Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Are You Making These Crucial Team Building Mistakes in the Age of AI?
In this episode of Developing The Leader Within, we sit down with Daria Rudnik, team architect, executive coach, and trusted advisor to high-impact leaders, to explore what it truly means to design and lead teams in a world being reshaped by artificial intelligence.
Daria brings a refreshing, human-centered perspective to a rapidly changing landscape. We dig into how AI is transforming workflows, redefining roles, and challenging leaders to rethink how their teams are built, supported, and empowered. From identifying which tasks should remain uniquely human to avoiding the structural pitfalls that stall growth, Daria breaks down the principles of effective team architecture for the modern age.
You’ll hear powerful insights on:
Whether you’re an emerging leader or a seasoned executive, this conversation will help you elevate your leadership, leverage technology wisely, and build a team capable of thriving in tomorrow’s world. Tune in, take notes, and get ready to design the future of work with intention.
Daria brings a refreshing, human-centered perspective to a rapidly changing landscape. We dig into how AI is transforming workflows, redefining roles, and challenging leaders to rethink how their teams are built, supported, and empowered. From identifying which tasks should remain uniquely human to avoiding the structural pitfalls that stall growth, Daria breaks down the principles of effective team architecture for the modern age.
You’ll hear powerful insights on:
- The new leader mindset required in an AI-accelerated workplace
- How strategic clarity increases trust and performance
- Why “team architecture” is becoming a critical leadership competency
- What a future-ready team looks like, and what leaders must start doing now
Whether you’re an emerging leader or a seasoned executive, this conversation will help you elevate your leadership, leverage technology wisely, and build a team capable of thriving in tomorrow’s world. Tune in, take notes, and get ready to design the future of work with intention.
In this episode of Developing The Leader Within Podcast, I explore how leaders must redesign teams for the AI era — combining human judgment with intelligent systems to build future-ready organizations.
- Leadership is shifting to team architecture and system design
- Strategic clarity drives trust, alignment, and performance
- AI is reshaping roles — but human thinking remains critical
- Future-ready teams balance technology + human strengths
- Leaders must act now to intentionally design how their teams work
(00:01-00:05) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
hey everybody welcome to dtlw podcast live
(00:06-00:32) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
This is my I think is the last session that I'll have a live show on, but I am excited about this. Welcome back, everybody. And if you haven't subscribed, please do so right now as it'll help us get our show to others and get to our next milestone. Today, I'm excited to have with me Daria Rutnick. Daria is a team architect and executive leadership coach. She helps H.R.,
(00:32-00:52) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
drive organizational success by shaping teams and leaders fit for an ai driven world we know that's where we at now so daria thank you for being with us and welcome to the show thank you thanks for having me here indra i'm very excited to talk about that yes and i'm excited to listen to you and folks
(00:52-01:17) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
This is an international show today because she is out of Israel. I love the country, and I was telling her about my future travels with my wife. She wants to go. But we will be talking about today team architecture in an AI-driven world. But before we get into that conversation, Daria, if you wouldn't mind letting the audience know a little bit more about you. Sure.
(01:17-01:32) Daria Rudnik
Well, my background is since I help HR, my background is HR and organizational development. I started my career in Deloitte. And then I was chief people officer for tech and telecom companies. And like, after a few years of
(01:32-01:53) Daria Rudnik
Doing lots of corporate stuff like mergers and acquisitions, setting up offices in other countries, cultural transformations. I decided to focus what I love doing best and what I can do best, which is building self-sufficient, high-performing team and help leaders go through various disruptions with the help of their team so that they don't have to do it all on their own.
(01:54-02:21) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
And that's very critical to all that we do in terms of leadership by execution of mission and what we do in that regard. So thank you for that. Now, speaking about the topic, you describe yourself as a team architect. In an AI-driven world, what does team architecture really look like? And how's it evolved in the last few years?
