#553-#556 The Essential Leadership Conversations: What Four Interviews with Marc Inzelstein Reveal About Modern Leadership
The Essential Leadership Conversations: What Four Interviews with Marc Inzelstein Reveal About Modern Leadership
Over four consecutive conversations, Niels Brabandt sat down with executive coach and author Marc Inzelstein to examine modern leadership from four very different angles: artificial intelligence, executive team performance, emotional coherence and hope. Taken individually, each conversation stands on its own. Taken together, they tell a more striking story. Across every topic, from AI adoption to boardroom trust to employee engagement, the same conclusion resurfaces: technical capability only converts into performance when it is anchored in a disciplined, human-centred approach to leadership. This article draws together the four conversations between Niels Brabandt and Marc Inzelstein to show business leaders what that discipline looks like in practice.
Leadership in the Age of AI: Anchoring Transformation in Being, Not Doing
The series opened with the question every boardroom is asking in some form: if artificial intelligence can analyse faster than any executive, what is left for leaders to do. Marc Inzelstein's answer to Niels Brabandt was that the question itself rests on a flawed premise, the do-have-be trap, in which organisations chase productivity and output as ends in themselves rather than expressions of clear values and purpose. Used without that anchor, Inzelstein warned, AI simply accelerates the busy work that already exhausts leaders and teams. Used deliberately, from a place of being before doing, it becomes what he called a liberator from work that never needed a human being in the first place. Niels Brabandt pressed him on the fear many executives will not say out loud, namely how to remain valuable as AI capability expands, and Inzelstein's advice was to step beyond self-protection towards core competencies that genuinely serve the organisation. His broader point, borne out by four decades of automation predictions that never emptied out the workforce, is that the next wave of valuable roles will be defined by exactly the things AI cannot replicate: creativity, connection and collective intelligence.
Why Executive Teams Underperform: Coherence Over Credentials
The second conversation turned from technology to the executive team itself. Marc Inzelstein told Niels Brabandt that the gap separating brilliant individuals from a high-performing executive committee is coherence, the degree to which people genuinely function as a whole rather than as protectors of their own department. He linked this directly to trust, describing how a significant trust gap often runs deepest at the top of an organisation precisely because so much is at stake. Niels Brabandt introduced the pattern he had heard from more than half of the leaders he surveyed ahead of the interview, that senior executives increasingly behave like temporary soldiers, arriving with a short mandate and moving on before the consequences of their decisions become visible. Inzelstein placed the responsibility for fixing this squarely with the chief executive, whose job is to define a shared purpose that survives beyond any individual's tenure and to build the psychological safety that lets political manoeuvring surface rather than fester. Discussing a real case from European banking, in which senior figures positioned themselves for a departing CEO's job rather than supporting the business, Inzelstein introduced the concept of co-opetition, coined decades ago by the IBM executive Sam Alba: competing to win, but doing so together, because one part of the organisation succeeding strengthens the whole.
The Leadership Heartset: Emotional Coherence as a Performance Driver
In the third conversation, Niels Brabandt asked Marc Inzelstein to make the business case for a concept far less fashionable than mindset: the heartset. Inzelstein was careful not to position it as a replacement for the intellect, but as the ground the mind stands on, a leader's connection to values, purpose and humanity. The most striking claim in the whole series followed: the heart emits a measurable electrical signal that changes under stress, and colleagues can sense that signal before a leader has said a single word. Leadership, in Inzelstein's framing, is a transmission of state. Niels Brabandt put the obvious counter-argument to him directly, drawing on interviews with leaders at C-level and two levels below it, many of whom privately admit their own CEO cares only about the numbers. Inzelstein's response reframed the trade-off entirely, citing a documented pathway between heart and brain in which emotional coherence measurably improves cognitive performance, and comparing distracted executives to a tennis player who has already lost the point by watching the scoreboard instead of the ball.
Hope as a Leadership Practice: The Engagement Multiplier
The closing conversation tackled the concept most likely to make a hard-nosed executive roll their eyes: hope. Marc Inzelstein grounded the argument in a number few leaders can dismiss, that US workforce engagement sits at roughly thirty per cent, with a further sixteen to seventeen per cent actively disengaged. Providing hope, he told Niels Brabandt, is what creates engagement, and engagement is what creates performance. Crucially, Inzelstein distinguished hope from manufactured certainty, which he called not just difficult but actively the wrong strategy, since it collapses a leader's credibility the moment reality diverges from the promise. Genuine hope, by contrast, is an honest acknowledgement of difficulty paired with a real belief that the team can find a way through it together. Perhaps the most useful correction Inzelstein offered was that hope is not a pep talk. It looks more like a quiet, attentive conversation, illustrated by a chief people officer who took her senior team on a listening tour across the organisation and discovered how much people needed simply to be heard.
