What's up, party people? My name is Sunny Ray. This is the Sunny Ray Show. next guest is Dave Claire. We're going to be talking about how thanks to AI, everyone needs to be into leadership. Dave, you're where again? In Australia, Africa, South Africa.
I'm in just north of Brisbane on the east coast of Australia right now. Yeah,.
In Australia. Okay. really good watching your intro. seeing the highlights of Toronto as an ex Toronto boy.
Were you getting nostalgic?
Yes.
I was like, gosh, I haven't seen the CN Tower in years.
I know. I actually flew in the other day. I was somewhere and it was like nighttime flying in. seeing the CN Tower was just epic.
So, Dave, I guess take us right in the deep end. What's circle leadership what's your kind of unique insight? I remember talking to you a couple weeks ago and as I left walking away you know thinking about a lot of the stuff you said. So yeah, take me right into it. Yeah. So Circle Leadership exists to evolve the world of work. we help organizations like get their culture leadership and strategy right and build a world-class organization that people line up to want to work for or work with. basically fundamentally the easiest way we share with people is we turn TGIF into TGIM. So people can go, thank God it's Monday. I like you get to do meaningful work. and I think work is a really big part of life. It's, you know, being in service of something or someone outside of ourselves is what gives our lives a sense of meaning. So if we can help organizations create meaningful work for people by having the right culture, leadership and strategy all working as in harmony as one ecosystem as we call it rather than three independent systems that they're fighting. So circle leadership is here to do that evolve the world of work and create a world hopefully where work positively impacts people and the planet.
Interesting. I guess like I have so many questions. I guess you've been you know a leadership practitioner your whole career. What did leading a team teach you that no leadership book had kind of told you first?
Yeah. great question first and foremost because I am actually a practitioner of leadership. I'm not a theorist or an academic. Everything that I've learned in leadership has been given to me through the lessons that I've learned leading teams. so for me that's it's really insightful. So the one thing that st stood out for me which is probably a lot of the core philosophy of the work that we do in this world is that we need to look at people as human beings first and employees second. and it was a great learning moment in my life where I worked that out and that we should have resources for humans not humans as a resource and no book has ever taught me that. any book and I've read a lot of books on leadership of course because whilst I've been a practitioner I'm still have a thirst of knowledge for anything to do with leadership. So my very first book simplified which is just like over my shoulder here that was kind of the premise of that book you know that leadership is simply you lead people and I realized that when we lead people we manage resources and people are not a resource. So that was the one big lesson for me is to look at people as a human being first and an employee second.
Yeah that resonated. So you said you loved leading team so much that you you worked out how to do it for a living. What was the moment you decided to make it the business?
Yeah, it was interesting. Like I was living here in Australia. I've lived in Australia twice, right? So I'm a Canazi so I'm half Canadian, half Australian, dual citizen. but I was working in banking and finance here. I was in leadership roles and you know it was really great leading bigger teams, and then I saw this opportunity in Papa Newu Guini was in banking and finance as well but it wasn't you know being a bank Johnny doing bank stuff but they were looking for leadership development consultants to work with the national managers and expatriate managers in Papa Newu Guini and I thought wow I could actually do leadership as a career like rather you know like whilst I was in leadership roles and I was really great leading people and I it was something that I really enjoyed doing I could actually do this for a living in terms of and then help other people learn how to become greater leaders. And so it was taking that leap and just it was just something I saw and like I didn't realize you could do leadership as a career in that. So I took that opportunity and never looked back.
Fascinating. And when did and by the way there was a little bit of delay. I'm not sure if you can if there's a way to tinker with the internet a little bit, but when did culture stop being something you noticed and start being the thing you build?
It was interesting for me because like I started in that leadership journey and I didn't even think much about culture as a thing at all. but then when I do started working with this leadership stuff and helping people to become the best versions of themselves and do their life's best work well in my care and beyond which is our definition of leadership and I started thinking well I was helping people to do that but then I realized some of the organizations didn't enable people to be able to do that right so that I'm like well what's wrong with the organizations then like why we're helping these people to develop leadership and capabilities and but then they struggled to do what was working within helping them with in the organization. And that's when I realized well culture the culture of the organization has to be conducive for the leadership to be able to thrive. And that's where I found that most organizations or cultures weren't conducive for. And that's when culture became a thing for me is realizing that the environment in which that leadership could thrive in it didn't exist. well the way it was set up it was made it very hard. Let's put it that way.
