Episode 307 · 4 June 2026 · 51:05
What skills do leaders actually need in the age of A.I.? With Vince Sanderson
Featuring Vince Sanderson
What skills do leaders actually need in the age of A.I.? With Vince Sanderson
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Intro: your manager vs. your therapist
Meet Vince Sanderson
interview#vince-sanderson#guest#introduction
The Future of Jobs data and the rise of human-centric skills
interview#future-of-jobs#data#human-centric-skills#workplace-trends
From 'soft skills' to core skills
interview#soft-skills#core-skills#skills-framework#workforce
Analytical thinking and complexity translation
interview#analytical-thinking#complexity#problem-solving#critical-thinking
Creative thinking — and why the label holds it back
Empathy, active listening, and building connection
interview#empathy#active-listening#connection#interpersonal-skills
The 4 levels of listening
Social influence vs. manipulation
Resilience, flexibility, and emotional regulation
interview#resilience#flexibility#emotional-regulation#wellbeing
Rethinking how organisations train managers
interview#training#managers#organisational-development#leadership-development
The multiplier skill for this decade
Where to find Vince and wrap-up
Show notes
What Skills Do Leaders Actually Need in the Age of AI? — with Vince Sanderson
Guest: Vince Sanderson — management and leadership coach with 14 years' experience, keynote speaker, and content creator with millions of social media likes.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs data is in, and the skills that will define leadership over the next five years read less like a traditional training catalogue and more like a description of a great therapist: empathy, active listening, resilience, and the ability to influence without authority.
Vince joins Al and Leanne for a third time to break down these "soft skills" into actionable workplace behaviours. They dig into why the term "soft skills" needs to die, how analytical thinking is really about translating complexity for your team, the four levels of listening, and the single "multiplier" skill that will define successful leadership this decade.
Top 3 Takeaways
Train your managers — it's the highest-leverage investment you can make. Research shows your line manager has more impact on your wellbeing and life satisfaction than your therapist. If you do one thing, train your managers.
The skills that matter most are the ones we never formally teach. Empathy, active listening, resilience, and influence without authority are topping the World Economic Forum's list — yet most leaders have never had a single hour of formal training in them.
Your ability to lead people is the multiplier skill. Every other capability — technical, analytical, strategic — is amplified when you know how to develop, coach, and bring out the best in the humans around you.
More From Vince Sanderson
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vince-sanderson-9957a5254
- Instagram: instagram.com/vincent_sanderson
- TikTok: tiktok.com/@vincentsanderson
- YouTube: youtube.com/@vincentsanderson460
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottThink about the people who have had the biggest impact on your mental health. Your partner, maybe a therapist, a close friend. Now here's a question that should make you feel slightly uncomfortable. What about your manager?
Leanne ElliottResearch shows that your line manager has more impact on your wellbeing and your life satisfaction than your partner or your therapist. And that's not just impact on your career, that's impact on your life.
Al ElliottOur guest today is Vince Sanderson, management and leadership coach for 14 years. He's the guy who's got 270,000 followers on TikTok and literally millions of likes, and his mission is to tell you the things your manager never got trained to say.
Leanne ElliottAnd that phrase, the stuff managers very often don't get training on, is exactly the problem. As AI accelerates, the World Economic Forum has mapped out the skills that will define the next 5 years, and many at the top of that list are distinctly human. Things like empathy, active listening, resilience, influence. And those are the things that most managers have never been formally taught.
Al ElliottToday, Vince is gonna tell us what those skills actually look like in practice, not the buzzwords, the actual behaviours, and also why getting this right might be the most important business decision you make this decade.
Leanne ElliottLike I always say, if you do one thing, train your managers. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace Culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner, and we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Vince Sanderson is back. This is his 3rd appearance on the show, which officially makes him a close friend of the podcast. He spent 14 years coaching managers and leaders across organisations of every size, and he has a very specific frustration. Companies spend billions on technology and And almost nothing on the people managing the humans trying to use it.
Leanne ElliottToday, we're using the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs data as a framework. It maps out the skills that will matter most between now and 2030. And what's striking is the top of the human skills list reads less like a training catalogue and more like a description of a great therapist: empathy, active listening, resilience, the ability to influence without authority.
Al ElliottSo after this quick break, Vince is gonna break every one of those skills down into actual behaviors, i.e., what they look like on a Monday morning, not in some kind of contrived workshop. And he'll tell us which single skill he'd bet everything on as a multiplier for the rest.
Leanne ElliottSee you in a sec.
