#128 - Threshold Leadership: Leading in the Age of AI - Nick Chatrath

[00:01:24] Episode Introduction

Henry Suryawirawan: Hello to all of you, my friends and my listeners. Welcome to the Tech Lead Journal podcast, the podcast where you can learn about technical leadership and excellence from my conversations with great thought leaders in the tech industry. If this is your first time listening to Tech Lead Journal, subscribe and follow the show on your podcast app and social media on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. And for those of you longtime listeners, if you find my podcast helpful and want to show your appreciation and support my work, you can subscribe as a patron at techleadjournal.dev/patron, or fuel me with more coffee at techleadjournal.dev/tip.

Lately, there have been a lot of hype, discussions, and debates about AI, sparked by the prominence of ChatGPT and Generative AI tools. Some people are excited by what AI can offer, while some are having concerns about the impact of AI to the jobs and society at large. Regardless of which sides you are on, I think we can agree that we need to be more responsible in developing the AI technologies and be more deliberate in providing guard rails to ensure that we use this technology to our benefits.

My guest for today’s episode is Dr. Nick Chatrath. Dr. Nick is a leadership and organizational transformation expert, and the author of “The Threshold: Leading in the Age of AI”. In this episode, Dr. Nick shared the concept of threshold leadership and explained its importance in the wake of recent AI advancements. He first shared some impact AI has made in our lives, both the good and the bad, and pointed out the importance of leaders taking accountability for those AI impact. Dr. Nick then shared in-depth the threshold leadership and its four pathways to help leaders be more responsible in the development and use of the AI, which are cultivating stillness, thinking independently, embodying intelligence, and maturing consciousness. For each pathway, Dr. Nick shared a few tips on what we can do to improve ourselves both at the personal level and the organization level. Towards the end, Dr. Nick closed our conversation by reminding us not to forget the two best human qualities we have compared to AI, which are love and wisdom.

This is such an interesting conversation with Dr. Nick, discussing the role of leaders and the leadership attributes we need to keep the AI advancement in check. If you enjoy listening to this episode, I would appreciate if you share it with your colleagues or within your community so that more people can learn from this conversation. Also leave a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as it will help me to spread the podcast to more people. Let’s go to the conversation with Dr. Nick, after a few words from our sponsors.

[00:04:35] Introduction

Henry Suryawirawan: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another new episode of the Tech Lead Journal podcast. Today, I have a guest with me. His name is Dr. Nick Chatrath. He’s an expert in leadership and organizational transformation. He’s currently the managing director of this leadership firm called Artesian Transformational Leadership.

Dr. Nick also recently published a book titled “The Threshold: Leading in the Age of AI”. As you can tell from the title of the book, we’ll be talking about AI (Artificial Intelligence), which is like the trending topic these days with all ChatGPT, fake AI, and all this AI generational tools.

Dr. Nick, it’s really a pleasure to have you in the show. I’m looking forward for this conversation about AI.

Nick Chatrath: Thank you, Henry. Yeah, it’s a pleasure to be with you on the Tech Lead Journal podcast today.

[00:05:17] Career Journey

Henry Suryawirawan: So Dr. Nick, I always like to ask people to share their journey. Maybe if you have some highlights or turning points that you can share with the audience here.

Nick Chatrath: Certainly. I started my career as a management with Anderson and then McKinsey, advising large organizations on a range of strategic and organizational human topics, and right from the start of my career, I had this burning flame really to help leaders flourish. And I was focusing in my consulting career in sort what I call Act One of my career, which was full-time, employed, working for large American companies. And I focused on a broad range of consulting and it helped me realize that the bit I really love is to help leaders flourish and to help organizations thrive.

And I left when I was 28 actually, and embarked on Act Two in my career where I juggled a lot of balls. One of them was freelance coaching and facilitating. I was volunteering at various organizations. I spent about 15 weeks or so per year doing coaching and facilitating leadership development programs. And that left a lot of time each year during Act Two of my career, which lasted 17 years in the end, it left a lot of time for other things. So I pursued a Master’s degree in theology studying Christianity, atheism Islam, then did another Master’s degree in classical and medieval Islamic history at the University of Oxford. Then did a doctorate there as well. I also led a couple of startups during those 17 years. One of them had some AI element to it. I volunteered as chair of governors at the primary school of my daughters. So did a lot in those years.

Then just before the pandemic, my family and I, we went and had a sabbatical. So I did no work for three months. We went to Colorado and we had a magical time in the mountains. It was life changing on many angles, and one was career wise. So as Act Two of my career was coming to a close, I felt there was something else I wanted to do with my career, which is, freelancing is great, juggling lots of balls is great, but what I lacked was a shared narrative of growth with a team, building an organization with a team.

And so into Act Three, we came back off the back of the sabbatical right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as it happened. We didn’t plan it that way to take the time off then, but when lockdown happened in the UK, the US in March 2020, we had to get on a plane at LAX at the last minute, fly back to London, back to Oxford where we live, and then lockdown suddenly.

So things changed and for me, career change was that I then joined this organization, which in fact I was being part of Artesian for many years, but we’ve essentially expanded and collaborate now more broadly globally. So I’m a partner in this leadership consulting firm. We have two partners, 20 employees, 200 freelance coaches and facilitators globally. And these are senior advisors. We’re serving a range of enterprise clients. Having a lot of fun, and yeah, obviously the book has just come out. Thank you for mentioning that. And it’s been five years in the making.

[00:08:20] Writing a Book About AI & Leadership

Henry Suryawirawan: I guess it’s also as part of many people who spent productive time during pandemic. You wrote a book, which, in this case you wrote a book about AI, specifically. Any particular thing, like why from leadership and growing organizations, then you touch on the topic of AI?

