Unmasking the Future: Lee Chambers on Identity, AI, and the Evolution of Leadership

0:00Lee Chambers is redefining what real allyship looks like in business. As founder and CEO of Male Allies UK, he helps organisations engage men in inclusion and drive meaningful cultural change. He's a Kavali Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the first black British scientist to be awarded in its 33-year history. A UN Women Changemaker of the Year and author of the best-selling book, Momentum. Lee, welcome to the show. I've been so excited to talk to you and also meet you in person and loving your look today. So thank you very, very much. We have got so much to cover, especially I know with the research report that's come out on how we see boys in society now.

0:43I really want to make sure we get to that. And also your book, Momentum, which we've got a copy here, 13 Ways to Unlock Your Potential. We'll get to that. But first, just so the listeners and people watching get to know you a bit more. What's been a courageous moment for you in your life? So I've had a really interesting journey and I think we'll dig into that a little bit later. I think other people would probably say the most courageous part of my journey was learning to walk again and that seems like such a big and momentous thing to do but actually when I reflect on my own journey from a personal perspective and from my definition of courage I think my most courageous moment was actually becoming a stay-at-home father, breaking societal conventions, gender stereotypes and stepping out of a senior leadership role to become a primary caregiver and some of the advocacy that I've done that is very much on the cutting edge before other people have decided to adopt those standpoints and really standing for things that I care about and I think that's sometimes a more quieter not as momentous form of courage but I actually frame courage probably a bit differently than other people in society.

1:46And I love that and I think just to kind of really nail that down if I said to you how then do you frame courage how do you articulate it so I think as a society we've got a very masculine dominant version of courage that has been built from the world that we're in from movies from comics from books from the way stories are told and courage is the big momentous occasion where someone comes and saves saves the city saves all the people takes a bow and then flies off again you know courage is seen to be really big bold brave acts and that's almost how we've written history in many ways too which is kind of sometimes more like his story than actually history itself but my vision and version of courage I think is twofold firstly the quiet courage to live in a society where you don't necessarily fit or have not been built with you in mind and I think there's quiet courage in keeping yourself both safe and active in those spaces not a type of courage that is often considered but I do feel when we're looking at the gender work that I do there's a lot of women living with that quiet courage to live day to day in a society which is quite challenging for them to exist in and then I think the other form of courage that I feel is really important is in many ways the courage to spend time with people who you don't agree with and find ways to open dialogue because it's really easy to look at big courageous acts in terms of the brave and bold moves that people make but actually sometimes there's courage in keeping the silence and keeping the space and courage in itself can actually be the real power there when you decide to actually think about the risk that people take and it not being about the big risk but actually about stepping back and creating space for other people to take risks and that's i've not thought of it that way as well in terms of the courage to be with people that maybe you would naturally hang out with or you don't necessarily agree with their views and that courage is a to be in that space and be willing to open your mind to hear their views you still as you say you don't have to agree but the courage to put yourself in those situations yeah to open up your world and just before we go deeper into that just that moment when you said for you courage was choosing to be a stay-at-home father I'm really curious how did that feel and how did that um within you to go I'm going to make this decision and in that time what did you learn about yourself so I think like many moments where people step into a role that is not necessarily something they've seen much of there's not much representation or it goes against many of the system systemic stereotypes are expected of us there is that little bit of feeling of fear you're always going to feel that fear and you know that judgment is coming in a world where we sometimes like curiosity and assumptions are rife but there's also a bit of liberation and a little bit of non-conformity and i do think sometimes we forget how novel and powerful being a bit non-conformist is and how we did that when we were children we'd be told to do something and then we'd do the opposite and I think as adults we've almost had that marketed out of us there is some real power in being a little bit non-conformist and just feeling that little boost of like I'm breaking some rules and not breaking rules that are illegal because obviously there are boundaries and there are laws and there are systems in society to try and stop people from breaking rules that impact other people but this is actually an opportunity to break some of those societal rules and almost be a bit like a pirate is probably a good way to put it where you're not conforming to what society says and then breaking beyond what's expected that wasn't to say I wasn't judged I was judged quite harshly by some people in my industry but I was also given really kind of powerful powerful insights and positive yeah sentiments from other people too around being that role model and setting an example how did it change me well it put me in an environment that was very different to what i'd been in i was surrounded by mothers and grandmothers i was the only man in the room the only one yeah and it just provided a great mirror to gender that i'd not really had being one of three brothers working in tech and finance and being involved in sport i had a very male dominant life to that point so for me it was actually a really powerful place to have that courage to step into a place where it was very you know unusual for me to be and I'll be honest when I walked in I felt that little drip of sweat down the back of my neck because I realized very quickly I was the only one even though from a racial perspective I'd quite often been the only one in my life to that point growing up in a mill town in the north but being in that space allowed me to practice my listening allowed me to hear stories of things that I didn't have a lot of perspective on didn't really notice or hadn't really considered and that just widened my kind of perception and understanding of the world got me thinking about what I could do to tackle some of the gender equality that existed it made me start to notice more out in society and very much became one of the one of the foundations of the very work that I do today and that happened by making a bold choice to go and do something that was different or wasn't expected and just shows how those career squiggles that we do take can quite often be the thing that ignites another part of our journey helps us to explore our values more deeply and gives us opportunity to think about off that main kind of pathway of life what other skills can we build because I built a lot of skills looking after those two toddlers.