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216 thousand spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Vince SandersonMy name is Vince. I am a management and leadership coach. I've been doing this for the past 14 years now. Some of you might know me through social media. I put a lot out there on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube to try and create as much free value for people around the stuff that managers and leaders very often don't get training on.
Leanne ElliottDo you mind just telling us about the Future of Jobs data and the story that you are seeing about the future of leadership?
Vince SandersonYeah, of course. So you can find this, and if you Google it, research it, yourself if you do want to read through it. It's very interesting. There's a lot more information provided than just what I will share as well. So it is worth having a look into. So what it essentially lays out is what we think are going to be the most important skills in the workplace over the next 5 years, from 2025 to 2030. And no surprise, the top of that list is big data, AI, cybersecurity, and that type of thing.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Vince SandersonBut what also is interesting is that very human-centric skills around leadership are going to be essential over these next 5 years as well. So skills like active listening and empathy and adaptability, resilience, and just generally creative and analytical thinking, things that are very human are going to be the, I would say maybe the balance That offsets this massive growth in AI.
Leanne ElliottAnd do you think that's why we're seeing this, this kind of refocus on human capabilities as AI and automation accelerates and starts to become a fixture in our workplaces? Is it that— is that why? Is it to address a potential imbalance we're seeing?
Vince SandersonWhether it's intentional or not, I'm not sure, but I definitely think they're needs to be as we use AI more often. And this may change with younger generations. I'm very aware of that, that younger people may use it more often and use it as an alternative to human conversations. But for many of us, we're not at that point yet. And as we use AI more, that doesn't mean there's not still a real need for Humans need another humans, certainly around leadership. I don't think that people are led and inspired by AI yet. Whether that will change in the next ten twenty years, we'll wait and see. But currently, we still want to be led by people. We still want to be inspired and motivated by them. People still buy from people, whether that's external customers or internal teams. And so I think as we utilize AI. More so for processes and systems. What we want alongside that is to be motivated and guided by a person. And that's, I think, why we're going to see a continued trend for human-centric skills.
Leanne ElliottI know we've had this conversation. I'm sure you've posted about it as well, but shifting kind of the language from soft skills, very much an inverted chorus for me. So things like you said, the empathy, the listening, the analytical thinking, And instead of calling them soft skills, calling them core skills. Why do you think that shift in semantics is important?
Vince SandersonIt is an important difference. And yes, you could argue it is semantics. And does a choice of word matter? Well, actually, yes, it makes a huge difference in how people interpret it. Interestingly, though, the term soft skills was coined, I think it was in the 1960s in the US Army. So, they had hard skills, for people that were trained and developing skills on hardware. And so they simply gave a different term for things that were not based around hardware, such as people skills. So they just picked the opposite and they called it soft skills. But then over time, as it was adopted into business, we seem to have shifted its meaning or interpretation. And certainly some people out there will see it as a lesser worthwhile skill set compared to hard targets, or these are just soft skills, therefore we don't really need them. When the reality is some people say, oh, rather than soft, we use malleable skills. And I still think that gives the wrong impression sometimes. So I much prefer people-focused skills or human-centric skills or core skills. It really doesn't matter. But something that shows you the importance of it, that these are integral skills for leadership and making businesses run effectively.
Leanne ElliottIf we take the, the kind of the first group of skills that came up, it was around kind of analytical thinking, critical thinking. Why is that important in leadership? And what might it look like in the workplace in a way that people would recognise?
Vince SandersonI think you touch on a very important point that the labels we use are often not telling of what we expect. And a common mistake that leaders can make is using terms, even a really common one, to be more professional. It doesn't really tell you what's expected of you. And then we make the mistake of saying, oh, well, you know, I assume you should already know that. And I think that's a mistake, whether it's around these types of skills or whether it's around coaching or difficult conversations, or just the expectations we have of people, we should be much clearer about the behaviors we want to see and maybe the behaviors we don't want to see. So in terms of the first one around analytical thinking, some of the behaviors that I would expect to see in leadership and trying to promote within teams are going to be things like pattern recognition and then complexity translation. So I'll touch on the second one first. So complexity translation is actually a really important skill that we want to see in our high capability team members as well. So they're not necessarily the people that have the highest performance ratings in terms of goals or outcomes or targets, but high capability are people that we're looking for as future leaders. So complexity translation is essentially how well this person takes complex information, whether that's market research, whether that's reading through the strategic plan, and being able to turn it into meaningful language for other people, not just themselves. So they can read the plan and go, right, what does this mean for my team? This is what it means. But what does this mean for you on an individual basis? This is how it connects. And that's a massive skill to be able to do, because if we expect people to do that at every level, we're going to trip ourselves up. So, we as a leader should be developing those skills. And the better people can do it, the more alignment we see, and the more clarity in communication we see, which obviously has massive benefits. And then the first one around pattern recognition, I always kind of picture My absolute favorite film, which is the first Matrix film. You remember when Neo goes into the Nebuchadnezzar for the first time and he sees all of the code and he's talking to, I think, Cypher, one of the other characters, and it's just all gobbledygook until you get used to reading the patterns. And then people see more information and more stories and more insight in it. That's really what we want to do in analytical thinking is use our intuition, use our gut feelings, use what's happened in the past to inform what might work in the future. Now, that has some potential problems as well, and we might come to that— come back to that later. But using your experience to inform speeds up the process massively. So it's why we often want really experienced people in our team, because we want to use their pattern recognition. capabilities, and it's one of the hardest things to teach. It just comes with time and practice a lot of the time, unless somebody is willing to absorb and soak up as much experience from someone else as possible. And there's a nice little phrase here, which is success leaves clues. So rather than trying to work it out yourself for the first time, use what other people have done, use their patterns, and then build on it afterwards.