Nick Chatrath: Well, yes, the first subject I studied at university as undergrad was Math. And I’ve always been interested in the algorithms that are used and the way that machine learning has throughout the last years gone about the development of it. And I then did lead a startup that put AI and wearables and human coaching together.

So my interest in AI was even bigger. And I’m a chess player of a relatively low standard. However, chess and AI has a rich history in terms of the Kasparov and IBM matches, the Deep Blue matches, fascinated me. So I’ve always had a deep interest in this area. And what I noticed was that there are a lot of great books out there about AI and they talk about AI technically. They talk about the future and the kind of AI we need to build. Wonderful books and I recommend them. There are lots of great books out there about human leadership, human growth. And I love those books. Very few of them are rooted in a deep understanding of AI and the challenges of accelerating AI that we currently have. And equally, very few of those excellent AI books are rooted in such a deep understanding of human transformation as I focus on and my colleagues focus on in our careers.

So there was a gap there, bringing those two things to the market. I’m a firm believer in never writing a book unless there really isn’t anything out there like it. So that’s what led me. As you say, I hadn’t actually put two and two together that a lot of the writing did happen in the pandemic.

[00:10:07] Impact of AI

Henry Suryawirawan: Nice. Thanks for sharing that. As we all know, AI these days is pretty trending topics, especially with the ChatGPT, right? People are crazy about it. Do a lot of fun stuffs and even, I think, intelligent way of using AI to produce something that is, maybe insightful, meaningful, or even creative. So, maybe let’s try to highlight what other advancement outside of ChatGPT that maybe you think are worth to share with the audience here who are not particularly following any kind of AI related topics?

Nick Chatrath: Thanks Henry for asking that because AI is really changing the world for good. And one example would be in detection of skin cancer. Human dermatologists can achieve in one study 87% detection rate getting it right and AI 95% detection rate getting it right. Interestingly, when you put AI and humans together, you bring both into the process, the accuracy rate goes up even higher if it’s done in the right way.

But yeah, AI has helped catch wildlife poachers. It has helped spot Alzheimer’s disease from cookie drawings. It’s just helped us do so many other things like the very tricky protein folding problem was solved through the efforts of AI. So it’s not a hundred percent positive story at all in terms of the impact of AI on our world, but there are a lot of positives. There are some massive problems for us to solve as a species, and AI can really help us.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah. Especially things like for optimization, right? Where it’s like very tricky for human to keep on banging their heads to find an optimal way. So AI with the computational powers that we have, I think, will be able to provide that kind of optimization.

But as you mentioned, it hasn’t been always positive, right? There are some negative impact as well, with AI. Things like, for example, the deep fake, where people create some kind of fake videos with a certain maybe political or actor, actress, right? So maybe if you can share also what are some of these negative aspects of AI for people to be aware of.

Nick Chatrath: Yes. There are so many different areas. I mean, one would be in newspaper type columns where misleading financial advice has been given. Another one would be in the rise of AI-fueled bots. And we’re very aware from, for example, the latest US elections or other elections around the world of the impact of bots on the election process and people’s voting intentions.

Also there is the shared distraction that there can be from people’s high quality thought processes. If you think about a student writing an essay at university. I know I’ve heard from several academics that many students have submitted essays that do seem to be a little bit ChatGPT-like, and there’s a style that you can sometimes tell. And one academic was telling me that they’re actually uploading ChatGPT responses to their own essay questions to the plagiarism software. So that they can then have the plagiarism software test the human students' answers knowing that if they do submit something ChatGPT-like that they’ll get found out. But of course, that lazy reliance on a tool to write an essay for you impoverishes the development of your own intellectual learning. So that time where you sit with a pad of paper or just with a Word document that’s blank and really doing your finest thinking about a topic. If we are overly quick to hand things over to AI, then we won’t be creating as well as we possibly can.

There are more emotive areas where AI has really caused problems, which is if you look at adverts that are put out there on our social media feeds and the adverts are often produced algorithmically now. And they’re usually produced in that way. And I tell a story in my book about a lady who had sadly suffered a miscarriage, and she was a software developer actually, so very expert at able to block certain cookies coming through her computer, but she got chased around the internet, in her own words, got chased around the internet by AI-fueled ads that were offering her pregnancy products and baby products. And this is after this sad miscarriage had happened. And it was only a full reinstall of her computer, talking a hard reset, that she was able to escape the effect of these ads. And that is terribly sad.

And what’s difficult, of course, is then the resulting question, who is responsible for this? Because you could blame the software developer, but then often the software developer is operating on such a narrow slice of the pie without the bigger context. Then you could blame the leader. But then how much of the detail were they in on? But then we can often get very ‘holier than thou’ as consumers and say, “Yeah, let’s at least blame someone in the company.” But of course, we’re buying these products. We’re investing in these companies through our pension plans and other financial instruments sometimes.

So it’s a very thorny question. But yeah, the abuse of AI tools and the negatives are there for all to see.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, so you brought up a very accurate perspective of what is actually happening these days with all these interrelated technologies, like internet, data as well. We churn out a lot of the data these days from our devices, from our activities, browsing histories, and things like that. And also with the invention of new technologies or new startups or new products that seem to solve a certain problem, but are actually, maybe putting two together, they create a bigger systemic issue or sometimes ethical issues, like just what you mentioned about the advertisement that is actually promoting a wrong product and might affect people’s mental behavior and psychological thing, right?

[00:15:34] Leadership Responsibility

Henry Suryawirawan: Which brings you to why you wrote a book in the first place. You want to be able to give more responsibility to leaders to be aware of such things and become conscious before putting technology or AI related invention into the world for people to use. So tell us more why leaders should have this moral responsibility to actually be more aware and conscious before they actually roll out these kind of inventions.

