A Data-Driven Blueprint for Transformational Leadership in the Age of AI

Mike DeVenney: [00:00:00] I know there's much more clinical definitions about the structure and the focus of the organization, but I think a real transformational leader would be someone who changes the energy. So, one of the things I hear most is that there's a massive resistance to change in the workforce. That's true, but that's just a surface issue.  

Right now, one of the big things I find is that people are not that excited. I measure the energy that people have in work, and I mentioned way upfront that transformational leader is someone who changes the energy, and that's desperately needed right now because energy is: do you look forward to going to work most days?

Do you look forward to doing what you do most days? Sadly, that number is ranked around 61% overall, for all employees throughout Canada. That's a C-, like almost a D.  

Mike Reeves: This is Solving For Change the podcast where you'll hear stories from business leaders and [00:01:00] technology industry experts about how they executed bold business transformations in response to shifts in the market, or advances in technology.

In every episode, we'll explore real world strategies and technologies that fuel successful evolution. I'm your host this month, Mike Reeves.

I'd like to welcome Mike DeVenney to today's episode. And, we're gonna cover something today that it's talked about often. Big topic. We certainly talk about it a lot internally in the company and are trying to do our best as executives and leaders across the company to to become better leaders and we're gonna spend a bit of time chatting about that today with Mike. And, the topic today is, it's about transformational leadership and, Mike's been spending a lot of time on this particular topic for a number of years now. But with some work and some research and some things he's been doing of late, he's got some great insights, I think, to share that are kind of real-time and current that I think would be great for a lot of folks to hear and understand.  

Mike, welcome to the podcast and just a quick note [00:02:00] to do an introduction. I'd love to hear more about what you've been up to for the last little bit and we'll kind of start there if you don't mind.

Mike DeVenney: Yeah, thanks Mike. And I appreciate being asked back. What have I been up to lately? Doing a lot of work around AI adoption and, or lack of AI adoption. And, just trying to understand the seeming block that both leaders and employees have with accepting and adapting to AI. So I've been spending a lot of time, did a large research project late last year: 2,500 employees and their perspectives. And I've been following up with series of interviews with CEOs and presidents to get their perspectives. So, it's like a 360 around how organizations are responding to AI, and there's a huge comment on leadership in there.  

So, good timing, good topic.  

Mike Reeves: Great. Thanks.

Thanks for that. I'd like to start with, [00:03:00] and I'll be curious to see how you respond to this, and it's a definition. I guess I'm trying to put a box around this, and maybe it's not possible, but I'd be curious, we're talking about transformational leadership. Do you have a perspective or a view on what a transformational leader is? I'll say kind of maybe a quasi definition or something.  

Mike DeVenney: I would say that a transformational leader to me is someone who changes the energy. I know there's much more clinical definitions about the structure and the focus of the organization, but I think a real transformational leader would be someone who changes the energy of the organization in a different direction.

Mike Reeves: Thanks for that. And I'm just trying to kind of set the stage or maybe provide some context to folks, that'll help us kind of guide the discussion today. And you and I talked as we were kind of preparing to do this podcast and you had some great insights in terms of what you're seeing with senior executives. And the [00:04:00] anecdote of late, of course, has been around AI, but it's a good indicator of how industries and businesses are changing and trying to evolve. As you mentioned, there's not a lot of adoption, for a number of reasons. And a lot of it starts with the leadership team in a company or an organization that things need to begin from, or the journey needs to start from.  

Maybe you could spend a few minutes, because you've been doing this work nationally, what's the current state of companies in terms of: we talked about culture, we talked about stress, we talked about approach. We'll get to that piece. But you kind of painted a picture in our discussion that was, I thought, very interesting in terms of the current state of executives and senior leaders.  

Mike DeVenney: I would say right now, every leader is in a transformational leadership position. The whole digital transformation, which we're still only 30% through that, we've got some pretty interesting shifts and changes in terms of the economics of doing business, and then we have [00:05:00] AI added on top of it.  

