Failure is Data (and Other Career Advice) with Todd Dewett, Leadership Author & Speaker

Richie Cotton: Hi, Todd. Welcome to the show. 

Todd Dewett: Hey, good to see you, and thanks for having me. 

Richie Cotton: Yeah, great to have you here. I know it's not quite Halloween, but I wanted to start about talking about fear, 'cause I know that's one of the themes that goes throughout a lot of your books, is that people are limited, both in their careers and their life, about fear.

So talk me through what kind of fears should people be letting go of? 

Todd Dewett: So the truth is that humans are very good at resisting basic realities that define them, and I don't know why that's true. I'm not that kind of doctor. But I gotta tell you, denying fears and letting them mold you in unproductive ways is extremely universal experience, and yet we have trouble talking about it and dealing with it.

We have a fear of public speaking. Apparently people fear that more than death. That's actually true. We have a fear of not being affirmed by others/being judged by others. That's the big one. That's the one that stops us from doing things we think we'd like to do but are scared to fail if we try doing them.

That really is the definition of so many people. The difference between success and failure isn't about IQ, being genius and so on. It's about people who deal with that reality effectively, meaning they engage And when they fail, they quickly get past the negative part we all experience, and they brush off the dirt, laugh a little if you're really good at it, and learn something so you can be more successful with the next effort.

It's an imperfect process admittedly. Learning is full of ups and downs, but choosing to not engage that process is a core part o- of mediocrity, to be honest. 

Richie Cotton: I love that. It's just the idea that if something bad happens, you deal with it, you move on, you learn from it hopefully and try again.

All right, so how do you get into that mindset then? How do you get to that state? 

Todd Dewett: That's a difficult question because so much of what happens is about our choices, and it's also about what we're born with. We know a great deal about personality and IQ, and they do tend to be predictive of useful things.

Long story short, there's mountains and mountains of research about different aspects of personality and so on. Having said that, what you're born with is a foundation. It is not the end-all, be-all definition of who you are. Think of it as a platform you're standing on, and how far you move from there is up to you.

That's back to the decision part of it. So I would say to anyone out there, go study great successful people 'cause the most interesting part of their story is almost always is the ridiculous, painful, inevitable, predictable failures that they went through before they became the thing that you think you admire.

So it's almost a false admiration we have of people, as if they worked it out and they never failed. They're not imperfect at the level I am. It's just not true at all. They're simply way better at processing failure and dealing with failure. Dare I say encouraging it. I've said this for years.

It's not the first time you've heard it, but if you're gonna be silly enough to give me a platform, I'm gonna say it. If you haven't failed lately, you're not trying hard enough. If you have real difficulty, think about the last calamity you were a part of that you helped create, you're on a plateau.

You're becoming not more interesting at all. So that's a challenge to anyone who's listening to you and following you. When's the last time you failed? And if the answer is, "I haven't failed big in five plus years," you are choosing to be less than your potential. 

Richie Cotton: I think particularly with social media around, everyone glosses their profile a little bit, and especially once you become a little bit famous or powerful, you get your own PR people, and then you only show the good side of yourself.

So I love that idea of just- even successful people, they were screw ups or they made mistake at some point in their lives. So yeah good to dig into those things and accept that everyone's a real person. Okay so the other thing you mentioned was about like pushing yourself outside your comfort zone.

Any tips on that? How do you approach going beyond me- mediocrity? 

Todd Dewett: I think you really want to push yourself. How do you get into that mindset? You just gotta start looking at people who are doing something you admire and say, "How did they get there?" They did not get there by overthinking it on the couch.

They just didn't. I'll give you a silly example. I'm not ready to prove it, but I'll give you a silly example. I recently went through some crazy stuff with the loss of my wife last year, and one of my therapeutic attempts to get out of the mental rut that things like that create was to create a comic strip I've been thinking about for many years.

I'm not a satirist by training. I don't know if I have any inherent skill, but I've been writing what I think is a funny kind of poking fun at corporate life 'cause my career's the opposite of that helping people in their careers, helping leaders, helping teams, and this strip actually makes fun of people.

I'm way better today. Now, you'll just have to take my word for it. I'm way better today than I was nine months ago when I started this therapeutic experiment. And why? Because I've written over 500 of them and researched what it means to write them correctly and examined what I'm writing versus the instruction that's so out there and available for anyone on the internet.

That's what you do. You have to be willing and able to be good before you're great. And if it makes you too uncomfortable being good because people are looking at you going, "You're looking mediocre over there, pal," then life ain't for you. Because everyone, generally speaking, is good before they're great.

