119: Humanity Works – Technology and Creativity in the Workplace of the Future with Alexandra Levit
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As technology and automation continue to evolve, so will the landscape of the workplace. Many skills, and even entire careers, will become obsolete as new ones emerge. What can we do to make ourselves valuable in the marketplace of the future? In this episode of The TalentGrow Show, Workplace Expert and Futurist Alexandra Levit returns to the show to share her insights on these critical issues. You’ll discover what important shifts and changes in the workplace Alexandra expects to see by the year 2030, what impact we can expect the evolution of technology and automation to have on today’s careers, and how we can best prepare ourselves for the inevitable change. Plus, find out what human attribute Alexandra thinks will become even more valuable as technology becomes an ever-more crucial part of the workplace. Listen and don’t forget to share with others!
ABOUT ALEXANDRA LEVIT:
Bestselling author, global workplace consultant and futurist Alexandra Levit’s goal is to prepare organizations and their employees to be competitive and marketable in the future business world. A former nationally syndicated columnist for the Wall Street Journal and writer for the New York Times, Fast Company, and Forbes, Alexandra has authored several books, including the international bestseller They Don’t Teach Corporate in College and Humanity Works: Merging People and Technologies for the Workforce of the Future.
Alexandra recently became a partner with organizational development firm PeopleResults. She consults and writes on leadership development, human resources, technology adoption, entrepreneurship, innovation, career and workplace trends on behalf of numerous Fortune 500 companies including American Express, Deloitte, and Staples, and has spoken on these topics at hundreds of organizations around the world including ADP, Cardinal Health, Campbell Soup, McDonalds, Microsoft, PepsiCo, and more.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
How Alexandra’s first book, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College, came to be and kick-started her public speaking career (4:36)
The idea behind Alexandra’s new book, Humanity Works (6:47)
We all have to be extremely agile and flexible; nothing is set in stone with respect to our careers or the way the business world is going to evolve (7:24)
What Alexandra thinks of as ‘the future,’ and what kinds of shifts and changes she expects to see (8:25)
Alexandra explains the three categories that she focuses on when looking at the future: collaboration, customization, and creativity (9:56)
Why human creativity is going to become so much more important as the workplace evolves technologically (11:41)
Alexandra shares a specific example of how human creativity is coming into play in a way it never needed to before, given today’s ever-evolving technology (12:17)
What Alexandra means by the term “human in the loop” (13:17)
What really happened during the United Airlines scandal when a passenger was violently removed from the plane, and how it relates to Alexandra’s insights on technology vs humanity in the workplace (13:59)
What can we do to hone our ‘human edge’ in the workplace? (15:28)
Alexandra’s prediction for the structure of the workplace by the year 2030, and what it means for leaders today (16:32)
Alexandra comments on the impact that technology has had on Generation Z (18:15)
A simple piece of advice for leaders who want to prepare for the workplace of the future (19:32)
Halelly shares how one organization that she sometimes works with is already preparing for change (21:47)
How the field of law has already changed with automation (23:05)
How can we start figuring out what aspects of our skill-sets we should focus on, and which ones might not be carried on to the future marketplace? (24:14)
What’s new and exciting on Alexandra’s horizon? (26:41)
One specific action you can take to become better prepared for the workplace of the future (28:08)
RESOURCES:
Get Alexandra’s latest book, Humanity Works
Check out Alexandra’s website
Here’s the website for Alexandra’s book
Listen to Alexandra’s first appearance on the TalentGrow Show on episode 42!
Transcript:
Episode 119 Alexandra Levit
TEASER CLIP: Alexandra: Some of you might remember that a passenger was very violently pulled off a plane at O’Hare because two flight attendants needed to get to their destination and so they needed those seats. What really happened here was that the algorithm that was in charge of getting people from here to there told the United staff that these flight attendants had to get on that plane. Everyone just sort of blindly followed this algorithm without regard to, “Okay, what happens to our reputation if we pull this guy off the plane? He didn’t volunteer to get off, so what’s that going to do to us?” And they were very sorry that they did not have humans appropriately in the loop on that. People were there, but they just didn’t check the machine. It was kind of like, “Okay, well, the algorithm says we have to get them there, so let’s just do that,” and that’s an example of how things can go horribly wrong. Algorithms don’t have a sense of right and wrong! Of moral or not moral or appropriate or not appropriate!