(02:22-02:50) Daria Rudnik
Well, that's a very interesting question. Because, I mean, to be honest, we never learn how to work in a team. School is not a team. University is not a team. Family is not a team. And the first time we join a team is when we join a workforce. And they say, be a team player. Work with your team members. Have this team spirit. But we don't know what it is and how to build that. And the same goes for leaders when leaders are...
(02:50-03:13) Daria Rudnik
expected to build amazing teams, but how do you do that? What you've always seen is someone setting tasks, delegating, controlling, and they go the other way around. So we don't know what the team like, and most of the units and groups and departments in organizations are not teams.
(03:13-03:36) Daria Rudnik
And then I've seen a huge disruption where many teams became remote and hybrid teams, and it broke a lot of processes that were never actually in place in the first place. And then AI is entering the workplace, and again, it's shifting team dynamics. So when we talk about team architecture and team design, we need to understand that team...
(03:37-04:03) Daria Rudnik
need to be created and they need to be built. They don't happen just because you get people together, give one manager to them. And how you do that, every team is defined by a shared purpose, something that they can only do together collaboratively that cannot be achieved by just summing up their individual contributions. So this shared purpose is the first thing every team need to have.
(04:04-04:29) Daria Rudnik
The second one is how you communicate. Like what are the linking connections between team members? And many teams and most teams, they don't have those connections. They talk to their manager. They talk to a few employees. But especially if it's a remote team, a lot of team members feel isolated. And until they have those linking connections between themselves and with their stakeholders, they cannot be called a real team.
(04:30-04:56) Daria Rudnik
And then the third point is integrated ways of work, how you work together as a team. What are your team norms? What are team rules? How do you have your meetings? How often do you have your meetings? What are the communication channels you are using? So all these small things, they bring clarity into your work processes and remove frustration and people are not anxious anymore.
(04:57-05:16) Daria Rudnik
The fourth point is collaborative decisions. How do you make decisions on your team? Some decisions can be made by a leader, some decisions can be made by individual contributors, and some decisions need to be made collaboratively as a team. And having clarity on that, like who is making what decisions is very important.
(05:16-05:37) Daria Rudnik
And finally, the fifth point is knowledge sharing and feedback. How you grow together as a team, how you give feedback, how you collect feedback. So when you have those five pillars, which is clear purpose, linking connections, integrated work, collaborative decisions, and knowledge sharing, that would make your team click.
(05:37-05:56) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Absolutely. Now, you mentioned integration. And as we're talking AI, the future, how it's working, as AI becomes more integrated into daily operations, what are the biggest structural mistakes organizations make when building or reshaping their teams?
(05:58-06:12) Daria Rudnik
We are going through a process of trial and error. There's a lot of experimentation in most of the organization and we're trying to see how AI would fit into our workplaces. How would that benefit?
(06:12-06:32) Daria Rudnik
And although about 78% or even more of organizations are actually using AI, according to Stanford research, the other research tells us that only 98% of all AI initiatives do not bring any return on investment.
(06:32-06:43) Daria Rudnik
So again, it's a lot of experiment. It's a lot of trial and error. So in terms of team dynamics and kind of mistakes organizations can make is thinking that AI can replace humans.
(06:43-07:03) Daria Rudnik
No, it can't. And we've seen that. There are organizations saying, we are laying people off and we want to replace them with AI. And then a couple of weeks later, they say, okay, no, it was wrong decision. And they rehire the people back because AI cannot do everything that humans do.
(07:03-07:14) Daria Rudnik
So that's kind of the myth number one that AI can replace humans. It can replace some of the work we're doing. But again, I'll tell you a story about...
(07:14-07:43) Daria Rudnik
a team, it's a customer success team. And they were early adopters of AI. They were super happy about it. They implemented AI in various stages of their work processes. They had conversations with their clients. They had AI transcribing those conversations. AI was generating summary and insights based on those conversations, generated items for the backlog, analyzed data, created reports, created agenda for the next meeting.