So, one of the things I hear most is that there's a massive resistance to change in the workforce. That's true, but that's just a surface issue. I think the underlying issue is one that's been around for a long time, but that's become way more acute lately because there's just so much change in our world.

And that is, I think there's a real problem around leadership communication. I think it's easier for leaders to assume that everyone's aligned and move on to the next topic of what they're going to work on then actually involve people. So, I know Gallup does a regular monthly review of engagement levels and it seems like every month we're at a new low. So we're at another new low: the lowest level of engagement ever, as measured by a Gallup.  

So, there's something definitely going on and it'd be really easy to say, "Well, employees have changed. Their expectations have become much more [00:06:00] difficult to try to serve in the workplace." But I totally disagree with that.

I think that leaders are still following a business school definition of what it was to be a leader that's 50 to 70 years old and hasn't been updated, and there's been a few changes the last few years. So, I think leaders have lost touch to be honest.  

Mike Reeves: Yeah, and you also mentioned something about stress in the workplace.

And if you think about stress, things are moving so fast in terms of expectations at work, then you throw lots of external stressors in there just with what's going on maybe at home, but social media and a whole bunch of other elements that are kind of infusing more stress into people. And then they're bringing that into work and then you put the work stress in there. Maybe spend a minute talking about that. Because, I think, one of the things I'd like to talk through is: there's a blueprint or a bit of a recipe I think that you have in mind, or an approach that you could take.

You know, I know we talked through communication, curiosity, and inclusion, but I know one of the key themes that was [00:07:00] a bit of an inhibitor for executives and leaders in trying to change themselves and also try and move that down in through the organization was stress and stress getting in the way of being able to really dig in and help a business move forward.

So, I'll pause there.  

Mike DeVenney: Stress, to be honest, is the biggest single issue that leaders and organizations are grappling with and probably not even knowing it. So, there's a lot of finger pointing to the pandemic, but stress levels in the organization were increasing well before the pandemic hit. But we are still at pandemic levels of stress, which means we typically have in an organization somewhere between 25 and 33% of the workforce who identify as having an intense level of stress and pressure. And what we found by the analytics we use is that, kind of powerful and astounding for me as someone who has my own mental health challenges with PTSD and anxiety, a lot of times I feel like I [00:08:00] catastrophize things. And it was interesting in terms of finally going through data to find out it's not just me, that people who feel an intense level of stress don't just see the world or the workplace as 20% worse than others. They see it as twice as bad. So it really amplifies the pressures that people feel.  

So, when we're talking about transformation, it's really a change process. There's always change involved. So, when you are putting something new onto a group of people that are already highly stressed, the response is not usually adaptability.

There's been such a test of our resilience, but one of the biggest aspects of resilience that's really declining is the ability to cope. So, people feel more disconnected from both colleagues and from the organization. They're struggling with being able to have conversations and despite all the attention that we put on mental health, it hasn't changed the fact that people don't feel [00:09:00] comfortable talking about it. And that brings us back to the resistance.  

So, people aren't resisting change because they're not open to it. It's just that there's so much weighing on them that they're not able to move through and having a lunch and learn, or having a town hall about stress and talking about benefits, that's not the answer. It's the way that we are working and the amount of bureaucratic stuff that we load onto people. And that's a technical term by the way. But we really have to look at how do we clean up the way we work so that people can work at their best and not be overwhelmed by meetings and expectations and demands that probably are not necessary.

Mike Reeves: A follow up to that is: you have three elements, or primary themes that you like to focus on through some of the research and some of the findings that you have. And we talk, everycompany talks about this, and it's communication.  

[00:10:00] Oftentimes people think they're doing a great job. Reality is most aren't, or there's a misunderstanding in the communication. The communication's not frequent enough, or maybe it's absent or maybe it's not the right type of communication. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that because I think that's something at the executive level that's super important to understand. Communication and how you're talking to folks in the company, providing them enough insight and enough direction.

I'll pause there and let you kind of take that a little further.  