[MUSIC] Announcer: Welcome to the TalentGrow Show, where you can get actionable results-oriented insight and advice on how to take your leadership, communication and people skills to the next level and become the kind of leader people want to follow. And now, your host and leadership development strategist, Halelly Azulay.
Halelly: TalentGrowers, we are having a slew of boomerangers lately, and that’s because so many of my guests are constantly evolving and creating more goodness in the world. Putting out new books, creating new interesting insights and I want to share that with you, so when it’s relevant, I do bring them back. Today we have Alexandra Levit coming back to the show to talk about the future of work, how you can prepare for it as an organization and as an employee. How to be aware of the kinds of things that are going to change and instead of just either being blind about them or freaking out about them, you can take proactive action to get yourself ready – you and your organization. We talk about the kinds of trends that she’s seeing as a futurist and that she has written about in her latest book Humanity Works. She talks about what are some of the biggest changes, what is the human edge, what kinds of skills you should be on the lookout for building and some examples. So I hope that you listen, that you take heart and that you take action. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist at TalentGrow and this is the TalentGrow Show. Here we go!
Welcome back. I’m so glad to have my friend Alexandra Levit back on the show. You might recall her from episode 42 of the TalentGrow Show. Alex is best-selling author, global workplace consultant and futurist and her goal is to prepare organizations and their employees to be competitive and marketable in the future business world. A formal nationally-syndicated columnist for the Wall Street Journal and writer for the New York Times, Fast Company and Forbes, Alexandra has authored several books including the international bestseller, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College, and her latest book Humanity Works, merging people and technologies for the workforce of the future. She recently became a partner with organizational development firm People Results. She consults and writes on leadership development, human resources, technology adoption, entrepreneurship, innovation, career and workplace trends on behalf of numerous Fortune 500 companies including American Express, Deloitte and Staples and has spoken on these topics at hundreds of organizations around the world including ADP, Cardinal Health, Campbell’s Soup, McDonalds, Microsoft, Pepsi Co. and so many more. In the last several years, Alexandra has conducted proprietary research on the future of work and many other topics, and today we’re going to focus on the future of work. Alex, welcome back to the TalentGrow Show!
Alexandra: Thanks Halelly. It’s great to be here. It’s always nice to talk with you.
Halelly: I always love talking with you and I’m so glad you made time because I know you’re in crazy book launch mode, traveling the world and kicking off conversations about that. I don’t want to assume that people listened to episode 42 or maybe they don’t remember if they did, exactly about your journey. I always start the show with having my guests describe their professional journey very briefly. Where did you start and how did you end up where you are today?
Alexandra: I started, and Halelly of course you know this story, but some of the listeners might not. I started my career at a large public relations agency in New York City after being a rather high-achieving college student, and I had an extremely rude awakening. My first boss hated me so much I thought I’d killed a relative. I watched people with half my work ethic get promoted ahead of me and I’d love to say that things turned around once I got out from under that boss, but in fact it took me three years, working at both that agency and a large Fortune 500 software company, to get my first promotion. In fact, my second boss told me I was like a square peg in a round hole and that she was going to have to let me go if I couldn’t assimilate into the environment. I was actually in danger of being fired not once, but twice, in my first couple of years, despite the fact that I’d done well in school. I got this idea to write a book called They Don’t Teach Corporate in College, and published that when I was around mid-20s. Originally I had intended the book to be a side project because once I took some personal development classes I started learning exactly what I needed to do to get ahead. But I wished that I’d had it earlier, so I wanted to help other 20-somethings experience or not experience some of the same that I did. The book I intended to just be something I did in my spare time, but much to my pleasure and surprise it did well, and I started getting asked to do speaking engagements, originally focused on young professionals. But as I started writing for more outlets, I expanded my reach a bit and then as I did more and more talks on the workplace and on careers, people would occasionally ask me, “Okay, what do you think is going to happen in five years?” And I would have to speculate based on what I had witnessed in the market so far.