(07:43-08:06) Daria Rudnik
It was fun. I mean, people said, OK, finally, we have some time to do some other projects. We can focus on something else. But something shifted over time. And people started to feel that they are kind of the operators of AI. Like, what is the meaning? What am I doing here? Am I just the person who gives some input to AI and AI does all the job?
(08:07-08:33) Daria Rudnik
And the other thing is when they had team meetings, those people, those customer success managers that used to know their clients in and out, they couldn't recall what happened during last conversation. They didn't remember what matters to their clients and they couldn't prioritize backlog and send those priorities to the product team because they didn't know, they didn't remember. AI was doing all the work for them. AI was making all the decisions for them.
(08:33-08:39) Daria Rudnik
And they lost this connection, they lost engagement, they lost motivation, and they lost productivity.
(08:39-09:06) Daria Rudnik
Why? Because they were using AI wrong. They delegated too much and they offloaded too much of the work process to AI. So what we did with this team is we created team norms and rules on how they work with AI and how they collaborate with AI. And one of the rules was that when they have a conversation with the client,
(09:07-09:30) Daria Rudnik
They first talk about, after the conversation, they talk through what they remember. They talk about insight, their own insights, how they felt, what they think is important. Then they uploaded it to AI and together with transcripts, AI generated some summary, which human custom success manager approved or like made some changes.
(09:30-09:56) Daria Rudnik
Why is that important? It's important because the way we work with AI matters and the cadence matters. There's a research called your brain on chat GPT. And according to this research, when you ask AI to give something to you and you use this output and you kind of edit it and interact with it, your brain stays disengaged or at least less engaged than if you do otherwise.
(09:56-10:17) Daria Rudnik
So on the other hand, if you think it through first and then give it to AI and ask for AI's comments, recommendations, edits, and then kind of go this back and forth, your brain stays engaged because you thought of it first and you have like keep those relationships. You have this connection with the output. So that's why this customer success team,
(10:19-10:32) Daria Rudnik
talked about the insights and feelings first, and then I uploaded to AI. So it really is important on how you use it so that it doesn't change team dynamics and it doesn't derail your performance.
(10:33-10:50) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
And that's so critical as a manager, as a leader, executive, those that are making those type of decisions for the team on which way they should or should not go. It's critical for folks to remember that what you give away is
(10:51-11:06) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
It's often hard to come back. You know, it's like when we sit and say, hey, we have a budget meeting. We don't need these thousands of dollars anymore. And you say, I'm giving it back.
(11:06-11:28) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Well, that's very dangerous. And so is the workload when you talk about that. So how can leaders discern which responsibilities should remain human-centered versus those that can be augmented or fully handled by AI? Well...
(11:28-11:56) Daria Rudnik
I do believe that teams can decide it together, what they wanna keep us as humans and what they wanna delegate to AI. But what generally happens and like my recommendation would be is always like decision-making always, always stays with human. Like final decision and final word always stays with human. And because they, I mean, we know the context, we have more information, we can connect the dots and AI cannot yet.
(11:56-12:14) Daria Rudnik
The other thing is everything that requires empathy and human connection also is staying with humans, with people. It's like you can hire people with the help of AI, but you should never fire people with the help of AI.
(12:15-12:30) Daria Rudnik
When you're firing someone, when you're letting people go, they need, apart from well-established process, like very well-run process, they also need connection and empathy. And there was a post on LinkedIn from one of the
(12:30-12:56) Daria Rudnik
VPs or, I mean, senior executives of a technological company who was so proud to say that, hey, we're laying people off. And he was an AI chatbot you can talk to if you feel kind of sad about this layoff. And it was huge. He removed this post, but internet remembers everything. So never, never send people to AI bot when you have bad news for them.
(12:58-13:14) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
That is so important. You're saying that my eyes are this big, my head is about to explode because how inauthentic and how brass to let that responsibility go.