Leanne ElliottWhat I really liked about what you said is how part of the critical thinking is helping somebody understand the plan and what that means for their role and connecting with it, and that's what will make their work meaningful. And I think when I hear people talk about meaningful work, it sounds quite fluffy, quite nice to have, quite abstract. And what you're saying is actually the analytical thinking is a key role in helping people understand the bigger picture and their role in that delivery.
Vince SandersonYeah, absolutely. You're right that we want our work to be meaningful and impactful on a day-to-day basis. And one of the things that gets in the way of that for many people is really not understanding why or where it's going or what needs to happen next. And this interestingly ties in with a common question I get asked, you know, Vince, how do I improve accountability and ownership in teams? Well, one of the things that gets in the way of that is people being confused and waiting and seeing for someone else to tell them what to do. And so, if we improve analytical thinking in leaders, complexity translation, and they're able to communicate much more effectively, then team members understand what's expected of them, their role, and how they play into a bigger picture much faster. And that really does help with that bigger picture, the, the why, and, and trying to get team members more invested in achieving the company goals. So yes, I absolutely think it's a critical part of developing a more meaningful connection with the work.
Leanne ElliottAnother skill that was, was highlighted in the report was around creative thinking, and I think There aren't maybe perhaps many leaders who would necessarily think of themselves as creative. Maybe I'm oversimplifying that, but I'm not sure it's a word that many people would necessarily choose to describe themselves as a leader. But what does it mean for leaders to have creativity and, I guess, support innovation within a team?
Vince SandersonYou're right. I think certain words, again, rightly or wrongly, are often associated with certain people or certain roles or certain ways of looking at life. So creativity, you might lean towards, oh, well, that's something to do with the arts and that's nothing to do with engineering or something hard data. But the reality is that they are very connected. Again, one of the mistakes that we can make when we are thinking analytically is using all of our past experience. And on one hand, that's great, but on the other hand, we're using an old and potentially outdated model of the world to inform what we're going to do tomorrow. So when we tie in analytical thinking with creative thinking, we look at patterns and then we start thinking, But is actually this the best way to go? What is the real problem we're trying to solve here? Is there any outdated ways of thinking that are stopping us being more strategic and coming up with something new and innovative? So again, creative thinking is just as important and potentially technical as analytical thinking. It's just sometimes the label we give it gives the wrong impression again.
Leanne ElliottAnd what can managers do to create an environment that creativity is nurtured in and encouraged, not just from leaders and managers, but from every, every person on the team?
Vince SandersonI don't often get asked about creative thinking in my work, again, probably because of the label of it, but I do get asked about strategic thinking and how to promote that. And I think there's a lot of commonality and similarity between those 2 terms. Strategic thinking, and by proxy creative thinking, isn't something that's just for C-suite level or senior leaders. We should be promoting this at every level. So rather than just looking for best practices, we want to be challenging people to look for next practices. What's going to change in your job? Are you looking out there? Are you influenced by what's going on in the market? Are you doing your own research? But in order for people to do that They've got to know that it's supported and encouraged, and that doesn't happen in every organization. You hear things like, well, it's always done this way, why would we do it any different? We already know what works. And therefore it robs people of the, well, ownership and the chance to try and find something new. But we also want to make sure that we are creating a psychologically safe environment. So if people do try something innovative and it fails, that it's not going to be held against them. Now, that doesn't mean we're not going to challenge them, but the first question should be, well, what was the learning from that? What are we going to do differently next time? What do we— what should we drop, or what should we take forward so that we are innovating and trying to find the next best thing? And if managers are not trained in developing a psychologically safe environment, maybe because they don't think it's relevant, Then you're going to stifle people coming forward with different ideas because they're worried it might go wrong, it fail, or potentially be used against them in the future.