After a while of doing that and seeing that I occasionally, from time to time, was right, I entered the world of futurism, which is not about predicting the future. It’s really about forecasting likely scenarios based on trends that are popping up, based on things that are kind of percolating upward, patterns that you see kind of in the background that have the potential for major market disruption. And I really enjoyed that work quite a lot, so the book Humanity Works, merging technologies and people for the workforce of the future is research, but also based on personal experiences with clients, around what do we do about some of these trends that are happening? How can we, as rising leaders, as existing leaders, how can we cope with some of these things and do small steps so that when these things become urgent we find that we’re not in a reactionary position, but instead we are ready? That’s how I got from point A to point B and I’m sure like everyone else, I will be pivoting multiple times throughout the rest of my career, but at least that’s where we are today.
Halelly: I love that, and I just think it’s such a great example of how you can set out to do one thing and end up in a totally different place. If you’re just sort of open and listening to the clues and the cues that life gives you, and then taking advantage.
Alexandra: That’s right. Everybody is going to have to do that, Halelly. We talk about that sometimes offline that we all have to be extremely agile and flexible and that’s the one lesson that I advise people who are reading this book to take away. It’s that there’s nothing set in stone with respect to your career or the way the business world is going to evolve. We just don’t know. The best quality you can develop is comfort with uncertainty and realizing that you don’t know, so all you can do is prepare yourself the best you can and be flexible, knowing that things are going to change.
Halelly: Well, I know we’re going to talk a lot more about the kinds of qualities that can help us, but before we do that, let’s just step back a minute. We say “the future.” The future is – that could be the next five years, that could be the next 25 years, the next 1,000 years. So what future does your book focus on? And what are some of the biggest changes? What are the themes that you see as some of those shifts?
Alexandra: The focus of the book goes to around 2030. That’s where I think we kind of reach the edge of where the world as we know it will still resemble the world we’re in today. What I mean by that is that at some point, in the first half of this century probably, we’re going to reach a technological singularity. What that means is that machines will reach such a development that is unrecognizable to us that we won’t be able to really predict how society is going to be structured as a result. I think we will safely get to 2030 at least without having that happen. But after that, it’s kind of anybody’s guess as to what is going to occur. I focus on around 2030, and one of the things about the book is that it’s not about things that haven’t happened yet. It’s about, for the most part, things that we can envision, that are already starting to happen and that organizations are already starting to implement but haven’t been really considered on a worldwide, global scale with everybody doing it. So the goal is to give people a competitive advantage by recognizing, “These are things I can kind of see and I can kind of see how it would become something we all need to worry about and I’m going to take action now.” That’s the goal of that.
In terms of what themes specifically we’re looking at, I like to talk about the future really in three categories. I don’t divide the book this way, but I think it’s helpful when talking about so many trends, trying to group them. I view that in terms of collaboration, customization and creativity. The way we are going to work is going to change in terms of the way we collaborate. We’ll all be a part of virtual, remote, more short-term teams that work for a variety of different employers at a variety of different times. We’re going to have access to a lot of technology that’s going to make collaboration easier. We are all going to be part of human machine hybrid teams and by that I don’t mean that a robot is sitting next to you, necessarily, I just mean that you will turn over certain tasks to chat bots, for example, to handle, and we’ll all have intelligent virtual assistance. The next one is customization. We were just talking about that, how nobody will have the same career as anybody else. You will be able to do anything that you want. You will be responsible for acquiring a wide bench across functional expertise, and you will use that to transition into many different roles in probably many different types of industries. We’ll also be able to customize our jobs according to what makes us more productive and we’ll actually be able to use wearables to measure such a thing.