The Throughline: What Four Conversations Reveal About the Future of Leadership
Read as a single arc, the four conversations between Niels Brabandt and Marc Inzelstein converge on one discipline rather than four separate ideas. Artificial intelligence needs a human anchor to avoid accelerating burnout. Executive credentials need coherence to convert into performance. Analytical rigour needs emotional coherence to function at its best. And engagement needs hope, honestly delivered, to survive difficult periods rather than collapse into disengagement. For business leaders and boards, the practical takeaway is not to treat any of these as a soft addition to an otherwise hard-nosed leadership agenda. Anchor technology and strategy decisions in stated values. Build psychological safety and shared purpose deliberately rather than assuming credentials will produce it. Protect the emotional state you bring into every room, because your team will sense it before you say a word. And lead with hope that is honest about difficulty rather than hope that promises certainty it cannot deliver. As Marc Inzelstein puts it across all four conversations, the organisations that will thrive are not the ones that automate the most, hire the most credentialled people, or chase the hardest numbers. They are the ones that stay the most human while they do it.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast's and podcast's transcript, read below this article.
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Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Episode 1 of 4: Leadership in the Age of AI
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Hello and welcome to the final of episode 4 out of 4 in our leadership series. Hello and welcome back, Marc Inzelstein.
Marc Inzelstein
Niels, so good to be back with you again.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Thank you very much. Back by popular demand.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So you talk about hope as a leadership practice, and let's face it, this probably will be one of the most controversial and most contested parts when you talk to leaders. Because most leaders tell you, look, we know employees are important, we know they have to be happy, but let's face it, hope is something which is out there or not.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Some people are more optimistic, some people are more pessimistic. I don't think it's my job to give hope. Times are tough, the economy's in a dip, so we have to face reality. People find hope or they don't.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
How, as a leader, when times are tough, how can I even consider when especially people who run the business and hire CEOs say, make the business work, make the ends meet, make the numbers be where they should be? How can then someone come up and say, hope as a leadership practice?
Marc Inzelstein
So it's a great question. I think we have to remember, first and foremost, that organizations are populated by humans. And without a meaningful future, without a hope that something good can happen for you personally, you lose your engagement, you lose your motivation, and you will be disengaged.
Marc Inzelstein
So a leader's first job is to provide hope, because hope provides engagement, engagement provides and creates high levels of work. And today we know that, in the US at least, the engagement level is around 30%, which is very, very low. And actively disengaged is something around 16 or 17%. So you have to provide hope to create engagement, and it's your job as a leader to know how to do that.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So when we talk about hope, does hope mean that you give people certainty for the future?
Marc Inzelstein
Great question. Absolutely not. I think.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
It would be great if you could, right? I mean, anyone likes to have certainty for the future in today's times.
Marc Inzelstein
Yes. We would love it. It would be wonderful to have a crystal ball and say, well, this is going to happen, and to have everyone be reassured. Well, no, we live in a world that's ambiguous. That's not going to change. It's just going to increase.
Marc Inzelstein
So hope is not about manufacturing certainty. In fact, I think that's the wrong thing to do, because people aren't going to believe you in the first place, because it's not credible to say you can predict the future. And secondly, when that certainty falls apart, you lose all credibility.
Marc Inzelstein
No, I think hope is saying that we are recognizing the difficulty of the situation we're facing. We recognize the challenges. They are real. And at the same time, I, as your boss, as your leader, believe that we can muster together the resources, the optimism, and the collective teamwork to find a solution.
Marc Inzelstein
So hope is a feeling that you provide, not certainty. It's a feeling that we actually can find a way to navigate the turbulence together, and that we'll find something that's worthwhile. So that is hope. It's reality, but it's reality knowing there's a possibility of getting there.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Excellent. Now, of course, I have to address one question which many leaders ask me when I prepare for this episode. Many people ask me, many leaders ask me, do I actually, am I able to win them all?
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So people often ask the question, look, I have the feeling some people are just incredibly negative, either due to their personality, due to their private circumstances, or due to bad experiences before. But some leaders have the feeling, no matter what I do, there are some people who I will never win.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Even if I try to give hope, they will deny to accept that. Would you agree with that, or do you think that you can convince anyone?