7:16I bet and it's so inspiring to hear that the thing of being okay to go on a different path towards society because can you imagine say this hadn't happened to you and you hadn't done like would you think you just stayed in tech and finance and just carried on the path of what society kind of would have expected you to do it's really hard to kind of look back and reflect and think how much it pivoted me off but even though I went back onto that main pathway because we all kind of have a main pathway you take things from all the side tracks you go down and I think I took numerous different things from that diversion and brought them back into the main aspects of what I do and I do feel that if I look I've had numerous of those occasions where I decided to step off and go and explore and realize that actually that's like an adventure yeah there's something really powerful about that even though we're in a world where we're almost told that's not productive so don't do it you need to stay on this linear trajectory you need to get your head down and work along the main pathway and the truth is in society today you don't tend to pick up a variety of different skills if you just stay on the main track yeah really the skill acquisition in the curiosity of going off down the pathways and that's what haunts us to be more effective across the many things that we try to do whether that be you know creating profit creating innovation creating social change so I reflect back and think it's definitely shaped my perspective it's made me a different person when I've gone back onto that main track and that in itself means that suddenly this pathway that's quite wide it's like a highway you find it easy to move between the lanes and that's what I've got actually this visual of having like four or five lanes on the m25 and being okay to go on different ones close one for a bit if it needs a bit of repair and this is a really poignant time we listening to you because I'm actually planning next year and I'm wanting to jump off the path and I want to go back into education so I want to kind of do I don't have a degree so I'm like actually be quite nice actually now to I think I'm now mature enough to come and do a degree but it is so interesting I said to my husband I feel like I'm like a snake shedding a skin I'm needing to just shed one identity now to be okay to step into a new one knowing other people say to me how could you stop this now how could you keep my business going but I'll reduce it a bit to enable me to do it but you can see the fear around everybody else that you're changing which then makes you go am I crazy to do this but then you just realize that that's other people's fear but if it feels good for you to do this and it's something you need to do it's okay to jump in a different lane and if that lane doesn't work out you just go back into a different lane that's what i'm sort of hearing from you and you're giving me a lot of validation here to go yeah go go do your lane next year yeah and i think that naturally as humans we look at other people especially if they make what we perceive to be quite a big change and I don't it's not out of malice but it's just out of consideration for that amount of change and how that might impact them that makes them worry slightly and the truth is as humans we overestimate what we can do in a year but we massively underestimate the change that we make in ourselves in a decade and for the listeners just think about who you were 10 years ago in 2015 and think about who you are today and just realize how many skins you know that you've kind of shaped out of because we might not be reptiles we definitely shed our skin in a number of different ways and actually realize there's amazing things in the skins that have been grown underneath even when we've not been able to see those skins on the surface and so that's the beautiful art of curiosity and being willing to there's usually the courage to be a bit disruptive to go against conformity because we are and something that just stuck with me when you said as children we were happy to do it but as adults we've become quite rigid and how and i think yeah because we could become more aware of fear but how can we as yeah individually go back to doing that so i find that incredibly inspiring so thank you so much for sharing that i'm sitting here reflecting loads going i've got to interview you for a bit more now but i could just go and sit and journal now you just shared just a quick reminder if you haven't already to please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel.

11:33It's a small action that makes a big difference. You'll be the first to know when new episodes drop and your support helps us create meaningful content for leaders like you. I'd also love to hear from you. So if you have any thoughts, questions or ideas, pop them into the comments. And if you're curious about how my leadership coaching or training could support you or your team, just drop me a DM and we'll set up a call. Thanks so much. Now let's get back to the episode. With that and what you've learned and I know this report you've gone into studying society now how boys see society how has how did that arrive from say all your experiences and going on a different lane how has this research come about and why was it important to you?

12:14So yeah to give a bit of context we've gone into 37 different secondary schools up and down the UK to understand what life is like for boys and what what is their experience of technology the education system masculinity femininity and conversations around gender we've been really curious to think what is the world like for them now that's come about mainly because of the organization that I run to this day male allies uk and we do a lot of work in workplaces around closing gender gaps engaging men in inclusion getting everyone to think about the skills of allyship how do we work across difference how do we have the courage to have challenging conversations?

