Christie Smith: Author of Essential

Episode 658

In this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I sit down with Christie Smith, Ph.D., co-author of the newly released book Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts Are Creating a New Human-Powered Leadership. Christie is not just an author but also an internationally recognized speaker, C-suite advisor, and founder of The Humanity Studio. Having worked with some of the biggest names in business—including Apple, Deloitte, and Accenture—she has been at the forefront of redefining what leadership looks like in today’s rapidly evolving world.
During our conversation, Christie dives into why traditional leadership is broken and what it takes to lead in an era of AI, remote work, and shifting workforce expectations. We explore the major disruptions facing leaders today, the $1 trillion problem of women leaving leadership roles, and why trust—not control—is the future of work. Christie also shares insights from her research, including why emotional maturity is now the most important skill for leaders and how businesses can navigate the current leadership crisis.
If you’ve ever questioned whether the old leadership playbook still works—or if you’re trying to stay ahead in a world where adaptability is key—this episode is packed with insights and actionable takeaways. Tune in to learn how to future-proof your leadership, redefine success, and build organizations that put humanity back at the center. Don’t miss it! Now on The Kara Goldin Show!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. I am so excited to have my next powerhouse guest, who is also a friend, but so so proud of her for everything that she’s done. We have Christie Smith, who is a PhD co author of Essential how distributed teams, generative AI and global shifts are creating a new human, powered leadership. Christie has done an amazing job, if you’re watching this video or the clips we have the book right here. So awesome. Christie is a C suite advisor international speaker and founder as well of the humanities studio. We were just chatting about launching a new company after years and years of working with other companies, including Apple, Deloitte, Accenture. I mean, she’s seen it all. She’s done it all, the real deal to listen to her so nearly 2000 CEOs stepped down last year, and AI is shaking up these industries faster than most leaders can keep up. I cannot even wait to hear what Christie has to say about so many things, including that and why traditional leadership just isn’t working anymore, the so many things that Christie is going to educate us about, inspire us on and absolutely you have to read this book, Essential. So welcome Christie. Super excited to see you. Hey,

Christie Smith 2:13
Kara. I am really, really excited to be with you. This is like a dream come true.

Kara Goldin 2:18
Super exciting, excited. And your book launched in January. It is now a best seller. Congrats on so many levels that is just awesome, awesome, awesome. So your book Essential is all about redefining leadership, but I’d love to hear in your words kind of what inspired you to finally go and write a book. Be it beyond me, probably saying to you at some point, when are you writing this book? I’m sure every point.

Christie Smith 2:51
Yeah, no, I think, I think you know to to that point. I think I’ve had a book in me for a very long time and and I think that’s because I’ve been so blessed in my career to see a lot of leaders, lead companies, lead teams, lead project development, product development, all of this. And I really believe strongly that we’re in unprecedented times today, if you look at since the pandemic, what leaders are faced with. We haven’t seen this in our, you know, economy, or in our history, since the Industrial Revolution, where you’ve got and even then, we didn’t see it. You’ve got global war happening in two areas, Europe and the Middle East. You’ve got socio economic conditions that are really challenging. You’ve got polarization, not only in the US, but outside of the US as well. Employee engagement rates are the lowest ever they have ever been. So are trust rates. And you’ve got this rise of technology that’s moving out of pace faster than anyone can consume and we have a skill shortage. So it’s the combination of all of these things that I wanted to examine in this book, and what it really requires when you’re leading with this kind of headwinds. What do leaders need to do fundamentally differently

Kara Goldin 4:20
so you have had amazing experiences. Do you want to just talk briefly about, kind of, some of the roles that you’ve taken on? We actually met, I guess, when you were at Deloitte, so, but I’ve seen you through some, some other amazing, amazing opportunities. But can you talk a little bit about some of the things that you’ve worked on?