You've gotta learn to smile and laugh at being imperfect and not yet where you wanna go. And this is the thing. You ready? Love the journey. You've heard people say that. What I mean by that is that learning is inherently fun. The first time I figured out in writing a silly comic strip, the first time I figured out what it means to, to use brevity, as one example, correctly to get something flowing quickly to the reader's mind, and I knew I did it when I finally got it out, it felt amazing.

Was it great? Nope, still good, but it felt great. Why? Because taking any little step forward, for most of us anyway, feels gratifying. That's not a joke when you say that the journey is as good as this thing you think you're chasing down the line. 

Richie Cotton: I love the idea that you go from beginner and you're gonna start off being bad at something.

Even the journey is important. You don't have to be great immediately 'cause that almost never happens if it's a worthwhile thing. And yeah that's that's quite a, the bounce back from from s- that sort of personal experience. Yeah so I love that. Actually, do you wanna pitch your comic?

What's the comic strip? It's not published. I've shared it through my newsletter with my followers on LinkedIn. It's called Creswall. It's a random name that hit me when I was in the 10th grade in high school. That, it's a generational vibe. We've got some Gen X, some Millennials some Zs, and a few old guys trying to get along in office life, making fun of all of the plentiful absurdities that define corporate life.

Todd Dewett: I'll just say anyone f- that's following me, stay tuned. In the next few months, I'll start building social media around it. 

Richie Cotton: All right we'll watch out for that, and I guess i- in the meantime I'll pop a link to your newsletter in the show notes. All right we talked about becoming fearless.

We talked about pushing yourself a bit harder. In general what are some useful career skills, like for people who wanna do better in their jobs, wanna get promoted? What tips do you have for that? 

Todd Dewett: There are a few universals that somehow decade after decade don't drop off the radar and they stay tied at the top spot.

Certainly I'm biased, I admit that, but one of them is people skills. So many people think IQ is gonna help them in a way that it will not. IQ is useful. Oh, it's very useful. I'm not saying it's not. But every step up the ladder you go, if you're trying to climb in your career, the distribution becomes narrower and narrower.

People tend to be brighter and brighter each time you join a higher level of folks who've been promoted, which means that's no longer the differentiating factor as people look at you and judge you, 'cause that's what we do, not just in corporate life, but in life, which means other things matter. What are the other things?

Largely defined, they're people skills. How well can you communicate and connect? Are you helpful? Do you believe in the team as much as yourself? Can you calm conflict? Can you motivate others? Can you really help change happen when it needs to happen? Those are all people skills. They don't teach them in school hardly at all.

Technically they do, but hardly at all in the K through 12 and college system in the US in any way. They just don't, which is, number one, a tragedy a tragedy. On number two, huge opportunity. Being a teacher of different types over the years, it has been, I admit, very gratifying to have people go, I wasn't sure when someone told me I should take this course, or read your book, or talk to you," or whatever the case may be.

"I wasn't sure that I was excited about that, and now I see the utility much, much more differently." People start to get their head up from their desk and look around at what's taking place, and they realize that the decisions aren't simplistic meritocracy-type decisions. They're just not. I hate to break your heart.

It's all about people skills. I'm not saying it's simplistically who you know, but there's something to that. People who tend to get ahead are more liked. That's a scientific finding, even if it sounds too silly They are more liked on average, and people who are more liked for some knowable reasons.

One of them is because they're good communicators. There's others, like being helpful and smart and so on. But being a great communicator, people who interact with them don't get confused. They don't feel awkward. They feel informed. They think it took the right time instead of too much time, et cetera, et cetera.

They are liked more. How valuable is that? 

Richie Cotton: Yeah, I love that. And certainly, I guess there's the stereotype of the boss is always stupid, but there's different-- have different priorities. And actually, yeah, as once you get to management... 'cause I sp- I speak to a lot of executives, and in general, executives are pretty smart.

So yeah, the higher up you go, smart's, less of a desti- a differentiating factor. So yeah, I love the idea that people skills are important. You mentioned that it's something that's not taught in schools. I'm trying to work out what would happen if, like, all these people skills were taught in schools.

Very different world, I think, there. 

Todd Dewett: I'm convinced, and I risk oversimplifying and looking silly, but I'm convinced that if we had stronger self-awareness, which is a skill one can learn, if we had stronger self-awareness, greater appreciation of communication, a greater appreciation of individual differences, which are just huge.

You, me, everyone else, we're just so wonderfully, hilariously unique. If we had, from early days, training and understanding that and in appreciating that a great deal of the strife on this planet would not exist. I don't care if I sound naive. I'm standing by that. 