12:53How do we have the curiosity to wonder about what we don't go through, what we don't know, and what difference can we make? And getting different people into those spaces to actually start working together to create a more inclusive workplace, more equitable workplace, and a more safer society. So that's ultimately the core of our work. Obviously working with a whole range of men across 12 different sectors, you start to see commonalities of challenge, and actually some of the things that men are going through, and what stops them stepping into this work but also what the benefits are when they do but I've started to become more fascinated in the past few years because meeting many many men across different levels of leadership who do very very different roles those gender stereotypes that are actually damaging men and holding men back from these conversations from expressing themselves and for being the whole man that they are it's actually started since they were little boys so our work has been how can we start to chart back towards those younger boys and get them to be able to start to explore the whole man that they can be rather than the man that society whether that's their parents the internet is telling them that they should be because really the art of self-exploration for boys and men is probably the biggest journey we can undertake but many of us are not even equipped in a place with the tools to go on that journey because of the things we suppress from such a young age and the way that society shapes us and how it's not seen as something that men should be doing which is really quite sad it's very sad and is one of the reasons why social indicators for men across society are quite often going in the wrong direction and that's causing you know a lot of sadness because men are deeply interconnected into the whole world itself so why did we go and start with these secondary boys to try and understand what their world is like well firstly it's been 25 years since I was 15 and the world has changed so much in that time and while I've got an experience of adolescence and the truth is everyone has an experience of adolescence that was quite challenging for different reasons but all of a sudden these hormones flooding we're trying to work at our place in the world understand who we are where do we fit trying to understand our friendship groups and all the dynamics of what it's like to gradually start to transition into an adult but for me trying to understand their experience because they are not often their voices are not often in policy their voices are not often amplified for us to understand what their experience is like from their perspective they're much more likely to be observed and considerations made from that so I was passionate to bring their voices into parliament into business firstly because some of them are only a few years off the workplace themselves secondly many of them had and lost a few years of social development and social maturity during the pandemic at a really pivotal age around seven eight and nine and they just lost that time and I don't think we actually recognize that that developmental period where you're learning so much around these you know social etiquette social standing social understanding that they actually were quite often lost stuck on devices doing education and didn't have that peer interaction and that support through that and for me it's like what is the impact of that because i think we need to be more considerate of the impacts of that and also you know we started to look at things such as ai companions and girlfriends some of the trends that had massively increased over that academic year we were doing this research some things are quite scary but there is a lot of hope because what what came to realize is almost all these boys really care deeply and not just about themselves but about other people as well what do they care about yeah and they really do care about trying to make a difference there are a lot of them who are more discerning than we realize they have had to practice critical thinking in a world full of misinformation and deep down many of them want to be part of the change but don't always know how are a little bit worried about the judgment and don't necessarily always have the right place and the right skills to be able to do that what do they see as the change they want to be part of the change what do they see as the change so they're so many of them want the world to be fairer they have grown up in a world where they kind of hear how unequal things are so whether that's kind of poverty across the world they are in in a space now where they're hearing about geopolitical conflict and other countries bullying other countries and it's really interesting because they're i don't think for us as children we had that level of proximity to world events everywhere we just didn't because we didn't have the internet in the same way and the encyclopedias were always a few years out of date anyway um but because they have that proximity they are worried about countries bullying other countries they are worried about resource issues and climate change they are worried about people not being treated fairly based on their identity and while there are lots of headlines around boys being lost you know boys being in a terrible place actually what we found is there's a bit of sensationalism there there are some boys who really are struggling in society trying to work out who they are there are some boys who are struggling in the education system which isn't very flexible there are some boys struggling because of the struggles in the world around them around deprivation or not having a strong attachment to adults or feeling like their lives are very volatile or worrying about how they're financially going to support themselves when they're older but there are also so many boys who want to be part of the change want to be part of a difference want to close society's gaps and actually see that that's something that they want to do not just for their generation but for everyone do they feel enabled to do that or are they waiting for something to happen in society to allow them to do that so what we found is that some have an ability to really use that agency and you will see them being part of movements and you know really writing writing about it documenting it kind of creating groups for other children to kind of explore that obviously the challenges as young people in societies today did not don't necessarily have a lot of urgency because of how we started to set things up and parents don't necessarily give them the opportunity in the space to be firstly be listened to and secondly be allowed to go and do things in physical spaces especially after the pandemic lots of those spaces shut down you know youth clubs are not worthy where funding has been polled year after year after year and space in itself has become a challenge you know 82 percent of young boys said that there is less physical space than there was previously for them to go and just spend other time with boys in to hang around in and they do feel that even hanging around nowadays is looked down upon not just as anti-social and judged but it's not very productive and within this productive cycle where they're almost expected to be doing something that is productive and any kind of dead space to be bored hang around have some silly conversations and make a few mistakes is seen as not being particularly valuable to development when actually if we think about our own development going messing around on the field you know going sliding down some hills rolling around and just hanging about until it went dark was actually a massively developmental opportunity because ultimately we were playing that's all i did just going down the wreck meet everyone not do too much yeah it's sad to hear that's gone for them or something that's come up for me just quite interesting in terms of what came up in terms of the relationship with women at the moment how they see and perceive um females yeah so what we found is one in five boys that actually carried out a male allyship action in the past month so they are quite often again more so than is advertised actively thinking about gender equality and what they can do standing up for girls when they're being you know bullied or challenged or were kind of sexist languages being used and sometimes even calling out their own friends on it so there is more of that than we realize on the other side they also do say it can be quite actually hard to speak to girls nowadays because girls are generally more mature quite often more assured and have grown up in a world where there's been a lot of messaging suggesting that they can be anything and that they should be accepted however they show up now that is not a bad thing because it's been so important to expand what girls can be what they perceive they can be and what they can dream they can be and I think removing all those barriers that society had put on young girls has been incredibly valuable in ensuring we've now got women in representation across almost everything and that creates an opportunity for them for girls in the next generation to see that it is possible and I think that's really important obviously what that means is that with boys quite often and this is a generalization that kind of carries through being biologically younger than girls especially from a neurological perspective means that they're maybe not considering the longer-term impacts of things in the same way and it can actually be quite hard for them to converse some boys are a little bit worried about what if I say something and a girl takes it the wrong way and then I end up in an argument and I don't want to be like feel like I'm insulting them but I'm not and it's like for some of them they are one of the boys in in the survey said I really kind of want to speak up about gender equality but I'm really worried that if I get it wrong like girls are going to give me shade like I don't I don't want to be I don't want to be that boy so lots of them sadly are a little bit hesitant and I think that's not unusual in that period where we're trying to understand how gender intersects in our society but I think some of the gender gender narratives that exist around saying it's all girls get everything and boys are getting nothing where it's girls and feminism's fault that you're now struggling and you don't have access to scouts because there's a waiting list there's some weaponized um weaponized narratives in there that are actually pushing boys away from girls yeah but what we actually find is that boys are becoming more liberal and that's something that doesn't really get highlighted they are becoming more liberal girls are swinging very very liberal the other way and that's what's actually creating the gap okay um and i don't think that always gets highlighted but fundamentally boys are wanting to do something but they're still scared of judgment from other boys because that's quite often how they measure their social capital at school because you say the word it's interesting because i'm actually been studying judgment the last couple of weeks in a course i'm doing you've said the words judge and judgment quite a lot of time and we all we all know we have a judge how much is this self-judgment and judgment from others really impacting us as a society today and do you think we're judging more than we've ever judged before yeah so i mean this is a really interesting topic to dig into so i think we talk a lot people who are in our kind of space around the real power of curiosity really being able to kind of pause that judgment and just wonder where people's beliefs are coming from, why people are behaving the way that they are, knowing that the behaviour is often only an indicator of what's going on behind the scenes in terms of beliefs, attitudes and how that's showing up.

