the information of what people are actually doing, how are they working, how are they using the tool? They are still the most likely kind of muscle of the organisation, or capability, if you like, to collect the relevant data that isn't there yet. So, if that can flow very clearly into the CHRO, and the CHRO can help the CEO understand the depth and breadth of this really intricate issue of managing the human-AI interface, not for today and not just doing what your competitors are doing or getting formal because you want to see 10%, 15% in productivity right now, but understanding more broadly that fundamentally, you need to reimagine how you organise yourself and how you think of talent and how you assign people to roles and how people will be adding value in the roles, start there. If you don't start there, then yeah, you can cut entry-level jobs, but it's going to be very fast and a quick fix that then doesn't lead to anything.
That, by the way, is as stupid as automating something that shouldn't be done in the first place. It's like, it will create the illusion of progress, and maybe you can claim that you've been using this tool or that tool, now it's AI. But it's a short-term strategy and you can fool all the people sometime and some people all the time, but you can't fool everybody all the time, as I think Abraham Lincoln and other people have claimed to say.
[0:38:37] David Green: So, you mentioned your article with Alexis Fink, who actually for listeners, most listeners will know, formerly led people analytics and other functions at Meta and previously was at Intel and Microsoft; and your article in Fast Company, and we'll put the link in the show notes, "Why Your Company's AI Strategy is Failing", you talk about volume, variability and human glue as the three ingredients of a good AI project. Can you walk our listeners through that framework briefly and maybe whet their appetite to go read the article if they haven't already?
[0:39:09] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, I mean so in essence, we decided to write this article as a response to the oddly kind of viral study by MIT that concluded that 95% of AI projects are failing, which by the way, if you actually read the study, etc, I mean you should take that with a pinch of salt. But it is clear that a lot of organisations are not getting the value or the ROI that they expected to get from that. So, we do mention, again, what are the things that need to be done better? And I think one of the obvious things is identifying the right problem or the right process to kind of automate or at least augment with AI. That's where volume comes in if you're really good. Like, a lot of organisations have 1,500 use cases and some of them are very trivial. Spending more time identifying the right problem that needs to be tackled is really, really important.
Equally, I think working on, this sounds really obvious to say, but cultural readiness for change in the end, AI might be really new and we might not know where it's going, but it's still a change management project. And so, you have to win hearts and minds. Actually, I think a lot, probably a disproportionate amount of attention has gone into debating skills, upskilling and reskilling people, when in fact AI actually, you can be pretty dumb and unskilled and use it. Maybe, and we say this in the article, the important element of skills is actually upskilling and reskilling mid-level managers or first-line managers who are notoriously underinvested in. So, if this is a huge change management project, are your mid-level or first-line managers ready to sell it to people, since they're responsible to drive change and translate strategy into execution and so forth? And then, again it sounds very obvious, but I think having measurable outcomes and measurable results that actually translate into some kind of value added to the organisation is really important.
I often make this point, and I think it's an underrated but important analogy or comparison. Frederick Taylor and the beginning of scientific management get a bad rep today, because it was dehumanising and treating people like productivity rats in assembly lines and machines. Obviously, work has improved a lot, we've come a long way, and we now care about spiritual, fulfilled workaholics. But nonetheless, what must be retained from that pioneering approach to making organisations more effective, and by the way, the parallels are also there in that a lot of the technological advancements from that industrial revolution had happened, but somebody needed to reimagine work and how to organise labour for that to translate into productivity. The most important thing to maintain is that organisations still see themselves as a kind of a real-life experimental laboratory where they can try things out. And by that we mean, in an obviously ethical and responsible way, try different approaches to how people engage with tasks, with work, and with each other. And I think it's only the organisations that have that experimental mindset and that curiosity and that modicum of self-honesty or self-sincerity to measure results and changes, that we're going to see progress. That's the part that is missing. And even sophisticated organisations with a lot of data often struggle with the leadership part, with the culture part.
So, I think, again, the answer is not to fix one little part, but to really approach it in a top-down way with a systematic strategy that focuses on long-term iterations and improvements. Lots of people are using now Kaisen, Toyota's Kaizen, or the Japanese concept of perpetual improvements, iterations, and understanding that the goal is not instant perfection, but finding better ways of being wrong incrementally. There's a reason why that philosophy or that innovation approach has worked wonders for so long. Applying that to the AI age, I think, would be really, really helpful.
[0:43:57] David Green: There's also the governance piece, which again, maybe come back to the org chart and org design, too much control kills innovation, too little creates chaos. What does minimum viable governance look like in practice?
[0:44:01] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, it's a little bit, you know, I'm a big jazz fan. And I think that's the comparison I would use. For those people who aren't familiar, typically in jazz, which of course basically is famous for creative improvisation, almost every jazz musician will at some point record or play what you call jazz standards. But typically, they just give you the parameters and the foundations, the basic chords, and then they're brilliant because of all the improvisation and creativity that can happen in between. I think the same for regulation. I think actually, Europe is often criticised for being excessively bureaucratic and regulatory and hindering or inhibiting innovation. But actually, when it comes to AI policy and AI guidelines, it's very innovative because it moves fast and it tries to get the basics right, which is protecting consumers, protecting organisations, etc. So, I do believe that getting the fundamental foundational parameters right, data privacy, confidentiality, protecting people, consent, informed consent, anonymity, and doing that really well, and ensuring, by the way, that that's actually implemented. Because they exist in America as well. But what we've seen is that the cost or price of violating them actually doesn't deter people or rich companies from doing so. That's about it.