Richie Cotton: No that sound very close to a utopia.

But y- you mentioned that self-awareness can be can be taught. How do you learn this? 

Todd Dewett: Again, we have a base we're born with on all kinds of things, including a tendency to be self-aware. That is to say, self-observational in a meaningful, thoughtful way. How am I being perceived? Why am I feeling this way?

Why did I say that instead of this? Can I do that better next time? Self-awareness of our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors. That is, again, there's a Bunch of studies from psychology to management and very related fields that show that's possible. We can take a person and evaluate them after doing a task in a laboratory setting and see what kind of thoughts how useful, how many, how productive thoughts they're having about their self as they were performing.

And then we can put them through all kinds of training that has you stop, reflect, journal, think, et cetera. Meditate very popular. Never stuck with me, but still a very popular tool. And then we can retest them, and you'll find consistently that people can learn to do this like a habit. Just like building a habit.

There's actually nothing complex about it. They just didn't know that it was an option, which why I, which is why I always get mad when I talk about education and tell you that we're not doing enough of this in education because we could. It works. 

Richie Cotton: Absolutely. Yeah, that sounds very simple now you say it out loud.

Just stop, reflect, do some journaling, do a postmortem of something that happened. Yeah think on it. Very s- Yeah, 

Todd Dewett: think on it. Complex stuff. We're so busy and so socially weird. I don't like them. I'm awkward with them. I don't understand them. We're so socially occupied and actually task-wise busy that we never do the small investments in self-analysis that we know make someone more effective.

Richie Cotton: Absolutely. Yeah, it seems like a worthwhile thing to pursue. All right I wanna get into some of those other sort of soft skills you talked about in more depth later. But- It seems like there are a lot of different skills pitched by a lot of different people. There are a lot of career influencers around.

Are there any career skills you think aren't worth their time? Are there any things where you think, "Okay, don't bother with this"? 

Todd Dewett: I wouldn't say I have a top choice for don't bother with this. I will say I can think of a couple things that fall into the category of too much of a good thing can be not so useful.

Richie Cotton: Okay. 

Todd Dewett: Classic answer everyone says, and they over say it, and people overindulge it, networking. Yes, who you know matters a great deal, but it's not a numbers game, it's a quality game. I just summarized tons of research and practical guidance that's out there, and it's really all you need to know. Stop thinking you have to go work the room.

People I've heard when they say that, "Hey, it's nice to see you, Todd. I gotta go." I've actually remembered this from colleagues when I was young. I gotta work the room. They mean that there are people in this room whose hands I will shake, eyeballs I will look at, or I will not have done my job.

And they take the joy out of social life, these people. Because they really mechanically aggressively go after networking because it was sold to them for so long. And I love to tell them what I already told you, which is it's about quality connections. It's not about quantity connections. So do it.

Do it thoughtfully a- and do it in a proportion with behaviors that aren't gonna make anyone awkward and aren't gonna ruin the social fun you could otherwise be having. So networking's one. We overdo it. One more that kind of mattered in my career, so I'm a little biased, is over specialization.

A lot of people think ... So here's the truth. W- when people get their first promotion, the best explanation is not that they're so full of what we know to be skills aligned with effective leadership. They're promoted 'cause they're good at their job. They're a good accountant or a good engineer, whatever, which is not a great way to predict if they're gonna be good after promoting them into leadership.

Nonetheless, because we know that's true, it makes sense, that's how you get attention, that's how you get ahead, people then dive deep really deep, and resist because who wants to throw to the side all these skills that I've been building as an engineer or whatever it might be. If you wish to climb, big if, but if you wish to climb, that can actually be a real detriment.

And we've known this for at least a couple decades. You've got to become a more interestingly well-rounded person and professional, which means actively taking on roles that push you away from the core thing that first got you attention. That makes people very uncomfortable, so they don't do it for that reason.

They don't do it because of the sunk cost. They don't do it 'cause they don't have an opportunity, or they haven't created an opportunity. But over belief in hyper specialization can be a real career hindrance. 

Richie Cotton: Definitely fallen in love with that last one myself. Yeah, my first sort of management role going from being an individual contributor to running a team.

Yeah it wasn't a total disaster, but it w- it was not a resounding success either. And yeah, it's very difficult to change that mindset from I'm doing work to I'm now leading people and getting them to do work. 

Todd Dewett: Let me make you feel better, sir. I'm known for talking about these issues And yet the couple instances where I was given the opportunity to formally lead, I was mediocre once and probably poor the other time.

