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Ryan Dalton on What Leaders Get Wrong About Employee Motivation
12 Plays1 month ago
Skills matter, but motivation is what determines whether people actually thrive.
In this episode of MustardHub Voices: Behind the Build, Curtis Forbes sits down with Ryan Dalton, co-founder of TalentMotives, to explore how intrinsic motivation shapes performance, engagement, and workplace culture. Drawing on his background in education, counseling, and behavioral science, Ryan explains how the Motivation Quotient (MQ) helps leaders understand what truly energizes — or drains — their people.
The conversation dives into why disengagement often has less to do with competence and more to do with misalignment, how AI can be used to strengthen (not replace) human connection, and why self-awareness is the most underrated leadership skill. Ryan also shares how Talent Motives’ AI-powered coach, Sherpa, helps leaders communicate more effectively, build better teams, and reduce unnecessary friction at work.
This episode is a must-watch for founders, HR leaders, and operators who want to move beyond surface-level engagement strategies and build workplaces where people feel understood and motivated.
About Ryan:
Ryan’s career began in education, helping students plan for college, where he first recognized the importance of understanding human potential. He went on to work in college counseling and career guidance, helping students and professionals find clarity and purpose. With a background in international relations and fluency in Mandarin Chinese, he gained a broader perspective on what truly motivates people across cultures. That insight led him to help architect the Motivation Quotient (MQ) and shape its impact in organizational settings. Today, as Co-Founder of TalentMotives, he leads the vision behind Sherpa—their AI-powered coach that integrates MQi into daily management and leadership.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:06
Speaker
Hi, everyone. This is Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. In these episodes, I speak with the people building, backing, and running better workplaces. I'm your host, Curtis Forbes. Welcome to today's Fireside Chat. My guest today is Ryan Dalton.
Ryan Dalton's Career Journey
00:00:22
Speaker
Ryan's career began in education helping students plan for college where you first recognize the importance of understanding human potential.
00:00:30
Speaker
Went on to work in college counseling and and career guidance, helping students and professionals find clarity and purpose. And with a background in international relations and fluency in Mandarin Chinese language.
00:00:43
Speaker
He gained a broader perspective on what truly motivates people across cultures. That insight led him to architect the motivation quotient and shape its impact in organizational settings.
00:00:56
Speaker
Today, as co-founder of Talent Motives, he leads the vision behind Sherpa, their AI-powered coach that integrates MQI into daily management and leadership.
00:01:10
Speaker
Welcome to Behind the Build. Happy to have you here, Ryan. Thank you, Curtis. it's happy I'm happy to be here. So are we going to do this whole thing in Mandarin right now? If you want to. No, i I wouldn't be able to follow you. um So I know that you listed youlisted work ah as a hobby. I think that I'm one of those people that kind of fall in that camp.
00:01:33
Speaker
um And I can kind of appreciate that on every level.
Motivation Quotient Project
00:01:36
Speaker
How long have you been working on this project? It started in early 2021 and we had a group of very, very smart people, which kind of is the, uh,
00:01:54
Speaker
the underlying foundation of my career I'm always the the dumbest person in the room, surrounding myself with smarter people. yeah And so I found myself working with a ah tech startup with a bunch of brilliant people who are identifying based on a lot of motivation science, but scientists and lots of different PhDs sitting around talking about how can we create something to help people identify what really motivates them from the inside.
00:02:22
Speaker
And so over the past, you know, almost almost five years now, we've been developing what is now the motivation quotient that had started with how to help students and, you know, in high school and college understand what drives them from the inside to help them point towards the better college and careers.
00:02:40
Speaker
And, you know, within a couple of years, I quickly identified this would be great to help people find their career. Imagine adults, imagine different different avenues. And we we had run summer camps and other classes based on motivations with students. And we would ultimately group them together based on motivations. So no one knows anybody, no one knows any skillsets, just based on your motivation, what job task you could, you should take and a mock like business sort of shark tank sort of deal.
00:03:14
Speaker
And we'd give them couple hours, come up with a product, pitch it
Impact of Motivation Quotient
00:03:18
Speaker
to us. And it always went well, but we had parents coming to us saying, this is great. Can you do this for me and my wife?
00:03:25
Speaker
Really? Or can you come to my company and help me with my business? And we started to realize there's there's bigger grounds for this. And so over the past year, we've been developing MQI, Motivation Quotient Intelligence, incorporating our own Sherpa AI to help individuals really read the results, read the reports, and ask questions simply based on who they are, what drives them. And we're starting to see some really good applications in the you know the executive level, organization level for HR.
00:03:59
Speaker
I love that. um And I mean, that's often how some of the greatest companies get started, right? And people are starting to ask you for all of these things. And then you um you actually have those those was customers, I guess, to eventually go go and build for.