Christie Smith 4:42
Yeah, I was at Deloitte as long as I’ve been at a company for almost 18 years. And what a what a blessing. I mean, I joined our human capital practice at Deloitte when it was very small, and saw it grow over 70. 18 years to be in the 1000s globally, with an incredible suite of offerings around talent organization, Salesforce, effectiveness, you know, you know, HR, effectiveness, all of these things, and really got to be a part of that as well as, you know, being an industry leader as well within Deloitte, and we met when I moved to the West Coast. I was, I grew up at Deloitte on the East Coast, and moved to the West Coast, and really, you know, had the opportunity to do some great things, not only lead our consulting practice in the West region, but also build the Center for inclusion at Deloitte University. The Center for inclusion caught the eye of Apple, and Apple recruited me to come in and build and lead their inclusion and diversity efforts. And I couldn’t say no to that. Really the only reason I would have left Deloitte, and it was incredible to innovate at, you know, arguably the world’s most innovative company in the world, around their people and their values. And you know, we can see in recent times, they’re living up to those values very courageously. So to have been part of their history is something I’m extraordinarily proud of. I left Apple and it was the pandemic, and had the opportunity then to go to Accenture, where I led our talent and organization practice at Essential at Accenture that you know, 40,000 people worldwide, very large practice, and decided I was done about 18 months ago, and just tired, burnt out, frankly, and was ready to be done with my corporate career. Thought I was going to retire, failed miserably at retirement, and then had the opportunity with Wiley to write this book, and had the time and the space and to do the research, to work with my co author, Kelly, and write the book. And in writing the book, I thought, well, I better put my money where my mouth is. And so I built the humanities studio, right? And it’s,

Kara Goldin 7:23
I mean, it, it’s so needed right now, I mean, and I could not imagine a better person to be leading that effort. So Essential. Your book is so so good, frames the current moment as a decade of culture shock, yeah. When would you say that that culture shock actually started in your view? Like, I know it’s sort of been progressive, to say the least, but did there used to be a way to lead that changed? And when did it change?

Christie Smith 7:56
Yeah. I mean, I think that if you look, you know, we spend some time in the book, like really examining how leadership has evolved. And certainly, you know, from that kind of command and control, and you know, employees, or, you know, wheels and cogs in the wheel, that kind of mentality to, you know, popular things like servant leadership. We began to look at that over a decade ago, and then we looked at things like emotional intelligence and flattening an organization and having less management. And you know, we seem to go through these cycles of getting rid of middle managers and then going, Oh, no, we need middle managers and bringing them back. But I think that what, what the change really began to happen when we began to see the influence of technology in our daily lives, and so when you think about the role that Microsoft and Apple had in revolutionizing the way that we did work through either computers or phones or what have you. It really revolutionized how we began to think about work, and therefore how as leaders needed to manage their employee base, right? And so even before the pandemic, you began to see employees wanting to not have to be at work every day, you know, because they could do it from anywhere. And you began to see rumblings of that, as well as this technology. And then the pandemic hit. And as you well know, everyone knows a crisis like we’ve never faced, and we had to. Leaders had to and companies had to take absolute interest in the welfare of their employees and care for their employees, physically, financially, in some cases, emotionally, all of it. And. And it was also a time where leaders themselves were met with their own humanity. It didn’t matter if you were a CEO or a board member, you couldn’t buy your way out of keeping safe from from this pandemic. It really leveled the playing field, and everyone was in the same boat, and leaders, I think, did mostly an extraordinary job during that pandemic coming after that, then you saw crises around race and Black Lives Matter. And again, CEOs having to lean into that, and senior leaders having to lean into, you know, the whole issue of race equality, transgender rights, LGBTQ rights, all of that. And you saw companies having to take stances there, very different than what we saw 20, 3040, years ago. And then, of course, you know, you begin to see what I explained earlier is that since the pandemic, you know, to hybrid work, you know, return to Office, you know, fully remote, and all these socio political issues, and still This meteoric rise of technology, but also a meteoric rise of employees saying, hey, wait a second, this isn’t a one way street, right? You know, for decades, we’ve asked the question, what do employees require? What do we we require of our employees to hire them? What do they do at work? All of that, employees started to say, uh, no, no, this is a two way street. Now I have some requirements of you. So,

Kara Goldin 11:44
so interesting. So many companies, particularly in the maybe the last month, are treating dei as a check box and maybe a check box that they’re no longer going to have. Right? You’ve grown your entire career through disrupting and and really calling attention to this, what does it look like today for you, for like, how would you advise companies to look at that today? Is it different? I mean, is it? Is it the same, is it? What is the kind of the key thing you mentioned apple and sort of what they’re doing today. But I’m curious to hear what you would say on that. Well, let’s talk about some