Leanne ElliottAnd do you think that's even more important in, in a world, a business world, a working world where technology is so disruptive and, you know, the geopolitical situation is so, so chaotic? Is that what's going to distinguish the organisations that will do well commercially to the ones that won't? Is those that are going to have people who aren't afraid to speak up and challenge ideas?
Vince SandersonYes, without a doubt, it is a massive factor. I think it also will be a huge factor for younger generations moving forward, having spoken to lots of, let's say, Gen Z, for want of a better label, over the past year in particular, I've seen and experienced less willingness and tolerance to stay in an organization with bad management. And so if we're going to encourage and attract the best talent of our younger generations, there is an expectation now, and I like it. I think it's a good expectation that my manager is going to listen and is going to build an environment where I have an opinion and my, my opinion carries weight. And it may not be the one that's taken forward, but it was at least heard and listened to rather than ignored because I'm young. And I think that's going to be a big difference in organisations moving forward.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast, that's Us, by the way.
Al ElliottYeah, yeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Vince SandersonAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking.
Al ElliottAnd you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil.
Vince SandersonWe've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of policy. It is.
Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Vince SandersonIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Vince SandersonI am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Lunch wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
Vince SandersonDefinitely come back, because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottI wanna ask you about the kind of the cluster of skills that came up, which I think listeners will be a bit more like, oh, that makes sense. You know, creativity and analytical thinking, it might be, might have not been expected, but things like empathy, active listening, building trust. We've talked about this before. I know our listeners would've heard about it before. What do you think is the most important thing about empathy and active listening in terms of future skills? So, kind of taking us to 2030.
Vince SandersonSo, I think that it's an interesting question because empathy and active listening and building a connection and caring about our team members has always been important. We've just seen an increase in the need for it. And I think it's a nuanced reason, and I think there's probably many layers to this. But off the top of my head, I would say the world is different. We live in a very fast-paced lifestyle now with lots of pressures. The economy affects it. And so this ability to separate our personal lives from our work lives becomes harder as well. And so managers are taking on more of a responsibility to support people's well-being. And we do know the research shows that a manager can have more impact on someone's well-being and their life, essentially, than their partner or a therapist, because they can spend so much time with that manager. So if those managers are not trained in empathy, in active listening, in being able to support people— but this isn't just in personal lives affecting work. I think it's also important in creating an environment where people can take risks, innovate, linking back to the previous question. If there isn't an understanding that managers aren't willing to listen and sit with people as they try and work things out and maybe fail and try again and build resilience, then we are setting people up to not give the best possible versions of themselves. And that's essentially what a manager's job is, is to get a group of individuals to collaborate together to achieve a result that is better than they could have done on their own. And if that doesn't need empathy, then I'm shocked.
Leanne ElliottI couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. And, and I want to kind of tie that in as well with With active listening that was brought up. What is active listening? Can we get a final say on what it is and what it looks like, especially for managers?
Vince SandersonNo, you can't. And I don't mean that to be flippant in that, again, it's a term that's used that means slightly different things to different people. But generally, I would say it's a set of skills that allows you to shift your listening into a different level. So there are 4— in one model, there are 4 levels to listening. There's cosmetic listening, where you do just enough to let someone know that you are still there, but maybe not fully paying attention. Maybe you're on your phone at the same time and you go, oh yeah, great. And then there's conversational listening, which is where we spend most of our days. You talk, I talk, we talk over each other a little bit, we have a laugh, and we move on. Nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with that in the workplace either, for most conversations. But as soon as there becomes an element of contention, or there's a problem we're trying to resolve, or maybe there's emotion behind some decisions, maybe there's anxiety or stress or frustration, that conversational listening isn't the best method to use anymore. We need to be able to unpick and coach through it. And so we need to employ different skills that we might use on a day-to-day basis. So skills like reflections and summaries and great open coaching questions, and even silence— not interrupting makes a huge difference. And it seems obvious, but many people struggle to do that, even for a positive reason. Maybe they're really excited and they want to join in the conversation. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you mean, but it disrupts the flow. Or maybe they're a manager and they've got great experience. Let's link it back to analytical thinking. Maybe they've gone through this problem that they're supporting someone with 10 times, and so they're using pattern recognition and they want to go, this is the answer. But we might be robbing that person of the ability to find a different answer.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Vince SandersonAnd so our ability to coach and actively listen for their interpretation, what's going on, can be the difference between real success and empowerment on autonomy and creating a bottleneck where we're the answer over and over again. And then the 4th layer is— and there's different terms for this— deep listening, therapeutic listening. And this is where we tend to go off to a very trained person for that extra layer that as managers, we actually, we need to be careful not to dip into that because unless we are actually counsellors, we may run the risk of opening a box up that we're not skilled enough to be able to put back together so someone can go home safely.