That's just true. I found what I call a high fit role in my career. Fits like a glove and I'm grateful for it. I'm a outside provocateur and educator, a poker and prodder from the outside of these systems that I'm fascinated by, these organizations that make the world turn. I love team, the lovely, the love, all of it.

It's not easy, and I was shocked just like you were. If it was easy, we wouldn't be talking right now and I'd have to get a real job. 

Richie Cotton: Yeah. Tricky for many people. Maybe someone else will figure it out. You also mentioned networking. So one of the things you were talking about was you need to go for high quality networking.

What do you mean by that? What, what does a high quality networking thing count as? 

Todd Dewett: That, it means a few different things. It means trying, on average to connect to people who are well-liked, successful, ahead of you success. Let's be clear. In an aspirational sense, you have this feeling you'd like to learn from them, you can learn from them.

If you only go after at the opposite of what I just described, yes-men who lick your boots, that's unfortunately very common and not helpful in the least. It just reinforces the worst things about you, to be honest. You wanna go after people that you want to learn from, can learn from, who you aspire to be a little more because they're likable.

That's different than really an expert or a successful person. They're successful, and you want some of that to rub off on you. That's exactly who you go for, and if it makes you a little uncomfortable 'cause they know more than you, then you know you're networking in the right direction. 

Richie Cotton: Okay. I have to say, I do quite like the idea of having an entourage.

There's moment. But yeah, I feel as maybe not that useful for most career situations. In generally, you wanna network with people who are, like, powerful or well-connected or useful to you in, in, in some sense. 

Todd Dewett: You're killing me. You're fully embracing the authenticity. I know you're gonna go to authenticity in a little while.

Richie Cotton: Oh, n- oh, go on. Let's do that then. Yeah. How do you be authentic? How do you be authentic at work? 

Todd Dewett: First of all, fascinating topic. It's a big part of my career. I fell in love with it because I was trying to be it before I talked about it, wrote about it, studied it, anything like that. I'm not good at looking like someone else wants me to.

I've never been good at that, and that can be a real problem or it can be a real asset if you know how to tame it when proper. And you can then find others who see a little bit more of the real you so that the connections you're making that do stick, that do feel like new friendships or good connections in professional life are more real because you didn't act your way into them, which is what most people do at work.

And the acting gets worse the more people that are in the room. The acting gets worse the more there are levels of the hierarchy in the room. It's unbelievable how true that is. I look a certain way. I have for a long time and it's an asset for me in my strange little career. For most people, and this is the honest answer to your question, there is risk that they perceive correctly associated with authenticity.

When you go into any new work setting, any new setting, they have their own unwritten, but often very clear, norms of behavior. And to see them and not adhere to them is obviously risky. That risk could be being ostracized, it could be being ignored a little, could be a denial of opportunities that may have come your way if you somehow fit in, whatever that means, more.

Those risks are not fake. They're real. They are real. The question is, are you likable enough, hardworking enough, smart enough, value-added enough that you can indulge, if I- I hate to say that we have to indulge it sometimes, but indulge being a little more real, a little more you, a little more raw, a little more authentic?

And I believe what I'm about to say, and I've said it many times. If you're a top 10 percenter, just to pick a number, if you are clearly not one of the kids over there in the pile of average people, if you're a top 10 percenter, it is amazing in nearly any context what you can get away with in terms of authenticity in how you look, how you speak, et cetera.

And I just love throwing that out there to people, especially young professionals who are worried they're gonna have to conform their life away. There's always some of that. I can't lie about that. You can chip away at that and get a little more expressively you to the extent that you add real value and people see that.

That's a beautiful thing to know. 

Richie Cotton: I do think there's a subtlety there, like if you're a top performer, you can get away with being a bit more authentic. If you are brand new somewhere, then it's a much bigger risk. And for anyone who's on audio Todd was showing us forearm tattoos.

Are the cases where you'd say you have to wear long sleeves depending on what client you're working with? 

Todd Dewett: No, I turn those down. Todd, do you believe in all this garbage that you talk about? Yeah, I lose gigs every year because some stuffy man in a suit, and there's been no exceptions to that.

It's been a man in a suit, not a female in anything, but a man in a suit who has said some version of this. "No, we can't put him on stage." He doesn't even fit the dress code for... 'Cause I wear blue jeans and I don't wear a tie, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I lose... I proudly lose those gigs. That might sound reckless to you, but it feels oddly gratifying to me.

So the question is, how resilient are you? How much do you really wanna believe in yourself? How much are you willing to embrace this idea? Not everyone's going to like you. That's normal. I'll stop short of saying it's good, but it is normal and predictable, and if you struggle with that, then you got some journaling and therapy ahead of you to get over that, because you have to get over it.