Christie Smith 12:31
realities. There is, you know, the reality that, again, because of employee disengagement, we’re losing $8.8 trillion a year globally. That’s Amazon, Microsoft and Apple combined in combined annual revenues. That’s crazy. On top of that, you’ve got, which is, this is probably a low number that’s been reported 320 $2 billion a year of lost productivity due to burnout and mental health issues of employees. Fact number one, fact number two is, we cannot build skilled workers fast enough. I mean, the half life of skills in organizations has shortened and shortened and Jordan in the United States alone, we have a shortage of 4.6 million skilled workers. By 2032 that will be 6 million. I posit that it will probably be higher. Those are economic realities that will make the difference, make or break the difference for an economy or for a company. Now you add to that this, this rejection of Dei, and that’s, let’s call it what it is. It’s a rejection of the principles and the values of Dei. Now, reality is a lot of companies that have pulled back have government contracts, and had to make the very difficult decision that if they, you know, said they weren’t going to do it, that we have a very retaliatory president and his cabinet, that they would remove contracts, which would mean people would be laid off. So unfortunately, they had the cow tow to the bully. The other reality is, though, for for those companies, what I’ve been disappointed about, and what I advise leaders on, is this may be an economic reality, to hold jobs and to have a productive economy and stay in it. Get that, but they’ve all said we’re not, we’re going to roll back our dei offer efforts, but they’ve not said what they’re going to replace it with. And that, to me, is really disappointing. And just I think you know. Are irresponsible. There is something that you can replace it with, maintain the values of culture, maintain the values that everyone in your organization is going to get access to education, to upskill, reskill, you know, opportunities that you know what are to be able to build a culture where everyone at work can still have an opportunity to thrive. They’re not talking about what they’re going to replace it with, and that’s disappointing. So,

Kara Goldin 15:37
so, so disappointing. So we’ve got Dei, and then AI, so you talk about and all these eyes, right? So in the book Essential, you talk a lot about AI generative AI. Can you talk a little bit about how it is Essential today. And and how do you view this, not only as a leader, but also as somebody who maybe doesn’t know a whole lot about the AI world that thinks, I think gone are the days where you can just say, we’re not going to do that right now, you know? And so I think that that that never really works. You have to figure out exactly how to do it. But talk to me a little bit about that, and I love how you describe it in the book, yeah.

Christie Smith 16:31
So I think that AI is critical, right? I it’s been around a really long time how we’ve used it, and the innovation around how we’ve used it in more modern times last couple of years is really the change. You know, unfortunately, AI was touted as replacing a bunch of jobs in an efficiency tool. I don’t think that that is largely true. I think that there are tasks that can be done by AI, but we talk about, you know, AI as necessary. It’s an incredible invention. It’s an incredible tool for us to use. But AI, in and of itself, is not a magic bullet. It needs human intelligence. What do I what do we mean and describe human intelligence as human intelligence? You know, AI is backwards looking. It’s historical, and it pulls from a bunch of data that is, in and of itself, bias, right? It’s only as good as the questions we ask it. And how well are we being trained on asking questions, right? Human, human intelligence is critical for a couple of reasons. It is that, how do you ask questions, digging in, being skeptical on the answers, to not to write them off, but to dig deeper. To verify what you’re getting, we have to understand the context of when AI is used, what is the context it’s being used in, for the team, for the customer, for the partner, in what environment? What does the environment look like from a security standpoint, we need to have governance around the use of AI, right? And I think that we have to use AI and see AI as a tool now those human intelligence attributes we’re not building. We’re simply saying in organizations, you know, build AI in, and the learning for it is side a desk. Because, I mean, Kara, you know this as well as I do. You start your morning and it’s back to back to back to back meetings, right? And so we’re not allowing or structuring a day or time for employees to really understand how to use the tool of the AI, so both have to live in concert with one another.

Kara Goldin 19:16
Yeah, definitely. So when you think about power skills. Can you define these and how does Why do you believe that they’re more valuable than even some of the traditional leadership skills that we’ve seen today?