(13:14-13:38) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
of that final connection between you and a person that's a part of your organization to a bottomless pit that really won't even care, right? And that's the point, right? We as leaders have to remember that care is still a major part of what we do.
(13:38-14:01) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
And if we remove that for the sake of convenience, now I'll tell you, there's some leaders that would love to have AI just fire you because they just can't have those type of conversations. Right. And which goes to the question, have they actually or are they actually leaders if they can't have those type of conversations with their people?
(14:01-14:30) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
So glad he did pull that. But guess what? Once it's out there, it's out there. And now you got to deal with the ramifications. Now, there's a lot of ambitious leaders that are like, go ahead and let's get this going. And so in your work with ambitious leaders, what mindset shifts are essential for effectively leading teams in an environment where technology is accelerating faster than culture is?
(14:32-14:53) Daria Rudnik
Well, exactly. I mean, the speed of change and the pace of technology is so high and it brings a lot of complexity to the workplaces. So leaders who stay in this old mindset of being a heroic leader and saving the world, saving organizations, saving their teams,
(14:54-15:19) Daria Rudnik
They cannot manage that. They burn out. They fail. They feel bad because they cannot save people. And sometimes it's because of their ego. But sometimes it's because they have well intentions. They want to help their people. They want to protect their people. They want to grow their people. They want to support their people. But being a hero and trying to save them is not the right way to help your team grow and to help your team grow.
(15:19-15:45) Daria Rudnik
become a self-sufficient, high-performing team. So leaders need to let go of this heroic mindset and then focus on doing a lot of things together with the team. Go into the team. If you have a question, discuss it with your team. If you need a decision to make and you don't know what to do, discuss it with your team. If you have something that your team can't do,
(15:45-15:49) Daria Rudnik
give it to your team and let them talk to stakeholders.
(15:50-16:19) Daria Rudnik
I hear a lot of leaders, I coach, they ask me questions, how many one-to-ones should I have with my team? How should I handle conflict between two team members? And although there are some best practices, the best approach would be go to your team members and say, hey, how often do you want to meet? What works best for you? And together you can come up with a solution that works for all of you. And again, I want to tell you a story about
(16:20-16:49) Daria Rudnik
a leader who wanted to save and support and protect her team. She's a cybersecurity leader at the cloud computing company, and she was the go-to person for every cybersecurity question in the organization. She communicated with stakeholders. She, like, gathered their feedback. She asked for their priorities. She was the one who was out there. And when someone made a mistake, she was out there to protect them because she thought,
(16:49-16:56) Daria Rudnik
Like she wants them to feel safe. She wants them to feel good. So she took a lot of work on herself.
(16:57-17:22) Daria Rudnik
What happened is that when she saw the engagement survey results, she saw that her team members were, again, losing engagement. They were not motivated. And she was curious, why? But when we talked about this team dynamics and organizational dynamics, we saw that she had so many connections. So many people knew her, appreciated her. But those people on her team, they were isolated.
(17:22-17:27) Daria Rudnik
The only people they could talk to was basically the small team and their manager.
(17:28-17:57) Daria Rudnik
So what she did instead, she connected those people to the wider organization. And she let them go and talk to stakeholders, present their ideas, ask questions, collect feedback. And that made team more, again, engaged. And that made them understand better what organization needs. And they found meaning in what they're doing because they knew that they're doing it for someone else. They're doing it for those people that they know and they can talk to.
(17:57-18:16) Daria Rudnik
So same thing happens when you have AI on your team. Again, what is the team dynamics? You don't need to delegate everything to AI. You still need to go out and talk to people and ask for the feedback and have these linking connections between team members and with the wider organization.
(18:17-18:42) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Yeah, that's so important, and I'm glad that that leader did choose to go a different route and expose the team. Folks, I tell you that there's been some team members on my team that have been able to run circles around me, and I was the leader, right? But it was my task to identify those people and let them run their race.
