E91: Why Smart Leaders Fail Without Emotional Intelligence with Cynthia Morrow

The science of work reveals how ethical frameworks and workplace design can transform your career—and why ignoring these insights keeps you stuck in burnout and conflict. Cynthia Morrow, an assistant professor specializing in the science of work, shares eye-opening strategies to rethink how we approach our jobs, workplaces, and careers. Y

ou’ll discover how invisible forces like incentive systems and psychological safety shape organizational behavior, and why many work problems are really systems problems, not personal failures. Whether you’re leading a team, planning your next career move, or just tired of workplace frustration, Cynthia’s research-backed advice offers practical ways to make work more meaningful and sustainable. 

Plus, she gives a sneak peek at her upcoming book Administrative Intelligence, which helps people understand their scope of influence inside organizations. This episode is for anyone ready to use the science of work to create better outcomes at work and beyond.

Connect with Cynthia:

https://www.evinarrative.com/

Want to be a guest on Work Sucks, But I Like It? Send Tony Tenaglier a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/worksucksbutlikeit

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

All right, welcome to the Work Sucks But I Like It podcast. Today we have Cynthia Morrow. She's a true elder millennial. Graduating in 2009 in the recession, she has navigated work through catering jobs, not getting a job at Chipotle, to earning her PhD in health services. She is now an assistant professor at Michigan State University. And on her best days, as she says, she writes about science, work, and the science of work. Cynthia, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Cynthia, define work for us today.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

From our perspective, in the research that I do, work is often the construct of getting things done. So that can be for your, you know, the fruition of your own labors, like let's say you're an entrepreneur, you're a founder, you have your own agenda, even if that agenda is existing within a W-2. So you're still working toward that agenda. Or it can be in order to get paid within a formal construct.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

So how do you see that apply to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

How I see that applied to me is certainly been an uneasy relationship, which I think is true for most of us. You know, my sister was a ballerina and she started dancing at three, and that's all she ever wanted to do. And in my little small town, when I would meet friends of my parents, they would say, Well, are you the dancer? And I would say, No. And then they would say, Well, what are you? And I'm like, I'm not sure. So I've had a varied path and a common thread for me for work is working with other people who care a lot about what they're doing. I would say that's a common thread of what work is for me, for my own agenda to get things done. And working with a lot of curious people, I would say is another common thread.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

I love that. So when I introduce you, you have true elder millennial. I actually don't know what that means. What does that actually mean?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah. So there are probably multiple definitions depending on your perspective. But my definition is, you know, born in 87, graduated from college with an idea of what the postgrad work landscape would look like, and was confronted with a very different reality. I will never forget putting in an application, a paper application in a stack this big at a Chipotle. And the woman working there just smiled understandingly at me. But uh we both knew the fate of that paper application. So I ended up working for a catering company where I could work at like five in the morning with Danishes and coffee for like early morning meetings, but then volunteer doing the work that I actually wanted to do, which was research. So I think that wandering path is something that a lot of elder millennials found themselves on. And I think it's resulted in some good things, adaptability, creativity, but it's resulted in some baggage too. You know, I read the the book Burnout not too long ago, and I think it spoke to a lot of us who experienced that.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Well, I just laugh, Cynthia, because I'm the same. So I was born in '87, graduated in 2009. We know the economy was shit then. And I guess, like, you know, it's funny because I went into grad school and dropped out. So my path has definitely been windy as well. I guess like, but in those moments, though, it's almost like you had to experience that to do the work you do today. Right. So I guess what you sort of followed this little thread. How did you build from that experience to the work you're now doing? I guess what prompted you to go back to school?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

What prompted me to go back to school was an interest in ethics and health services research. And it was also, I think, you know, being totally honest, the structure that I so badly was missing joining the economy that we joined as undergraduate who just graduated. So it was the expectations were clear. Let me follow those expectations. My role and my responsibilities are clear. I can fulfill that role of student and learner. I started working for the medical school while I was getting my PhD in health services research at University of Colorado. And my fabulous boss ran her department in the same way. Roles and responsibilities were clear, expectations were clear. So I found a path in which I could be successful. And I think a lot of people who gravitate towards school, they want to know the path that they must take in order to be deemed successful, whatever that means. And so I think that was a lot of the natural pull. And then I also just like to read, like to write. So it school worked well.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

So I'm very curious. Like, I mean, a PhD is quite the endeavor, right? So why health services research? Like what kind of piqued your interest to say, hey, I want to really study this and get a PhD in it.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

So I graduated with my master's in bioethics first. And so I had this construction in my head that ethics is what we should do, but we're limited by resources and by capabilities and by the realities of the world. So health services research is what we can do. And I liked the empiric nature of health services research. And so today I still teach and write and research within those realms. And I've even though I, you know, am a realist working with big data, you know, and and studying organizational forces with my organizational psychologist collaborator, I never lost that ethics lens that I gained. So what should we be doing versus what can we do? And how do we optimize between those two forces?