Christie Smith 19:32
Yeah, power skills is, are the things that are uniquely human to us? Right? This idea to be transparent, to be able to communicate, to have empathy, discernment, these kinds of things, curiosity. You know, I was sitting at a conference, and I was listening to Satya Nadella, who said, you know, Scots skills are the new hard skills. Mm, hmm, and 100% right. Because of the complexity of how leaders are leading, these power skills are exceptionally important in dealing with the humanity that exists within your organization. Most leaders have gotten to where they’ve gotten because they’ve had a technical expertise, not because they’ve had these attributes of power skills that they’ve just been these, you know, able to build a movement with their workforce, right and a purpose. And how does work get structured? And so the power skills are the new hard skills. The power skills are the things that our employees are needing from us, in order to trust, in order to be productive, in order to, you know, be engaged at work, in order to feel safe at work. And so, you know, Satya Nadella talks about empathy, you know, Jamie diamond talks about curiosity. Is the new power skills. These are all things that we haven’t necessarily cared that much about, that we need today in our workplace. So

Kara Goldin 21:14
if somebody is in a leadership role today and feels kind of overwhelmed by all these changes, you talk a lot about training as well, which, if you can speak to that, I mean, what? What’s sort of the the first step that somebody should really take. And I think sometimes it’s like people think, Oh, they’re the CEO of the company, or they’re in senior management, so they should be training. They should be mentoring other people. But at what point do you not need training? I guess is the question, yeah,

Christie Smith 21:49
you never not need training. That’s part of the problem, right? Is that we sometimes reach a position in our careers, or an age in our careers where we don’t think we need to learn anymore, right? I think that you know what we talk about in the book is this need and this this absolute shift from kind of what we were just talking about, power skills and some of those emotionally intelligent skills that leaders need emotional intelligence is great because it’s inward. Think it’s inward facing. It helps us understand what our proclivities and attributes are in terms of those power skills and it measures us. But we could take a test or be taught them and stick it in a drawer right. There’s no accountability to it. What we need today is to shift from because of the complexity of leadership, shift from emotional intelligence to what we call emotionally mature leaders. And these are leaders who need to have a distinct mindset. Shift from, you know, being it’s all about them to suspension of self interest. It’s actually about the team and the people that work for you, and how do you build the the conditions in which those people can thrive? Right? It’s about the capability of insatiable curiosity, right, understanding your employees in the context in which they’re coming to work, and what are the headwinds or tailwinds they’re facing? I mean, you know, I was with at a dinner last week in Seattle with a bunch of very senior people, and the moderator said, you know, what’s the one thing you guys are struggling with? And as everyone went around the table, they talked about a failing parent that they’ve got to take care of an issue with a kid their own health, not having any time to deal and these are all In the C suite leaders, right? And so as well as you know this, this is true for every employee. So this notion of, you know, just discarding, we have to, you know, check our humanity at the door when we walk through our offices and say that we’re not holding any of these issues during work. We have to have that contextual competence as leaders, to understand what our employees are faced with, and understand our own humanity in that regard. And then, you know, finally, what do we what do we do with regards to how we structure teams, the architect of teams and cultures that we’re in, we have to obsess about that. That’s one of the best things there is about Apple. It absolutely obsesses about culture, and that’s why you see such incredible innovation coming. So this idea that you know, leaders need to make the shift from emotional intelligence to emotional maturity. They have to learn those. Traits, yeah, and they have to value those traits. And frankly, it’s an expectation of their employees. So if you

Kara Goldin 25:07
have somebody in your organization, for example, that just doesn’t get this right, and we’ve all seen it right, and I would go as far as to say that it is Essential, but maybe this person doesn’t see it in themselves. Like, what do you do? Well, I

Christie Smith 25:27
think that everything data is is queen, right? I think, you know, the first thing you do is, yeah, you’ve got to assess a leader. You know, we’ve built an emotionally mature assessment. We’ve also built a team assessment, so the combination of the two gives the leader a really clear picture of where they fall on these power skills and emotional maturity skills, but how their team perceives them and the impact of that. So, you know, we look at this on a four, you know, two by two by two, where you say, you know, your team’s in fear, apathy, they’re not moving to high performance. How do you take your team and move them from where they are to high performance? Well, that structure of the team you have to many of the leaders I work with is doing these assessments, and then going back to the, you know, business context, right? Which is the performance context, which is, what is purpose? How does purpose aligned to strategy? Strategy aligned to culture, culture aligned to structure, and structure aligned to OP model and the skills you need, the leadership you need. So it’s the awareness, is the feedback, it’s looking, over a long period of time, the performance of that leader and financially, as well as with regards to his, his or her team, and how they’re operating. And the means doesn’t justify, you know, the ends don’t justify the means. Is, you know, how many people are they losing? Right? What’s the retention rate? All of these things, you have to look at the data that is available to you to get a clear picture on the leader, definitely.