Mike DeVenney: What I do is workforce analytics, so that can be for a sector, but more likely it's for an organization or a company. I'm a data-holic, so I'm always looking at the numbers. But what it means about people is in every piece of work that I do, communication is almost always the central issue.

So, it's not a huge surprise when those numbers come back. When I did the Canadian Survey of Workplace Perspectives, the [00:11:00] average rating for leadership communication was 53%. That's the average. But then you have somewhere around 46, 47% of people who rate their leaders as doing a poor job at communicating.

We're not hearing from leaders what we wanna hear and that's now starting to have an impact on the way people perceive the direction of the organization. That there's a lot of people now who doubt the decisions that are being made by senior leadership. And that's mainly because they're not hearing about them until they actually happen or after they happen.  

So, if I'm not involved, if I've never heard about it, the chances are way more likely that I'll be resistant or critical. If communication's always been the issue, why don't we get better at it? I just finished a, sector study with a sector that's high on empathy, still the same ratings, and the fact is, [00:12:00] it was a group of eight CEOs that I was speaking with and all of them said, "But we've talked about this." And I said, "Well, how did you talk about it? Like in a town hall, no one wants that.  

I think, now, we've moved into this place and space with AI that it becomes much easier for really busy leaders to communicate. You can record and send messages out. If you're sending out something each week, to me, that's probably what people are looking for.

We're in a culture now where we can access information all the time, anytime and because of the web, we can access, access information from all over the world anytime and immediately. So, to not hear from our leaders except once a quarter, and often in in memo format... That's what's going on is that we're now used to a far more personalized and immediate access to communication and we're not [00:13:00] getting it. And now employees are really pushing back that it's creating a challenge for them to be able to work.  

Mike Reeves: Do you have a couple of examples of approach, communication style/type that you would suggest to leaders? Executives, like executives, and then you've got directors maybe, and managers. There's kind of a cascade or a theme there across each group. Do you have some anecdotes?  

For instance, you just mentioned town halls. I know you can do town halls in different ways, but a lot of them are still very traditional. They're more uni-dimensional in terms of approach, and I'm just wondering if you have some examples of leader in approach. Things they can do that would resonate, maybe help connect better.  

Mike DeVenney: Yeah, so I call it the power of the question. Leaders, there's still this martyr syndrome that leaders have. Like, I must carry this all, I must take this all on for everybody. We don't need another martyr, so that's not going so well.

And I was quite [00:14:00] surprised in a recent leadership survey that we did that more than a third of leaders still use the command and control approach. Meaning, I'll make the decisions and I'll let you know about that. So, that's definitely not working. But a third of people are still there, and if you're communicating in terms of telling people what you expect them to do, that's actually not going to help. It's gonna hurt.  

The type of communication that really makes a difference is, I guess I'd call it consultative, that you're asking questions. I find leaders who ask questions get far more respect and far more engagement from people than leaders who tell people what's going on. This doesn't mean that you're going to follow every comment that people make. You know you're gonna make your decisions based on what employees want to see you do. The point is you involve them. So they've been a part of it. And then as a senior leader, executive leader, you make a decision based on that. People will [00:15:00] respect that and will adapt and follow because they've actually been involved.

I always feel like you don't have to agree with me, but it'd be really great if you involved me and we had that discussion. So, leaders who ask questions are the ones, I think, who make the greatest connections and are able to move things forward.  

I worked with one organization that spent, I would say, probably 10 months on a rollout plan for a digital transformation that was going to completely change how the frontline would interact with customers. And they did a huge amount of work. Put a 92-person team together to decide how they're gonna bring this out, roll it out, deliver it. And really interesting, they didn't include one group of people: the frontline employees who would actually implement the change. So after ten months of preparing this entire rollout plan, it kind of rolled out flat.

And frontline employees basically turned their back and went [00:16:00] and did what they've always done. So, there was a big backlash about why people aren't open. I luckily got hired to say why they weren't open. It was basically, "Well, you didn't ask them and you made their job harder because you didn't actually know how they do the job. You didn't ask them."

That's a long-winded way of saying the best type of communication is when you ask questions.  