Leanne ElliottI remember when I did my coach training, one of the exercises we did was that one of us would, would one-on-one, one of us would have to talk about anything, everything, whatever we wanted, whatever came to our mind for a minute. And the other person had to sit in complete silence and not say anything. And the struggle was real for a lot of, a lot of us because the feeling is you want to respond, you want to engage, you want to encourage. So, I'm interested to know more about the silence that you mentioned and why that's important. What does silence facilitate?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottin a conversation that nothing else can.
Vince SandersonI think there's a really important distinction here between a training environment and real life as well. So, having done the same activities, it's really good practice. I would encourage anyone to try it and see your levels of comfort with it. Because we're just— that's just not how the world works most of the time. Anything above 2 or 3 seconds, we tend to fill in some way. But when you do get used to it, it usually has a couple of things that happen. One, and this is— people don't pick up on this as quickly. One, it can really give the impression that as the listener, But you are really digesting what someone's saying. Now, the reason that I started this with, there can be a difference between a training environment and real life, is I just want to be clear that when we're talking about silence, that doesn't mean you're not doing anything and that you're sitting like a stone. That in and of itself in the real world can create a very tense and uncomfortable position for people to be in because we look for nonverbal cues and maybe small verbal cues, little nods and noises and, uh-huh, yeah. Oh, okay, I understand. Tell me more about that. That doesn't mean we're interrupting. It's just letting the other person know that we're still there and we're paying attention. Because if you don't get anything, and I'm sure people listening back have probably experienced this, if you've been to an interview, where someone on the panel just stares and you think you're giving a great answer and they don't do anything. There's no nodding, there's no smiling. It feels so uncomfortable. So, that's not what we mean when we're talking about silence. You can be silent and still active, coming back to the active listening, active in the listening. But what it does do when we don't interrupt, is it really gives people a chance to hear their own thoughts out loud. That alone is worth its weight in gold. The amount of times that people will have gone, oh, well, I did this and I thought about this and do you know what? Having said that out loud, I know what I need to do. Having said that out loud, I can hear how silly that sounds. So you don't need to do anything to provide clarity to people. You just needed to give them the time and space to do it themselves, because that's what's often missing in certainly modern-day society. We just go, go, go, go, go, answer, answer, answer, next, problem solved, move on. When actually what they may have just needed was a little bit of space and connection, and then they solve it themselves.
Leanne ElliottOne of the most powerful training programmes I ever did, and Al did too, is when we both used to volunteer for the Samaritans. That's how we met, actually. And listening was such a big part of it. And they used to describe it as the analogy of like, you're— because Samaritans doesn't give advice, it's a listening service. You're basically— somebody's coming to you and they're a tumble dryer and they've got jumpers rushing, you know, rolling around in their heads. And all you're doing is stopping the tumble dryer, opening the door, taking out a jumper one by one, examining it, folding it, and putting it on, you know, on the side. And then you take out another one. And Al and I both took that forward into our professional careers as coaches and otherwise. And And what's always surprised us, and we kind of smile about, is the number of people that will say, oh, you'll have a conversation, they go, oh my gosh, thank you so much. Thank you so much. That's brilliant advice. Thank you. I say, I didn't say anything. I didn't offer any advice. I asked questions. And do you think this is where, as well, it takes some of the— for managers to be trained in this type of thing, does it take the pressure off them to think they have to have all the answers?
Vince SandersonIt's interesting. Yes, but it adds another pressure. This comes up time and time again in the training that we do. You don't have to give the answer. The pressure is off to be the font of all knowledge. The pressure is off to be the bottleneck, but the pressure is on now to come up with some type of clever question, it feels like.
Al ElliottYeah.
Vince SandersonThat creates this insight, when the reality is that when you are giving people space and allowing them to process, you don't need any clever questions. Some of my absolute favorite coaching questions are the most simple. Something like, okay, what does that actually mean to you? Talk me through your thought process behind it. How are you feeling about what you've just shared with me?