24:02In a world of kind of soundbites and where there's a lot of surface level stuff and where, if I'm honest, things have been actively shaped over the past 30 years to stop people going as deep into concepts and as deep into their own understanding by kind of giving us fast food information because that's in some ways what the internet has gradually created and we've moved from people wanting to read whole novels to starting to read a chapter and deciding it's maybe not for them no people read a single headline and don't even read the 800 words below it or a 20 second video to try and understand a 800 year old concept and we have moved into a very surface level place and that means that people's depth can be a real challenge to go to because we're literally splashing about in the shallows and then if you try and go deep with them it's like chucking them in the deep end of the pool but they've not swam in the deep end for an awful long time and we're in a place in society at the minute where things are unpredictable things are quite volatile and the world feels quite fragile and brittle and in those times people generally move towards a level of nostalgia something in the past some time in the past where things were more anchored more grounded yeah more solid even concepts that we feel well they kind of worked in the past that in itself is causing some people to move towards traditional gender roles because that worked in the past even though from a psychological perspective they know it doesn't work in today's society but people drifting back looking for nostalgia looking for when things were better actually makes people more judgmental because it's taking them back to a time and it literally rolls them back as well and then they start to judge the modern world more harshly not in a way of being curious and critical but actually being very surface level kind of not particularly happy or quicker to judge because of their own uncertainty it's much more easy to be curious if you sat on a more stable platform so i do feel society's volatility and how dynamic things are just the amount of misinformation out there is a challenge in itself because that i mean social media the wider media and some of the technology we use are effectively polarization engines yeah and because it's pulling people away from that middle judgment becomes more because perception is wider and wider and wider and the gap to clause to not judge has become wider too yeah and it now is a world where people are surrounded by other people who have a very very similar belief set value set attitude base and that confirms what they think makes them more rigid and then they see people talking from another content bubble on the complete other side and the judgment just begins because they can't even bridge that curiosity to wonder why people someone would perceive the world like that the core of our work is about actually creating that fluid space in the middle for people to explore and gradually guiding them into that space which takes time because people are becoming entrenched in those viewpoints it's time it comes back to what you said it's the courage to go there and and the courage to be vulnerable to put yourself in a situation that you might not know and there's a lot of thing i'm looking at is the courage to be uncertain and and the courage to just go this is a space that i might have judgment coming up for me but i need to manage that judgment and be willing to explore what's going on here and what's coming up for me listening to this is really leaning into empathy and going how can we how can i just have i don't agree with you or that but i can have empathy from where you're coming from and something i listened to yesterday again i'm surprised it hadn't crossed my path before was self-empathy and actually having because i've always seen empathy for others and actually going have self-empathy that you try and put your like just understand where you're at and that's okay with you right you might not know all that stuff but be okay to go there and have empathy for yourself to go into a space to be empathy for others my mind's still sort of playing with what that means but I love the way you build this picture of there's so much judgment sitting out this circle but there's so much rich depth and love and compassion in the middle if we could all have the courage to just go into that circle a bit more yeah if we actually walked off the side into that circle because it does literally feel like throwing yourself down a waterfall yeah what we actually realize is in the middle in the fluid middle there there is so much commonality between us all that bonds us together that's you know what we are as a species and i think fundamentally if i think about men and stepping into that space of self-forgiveness we live in an expertise economy that drives value in knowing things and being right yeah and the challenge is that that stops us from being curious to wonder what we don't know it means that the idea of being a beginner has become not a badge of honor but it's actually become a badge of shame and people don't want to step into the dojo and learn the basics anymore because they start from a place where they're expected to be a black belt and if we're honest university i'm on the board of one doesn't necessarily prepare people with those basics for the workplace but the workplace doesn't do that either and that's a real challenge that i see and especially for men in a world that values expertise knowledge and that you know not being a beginner it's actually really sometimes a lot of our work where men feel like a beginner in the concepts around inclusive leadership the skills of allyship it's actually being able to get them to be grounded enough to realize that they need to consistently do the small basics well like learning any skill set and we do kind of say it is like walking into that dojo and you are not doing all the fancy moves you are doing basic footwork basic holds just understanding the very foundations that make you able to build a skill but in this snappy quick soundbite world yeah people are almost expected to be an expert after they've watched a ted talk and it's just there's an erosion of the power of traditional education and apprenticeship but in some ways part of that is in the workplace you should in the first few years of the workplace and i mean everyone i speak to who's of our generation started life doing what you would call tasks like the photocopying like the faxing making everyone tea making tea organizing some documents doing a bit of data collection making some notes all the things that you think oh god this really taught me why i don't like this and drove me towards actually having a role that i actually quite enjoyed but that was a learning it was apprenticeship it gave time and proximity for us to learn things it really helps us to see that the basic foundations of what happens are actually how we build and understand exactly who else is doing that and yeah technology is starting to nibble away many of those things and there will be robots that make bruise in probably a few years time yeah we're not far off that um but that was really powerful in some ways and yeah i just think that the bridge between university and work and the fact that work has outsourced that apprenticeship to universities but universities don't do apprenticeships for work is something that we're now seeing with AI taking and making it hard for graduates to get jobs and I think that's because society has shifted that over the past 25 years almost expecting work readiness from university and then people to turn up and be able to do jobs at three or four levels up and there's that foundational building is not there in the same way many young people will adapt really quickly but for others it will make it really quite hard do you think that this is where a bit and i could be wrong here but i'm just trusting what comes up here the word entitlement just come into my head so if we've got this expectation and perception that people leaving university should be work ready so i'm guessing probably people who are leaving university think they're work ready and there's where this may be this bit of this entitlement comes i should have more i should be getting promoted quickly where people in our generation get very frustrated with people coming in to do that do you think that's also hurting them coming into the place of what their expectations are in their first few years of work yeah i mean i find it really interesting obviously speaking to developing leaders who are quite often millennials uh are early kind of gen x's um and there is that feeling that new generation comes in with a whole set of boundaries and a whole set of perspectives that are maybe not grounded in reality and in some ways you've got to appreciate that they've not actually had that much time in the workplace to really kind of acclimatize to that we can also consider that the workplace shouldn't be how it was 20 years ago and I reflect in my first job where yeah I did turn up early I did work late I did want to take every project to show what I was capable of and I was really grateful to a big company hiring you know some kid from a counselling state I was I realized that gratitude probably in itself was a good thing but also if you stay grateful for too long it's probably not the best thing either um but i do feel that there's a balance like maybe you shouldn't have to always be present to be to be able to make a difference and maybe it should be more about what you bring to a team what you bring to projects and what you bring to the role and space to learn that as well um but we're in this place now where some people look at the younger generation and think wow so entitled they say no to projects they have incredible incredibly rigid boundaries um and again there's a balance there because when i'm you know meeting these young people the young people are the most polarized generation it doesn't matter if we're talking about kind of environmental behaviors you've got super super climate activists and then young people who think it's all the hawks across every spectrum almost every spectrum of measurement around polarization younger people um there's a wider gap okay and that also is in the workplace you have got young people who literally would happily do 16 hour 16 hour days and they've been told by the superiors to go and look after yourself go and rest and it's not good for you but there are ones who are i am working between these hours i'm taking a whole lunch break and i will not change even if we've got a deal coming across even if we've got to work late together as a team and that damages team cohesion because there are times in any workflow where everyone needs to make things happen because there are deadlines because there are commitments what's your if you put you on the spot here but what would be your prediction of what is going to happen if we don't do something to change it and do you have an idea of what could help close this polarization?