SPEAKER_01 5:58

So I love that you bring up ethics, right? And I guess like one thing we like to say, Cynthia, on the show is that success is not a matter of good luck. It's good skills. Now I believe having a sort of moral compass, if you will, is a good thing to have. What would you say is the skill to develop this sort of like ethical practice, I guess, in our lives?

SPEAKER_00 6:16

I think one of the skills is being able to learn from frameworks of thinking. So, you know, that the idea that an ethics question is a matter of perspective, is a matter of heart, is a matter of opinion, I think limits the utility of those conversations. But functioning within a field accepted framework allows for more fruitful discussions, better decisions, just, you know, realizing the frameworks and the structure, again, maybe seeking that structure again to help us have those ethical conversations and answer hard ethics frameworks, I think is valuable. And when I've been in ethics discussions, utilizing a framework has allowed individuals to pinpoint at what point they do disagree about the answer to an ethical question. So rather than say we completely disagree with each other, you follow a framework, you say we agree on that the problem's important, we agree that there needs to be a solution. It's at point, you know, the plan at step one, point A, point two, point, you know, whatever, that's the point at which we are disagreeing. And so you see black and white, how much you agree with the person that you're discussing this ethical question with. So that's what I would want to share is that there are tools available for individuals and for organizations to tackle really hard ethical questions.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

So, what's an example of a framework that you might give someone that's, you know, say a nine to five job and their workplace culture sucks, they hate their boss, you know, they want to do all these things. I don't know. What are your thoughts of that? What kind of framework would you present to them?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

I would say, you know, your boss sucks, your team sucks, everything is terrible. Taking a look at incentive systems is a framework in which we can evaluate ourselves and each other. Are there perverse incentive systems that are naturally making individuals conflict? I want to maximize the profits on this project. Someone else is responsible for the client relationship. The client relationship will be hurt if I am overstating the work done on this project to maximize profits, but our profits will be hurt if my collaborator is constantly promising the client things that we can't deliver under the current scope. So I think incentive systems is a natural structure to help us navigate the workplace. Another one is, you know, established work and psychological safety. So psychological safety in the workplace has a keen and a real and operationalized definition. So, how can we identify using that operationalized definition to identify violations of psychological safety? So my team sucks, everything I say, people shut down, I can't get anywhere. Looking at the definition of psychological safety, is it that the environment has not allowed for risk taking, has not allowed for doubt? So that if you're staying something that perhaps your team disagrees with, they're responding with silence because it's not a psychologically safe environment to express doubt with what you're saying. So I think those are two phenomena that can help us get along and work within a framework together in the workplace.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

I love that. So let's look at incentive systems first off, because I love both of these and I want to kind of ask some questions around that. So incentive systems, I guess, like, you know, when I think of incentive, I think of pay, right? Maybe that's what the listeners are thinking of as well. Is it just restricted to pay? What other ways can we incentivize the team?

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Pay is a big component, absolutely. Another incentive system is how you will be evaluated as a member of the team. So evaluation, you know, let's say you have like a yearly performance review, and part of what I am evaluated on as an analyst, let's say, is my utilization rate. So I want most of my working hours to be billable to a particular project. But then other researchers on my team who are responsible for the PL of that project, they're evaluated on the margins of their project. And so I'm trying to maximize my hours on a project in order to improve my utilization rate. They're trying to decrease analyst hours in order to improve the margins on the project. We have conflicting incentive systems in that scenario. And so interpersonal conflict may not be personal at all, simply economic.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Interesting. How does intrinsic motivation factor into this? How would you say you'd intertwine this?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