Nick Chatrath: I think when you lead, you do have accountability. And it’s interesting to think about the difference between accountability and responsibility. So you are accountable as a leader. And I suppose there are some leaders, sadly, who would shirk that. Maybe they’re busy or not quite equipped enough yet for the breadth of accountabilities that they don’t have as a leader. And so that, I sometimes see it’s a rabbit in the headlights approach where a leader has been extremely proficient at a technical role or a more junior leadership role, and then got promoted and they’re in over their heads, as has been said by others.

So they are accountable. It’s not about me putting that on them. Then the responsibility could be on them or could be delegated responsibility. But leaders, we are the ones shaping the world of tomorrow. We’re making those policy decisions, making the decisions of where do resources get allocated. AI is an example of a technology that is very current, that is shaping our world in a lot of ways. Everyone’s talking about it in business and not in business. And so leaders have that accountability right now.

So my work is an attempt to inspire leaders to focus on the important role they have and to embark on a journey themselves as people that will maximize the benefit of their impact on society. Because if we don’t invest in our own growth, then we can walk unthinkingly into a negative future.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, that’s especially true, right? If people do not grow themselves, personally as well, like knowing what is the impact of the things that you are producing or inventing. And thinking about from different angles, right? Because sometimes we, technologists, tend to just work on the problems. We know what’s the problem, we find a solution, and that’s it. We never think of the implications of the second or third degrees of the impact of that particular solution. I think that is really critical for leaders to be able to think in multiple hats, multiple perspectives, and the systemic impact of certain things.

[00:18:02] Threshold Leadership

Henry Suryawirawan: And in your book, you actually mentioned this term called threshold leadership. So tell us more. What is threshold leadership? What is so different about this kind of leadership?

Nick Chatrath: Threshold leadership absolutely refers to this systemic effect that you mentioned rather than a simple move from problem to solution. Threshold leadership goes beyond older models of leadership that have been mentioned. Like for example, Frederick Laloux talks about the wolf pack and then the army form of leadership where you are very socialized into a certain values there of a public school or an army or a particular business. Then there’s a machine form of leadership that’s very much more transactional if you like. And if then there’s a family form of leadership that’s come about more recently that’s much more values-led.

And threshold leadership goes beyond these. And it’s similar to a form of leadership Laloux also talks about, which is names with the color teal. Threshold leadership goes above and beyond these earlier forms of leadership but also includes what is best about them. Ultimately, threshold leaders, they see themselves on the edge of something emergent. They appreciate the systemic richness and complexity that is around them.

So let me give you an example. You mentioned about the software developer who might think, " Here’s a problem. I’m going to find the solution." And I love the way you talked about, yeah, are they thinking about the implications? Are they thinking about the second, third degree implications? To think about those implications is hard work. It’s complex to do. And threshold leaders enjoy this. They appreciate this complexity. They realize that they don’t know everything. They’re deeply reflective, but they’re not so lost in reflection that they’re powerless to act. That actually they’re progressing into a deep freedom to act in accordance with who they are becoming and what the world is becoming.

As AI develops, the language models that it’s based on then become part of our world, we don’t actually know how human beings will then respond. For example, the next release of ChatGPT, we don’t know exactly how that’s gonna change how people interact. If we’re trying to predict what’s going to happen in the future, we don’t actually know the basis on which future AI will be developed yet.

So futurology really is a fool’s game. And so threshold leaders are okay with this complexity, and they’re immediately going to questions like, what is the bigger picture here? How could this technology be used in future? They’re willing to prize these four pathways that I mentioned in the book, and this is essentially the core of threshold leadership, are these four pathways of cultivating stillness, embodying intelligence, thinking independently, and maturing consciousness. That’s what threshold leaders do.

Henry Suryawirawan: I must say as a leader as well, it’s not so easy to think that way, right? Especially in these days where you work in organizations, you have KPIs, OKRs, performance indicators, whatever that is. That number itself is reduced to some small set of the situation. So you actually don’t have these KPIs to think about, oh, what’s the systemic impact of your solutions that you’re producing? I think that will be also a homework for all of us leaders here to also go beyond and always think, like what you said on the edge, right? Not only on the solution space but also think about the impact.

[00:21:17] Cultivating Stillness

Henry Suryawirawan: So you mentioned about the four pathways, and they are cultivating stillness, thinking independently, embodying intelligence, and maturing consciousness. Maybe if we can go one by one. Let’s start with cultivating stillness. I think stillness here, what you are referring to is like people being able to self-control. Why do you think stillness is the key here? For the first thing for leaders to actually think about becoming a threshold leader.

Nick Chatrath: Stillness is at the heart of human effectiveness. With KPIs and OKRs that you mentioned, we’re often heads down and we are just pushing towards a result that someone else has given us. And it’s like we’re a cog in a machine and not reflecting on does this machine really matter, or what part can I uniquely play in this machine?

So stillness is so important because it allows us to be more productive. I remember times when I’ve been working long hours and just not really taking a break, and then on a different day when instead I just go for a walk for half an hour without my device and just take that time to reflect. Then I come back and in the next, let’s say 5 hours of my day, I’m way more productive. So if you add up the 5.5 hours in total, then okay, I’ve only worked 5 hours instead of 5.5, but I kid you not, my productivity sometimes is double in those 5 hours compared with what it would’ve been in the 5.5 hours. So there’s a simple equation that can be used to say why this actually works.

I remember once. I was standing by an ancient well in Mottisfont, which is in the South of England. I was on a guided retreat. And the guide said “Look at this well and the water on the surface looked completely still.” And I said, “Yeah, it looks completely still.” And then the guide just let us take this in for a few minutes, and then said, “Look over to the right there at that stream.” And we could see this gushing stream over to the right. And there was clearly a lot of water flowing through that stream. Hundreds of liters per minute of water flowing through the stream, the guide told us and said that’s coming from the well. And this well, as you look at it, is completely still. Yet vastly productive.