Yeah. And what does what does invincible mean in invincible culture? Invincible against what exactly?
Yeah. So, one of the things one of the three core things that we help organizations do is build that invincible culture. And invincible means that it's able to withstand you know, anything that comes its way. All right? So, it's not like it's going to go beat the crap out of everything. What it is that if things happen, it's it can bounce back from it. Has a sense of resilience. doesn't mean that your culture will not come under attack through competitive nature or market changes. But a culture that is invincible is unconquerable. You can't conquer it. You won't be able to defeat it. And so it will be able to build and go into whatever is coming its way and find its way through that. Right? So it's that's for us is like this sense of invincibility. It's unconquerable. Yeah.
And what and you have to put that into context too, Sunny, because culture like if you think about anything that can be copied in your business,.
Your everything else can be everything about your business can be copied. Marketing, software, tech, platforms, products, services, branding, you name it. The only thing that can't be copied is your ability to capture the spirit of your people. So, it's your culture obviously that is your one true sustainable competitive advantage. And so you need to have an invincible culture. If that's your true sustainable competitive advantage, your people and the way that you you know get them to think and feel about the work that they do and you can make that invincible.
Like that's where that comes from.
Yeah. I'm starting to make sense of it. But you're building an AI platform like what does it do that a.
Human practitioner cannot and like what will you I guess never let it touch?
Yeah, great question. so it will be able to do probably about 80% of what the humans can do in like in the work that we do with our clients around the world. The a what the AI will do is it'll certainly be able to help our clients faster. obviously it allow me to replicate a lot of the thinking we have in our organization, the philosophies, principles. so if they, you know, if you imagine like when Steve Jobs said, I'll put 10,000 songs in your pocket, you know, with a iPod. Well, we can put, you know, anything, you know, whatever you would want to know from a leadership lesson or things that we do right there in your pocket. So, you don't say, "Hey, Dave, I want to can I jump on for a quick coaching session? I want to talk about this or that." They won't need to. They'll be able to access a lot of it directly. So, it's ability to scale the thinking of our organization and make it more accessible to our clients immediately in real time for them. Right? What it won't be able to do though is the creativity, the curiosity, the imagination, the intuition, the critical thinking, the empathy of the human being. and then when we're facilitating organizations to uncover their purpose and their values and imagine the world that they want to see and the business that they want to build, you know, I'm not saying it won't maybe in the future, but right now it won't be able to. because when we're facilitating that humanto human, I'm looking at your face. Does your physiology change? Does your you know when you're thinking and you know and I'm listening to the questions you're asking then with my tacet knowledge and even our team like as every one of us are working around the world we can look at it and go hm like we can ask the questions that we need to ask because the experience and wisdom that we have is has been built up over the years. So I don't we haven't worked out yet how to embody the tacet knowledge the nuances the wisdom because AI can take the knowledge and information but knowledge and information are different to wisdom. is learned from experience. So the number of times we've sat across from leadership teams and leaders and people and I can see whether they're getting it or not getting it and I you know we've done this enough times to go they need to go deeper in uncovering whatever they're working through and to tap into the emotional cortex of the human mind because a lot of the work that we do is especially when we think about purpose or values sunny like a lot of that stuff we call it uncovering it because it's already there but it has an emotional context to And so the part of the human mind where emotions live, well, love lives where the emotions are, there's no words there. So we need to open up the emotional mind of the human being and let those feelings drop in and then help them to put words to how they think and feel, right? And so AI's ability to tap into our emotional cortex at the moment. it doesn't have the skill set to do that. It doesn't have the capabilities to see that. And I'm not saying it won't develop in the time it could do. But right now, I guarantee you, could sit there and I could put everything in our AI and you could ask all the questions and then you can do it with me and you will not get the same result.