That's a really good question. I think intrinsic motivation, I mean, it plays a huge role, doesn't it, in where we find ourselves and how we feel once we get there. So I think that the murkiness of how to make decisions at work is oftentimes an immediate murkiness. Like I can't decide, you know, what to prioritize at work is really an upstream issue of I don't know what my goal is in being here. I had the opportunity to speak with some graduating seniors at the university that I attended, Lawrence University in Wisconsin. And one of the things they asked me was, what should I be looking for in my very next job? And I'm like, not trying to apply to Chipotle, but other than that advice, the advice that I had was look at the skills that you'll gain there. I think there's a lot of smoke and mirrors with titles. You certainly have to consider pay, but drilling down to what skills you'll be able to, you know, hone in on as a recent graduate at your next job after graduation, I think will provide some guidance into how you want to spend your work time. And it will also improve your resume.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Love that. No, I like that kind of practical advice, you know, looking at the skills that you're gonna develop and not necessarily the title you're gonna obtain. That's excellent. So I want to talk at the about the second system now. So psychological safety. I mean, Cynthia, you've you've heard it before, right? People will say, well, I'm here for the job. I don't want to make friends, right? This isn't my family. This is, I'm here to do work. How do you respond to that? And I guess how do you build a psychologically safe space around people like that with that mentality?

SPEAKER_00 12:59

There are definitely methods to evaluate whether a workplace is psychologically safe. And I think that's kind of the first step. And on what metrices is it or is it not safe? It shows up as symptoms of a problem, right? So we're not asking in in the work that I've been doing, you know, the organizational psychologist I've been working with, Dr. Jennifer Wisdom, she, with her client engagements that are trying to improve their organizations, she doesn't ask them, is your organization psychologically safe? Instead, she asks assessment questions that identify the symptoms of a psychologically unsafe work environment. So do people express doubt? Do people shoot from the hip and brainstorm new ideas? Do people take risks in their conversation? So a risk in a conversation would be challenging someone who is more senior than you in the hierarchy or making a joke within meetings is also another form of risk. So I think assessing whether the workplace is psychologically safe means assessing these kinds of symptoms. And in order to manage it, or if you can't prevent it, right? You've been hired into the space, this is the way it is. One of the ways to do it is conversationally with your team. So encouraging brainstorming, encouraging risk-taking and conversation, laughing at those jokes, you know, having kind of being the leader by example. And this is something that we see great employees do that it's and it's a form of, you know, responsibility without authority or leadership without authority, where they're leading by their own example. The flip side of that coin is that you are now the system is now asking more of its best team players. So that's, you know, one of the cycles of burnout, then it's definitely one of the challenges.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

So build upon that. I guess I'm trying to follow that sort of train of thought. So it leads to burnout.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Well, it it can, right? So if you have a new team member who enters into a psychologically unsafe work environment, gotcha, and they are leading by their own example by accepting those that do take risks. So, you know, shoot off a new idea, challenge the status quo, express doubt, brainstorm in a sort of uninhibited way. If they're then encouraging it, that's a level of emotional labor. So we're just asking more of those individuals that are trying to lead without authority. So the best case scenario is that the efforts to address a psychologically unsafe environment is coming from those who actually have the authority, like a top-down approach. So a team manager, a director, the C-suite. And, you know, one of the things that in our work we are challenged to wrestle with is that it's effective and doesn't burn out those that are trying to lead without authority if it comes from the top-down. That said, it's the individuals that are not a leader shouldn't feel like they need to wait for a top-down approach in order to make incremental improvement for themselves and for their teams. So there's a scope of influence that all of us have at work. We can make improvements within that scope of influence without waiting for a top-down approach to improve the workplace.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

No, I love that. I guess, like, you know, middle managers have it tough, right? I mean, they're trying to balance, you know, steering the corporation with, you know, the profits and everything else versus, you know, seeing with the day-to-day on the floor. I guess why do some workplace cultures overlook the importance of, I'll call it small talk, right? Building these relationships, these conversations with people because they're so fixated on we need these numbers, right? We need so many widgets out today and we can't have whatever, so many defects. Why do you think we overlook that? And what is the cost of when we do overlook these kind of small conversations to build?