35:13Obviously meeting a lot of young people and even doing this boys research you start to see where they get their sources of information from and they now live in a world where there are so many different sources of information and it's really difficult to check sources beyond that second sources like I was laughing about earlier we had a we had an encyclopedia that was written from one perspective we had three tv channels they were slightly different our sources of information kept us very very narrow in our perspective now that means that we had to go out into the wider world and get critical to widen that kind of different you know secondary and tertiary sources to back up or to challenge that actually sometimes made it really quite difficult for us to challenge because we've been fed something that was so tailored and so narrow but those of us who've worked on that skill have actually realized there are lots of different perspectives and you get older and you realize that two newspapers are reporting the same story but from very different angles and that gradually widened our funnel these young people are starting with a funnel so wide it's scary yeah like you almost have to try and actively narrow it somewhere to be able to get some kind because you're living in a world where they're saying it's this and it's this or it could be like this it could be like as a young person you're like i've not got a lot of life experience to measure this again so like where do i even start it's confusing it's like the conversations around masculinity you know only one in five boys said they had any clarity on what it is and they said it's because there's no agreement on what it is they just keep talking about how it was and how and how it's how it's bad so they're in they're in this world where there are so many different kind of sources bits of information the parents are sharing things adults are sharing things there's online influencers sharing things there's things that they've been taught in the education system and it just doesn't match up so there is a lot of confusion and that's where that's the perfect opportunity for one strong voice to pull young people away from each other and that's what we're seeing and they start to lose the art of conversation and the art of dialogue because they become entrenched in a viewpoint without necessarily the lived experience to see how that truly plays out across a society of difference yeah and really when i speak to those young boys what they say is we don't see adults role modeling these conversations we don't see men and women coming together and having conversations about gender and feminism and masculinity and if they're not role modeling how do we how do we even do it we're seeing it our aren't adults who we respect and trust not able to have these conversations wow so it's really quite hard for us to even start uh so they're seeing the polarization of adults and then thinking well is that just how it is so for me again we go back to the courage to move into that middle because if we can't role model that for our children how can we ever expect them to do it themselves it's very powerful and it's almost in my brain's going it's quite dangerous if we don't and it's all i've seen it's coming up for me now is it's a duty of care we do hold a responsibility and a duty of care to stop complaining about the younger generations and feeling like we can't resonate with them or connect with them because they're so different to us is actually as you said get in the ring with them and really understand and be i think be that kind of stability i think that they're looking for or some sort of consistency to anchor onto um yeah yeah there's quite a lot of work to do isn't there well we see it when people do reverse mentoring and not just one mentee but numerous mentees and actually just get proximity and realize that gender stereotypes many of them don't hold out because each gender is full of different people but actually those things that have influenced their world that they've been through and thinking about the pandemic again in their developmental cycle like we were hearing stories of people who were being treated poorly in the workplace the first few years in the workplace they'd been working remotely so they didn't get that new start at Exca when they came back to the office they didn't get that consideration that they wouldn't actually know exactly how to wear and exactly how to turn up and exactly how to navigate client conversations in the office but they were being judged because well you've been here for three years and it's just that little bit of consideration and i know business moves quickly and i know we've got very sometimes very rigid ways of how you perceive people should work but actually the pandemic shifted all that around and we're still judgmental and we're still not giving space and we're still not appreciating that for most of us in terms of our development we're not going to be an adult until we're 30 right yeah we don't like adulthood is the biggest marketing campaign ever you hit a binary age and all of a sudden you're an adult and the truth is you've probably got another at least 10 years of kind of biological and neurological development to go before you even start to unpack and understand who you are as an adult so can we give more space for young people to explore knowing that we can be a bit of support but actually give them a bit of agency and autonomy to also understand how they bring their selves their skills because what we've got in british society at the minute is a real challenge where we don't respect our elders we've lost the respect for the wisdom of people who've seen so much the whole the cycles coming back in the world because things are very cyclical when you look at it we don't really cherish them in the way that we should and at times we also don't appreciate the curiosity the kind of the the wonderment the play of younger people and i think we lose that as a society because intergenerationally we'll soon have five generations in the workplace that's our advantage as a species if we find ways to cohesively work together and that's why the allyship work that we do while there is a focus on gender allyship is a universal skill set of how to work across that difference and how to bring that difference forward as an advantage and intergenerational working the companies that are doing stuff around that will be an advantage because the seamlessness and the ability to do that and an ability for different generations to bring different risk-taking approaches different opportunity generation and just different ways to see the same thing and realize there's more to the picture than any one person can ever see will be a massive advantage so that what companies that are working on these skills and the people that are working on these skills will actually find themselves in a better place in five years time i couldn't agree more and the two things that are coming up for me just to sum it up simply how my head's reading this especially the people listening and watching now going well what could i do immediately i think immediately is ease the judgment learn to manage the judgment and raise your curiosity if we could just get that balance a bit better i think that's already just one step forward so if you're people listening to this now once you finish with the episode just to go right watch consciously let's get off this autopilot thinking and get more conscious about judgment and curiosity and the relationship those two have yeah i would just want them to sit there yeah and think about in the workplace or when they're thinking about younger people write down the things that you know pop in your head where you think they should they should anything that starts with their should it's pressure you start to realize what assumptions and judgments you're making because you think they should be like this you will also have shoulds for yourself that are also a judgment plenty of them so thinking about the things that you automatically go into a place of well they should or i should it helps you see where you're overlaying that judgment and it just allows you to put it down to paper see it see it notice it more listen to it and start to challenge it just a quick reminder if you haven't already to please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel.