I think the problems come when you go very specific, when you are basically retrospectively enforcing things that don't have much relevance for the future, and so on. So, I think, like any strategy really, a strategy that is 80% right but implemented all the time will be better than a strategy that is 100% right but impossible to implement.
[0:46:02] David Green: On a more personal note, Tomas, how has all your research on authenticity, competence, AI and the other stuff that you research, has it changed the way you lead and show up in your own work?
[0:46:15] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Oh, ordinarily, when people ask me this question, "Do you walk the talk?" or whatever, I'm immediately embarrassed because I feel like I'm a classic academic in that I care about the research and the data, and then don't ask me if I do it because that's not the point. But I think when it comes to authenticity, there's definitely a strong autobiographical or personal kind of layer to it. When I began as a leader or managing people, I probably, and I blame this on my Argentine upbringing, I probably overestimated my skills, my talent, my EQ, etc, to the point that I thought I was full of ideas and I was very innovative and people would automatically follow. And as I've matured and grown, I learned in a painful way to understand how self-deceived I was and how important it is to actually worry about how other people see you. So, I like to think that my own personal development journey as a leader has been a painful but really beneficial process of learning to be myself less, and also of learning to adjust more and adapt to the culture and environment that I was in.
I think you will like this specific part of this, David, because I've spent now about the same time living in Argentina and living outside of Argentina. Outside has mostly been the UK and the US. But when I first got my first job at university at UCL, I think I was a lot more Argentine and excitable and outgoing. I always appreciated London as my second home, because it has always been, and it still is even today, a place that is very tolerant to people from the outside, almost so much that if you are from there, you apologise, "Sorry, I'm just from here", or like, "Quarter Welsh, but how I wish…" especially if you come from somewhere where the sun shines and the weather is good, people are like, "Oh, that's so great, etc". But also, British politeness means that people are going to tell you that you're really interesting, what it means that you're wacky and you should just shut up, so positive reinforcement there. But then, after 10, 15 years in the UK, I learned actually that there were advantages in inhibiting my unhinged behaviours, uncensored behaviours, and be a little bit more kind and caring.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, with about I think a period of 10 or 15 years had passed from me meeting this mentor of mine, Professor at UCL, who hasn't seen me in a while. And then, I met her at a Christmas party of all places, which is the one time a year where English people are allowed to just be themselves. Now HR is sanitising it, but for good reasons. And then she told me, "God, what happened to you? You're so boring now", okay? And so, this was the one person, an English colleague and mentor, who was actually quite entertained by Argentinian me. But I took it as a compliment, because I had become more British. Now, I inadvertently created a big diplomatic conflict or fiasco. But I know you know what I mean.
[0:49:37] David Green: I know what you mean. And actually, if people's reaction is anything to go by on your leadership and stuff, I remember a few years ago now being in the audience, I think you were at CogX and you were speaking with another mutual friend, Ian Bailey. And when you finished, I think there was a break straightaway, and if I remember right, the electricity wasn't working, so there were no mics, no slides. I don't think you had any slides anyway, but I think you just had to shout basically. And afterwards, the amount of your students and former students that came up to talk to you I think is a good indication from us of your leadership. So, an ability to inspire. So, I can say it, and I'm being very un-British now.
[0:50:17] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, you are, but you're very kind. But I think fundamentally what's really important is that we all try to be better or a better version of ourselves. And if you're interested in doing that, you have to change. And if you're interested in changing, that also includes to not be more of the same. Some of the most interesting findings in psychology show that the question is, can people change? The answer is yes, but mostly they don't. Everybody loves change until they have to do it themselves. What we want is for other people to change and evolve around us. And then, when people change, they typically change in two ways. The one that I described, which is they become a more boring version of their earlier selves, that's called psychological maturity. You become more agreeable, less explosive, less neurotic, more conscientious, and actually less curious. The other is you become a more exaggerated version of yourself.
So, in a way, people are a bit like wine. The good ones get better with age and the bad ones get worse, vinegary and acidic. So, you've got to be on the good side.
[0:51:22] David Green: Good answer. And this is the last question, Tomas. This is the question of the series, so we're asking everyone about this. And this probably plays quite well to what we've been talking about. How can chief people officers influence leaders to use AI to augment rather than replace talent?
[0:51:37] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: They have to rely on their EQ and their political skills, and really get under the skin of the CEO. That's it. The influence goes via the CEO, and then nothing that they would have learned in business school and nothing that their IQ can help with will help them have that level of influence. If they can't think of ideas, they might go to generative AI and ask for 10, 15 suggestions and try things out. But it's mostly a battle of hearts, not so much minds.