SPEAKER_00 17:12

That's a really good point and a really good question. I think because it doesn't interfere with the bottom line until something goes dramatically wrong. So one of the fields of study that I find really interesting is resiliency within the workplace. One of the best places to study resiliency within the workplace is in post-acute care. So nursing homes and long-term care, because we see how psychologically safe and socially secure workplaces for the individuals working there, the nursing staff that are working there, can build resiliency after the death of a patient, which is routine in that type of environment. So I think the numbers reflect a lack of, you know, collegiality or a lack of psychologically safe interactions in the workplace when something goes wrong. And then because something has gone wrong, it's easy to attribute the loss you see in the numbers to the thing that went wrong rather than the lack of resiliency that your staff had to navigate hard times together because even when things are going right, it's not collegial and it's not psychologically safe.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

No, I guess it makes me think of like, so I've been working in manufacturing for over 15 years and make parts that go into airplanes. And, you know, I guess like I'm big on language. And so one of the things I always find interesting is that, you know, we're saying, okay, we want 5% scrap for a KPI, a key process indicator for a goal. But then I'm thinking in my mind, it's like, why are we talking negative? Why are we looking at the positive things, the 95% of what you're doing well? Right. I guess, I guess my question now is we're afraid of making mistakes. We're afraid of not being perfect. We're afraid of AI. Some of us, some work, you know, it's being replaced by AI. What are your thoughts on, I guess, that sort of vulnerability and the fact that we're human, we're gonna make mistakes. How does that factor into the workplace?

SPEAKER_00 19:15

A huge amount, right? So there's a exercise called like a post-mortem or a post-parade where you evaluate how a project went, whether it went well or whether it went poorly. So a post-mortem is it went poorly, a post-parade is it went well. And you learn from your experiences as an organization through that critical appraisal. And one of the questions that, you know, I think is important to ask in those scenarios is not who made a mistake, but how did we react to the mistake? Because how we react to the mistake has a direct relationship to willingness to take risk and to innovate on the next project. So, you know, if the reaction to the mistake was personal, you know, was assigned unnecessary blame, then that is going to not only limit that individual's willingness to innovate and to take risk and to brainstorm and to present challenges and doubts when it's hard to present challenges and doubts, it will decrease the entire team's willingness to participate in that type type of innovative behavior that pushes organizations forward.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Gotcha. So I'll pivot here for a moment here because your phrase science of work really uh, you know, I like it. I guess. So when I think of science, right? You know, it's that you got a hypothesis, you're testing it through an experiment. I guess walk us through that. Why, why do you call it the science of work? I love it.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Yeah, well, one is that the the strategies for improvement are from research and science. So managerial sciences, organizational psychology, health services research, health economics. So all of the evidence-based strategies that my colleague and I are writing about and synthesizing across these different fields all come from the field of science. The second piece of why I like the phrase science of work is that it's measurable and reproducible. I think we believe wholeheartedly in our own exceptionalism in our workplaces. So this is this group of people had the exact right recipe to make a giant mess and it will never happen again. Or this group of people had the magic, right, to create a real success. And while that might may be true, it may be that this particular workplace is exceptional. Most of us are in an unexceptional workplace that would benefit from strategies that benefit most organizations. So a big part of research and science is that results are reproducible. This intervention, This exposure is associated with this outcome. And I think that approach creates agency for individuals and for organizations. We're not the victim or the unwilling participant of a, you know, wild workplace that no one can fix because it's so unique. Instead, we are exposed to exposures that we've studied before, aiming toward outcomes that we can actually measure.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

All right. I love that. You have the science of work now. So what are your thoughts, Cynthia, about self-help? Okay. You've read the atomic habits. You've read the highly effective people books and all these things. Is there science to those? I guess. What are your thoughts with self-help and I guess academic science books?

SPEAKER_00 22:47

I love those questions so much. Can I start answering it by telling a little story?

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Go for it. I love this.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

So when I started at my workplace within the university where I was getting my PhD, I worked for this, I think she was by training a medical engineer, but then she was also an MD. She was just brilliant. And it was like every project had leaders and roles and expectations and milestones and a path to success. And I felt that if I put in the effort and asked the right questions and had a curious mind, I had a path to success. It it might be hard, but I could get there. She went on to private industry after being in academics for a long time. And when she left the university, I switched departments. This department had been struggling with a toxic workplace environment for a long time. But from my egotistical perspective, I thought that I had landed into this workplace and that I was the problem. And surely my worst fear was coming true and that I was never smart. I was just nice. And so people liked working with me. It was like my biggest fear popped up, right? Not smart. I'm just nice. I couldn't seem to get anything done. Every email exchange with the administrators within this department seemed tense and non-collaborative. And I wasn't fulfilling what my goals were. And my goals seemed to keep moving around. I didn't have a real boss. Everything just seemed to mess. So I started reading, you know, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, hackier anxiety, you know, atomic habits, like stolen focus. I started reading all of these books because surely I was the problem. And I just needed to upskill myself enough to somehow rise above a toxic work environment. My boyfriend at the time, who became my husband, told me to quit. My mom told me to quit. She's like the depression, the something seems weird. I refused to quit until my hair started falling out. And then because I am vain, I quit. So eventually I quit. And with the perspective of getting out of that work environment, that work environment where before you're even out of bed in the morning, you're one eye open looking at your email, where walking into a meeting, you're already uncomfortable, you're already fidgeting, you feel the need to protect yourself more than you feel the need to collaborate and innovate. I thought that within that environment, I could change enough to overcome it to get done what I needed to get done. To make things a little bit worse, my dissertation data was contained within that department. So I felt like I couldn't leave because I was working on my PhD at the same time. In hindsight, that was not true. But at the time it felt like I couldn't leave. But once I left, I started to get some perspective on the organizational forces at play that diminished my ability to exercise my own agency within that workplace. And the sort of expectation minus reality equals disappointment. And the reality was so brusque that I was dealing with my own disappointment. And that's part of why I was struggling to get things done. So a very long walk to answer the question of the self-help books. One, I still use tips and tricks that I learned in those books today. One of my favorites that I don't remember where it came from, but one of my favorites is if it takes less than two minutes, do it now rather than writing it down and doing it later. Do you remember where that came from?