Talent Motives' Mission
00:04:14
Speaker
um I'm really excited to to, I think, learn a lot more about talent motives as an organization, right? you guys do some super interesting things with this data.
00:04:22
Speaker
The psychology, you know, that that drives the employee engagement and productivity like you were just talking about. Yeah. you know, and and how it increases retention, you know, tapping into, I think what motivates people to stay right with a certain workforce, um you know, or, you know, presumably what might attract them to some, to another, you know, another organization.
00:04:45
Speaker
Tell everybody what talent motives is. I think um understanding a little bit about mqi is super helpful, but as an organization, what does talent motives do Yeah, we're looking to help organizations and individuals understand themselves and their people better to make better people decisions using our human centric AI. And ultimately looking at coming in when we're're when we're finishing development, coming in at three different levels of helping executive leaders
00:05:18
Speaker
have better self-awareness and just lead better. Just know, you know, what's the best approach to how they take on their role as leader to helping organizations, companies overall, just improve engagement, improve, improve relations, culture,
00:05:34
Speaker
a lot of the things that have been missing in the workforce for, you know, like a century or more, even to then going into helping people hire better so that you're not just hiring someone who can do the job there. You're hiring someone who can do the job with your people specifically and helping ultimately, know, the big, big picture sort of idea of my, you know, the BHAG sort of idea is just helping people understand each other better.
00:05:59
Speaker
and create better cultures, better environments for people to work and to thrive and to find purpose in their day to day life. I love that. You know, it certainly overlaps, I think, where a lot of, you know, the things that we do is. And, and you know, so it it certainly certainly certainly resonates with me. So and and Talent Motives is is your company. So tell me, why why did you co-found Talent Motives?
Entrepreneurial Experiences
00:06:27
Speaker
and And what ultimately drove you to entrepreneurship, I guess, is the better question.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, I've been working in startups for the past seven years. um I got hired for my first one and I really like working for startups. It's exciting. i think it's slightly addictive ah once you get involved with it.
00:06:46
Speaker
Definitely addicting. It is because there's there's always, i don't know, I never gambled, but it seems like there's a bit of like a gambling thrill in each case of, you know, huge payoff or just absolutely lose everything.
00:07:00
Speaker
um And, you know, developing this technology over the past few years, we saw a need outside of its initial niche, which I mentioned earlier, we were working in education and seeing that, you know, the parents of these students were saying, come to my company.
00:07:17
Speaker
come and help my people, we figured, you know, rebranding and starting something completely new with um people who are more experts in the realm of human resources and and and business. And so we partnered with a couple associates of ours who have extensive experience in the industry.
00:07:36
Speaker
Me being one of the co-creators or co-authors of the motivation quotient, it made sense for for me to partner with them to create this new type of solution to solve problems that we've all experienced.
Intrinsic Motivations in the Workplace
00:07:49
Speaker
um Going back to when I was at college doing college counseling, you know i got a really close connection with the parents I worked with. and I was in San Diego, California, lot of tech companies down there.
00:08:03
Speaker
and a lot of the parents would be coming in saying i love my job i love what i do but i just i can't get along with my people the people i work with i can't get along with and the first startup i worked for was a coding boot camp in san diego and would find people train them in software get them jobs and we would talk with a lot of business owners tech startups and you know small businesses and their biggest struggle was finding people who would stay because there was always personality clashes okay i initially saw a lot of potential for intrinsic motivation which i believe really strongly influences your personality and behavior to if you understand where someone's coming from you're less likely to have conflicts over this
00:08:56
Speaker
you're less likely to um immediately result to, oh, this person's a jerk and I don't like them to more of, oh, this is this is how they behave. And when we're developing this, the team developing motivation quotient, we did it ourselves and immediately all of our relationships improved exponentially.
00:09:16
Speaker
um There were you know some engineer types who were just very different from me. I'm very much the other side of the brain, not the math and the science data type. And i'm working with a particular engineer, I love the guy, but ah I just I just couldn't stand working with him until we did our motivation potion and mapped our intrinsic motivations. And I understood why there's certain behaviors that would annoy me or bother me, why where they were coming from.
00:09:43
Speaker
and why it was sort of like this drive from the inside of it. I've got to do it this way and understood, oh, well, that makes sense. And just understanding that about where he's coming from, you know, how he walks his eyes, how he sees the world gave me, what is the word, you know, empathy or sympathy or just yeah something to understand who he was. And I thought, man, if we could put this in every business where people actually know each other and we can actually build better communications,
00:10:13
Speaker
that's got to be a huge influence in the workplace. And so that was the first like seed idea that came into it. And I just grabbed some partners who were experts in in the field of human resources and and HR tech.