And for me, that’s a metaphor of the human leader in the age of AI. There’s a temptation already with our digital devices to be distracted all the time. Then AI can get so exciting, can do things for us, we can be always on with our tech. But actually, if we take those moments of sitting under a tree or just going for a walk or a run. I know a run is not stillness, but actually you can find a stillness within sometimes as you are running. For some people sport is a very meditative thing to do. Threshold leaders will cultivate that space to wrestle with the most important questions.

Henry Suryawirawan: I believe some people also refer to this practice as mindfulness. Not only meditating, so things like running, going for a walk. Or even mindful eating, right? Some people also can eat while being mindful. These are the things that probably some practices that we can do in order to cultivate the stillness.

[00:24:28] Knowing What Matters Most

Henry Suryawirawan: And I also like one quote that I saw in your book. You mentioned that “at the threshold, cultivating space in your life to wrestle with who you are, who you are becoming, and what matters most”. I think for some people this is maybe existential questions or more philosophical kind of question. Maybe you can touch on a little bit why it is important for individuals or leaders in particular to know all these things. Know who you are, who you are becoming, and what matters most to us.

Nick Chatrath: Well, thank you for asking that question. I mean, it’s at the center of this whole discussion. Let me start with what matters most. Unless leaders are giving time to think about that, then they are potentially merely highly effective conduits to a dysfunctional future. They’re potentially ushering in dystopia more quickly. Now, maybe they get lucky and they usher in something brilliant and beneficial, but why don’t we be intentional about ushering that better future in?

So we think about the way that there’s a balance in the news media now between, for example freedom of speech, or do we put certain guard rails on to certain groups that may be disadvantaged and build in some safety and protection. There’s a valid discussion about that. Unless we have that discussion responsibly, and leaders can say, yeah, what matters most in our society on that dimension, and how are we gonna build AI to preserve what we want in that balance? Then, unless we do that, then it’s just a fight between two sides that aren’t talking to one another. And maybe the richest nations or the richest groupings of nations or individuals win out with whatever that philosophy is. Unless there is some deep reflection on that question and deep engagement fueled by stillness, then we won’t be tapping into the best of our humanity. And I hold as a deep thought within me that humanity is at root, loved and loving. But if we tap into that, then there’s a deep care and moral positive that we can send on out into society. So that’s about what matters most.

In terms of also wrestling with who you are, who you’re becoming. There’s another reason why this kind of stillness is so important for leaders, which is how do leaders get anything done? It’s through people. Leaders lead teams. Leaders have peer colleagues who are also leaders. There are extended stakeholders in their industry or in government, in other parts of the workspace. So as leaders, we’re always potentially inspiring others. Now, maybe we are also being deeply uninspiring to others. There’s a spectrum there.

A great source of inspiration I’ve found in people I’ve coached and when I’ve researched what makes for most effective leadership. A great source of inspiration is to be authentic and vulnerable with who you are. And not trying to pretend as if I have all the solutions, but actually I’m still becoming an even better version of myself. I’m on a learning journey myself, even though I’m a leader. And so to share about who you are with others. And that needs to come from having wrestled with it and having done the deep work yourself. Sometimes in organizations I talk with senior leaders who essentially say to me, “Oh, we’ve got these five issues among our people in our organization. They need to shift from A to B, can you help us?” And essentially what they’re saying to me is, “Nick, go and fix all these other people.” And I’m like, “Okay, what about some role modeling from you as a senior leader?” So I think it’s important at all levels.

[00:28:01] Organization Stillness

Henry Suryawirawan: That is a very good point, because we tend to just treat everything as a problem and we try to fix, right? So maybe there’s a silver bullet to fix everything. And you touch on another very important thing like, cultivating stillness for individuals for us as leaders. But how about cultivating stillness as organization, in the whole organization? Is there such way to create stillness in organization?

Nick Chatrath: Well, there is. And this puts the role of the leader even more center stage, because we can think about individual work, we can think about our team and how we inspire them and help them cultivate stillness. A leader can add tremendous value if they’re moving the needle on the culture of their organization.

So a group of threshold leaders can, if they get particularly good at this, inspire a threshold culture. This would be opening up spaces in the organization where employees can explore their true selves, can discuss about purpose. And opening up spaces can come in many ways: it’s about changing how we hire, changing annual review and assessment and promotion criteria. It’s yes about training and development interventions. It’s about role modeling.

Sometimes it’s about physical spaces. Actually, I would say that the physical place that a company offers its people is an important indicator of how they want them to think. I’m actually doing a talk in New York for a company that was telling me about their new office space they have. And this sounds very inspiring in terms of the care and attention they’ve put into the kind of air filters they have and the temperature and how that changes at different times of day, the kind of seating they have. And they really were thinking ahead about the kinda experience they want their employees to have: a restful experience and a productive experience.

So these broader questions of organizational stillness is important. And then also I think final point is the leaders can set the tone by how many KPIs they go after. If I see an organization with 50 priority result areas than just focusing on too many things, which could give rise to much more of a frantic culture. Rather to focus on three priorities and cascade them through the organization and allows people to take the time to focus on them well.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow! I never saw it that way, but now that you mention it, I can see the point. So the first is about physical aspects. So the offices, layouts, the setup. We used to have a lot of free seating, open table kind of a setup, which I think brings a lot of distractions. Especially when people talk or discuss, you can actually hear a lot of noises, right? Also neighborhood, maybe there are some construction, things like that. These also play impact to your stillness, as an individual, of course, and also the organization, right? If the leaders are getting distracted, of course, it’s very difficult to make a good decision.

