016 : The Mindsets and Skills of the Future Leader with Jacob Morgan
Jacob Morgan believes βthat we all deserve to work for organizations where we actually want to show up each day.β To this end, he wrote the book The Future Leader (2020) to give individuals and organizations a blueprint for what they need to be doing now so that they can be ready and able to shape the future. Through his research, Jacob was able to unearth what he calls βThe Notable Nineβ: four mindsets and five skills that every future leader must possess.
The leaders of the future will no longer be able to bank on deal making skill or playing office politics alone. What is more, the true standing of a leader is the perception that their team has for them. Many are unaware of their true effectiveness as leaders. This will be their downfall in the future workplace if these leaders fail to bridge this βgapβ between how employees look at them and how they look at themselves. Bridging this gap is a matter of practicing the mindsets and skills that Jacob outlines in his book. More than this, Jacob encourages leaders to duplicate these traits in those they lead. He uses the image of a lighthouse to illustrate this important point: βLeaders need to build themselves up to become a lighthouse; but more importantly, a lighthouse is useless if there are no ships in the water.β
Jacob Morgan and Steve Chaparro go through the key points laid out in The Future Leader. They cover topics such as the evolution of expectations and values people have of leaders, defining your purpose and meaning (and the difference between the two), being clear about what you stand for, and how COVID-19 has exposed true leadership.
Hereβs a glimpse of what youβll learn:
- The four mindsets and five skills that leaders of the future must possess
- Why organizations are shifting from a top-down leadership structure to one that is more agile and responsive
- Crossing the βleadership gapβ
- The leader as a βlighthouseβ
- Why you need to display your vulnerability and humanity as a leader
- The differences between purpose and meaningΒ
- Finding your βtrue northβ by consolidating your personal and professional values
- Challenges that every leader faces
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
- Jacob Morgan’s Website
- BYOB Podcast
- Book: The Future Leader
- (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)
About the Guest:
Jacob Morgan is an author, speaker, podcaster, and futurist. He has written four bestselling books, including The Collaborative Organization (2012), The Future of Work (2014), The Employee Experience Advantage (2017), and The Future Leader (2020). Jacob is also the founder of The Future of Work University, an βonline education and training programs focused on themes related to the future of work, employee experience, and leadershipβ, and The Future If Community, βa global community of business leaders, authors, and futurists who explore what our future can look like IF certain technologies, ideas, approaches, and trends actually happen.β
He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, and a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management/Economics, both at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He also holds a Professional Certificate in Foresight from the University of Houston.
Sponsor for this episode:
This episode is brought to you by the Culture Design Studio, a consulting firm that helps people and cultural leaders who feel constrained in their ability to engage their employees to become champions for their people through a series of facilitated workshops. They provide a practical and collaborative process to transform the culture within your creative organization.
Culture Design Studio has worked with organizations like Duarte Design, Design Thinkers Group, Red Bull, USAID, Bacardi, and the Office of Civic Innovation
If youβre looking for more than just a consultant and want someone who can facilitate your organization through a structured conversation to transform your culture, Culture Design Studio is the one for you.
Contact them today to learn more about what they can do for you and your company.
Full Transcript: Powered by Otter.ai
Announcer
Welcome to the Culture Design Show where we feature conversations with leaders and thinkers who are passionate about culture and design. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Steve Chaparro
Steve Chaparro, here. I am the host of the Culture Design Show, a podcast where I feature leaders and thinkers at some of the top creative firms in the world, including architecture, design, technology, and marketing. What’s the one thing they all have in common, they all believe in the power of culture and design.
This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio, we help people in culture leaders who feel constrained in their ability to engage their employees to become champions for their people. Through a series of facilitated workshops, we provide a practical and collaborative process to transform the culture within your creative organization. We’ve worked with organizations like Duarte Design, DesignThinkers Group, Red Bull, US Aid, Bacardi and the Office of Civic Innovation. So if you’re looking for more than just a consultant, but someone who can facilitate your organization through a structured conversation to transform your culture, reach out to us at culturedesignstudio.com.