Then the final one, which is probably the most important, is creativity and other human skills. I think as machines become capable of more and more and get more sophisticated, it’s going to become really critical that we recognize our value as humans and that we hone abilities like creativity, empathy, judgment, intuition, interpersonal sensitivity, because that is going to be what sets us apart. Creativity in particular is important because a machine, in and of itself, doesn’t know if something is a good creative endeavor. It’s very subjective. Even if a machine is participating in the creation of something, there’s no way for that machine to tell if it’s any good or not. That requires that is known as human in the loop. Pretty much wherever there is any kind of process that exists, we need a human involved in the process to kind of design a machine that can work with it, to build it, to govern the machine’s involvement in that process, to fix it when it breaks, to decide how to redeploy it. That all takes a lot of creativity.
I’ll give you, Halelly, a quick example of something that’s happening with me now. I’m working with a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company here in the Chicago area, and they’re implementing a chat bot to help with their onboarding process. They are using it to help guide new hires through the organization. They have no fewer than 20 human beings working on this. Those people all had previous responsibilities and now their responsibilities involve a chat bot. This is an example of where humans are coming into play using their creativity and their other skills that they didn’t need to before. Those are some of the things we talk about in the book, and really, it’s a chance I think for people to recognize what they need to focus on now and to start reskilling, upskilling, do whatever they need to do to prepare for potential next moves. That’s really what we’re trying to accomplish here.
Halelly: So many question and things. One clarification because you said it earlier and I was trying to make sure I understood what you said – did you say that it’s human in the loop, is that the language you used earlier?
Alexandra: Yeah, human in the loop, and that just refers to a human being that’s checking the machine. So a machine doesn’t just go amuck and do whatever. A human being has to be looking out to say, “Is this an appropriate conclusion based on what we know to be true?” Even if it’s an appropriate conclusion with respect to the bottom line, are there nuances, are there implications of making a decision based on a machine’s data that only a human could really understand? An example of that is what happened with United Airlines a little while ago. Some of you might remember that a passenger was very violently pulled off a plane at O’Hare because two flight attendants needed to get to their destination and so they needed those seats. What really happened here was that the algorithm that was in charge of getting people from here to there told the United staff that these flight attendants had to get on that plane. Everyone just sort of blindly followed this algorithm without regard to, “Okay, what happens to our reputation if we pull this guy off the plane? He didn’t volunteer to get off, so what’s that going to do to us?” And they were very sorry that they did not have humans appropriately in the loop on that. People were there, but they just didn’t check the machine. It was kind of like, “Okay, well, the algorithm says we have to get them there, so let’s just do that,” and that’s an example of how things can go horribly wrong. Algorithms don’t have a sense of right and wrong! Of moral or not moral or appropriate or not appropriate!
Halelly: Wow, that’s a great example. I’m glad you shared it, and you’re right. It’s the morality and maybe empathy or fairness. Those are not things that robots can do. In the book you say that everything hinges on capturing the human edge in your organization. It sounds like we’re kind of talking about that a little bit here and you mentioned earlier sort of the soft skills or people skills, creativity. Tell us more about this human edge. What else do we need to focus on and hone up within us so that we can have that edge?
Alexandra: There’s a couple of things I’m concerned about, with respect to the human edge. Number one is that all humans are not created equal. That refers to interpersonal skills. We all know human beings who aren’t so good at that, and that’s going to be your differentiator or one of the major differentiators. All these tech folks who have been kind of resting on their laurels because we’ve been in an IT shortage for the last 20 years, who really just sit in a corner and code and don’t do anything else and don’t engage, that’s been fine up until now. That is not going to fly in the near future, because we’re going to have machines that can code. Those are going to be some of the first jobs to be automated, so we really have to look out for those people who don’t have that natural skillset and as leaders be responsible for helping to train them and help them get up to speed.