00:10:26
Speaker
And we decided, let's let's do this. Let's try, let's try something new and partnering with our our technology in this area. You know, it's, it's still startups still roll of the dice in a way yeah but it's exciting because we really really do believe in the in the huge potential of being able to understand people better map the motivations of people whether they're your boss or your employees and develop just a better understanding of where humans are and where we fit in this world where there's this huge disconnect and everything's technology
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, you you have a really interesting career trajectory. Most of your experience originally focused on education and learning. um I'm kind of curious what drew you to that.
00:11:13
Speaker
And then what was it that impacted the career path that you the you took in this other direction? Yeah, it's it's um not a linear path. career path at all. um As most startup founders, I would say, tend to be a little non non-linear. So I think you your that tracks.
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, and to be fully transparent, like, you know, to add on to the last question of like why entrepreneurship, why the business is because I look at my, my background, I don't really fit in any job title that's out there. And so it's like, well, you know, if I can't find the right fit out there, I'll just make my own.
00:11:52
Speaker
Um, but moving in from education and to you know, the HR tech world, completely different industry. Um, again, like I, I've had a, um,
00:12:06
Speaker
A lot of experience of being the dumbest person in the room and surrounding myself with people who are just vastly more intelligent than me to learn from them. And so on a personal level, it's an exciting adventure of doing something I've never done before. Like when I was in college and I studied Mandarin Chinese, it just seems so hard.
00:12:24
Speaker
like it's this huge problem. It's this big challenge to overcome yeah that. Why not? Why not try something new and see if it works out. And if it doesn't find out, finding out the way that it will work out. Um, and,
00:12:39
Speaker
the difference of going from like education to here is through my career was I was a classroom teacher. Then I was a teacher trainer and I did training and education. Then I did ah curriculum development. And then I did a lot of just counseling and research and talking people through college and telling parents, don't worry when they drop out, we have a second plan for them. Or to, you know, a lot of that was international, a lot of that was in Asia and the US helping, you know, the the international relationships of of coming from one area to the other, to helping people understand really, where do you
People-Centric Business Approach
00:13:18
Speaker
belong in the world? And where should you fit? And that's the one common denominator of, you know, it's education is all supposed to be supposed to be all about
00:13:28
Speaker
your career and what you're going to do for work for the rest of your life. So it's almost like I started in kindergarten and I've worked my way up to postgraduate or, you know, the real world now of helping people understand just, it's always been about who are you? yeah so maybe the spaces Maybe the spaces really aren't that different. I mean, you you it's as you see a lot of commonalities, right? In the different spaces, you know, that you've that you've been in Yeah, big picture commonalities. um Details of you things I learned about the ah HR world is wildly unexpected, you with compliance and laws and all these different things. But yeah, big picture commonalities is we're all human beings.
00:14:13
Speaker
yeah we're all We all have emotions. And the biggest problem I'm seeing just in in in the workforce is the same like in high school and college of we're all disconnecting.
00:14:26
Speaker
it was There was a great, we did a great episode once with, um you know, a guest. um And, you know, he made the comment that every business is a people business, um which I think totally, you know, blew me away. and And I think rings true every time I think about it, right? Because whether you're in education or you're in HR, know,
00:14:54
Speaker
or you're selling products and services you know of any kind. you know Ultimately, right it's for the you know to make people's lives better or do things faster or cheaper or somehow enhance you know the human experience that we have in some way.
00:15:11
Speaker
So there you go. So let's let's talk more about talent motives. I'm curious to learn about the kind of clients that come to to Talent Motives. You know, who are they? We don't have to list any names here, but just kind of curious, like, you know, who who are they? What are the challenges that they're facing that bring them to you?
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah, the, you know, we're we're still ah in development phase, but we do have, um you know, a handful of clients who have been working with us. for the last, you know, almost almost couple of years, about a year and a half, and given great insights into but that what direction we should be taking. So right now, they're mostly like engineering companies, um you know, biotech, and a lot of more of like the science-based businesses who are attracted to the idea of the data.
00:16:01
Speaker
and um know we we want to expand it so it's not necessarily a data heavy product um although that is incredibly important so what they've let us know what they've been looking for what their challenges are mean one case is a ah company of um know it's just um engineering company and they're looking at this is, you know, our top performing team, right? They're based on teams working on different type of product development and product engineering. And so they've primarily been using this for a way of tracking what makes the best team using the data motivation. So they're already hired. So it's all they're already skilled, right? So they have the people that they've hired. They're already they have the skills.
00:16:51
Speaker
But beyond skills, what's that missing? Why is there one team performing better than all the others? So using MQ, tracking their motivations, they were able to essentially, ah which helped us with the next phase of data development, of creating like just sort of um a formula.