Jacob Morgan is a four-time best selling author, Ted and keynote speaker, professionally trained futurist and the founder of the future of work University. He believes that we all deserve to work for organizations, or we actually want to show up each day. And everything he does is about trying to create inspire those types of organizations. He’s written four best selling books, which are the future leader, the employee experience, advantage, the future of work, and the collaborative organization. Jacob, welcome to the Culture Design Show.
Jacob Morgan
Thank you for having me.
Steve Chaparro
Well, last time we talked, I was actually interviewing you for my previous podcast, the Reshaped Podcast. And at that time you had just released The Employee Experience Advantage. But, here we’re talking because you recently released another book, The Future Leaders – nine skills and mindsets to succeed in the next decade. What led you to write this book?
Jacob Morgan
Well, I was getting a lot of questions from business leaders around the world about the future. And you know, speak it probably around 40 or so conferences a year. And that would be a very common question, not what should we be focusing on now? But what should we be thinking about for the future? How do we prepare for the future? What are the skills and mindsets we need to be teaching people? And I had some ideas about that. But I didn’t actually have any data or research that I personally put together. So I decided to go out and try to answer that question, which is will the leader of 2030 be that different than the leader of today and if so, how? And so I interviewed 140 CEOs around the world and surveyed almost 14,000 And employees in partnership with LinkedIn to try to answer that very, very specific question. And that’s really why I wanted to write the book is to give individuals and organizations a blueprint for what they should be doing now so that they can make sure they are ready and able to shape the future.
Steve Chaparro
So how did the research that you underwent and you know, the insights that came from the How did they compare to some of the things that you were thinking innately? Did they prove or maybe in some cases surprise you about what the reality was in terms of what types of leaders people are looking to have in the future?
Jacob Morgan
Well, the assumptions that I had were aligned. So for example, if you were to ask somebody, hey, what do you think it’s going to take to be a leader in the future? You know, chances are, they will name some skills and mindsets you know, communication, Authenticity, emotional intelligence, like these things will come up. But what I wanted to do, it’s not that the skills and mindsets that identified are unique, because we’ve all heard of things like emotional intelligence. We’ve all heard of things. Like, coaching and mentoring others, it’s the fact that it’s this specific set of nine things together that the future leader must possess. So I knew some of these things, but I didn’t know which one of these things are going to be most crucial.
You know, for example, critical thinking, you know, that didn’t get identified at all is a top skill or mindset by future CEOs. So it’s sort of like, you know, somebody could pick 100, different skills and mindsets that are going to be relevant for future leaders, I want to just what are the top nine? What are the top things that we need to focus on? And that’s what these collection of what I call the notable nine are? So there were a lot of things that, you know, kind of I thought were going to be on there, but a lot of things weren’t on there, right? I mean, things like critical thinking, creative problem solving, you know, some of these things that you keep hearing about in various surveys, but the CEOs didn’t actually mention. So I thought that was pretty interesting. And again, it’s not the fact that these skills and mindsets are things people are never heard of. It’s the fact that it’s this specific collection of skills and mindsets that the CEOs believe are going to be most crucial.
Steve Chaparro
I definitely want to get into those. I know we have four mindsets and five skills that you lay out in the book. But even before we dive in, like some of the things in I probably need to do some of my own research as well. And I think, but the sense that I’ve been getting as I talked to organizations around the country as well, is that I mean, there’s the big bucket conversation of, you know, the organization’s in terms of organizational design, but also fueled with leaders that have these skill sets in mindsets that we’re having to move away from this top down command and control type of structure to one that is more agile, more responsive. What are your thoughts about that phenomenon? I mean, I would imagine that that shift is already underway, but how much more important is that for the future from a structural level?