(18:42-19:00) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Let them do the interactions and get the most result for the talent that I had in my team. And a lot of leaders, for some reason or another, maybe it is ego, maybe it's a lack of trust. They kind of corral their team.
(19:00-19:24) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
try to control those parameters that they can actually do. And then, and in essence, you cut them off, right? You basically snuffing the life out of them and the potential for them to grow and become better. So thank you for sharing that story. Very relative. Now, when we talk about team dynamics, sometimes leaders are
(19:24-19:39) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
responsible for structuring what that team looks like in the future. So what signals tell you a team is not architected for the future? And what's the first step leaders should take to course correct?
(19:41-20:02) Daria Rudnik
Well, that's a very important question because, again, things change so fast. And once you've established something at some point, that might not work anymore. I mean, you need to restructure, you need to redesign the way your team works. So the first signal to me would be when team members become quiet.
(20:03-20:20) Daria Rudnik
They don't argue. They don't ask questions. They do what they're told. And it can happen for various reasons. They can be tired. They can be scared. They can be demotivated. But if you see a lot of that
(20:21-20:50) Daria Rudnik
that's a very clear sign that something needs to be changed. And the first thing to change here is to get together and start having an honest conversation. It might take some time, it might take a few meetings, a few sessions, it might take a few one-to-ones and a few team sessions, but it is critical for a team to start talking openly in the team session together, deciding how they want to work together. So AI brings a lot of fears and people are afraid that
(20:51-21:17) Daria Rudnik
AI will replace them, or more importantly, that their manager will think that AI can replace them. And it makes, again, when people are scared, they become quiet. So when you start noticing that there is no argument, there are no questions, start having those conversations with your team and establishing maybe new rules and norms of how you work together.
(21:18-21:46) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Yeah, I believe they call that quiet quitting, right? They're on board, but they're out. They don't want to be part of that team. They just don't want to lose their paycheck. And so they'll stay there and say yes and do whatever until it's time for them to pick and go somewhere else. It is a treacherous time for both the manager, the leader, and the worker, right, those that are doing the task.
(21:46-22:07) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
because that's what we call a divorce in progress. This is going to happen. It's just who pulls the trigger first. Do you fire the person? Can they not producing as they should? Or does the person leave because they're disenchanted with the organization or the leader? Because we know
(22:07-22:30) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
that really people leave leaders, right? They leave managers. They usually don't leave the organization as a whole because there may be some good in it, right? Now, we've been talking about AI, what it can do, what it should do, what it shouldn't do, and the responsibilities from leaders. And AI certainly is reshaping workflow, right?
(22:30-22:41) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
But it's also reshaping identity inside organizations. So what do leaders often overlook about the human experience during digital transformation?
(22:45-23:03) Daria Rudnik
Digital transformation, and especially AI transformation, it's a lot of change. I mean, as with any change management project, as with any change, there are people who are willing to do that. There are people who are kind of cautious. There are people who will never change.
(23:03-23:23) Daria Rudnik
And treating this AI transformation as a change management is very important and understanding how people feel and addressing those fears and addressing those needs. And I'll tell you a story about an organization. And then there were a lot of like many small AI initiatives across the organization and
(23:23-23:41) Daria Rudnik
People were trying different AI tools. They were trying different frameworks for testing those AI tools. And again, since we are in this experimentation stage, it's okay to do that. It's okay to try to write out various resources, use different tools.
(23:41-24:05) Daria Rudnik
frameworks but at some point you need to figure out okay what's best for us like which of those tools are we going to use which of those frameworks are the most useful for us what are the metrics we're going to again use for evaluating the performance and ai output and that is that might become a problem because like in this case in the organization i was working with people are kind of
(24:05-24:22) Daria Rudnik
become attached to the tools that they've chosen or the frameworks that they were using. And they thought they were the best, even though they might realize that they're not exactly the best. But since they've been working and I got used to it, it became very close to them and didn't want to lose them.