Al ElliottThat—
Vince Sandersonthose are the most profound questions I found. And I've gone through all sorts of coaching training myself and created all sorts of pithy and witty and clever questions, and you always forget them, and they're never the ones that create the lightbulb moments. So, yes, the pressure's off to give an answer, But I've seen it add on a layer of pressure where people are so comfortable and it's so habitual to give answers that they then feel the pressure of feeling like they're not helping because it's their job to help. And so they attach helping with giving advice.
Leanne ElliottYeah, and I love that. I know one of, one of Al's favourite techniques is the repetition. So someone goes, I'll coach them and say, I'm really confused about this. And I'll go, you're confused? I'm like, yeah, I just can't, I can't get my head around it. It just seems so complicated. He's like, is it complicated? And just kind of, that's all he's doing, he's repeating back what I've said. But you say it's that space to kind of think in. But I agree with the coaching questions. It's, um, yeah, I've seen people kind of melt trying to come up with a great question. And actually, you say you can keep it, keep it simple and it's more impactful. And is this where you think, this seems to me like a really practical thing we can put managers through in terms of of training? Or maybe do we put— need to put everybody through this type of training? I can't imagine everyone— anyone's not gonna benefit from, from learning about listening and, and asking questions and holding that space for people.
Vince Sanderson100%, because even if you are the most junior person in an organization— I don't mean that in terms of age, I mean the position is the furthest away from the CEO— You're going to be part of a team.
Leanne ElliottYou're—
Vince Sandersonor I hope the expectation is that there is challenge between each other, robust challenge, because you've got to try and work out what the best way forward is. And in order for a team to challenge each other well and work through problems, they need to be silent at times. They need to actively listen. They need to move away from this notion of—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Vince SandersonI need to get my point across, I need to win it because it's my idea, into, well, it's not my job to be right, it's our job to get it right. So I need to listen and try and understand what people are trying to communicate rather than just react to their choice of words. That is something that everyone can benefit from. And I, I always say this in training, it has massive benefits for your life in general. The ability to sit with your partner or your kids And really try and listen to what they're trying to say rather than the actual choice of words, which we often just react to. And then it just becomes 2 monologues rather than a dialogue where we're trying to work through it. But of course, then, you know, this is a rabbit hole that you go down. People say, oh, you know, the most important thing in any relationship, whether it's personal or work-based one, is communication. And whilst that is true, it misses something underneath that, which is your ability to regulate your own emotions so that you can communicate effectively, not just delivery but also on the receiving end. But that's such an uncomfortable thing to work through because it, it's so tied into our personality or character, or at least we think it is. And therefore, we— lots of people will feel uncomfortable about challenging themselves and developing and working at that skill. But I would say, just linking it back to, to the workplace, it is a non-negotiable for me in management and leadership. You have to have exceptional emotional regulation to do this well.
Leanne ElliottI want to now look at an area on here that I wasn't as familiar with, and I'm hoping you can, you can enlighten me, Vince. It was around the kind of social influence And when I hear social influence, maybe I'm just a typical, typical kind of— I believe I'm a geriatric millennial, technically. I'm an old millennial. I kind of hear socials and I go, oh, they're, they're on their Instagram, they're, you know, they're TikTok famous. Is that what we mean by social influence?
Vince SandersonNo, I think again, the terminology doesn't help us here. I would say that social influence, a better way of, of talking about it, and there's quite a few books that I would recommend on this, is your ability to influence without positional authority. So you don't need to be a manager in title or a senior leader in title or chief executive to have influence over other people. You can do it horizontally within your team. You can even have influence over people who have a higher positional position than you do. And so really, it's the skills involved in that is what it's talking about. You can lead without being a leader.
Leanne ElliottAnd what does that mean for an organisation to have? Because I feel like we've— this is a theme that we keep coming back to, is building these skills at all levels of an organisation. What does it mean to have an organisation that— or maybe we flip it— that doesn't have much— people don't have much social influence, but have a very strong hierarchy? What types of things are we going to be seeing in that structure?