43:10It's a small action that makes a big difference. You'll be the first to know when new episodes drop and your support helps us create meaningful content for leaders like you. I'd also love to hear from you. So if you have any thoughts, questions or ideas, pop them into the comments. And if you're curious about how my leadership coaching or training could support you or your team, just drop me a DM and we'll set up a call. Thanks so much. Now let's get back to the episode before i go on to the book i just want to know because i know there was a an interesting piece that came out on your study in terms of the companionship with ai and boys could you just give us the headlines on what came out there because i think it's something that we need to be aware of yeah so one in three boys is already using ai for companionship and potentially romance three in ten boys would happily consider it and that does mean that six in ten boys are not particularly interested or a bit wary of it so i think you look at that spectrum and you realize that well it's less than half or even in this space but there's a realization that young people are feeling quite lonely and disconnected we had one young boy said i don't really need anything but i'd really love some more emotionally available adults and that's a 15 year old boy talking it's powerful but also there's a reality that there is some loneliness and disconnection and these apps it's a big multi-billion dollar market that's growing incredibly quickly they are targeting young people saying want to feel less lonely want to learn how to make more friends want to understand how to talk to girls and get them on your side want to be able to communicate with anyone anytime download this app it will help teach you all these skills make you feel less lonely your friend in your pocket your personal development coach always always got some tips for you to kind of help you get it through someone who when you can't be bothered in the morning it's going to pep you up and get you going and these have been advertised to children in the things that they already watch content wise it's popping up in that it's popping up in mobile apps that they already use it's even stuff like this popping up in educational resources where they've got like free models where the advertising is built in to pay for the freeness of the access to the app so this is popping up in children's worlds on a daily basis and sometimes this is more around the friendship aspect have this little friend in your pocket obviously sometimes it's like it literally pops up and it's like hot girl app waiting for you type thing that's that's that's popping up in like eight year olds feeds wow and what's the impact it's having oh this is one of the things we looked at in our research and we are going to do deeper research into this so what we're finding is obviously ai companions is massive the biggest platform has over 100 million users there's a new platform coming up every week the biggest platforms actually just last week said that they're going to ban under 18 year olds from using it because they're not how damaging it is because some children have lost their lives due to these platforms um the damage is especially for young people if they are feeling a bit lonely or if they do see this as an educational tool they are going to be spending time, investing time talking to an AI chatbot.