Richie Cotton: That seems like a very important message, just be okay with some people not liking you. And also, I'm right there with you on companies where they've got a 10-page dress code document. That would be, like, hard no for me working somewhere like that. Yeah I don't think I'd make it through the first interview.

So yeah, I love the idea of authenticity. A lot of people are worried about okay, AI's coming for bits of my job, whatever. Are there any skills you think are AI-proof? 

Todd Dewett: I'm not sure. I'm certainly not an expert, that's for sure. I am a casual observer, a heavy reader of the news, and a user of the common AI tools, primarily to support ideation and writing.

Tell you my experience with it if you wanna hear it. I don't know with great confidence the answer to your question. I want to say this: they've not yet got me convinced AI's gonna replace human creativity. What they have is computational power that is going to be crushingly interesting and painful in terms of job changes, job losses over time.

I'm not convinced, even though it can now take a robotic arm with a brush a- and create paintings that look like a master did it. E- even though things like that are emerging as capabilities, I don't think they can... i'm not yet convinced that they have human creativity properly modeled or bested.

I'd like to say that 'cause I'm a creative professional, but I'm s- I'm standing by that Richie, if you don't mind. How I use it, I do use it for ideation and writing, for... One of the things I've done a ton of over the years is write scripts for courses that I'm making that need to be filmed, and that used to be more laborious.

And I did, and I admit this too, I had a year, picking a number there, where I was like I don't get it. I don't wanna use it. That's not me. That's AI. And other such things that people say before they finally try the tech that's new on the block. And then I started using it and I got a crush, I got a little crush on AI 'cause it's so fun and useful.

It helps me write my comic, it helps me write courses, it helps me write books. I- all the ideas are mine, utterly mine, but when I say, "What do you think about this paragraph or this outline, this four-bullet outline?" And it'll come back to me with a thought that had not yet hit my head on a regular basis, which stimulates me to go into a new direction that eventually I really like.

So it's a key co-pilot in terms of supercharging my speed of thought and my creativity because honestly, it makes me think of things that otherwise wouldn't have thought of. It's rarely the case that I look at AI feedback for something I wrote and go, "You're right. I'm taking what you did and using it."

That's beyond rare. But what's common is I go, "Ooh, that's interesting," and that, that makes me think blah, and then I feel better about the work product, very clearly making a step forward because of how they jarred my brain. 

Richie Cotton: I love that it's a very sensitive issue around AI and creativity, particularly if you're a creative professional and you're creating your own content 'cause, yeah, you've got this rival content creation tool, but it doesn't have the same spark.

So I think I love that story about you were very hesitant to use it before and then y- you found use and it's actually been a good partner with you to make you create better work. Before you were talking about communication skills, and I think you opened with one of the biggest fears people have is around public speaking.

So let's start with that. How do you get better at public speaking? How do you overcome your fear of doing this? How do you do it well? 

Todd Dewett: You're gonna get off this conversation and you're gonna say he's either really smart or dumb and overrated. I'm not sure which way you'll go because I sound redundant sometimes.

It is a skill. Repetition and education can make you better at nearly anything. So I used to force students, back... I had 10 years as a MBA professor back in the day before I went solo 13 years ago, and I loved forcing students to make presentations and have other communication required, communication episodes, both writing but especially verbally.

And I wish I was still doing it because according to the research that's been out during the decade plus that I've no longer been in the ivory tower, today's Gen Z-ers that are dominating the workforce now have great difficulty. I'm not sure how they're doing in terms of forming coherent ideas, but we know in terms of expressing coherent ideas that they find it very difficult and they opt out of speaking to others if they have the opportunity far too often because they're used to the online world And much more than you and I ever were.

What was the question? Something about... Oh, public speaking. So I've loved making people uncomfortable. Why? Because the second time you do it, you're a little less uncomfortable. The third time you do it, you're a little less uncomfortable, et cetera. Same prediction you predict I would say this obviously.

And it's very gratifying to watch a person r- realize that, "Oh, you're right. If I stop running from this and engage it, I actually get a little better at it." Now, not everyone's gonna become a pro speaker. Okay I hear you. You can get over your fear and stop really harming your reputation at work because believe me, you can be the brightest person in the room, if you do a bad presentation, people will...

Unfair, unfair, but people will think negative things about you. And that stinks, but I don't wanna back away from that 'cause it's real and it's a skill you can build. There are apps run by AI. They tried to recruit me, "Hey you can be the face of this." No, thanks. But they'll tell you your ums and your uhs and your pace of speech, et cetera.