The other thing that I’m concerned about refers to the changing structures of our organization. So by around 2030, approximately half of all global workers will be in a contract capacity. Which means they will not work fulltime for any one employer, and just like not everyone is cut out for work in the corporate world, we’ve seen people quit their jobs to start their own businesses, etc., there are going to be just as many – if not more – people who are not cut out to work for themselves. Or at least they don’t know how. It’s in our best interests as leaders to really be facilitating autonomy and independence in our people, the development of agility and cross-functional expertise, and essentially preparing them for this work as in a contract capacity. The first thing I can hear l leaders saying is, “Why do I want to train my person to go out and work for other people?” But actually, you’re going to want that to happen, because you’re going to realize as an organization, “Why am I paying overhead? Why am I paying insurance? Why am I paying all this stuff for these people who are going to end up leaders and leaving anyway after a couple of years?” It’s not going to be in the organization’s best interest to have a ton of fulltime employees, but yet you’re still going to want people who you trust, who understand the organization, and who you can work with on an ongoing basis. You might not be the only person they work with, but you’re going to keep going back to them on an ongoing basis. It’s in everybody’s best interests to look at these trends really carefully and say, “This is what we need to do to prepare for this world.” If people fail and they burnout, that’s not helpful to you as someone who is a partner of theirs. Those are kind of two of the things that I’m concerned about. I’m concerned about people not being ready for the structure change that’s going to happen, and I’m concerned about people who haven’t honed their interpersonal skills.
One other thing about interpersonal skills, we have Gen Z rising very quickly. They’re the generation that was born after 1995 and they’ve been raised on technology. They’re the first generation to be born with technology. And as a result, we see some real deficits in interpersonal skills. It’s not their fault and it’s not anything inherently wrong with them, it’s just that they haven’t had the practice. If you go into a room and you ask them, for example, if you ask a group of them, “How many of your have dumped somebody on text message,” all of them will raise their hand. They don’t have the skill to do diplomatic discussions in person, and that’s a huge problem. If we think existing workers don’t have great interpersonal skills, it’s even worse with these guys. That's a major area of focus when it comes to helping our employees to develop the skillset.
Halelly: Good, you’re making me feel like I have tons of job security since I focus on the skills!
Alexandra: Yes I know you do. You’re perfectly well positioned!
Halelly: I know in your book you have a lot of examples and case studies about organizations that are already on the cutting edge and doing things now to prepare. I’d love for you to share one or two so that we can really concretize what you mean by getting ready.
Alexandra: I want to share a really simple one, because I think with a lot of my work, the tendency is to believe that it requires a major organizational overhaul to do some of that stuff. That’s not true, actually. Sometimes it’s just a small thing. I have examples of some big things that companies have done, but I’m going to share a small one. I was working with an oil and gas company and they had the issue of one department being really busy and really cutting edge and doing a lot of the organization’s important work, and they had another department where a lot of things had been automated and the manager wanted to hold onto her people, but she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to, because the work just wasn’t there. What they decided to do is the very busy department put up an internal job board, and they described a bunch of different work they needed help with. They were isolated projects in a lot of cases that required kind of some minimal basic expertise, some knowledge of the company, but they you could learn on the job. They were able to outsource a lot of their work that they couldn’t handle to people internally who were looking to develop cross-functional expertise and also earn their keep within the organization. This helped, as you can imagine, on several levels. It helped the busy department get the work done without having to outsource it completely outside of the company, and it helped the people who didn’t have enough work to develop that cross-functional expertise to be able to contribute in that way to that department in the future, to other departments in the future, and that leader was thrilled to have their people getting some of these transferable skills. Because again, everyone is going to need them. This is an example of a really small thing that made a huge impact. An internal job board, think about it. It’s not rocket science, but it’s a really clever idea and it really did meet everyone’s needs in the end.
Halelly: That’s a great example. I love it. An organization that I sometimes work with, PWC, I know they are really being prepared for how a lot of the people who work for them now, the skills that they bring to the table, are going to get completely shifted over to automation and robots. There was an article in the Harvard Business Journal in October about how they’re teaching digital skills to their workforce and really reskilling and upskilling their current workforce rather than letting them go or giving them the option to learn these different skills so that they can be competitive and continue to work and what’s happening in the future of the 21st Century worker.