[00:30:53] Improving Stillness

Henry Suryawirawan: So, also in the book you mentioned a few techniques that we can do in order to improve our stillness. Things like liminal questions, silent aspirations, the art of sitting, and so on and so forth. Maybe you can touch on a little bit and share what we can do to actually improve our stillness.

Nick Chatrath: In terms of improving our stillness, there’s a great exploratory team exercise that you can run. And this would require about a day to do this with your team and a bit of preparation in advance. And the purpose of doing this is you can expand your team’s aspirations about a topic they’re interested in and do it in a way that encourages stillness.

And these aspirations that you talk about could be linked to AI. So what you would do is you would decide the topic. So let’s say you have a team that wants to improve its response to the current ChatGPT launch, and then you agree on what the purpose of this exercise will be around that topic and gather inputs from your team about it.

And you plan an offsite event. At that offsite event, you make sure that you’re asking a broad range of questions to your team around their own purpose as a team in an 18 month to 3 year timeframe. You’re asking them around their strengths in this area, because too often we forget about our strengths. And then you’re also asking about stakeholder needs. So you’re covering this ground gathering inputs. You are encouraging your team in this offsite event to helping them to develop a draft aspiration statement for starting 3 to 5 years ahead and then ratching it back to 2 years ahead. Then you’re making it very practical, so it’s like a team offsite flow.

But the big tip I really want to give is to not pack that offsite with too many conversations. So I’ve given an overall flow of what you might cover, but that’s for a whole day. Someone might say, oh, we can do that in an hour. The problem doing that in an hour is you’re not allowing other people’s thinking to settle. And so I’d build in lots of stillness which could be just going for a walk, could be some mindfulness for five minutes.

I remember when someone first tried this sort of mindfulness in a business setting with 30 of us in the room, and someone else was leading this. And I felt, wow, this is weird, but all happened literally was silence for five minutes. And over time, I found this was really helpful in getting my thinking to settle. And then new thoughts emerged. And for me more powerful thoughts emerged. I was able to contribute to the discussion in a much better way. I surfaced more creative thoughts. So that would be a tip for a team offsite is to pepper it with regular silences of different kinds, such as sitting, walking, etc. Eyes closed. Sometimes you can have soft music; not exactly silent then, but it’s still being still.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thanks for the tips. I think it’s very important to introduce or include some kind of a silence. Maybe sometimes for leaders you jump from meeting to meeting, and they’re always back to back, never have any break or any pause, so to speak, right? So I think maybe sometimes you can practice in the meeting before you start actually you cultivate stillness. You have maybe a few minutes break, few minutes silence for people to settle down and think deeply about the particular topic that you wanna talk about.

[00:34:00] Thinking Independently

Henry Suryawirawan: So after cultivating stillness, the next path is actually to think independently. So tell us more about these pathways here.

Nick Chatrath: So there I was. A few years ago in Berlin, and I’d arrived at this hotel to lead an event. And I put my bag just to one side. I arrived on a flight and there was a participant at this event who looked a little bit lost as to where to go. So I just directed it into the main room and then turned on to carry on with my work and opened up my bag and noticed that my laptop was missing. And I had my laptop. I knew it was in there, and I’m doing that thing of when you lose something. " What? What’s happened?"

And then I’m looking around, I noticed someone else in the conference area is also looking perturbed and turned out she’d had her iPhone and passport stolen. Again, a couple of minutes earlier, she just put her bag down. And someone else had their laptop stolen. We worked out quickly, there was a thief who just run through this area when our backs were turned and grabbed this kit and left. And I went down to the front desk and I’m there, I’m like “Did you see anyone? No.” And they’re like, “Have you got CCTV? Yeah, but it’s not working.”

It’s like the frustration. I’m like, just lost this laptop and all that work I had on there. This was pre-everything being in the cloud. I had a lot of stuff on the cloud, but not everything. So I was suddenly just this dawning realization, this horror that I’ve got days of work ahead of me of trying to unpick stuff and redo stuff. And I’m there at this hotel to lead an event as well. So I had to center myself.

And I remember this frustration sat with me for days afterwards and it was affecting every meeting I was going into. There was this sense of grievance. And I’d ordered a new laptop and I was like, do I try and go through the insurance now for all the hassle or would they pay out? I don’t know. And I was just carrying this frustration into a meeting after meeting. And it wasn’t until a few days later though, I was sitting down with a friend of mine, Georgie, who is really good at creating spaces where other people can think independently. And she said to me, “Nick, what do you wanna think about?”

And no one had asked me that question in the last few days. And it was just such a wonderful open question. And she didn’t interrupt me and she was looking at me, great eye contact and various other things she did that we can talk about. Just created this space where I suddenly was starting to think for myself a little.

And first thing I came out with was all of this laptop story. Oh, my laptop’s stolen. I’m a bit frustrated. Took me 5 or 10 minutes for me to get this out and my thinking to settle. And then she says, “What more do you think, or feel, or want to say?” And she was deeply fascinated with what I was gonna say next.

And I was, I didn’t have my digital devices with me. We were in this one conversation. And through that conversation I had a load of insights and I surfaced a load of feelings, had some new thoughts, and off the back of that conversation I felt different. I felt more positive. Sure, this laptop hassle had happened, but suddenly I’d remembered what I knew anyway. I’d remembered more of what’s best about me, which is I actually do care for people that I’m in meetings with. All of these previous days when I just been at my worst in these meetings. It’s not what I wanted to bring to those meetings at all. It wasn’t what I wanted, and yet I was doing it. And so this environment where I was able to think for myself, allowed me to show up better.