There's tons of those out there now, and there's a million coaches, people like me. We have courses and books. There's no shortage of free to low-cost ways to go learn the basic mechanics of giving a presentation effectively. And so I'll just repeat for anyone listening, oh yeah, you can do this. You don't have to be a pro.

Big deal. Stop acting like it's the toughest thing in the world. No one, almost no one loves it. This is important I'm a post speaker, have been for years. It's one of the things that I do. I'm still nervous every single time the camera clicks on or I step on stage. Every single time. The difference between the effective communicators and the less effective communicators is that we know that, we admit that, we embrace that, and we learn to channel those nervous energies into something productive.

It comes out in its own ways. One of mine is that I speak on average faster than I should, even when I'm on stage, because that's one of the ways I process the nervous energy of having a room full of people staring at you. But it doesn't debilitate me in any way, shape, or form, and I just imagine being successful.

It's a huge trick for a lot of successful people. Watch the video in your head right before you step over there to do the whatever it is you're about to do, and then once you get in, you're going. You forget about that so quickly. So I just love telling people, even alleged pros get nervous. Just common all of us.

And you can put that in check. How? Reps. Reps. Stop not presenting. Choose to go to the brown bag lunch and tell everybody about your job. Choose to do those things. You'll get better. 

Richie Cotton: I love that, and I like the confession, Todd. It's okay. You're in a happy place here. You're fine. Yeah so I think it's true.

It's like anything else. You can build the skill by practicing, and also you made a point about speaking to other people in real life. This seems incredibly important. So actually I'm from the north of England, and the north of England in general, we're quite chatty with strangers. In the south of England, not so much.

The further north you go everyone will tell you their life story at a bus stop. And I think that's a skill that isn't universal, so maybe something that's something for the audience to go away and practice. Go and speak to a stranger at some point today. I think that just feels like a useful thing.

Todd Dewett: Don't laugh. I try and push myself 'cause I kn- I'm, I always have a fear of not living the way I preach, and I don't fully, but I usually align well with the stuff I preach. But I try. I do try. I go to the grocery store sometimes with a goal in mind. I will talk to at least one stranger. Yeah, I do it.

I do it. And then you meet somebody, and then you make their day, and then you find out something you weren't even gonna think about, and your brain says thanks 'cause it's getting tickled in a new way, absolutely, yeah. 

Richie Cotton: It's amazing how many interesting things happen when you talk to strangers.

Okay, as the opposite of what you were taught as a child communication skills. Okay, so we talked a bit about speaking skills. Presentation skills are very important. How about written skills? Talk me through how you get better at those at work. 

Todd Dewett: Okay, so the answer's the same, but the situation's different.

The answer is reps and education for sure. And again, free to low cost, tons of options. You just don't have an excuse to be a bad communicator anymore. You don't. Matter of fact, my whole library that's been watched by, brag moment, you ready? Millions of people in every country on planet Earth in 10 different languages.

You, dear person listening or watching, can have access to that for free, at least in the US, if you join public libraries, 'cause you can access with your library card LinkedIn Learning and have access to all of that from me and a few thousand other really good instructors. So there's just no excuse.

The situation I said is different. According to the experts who show up in the news The current generation, let's call them the alphas and Zs, the dominant groups at the bottom of the pyramid, are having real trouble with this. They gave up on cursive completely. They don't do that here anymore. And the amount of writing has gone down and the quality of writing has gone down.

You said a minute ago, and I almost laughed, you said in real life, and I just laughed because the people I'm talking about right now wouldn't even say that. They would say IRL. Because they were raised online using weird acronyms and emojis instead of words. And so they struggle with that. How can you improve?

Yeah, you just gotta do the reps and do the education. There's a big fear in EU over here anyway, I don't know about where you're at, but AI, it's so fascinating, so full of potential, and in fact it's being used in a lot of classrooms in different ways, and we have a teacher shortage, and teachers are hating life because they're handcuffed more and more every decade and rowdy students and parents take over, and educational outcomes look very questionable, let's just say.

Is AI gonna help that or hurt that? There's emerging evidence it's gonna hurt. From doctors who are losing their ability to read scans as effectively as they did before AI started helping them to students who are not making coherent, simple, short essays the way they did before AI became everything.

Hell, there's students here, I had a granddaughter who was living with me for a while and she proved this. I had read it, but I had never seen it in person, and she proved it. They resist reading, and they just use apps to have whatever it is read to them out loud. 