Marc Inzelstein
I think that over time, you can definitely turn the tide. I think there's probably a small, it's like a bell curve. The extreme portion of the bell curve maybe will never be convinced. And you don't want those people in your organization anyway, honestly. Ideally, you want people that do have some level of willingness to look at a possibility.
Marc Inzelstein
But let me tell you a story. About 15 years ago, a friend of mine, now a friend, at the time a client, took over a very large professional services organization, over 100 years old, and brought a dynamic, bold vision, announced a strategy, a change in culture. And many people, including many senior leaders, were dead set against it. They didn't believe a word of it. They didn't believe it would happen. And they were either vocal naysayers or silent dissenters, and they were significant.
Marc Inzelstein
But this leader, because this leader projected hope, was someone that created tremendous purpose in the organization. Over time, the tide started to turn, and actually, some of the biggest naysayers, some of the biggest resisters, became the biggest proponents.
Marc Inzelstein
So I think when people actually move from, let me see, this seems impossible. Oh, maybe it is possible. Oh, it's happening. Okay, I'm all for it now. So yes, the tide can turn, and I think you can turn people into, you can definitely turn the tide with people. Not everyone, but certainly a lot.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah. And I have to add one question here, because some people were very honest when I sent them the survey. Some people said in the personal comment section, they said, I think I'm not very good at that, because it is not my personality to give people the pep talk. That's, of course, a bit colloquial. There's more explanation afterwards.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
But a couple of people said they really see the point. So these were the people who, by the way, were most supportive of your point here, said, I see how this is important, but I think I'm not very good at it because of my personality as a leader. So then they described how they worked in controlling, and they often were steering organizations through crises, etc.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So when you have people who are, I mean, that's a remarkable level of self-reflection for some people, but they are still stuck saying, I think I'm still not very good at that. So when people say, I'm not very good at it, and I don't know how to learn it, how can I learn it when people say it's not naturally my personality to give people hope?
Marc Inzelstein
Oh, it's such a great question. The first thing I would say is, it's not. It's the opposite of a pep talk. Because all of us need reality. We need authenticity.
Marc Inzelstein
Hope can be a quiet conversation over a cup of coffee or a beer, where the leader is actually sitting with someone and saying, tell me what's going on for you. Where are you struggling? Where are you struggling? Where are you looking to grow your career? What are the opportunities for you?
Marc Inzelstein
Let me talk about what's really happening here and lay out what's be truthful about the organization. And then say, you know what? I'm here for you as your leader to help you find a path to success. Be part of my team and help us find a path to success. Right?
Marc Inzelstein
So we don't have all the answers, but by working together, by building trust, by being honest, that creates hope. Hope is not a pep talk.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Excellent. So when now people say, I think I should give them hope, I just don't know where to start. Is there something where you say, this is the hope 101 when people say, I actually never thought of that. I never considered it part of my job. So it's quite a big project, of course. Giving people hope is a massive task. So where to start?
Marc Inzelstein
I think start by listening to people, Niels. Start by really and really hearing them. What is going on for that person? You know, recently, a friend of mine who is a chief people officer in a big organization did something very unusual.
Marc Inzelstein
She and her senior leaders of her team went around the organization, and they just listened to what was going on for people. And in small committees, and people opened up. There were tears. There was anxiety expressed. People were open because leadership is hard today.
Marc Inzelstein
When you start to listen and you're there and you're really giving an authentic ear to the reality of the person in front of you, that's the first step. Then when people know that you're listening, you care, then you can say, well, let's talk about what might be possible in the future.
Marc Inzelstein
I'm not saying everything's going to be easy. It's not going to be easy, but I'll be truthful with you, and I'm going to help you get there. And we're in this together. That is where hope starts to ignite.
Marc Inzelstein
So again, not a pep talk. It's a reality talk, and it's a point of connection between the mind and the heart.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Perfect. Two more questions here. When you say people can open up, does it mean that the leadership open up first, or do you ask people to open up and you go second? Who do you think has to go first?
Marc Inzelstein
You know, that's a really good question. Sometimes it's good for the leader to be a little bit vulnerable and to share, you know what? I've got to tell you, you know, I had a health crisis last year. I was scared. I was under a lot of pressure. Thank God I'm through it now. But yeah, every day is not easy for me. But my commitment is to show up with truth and courage to be there for you.