[0:52:09] David Green: And I think, as we've said throughout the conversation really, it's actually getting on the front foot, isn't it?
[0:52:14] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Getting on the front foot, doing it, and I mean if they are lucky enough to work for a very rational executive or CEO who might not be interested in the fluffy stuff that we call culture, talent, etc, let the data do the talking. Tell them or explain to them what measurable outcome indicator, KPI, OKR, whatever they want to call it, will change and improve because they are doing things differently or when they try certain things out. So, in a way, they should function very much like academic researchers, trying to kind of isolate potential causes, having assumptions or hypotheses, and then measuring outcomes, but hopefully bring about improvements for the organisation.
[0:53:01] David Green: And it reminds me, we podcasted a few weeks ago now with Dave Ulrich and Dick Beatty and Patrick Wright. Dave relayed a story of a CHR owner, large retail company, and they'd actually calculated that in their retail outlets where they had high employee engagement, the average basket size was $48. Where they had average employee engagement, it was $40. So, she quantified this into what it could mean for the business, and then got an investment to lead with employee engagement, measured the impact and got double the amount the year after. So, I think it's really framing it in language that is going to resonate with the CEO and the CFO, rather than, as you said, getting fluffy, because they're going to care less about the fluffy stuff. They're going to care about hard metrics that actually help the business move forward.
[0:53:52] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Exactly. I think hard metrics, even if storytelling is important, it's nice to have some substance, and that usually happens when there's data underneath. Look at publicly traded or listed companies, they can tell a story once or twice. But if it's not followed by actual results, you're found out. So, that's why I think do not underestimate the importance or the value of actual data. And AI can obviously be a really important tool for translating data into insights at scale, but leadership is what gets you from insights to actions. And that is a joint responsibility from anybody in the C-suite, but also anybody in a leadership role.
[0:54:31] David Green: Before I ask how people can get in touch with you, Tomas, you reminded me, when you were talking about Argentina, that when we recorded our last episode three years ago, I think it was just after Argentina had won the World Cup, and you'd been to Buenos Aires to join in the celebration. So, obviously the World Cup is taking place. This is the football, or soccer World Cup if you're in the US. It's in the US, Canada and Mexico next year. What's your prediction? Are Argentina going to retain the trophy?
[0:54:58] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: No, I don't think so. I think it's going to be Spain.
[0:55:00] David Green: Yeah, I think it's going to be Spain. Everyone here thinks it will be England. It won't be England.
[0:55:06] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Unfortunately, as much as Harry Kane will have scored 7,000 goals by then, he might still miss the crucial penalty in the final against Spain. Now, if I get this right, maybe we should record 70 different answers and then you can play the correct one.
[0:55:20] David Green: Or we'll just get AI to change it.
[0:55:22] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, exactly. That's better, exactly.
[0:55:26] David Green: Tomas, as ever, it's been a pleasure. Can you share with listeners how they can follow you and all the great work that you're doing for the field?
[0:55:33] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Yeah, so I'm pretty old school, so I'm going to give a URL, which is a website for our younger listeners, but that's the easiest way to find most of the things I do, say, keynotes, lectures, talks, writings, and it's just drthomas.com. And that will include information about the latest book, which is Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity is Overrated (and What to Do Instead), which I hope some listeners pick up, especially if they are open-minded enough that they are willing to challenge their assumptions. There it is. Beautiful cover. And you will also see that it has like a 3D aspect. The label is there if you touch it. But I hope they like the contents and I hope, whether they're in HR or more broadly leaders or employees, that they'll find it also useful in terms of challenging some of the assumptions and really finessing or fine-tuning their bullshit radar.
[0:56:37] David Green: So, those watching on YouTube will see that I held a copy of the book up to the camera. Those listening won't have seen that, but we'll put in the show notes links to Tomas's website, a couple of the articles that we spoke about today, and also a link to the book. So, Tomas, it's always a pleasure. Looking forward to seeing you next week in Atlanta. When this episode goes out, it will be about three or four weeks after that, but yeah, looking forward to seeing you next week.
[0:57:01] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: Likewise. Thank you, David, as always.
[0:57:04] David Green: That was such an insightful discussion with Tomas, one that really makes you think differently about authenticity, leadership and what it means to stay human when everything around us is becoming more automated. If there's one takeaway for me, it's that good leadership isn't about showing more of yourself, it's about showing up better. So, a huge thank you again to Tomas for joining me, and to Valence for supporting this episode. And of course, a huge thank you to each and every one of you, our listeners, who tune in to each episode. Your support, your curiosity, and your willingness to explore these ideas are what keeps this podcast going. So, if you found today's conversation valuable, be sure to subscribe, rate, and share the episode with a colleague or friend. It really helps us keep bringing these kinds of thoughtful, forward-looking conversations to HR leaders and professionals around the world. And to stay connected with us at Insight222, follow us on LinkedIn, visit insight222.com, and sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter at myHRfuture.com for the latest research tools and trends shaping the future of HR and people.
That's all for now. Thank you for tuning in, and we'll be back next week with another episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. Until then, take care and stay well.