SPEAKER_01 26:22

No, I don't. Yeah. I was trying to think too.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

I learned so much from Burnout. That was one of the books that I read during that time. I learned a lot from Atomic Habits, Super Communicators. I read a lot of Adam Grant. So I did get a lot out of it. And in the same breath, I do enjoy some citations to go along with my advice. So just the way that I think.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

No, I love that. So, Cynthia, you know, I love the fact you're in academia. I guess what are your thoughts with coaches today? So I have this sort of like pattern that I've been seeing on the show. And, you know, I've got people, you know, that are academics like yourself, people that are working a nine to five job. And then most of the entrepreneurs, I'm not gonna lie, have a book, they're doing a coaching practice. I guess what are your thoughts from the academic perspective of a coach today? What like a life coach, like a performance coach? Like what what does that phrase mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 27:19

One of the challenges of I think coaching as it's currently constructed in some fields. So not wanting to make a blanket statement, but for some fields, coaching is struggling with the same expectations and measures of accountability that other fields struggled with early in their formation. So there needs to be uh clear uh standards and measures of success to make sure that any practice isn't exploitative. So there have been fantastic grassroots efforts to build and maintain practice ethics and practice standards for the wellness community as a whole. And I think that a coaching practice, especially specific to career coaching, those individuals want those clear expectations as well because the best of those coaches will want clear expectations because they know that they can reach them. So I think the creating standards for practice and expectations will help individuals who are great at their job establish their value and their worth. And those that are not in their current scope of practice making improvements for individuals will not be able to establish their worth.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

I guess I'm just like confused on why we have coaches. I'm gonna be honest with you. I just, you know, and it's not that I'm against the work that they do, you know, and I've I've fun if you're listening to this episode now, and I'm not trying to insult you if you're on the show talking about your coaching practice. But I just find it sort of alarming in some sense that, you know, people have lost sort of like the, you know, the belief that they can make change in their life. And now we're willing to spend X amount of money to have someone say, hey, you need to do this or do that. And I don't know. I mean, having played sports my whole life, I'm used to a coach, you know, and I used to play competitive golf. I had a coach swing, I mean a swing coach to help me to get in shape for tournaments, but I don't know. I guess that's just me just being biased towards my own question.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Well, I struggle with the m money component as well. And the, you know, the wellness industry has the same challenge of how do you hold individuals to promises that were made in exchange for money if you don't have clear standards of practice, the way other individuals that are paid to help, you know, to help others. Like if you, you know, hire someone to clean your windows, there's a checklist of things that will get done based on the payment for that skill, for that expertise. So I think that the the best coaches will be, you know, very welcoming to empiric evaluations of their own practices and their own outcomes. It also really depends on whether a coach is working for an organization versus working for in which the organization is paying for them versus working for an individual.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Gotcha. I guess what I struggle with at just the basic transactional level, I mean, the cost thing, it's like now we're sort of equating happiness, well-being by investing thousands of dollars, say, into a coach. And what I find is that like enjoyment can come from simple things, right? So now we're sort of building this muscle in our brain, if you will, to say, oh, you know, I need to pay thousands of dollars to be happy, where you don't need anything. You could go for a walk and be content, right? You could have, you know, maybe you if if you did get the job at Chipotle, you could probably be loving the job at Chipotle, right? Like, you know, sucks for them. They didn't they hire you, so you're on to other things now. But like, I don't know. I guess those are my, yeah. So your thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