Marc Inzelstein
Sometimes it's not necessary. Sometimes it's just, you know, what they say, it's the quality of listening elicits the speaking in the other person. If you're really listening, not much with your mind, but listening with your heart, the other person will actually open up in ways that may never have happened before. So it could be both ways, depending on the situation.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Perfect. And that's, of course, one last question which I have.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
People now listened to four episodes with you. We talked about leadership in the age of AI. We talked about why even brilliant executive teams can underperform. We talked about leadership hearts. We talked about hope as a leadership practice.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
By the way, if you just jumped into the fourth episode, listen to the other three as well, please.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And of course, I now have to ask, when people now say, hey, I think Mark can be really helpful for my organization as a trainer, speaker, coach, speak at our conference, or help us in any other way. My question, of course, has to be, how can people reach out to you?
Marc Inzelstein
They can just go to my website, which is essential-leadership.com, essential-leadership.com, and my contact information is there, Niels. And there's a link to my book as well for those that are interested in reading it. But thanks for asking the question.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Perfect. And of course, we have an additional interview online about the book, so don't miss out on that one, because that is also a brilliant one. We see leadership is complex, but there is someone who can help you, and it's actually a skill that you can learn. So at the end of the interview, this podcast and video cast series, there's only one thing left for me to say, Marc, thank you very much for your time.
Marc Inzelstein
Thank you, Niels. Always such a pleasure. Appreciate it.
Episode 2 of 4: Why Executive Teams Underperform
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Welcome back to episode 3 out of 4. In this quadruple episode of ExcellentHere, we talk about the leadership heartset, and—well—hello and welcome back, Marc Inzelstein.
Marc Inzelstein
Thank you, Niels. So good to be back with you.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So you talk about the leadership heartset. Let's face it: 99% of the talk is about mindset. You need to have the right mindset, you need to be in the right mindset, every challenge needs a certain mindset. Mindset is all over the place, and it seems to be the genuine key to everything now, and especially motivational inspirational speakers do not get tired of talking about the right mindset. So what actually is the leadership heartset?
Marc Inzelstein
Great question, and thank you for asking that. So the heartset is, in my opinion, at least as important as the mindset. It's the other part of the human. Our minds, our brains, our intellects are extremely important. We use them all day long, every day, and they play a vital role in our lives and organizations.
Marc Inzelstein
But the heart is what makes us human. When we forget the human, then organizations become meaningless and empty, and eventually become full of activity but with no actual internal intrinsic reward, because as humans we need meaning in our lives, and meaning comes from the heart.
Marc Inzelstein
So the heartset is not there to substitute the mind, it's there to complement the mind. It's there to tell the mind, "Okay, if you're going to be thinking and analyzing, what place are you doing it from? Are you doing it from a place that's grounded in your values? Are you doing it from a place that's grounded in meaning, that's grounded in purpose, that's grounded in humanity?"
Marc Inzelstein
And so the heartset is there to make sure that when we lead and when we execute strategy and when we are, you know, creating ideas and products and all sorts of things, that it's rooted in the place that is human. So we don't veer off track and actually do something that creates value for the humans in this world.
Marc Inzelstein
That's ultimately why we do everything. We're a world populated by billions of humans, and ultimately our job, I think, whenever what we do is to create value for other human beings. Without the heart, we can lose track of that very quickly.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Excellent. And in this context, you also talk about something you call emotional coherence. We talked about coherence before regarding leadership and executive teams, so what do you mean by emotional coherence in this context?
Marc Inzelstein
So emotional coherence is basically the actual physiological state of your heart. So I don't want to get too technical on this, but our heart emits an electrical signal. When we're stressed, when we're fear-based, when we're worried, that signal is distorted.
Marc Inzelstein
And what's fascinating, Niels, is that signal can be picked up by the people next to us even before we open our mouth. If you and I are sitting in a meeting together, within a few minutes I'll be feeling, without knowing it, what you're feeling. If you're feeling good, if you're happy, if you're centered, I'll be feeling comfortable. If you're stressed, angry, I'll start feeling uncomfortable even before you open your mouth.
Marc Inzelstein
Now, leadership is a transmission, in my opinion, a transmission of state. If a leader is in a good state, if their heart is coherent, if it's carrying the right level of energy, positive emotion, hope, trust, empowerment, these positive feelings, the person next to you is going to feel that. And that emotional coherence is something that's transmitted, again, before the leader even opens their mouth.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Excellent. And when we now talk about this emotional coherence, I actually ask leaders on C-level and the two levels below that, what do they think about that? So many people said they think it's perfectly important, and then the second part of the phrase often was, "But my CEO cares about the numbers."
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Or they say, "We have more KPI meetings than human talks in this organization." Or, and I quote word by word, "My leader said that these emotional things end up from team leader's level." These are statements by people who are right now leading organizations internationally.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So human connection and leadership: how do we actually get this in place beyond the motivational talk of saying, "Oh, it's all so important," and now let's get to the profit and income statement, profit and loss statement, income statement, cash flow statement.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So how do we get the human connection in place in a world where, when we look at the final result, the bank and the shareholders are going to ask you for profit and loss statement, cash flow statement, income statement, and maybe the stock price if you're lucky?