And so Dave, which ideas like books or people most shaped how you think about leadership and like which one have you since like disagreed with?
Yeah. look I don't from a leadership point of view here's the challenge with that and the reason why I pause for this because most of what we call leadership in the world so far today Sunny is modern management practices okay not what I call leadership right which is about leading people and so the people who have most influenced me are definitely people like and it's funny because it's not necessarily leadership but Tom Peters a great author he's written 40 odd different books but at the heart of all his books. I had the privilege of seeing him and having a chat with him when he came to Australia and he was gracious. I've got a signed copy of his book and he's just definitely an author that has influence the way I think more so not even just in leadership but the he said in the 40 books I've written over 40 years it's been the exact same theme in every book. What is soft is hard and what's hard is soft. And it's like you know what's what soft is the soft stuff is which is the people culture stuff is actually the hard stuff and the hard stuff the numbers is actually the soft stuff because if we take care of the people the numbers usually take care of themselves and so from a culture and leadership perspective he his philosophy on that has been great. Now there's other leaders you know like John Maxwell is a famous author on leadership and there's a lot of his stuff that I do quite like and there's you know other leaders that are out there or sorry leadership people out there today who are sharing about leadership but what I find with a lot of the leadership gurus in the world today is that they say these things which are really inspirational sayings and statements. You know even John Maxwell he'll say that leadership is all about influence and people like oh wow yeah that's amazing. And I go cool what does that mean to you? like what is influence? And they give me their thoughts on influence. I said, "Well, that sounds a bit like manipulation, isn't it?" Well, no, but it's so helping people to understand what influence actually means, which in is a prefix for into fluence is the Latin derivative of fluid or flow, which means leadership is all about getting people into flow. When are we at our best? When we're in flow state. And so, there's a lot of people who can say these things and they sound really inspirational. we should sacrifice the numbers for the people, not people for the numbers. Well, what does that mean? What does that look like? So, I'm challenged by a lot of the very inspirational leadership messaging that's going out to the world, but it all sounds lovely, but nobody knows actually how to do it, right? And then we can say these wonderful things like leadership is all about influence. Yeah, that sounds beautiful, but what does it actually mean? What does that look like in practice in the workplace? So, I've been influenced by a lot of leaders and I see a lot of leadership stuff that it's not that I don't agree with it. I just think that it can be very misleading when people don't understand actually how to use it or what to do with it.
Right. So, that's the stuff with my leadership stuff in the world today.
You wrote a whole book called Simplified around one sentence. Leadership is a simp is simple. You lead people.
What made you strip it that far down?
Yeah. Well, it's quite funny because like I've been doing leadership for many years before I wrote Simplified, probably about 20 odd years. And people said, "Oh, Dave, you do all this leadership stuff. Where's your book? And I didn't want to just be another meto author on leadership until I had my own voice and my own message and what I believe that leadership is or should be but what I do believe it is I want to write it but then once I go this what then that's when I wrote simplified and it was built on a couple of key principles one is that our definition of leadership which I've shared which To us, leadership is all about helping other people become the best version of themselves to do their life's best work while in your care and beyond. and so that means leadership is all about people. That means if I have to care about people to help them to become what they do, become who they're capable of. And I know if I help them do that, they're going to do great work anyway and well in my care and beyond. and so that leadership when you think about that doesn't require position or title. So we could actually create all-around leadership in an organization not more top- down layers of leaders and the while in my care and beyond means I actually care about you as a human being first and an employee second which is where that whole context came from. And so for me I realized if we can just understand that and we can make it really simple about how to help people to do that and then we could create organizations where everyone had something to believe in someone who believed in them and someone they could believe in. we could create amazing cultures where that leadership could thrive. And so that was the whole premise of Simplified.
Interesting. and what's the through line from your first team to circle leadership today?
Sorry, can you say that again? The.
What's the through line from your first team to circle leadership today?
The very first team I led.