(24:22-24:41) Daria Rudnik
So it is important when you are in this experimentation stage and you're trying different resources and you let people do different things, be very clear that at some point you will need to come up with a mutual decision or solution that will be unified for the whole organization so that people are ready for that.
(24:41-24:58) Daria Rudnik
and are willing to contribute to finding this solution, not come to contribute to using their solution as the best one, but kind of contribute to the bigger one. So kind of this, this is what I'm seeing in some of the organizations that are using AI and trying to work with it is that
(24:58-25:13) Daria Rudnik
It's a lot of chaos at first. And then with no clarity, it's hard to get it back together. But when you have a clear process and communication, it's much easier to then choose the best tool for work.
(25:14-25:40) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Yes, very important. I believe a lot of organizations are fearing being left out or fear of missing out on one way or another when it comes to AI and its implementation and how it should be involved in your organization. But it's very important, leaders, to understand that just because something has been created doesn't necessarily mean that you need to jump on it right quick.
(25:41-25:58) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Or that you even have to use a particular thing. Now, there are some that will explore every option and then kind of pick. But I would say that do that in a test and development phase where you don't pull people in automatically automatically.
(25:58-26:25) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
And then all of a sudden you're saying, oh, we're not doing that. And all this time wasted, energy wasted, and then you become or you create an environment where the people just start to say, I don't want to even do that anymore. And then when the good thing comes, you won't have an investment from your people. So thank you for sharing that. Now, we've talked about how –
(26:25-26:54) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
if it should be implemented, how they can think about that. But let's shift a little bit about development. Leadership development is also being impacted by AI because I remember when I was in the Navy and we were creating leadership development, CB, right? CBTs and all these different modules with an AI person speaking. They didn't even look real, but...
(26:54-27:07) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
But in 10 years, the people look real. And now you could truly develop a course where you almost feel like you're being taught by a person. And even still,
(27:08-27:34) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
You have to be cautious because you have to have that kind of connection with that person. But if you could redesign the leadership development path for emerging leaders in an AI-powered workplace, what capabilities would you prioritize and why? Well, since you mentioned how AI can train people, I know I'm in a very good platform, Bongo or something.
(27:35-28:03) Daria Rudnik
What they do is you kind of practice with the help of AI, but then you have a human expert who sees all of your practice logs and can give you feedback on how you developed, what else maybe you need to work on. So the final word stays with the human facilitator or the human coach. So when it comes to AI, one of the most critical things, and I'm really...
(28:05-28:26) Daria Rudnik
I'm worried about that because it's critical thinking. It's how you use AI output. So any emergent leader who is working with AI and implementing AI to their team need to first be aware of their own cognitive biases and how they accept or evaluate AI output.
(28:26-28:54) Daria Rudnik
And same thing, how they support their team members so that they, again, have meaningful conversations and discussions about AI output, how they challenge AI output, how they challenge their own assumptions, how they try to ask questions to AI and how they prompt AI to challenge them back. So we have so, so much information about anything.
(28:55-29:13) Daria Rudnik
on various topics so if you ask a question if you google a question if you ask chat gpt you'll get you'll get it like straight away but is this the right information for you is this information would that fit your environment would it fit your organization would it fit your team dynamics would it fit your product
(29:13-29:29) Daria Rudnik
All of those things need to be closely monitored by leaders and teams. So I would say critical thinking is an ability to facilitate meaningful discussions is one of the most critical skills for leaders in the AI era.
(29:30-29:57) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Yeah, so important. And folks, we have to remember in our conversation earlier, Daria, you mentioned empathy and the things that are heart centered. There are some qualities that humans retain that you just cannot replicate because it's this, it's the body, it's the mind, the heart altogether working, right? And
(29:58-30:23) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
In developing your leaders, if you rely too much on an unemotional, unfeeling type of system and you cannot bring your people through a development where they learn how to use their heart, mind, soul, body, whatever, spirit in leading others,
(30:24-30:42) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
what you may cause is a disenchantment with even leadership development. And people will not even want to go that route if they're not gonna feel like they're actually changing. And the true leadership development
(30:42-31:05) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
is an inward type of effect that now you can teach somebody else. So very critical to keep an eye on that and not offload almost everything to those things and keep a human touch to developing others. Now, you wrote a book. I want to hear about that. Tell us about your book and what you're working on now.