Mike Reeves: Yeah, that was great. Thank you for that. You know, the next one of the three, so we'll hit number two is, curiosity. We were talking about that the other day, so I'm wondering if you could just elaborate on that a bit.

Mike DeVenney: Curiosity is about... We lose this when we're young. Because when you're a kid, you're constantly curious. I think most parents know that the worst question is why, but it's actually the best question. And when leaders are looking at, I use the AI example, they're looking at ways to integrate AI into the workflow. So a leader can make a decision from their position and from what they're hearing from their executive team as to where an AI solution could make a [00:17:00] difference. But they're missing the way things are actually happening.  

It's way better and way more fun to be curious and get out and talk to the people doing the work and kind of go through a day in the life of what's it like working in this role. And suddenly you find out so much and you understand: okay, that solution really wasn't gonna have the impact we'd hoped, but this one would make a huge difference. For curiosity, it's, to me it's that openness. So, part of it is being able to ask questions, but the biggest thing is that openness to be able to go in and hear what people are talking about, to see how things are being done, and to just not have to have all the answers all the time.

Mike Reeves: Yeah. And I think, with curiosity comes a very positive type of energy. And, everyone feels that and experiences that and it also has a dimension of caring around it as well and interest. And, I think that's a really great point to make. And that's why I wanted to spend a little [00:18:00] bit of time talking about that.

And, the next one I want to touch on, and the third one in your approach is: inclusion. And you kind of touched on it a bit earlier with the example of the frontline folks not being included. But, if you could maybe just do a broader sketch of that, maybe organizationally, in terms of what you see and maybe what examples of what hasn't been working. And then maybe you can talk through a playbook about what is a good approach and what does work that leaders can look to.  

Mike DeVenney: So, inclusion for me is involvement. Inclusion can mean a number of different things, but I just wanna be clear that in this situation, for me, it means that people are included. In terms of conversations and discussions, and they're involved in the background of what's happening. That all comes down to really asking questions to people about their work. You know, what's it like for them? How are things going? So there's a number of ways to do it, depending on what you're looking for.

One way to do it, if you're looking to just connect with people is to have [00:19:00] short conversations. You know, how are things going? Like, what's going on with your role? Like, what do you like? Things like that make a big difference.  

The more formal way, which is where I work, is on the analytics side. If you ask someone where they're finding challenges in their work, I would say 60% of the time you will not get the answer or if you ask someone, "So, how do you like working here? Are you enjoying it?"  

"Yes." I'm not gonna say no because you're standing right there. So, by having these conversations, and there was a leader I worked with who spent three months with these index cards going around talking to all the employees. When he talked to me, he said, "I feel like I got nothing."

I said, "Yeah, you pretty much did. Like it was nice connecting, but no one's gonna tell you directly, or very few will tell you directly."  

I work with analytics and these are anonymous surveys that people can actually provide ratings or put in their text responses. We're even moving [00:20:00] now to being able to use voice rather than fill out a survey, which always like excites people to no end. So rather than filling in a survey, they actually have a phone call where an AI is actually asking them questions and they talk to it. And we get the data that way now. I could talk about that for hours because it's phenomenal what comes out.  

Mike Reeves: Hmm.  

Mike DeVenney: But you're getting your finger on how people feel and this project I recently finished that I mentioned with the sector, the senior leaders were really disheartened by the rankings that they received. They said, "We thought we had handled all this, like we thought we had gone through this." I said, "But in this situation, anonymously, people are free to actually rate things the way they see them. So, this is actually how people see things. The accuracy is in the high nineties, so you're getting a really clear picture of what's going on." And I think before any leader goes down a [00:21:00] road of transformation, I think you do the employee experience analytic upfront.  

Understand what is it like right now. So, what's the culture like? If we wanna do a leadership... I hate leadership development, but leadership, I used to teach leadership for years... But, so rather than a leadership development program, I think it's a leadership application program. So, you actually learn things that you apply in your work when you do the employee experience.