Yeah. Okay. I my when I entered in Lysa I was blessed with great parenting right so like you know nurture nature my mom and dad were and just very quick so to understand the context of what I want to share learned a lot about leadership through community service my mom and dad were in the JC's and Rotary my dad was national vice president the Canadian JC's and they were so they learned and dad was always talking about you know leadership through community service being in service of other people and leading people to achieve great things. and that's what I believe leadership to be about. But then when I went into banking world back in the mid80s, it was seemed different to what I'd been told and I kind of got absorbed by the system. So the very first teams I led my actually ver very first leadership role I was the number one teller at the bank by rank in terms of where you stood in the counter not because I was the best teller in the bank but when an opportunity came up with the to take over the assistant supervisor role u they said hey Dave we'd like you to do it you're really good with people and customers can you do this and then I thought I have a position of power and authority and everything I thought I knew about leadership and then when I was in the bank and the pressures and demand and results and d and I'm like oh it can't be what my mom and dad were talking about it must be this and so then I started to build my career on the teams and driving results and so much so that got to stage so that throughine to where we are today is it started with me being corporal cla and dictator Dave and all the way to when I realized in the moments that I'd learned that everything I believed about leadership before I started doing leadership was actually true and everything that the system had taught me was wrong. And now I help people so that they don't have to have that same experience that I had. when we come into leadership,.
You say a culture eats strategy for breakfast is probably the most like quoted line in business, right? So you say it only wins because the two are kept apart. Can you make the argument?
Yeah, sure. So the whether Ducker or whoever said it but culture eats strategy for breakfast and like strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner blah and I just said like why does it have to do that? So fundamentally the concept is saying that you can have the world's greatest strategy but if your culture isn't right you're never going to execute on that strategy at the right level right so I thought what if we could find a way to hack culture and strategy why do we have to look at them as two competing systems or that everyone even today everyone talks about trying to align culture and strategy so as it stands today they go culture and strategy are kind of two separate things that we're trying to align and as a leader you're the one holding those two walls of the building so the roof doesn't come down and it's exhausting for a lot of leaders to try and align culture and strategy and they're fighting well strategy is more important right now culture is more important right now I think why does it have to be that way son and so as I started working through the things that I learned about human behavior and then developed our own methodology for organizational behavior because I studied org behavior and this is where I learned it because as I started studying organizational behavior what I realized there's all these complex theories that are out there and so I just asked a simple question like what fundamentally is an organization and it's basically a group of human beings all working together to achieve some common goal. So then I asked myself well why would then the process for or behavior be any different than it is to human behavior rather than a collective version. So then I created a collective version of organizational behavior for organizations to follow. And when I did that, that's when I realized, oh my gosh, this is how we can stop culture eating from strate eating strategy for breakfast, lunch, or dinner or whatever because it doesn't need to because we're looking at them as two separate things when they're one is an extension of the other. So the argument is this that if from a culture point of view, I believe that the three key elements of a invincible culture are your purpose, your values, and your vision. So if your purpose is the seed of culture, it's why your business exists and this is why everyone comes to work beyond a paycheck. Then our values most organizations they have a purpose or a values and none of these things are connected. We have a purpose here, there's values here, they have a vision here. And I said, well, what's the relationship between the vision and the purpose or the thing and this they're just four independent statements. Purpose, values, vision, and mission. So what I worked out is that if our purpose is why we're here and then our value should be how we uniquely think about that. So yes, people buy why you do what you do. But I believe that your values are why they buy it from you. And that purpose lived through those values will help you create the world that you see. So if you imagine getting up every day for 3,650 days in a row to create this impact that we want to have in the world, that's our vision. So our purpose is guarded by our values. are how we think about our purpose. lived through our values is our vision. Then our vision of the next 10 years all we have to do is go who do we need to become in the next three years to start to bring that world into reality and that formulates our mission and then our mission our strategy then is how do we become that organization in the next three years. So our strate, our vision gave birth to mission. is what develops our strategy. And so now everything is all working in sequence because the seed of culture runs through everything and back through into the mission. And then your three years and one years and 90-day plan to get there. So all of a sudden your strategy and your culture are all working as one thing. They don't it's almost like culture is a shield that wraps around your strategy and protects it like a mother or father protecting his child. So it would never need to eat. Culture never has to eat strategy if it's done in a sequence way where everything is integrated and related. But we the reason why the argument exists is because we see them as two separate things rather than as a sequencing of one whole thing. And that's what we've created as a one system organization where everything works as one, not three, four independent pieces we're trying to align and bring together. So we've been able to find a way to sequence them so it doesn't have to happen. So, if culture, leadership and strategy run as one ecosystem, like what's the first thing an executive team has to stop doing?