Jacob Morgan
For having these skills and mindsets?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Jacob Morgan
It’s essential. So if you think about it, there are a lot of leaders who have been put into positions of leadership roles, not because they’re good leaders, but because they make the most amount of money. In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine earlier today. And this is very typical for people who work for financial institutions. It’s very typical for people who might work at like a PwC, or a KPMG. You know, usually you get promoted to this title of like, partner, or VP, or whatever you want to call it, not because you’re a good leader, and you practice these skills and mindsets. It’s because you’ve been at the company for a long time you brought in a lot of money. You’re good at navigating and playing office politics, you’re good at, like I said, navigating bureaucracy, that doesn’t make you a good leader. And so really what we’re starting to see and what the CEOs told me is that so…
For today, for example, you could get into a leadership position without practicing emotional intelligence. You could get into a leadership position without coaching and mentoring and looking After others, and I know this because we see such very high levels of disengagement and employees around the world. And it’s precisely because we have the wrong leaders in positions of power. So what these CEOs told me is that while you can get away with some of that stuff now, over the next decade, that’s not going to fly anymore, you won’t be able to get into a leadership position because you bring in a big deal, or because you were good at playing office politics, these are going to be like air and water, these are going to be essential things that you need as a leader, if you want to succeed over the next decade and beyond.
Steve Chaparro
Right. I think speaking to that, in part one, where you title that, that the section of the book, understanding the role of leader, and you talk about the leadership gap, share with us a little bit about what you’ve identified, I think you’re pointing to it already in some of the things that you’re saying. But what is kind of the breadth and scope of what that leadership gap looks like right now?
Jacob Morgan
Well, the specific leadership gap that identified is in there, there’s a lot of different statistics Some things that we can point to in the book. So if there are any of those you want to call them, let me know. But from a high level of a leadership gap basically means that leaders around the world think they are doing a pretty decent job of practicing the skills and mindsets that I identified in the book. But the people who work for these leaders say that their leaders are doing a terrible job of practicing these skills and mindsets. And the gap is massive in like, you know, 40% 50%, in some cases, upper 30%. So it’s not like these are small gaps. These are massive, massive gaps. And what it really shows is that leaders are very much disconnected. They’re in that ivory tower. They’re not aware of what their employees think of them how their employees think they’re ready and practicing leadership skills and mindsets. So that’s what I refer to as the leadership gap. It’s how leaders think they’re doing versus how they’re actually doing according to the people who work for them.
Steve Chaparro
So in your conversations with CEOs in this gap has been identified. However, Some of these leaders and maybe it may or may not be the ones you’ve talked to, because maybe they’re all the ones you’ve talked to are great leaders. But what does that look like for a leader to be confronted with the reality of this gap? And how can they respond to that gap?
Jacob Morgan
So the first part of this is how do you kind of get confronted with that gap? I think that’s the first thing that a lot of leaders need to realize is that perception is reality. And so, as a leader, if you’re listening to this, I don’t care how well, you think you’re practicing these skills and mindsets. I don’t care how good of a leader you think you are, how ready you are for the future. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is how your people perceive you.
So if you think you’re an amazing leader, and the people who work for you don’t think you’re an amazing leader, then guess what, you’re not an amazing leader, regardless of how many books you read, or how wonderful you think you are, or how great you score on, you know, self assessments that you take. only thing that matters is the perception of the people who work with them. For you, not what you think of yourself. So that is a very, very important thing for leaders to recognize.
As far as how you start to close that gap. Well, you practice the skills and mindsets that are outlined in the book. And perhaps more importantly, you teach these skills and mindsets to those around you. So, you know, part of the interesting thing is that there are a lot of leaders out there who do invest in a lot of learning and development for themselves, you know, they will learn things. You know, they’ll watch TED Talks, they’ll read books, but they don’t put them into practice. And then there are people who might put them into practice and kind of an individual level, but they don’t have this open dialogue or communication with members of their team. They don’t teach their team members these same skills and mindsets. So that’s a crucial difference.