So, what it's like to work here from the employee perspective, you find out exactly what type of leadership they're looking for because they tell you, this is what we're looking for. So, if you wanna look at like what are the five different characteristics or traits we're most looking for in people to promote into leadership roles. The analytic tells you very clearly, this is what people are looking for. This is what will engage them, this is what will have them be really involved in the organization, be proud of it, and commit to what you're trying to do and be [00:22:00] adaptive.  

So, when you ask them and involve them and then respond, everything does change.

Mike Reeves: Yeah, that was a lot in there that you went back, so thank you for that. You had me reflecting upon the work that you've done with us over the years and we go through this diagnostic analytic review with you and just as you described in terms of the level of information and the richness of it that we get, through the analytic and then your interpretation of it. And then your support and helping build a plan to remediate things that we need to work on or maybe continue to support things that we get great feedback on.

And a question I have for you really is, you go through this exercise and we come out with this analytic and we build a plan and we go execute on that plan. A couple things I like about it is, it really informs a strategy for us in terms of the temperature of people in the company. And if we're gonna look at a transformational change for the business, or new strategies and directions, we can look at the people in the company and see, are they ready? Can they [00:23:00] accept or step up to some additional change? And your work really helps us guide our plan and things we need to fix before we can go look at those transformation or new business initiatives or things we need to change. I find that really powerful.  

But my question, a little bit of a diatribe there, but my question comes back to continuously trying to embody that approach of what you went through with the communication, the curiosity, the inclusion. Because what happens is a lot of folks, and I'd say we've been guilty of this at times as well, is that you have someone come in and help you through an exercise like you do and it's great. You do it once and then you kind of like, "Okay, we checked that box and now we're just back to business." And you used it to inform strategy and you did try and work and address things, but to me it's kinda like you have to embed that in the culture. It kind of has to be almost an operating principle. And that's [00:24:00] why, I go back to this transformational leadership change. You have to make sure you're continuously doing those things. And I'd love to hear some comments or some ideas that you may have. Or again back to maybe some examples of where you see that continuous integration or thought of doing what we're talking about here around some of these areas of change and transformation, rather than just them be a one stop, one time shop.

Mike DeVenney: You know, a big difference about MOBIA and what you and Rob particularly do is that you do continue to go back and reassess and continue to ask the questions and find out where you are in each year. There could be a bit of a different focus to it, but you find out where they are.

So, the biggest thing that needs to happen is that there's actually a sponsor at the executive level. So, people have to actually see this as being important and not checking a box. And I get a lot of feedback from people saying, in terms of working with me, "Well, we've done surveys and [00:25:00] people don't really like surveys." And there are two answers to that: you haven't done a survey that I've done before then. People aren't tired of surveys. They're tired of getting no feedback from them. Actually being honest and putting out what's come back, the data, is hugely important to say that we heard what you said. And again, I'll plug the AI route. We now are turning the documents into AI podcasts between five to nine minute snippets that managers, executives, and employees can listen to and you can shape it based on the type of position that you're putting it out to.  

Managers, you can construct it to be what are the things that people are most looking for from you and what are the things that are gonna help teams be more high performing, be more committed to change, be more open to looking at innovation.

If you're going to employees, it would be what's the organization looking for from you. What's the overall experience like, is it [00:26:00] just you or is everybody... Or are you not alone, I guess is a better comment. That makes it way more accessible. People get far more excited about it and right now, one of the big things I find is that people are not that excited.

I measure the energy that people have in work, and I mentioned way upfront that transformational leader is someone who changes the energy, and that's desperately needed right now because energy is: do you look forward to going to work most days? Do you look forward to doing what you do most days?

Sadly, that number is ranked around 61% overall for all employees throughout Canada. That's a C-, like almost a D. But when you go into the numbers, 46% rank it at failure. Almost half of your employees are not looking forward to going to work most days. They don't wanna be there.  

Mike Reeves: Mm-hmm.  

Mike DeVenney: That's a really sad comment at a time when we've got so much going on [00:27:00] in so many different places.