First thing an executive team has to stop doing? well, the first thing they have to stop doing is making everything about the numbers,.
Right? Because when money is your endgame, you'll play any game. If your business only gives a crap about numbers, don't be upset when your people feel like one of them. What we need to understand is that that numbers are important. Money to a business is like oxygen to you and I as human beings. We need it to survive. But we weren't born just to breathe. And nobody jumps out of bed in the morning and goes, "Gee, I can't wait to make the boss rich today. Gee, I can't wait to be an expendable commodity or a means to an end today." So they need, you know, there's things they need to start doing, but what they would need to stop doing is making everything about the numbers. Because when you make everything about the numbers, you're telling everybody what's important here. And then when you're sitting there going, "Why do my people only care about getting a paycheck? They just want to come in, get their paycheck, and get out of here." Well, you've told them what's important, which is numbers, and that's their numbers. And then they will game the metrics to get the numbers that you want.
So top down leadership is a thing of the past. all around leadership is the way forward, right? So where does that break down and like what still needs a single decider? So where does that breakdown end?
And what still needs a single decider?
Yeah.
Instead of I just mean in terms of like.
Like top down leadership is a thing of the past, right? So that's what that's kind of your comment. Meaning now it's more about like allound leadership, right?
And so I guess what I'm asking is like where does that break down? like don't you still have certain moments in a business's life where that top down leadership still needs to exist and make decisions or maybe not. I'm just curious is there a place I see where you're going with the question. That's cool. So interesting. So yes, so top down leadership thing of the past all around leadership is the way forward because what we found in organizations is that as things scale and get bigger more layers, right? More layers of authority, leadership or and what they call leadership is more management rather than leadership anyway. And so what I found is that I did a case study many years ago of 25 business owners leaders I worked with them for four months in their engine rooms in their kitchens to find out what the biggest challenges that they were having. And one of the common challenges every business had was a lack of leadership depth and strength in the organization. not a lack of leaders but leadership depth and strength right and so when we talk about firstly all around leadership it's actually making sure that we can create like self leadership is the first leadership it's so we got to you know we got to learn how to lead ourselves before we can lead teams and then so we go leadership of self leader of teams lead the business so that's when we go deeper into the concept of leadership rather than actually layers of leaders.
Got it now the interesting thing is the authority part in most organiz organizations authority is held by a person because organizations have a structure but what they lack is architecture of the business. So when you sit there go our philosophy is that everybody answers to something first not someone. Everybody answers to the purpose of the organization through the lens of the values. So if you can imagine the purpose sitting in the center of a table and the values wrapped around it and everyone is sitting around that table. Everybody answers to that purpose through the lens of those values. So the purpose becomes the authority. Does this serve our purpose? Yes or no. Does it rejected any of our values? Yes or no. Will it take us towards our vision? Yes or no? Will it help us become the organization we need to become? Yes or no. Is it more important than the next three years, one years, or 90 days what we're working on? Yes or no. So all of a sudden the architecture of the organization becomes the decision filter. And so I don't need to have yes there are certain different types of decisions and things that need to happen. But we can make decision-making binary in an organization and then coach judgment because what most people don't understand from a decision-making point of view decision actually comes from the Latin word desire which means to cut out or cut off. So if we're teaching our teams what to say no to. So can you imagine everyone in our organization Sunny knows what to say no to. What can everything else be?
It's a yes.
Yes. Everything else can be a yes, right? But then all you need to do as a leader or with through leadership is coach people to a better yes and a better time for that yes,.
Right? And please understand that as leaders, we want the best idea to win, not the boss's idea.