Marc Inzelstein
Yes, it's a fantastic question, and it's an absolute reality that most organizations face today. Many CEOs sit in that place, especially the public companies. They're looking at their quarterly reports and their stock price, and they're held accountable by their board of directors. So it's a reality that we have to deal with.
Marc Inzelstein
So my experience with this, Niels, is that it's actually misunderstood that the soft stuff, what they call the soft stuff, the emotional part of the human, leads to—can lead to—a distraction from the numbers. Actually, it's quite the opposite, because when you're emotionally coherent, when you're focused on the emotional part of the human being, you're actually much better equipped to perform.
Marc Inzelstein
So the studies show us that when your heart is in a place of gratitude, of optimism, of joy, your mind functions significantly better. It's an actual, real, scientifically proven pathway between the heart and the brain. And when the heart is in a good place, the brain is in a much better place. So we actually are much more equipped to think. Again, it's—
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And Paul, as we all know, but in certain times in our life where we thought, "I think at that moment, because of something that happened in my private life, I wasn't in a good place in the business as well," I think we all can relate to that very quickly.
Marc Inzelstein
Yes.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
We know the signs or not. We all know these moments where you think, "Maybe I didn't do too well personally, and that's maybe because I didn't do too well in the business," and vice versa.
Marc Inzelstein
That's exactly right. I mean, we've all had a time where we've had an argument with our significant other, we show up to work, we're not in a good place, that spreads to our team, we can't think, we can't function. So we know even from our experience, without going into the science, our experience tells us that's true.
Marc Inzelstein
The other thing is that when your eye is on—if you think about sports—when your eye is on the scoreboard, you can't be in the game, right?
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah.
Marc Inzelstein
Looking at the Wimbledon final, if all the player is doing is looking at, "Is it 6-3? 6-4? What's the score?" The game is lost already. But if they're in the game, that's with heart. That's the emotional component.
Marc Inzelstein
So being in the game means, yes, the numbers are important, but I need to focus on doing my job well, with meaning, with purpose, with inspiration. And when I do that, the numbers will take care of themselves.
Marc Inzelstein
And I do think a lot of executives are caught in that predicament. My advice is you have to be able to let go of the scoreboard so you can focus on the game, and the game needs to be played with heart.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And that also means that probably in executive qualification we need something more than we do today, because let's face it, most executives say, "At a certain point I'm going to do my MBA," and many people say, "Look, I'm going to do the smart pick," so I take something like MBA in Finance, Digital Transformation, and International Business, because that's what we need, and then they try to build their career.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So we need something on top of that, which goes more in the direction of soft factors.
Marc Inzelstein
I completely agree. I think in every profession today, and of course for organizations and leadership, it's critical. If you're doing international finance or international marketing, whatever it is, there should always be a series of calls to the knowledge: how do you maximize your own internal resources?
Marc Inzelstein
How can you remain resilient in the face of the complexity we're facing today in the organizational world? How can you become an engaging, inspirational, meaningful leader?
Marc Inzelstein
These things are absolutely essential, I think, and the world we're stepping into now, with AI and with the complex we're facing, is more important than ever. I think it needs to be a core part of every curriculum.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah, absolutely perfect. And one aspect which is important here seems to be hope. And here's a little teaser: we have one more episode for you where we're going to talk about hope in leadership. So stay tuned for episode number 4 of 4, which we're going to start in a minute. And now there's only one thing left for me to say for this episode. Marc, thank you very much for your time.
Marc Inzelstein
Thank you, Niels. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Episode 3 of 4: The Leadership Heartset
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Your executive team might underperform, and you wonder why. When you saw our last episode, you saw us already talking about the leadership in the age of AI. The question now is why, even with AI, your brilliant executive team might underperform. And we have an expert with us here today, backed by popular demand. Hello and welcome back, Marc Inzelstein.
Marc Inzelstein
Niels, thanks again for having me. I always love these conversations with you.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Thank you very much for taking the time again.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So, let's say you have an executive team, and often that means you have perfectly educated people who often come from prestigious organizations, who have years, not solely decades, of experience within the industry.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
They have a network, they know the people, they know the processes, they know organizations, they know best practices, and they know all the industry standards.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
How on earth, when you hire like that, can you be anywhere near underperforming when you hire these people? Because let's face it, they're also on a reasonably high payroll.