The analogy and what I have on the cover of my book is a lighthouse. And the whole messaging behind that is that leaders need to think of themselves as lighthouses. They have to build themselves up to become that lighthouse. But more importantly, a lighthouse is useless if there are no ships in the water. So don’t just do these things for yourself. Remember that your job as a lighthouse is to guide your people in organizations to success, and to make sure that people are able to get to success in a safe way.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I love it when there can be conversations, you know, what we call real talk, real conversations that we say, Okay, guys, let’s talk about the good and bad and the ugly of leadership. And even sometimes, the leadership at our organizations, even the ones that we may be leading ourselves and say, you know, if there is a leadership gap, and I think many times there are leaders who have gained a ton of success over the last maybe decade or more, and they’ve done it because maybe they’re charismatic, maybe they’re high driving, maybe they’re visionaries, and they’ve adopted best practices that have gotten them to where they’re at now, but obviously, like for me, I love the Marshall Goldsmith, quote, you know, what got you here will not get you there.
And I think that reality of Understanding that, since our world is so volatile, it’s uncertain, complex and ambiguous. I think those best practices that we employed before were based on those knowable, you know, aspects of the landscape that we work in, but because the future is so, you know, hard to grasp, we can’t rely on those best practices. And it just, I would love to hear more about CEOs, you know, just in general in conversation out in the community, the marketplace about leaders who recognized, you know, what I really needed to change. I keep going back to my father in law, who told me, Steve, if I ever wanted my kids to change, I needed to change first. And I just would love to hear more vulnerable stories of leadership coming to this understanding. And many times we don’t hear those stories. What are your thoughts about that?
Jacob Morgan
Yeah, I agree. And you know, one of the things that this Korean pandemic has shown is that it’s very interesting that a lot of the conversations in the desert discussions as of late, have shifted away, for example, from robots and automation and AI and technology, so much more about stories of leaders who are doing things like committing to not laying off any employees during 2020, right, we hear all these stories of leaders who are stepping up to be human leaders who are stepping up to take care of their people, you know, to do whatever they can to help their people out.
And so it’s a very good reminder, that business, that leadership is still very much about the human stuff, the relationships, the trust, the safety, the very people who were there. And it’s a very, very important reminder and something that we should not forget. And so I just find it interesting that we’ve seen this narrative change. And I hope that after this pandemic is over that we don’t forget that and that we don’t all of a sudden jump back to the technology and automation and productivity discussions all the time, and that we remember to put our people first, that sometimes it’s more useful To be a good human being than it is to worry about the the numbers and you know how much money the business makes.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, that’s so good. And so true. I agree that those are the stories that have resonated with me during this time has been those leaders that have shown themselves to be human, and whether that’s vulnerability, or them saying, I don’t necessarily know what the future looks like, but this is the direction we’re going to go in and we’re going to learn as we go, even if we only have the path before as lit for the next few paces, agree that those are the conversations and stories that I’m most enjoying. Yeah, in part to the book, you talk about trends and challenges that will shape future leaders and of the trends that you talked about. There were two that I’d love to chat about, especially because of this time and what you just shared, and that is the pace of change and the aspect of purpose and meaning. What did you say? See regarding those trends and how that’s important for future leaders.
Jacob Morgan
Yeah, so those are two of I believe the six trends that the CEOs identified and pace of change is something that we’re all kind of experiencing, right. It’s basically how fast the world is moving, not just in terms of technology, but expectations and values and things that we care about just things move quickly all the time. I mean, we can all see it and feel it and experience it in our lives. The second aspect of that is around as you said, purpose and meaning, which is something that people always grouped together, but are not the same thing. So in the book, I have this kind of diagram that I lay out between job purpose, meaning and impact. And so purpose and meaning are not the same thing. Purpose is basically why you got hired, what are you supposed to be doing?