Alexandra: Yeah, and that’s brilliant. That’s what all organizations need to be doing. PWC is known for being on the cutting edge. In fact, all the major consulting firms tend to be good at this stuff, or at least they’re the ones leading the charge. Deloitte is another example of doing a lot of cool stuff. I think that’s all you can do. The individual has to take some responsibility too, for reskilling and upskilling, and everybody should be looking at what parts of their jobs have the potential to be automated first, and you should be moving away from those things and toward the areas where you can add value. Law is a great example of this, where you just need to look at what are responsibilities of a lawyer, and typically legal research was a huge component of it. The fact that you would have to research precedence for cases and see what the law had said prior and what the law was in your state and how it differed and now all that stuff can be done by machines. Legal research is almost completely automated not. What value do you as a human lawyer bring? You’re the one who can stand in front of a prospective jury and determine by looking in their eyes if someone is going to be biased or not. That’s nothing a machine is going to be able to do anytime soon. You can convince a judge of a particular argument by being passionate and empathetic. These are things that, until machines develop consciousness, it’s going to be very hard for them to take over. But that legal research is one of those things, and if you were a legal researcher only, or a paralegal, you’re in danger, so those people have to find other ways to contribute and so that’s where we are.
Halelly: Such a great example. Is there like a short tip you have for people listening for how they can research or what’s the best place for them to go to figure out what parts of their current skillset are the ones to let go of, and what parts of their future skillsets should they grow?
Alexandra: My quick tip is to read. If you’re reaching either journals or publications like Fast Company or Inc. that have things about your industry, then you will be able to see the cutting edge stuff that’s happening, and if it’s happening with one employer and it’s deemed to be revolutionary, you can pretty much guess that it’s coming your way. I guess this is a little bit of a tall order, because I'm asking everyone to become a futurist. I’m asking everyone to read the writing on the wall and say, “Hmm, I think this might be coming.” A great example of this is effective computing, if you were in customer service. Effective computing refers to the ability of machines to simulate and recognize human emotion. Typically customer service has really been reserved for humans except for that really basic when they answer the phone and figure out the appropriate person to send you to is, and those things infuriate people because they don’t have any emotional intelligence, except they’re getting it. If you’re in customer service, you’re in real danger of not having a job, so you need to figure out, “What else? Can I skill up so I become a supervisor of those machines, instead of just being the person who handles the calls?” In every industry we need to be reading and seeing, “Okay, if I’ve been looking at the customer service industry I would know about effective computing already. I would have seen something about that.” Just don’t bury your head in the sand. Really be reading about your industry all the time and you’ll see this stuff pop up.
Halelly: That’s some good advice. I’d say read from other industries so you can start to make those connections about things that maybe people that are only reading things in your industry are going to miss.
Alexandra: Right – and shameless book plug, you can read Humanity Works because I’ve done the work for you already!
Halelly: Love it. Of course. We’re going to link to it in the show notes. Before we share one really specific actionable tip, in addition to this one about reading, what’s new and exciting for you? What project or discovery has your attention these days?
Alexandra: I am working on implementation, Halelly, so what I’m doing is going beyond the trends and I'm working with organizations to implement some of these trends. An example of how that would play out, I’m working with organizations to systematize their contract workforces, so instead of just having one manager bring in a contract worker and them somebody else brings in one and there’s no rhyme or reason to how we do this, recognizing there’s some serious financial and legal implications for not having your ducks in a row on your contract workforce. That’s an example of something I’m doing. Starting to work on predictive analytics as it refers to talent acquisitions. So being able to read your data coming from different sources and tell where you should be recruiting from, how you know employees are going to be most successful, how do you onboard them effectively so that they won’t leave? Those are some examples of where I am trying to add value as a futurist and say, “Okay, here are the trends coming down the pike. Here’s how you can adjust your systems and processes to cope more effectively with them.