Marc Inzelstein
Yes, yes. That's a brilliant question, Niels. And it happens a lot, far too often, unfortunately. So I would say that what we often see is that individual excellence is not converted into collective coherence. That's the big, the gigantic gap. And let me explain what I mean by coherence.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah.
Marc Inzelstein
Coherence is when the different parts work well within the whole, right? That's really what we're looking for is coherence. And organizations, even the best, have a massive gap in coherence. Why does that happen? Because, like you said, you have the most educated people, often terrific people, nice people, but there's a massive trust gap on all teams, and sometimes more so than anywhere else on the executive team because there's so much at stake.
Marc Inzelstein
So when people get into the room and they're sitting around the executive team table, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of unspoken things. People are looking at how they protect their own departments, their own functions, rather than looking at, "How can I be part of leading the whole?"
Marc Inzelstein
If you're not coming from the whole, if you're not functioning from a place of coherence, you are definitely going to underperform. There's no question. So the potential collective intelligence that is available is not tapped into. So we've got functions sitting around a table, a committee, but it's not a team.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah. Excellent. And I—this is now almost perfect here.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
I, of course, asked people before why their executive teams underperform, and they think, and an answer which I received by more than half of everyone I asked, they said, "Look, our executive teams, they are all temporary soldiers.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
They come into the organization, they have their mission, and what many people who work for them think they have in mind, they think, 'What's my next step after this?' So I have here 2 to 4 years, I will achieve a certain implementation, a new CRM system or whatever it might be, get my bonus, moving on from here."
Marc Inzelstein
Yes.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So when people now think that from a certain level of career, anyone in there is not in for the long run. They are all in for the short run, according to many people who I ask.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
How should I ever get anywhere near trust when people say, "Look, you're just here for the next bigger bonus," and then you move on anyway, and probably everything falls apart 2 years later. But that's not your problem, that's our problem then.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
How to create trust when the picture is conveyed that many people think, "No one is here for the long run anymore"?
Marc Inzelstein
That's such a brilliant question, and it is a very big truth, unfortunately. This is the onus that goes to the CEO, right? This is the CEO's job. He or she needs to create an environment where people want to be part of it for the long term, and not because of the money. Obviously, these executives are brilliant, they're highly experimented, they are very well paid, but if they are only taking the job for the money, it's the wrong reason. And you don't want those people.
Marc Inzelstein
You want people that are in it for the mission and purpose of the organization, that they're to serve, that they're to lead other people, to elevate the hundreds or thousands of people, or tens of thousands of people that they may be leading. And the CEO, it's the onus on the CEO to create an environment that brings out the best in those people. What does that mean? Define a shared purpose. Why are we all here? Beyond making money, beyond, you know, our stock price, what are we here to serve in this world? Because every human being, even those that don't know it yet, need a purpose to be at their best.
Marc Inzelstein
The second thing is, how do I take the politics out of the room? How do we surface the issues that are there, but are not said, they're not spoken openly, creating psychological safety? When a human, and I can tell you, I've been in this work a long time, most of the people, the vast majority of the people I've met and worked with, want that. They don't believe the others want it around the table, but they do.
Marc Inzelstein
So the safety that, and the climate that has to be created by the CEO, but the CEO needs to know how to do that. It's not easy. Everyone can learn it, but this is where I think coaching and leadership experts, advisors come in to help a CEO create the climate, because it's hard to do alone. It's a very, very difficult job, a very loading job to be a CEO, but that's the job of the CEO, to make people want to work there for the purpose and not just for the money.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Excellent point here. And of course, I have to tap into one other aspect here. We probably heard of that. We had one Swiss bank that went under and now was merged with a bigger bank, so, and it turned out afterwards that the CEO, especially the last CEOs, had a brilliant team. They were all very well qualified.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
However, looking at what happened when they all unraveled the whole story of why the bank had to be merged, they found out, well, many people worked with the CEO, especially because they wanted the CEO's job. So on the surface, they were all there, but they said, "Look, look, look, look, I am just in the waiting position. You're going to fall. The question is not if, the question is just when. I will certainly work with that, and then it's my big time."
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
The question is, how can you prevent this from happening when, let's face it, you are all around very powerful and very influential people where you have no direct disciplinary action, simply tell them to stop doing that?
Marc Inzelstein
That's a really, really good question. And so just to be clear, you're asking how does a CEO prevent a climate where people are just there to take that person's job?