And so for example, my purpose is to create educational content. It’s to speak, you know, and to focus on leadership, employee experience and the future of work. Like that’s my purpose. That’s what I’m supposed to Do that’s not my meaning. My meaning is not to speak and to create content and to educate organizations. That’s my purpose. That’s what I’m supposed to do. The meaning that I get from this is to work on things that I enjoy doing. It’s to be able to build something on my own from scratch, it is to be able to work from where I want and work, what I want is to be able to do the things that I genuinely want to do. That’s the meaning that I get from it. It’s the relationships that I get from working from all these organizations.
And so oftentimes, when we group purpose and meaning together, purpose really just means that you understand why you’re at the organization. In other words, if you are a developer, do you understand how the work that you’re doing is impacting your customers or the community or the world? Like what is it that you’re doing? How is the code that you’re developing, being used? You know, do you meet customers? Do you see people who are using your products or services so that you kind of get that connection? That doesn’t mean that that’s the meaning you get meaning is very simple. objective, it’s what you personally get out of it. Some people might get meaning from working on challenging problems. Other people might get meaning from financial rewards and incentives, you know, it gives them that kind of meaning other people get meaning from just seeing growth and constantly wanting to conquer things and you know, climb the corporate ladder, you get meaning from many different things.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah,
Jacob Morgan
And it’s very subjective. So oftentimes we group purpose and meaning together. But the important thing is for people to understand that purpose and meaning are not the same thing. And what I found is that as a senior leader, you have a good sense of your job, you have a good sense of the impact that you have, you tend to have a good sense of your purpose. But leaders struggle to like everybody else with meaning entry level and maybe some mid level employees. They have a good sense of their job. They kind of know the impact that they have, but you know, they to struggle with meaning and with purpose. And so it’s really important for us to again, understand the differences between purpose and meaning and to me Make sure that we are able to have both in our lives, because they create different senses of fulfillment. One is very personal, you know, what you get as an individual. And the other one is more kind of career business focus, which again is also very important, right? We want to feel useful, we want to feel like we are contributing, like we are building something. And if the other side, the other end of that is that we also want to feel like we are getting something personally out of it just on a human level.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I love that idea or just that goal of being able to one, understand purpose, but to be able to understand meaning. And I think that alignment between the personal and professional purpose and meaning, but when those things are in alignment, also with the purpose and meaning behind the work of the company. I think that becomes then perfect relationship and synergy to create some cultures that are very meaningful and fun. Fill in, do you see correlations there as well?
Jacob Morgan
Between between which two things?
Steve Chaparro
Well, there’s the personal slash professional purpose and meaning of an individual being in alignment with the personal.
Jacob Morgan
Oh, yeah, of course. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes I think people make is that when they take jobs, they don’t see alignment between those two things. They think things just, you know, because of money. And so understanding your truenorth is very, very important. You know, what your values are, what you care about what you want to stand for. That is very important, because that will help guide you, or the type of organization you should work for the types of leaders you should work for the type of leader you should become.
And, you know, it’s interesting because over the past few years, leaders have always taken this approach of like, you know, I’m going to play in the gray area, I’m going to be neutral. I don’t want to let really let people know what I care about in value in Stanford because they might disagree with me and I you know, I don’t want people to disagree with me, so we always stay neutral. But I think the fire bigger fear is Isn’t that people will disagree with what you stand for and what you believe in, but it’s that they don’t know what you stand for and what you believe in to begin with.
And so that is, I think, a far bigger fear. Because it’s okay to say, Hey, you know what, you know, I know Jacob really stands for this. And he cares about this. And this is what he fights for. I don’t agree with it. But you know, I get it, I respect it. It would be much scarier, I think to say, you know what, I work for this guy named Jacob. And I really I have no idea what he cares about. I don’t know what he fights for what causes he believes in like, I don’t know any of this about him. That’s a little weird. So don’t be scared of people disagreeing with you be more scared of people not knowing what you stand for and believing,
Steve Chaparro
right? Because I think in the absence of that understanding, then they create the narratives for you on your behalf. And generally those are, those are faults or at least not true to the person if you know in the absence of information you create your own. That’s the drawback of not being able to share or not sharing what you stand for? Yeah, for sure. So you mentioned in that same part of the book that there are challenges shaping these leaders, what are some of those challenges?