00:17:10
Speaker
a motivation formula for the best performing team for their company, their industry. And so using that data, they just went around and let everyone know on the different teams, um we're going to we're going to do a little switching around a little bit. And each time they're forming a new group of engineers to work on something new, they use that motivation formula every time because they're finding it it fits what they need for performance for you know lack of um nothing disruptive as far as you know personality clashes or anything and they're able to just have this neat formula of this is a high performing team for us and so every time we put them together we use that which has helped us develop um a new feature of of grouping so one of the things you can do with our sherpas
00:17:56
Speaker
just for your whole company or for your whatever grouping of people you've got, just type in, we need, you know, a group of people to work on this thing, to do this task.
Optimizing Team Performance
00:18:04
Speaker
And they have these traits or something, click a button and it will automatically group people for you who are highly likely to work well together.
00:18:12
Speaker
um That's really interesting. i want spam yeah I love that. Let's kind of talk more about some of these things, the kind of insights and and outcomes that your clients are seeing. So, um,
00:18:27
Speaker
you know They're interested in in improving performance. yeah um And I guess in in order to do so, right they see an opportunity here to um to create these teams in a way that will, I guess, best optimize their own interpersonal interactions with each other.
00:18:47
Speaker
Right. That then theoretically leads to to higher performance. What are the insights that they're getting from um from, you know, these these assessments from talent motives that, um you know, be beyond being able to type in and say, who are the people that should be on this?
00:19:04
Speaker
What are the insights that they're getting that can allow them to even make that assessment on on their own? Overall, it's a matter of understanding what really drives each individual on the team and then also collective as groups. So fundamentally, what motivation quotient does is it measures your intrinsic motivations. And we've I mean, there's got to be a a tremendous amount, but we've mapped 24 specific intrinsic motivations relevant to work.
00:19:32
Speaker
And then there's another six life indexes that are just um you know outside of the work workplace, more personal life, sort of like like food and and and family relationships and exercise, that kind of thing. um What it's doing is it's it's fundamentally letting you know what type of not not necessarily just the job, but environments and what what gives you energy.
00:19:58
Speaker
and what on the other side will drain your energy so you can see really quickly for an individual uh if if this person is put on a group of people doing just teamwork constantly it's going to drain their life away from them they're going to burn out quickly versus another person who might if you leave them alone to work on a project by themselves they need community they need people they get their energy from spending time with people so if you leave them on their own they're going to burn out so understanding what gives you energy what takes it away is is fundamentally what it is uh with motivation quotient what makes you tick in the old sense of the word and
00:20:39
Speaker
So what it can do is it can help you understand it as one example was a performance review of a sales individual, salesperson who highly skilled, great salesperson, just wasn't hitting their goals.
00:20:55
Speaker
And so loading up literally their performance review into our Sherpa system saying, read this, map their motivations, tell me why this salesperson isn't performing at peak levels anymore. and it just read out the you know the best environment this person should be working uh this individual was you know very independent very creative couldn't stand rigid systems and so i think in that situation they and they'd had everyone move in an office together maybe a post-pandemic thing i don't really remember but
00:21:28
Speaker
Everyone had to work in the office together. They had their sales sales scripts and you just had to check your boxes going through your sales day. This person was going nuts. So the solution was how about you work from home a few days a week.
00:21:40
Speaker
You can go off script anytime you want, be creative, talk with us, we'll work through it. And the individual's performance and just overall satisfaction went through the roof. and the numbers went back up and it wasn't about offering them more money or giving them pto or any of those extrinsic outside motivations that are typically used because what else would you use um funding what drives that individual for businesses that are willing to do this and this is very rare if you have an individual who's just disengaged at work if possible move them onto to another team
00:22:17
Speaker
or even to a different role. We've seen individuals who were just, you know, doing boring administrative work. They're good at their job, but just not very engaged. Turns out they're highly creative, little artistic flair to it.
00:22:31
Speaker
Would you like to work in marketing? And this company was was able to do that. Kind of rare, but transition this person from administration into marketing, little bit of training, little bit extra time. went from being a clock in, can't wait to clock out, working for the weekend type to, i love my job, I work all the time.
00:22:50
Speaker
ah So finding what gives people the energy to get them engaged is the most valuable aspect of what we're offering with Talent Motives and our MQI and Sherpa. love hearing that, first of all, and that's some pretty powerful stuff.
00:23:08
Speaker
pretty powerful stuff you know it's It all starts with, I think, understanding people. You you sort of clearly, i think, make that case, right? um And so many of the people problems, I think, stem from the the leaders not really understanding you know all those folks that well, their their entire workforce, right? And you sort of, you're able to surface this um this information, um you know, in ah in ah in a meaningful way, right? That they can actually take action on or
Leadership and Workforce Disconnect
00:23:40
Speaker
do things with. I think they can improve their performance.