And there are so many factors in our society that interrupt our thinking or disrupt our thinking, away from independent thinking. One would be polarization. Just to take one example. We see so many areas in our society where labels are given to different segments of society. It’s " Ah, okay, you are a red, I’m a blue, or you are a blue. I’m a red." Or it’s liberal, conservative. Or is this that the other, Brexit, anti-Brexit in the UK. So it’s very polarized very quickly. And two things happen which are both a massive shame. Firstly, the discussion gets shut down. But secondly, even among those where the discussion does not get shut down, where there is some space for discussion, it’s still not happening at a high enough quality. By which I mean the people involved in the discussion are not thinking for themselves, and they’re not creating an environment where the other person can think for themselves. And unless all of that is happening, there’s something impoverished. And it’s very difficult if I have, for example, a very deep seated political viewpoint, it’s difficult for me to have a conversation with someone who has the opposite political viewpoint where I am genuinely fascinated by what the other person is going to say next.

That’s the hard bit. I can spout my point of view. I can pretend I’m listening and just be pausing while the person is speaking, and I’m just reloading with what I’m gonna say next. That’s different. But thinking independently is all about am I really fascinated with what the other person is about to say? Am I really paying magnificent attention to this other lovely human being who is intelligent and who is creative and is worthy of good outcomes?

That’s a challenge you mentioned earlier in our conversation that is not easy for leaders. It is not easy, but also it just takes that intentionality and when we show that intentionality, then we can really go places in our thinking.

Henry Suryawirawan: It’s a good point you brought up about polarization, right? These days it’s becoming more extreme. I think you can also see from the political scenes, from religion or maybe other parts of the world as well. They have this kind of polarization debate. And I think you also mentioned few things that can disrupt the quality of our leadership thinking, Things like persuasion, right? Some people can have a very persuasive kind of a style. Maybe also advertisements that follow you around, right? They can also persuade you not to think clearly. And homogeneity, so you associate yourself with a certain group of values and you never think outside of that.

[00:39:48] Cultivating Independent Thinking

Henry Suryawirawan: So I think it’s very important for leaders to be aware, conscious about this potential disruption and be able to think independently. So similar to the previous question, how can we cultivate or nurture this kind of independent thinking environment in our organization? Maybe some tips here.

Nick Chatrath: Yeah. In our organization, I think one thing we can do is I’d encourage any person listening to this podcast to identify a meeting that you’re going to have in the next 24 hours. And it’s up to you whether you pick a meeting with someone you really like a lot and know well, and the meeting tends to go well already. Or maybe you pick a meeting where it’s a tough one, and it’s just like this type of meeting doesn’t go very well.

And with the meeting that you’ve identified, make a commitment to yourself to go into that meeting determined to pay magnificent attention to what others are saying. See the impact that you’ll have in that meeting, because to be listened to is one of the greatest gifts we can be given as a human being. And all of these other lovely colleagues you have in that meeting will be very grateful to you. They’ll be very inspired. They’ll have even better thoughts and they will probably, having been heard, be more likely then to ask you what do you think and be interested in the answer as opposed to asking you what you think and really not being that interested.

So that would be the commitment is to see whether you can go into that meeting, as your prime objective is to pay magnificent attention to everyone else there. And what does that mean at the level of tips? It means when they are talking, look at them in the eyes. Don’t take notes on your iPhone. Don’t be messing around your email on the side. Look at them. When they’re talking, don’t interrupt them. Cultivate a real fascination with what are they gonna say next? And you are really interested in that. Not trying to pass and summarize and analyze what they’ve already said so that you can say some really intelligent thing back. Be really attentive to where they are and what they’re saying. If they cry, that’s okay. If they laugh then you laugh with them. If they’re angry, you can listen through the anger. You’re paying magnificent attention to them.

Henry Suryawirawan: That’s really beautiful. Yeah. Sometimes as stressful leaders, we tend to always want to go from problem to problem and find solutions quickly, right? But actually active listening, as I’ve also heard from many of my guests, is actually one technique that we can actually improve in order to be more attentive, appreciate the others, and create some kind of engagement with the other people that we work as well.

And I think in your book you also mentioned to produce a generative culture in organization, things like psychological safety, engaging the talent within your organization, and not always leaders have to come up with the solutions, right? I think we have bright people joining the company, so we also have to give them the chance and psychological safety to produce some kind of results that I think as long as it meets the outcomes that we want, I think that will be a good solution as well.

[00:42:46] Embodying Intelligence

Henry Suryawirawan: So we have two more pathways. So maybe quickly moving to the embodying intelligence, what is it all about, embodying intelligence?

Nick Chatrath: The fact that machines are not made of flesh matters more than some people think. And so embodied intelligence refers to the brain adjusting to feedback from its body and other parts of its surroundings. And at some level, it’s important when we talk about AI to remember that a robot is not necessarily AI. And a robot is a piece of hardware, and AI is software. So you can then have the two things put together and it’s possible that a robot with certain kinds of AI can have feedback from the body to the brain if you define the brain as the artificial intelligence part. So at some level, embodied intelligence can apply. And at some level all of these other intelligences can apply to AI.

But in all of them, my thesis is that as humans, we can add so much more beyond. In fact, that runs through the whole book. It’s essentially all answering the question: As AI gets better and better and better, what space is there for human leaders? If we believe that certain tasks like creating a financial spreadsheet will be usurped pretty quickly, if not already by AI, then what capabilities remain? What role is there for human leaders going forward? And all the four pathways are answers to that question.

So in the case of embodied leadership, AI does not know what it’s like to have a body. It has not got the experience of having a body. There is the fundamental difference. And another difference is that computers are potentially always on and they can run multiple programs at the same time. Whereas as human beings, we need to have a good pulse between resting and expending energy. And a lot of research had shown that multitasking on cognitive tasks does not work for human beings. We cannot multitask on cognitive tasks, whatever our gender, without losing quality or speed. If you want quality and speed in cognitive tasks, and the research shows do them in series, not in parallel.

So there are various differences between us and machines. And so for humans, embodied intelligence is about knowing how to recover energy and also really building on the experience we have of being embodied.