So in all around leadership, we can coach, we can teach people what to say no to. We then can coach them to better yeses and better time for that yeses. But in an organization, where does it say that you're the best person to coach the team through that judgment process? Because I don't do your job. Like some of the roles in our organization, I'm not the best person to lead that because I'm the founder or whatever the organization. That would be silly just because I have the position of founder of the organization. I'm not the best person to do or to help with the judgment in these things. I don't do that job. I don't do the systems. our AI like I don't I'm not the best person to you know make the best yeses and better times for those yeses in terms of AI. I get coached I become part of the so the person who's got the best wisdom in that space is the one who leads that conversation that thing to get the best idea to win.
Yeah it's these are really.
Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.
I was say it's just more like distributed authority. Yeah. But there is when you have the architecture when you don't have that you only have a structure then we have to have the hierarchies we have to have all the positions we need to know who can answer to what and what questions because we don't have most organizations don't have the architecture or if they do it's not clear enough there's lack of clarity and clarity precedes alignment.
Got it when you have that clarity our team can go here's this that yes or no.
Yeah I know these are some big ideas I had a lot of more questions left but I want to be mindful of your calendar. I had booked you for 30 minutes and we're near the end of it. Happy to do a part two and kind of keep the ball rolling, but I guess help me land the plane, Dave. Where do people learn more about you? Where do they learn more about Circle Leadership? and then yeah, we can bring this stream to an end.
Yeah, if they want to learn more about Circle Leadership, the simple place to go is circle leadership global.com. if you want to learn more about me, it's just Dave Claire d a vl.com. that's where you can look for both. yeah, and that's just the best place to go find out this. But I think what we could quickly answer is the title of this show.
Yeah, I touch on that. Thanks to AI, everyone needs to be interested in. Yeah. What do you mean by that?
Okay, so the reason why.
Let me guess. Are we all leaders of agents now or what?
Well, yeah. Well, here's the thing, right? So as a as AI agents come into your organization and they take the tasks away from what the human beings were doing right I'm a firm believer that we should delegate outcomes to people not task to people we should get people involved in the work involved in decisions about the work and now as we're employing AI agents into or sorry let me rephrase that because this is really important distinction we employ humans and we deploy AI so as we deploy AI agents into the business we're going to take a lot of the tasks away from human beings All of a sudden, somebody who's never led a team or had a team that they've been a part of they might have four AI agents do helping them do the work that they do. So they can bring they can be the human being doing the creativity, curiosity, imagination, intuition, empathy, critical thinking, all that while the AI is the is doing the doing. So we can have human beings being again we be creative, we be curious, we don't do creativity, we don't do imagination, right? So we can have humans doing the being stuff now, but they're going to have four or five agents. And so they're going to need to understand leadership, not how to be a leader, but understand leadership because they're going to have to work with a team. And so they need to become coaches of their agents because they got here's the outcome. Here's your agents. Here's you. Now you're going to need to understand leadership because we got to make sure that follows our purpose, our values, vision, mission of the organization, all these things. and you've never had to demonstrate leadership in the past, but now you're going to have to because you could have a collection of humans and or AI agents or just a team of AI agents. So, everyone's going to need to understand leadership. It doesn't mean everyone's going to need to become a leader, but everyone's going to need to understand leadership. How can we help our AI become its best version of itself to do its life's best work while it's in our care? We need those agents to keep evolving as much as we need the humans to, right? Because as things improve in the organization, we need it to you know obviously become even more of what it's capable of and help us to do even more great work in the world. So everyone's going to need to understand leadership in into the future.
Well, right now technically because we the future is here.
The future is here. Well, Dave, thank you so much for your time and like I said, I only scratched the surface with all my questions here, but happy to have you back. And yeah, these are big words. These are important words, but often they all just kind of jumble into like this goo, right? Like mission, vision, purpose, value, all these things you're talking about. And so the fact that you're kind of like piecing taking it apart and like helping people put it back together in a logical and sensical way, it's interesting. but not going to lie, it's still hard. even though I get a lot of this and I am a company builder, it's hard to kind of like put it all together. So anyways, I appreciate everyone tuning in live syncing with us. Thank you.
And Dave, thank you for your time. And hang out for one minute. Dave, I'm going to bring this stream to an end. And until next time, everyone. Cheers.