00:23:42
Speaker
What are the issues that the organization is going to see when the leadership is not aligned with their workforce, you know, with what they want and what they need and these intrinsic motivators that you talk about, you know? And then I would say,
00:23:57
Speaker
Beyond what are the issues that you'll start to see, what are then the actual consequences or negative outcomes for an organization if there is this disconnect? Ah, it's, it's everything you read. If you're reading the newspapers and the different articles from, you know, the big HR companies, it's, and, and my goodness, my LinkedIn feed at certain times, yeah it's like, everyone's posting about the toxic boss, the toxic workplace.
00:24:24
Speaker
um And these are, these are my connections. So I don't know. um But I'm seeing a lot of not just in LinkedIn individuals, but that's really speaks louder is people putting together these, um these posts about, you know, Hey, if the workplace is toxic,
00:24:42
Speaker
leave or you know focus on yourself um you know don't sacrifice yourself for your company because your company doesn't care about you um i mean you see this and obviously like even television shows you see this um throughout movies i mean like old 50s movies of them standing around the water cooler you know when the boss is like why aren't you working it's the consequences first it's disengagement. People don't care about the job.
00:25:09
Speaker
They might when they start. Circumstances arise. They're no longer you know vested in the company. They're no longer thinking like, hey, I work here because I want this company to thrive so I can have job security. It's more of man, the boss is toxic or the environment's toxic. Nobody gets along. Nobody talks. There's disconnect. And for the big business on the on the bigger picture is You know, you have to adjust your your your turnover rate um to the point I think now it's common practice for some of the bigger companies to just expect a 15% turnover rate every year or every quarter and and expect it so that if it's not that high, they might even lay people off just to achieve that number because it's normal.
00:25:55
Speaker
And ultimately, fundamentally, which I should have started with, is you're losing money. Your business is losing money. you're losing a lot. The amount of money it costs to hire somebody new, even if you're, you know, billions and billions of dollars and, you know, paying two times salary to hire a person is okay. It's still a lot of money that that's being wasted. Um, and it's also just developing on a bigger, bigger picture you know, the quiet quitting culture, um, the ghosting culture, the it's just a job. Why should I stay so that there is also that softer damage, which might not affect your finances as a company as much, but it's definitely going to affect the people when someone suddenly quits and you're working on a team where everyone's changing all the time. And there's not a lot of stability. There's not a lot of, um,
00:26:49
Speaker
you know, like I said, like you're not really invested in where you are. And so it's almost like everyone's always looking for another job. And that's dangerous too, because i don't know why, but it's like, I hear a lot of people looking for jobs and there's a lot of jobs and no one's getting hired and what's going on. Yeah. yeah There's also that fear of, well, we have this huge turnover and maybe we're calling it healthy, but when we go to hire the next person, we're going to be a lot more careful. So it's going to take even more time, more energy, more resources, more money,
00:27:19
Speaker
to replace everybody or to keep people where if we just realized that we're all humans and not numbers if we had a tool if we only had a tool where I could just easily know who people are what type of environment, circumstances, situations they would thrive in. So I could spend a minimal amount of time letting them know, Hey, I see you, you're a human being and not a number in my company. If there could be that kind of connection to where we shifted focus of, we should start thinking about keeping people and start thinking about people.
00:27:51
Speaker
Yeah. You could have a tremendous, tremendous change. Unfortunately, A lot of people, well, not people maybe, but a lot of businesses, it's it's not a priority really.
00:28:03
Speaker
If there was only a tool. If there was only a tool. I love that. um You know, it's what you're describing, I mean, is is it's pervasive, right? You see it everywhere. You see it everywhere where these leaders where and there are leaders who just don't seem to get it right. And I guess the kind of question is, is how do you begin – to steer them in the right direction. um you know, i suppose, ah suppose that, that, that might,
00:28:34
Speaker
That question might even be answered if you knew the leaders, intrinsic motivators, right? If you understand how they work and how they behave, um you know, might be able to put into place an effective strategy to help them move forward and them do a better job leading their people. um I don't know, presumably, right?
00:28:54
Speaker
I'm curious, you know you know, from your perspective, from your experience, how do you steer them in the right direction, you know? as to what those next steps are in general. And I think that, um, what that looks like through, you know, even leveraging your solution.
00:29:12
Speaker
Yeah. It's well, to start an old saying I've always believed in is you can't help someone who's not willing to change. Yeah. yeah So if you have, if you have poor leadership and they don't care cause they, you know, assume I'm, I'm, I'm the best, or I don't want to change.
00:29:29
Speaker
there's There's going to be a struggle. So there's no panacea for for this. But if someone in leadership is at least willing to take a look, what type of leader am I really objectively?
00:29:44
Speaker
Not just what you know my friends are telling me or what my you know my employees are telling me because you you got got to say nice things to the boss. you know it's It's kind of like, you know what if there was this tool where you could find out really who you are?