Vince SandersonWell, a very Hierarchical organization is essentially a traditional organization. Now, I don't mean that in a bad or good way, in that most organizations are set up very hierarchical. I actually don't have a problem with it. We know we've— lots of organizations have tried a very flat structure, and it's not easy to get going. There are only a handful. I mean, even— less than a handful that I think have really successfully done it. The reason being is someone has to make a decision eventually, and by default, that person is usually the person with seniority in title. However, if we lean too heavily into that, it creates the feeling that whoever is beneath that person Their opinion holds less weight. And if they believe that, when they come to discuss a problem or planning a project or creating innovation, are they actually going to voice it if they believe that it won't matter? Well, they've already made up their mind anyway. We go through all of this same consultation process, but really they've already decided what they want to do. It's just a tick box exercise. So if we want organizations to succeed, I think we need people to genuinely believe that their opinion matters, that it holds weight, and people to be able to— one of my favorite terms, and this is from a book by Keith Ferrazzi, which is co-elevate with others. So rather than, you know, let's say you're in Department A and you need to influence Department B, even though your goals are slightly different, Rather than just going over to department B and saying, can you do this for me? Actually building a connection and building a relationship based on understanding them, understanding what their drivers are, what their needs are, what frustrations and obstacles they're facing, and what can I do to serve you first before I ask for some reciprocity? And I think that not only is that helpful If you're not in a leader, but that's the stance that we should take as leaders in general. Not what can you do for me, but what can I do for you as a team member, knowing that in return you will go above and beyond for me as a leader. The law of reciprocity is massive. Even when you don't want to, even when the other person says you don't need to repay the favor, we're— it almost feels biologically driven that we feel we have to do something. Now, this is— some people have asked me on training when we've talked about this, oh, Vince, what you're describing to me sounds like manipulation. And I'm like, it's a good point. And I think— I don't know what I'm about to say. I can't say is scientifically true. It's my interpretation of it. And I'll put that out there. The influence and manipulation are two sides of the same coin, and it's the intention behind it.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Vince SandersonInfluences, I genuinely, genuinely inside want the best for us, want the best for the business, the team, the company, whatever it is. It's bigger than me. And so if I do something to benefit you, it has innate worth in and of itself. And whether you give anything back to me is irrelevant. Whereas if I go into providing to you with only the sole intention of getting something from you, I would say that that is manipulation then.
Leanne ElliottAnother kind of, again, the final cluster that came up, and these are words that get thrown around all the time: resilience, flexibility, agility. They're often used a lot. Again, what do you think that looks like behaviorally within an organization to be resilient, flexible, empathetic, and agile?
Vince SandersonI'm just going to kind of double-click For want of a managerial phrase, although I'm never a fan of these things. We're going to double-click on something that you said there, Leanne, which is what behaviorally does that look like? And I think that's what the question we should be asking, whether it's about terms like resilience or analytical thinking or adaptability or something bigger like culture. Culture is really just The most common behaviors that we see, or the behaviors that we're willing to tolerate, someone describes it as. And so, if we want to change a culture of an organization, we shouldn't be looking at amorphous word salad responses. Oh, we want to be a respectable, psychologically safe culture. It doesn't tell you what the managers should be doing.
Al ElliottRight.
Vince SandersonWe need to break it down into simple terms, do this and don't do this. So in terms of resilience, in terms of behaviors, I would say resilience is your ability to cope under pressure and then bounce back from setbacks, which ties back in with your emotional regulation. Can you process things? Can you let them go?
Al ElliottYeah.
Vince SandersonIf that's the required outcome, and not be defined by something like a failure, but to get up, brush yourself off, and try again, I think would sum up resilience.
Leanne ElliottAnd in that organisational setting then, how can leaders model that? Is there maybe an example you can give us of, of where you think a manager has really brilliantly role modelled resilience?
Vince SandersonI think it is. Yes, I'll give you an example, but I think it's also important to say that if you want a team to develop these types of skills, you as the manager or the person with positional authority has to be the first person that goes first in doing this, whether it's resilience, adaptability, Coping with change, vulnerability, trying and failing. So what the manager needs to do here is demonstrate it themselves, talk about how they're feeling, talk about what they did, talk about past examples of where maybe they were resistant or reluctant to try something. or go through change and what they did to overcome it. Just promote it as a discussion rather than expecting people to be able to do it without any conversation around it, because that's very reliant on someone's upbringing and character, and we don't always know what people come to with the job.
Leanne ElliottAnd as you mentioned, the word keeps coming up again, and I think it's recent what you said, their emotional regulation. What can managers, leaders be doing? What can we all be doing to be more aware of how we experience things emotionally and how we do actually regulate it? Are there practical things we can do?