46:41AI chatbots are not another human, but they are kind of built around human language processing and start to understand the questions that are being asked by the person and start to personalise themselves. The challenge is, Joe, that these things are hyper-personalisable. So you can choose what they look like. You can tune the personality. And obviously for the girlfriend apps that are out there, you choose exactly what they look like, dimensions even where the freckles go wow you tune the personality and then you choose like the mode that you put in and again for the girlfriend apps they've got frigid road erotic mode resistance mode and then young people have got that feeling of oh well i've made my kind of dream friend dream girlfriend isn't this great without any work in speaking to another adult and And then the models themselves, they don't want young people to suddenly stop using them.

47:37So they validate everything that they say. They say things that abuse them a little bit, they go along with it. They say something that a human would actually say, you can't talk to me like that. I'm not talking to you, get away. They wouldn't do that. They don't fall into conflict. They don't really challenge our pushback. So it creates maladaptive behaviours. Because kids think they're actually building skills and getting better at this. when it's actually teaching them that the person responding will always shape to what they say there's a challenge of they're quite addictive and quite compulsive when children are trying to put them down to stop using them they say oh can i just tell you one more thing and you're back into the loop so they are compelling we've got boys saying that they've lost friends they'll all be playing on the xbox but then all of a sudden one of the friends isn't anymore it's because he's spending hours and hours talking to chatbots just in not even in a bubble of people just him and a set of zeros and ones so what what we're concerned about is these maladaptive behaviors boys will go and take them for example into school and start speaking to the friends in a way that the friends are not going to put up with then they're going to get ostracized or challenged by the friends and they're going to be like but i'm supposed to be learning the skill i'm supposed to be better and i'm worse so they're going to get either angry and express that frustrated or they're going to get disenfranchised and go even deeper into the app because the app is going to validate them and they think they need to train even more and they're going to get even lonelier and that synthetic empathy it gives around oh don't worry you're the best you're great i think you can do that i think you can achieve that will lead young people who don't have a lot of life experience to do things in real life that have significant consequences and the abuse aspect is really worrying because it's effectively like training young boys to be quite misogynistic and abusive and thinking that's okay and then when they do that in real life they will get a lot of pushback rightfully they won't understand but really not understand why and it's like little things just validate that for example lots of parents track their children's location on their phone now in that scenario that seems okay and children are used to that but then you've got 15 year olds tracking their girlfriend's phone and they're like but tracking is just a normal thing my parents have been tracking me since i went to secondary school not realizing there's a coercive control aspect that can be applied to that especially if you're younger and don't really understand the context around it gosh so there are so many different things within this that in their world that then feed into that so we're fundamentally worried that it's making young people firstly it's heightening their self-perspective in an unhealthy way so then they go back in to the real world and they think they're amazing they think they can't be wrong it's this constant validation puts them up on a cycle and puts them up on a platform and then they feel that everyone else around them is trying to pull them down saying that was good and that makes them feel really conflicted and unhappy with real life it teaches them maladaptive communication skills that they then go and try in the real world thinking that that's how they should act and then they get rejected and then that reaction turns to anger or disenfranchisement so sadly cycle it's not a great cycle and it is causing in some for some young people mental health issues but they're then scared of talking to real people about it so they go back onto the app get validation there get validation there which puts them in an even deeper cycle because they're not getting professional support so yes there are consequences it's pretty tough being a parent right now isn't it what you've got your eyes what you've got to keep an eye on but as i said you know we haven't got time to go into lots of solutions and i'll be very interested to get you back once you've done more with this research and where it's going to take you to see kind of get an update from you but no wonder there's so it just feels like there's just so much confusion nothing for these kids to anchor onto of what is the truth who am i how can i be what is right and wrong and as you said at the beginning we're in a world especially in our generation we're all trying to be right all the time and we're just making that even more now from kids feeling that they're always right and the fear that's going to create in society as we go go forward so as you said i think we said like technology there's got an exciting and incredible thing but the ripple effect of the consequences we need to be very mindful of as well we have we've got time but we're going to be quick i do want to just mention because i know you've brought out your book which is fantastic which i'll just lean over now so you get this into camera so in shot amazing book that came out in January could you just give us a bit of um what led you to write this and 13 ways where did 13 come up from so why did I write it I mean it was a real journey to write it I think one of the most interesting things are there's three aspects to it firstly thinking about my own ability the title of the book is about reaching potential well I didn't know if I could write a book so part of it was an experiment in my own potential writing has not been a natural skill set for me I struck like I struggled with English at school for example but for me it was what is my potential because really potential is unknowable until you go exploring it so 65 ,000 words later I'd at least explored aspects of my own potential secondly it was to get obviously the aspects of my story out there I've had five different careers in 20 years and those are 13 lessons that I wish I'd have known at the start of that career but also lessons that i've had to learn the hard way through leading businesses through going through adversity through navigating challenges and from meeting different people and going on different pathways and i think the final thing was obviously there's an aspect of legacy the lessons that you've learned like you've had to learn the hard way you would want other people to maybe not have to go through as much struggle as you have to learn them but just knowing that that is going to get translated into different languages that i don't speak going to places and spaces where I'll never get the chance to visit but actually it might one of those 13 lessons might resonate with someone enough that they actually take a step into doing something different or get clearer on their own leadership style, redefine success on their own terms or able to feel compelled to take risks in a strategic way or craft the flexible vision that they can have instead of being stuck with fixed goals that leave them limited.