00:29:59
Speaker
Self-awareness is something that I don't know if it's new. um and Different generations have certainly had different conflicts as far as you know where's your energy it you know focused on, is it towards yourself or towards your others?
00:30:15
Speaker
But there does seem to be, at least in the HR tech industry, a call for more self-awareness, more awareness of you know what am I saying? And when am I saying it and how do I do it?
AI and Communication
00:30:30
Speaker
um One small small tech company we worked with, it was Total Transparency, great guy, owner of the company, said, you know, I would love to use this because sometimes I'm strapped for time.
00:30:46
Speaker
I'm busy. I don't have time to to focus on everybody, even if it's five minutes. I don't have time for that. I just need something to where before I go and tell this employee something, I don't want to come off as brash as, as rude as Kurt, because I know they're not going to accept what I have to say very quickly.
00:31:06
Speaker
So could I use this to find out what's the best way to talk to them? And the answer is yes, it's exactly what it does. So that if, if you do just take that extra 30 seconds of, you know,
00:31:19
Speaker
Curtis, I need to go tell Curtis this thing right now. Personally, I know for myself through my own self-awareness with motivation quotient. Um, I don't typically think too much about how someone's going to respond to what I say.
00:31:33
Speaker
I'm very, very direct, just very matter of fact. I don't mean to be rude. I love people, but it's just, it's just the way I am. I typically it's like, here's problem here solution. Do you want to hear it or not? And so if I know,
00:31:46
Speaker
As an example, if I'm coming to talk to Curtis and I just check real quick, okay, I got to tell Curtis this thing. All right. What's the best way to say it? And then Sherpa says, oh yeah. Um, and I'm not saying this is you Curtis, but as example, you know, this person's getting a bit more sensitive, you know, really loves, um, you know, positive reinforcement is, you know, really cares what people think about them. Like, I don't, I don't care what people think about me. It's just wait. is Um, but the person I'm talking to is different than me.
00:32:12
Speaker
Ooh. Okay. Let me slow down for a second. And instead of just rushing and say, Hey, this is the thing that needs to be done and do it. can go in like, Hey, how you doing? Hey, awesome. How, how's your day? a little bit more time, a little more friendly, a little more thoughtful.
00:32:27
Speaker
Hey, we're going to do this thing. What do you think about it? Cause we know you're good, blah, blah, blah. Little things like that can be helpful. Um, it's not the best example, but being able to know how to talk to the person. If I need to be a little bit nicer and kinder to this person, Or if I am that way, like if you come to me and you want to compliment me and say, Hey, Ryan, you're great. We like this about you. And could you do this? My guard's up because you're going to take advantage of me. You don't talk to me like that. Just tell me what you want. Let's move on, do business, right? Interesting. Just a bit more direct. So if you just a few seconds, 30 seconds, maybe a minute to take the time to talk to somebody, you can prevent conflict.
00:33:05
Speaker
You prevent these sort of ah common workplace problems that spiral and snowball into bigger areas. I know that millions of people out there use ChatGPT to help them write emails or, i don't know, call scripts or or, you know, like you're talking about, right? even Even go talk to folks. And it spits out answers based on what it knows about you, the person writing it, right? Right. And, you know, what it might characterize as, you know, clean, direct, straightforward, or persuasive, or, you know, a million other adjectives that it it will use to describe the responses that it gives you.
00:33:54
Speaker
But it what it doesn't give you of those... all of those adjectives as it pertains to the recipient. The person who will be receiving the information only describes or or writes this for you as the person giving it, how you would say it, but not in a way that, you know, you might want to move the needle when it comes to how you're delivering it to the eventual recipient.
00:34:23
Speaker
i think what you're talking about is really interesting in that, you know, may have something to say, And rather than going to my chat, DBT, Gemini, Claude, Croc, whatever it happens to be, and saying, what's the best way to say X?
00:34:38
Speaker
You're talking about really going into a you know an AI solution and saying, what's the best way to say X? So it's received in this manner.
00:34:49
Speaker
And um that's adding a, frankly, that's adding a pretty powerful layer that, you know, arguably gets the job done better, right? Than ah than just doing, you know, typical solutions out there.
00:35:03
Speaker
um One of the things that I think is that I that i see, right, is is it's also not just leadership and the workforce. it's it's It's across to the whole workforce.
00:35:15
Speaker
It seems like there's there's fewer just human connections across the organizations. And I mean, I'm curious, what are the causes? What are the ramifications? Do you see the same thing?
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's just one of so common it's, it's expected that there really isn't that much of communication.
Technology and Human Connections
00:35:35
Speaker
mean it depends on, on the type of industry you're in, the type of work that you do and how you spend your time with people.