I would make a much better burrito today if I'd been hired at Chipotle in 2009. Fair enough. But I I think it's a good point and it's something to think critically about. And I think it has a lot to do with what we were talking about earlier in our conversation about like understanding what work means to you and what your goals are. Because if that upstream thinking hasn't occurred, if that upstream decision making hasn't occurred, then it makes every downstream decision feel impossible because you don't know what that upstream goal is. So when you're in the murkiness of the downstream decisions, you're in a vulnerable position in confronting someone who, you know, in exchange for money, will answer those questions or help you answer those questions on your behalf. But a great coach could identify that it's an upstream question that needs to be answered.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Yeah, fair enough. No, love that. So, Cynthia, this is the work sucks, but I like it podcasts. What is something that sucks about your work and what are you doing to make it not suck?

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Something that sucks about my work is spending hours editing AI slops submitted by students.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

That's something that's that does sound pretty crappy.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

And sitting with the discomfort that to generate this text took mere minutes, and to read and provide feedback on the text takes much more time. Sitting with that discomfort had a transition period. I feel much less emotional about that labor now than I did when I first started seeing AI slop in my classes. At the college level, graduate level. Man, that's even worse.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Wow. I mean, I'm gonna not gonna lie, I use AI to help me with kind of questions, but I've never used it to write an assignment. Like I've never done that. I'm like, hey, what do you think of this thought? You know, and then it spouts back something, but I can't believe that. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

It so that level, that discomfort, one, I had to overcome the personal discomfort, right? And then in working through that personal discomfort, I did a lot of writing of why is this bothering me so much? And it's because AI is separating when you use AI to write an assignment, you're separating the writing from the thinking. To do it manually, you're thinking while you're writing. To enter in a prompt and then copy paste the response over, you're not doing the critical thinking. And so the critical thinking was happening in my office hours. So I'm like, why does your stakeholder engagement plan, you know, not include these important components that you identified in another section of your paper? And the student was like, My what? So unfamiliarity with their own paper. And I love my students and we have strong students. We have very strong students, but this is something that's happening across the board in academics and in education in general.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Well, even I see it in the workplace as well, just kind of I call it laziness, you know, without that critical thinking. They'd rather be like, oh, let's chat GBT it or what have you. So it's not just academics, it's in the workplace. So, Cynthia, I know you've got a book coming out this year. It is gonna be August 2026, I believe. That's called Administrative Intelligence. If I think this is when the episode will come out, so this will be perfect timing for this book. I'm definitely excited to read it. What is one thing that if someone were pick it up, they would take away from reading this book?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

I think identifying their own scope of influence. So whether you're a leader at an organization that's struggling, a leader at an organization that's pivoting, or you're an aspiring leader at the beginning of your career looking to establish, you know, good habits, good practices, and a lot of wins, you'll take away an understanding of what your scope of influence is and what practical measures you can improve through simple strategies within that scope of influence. So the book does not enable someone at the beginning of their leadership career to change an entire, you know, multinational organization. That's not what we're aiming for. But for a team, identifying roles and responsibilities, identifying expectations, having periodic safe points of evaluation where people can ask questions and course correct if needed within a safe environment does improve outcomes. And that is within the scope of the manager and director level. The second thing that I hope people can walk away with is an understanding of organizational forces that change the way people behave. Good people can behave badly with the right organizational force. Bad people can behave perfectly fine with enough good incentive systems and clear expectations. So a goal of mine and of my co-authors is that more workplace behavior is explained by systems thinking as opposed to individual blame.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

No, I love that. So when it does come out, where's a good place for them to pick it up?

SPEAKER_00 36:36

It'll be available through Taylor and Francis Rutledge. So it's under their Pracademic offering, which I love. It's like practical academic, they're Pracademic. Which is ironic because our first title was Administructure, Administrative Infrastructure. And they're like, we don't love the made-up name. And we're like, we'll change it to fit within Pracademic. So administrative intelligence will be available. It's it's available for pre-order now through the Taylor and Francis website. It's available as an exam copy. So if individuals that are teaching managerial sciences or project management want to order a copy of the book to take a look at it, uh, to consider it for their classes, they're eligible for a free copy. And it'll be available on Amazon starting in August.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Awesome. Well, Cynthia, thanks for being on the show today.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to speak with you.

unknown 37:31

And there's a win that blows across the plains and a season.