We've got a team that's tired, stressed, and not feeling it. A transformational leader really does need to happen. It's someone who can change that energy, and that's not meaning that you've gotta be some charismatic, light the room up type of person, but it's someone who actually can connect people to the meaning of the work, the purpose of what the business is trying to do, how they contribute to customer satisfaction and loyalty. And people will find out that there's so much to look forward to that the energy does change.  

Mike Reeves: Thank you for all that detail. We're kind of getting to the end of our time here. And just back to the transformational leader, you just hit on a few things there. I'm wondering if there's just a few key things that you would consider important that people at a leadership level should be thinking about to address what you just described there, like some key attributes that they [00:28:00] can take to work every day and make sure that people are seeing it, feeling it. A bit of a coaching moment here, if you will.

Mike DeVenney: To me, if I were to leave leaders with something tangible, there's three questions that I think you ask yourself. Do employees here feel safe to speak up and take risks and innovate? Do they feel that they actually can talk without repercussions? That's huge. How well equipped are our managers to be able to support the work that we're doing?

Managers are the great unsung heroes of every business, every organization. They're overworked. They are the most highly stressed group of employees. They are the ones who will help translate strategy to execution and we just have to do better at supporting managers. Does our culture encourage adaptability? So, does it encourage people to be open?  

Those three questions will continually keep you moving forward. Do people feel that they can talk here? If not, what do we need to do? [00:29:00] Are the managers supported to do their jobs? If not, what do we need to do? And is the culture open to new things? If not, what do we need to do?

Those are the things that will change the energy. When people feel that no matter what they do, things won't change, your shoulders start to sag pretty quickly. If you've got managers who are inaccessible because they're so overworked, okay, I feel like I'm not heard. I feel like I'm not seen. I start thinking about where else am I gonna go? If I feel that I can't talk. If I can't say what I think, then I wonder why I'm here.  

Those three things start building the stress up. And if I go back to stress to make one final point on it, stress is the single highest correlated factor to departure. So, if you're looking at retention and if you're looking at turnover, no factor comes close to stress.  

Everyone talks about compensation. "People left for more money." They didn't, they left to try to change the [00:30:00] stress they feel in the working environment. The money just checked the box to go, "Okay, let's do it."  

When you're looking at measuring that stress, that's where the focus needs to be.

So as a leader, as a transformational leader, how do we turn that stress into something more positive? And that's when organizations really start to do something amazing.  

Mike Reeves: Great. I really appreciate you sharing that. That was, very insightful. Just before we sign off here, as we did last time, and we can include it in show notes if you like, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?  

Mike DeVenney: The best way is always, probably email. As you already know, I'm fairly addicted, so you usually get a response pretty quick. Easy email would be michael@workinsights.io. That's a quick way to get me.  

LinkedIn, I'm also pretty responsive on, so I get a lot of messages that way, so you can find me there.

As you know, Mike, I'm always happy to talk and always find time. I would say to [00:31:00] anybody listening, there isn't a problem that I haven't met that I don't like. I love when people give me problems because that's when I really can dig in and do something because I feel the gold in the organization is the employee perspective. And only 10% of leaders are actually measuring employee perspective and MOBIA is one of those 10%. By overlooking that, it's missing this huge asset that can inform leaders as to, like you said, the strategy, the direction, decisions to be made, things that have to be done.  

The great thing is the employees are desperate to provide that perspective. So, it's something that actually will improve on both sides: communication from leaders, engagement and energy from employees.  

Mike Reeves: Great. Well, thank thanks for sharing that and thanks so much for joining me again today. I really enjoyed the conversation and I know we could continue to talk. We'll try and sign off here. And again, I appreciate the friendship and the work that [00:32:00] you've helped us with over the years.

It's been wonderful, thank you.

Mike DeVenney: For me as well, it has been incredibly rewarding.  

Mike Reeves: Mm-hmm. Thank you.  

Thank you for listening to Solving for Change. If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast service. Keep an eye on your favorite podcast service for our next episode.

Thanks very much.

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