Richie Cotton: It is definitely getting weird, and I think I'm-- There's been a few things that I-- 'cause there's obviously the COVID school break as well, which caused a weird sort of interruption in a lot of people's educations.

And yeah, I just wanna make sure we're not coming across as like a middle-aged man going, "Oh, these young people they're terrible." Learning to read Or at least continuing to read also seems like a fairly fundamental life skill, so something you shouldn't shirk on even if you can have AI summarize things for you.

Sometimes you need to read the whole thing yourself. Just saying, look at how books the volume of books people read now versus five years ago versus 10 years ago, and it's falling off a cliff. 

Okay. So I guess do you have any more tips on things, or I guess s- the art of skills that are dying out but you should continue?

Are there any other things like reading where you think, "Okay, this is something you just need to make sure that you are still doing as a human?" 

Todd Dewett: I would say don't forget that habits are real, and you can form one. Around 20 days, give or take. So find something, I don't care if it's a comic book, find something that you like to read and make it a habit.

I do five minutes every day, or I always have a book with me when I stand in line at blah, blah, blah. I will dedicate these two instances that I experience on a regular basis to not looking at my phone and instead looking at this other thing. Form that habit, one of the best habits you could ever build.

Richie Cotton: Okay, yeah, that certainly seems incredibly important. And I love the idea of if you're at a specific time, like if you're at the bus stop or you're in a line for whatever, that's when you do a thing. Yeah. Do you have any more tips on building good habits? 

Todd Dewett: Yes. Go less is more. Never forget that.

You can listen to energetic people like you and me, and you could go I hear you, and I'm gonna do it 'cause I've been thinking about all them things I need to do," and you're gonna fail if you go after 20 at once. One or two max, and get comfortably past, "Hey, this I formed this habit. It's sticking, right?"

Get comfortably past that to where you know you've made a nice, small, useful behavioral change. Let that sit in. Enjoy that, then go to the next one. But less is more. We are, we, our capacity to focus on a lot of different things, especially when we're trying to push ourselves, is quite limited. 

Richie Cotton: I would say I love the idea of just taking your time over things.

I have to say I, I switched to becoming vegetarian I don't know, seven years ago. It took me a long time to do. I went from oh, j- I was a heavy meat eater to oh, maybe I'll just eat meat once a day, and then meat a couple of times a week, and then I got rid of it. But having a big lifestyle change in one go you fail immediately.

And I think that's again taking your time s- gradual lifestyle changes tend to work stick a bit b- better. Okay. We talked a lot about different career skills. If you take all this advice things go well, are you gonna live happily ever after or what could go wrong? 

Todd Dewett: Lots can go wrong.

This has been written about by lots of people over time. I think we started by me saying there's some things we know about humans that we resist, and they, we keep doing the same thing over and over even though we know the problems associated with it. Success is one of my favorite examples ever. When people are successful for more than a little spell of time they change.

They stop doing some, oftentimes many, of the things that helped them become successful. That could be hours worked. It could be indulgences that you choose not to indulge. It could be questioning yourself. It could be seeking feedback using a mentor, coach, et cetera. There's 20 things that fall off once we become successful, and they're replaced with feeling good about yourself 'cause look what I've accomplished.

I have that title for a reason. There's reasons people are in my entourage, to use your word. And there's some goodness to being successful, for sure, especially when people show deference or respect and so on, but the trap is very real as it as it impinges learning, as it makes you not care about striving and growing and evolving in a positive way.

So what do you do about that? Ugh. First of all, don't forget the journey's gotta be as good for you as the outcome. That's step one. If you don't believe that, then success is gonna be a big fat trap for you. Next is, this is huge, who you hang around matters. Who you hang around at work and in life matters.

They impact you very directly in measurable ways, and you want people that will love, respect, and appreciate you, that will not kiss up to you and will tell you, "Yeah, Todd, that, that strip that you just wrote was funny. The second one you handed me, I don't get it. It's confusing. What were you trying to say?

'Cause it did not come through." And they'll love you enough to tell you the truth. So you, the success trap can happen in small amounts to anyone But you can get around it if you remember the journey, if you surround yourself with people willing to be honest. And what we have at work is, man, it's hard to say this, it really is.

This comic strip's getting me out of my shell a little bit, but I'm getting more honest about the absurd realities of corporate life. And we have a lack of honesty in all kinds of ways, some that are normal and expected, some that are very unhealthy at work. People are constantly trying to socially manage how they're viewed and trying to stay out of trouble, trying to please this guy over here, et cetera, et cetera.