Jacob Morgan
So I group the challenges into two buckets. Basically, their future rise challenges and humanized challenges. Future eyes challenges are challenges that help make sure that your organization stays relevant, and is ready for the future. And humanized challenges are challenges that are really about making sure the organization stays human. So give me an example. Something like sticking with what worked in the past versus embracing something that’s relevant for the future, right? That’s a future rise challenge rescaling and upskilling your employees. Again, that could actually fall into either but I think in the book I put that into the future is challenge. Something like leading diverse teams, attracting and retaining talent. Those are humanized challenges, making sure that we remember that the organization is about people and trust, right? That’s a human challenge. So these are the two things that organizations need to balance. How do we stay relevant, and current? And always thinking about the future and adapting, versus making sure that we always remember to keep these human elements inside of our organization like trust, empathy, emotional intelligence, leadership, all these things?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I think it’s such a sobering conversation to have amongst leaders, you know, if we’re asking ourselves, if we see what the future is somewhat is shaping up to me, or at least the shifts that are happening in our current moment in time right now? Are we ready to make those shifts? And if we aren’t, how do we get ready? What are some of the things that they can start to think about when they’re asking, Are we ready? How do we get ready?
Jacob Morgan
So what are some things they should be thinking about?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, in that regard?
Jacob Morgan
Well, I mean, it all goes back to the skills and mindsets that I talked about. So for me when I think of ultimately How do you prepare for whatever the future is going to bring? You think about what I call these notable nine, these four mindsets and five skills, because they inherently will get you prepared to face and to conquer whatever comes your way. And again, these are things like curiosity, emotional intelligence, having the growth mindset, being tech savvy, and digitally fluent, right. These are all very, very important skills and mindsets that we need to have, whether you were a leader or not, to stay relevant and whatever the future might bring. And by the way, when I say leader, you can also be a leader of yourself. You don’t necessarily need to be a leader of others, you know, you can be a leader of self as well. So master these skills, master these mindsets, make sure that these are kind of like your operating system when you wake up every morning. This is how you should be operating and thinking about yourself and leadership and work and business.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. I almost think of it in some cases, like in my work of culture and helping transform culture. It’s a culture of one. It’s the culture within the leader themselves. And I totally think that that is probably the first order of leadership is leadership itself. In these notable nine, you mentioned that there are four mindsets if you can give us a brief overview of what those four mindsets are.
Jacob Morgan
Yeah, and I came up with in a different clever names to group these mindsets together. But in the book, I talked about the mindset of the Explorer, the servant, the global citizen, and the chef. The Explorer is some of the stuff that I touched on earlier. It’s worth things like curiosity, lifelong learning, having a growth mindset and being open minded to other people’s ideas comes into play. A servant mindset is about having humility and vulnerability. And also understanding that part of your role as a leader is to serve others. serve your team, your customers, serve yourself as well. Because we oftentimes forget about that, you have to serve yourself because you can’t show up to work each day, leaving others if you cannot take care of yourself.
And it also means you serve your leaders if you have them. The Global Citizen mindset is about two pieces. One being able to think big picture, think globally, not just what’s in front of you. And also embracing diversity surrounding yourself with people who are not like you who don’t think like you, who don’t believe even in the same things that you believe in. And the last part was the mindset of the chef. And the mindset of the chef is about understanding that you have two ingredients you need to balance, the humanity aspect of work, and the technology aspect of work. So those are the four mindsets for all leaders to embrace.