Henry Suryawirawan: That’s very interesting thing, you mentioned about AI also not having this body experience. Or sometimes also when people talk about AI they think, oh, they can just do everything, always on you mention, right? Do everything, maybe even solve expensive computational problem, right?

[00:45:30] Importance of Recovery

Henry Suryawirawan: But, at the end of the day, yes, they don’t have this experience that we have, especially when we have senses, right? The body, the senses. And also this recovery period. Tell us more why this recovery thing is essential in the intelligence part. Because AI is always on. They can always produce work and outcome, but why it is important for us to have this recovery aspect?

Nick Chatrath: It’s partly simply a statement of how we operate as human beings. That if I always exercise 24/7, I will run out of energy. I’ll just have to stop. If I never exercise, my body will atrophy in some sense, and it’ll be worse for it. Similarly, we have to sleep. So firstly, it’s just a statement of a difference between humans and machines.

But secondly, in our experience, there are many creative insights that emerge the more we recover. How many times have you had it? You woken up in the middle of the night and had a breakthrough idea? Or you’ve just been working for three hours? And then for me, often I go for a swim. In the swimming pool. I don’t have any of these underwater headphones where you can be listening to a podcast while you’re swimming. I actually quite like not having that, and I’m just swimming. So it’s one of these times in the day when I’m not in front of my laptop, I don’t have a pad of paper, I can’t be surfing a social media website or anything like that, I’m just swimming. And naturally I’m thinking about things. And often what happens after about half an hour of thinking about whatever, often some deep insight comes to me related to a work problem I’m working on, and it’s out of left field. And often it’s a solution that really helps me cut through. I mean, swimming isn’t recovering, and in a sense, physically I’m exerting myself, but I am recovering mentally when I’m swimming. Or if you’re sleeping, then you are recovering physically.

So these flashes of insight and creativity that come from left field, they often occur during those moments. And who is it who designs AI? Who is it who gives the purpose to AI? It’s humans. And it’s not at all sure that AI will be able to rise to the level of that kind of creativity.

Henry Suryawirawan: That’s a very good point, right? Creative insights. I think we all have experienced it. Maybe from going to a walk, taking a shower, or maybe washing the dishes. You get spark of inspirations. I think this is the key that you try to convey here, right? Recovery is important, not just physical, maybe through sleeping and all that, but also mental recovery.

[00:47:55] Organization’s Embodied Intelligence

Henry Suryawirawan: So how can we do for organizations to have this embodied intelligence? Is it like having more flexible working hours or not to get burnout and things like that, or any other tips here to embody intelligence?

Nick Chatrath: Yes, those are good ideas that you mentioned there. It’s about normalizing recovery. Prizing. I think normalizing is a little bit of a low bar really, but prizing and cherishing recovery. I once worked with some people who were in a call center, and for them it was about, they had to be on shift for a long period of time, but it was about being OK about taking five minutes here and there, where you’re not on the calls.

It can be about the spaces that you create as we spoke about for employees. It can also be about allowing employees to take a leave of absence, if they want to for a period of time. Having more future facing rhythms of work. For example, if someone wants to work nine months of the year and take three months off every year doing an expedition or something completely different, that’s fine.

Also we should think about recovery in a longer arc. There has been more publicity, there have been more articles about paternity leave and maternity leave and how to allow parents the time off they need around the time of birth of their children. And some policies have shifted around this. I think there’s much further to go. But one thing that I think hasn’t received a lot of attention which does need attention, is that when someone returns to work after having had a child, then actually they’ve been out potentially for many months. And for a new employee at that company, there’s an onboarding process and there’s a general recognition that this person doesn’t know the culture of this company and will need time to ramp up. Whereas when someone comes back into the workforce after, say a pregnancy and many months off, that recognition isn’t generally there. It’s, oh, you’re back. Yes, you’re in your old job. But of course the world has moved on and new colleagues are there, maybe new processes are in place. So some recognition from employers that we need to invest more, perhaps in some re-onboarding or hearing, crafting together with employees what sort of re-onboarding or reintegration processes, not just for the person coming back, but for other colleagues. What would make sense?

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow. You make a good point. I never thought about that as well. So we always thought, like for people who took a long break, “Hey, you’re back! Here are your old jobs. Please help continue.” So I guess it’s very important for leaders, don’t do that, right? Think about the re-onboarding phase and things like that, so that people ease off into their working mode again. So thanks for sharing that.

[00:50:22] Maturing Consciousness

Henry Suryawirawan: We have one more pathway, which is maturing consciousness. I think this is a little bit philosophical. Consciousness. Tell us why it is important.

Nick Chatrath: Yes, it can get philosophical, it can get ethereal. Another way though of looking at it is about maturity, because ultimately it’s a very practical thing. And I remember when I was first a consultant and in my early years, one thing I was very good at was charts. I could write PowerPoint charts and put things on there. And I could analyze an organization and say what it needed in terms of its future strategy. And I felt I was very good at these things and probably had a high level of arrogance with these things. I was in my twenties and feel like I’m hopefully a little bit more mature than that right now. Let’s see, ask my wife. But I remember this time when I was consulting for a client and I’d drawn up this chart and it had put the client in a bit of a bad light. And this guy was called Josh, this client. He comes storming into my office with this chart. And his fists are all scrunched up and veins throbbing on his neck. And he slams this chart down on my desk. “Now, what, what are you playing at?” And I was insensitive in the way I put that out there. And I didn’t go and discuss it with him beforehand. And looking back now, I know I could have done things differently. But at the time, I responded to him by saying, “Well, it just depends how you interpret the data.” I was digging my heels in, I was just not willing to admit I might have done something wrong or there might be another perspective. My self-concept, I felt attacked and I reacted by protecting myself. I was relatively immature and I was socialized into a value of my employer, which was a value of excellence, feeling like I have to hold the line on this and I couldn’t see beyond it.