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah. Because also, let's face it, often CEOs said, "Oh, I like the atmosphere of having a bit of competition among staff. You know, the sales team all should meet the best." So you want competition inside the organization. However, where is the fine balance between the reasonably good competition and people just trying to outpace each other on the next promotion?
Marc Inzelstein
So, yes. I'm not a huge fan of competition on leadership teams. I like the term co-opetition, which is a term that was.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Nice term.
Marc Inzelstein
Yeah, it was created decades ago by a friend called Sam Alba. He was a senior executive at IBM. He's unfortunately parked on some years ago.
Marc Inzelstein
But co-opetition, meaning, yes, let's be competitive, let's win, but let's do it together, because when my team wins, your team's going to win too. We're all part of the same boat here. We're all in the same ship.
Marc Inzelstein
I don't think you can prevent, no one's got a crystal ball to say, when you hire someone on your team that that person's not going to want to take your job. Often ambitious people do want the top job, and that's okay.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah.
Marc Inzelstein
It's not a bad thing. As long as they don't do it with daggers in your back or trying to shoot you from behind, and that does happen too. I think you have to be careful. I think, look, I've watched a lot of executives over the years, a lot of CEOs over the years, and you have to be politically astute to know who you're allowing into your trust.
Marc Inzelstein
Ideally, though, when you've created enough trust on a team, the team itself is going to have a level of mutual accountability. When they see egregious behaviors, when they think it's becoming too political, they'll balance it out. So they want to be part of a team where there's some level of harmony and safety.
Marc Inzelstein
Now, again, it's still a minority of teams, but the opportunity is there to do it. And again, it's a climate the CEO needs to create. It's not perfect. There's always danger. There's always going to be people that are out for your job. That's unavoidable. But how do you create the climate to bring trust and openness into the room?
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Perfect. I think these are the perfect final words for this episode, because in our next episode, we're going to move from climate to the leadership hard set. You probably heard of mindset. The question is, what is hard set? So stay tuned and listen and watch to the next episode. So for this episode, there's only one thing left for me to say, Marc, thank you very much for your time.
Marc Inzelstein
Thank you, Niels. My pleasure.
Episode 4 of 4: Hope as a Leadership Practice
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
AI is here, and it's certainly here to stay. The question is: which role will humans play here? And we have an expert back by popular demand with us here today. Hello and welcome, Marc Inzelstein.
Marc Inzelstein
Hello Niels, so good to be back with you. Thanks for having me.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Thank you very much for making the time again.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Of course.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
When I know people say, look, AI is taking over step by step, I see my buddy who's a graphic designer massively affected. I see my person who's working in bookkeeping massively affected. And people often say, look, it looks like the whole human aspect of the business is slowly but steadily becoming less relevant and less needed.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So what is your take on that? Are these people right, or are they wrong?
Marc Inzelstein
I think they're partially right and partially wrong. I'd say they're right in the current experience of AI, because it's a baby. And like anything, you know, we're babies with AI as well. So we're jumping in, we're trying to figure it out, we want to get more done, we want to get more answers, we come have better analyses. And so I think in the short term, yeah, there's definitely dangers for jobs replacing humans. The question really is, is that the optimal way to go? Because the way I see it is that AI has tremendous, tremendous potential to augment our humanity and to augment the human side of our jobs.
Marc Inzelstein
So if I can just take a step back for a quick sec and talk about a paradigm that I talk about in my book, Essential Leadership, which is that even before the advent of AI, for the last 100 years, even longer since the Industrial Revolution, we've moved from being human beings to human doings. And what I mean by that is we want to do more, faster, better. We're always after productivity, about achieving. And we've become trapped in what I call the do-have-be trap. We want to do more to have more things, to be whatever makes us happy, but we think we need to be happy to be fulfilled. And that's backwards because it keeps us on a hamster wheel.
Marc Inzelstein
And it creates all sorts of stresses in our bodies, in our systems, in our organizations. It leads to burnout, and it leads to a lot of unhappiness, quite frankly. And that so that do-have-be is, I think, a mental distortion. And I think we need to step out of it and get and reverse it to the being, which is to be do-have. When we start with who we really are, our core values, our principles, who we are at our in our hearts as human beings, when we be differently, when we be who we truly are, then we act from that place. So we do from the place of being, and we have the things that really matter.