00:35:40
Speaker
But it's, it's definitely, I'm noticing more and more and more just disconnect of maybe it's technology, which is kind of weird because and In a way, we're we're looking at ah at a world where we have an entire generation who grew up with a smartphone in their hand and are always going to not not VR virtual reality, but essentially a virtual world that's not real of Instagram and TikTok and all these things that are
00:36:11
Speaker
filtered and edited and everything and and creating unrealistic expectations for people, creating a different sort of mindset towards what the world is and and how to communicate with people, um you know, beyond just, you know, the slang that older guys like me can't pick up on anymore, but really disconnecting and not having real human connections anymore.
00:36:34
Speaker
um The sort of thing you'd see if i you know I go out to eat with my wife and son, you see a young couple on a date and you know they nod their heads and then go to their phones during the entire meal. it scares I mean, I've been married almost 15 years now, so I've been out of that game for a long time. It scares me to see that.
00:36:51
Speaker
And it's not just in you know in in personal life, it's it's in the and the workplace. And it's, it's just, you know, it's and it's, it's kind of funny what I'm trying to do with talent motives is, is saying, you technologies were technology overloaded and it's tearing us apart as people or human connections are breaking apart. And here I am saying, well, we use this AI tool to force you back to being a human, which is kind of, kind of strange, but it's, it's trying to help people realize we need to go back to being humans to yeah is toer for people.
00:37:28
Speaker
Talking about, talking about using och technology to overcome technology. Um, and I kind of want to pivot into, into that a little bit. Um, not that, uh, Not that we're talking about Skynet for anybody who knows that reference.
00:37:41
Speaker
yeah But um let's talk about tech. and you know Mustard Up is a a tech company, so telemotives. um What role do you see technology, and I guess all the various tools and and and platforms that companies are adopting, ah play in engaging the workforce? Are they making a positive impact?
00:38:00
Speaker
um Could all these different tools be impeding? the the progress, talk to me about what you see there just in terms of technology.
AI's Impact on Productivity and Employment
00:38:10
Speaker
where We're at like the boom time of AI, right? It's like we've just discovered the gold in the foothills, right? And it's it's causing obviously the effects of, hey, this is amazing. There's so many possible potential, positive potential. And then, oh my gosh, Skynet, right? The whole world's coming to an end We're all going to lose our jobs. There's an article today of um someone predicting 17 or something percent of the workforce just we don't need anymore because of AI.
00:38:40
Speaker
So there's there's a big fear of that, and it's legitimate because it's real. Going back to Eli Whitney in the cotton gin in 17-whatever, a machine that took the job from people making thread with their hands, to the internet.
00:38:54
Speaker
um you When the internet took off, workforce shifted. So what we're seeing initially on the negative side is There are jobs that aren't going to exist anymore.
00:39:05
Speaker
um I never really took the time to really learn how to code myself in software. And Claude will do that for me. ChachiVT will do that for me. It's pretty pretty incredible. I mean, you can get your entry level software designer just by typing words into a box.
00:39:21
Speaker
And so there's the negative side of of a lot of different type of jobs that aren't going to exist anymore. um But there has to be at some point new jobs being created, shifting in the workforce, which is disruptive and it's not comfortable.
00:39:37
Speaker
um it It is a problem. It is dangerous um for a lot of people. And it's going to cause big disruption to the economies. And it's just a matter of, you humanity is just going to have to adapt and overcome and come up with new solutions for these new solutions. Yeah, yeah. But on the positive side is,
00:39:57
Speaker
It depends on how you use it. I mean, there i forget the name of the company. I forget. Maybe, you know, like, I think they laid off like 12,000 people because they said, hey, AI is going to replace them all.
00:40:09
Speaker
And they just like banked on it. And then they found out AI doesn't do it all. We need to hire everyone back. And so that was a bit rash, a bit of a big push. But there's the productivity side of, you know, a lot of people in the workforce are saying, well, this could give us a four-day work week.
00:40:26
Speaker
Or it could be like George Jetson. I show up. I don't know. That's, and that's an old reference, but there was a cartoon. If you didn't know the show space age, guy goes to work three hours a day, pushes a couple of buttons, goes home.
00:40:39
Speaker
Um, there's that outlook of, Hey, it can make life easier. And it can certainly make people more productive. You can output a lot more. I mean, I know for myself, just chat, GBT and, um, and Gemini and grok and other things I can do a tremendous, I can produce a tremendous amount of work in a day by myself.
00:41:00
Speaker
But again, it's, um, you know, are we using that for productivity and is it going to make one person take three jobs and just work 16 hours a day, you know, 16 hour days and and push it back. so this productivity is actually going to take time away from us or give us more time. It's, it's entirely unclear. There's so many different ways of doing it, but it's really comes down to the responsibility of the individual.