Steve Chaparro
Now, do you think of this approach as adopting a Venn diagram of these mindsets in terms of experiencing or trying to have all of these within a single leader or is it like a personality profile where a leader might be more indicative Have any one of these? What are your thoughts on that?
Jacob Morgan
No, I think absolutely. As a leader, you need to have all four. I don’t think of it as like a scale of well, you know, you can be really good at the mindset of the Explorer, but not good at the mindset of the chef. I think if you truly want to be a great leader, over the next decade and beyond, where you can guide your organization, your people to success where you can help create other leaders, you need to fully embrace all of these skills and all of these mindsets. Otherwise, you’re gonna have a hard time. It doesn’t mean you won’t be successful. But it will certainly mean that you will be stopping short of where your potential can take you.
Steve Chaparro
Now, let’s move on to the five skills. What are those five skills? How would you describe those?
Jacob Morgan
So the skills are and again, they have these quirky names that I gave them, the skill of the coach, the translator, the futurist, the technology, teenager and Yoda. So the coach is really about being able to motivate, engage and inspire People. But first and foremost, I think it’s about helping make sure that you can create other leaders, other people who are even more successful than you. The translator mindset is about listening and communication to things that have arguably been around for many, many years, but also to things that are changing the most. From the perspective of leadership, because new tools, new platforms, so many different types of generations in the workforce, like there are a lot of things that are just causing listening and communication to be different, not the way they used to be. A futurist. A futurist means thinking in terms of scenarios and possibilities and options instead of just picking one path and going down it. The skill of the technology teenager means that you are tech savvy and digitally fluent. And the skill of Yoda is about emotional intelligence, specifically, empathy and self awareness. So those are the five skills for future leaders.
Steve Chaparro
So I know this book came out several months ago or a couple of months ago, and I would imagine There’s been a pretty somewhat of a groundswell of response to the book, what has been some of the feedback that you’ve gotten from leaders? Because I would imagine that this is pretty relevant story for a lot of leaders to kind of read this, then look in the mirror and say, you know, I’ve got some things I probably got to work on.
Jacob Morgan
So as far as images general, the feedback I got for the book, yeah, well, you know, thankfully, it’s been very, very reassuring, very positive. I mean, the book was number one in Germany, it was number one in the United States or management for a while. So I’ve been very fortunate that people have been very, very open and responsive book, which has been great. You know, the other thing that I think really helps is that it’s based on data. It’s based on actual CEO stories, not based on opinion or observation. So I think people really appreciate that. And when you go through the book, I have no direct quotes, direct stories from the CEOs themselves, so that you can hear from them, you know, What they think what they’re doing, how they’re approaching leadership in their organization in the future. So from that perspective, I think it makes it a unique book and one that a lot of people find very valuable. So there’s the response so far, and I hope it won’t change has been very, very positive.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I would imagine also, when you look at these principles, these skills in these mindsets, through the lens of COVID-19, how much even more rich has the conversation been for you? Regarding all of this, when you’ve talked to leaders, you know, you have a podcast yourself, and you’re speaking with leaders all the time, I would imagine that COVID-19 has brought these principles more to bear than ever before.