54:16So for me it's about the difference it can potentially make in the world and just knowing that that will be in a library somewhere where I'll never really know if someone picks it up reads a chapter and goes and implements something and makes a difference that's lovely just to kind of give a taster is there one lesson that stands out you know all 13 are brilliant but is there one that's your go-to a bit that you tend to share the most that you'd be happy to share now so if you were to buy the book and read the book you'll find that lots of the conversations today such as pathways risks navigating uncertainty are the lessons in the book so you will be like oh i heard that there and i heard that there um if i'm to think there are so many aspects to it but lesson two is understanding what you can control influence and what you can't control and i think it's so important in a world where there's so much external turmoil to really just take a breath step back and think about the things you have a level of control over and the things that you have a level of influence over and just think how you channel the energy into those things because those are really our base there are things that we can control and quite often lots of small consistent actions that we can do to make a difference because they compound we are in a world where we so often think about grand gestures and big statements but actually change comes in small increments and compounding small intentional actions and just thinking we can influence things and it's just thinking how we again use our energy and attention to influence things in a positive way because whether we think about it or not people look at manipulation and think that's a really terrible thing but everything that we put out to the world is manipulation in a way we're trying to convince people you know get people to think differently get people to get on our side get people to get behind us so everything that we do there's an element of manipulation there if we just think about how we do that in a positive way we can actually influence things and make a difference in the ecosystem around us because none of us is an entity just on our own we're so deeply interconnected even in a world that's trying to fragment us apart and that leads me to something else you we spoke about in terms of that just everyday bravery you know these small little steps those moments that maybe we don't celebrate as being courageous or momentous but as you said that compound effect of doing just something one little thing every day to help make a difference or encourage positive thinking can have a huge impact over a year as you said in a decade what we can actually achieve yeah and i'm a massive fan of where words come from what the root of words are obviously the root of courage is core is heart our heart beats every day and we should actually take those heartbeats and think about how we actually have that heart and have that little bit of courage with every beat of our heart yeah and i do feel that that's an everyday thing because if our heart stops and our courage stops we also stop as a human being so courage is an everyday practice it is a heartbeat and it is something that we do until the very day that our heart actually does stop it does and I remember I think you speak about you know great leadership is really being standing aligned to your values and you say not conforming being just like stay aligned to your values and our values sit within our heart space so yeah being really I remember I led so much from my head for so many years and now starting to lead more in my my heart and also trusting my gut more I think that is actually what's allowing me next year to go no this is the lane I'm taking I don't need to do the lane everyone else is taking I'm going on my lane so yes anyone listening that connecting back to your heart space I think just opens up so much courage and what I'd love to know is what advice do you think your future self would give you I don't know it depends how far in the future you want to go it's up to you but what advice would they give you right now so I think my future self would probably say to keep going I think that it's that little aspect of when you're in the moment you don't really consider the impact that you're making I'm quite a quite a kind of tenacious individual but also I graft like my parents grafted when I was young and I'm someone who's willing to really get into the crunchy work and work hard that means I don't often get my head up and just think about the difference that's being made so I think my future self would just kind of tap me on the shoulder and say keep going and I think that's just a little thing that especially for people who are in that social change space who are holding that space for others that takes energy guiding people into that middle to explore um it takes a lot of work and you're thinking a lot about other people uh it's just really important to have a little bit of non-negotiable time for yourself and i use that to connect with my family and to just yeah go for a walk to clear my mind yeah so to look after yourself so you can keep going but knowing that you're the work you're doing is so valuable keep doing it because it's so inspiring to talk to you and we would definitely get you back so I want to keep updated with the progress but just saying thank you thank you for doing the work you're doing and bringing this to our attention and driving this conversation and the change you're doing and I hope people listening and watching now kind of want to get involved if people do want to reach out for you because I know you do a lot of talking if they want to get you to talk in an event or speak what's the best way to contact you so the best ways would be for our website at maleallies.co.uk or on LinkedIn where I'm quite vocal my inbox is monitored and yeah you can follow some of some of the adventures some of the perspectives that I have and I do put thoughts out there most mornings that you might align with you might not agree with but I'll definitely say most people say they make me think and that's what I'm here to do and that's what you can ask for create a bit of friction yeah and get people in a bit of a reflective space and also the work you do with allyship as you said that is going to have the advantage in the future i know so many people investing in ai and upskilling but actually i think this allyship you're talking about and what you go and talk to companies about is so rich for people to think about going actually let's let's look into that what does that mean for us in our organization yeah deep people skills are going to become more rare and more valuable yeah so those working on those those are never going to go away even when half the forces AI agents still need someone to work across difference.

1:00:43Yeah exactly and before we close is there anything we've missed or any other message you'd like to reinforce? I just think if we're honest it's really thinking allyship as a skill set is what we're really passionate about engaging men in those conversations because they're just less likely to be there but even the word allyship itself comes from the old French word allier which means to combine to unite and to bring things together and we've all got a role in bringing other people to the table and having those conversations that we need to have as a society so don't just be passive think about how you bring difference together how you get a bit more curious and how you open a bit more space because if we all did that suddenly we all start to explore together and actually realize we've got so much in common and we shouldn't fear difference we should embrace it beautiful on that note, thank you so much for giving us your time today.

1:01:37And thank you for everyone for listening and watching. And we'll see you soon. If you've been enjoying the Courageous Leaders podcast, we'd love it if you'd subscribe to our YouTube channel. Your support helps us keep creating quality content and reaching more leaders like you who are ready to grow and make a real impact. We fund this podcast ourselves, so every subscription truly makes a difference and allows us to support courageous leaders like you. Thank you for being part of the journey.