Kara Goldin 27:19
So as you’re writing Essential, and again, such a good book. I mean, it’s like really had me thinking on many different levels. I’m on the boards of few different companies, and I’ve seen a lot of different types of companies go through challenges, and I think that Essential is just speaking to me right now on so many levels in this insane, insane world. But how is writing Essential really changed your own perspective on leadership? Maybe from I feel like you’ve lived it and seen so many different examples, especially working with Deloitte and, you know, going into other companies and seeing how people do want to change. You’ve seen a lot of different things, but now we’ve also got the future of work. It seems like people are trying to get people back in the office. You’ve got people kind of resisting, because they built a life around not going into the office. They’ve moved somewhere else, like, there’s just, it’s a lot of crazy going on around but how has writing Essential kind of changed your perspective on leadership and maybe the future of work?

Christie Smith 28:36
Yeah. I mean, I think we started with a hypothesis of, you know that, you know leadership today is really hard, just the the overwhelming forces where people are looking to the private sector in particular and private sector leaders in particular to solve for socio economic health, you know, skills, all of these problems. They’re not looking to government leaders, to the public sector. They’re looking to the private sector. And we’ve seen, you know, this hypothesis was born out of, you know, a lot of research over the years, and certainly my experience in working with leaders. But you begin, really began to see, in the last 10 years, CEOs leading in leaning into those social issues, whether it was LGBT rights, whether it was immigration, you know, whether it was black lives matter, whatever you saw the rise, and we’ve seen The rise of CEOs having to take a stance and be, you know, the moral compass, if you will. And so the hypothesis was, you know, with all of this, how does it impact the way we lead? Right? And is leadership or. Requirement different. So so, you know, clearly it is, and the biggest driver to that is, you know, employees, workers themselves, have very high expectations of their employers, and they feel the freedom to leave. If they don’t, they’re okay with having four or five jobs if they’re living to their values, right, and they’re okay to start their own company. The fractional worker is fastest growing part of our economy. So this empowerment of people, combined with all of this, these issues that we’re dealing with, you know, really proved to us that this hypothesis was right and proven out. So, yeah, I mean, I think it’s a culmination of my my life’s work, and what I have seen in action. So

Kara Goldin 30:58
in addition to Essential you have started your own company, the humanities studio. Do you want to talk a little bit about that as well, and sort of why you’re so excited about what you’re working on?

Christie Smith 31:11
Yeah, we’re really excited about the humanities studio. You know, we our goal is to revolutionize the way we live by revolutionizing the way we work. Right? And we fundamentally have to look at leadership and work differently in the age that we’re living in. And really work does have to fit into our lives, not the other way around. I think my generation, the boomer generation, you know, is actually has more in common now with Gen Z’s than not. They want values. They want to work, when, where and how. They want to work. They want the, you know, safety net of wellness. They want connection. They want all of these things. But we really screwed it up for the younger generations in terms of this kind of you have to be there’s only one model for success in the office. You know, the archetype of a straight white man. You know all of these things so, so I think that you know, for the Humanities studio, what we are building are, is both AI and programs around an assessment, around building emotionally mature leaders and and teams.

Kara Goldin 32:28
I love it. So good. So Essential. Is Essential. So absolutely. Love it. Love it, love it. Christie, thank you so much for joining us. We’ll have all the info in the show notes. Cannot even wait to see all of the additional stuff that you’re going to be working on and working on now, but for everyone listening, make sure to grab a copy of Essential if you’re interested in working closer with Christie too, we’ll have all the info about the humanities studio in the show notes, but thank you again for sharing all of your wisdom today and and best of luck with everything. Thanks, Kara. It’s great to be with you. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. You.

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