Jacob Morgan
Oh, yeah, more so than then one could have imagined because, you know, now more than ever, especially like you said that this current pandemic, the skills and mindsets are, you know, who knew this would have even happened in fact, in the book, I even make a joke and I say, you know, if there was some kind of a leadership virus that came in wiped out leaders from the face of the earth, we don’t have enough good leaders who could step in and take away, those, you know, could step in for those shoes for those leaders that disappear. So, you know, it’s kind of an eerie little thing that I mentioned in the book that ends up you know, we’re we’re now dealing with this virus.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Jacob Morgan
So it’s been very, very interesting to see. And again, I think some of the skills needed, especially the emotional intelligence, you know, leading virtual teams, people that you can’t actually see anymore, you can only see them by a video conference. You know, that’s huge. And when you start off these meetings, when you don’t, the first thing that you say isn’t like, Hey, did you meet your numbers? How’s the project going? But it’s like, are you okay? Yeah, being able to get groceries? How are you doing? And that is a big part of this concept of emotional intelligence. I think that Yeah, they’re never been more important.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I think of it. You know, I was in the real estate development world during the housing boom, back in the early 2000s. And I remember from 2005 to 2010, when I was in that industry, You know, we had reached the peak and we’re in a five year decline in that industry. And I remember that we were learning more in that crisis than we ever had in the boom years because we were forced to strip ourselves away a bad practices that we gotten away with in the really good times. Because, you know, one of the things I would say is, is our bad practices were covered by a multitude of appreciation, you meaning rising, rising prices, and when things are good, you can get away with stuff. But when that is stripped away, almost like today, I almost feel like the tide has gone out. And now we are left with what was ever lurking, you know, beneath the surface, and we realize almost like the Emperor did when he realized he had no clothes. And so now we’re kind of just stripping away what is superficial, what is not real, what is not beneficial, and we’re left with something that is so human. It’s the great equalizer in many respects. I think This is an opportunity for the divide between leadership, and the folks that are working on the front lines to almost find more in common with each other than we ever have before.
Jacob Morgan
Yeah, I mean, it’s an opportunity, people are willing to take advantage of it. Right. So, you know, I certainly hope that people do, because like you said, I think there’s a huge opportunity for leaders around the world to be able to step up, and to really show what kind of leaders they are, what kind of an organization they want to create, that they really care about their people that they’re willing to stand behind their people. And this is why even I think it was today I put up this article that why employee experience matters now more than ever before. Because it’s easy to treat your people well, when things are going well. It’s much harder to treat your employees well when we’re going through tough times. And that’s why now is really an opportunity for leaders and for organizations to show who they are and what they’re made of.
Steve Chaparro
Well, I would imagine you’re spending some decent amount of time talking about this last book that you You’ve written but aside from that, what are some of the things that you’re working on? Are you writing a new book? Are you talking with organizations on a consulting basis? What’s, what’s the main thing that you’re working on these days?
Jacob Morgan
Well, yeah, usually the bulk of what I do is speaking, but you know, with what’s going on now, a lot of that has been postponed. I mean, thankfully, a lot of my events are already getting rescheduled for later this year, and for next year, so I’ve been fortunate with that. But a lot of the time that I spend now things are quieter. You know, I have a course for the future leader that’s coming out. I’ve been working on a lot of resources. For example, somebody can go to future leader survey, and taking an assessment that will show them how well they’re practicing these skills and mindsets. I started a podcast with my wife.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, that’s awesome.
Jacob Morgan
I’m basically sharing what we learned during our entrepreneurial journey. So for anyone who’s interested in being an entrepreneur, that’s BYOB podcast, calm, beyourownbosspodcast.com. Keeping busy. We also have a new baby on the way next three, four weeks, so we’re just staying busy.
Steve Chaparro
Is that a new baby or a first baby or both?
Jacob Morgan
No new baby. I mean, well, a second. It’ll be our second.
Steve Chaparro
Nice, very nice. Congratulations. Yeah.
Jacob Morgan
Thank you. So that’s been, you know, we’re definitely staying busy. We got a lot going on. And yeah, certainly spending more time with family, which is always nice.
Steve Chaparro
Well, folks, we’ve been talking to Jacob Morgan, the founder of the future of work university, Jacob, if people want to learn more about you and your work, where can they go?
Jacob Morgan
So my personal website for people to connect with me is thefutureorganization.com. That’s thefutureorganization.com.
Steve Chaparro
All right, Jacob. Thank you very much.
Jacob Morgan
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Announcer
Thank you for listening to the Culture Design Show. We’ll see you again next time. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. And while you’re at it, feel free to leave a review of the podcast.