00:41:30
Speaker
of of a worker, the manager, the business owner of how are you going to use this and realizing, like you said earlier, every business it's it's about your people. yeah if we're just replacing people with machines i for one i hate the self-checkout still at grocery stores i want the person there i want you to have a job and i want to talk to you hi i'm a human being um we we we can't allow that to happen and i think what will happen is some businesses will do the huge layoffs and replace everyone with ai and then realize that was a mistake we need people so the question is
00:42:03
Speaker
what do we do to create human centric technology that puts the people really not just on paper, but really puts people first so that we can focus on the human being and their work and maybe ease work conditions or make life better is you know, the utopian dream of technology.
00:42:22
Speaker
But it is possible in certain areas. And that's really where I see Sherpa, AI and and MQI is coming in as a boon for people focus on the human being, understand the person better.
00:42:33
Speaker
so that we don't replace people, we keep them. Talk to me about the future of HR tech. I want to hear trends that you're watching, new tech that you're excited about, aside from your
Trends in HR Tech and Leadership Self-Understanding
00:42:48
Speaker
your own. Just kind of cute curious where you see that that future of the technology in the ah HR space going.
00:42:55
Speaker
AI. Everything in HR tech is AI this, AI that. And Uh, we were at HR tech in Las Vegas in September and I was, I was actually shocked. Um, we were in the startup pavilion.
00:43:12
Speaker
There were, i think 60 something startup companies and almost all of them were doing agentic AI for talent acquisition in one way or the other, to the point where I went to go talk to a booth of a company that does nothing related to that as sort of more artistic, um,
00:43:29
Speaker
ah learning management system that just looked really cool and I wanted to talk to human beings. um So I mentioned, oh, we're at the startup pavilion and she jokingly said, oh, do you also do agentic AI and talent acquisition?
00:43:42
Speaker
said, well, no, actually, we're totally different. But it's there's going to be big focuses on where areas that we can get through the massive workload of of especially right now with talent acquisition, I mentioned earlier, there's there's so many jobs that are open and so, so many more people applying for them is first looking at efficiency. And I think the bigger attention is we've got all this compliance stuff to do.
00:44:10
Speaker
We have all this stuff that we've got to do a lot of manual work that can just be replaced by AI to make the job easier so that the, you know, HR representatives or the managers or whoever's working in whatever capacity is able to ultimately do a lot more work.
00:44:26
Speaker
I think that that's really the focus is easing the hiring, easing the, um you know, the compliance side of it, but with all the focus towards just automation instead of manually type it just automate everything.
00:44:44
Speaker
um The dangers of that is, is is one, automation has mistakes. um There could be, you know, an issue where you know hundreds of thousands of um you know whatever documents or processes are are messed up and they have to be redone manually perhaps but the bigger issue i think is oh and then the other problem is the future of getting a job is you and me like we're interviewing with a robot that's talking to us and there's less human connection i don think that's the bigger danger
00:45:18
Speaker
is is focusing on the wrong things of actually getting us further away from the human element to where, you know, it's the robots we're talking to, the robots doing the work and we don't take the, and we're going to be so busy managing the robot automation work that we're not talking to people as much as we should.
00:45:37
Speaker
Which I think kind of brings me to to a question I always like to wrap up with. I'm super curious to to hear your your take on this, but you know if and If an entrepreneur, you know some executive or or somebody in leadership asks you for your your single most important piece of advice about what they can do better as a leader when it comes to motivating their folks, when it comes to engaging their people, potentially reducing their turnover, um you know or creating better cultures within their organization, um right you only have a minute with these folks before they turn right around and and walk in the other direction. What is it that you tell them?
00:46:15
Speaker
You will reproduce what you are more than what you say or what you do. So you as a leader, people will see you for who you are and you know, like the old saying our parents used to say back in the days is do what I say, and not what I do. it doesn't work.
00:46:36
Speaker
So as a leader, again, you're going to reproduce who you are. People will reflect based upon you or reject you outright. So The most important thing that you can do for yourself is really know who you are.
00:46:49
Speaker
Now, who you think you are, not what you say, not what you do, and certainly not what the people who like you tell you, you are. Right. Find out who you really are.
00:47:02
Speaker
And at that point you can then start to see what am I reproducing? What do people see from me that I'm mostly unconscious of? Because as a leader, I'm so busy. i don't have time to sit and self reflect.
00:47:14
Speaker
I have a billion things to do five minutes ago. Yeah. I like that. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. Thanks for joining me today. Appreciate all your insights and your thoughts. This was really, uh, this was a great one. This was pretty powerful.
00:47:28
Speaker
Thank you, Curtis. It was, uh, it was very, very nice. I like this conversation again. I like talking to people. Thanks for everyone tuning in to Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. Please like and share this episode and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Be sure to visit mustardhub.com to learn about how we help companies become destinations for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge. Sign up to get started for free while you're there. And until next time.