So maturing consciousness is about, partly about saying we’re getting more mature as adults as we age, and people can go faster and slower on that journey. And so to be more mature as a threshold leader, then you get more at ease with tension, you’re more able to play with things. Like my twenties with Josh, I was nowhere near being able to joke with him about this. Complete sense of humor failure, and I wasn’t at ease with the tension that was in the room. My back was up, I was reactive, I was triggered, and I was hitting back. And that’s a lot of what we mean here by maturing consciousness, because where AI is gonna develop, we don’t know exactly. And it’s going in a lot of positive ways and negative ways, like we’ve talked about earlier. Threshold leaders will mature their consciousness in the sense that as these issues get more and more complex, including about ethics and responsibility, then there is a human breakthrough that happens towards increased consciousness.

[00:53:05] Love & Wisdom

Henry Suryawirawan: So that’s a very interesting story that you mentioned. I’m sure all of us here, leaders can relate, right? Because sometimes when there’s a situational happen, our people sometimes criticizing our work, right? Our first stance is be defensive, try to like counter argue about that particular aspect. So I think the key here, you mentioned three things, right? Humility, getting ease with the tension, and introduce play, right? Not everything has to be serious, right? So it’s not always about business. Sometimes play, jokes, and things like that can also help. And you also mentioned the two things in the consciousness here that I love actually in the book, is that you say that “no human qualities provide the evolution more than love and wisdom”. So tell us more the relation of consciousness with love and wisdom.

Nick Chatrath: Well that’s a big question. I mean, love is at the heart of all of this really. And in the pathway four in the book, I imagine a world where AI gets significantly better than it is right now. Now we’re in an area of narrow AI where AI on certain elements of cognition can do very well. I imagine a world where it’s even AI is super intelligent, where it matches or even exceeds human intelligence emotionally and kinesthetically and musically in so many other areas. And I imagine at that point, what value can humans add in such a world?

And really come down to these areas of love and wisdom, because at the heart of a highly conscious leader is a knowledge that they love themselves and that is a bedrock for then loving others. And this is something that underlies the finest human thinking and the great theologies of the world, is that love is at the heart of it.

This is one thing that I have been on a journey of discovery about over many years as well, is I think in my younger, less mature self, when, if I really think about it, sometimes I would care for others. I would love others out of a sense of wanting to help them because I felt they needed help. Out of a sense of a little bit of pity or a little bit of superiority from me to them, like, “I need to help you, so I’m going to help you. And don’t I look good, because I’m being kind and loving and caring.” And there was at the heart of it, a sense of insufficiently deep love for myself there actually, and saying that bedrock isn’t there and therefore I’m going to express my love externally.

And I’ve found that when I’ve really tapped into the fact that I am loved and I can embrace that, then that gives me a much stronger foundation. And that helps me be more conscious in the sense that we’ve talked about. Because now if somebody comes to me and criticizes my work, I think the first thing that I do now when I’m at best is, and this links back, all the pathways are interconnected, it links back to stillness. This can happen in an instant, but essentially I might even if close my eyes for an instant, I will breathe. I will be grateful for my body. I will connect different parts of my body and my mind and just have some loving thoughts. Say, “I’m here. I’m valuable. I’m worthy. I’m intelligent.”

And that’s fine because then this other person is coming at me. So are they, and they probably got a really good point of view. There’s always a kernel of truth in the feedback, however badly it’s given. And so I’m more able to access that kernel of truth and I’m feeling so much better about myself and I’m feeling very positive about this other person as well. That’s a huge win. And in the context of AI discussions that can make people very frustrated with each other, that can surface historic divisions, we do need to be accessing these breakthroughs in our human consciousness.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow, that’s so beautiful. The way you elaborate about the importance of love and wisdom and especially loving yourself. Just like the analogy of putting the oxygen mask on the airplane, right? You should put it on yourself first before you help others. So I think that’s really true, especially from my journey as well. I realize that, growing yourself, having self love for yourself is very important before we actually impact other people. And you also mentioned this thing called servant heartedness or servant leadership some people say. That is also important in this aspects, right? But you have to also help yourselves first, grow yourselves first before you actually help others.

[00:57:29] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom

Henry Suryawirawan: I really love all these conversations, but unfortunately, due to time Dr. Nick, we have to wrap up pretty soon. But before I let you go, I have one last question that I always love to ask my guest to share, which is I call three technical leadership wisdom. Think of it like an advice that you want to impart to listeners here for them to learn from your journey or your expertise. Can you share maybe the three technical leadership wisdom?

Nick Chatrath: Certainly. And some of these pieces of wisdom cover on territory that we’ve covered already today as well.

So the first one would be prize love. And as part of this first piece of wisdom, I love the saying, “Be kind always, for you never know what battles others are fighting.” That’s the first one. Prize love.

Second one is to be at ease with not knowing. To cherish mystery. We’re gonna need to get even better at that as leaders.

And the third and final one is to pay magnificent attention to other people.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow! They are all so beautiful. Especially, I like the first one. We ought to be always kind with others. We don’t know what battles they are having, So I think that’s really beautiful.

So, Dr. Nick, if people would love to continue this conversation, they wanna find you or maybe chat with you or talk about all this AI stuff and threshold leader, is there a place where they can find you online?

Nick Chatrath: Yes. If you go to LinkedIn under my name or artesiangroup.co.uk then they can get in touch with me that way.

Henry Suryawirawan: Alright, thank you so much. Thank you for this insightful discussion. I really love the topic, especially the four pathways. So thanks again, Dr. Nick.

Nick Chatrath: Thank you, Henry. Delighted to be with you today.

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