Vince SandersonYes, and they're not necessarily comfortable or easy. So, 360 reviews and feedback are always a great way. There are different activities out there which you can Google, like the Johari window, is a great way to understand a little bit more about yourself. One of the simplest things to do in terms of emotional regulation is, again, there's a difference between knowing something and doing it, is just reflecting on it afterwards and just typing some notes out. You just delete them straight away, but making them real, giving them tangible language. Saying it out loud, we know, helps. So if you're feeling frustrated, saying it out loud, I'm feeling frustrated. It's the ability to acknowledge it and then let it go rather than try and push it to one side of your brain and not deal with it. That doesn't help with emotional regulation. But we all have different ways of processing things as well. So I'll give you a practical example. that I do lots of presentations, workshops, keynote speaking, but I'm naturally an introvert. And so, I can feel nervous before going on stage. It's less so now, 14 years later, but if it's something really important to me, it can still be there. And I get asked a lot, oh, how do you go up on stage and do these things? I just get so nervous doing it. Well, one of the things, there's lots of things, but one of the things I will do, but not every time, is I'll do something like star jumps before I go on, because physically moving changes my physiology. It changes how I feel in the moment. It clears out some of the jitters, and I go on and I feel much more comfortable. But you see people's reactions when you say that, and you can see them go, I was hoping for something That you were going to tell me something that I could just think differently and therefore behave differently. I don't like the idea of having to behave differently to feel differently. No thanks. So when we're talking about emotional regulation, there's not— I've never found anything very complicated. It's the willingness to try different things to help you regulate.
Al ElliottYeah.
Vince SandersonThat's what is the biggest obstacle for people. They don't want to have to do anything different. They just want the different result.
Leanne ElliottI mean, if organisations are listening and going, okay, I'm buying into this, how do they need to maybe rethink how they approach training and development, start to build these skills in their teams?
Vince SandersonIf you want your teams to be as successful as possible, Then they need to be led by people that know how to lead. It's as fundamental as that. And if those people who are leading people have never had any training on it, they've never stopped and thought about it, and they're just simply focused on the number that they're trying to achieve, you've already missed the mark. So it's If you want to change how an organization approaches this, it has to be the people at the top that go, we need our leaders to lead, and we're going to invest in that, and we're going to develop them, and we're going to not just develop them in the short term by putting them on a day's training, we're going to develop a leadership pipeline over the next 5 to 10 years further because we want this to be a long game. We hope our organization is around for the next 100,000 years. So what are we going to do to develop people, look for our high-capability team members from the moment they step in so that we can develop them through the company? Because that has much more upside than just bringing people in all of the time. Nothing wrong with that, that there is benefit to that at times, but we know that developing from the grassroots upwards bring so much more. And then the people who we bring from the outside, uh, just kind of to plug the gaps here and there and the little cherry on top of the cake as well. The, the counter-argument that we have to be mindful of is not falling into groupthink and outdated ideas. And that's what bringing in people from the outside can really help with, is a fresh perspective. And so, there is a nice balance that we need to get there.
Leanne ElliottThere's kind of 6 clusters of skills there that we talked about. If you had to pick one as kind of a multiplier, an amplifier for the others, which one would it be?
Vince SandersonI know this isn't technically one of the skills in and of itself, but I would say that your ability to lead people, and I guess the closest skill that we've talked around is influence. Because as your company grows, as a leader, you have less hands-on time doing the work itself and more time— everything is by proxy. So if you cannot influence people in a positive way, support them, meet their needs, challenge them, stretch them, motivate them, which are all people skills, looping back all the way around to the very first question, They're not AI skills, then if you can do that, all of the other skills follow behind that. Great creative thinking, great analytical thinking is allowed to happen because people feel safe and the space is created for them to excel. That is leadership in a nutshell.
Leanne ElliottWhat an answer. What an absolute way to end Vince, thank you so much. I know our listeners will want to learn more about you. Where's the best place for them to go?
Vince SandersonAny social media, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, website. You just type in my name and I, unfortunately, depending on who you are, or fortunately, pop up everywhere now.
Al ElliottThat was Vince Sanderson. And whether you're a founder, an HR lead, or a manager yourself, here's the takeaway: AI isn't necessarily your biggest threat. An untrained manager is.
Vince SandersonMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd 3 takeaways that you have to have. First, your managers are the most important relationship in your people's lives. It's not HR, it's not the CEO, the line manager. And that means investing in them isn't a nice-to-have, it's such a business-critical decision.
Al ElliottSecond, the skills that will define leadership over the next 5 years, we've already said them: empathy, active listening, influence, resilience. These aren't personality traits, they're trainable behaviours. And if your managers don't have them, it's not their fault, it's a training gap.
Leanne ElliottAnd third, if you only do one thing, thing after listening to this episode, identify one manager in your organization who is leading people without any formal training and change that today.
Al ElliottYou can find Vince on TikTok and Instagram @vincent_sanderson or head to vinceandsanderson.com. All the links are in the show notes. Go follow Vince on TikTok. He is very, very good.
Leanne ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work. We will see you next week.