And so what we say is often disconnected from what we feel and what we want to say. That's always going to be true. The only question is, are you indulging in it this much? That's the corporate life that'll suck your soul and make you unhappy by 40. Or are you indulging in it this much because you've surrounded yourself to the best of your ability with interesting, good people, and you've prove- proven you can add value at a higher level, which gives you a little more latitude, a little more wiggle room to not worry about impression management as much.

You'll always care about it if you're smart, but not as much, because it is soul-draining, energy-sucking to constantly be acting. It's funny, I I make this joke all the time. I go to work, when I look at teams, you know what I see? I see a team of people who are acting like crazy, and none of them were trained to be actors.

So it's obvious to everyone involved, while we're all managing impressions, acting, call it what you want, while we're all doing that, people are aware that we're all doing it. No one says it, no one changes course, but that's what we do at work. And that's a funny, in a dark way, a funny situation.

But we can talk about it, and you, at least as an individual, can get better at being more authentic and straightforward. 

Richie Cotton: It's seeming increasingly like this entourage idea is a bad idea. Like surrounding myself with yes men, not gonna work out well in the long term. 

Todd Dewett: Big D buddy. 

Richie Cotton: It's a show. It is weird.

Yeah, corporate culture's odd because, yeah, you do have to please your boss and other managers who are around and maybe even your colleagues, things like that. So yeah, you do spend a lot of time doing odd stuff in order to get by. So I like the idea that you want to do a little bit of it. You don't want to do too much.

Actually, are there any more absurdities of corporate life you, that you think, you should be mindful of? 

Todd Dewett: There's a bunch, and I don't know how on, on brand they are for this conversation, but, people talk about motivation. There's piles of science. I can tell you things that will work, things that don't work.

The biggest motivator at work by far is a negative motivator called job insecurity, and people are afraid to be without a paycheck because they got bills and they got kids, et cetera, et cetera. And yet no one talks about it. And when managers get together and they talk about the team and how to optimize them, they never address that fact.

It's a fact. And it's addressable, by the way. Let me start by saying this: companies should face penalty of some sort when they say things they meaningfully do not believe. "Hey, we're all family. We're family here at Acme Products. That's just right, baby. We're family." And they're not family. Corporations love shareholders.

There's data, there's proof for that, tons of it. But when things are tough or when they need to impress shareholders, they'll let people go in a heartbeat and then take a bonus for making profits look better because labor's expensive. But so these-- Let's-- There's always inconsistencies, but these large inconsistencies between what is espoused and what is behavioral reality in the trenches, that's got to be something we can talk about.

And in most corporations, it's still not something you can talk about, so people just act like it's not happening, and they're complicit. That sounds really like I wanna talk about a murder or something now, but that's what happens. People do this And that makes them complicit in whatever broken part of the system you'd like to talk about.

Richie Cotton: Okay. Yeah. Certainly yeah the we are family lie is very common, I think in m- in many companies. So it's good to be mindful that these things exist. Know when you shouldn't believe the official line and things like that. And I do like the idea that a culture of transparency, being able to discuss these things with the colleagues is a very good idea.

All do you have any final advice on career skills? 

Todd Dewett: Sure. I've got tons. I'll pick one for brevity. I'll say that more is always possible. Who doesn't love a good catchphrase? I've used that one a few times, and I mean it because I meet so many people and I see it in action. The success trap can be overcome if you remember this basic truth about us.

You stop learning and you stop living. More is always possible. You think you had a good year? Great. Let's tear that up and figure out why that's true and see in what new way we can do that again next year. Because more is possible. More is always possible. I would just say that.

Ch- turn to learning, laugh at your imperfections, because more is always possible. 

Richie Cotton: That's very motivational. I love that. Yeah. More is always possible. Okay. So to wrap up I always want more people to learn from. So who's work are you most excited about at the moment? 

Todd Dewett: Oh, there's always a lot. I've got c- several on LinkedIn that I think about.

I am not a psychologist. I am not an ist of any type. I have a PhD in management and organizational behavior. My chair was a psychologist, and I've always been fond of that profession. It's a big part of my profession in terms of the research that we pull from. So there's Dr. Jimelly Roberts and Erin Shrimpton.

Both are psychologists and they're doing ... This is my favorite. When I find an expert who can translate something that we know at some level can become quite complex into a, digestible practical reality that people can relate to, understand, and use, and those two ladies are very good at that. I feel impressed, so I love shooting them some attention.

Richie Cotton: All right. Jimelly Roberts, Erin Shrimpton worth wa- watching out for then. All right. Super. Thank you so much for your time, Todd. 

Todd Dewett: My pleasure.