Marc Inzelstein
AI, in that context, has become an extension of that endless doing. So it's a danger in that sense. So if we if we implement AI without this understanding, we have to revert to our being first, we really put ourselves in significant danger. But if we if we revert to being, and we start with the place that's most important inside of us, our values, our humanity, AI can become incredible. And I think there's a place for greater humanity as AI liberates us from a lot of the busy work that we don't need to be doing anymore.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah, excellent. When I know people say, okay, this place of being who I really am. When people say, look, I try to be there.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
However, when I want to be who I really am, I always meet the reality of there are bills to pay, there are pressures I simply have around me, there are expectations I have to fulfill.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
If I say I want to be who I want to be, all of these pressures suddenly can't be fulfilled, and probably I can't pay my bills.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So how do I balance this right to say, on the one hand, I want to be who I want to be, on the other hand, there are certain circumstances where I simply have to fulfill expectations, probably from myself or from others?
Marc Inzelstein
Yes, that's a great question, Niels.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Thank you.
Marc Inzelstein
What you're really saying is we have to meet reality. And meeting reality can pull us away from the things that matter most to us, from who we are, from what really matters to our hearts, our souls, our spirits.
Marc Inzelstein
I find that to be a false dichotomy in the sense that we actually are much better equipped to meet the challenges of life when we are resourced in our true being, in our inner resources. Humans have much more inner potential than we know, much more.
Marc Inzelstein
But the stress in our minds, the constant activity, the constant reaching for that next achievement keeps us from connecting with that true power inside of us. So in fact, when we take the time, we can pause and reflect and take some quiet time and go inside to find out who we really are, what matters to us. We are much better equipped to meet the realities of the world as they are, not easy.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Absolutely. When I know people say, look, I am on the leadership side here. And when people say it should become increasingly important, I see more and more businesses cutting down even on leadership levels.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
I'm sitting here, and this is one of the questions which, when I prepared for this interview, received a lot that people said they are not addressing it openly because they are too scared to say it.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
But they say, how can I make sure that when suddenly the cuts arrive, I'm going to be on the side where they say, well, we will keep you even in the age of AI? So how, as a leader, can I adapt that I say I'm going to be attractive enough for the organization to still keep me in place?
Marc Inzelstein
That's a really good question. And I think the first thing is to recognize that with what's happening, there's a lot of fear that's generated. Fear is the enemy. When we act from a place of fear, we're at our worst. Now, I'm not saying fear is not real, and I'm not saying we shouldn't feel it, because when it arises, we have to deal with its reality. But our first step is to move beyond fear towards hope.
Marc Inzelstein
Understand there's always solutions out there. There's always solutions, but we have to be in a place of confidence to access our solutions. So if we're acting from a place of saving myself or not being part of whatever cuts may come, we're going to lose our ability to be creative, to be engaging, to do things that are going to serve the enterprise and serve whoever our bosses are in a meaningful way.
Marc Inzelstein
So we have to find there are many ways to get there. We have to step beyond fear into looking at our core competencies. Who am I? What can I really do well that no one else can do well? Reaching out to other people and serving the enterprise.
Marc Inzelstein
Meaning, if you look to serve what's the bigger picture, what does the company need from me? What does my team need from me? I've seen that across my 25 years of doing this work, is that when you look at the bigger picture, you serve the bigger picture, you are setting yourself up for success because you're actually stepping beyond yourself rather than thinking about, you know, what's going to happen to me.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah, absolutely. And also, I think we can consider, I remember when I was 10 years old, they told me, oh, all of this work will be done by computers. That was in the 1980s, 1990s. Looking forward, 40 years onwards, we're still all here and we're actually more busy than before. So can we say, even when we now say there might be a certain dip, new jobs will arise, in your opinion?
Marc Inzelstein
I think definitely new jobs will arise. And I think we're going to be more human jobs, right? AI is going to help us do more analysis, bigger productivity, help us understand and process information, find potential solutions.
Marc Inzelstein
But if you really think about what really happens, when the magic happens in an organization, it's because people, humans, me and you and others sit together in a room and our minds connect, our hearts connect, great ideas emerge. And that creativity, I think, is purely human.
Marc Inzelstein
And when we have more time for that creativity, more time to coach one another, to listen to one another, share ideas, to generate collective intelligence, which I don't think AI can do. AI is brilliant, but it can't have that level of creativity that the human being can have.
Marc Inzelstein
So I do think there's a bright future there as we leave place for the human genius, which is still caught up in too much business and too much doing. So there's tremendous potential there.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Absolutely. And I think we are going to we're going to go deeper on that in the future episodes, because we're going to have more talks with you. This is actually a series of four episodes. We now talked about leadership in the age of AI, and we're going to talk about why brilliant executive teams underperform in our next episode.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So stay tuned for this episode. There's only one thing left for me to say, Marc, thank you very much for your time.
Marc Inzelstein
Thank you, Niels. As always, terrific.