Halelly: That is so cool. That’s really mind blowing and I’m so glad we have you and people like you working to help companies adjust to this brave new world.
Alexandra: Well thank you for saying that, that’s nice!
Halelly: I hope that listeners are going to figure out a way to get you in there and help them out. What’s one specific action that listeners can take today, tomorrow, this week, to help them upgrade their future readiness or their leadership skills?
Alexandra: For one, if I had to offer it, I would say look at your company for training opportunities. Look where you are and see what is currently available. What leadership training do they offer? What skills training do they offer? Because we are really seeing, or I’m really pushing companies, to develop what are known as applied technology skills now. It’s not that you know how to code yourself, it’s not that you know how to build an app yourself, but you know that there are apps out there that can help you do your job more effectively and you know how to leverage them. That’s applied technology skills. If your organization is not training people in these or other skills you think you need to be future-proofed, you want to go online and look at massive open online courses. I particularly recommend something like data analytics. It kind of doesn’t matter what role you’re in or what industry you’re in. If you don’t have a core understanding of how analytics can be leveraged, you need to get it. That’s something that if your organization isn’t offer it, go online and take a massive open online course. Be with like 500 other people. Get a certification or a micro credential. Have that knowledge in your back pocket and then be able to offer that, because every department in every industry needs analytics. Those are just some examples. It can be specific to technology or it can be just something that’s in your industry or your role you’re seeing as becoming increasingly necessarily. If you’ve got a boss, talk to your boss. Your boss might have some ideas. And your boss probably needs to gain the same skillset you do. You can work on it together.
Halelly: Great advice and I just wrote a piece for a book that was recently published that I said you should go from ward to steward of your career. Take ownership of this. Don’t wait for your company to give you all of this, but be proactive. It sounds like we’re totally aligned about that.
Alexandra: Absolutely. We are aligned, and your company might not even tell you that they offer this stuff. Believe it or not, some of this stuff is there and people don’t even know it. It’s not mandatory, and that’s why I recommend people look there first because the cheapest way to go is to get your company to pay for it!
Halelly: Awesome advice. Alex, how can people stay in touch, learn more about you, follow you, learn from you?
Alexandra: I would love for people to visit HumanityWorksbook.com to learn more about the book. You can also find everything that you ever wanted to know about me at AlexandraLevit.com. And, the most important thing I’d say to people is just give me feedback on the book, because this book is one of those things where content is going to need to be updated every couple of years, so if there’s something you want to see more of or you would like me to take things in a different direction, please do let me know that because I enjoy hearing that feedback and will definitely use it if I can.
Halelly: Super. Well, we really appreciate that you stopped by the TalentGrow Show on your book tour and shared some of those insights with us, Alex, and I hope that people will really take you up on that offer because that sounds like a great idea.
Alexandra: Well, yes, thank you so much for having me Halelly. Always a pleasure to be here.
Halelly: Thank you. It is such a pleasure to have you on and I look forward to our next opportunity. Thanks.
Alexandra: Thank you.
Halelly: Well TalentGrowers, as someone who works on employee development and leadership development, having Alex suggest that you go and develop and grow yourself is something that is definitely strumming on my heart strings and I hope that you will take her advice and take action, because only action can make change happen. This has been another episode of the TalentGrow Show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist here at TalentGrow, and I create this show for you, so I hope that you found it valuable and I hope that you’ll share it. Just give a link to somebody that you care about that could benefit from this, and right away we will grow the number of people that benefit from the work that I’m doing. That would be such a great way for you to show your appreciation and to help me, and it doesn’t take very much effort, but it makes a very big difference. I thank you in advance for doing that today and always, of course. Until the next time, make today great.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the TalentGrow Show, where we help you develop your talent to become the kind of leader that people want to follow. For more information, visit TalentGrow.com.
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Intro/outro music: "Why-Y" by Esta
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