(31:06-31:26) Daria Rudnik
Well, yes, I have a book. It's called Clicking. It's the book for overloaded leaders who want to build self-sufficient teams and get more trust and get more work done. And the reason I wrote the book is because, again, with the complexity we're facing right now, leaders are so overloaded and stretched. They face so multiple
(31:27-31:40) Daria Rudnik
many multiple demands from their shareholders, from the customers, from their peers, from their team members who say, engage me, motivate me, give me goals.
(31:41-31:59) Daria Rudnik
from the families who want to spend meaningful time with their loved ones. And it's very hard for them to keep going. The burnout numbers are very, very high. I mean, the burnout is really, really going high. There's so many people burning out.
(31:59-32:26) Daria Rudnik
so that's why i wrote this book about how to build self-sufficient teams and like that describes the framework i mentioned click which is about clear purpose linking connections integrated work collaborative decisions and knowledge sharing and once leaders are able to give that to their team members and and create more self-sufficient teams they would have more time for themselves for strategy for relationship building with critical stakeholders
(32:26-32:56) Daria Rudnik
And for other things that they don't have time doing. So, yeah, that's my book. You can find it on Amazon if you're interested. And really, I hope it will help you live a more fulfilled life. And it will actually make your teams more empowered. So it's not just for leaders, but it's for teams as well who will feel more powerful. They are in charge. They do meaningful work. It creates better connections in the team and within the organization as well.
(32:57-33:21) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Well, I'm so happy that you were able to not only fulfill a dream, I'm sure that writing a book is one, something that as professionals we want to have, but also now that someone else can take all that insight, read for themselves and implement it. And a special bonus for those listening right now, if you could tell me what CLIC stands for and DM me,
(33:21-33:39) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
those words, then I'll make sure you get a copy of that book. Daria, thank you so much for the time that you've shared with us, the insights you shared. And if people wanted to get a hold of you, connect with you in one way or another, or support you, where can they find you?
(33:40-33:56) Daria Rudnik
Well, thanks, Evik. It was a great conversation. I'm very open to connections on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. And I'm Daria Rudnik. You can find me on my website, dariarudnik.com. And again, my book is available on Amazon. So I'm very happy to connect, reach out, and let's continue the conversation.
(33:57-34:16) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Outstanding. Well, folks, thank you for joining us today on this episode. Daria, thank you once again for sharing your insights. Wish you well over in Israel. And I know it's the holiday season worldwide. Sometimes you celebrate, sometimes you don't. But whatever your choice, I hope it's a blessed one. Folks.
(34:17-34:39) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. And I also want to highlight Bonefrog Coffee Company, which is our newest sponsor going into 2026. So thank you, Bonefrog, for being with us and supporting our show. Until next time, we bid you farewell. Happy holiday season to everybody. Be blessed.
hey everybody welcome to dtlw podcast live
(00:06-00:32) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
This is my I think is the last session that I'll have a live show on, but I am excited about this. Welcome back, everybody. And if you haven't subscribed, please do so right now as it'll help us get our show to others and get to our next milestone. Today, I'm excited to have with me Daria Rutnick. Daria is a team architect and executive leadership coach. She helps H.R.,
(00:32-00:52) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
drive organizational success by shaping teams and leaders fit for an ai driven world we know that's where we at now so daria thank you for being with us and welcome to the show thank you thanks for having me here indra i'm very excited to talk about that yes and i'm excited to listen to you and folks
(00:52-01:17) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
This is an international show today because she is out of Israel. I love the country, and I was telling her about my future travels with my wife. She wants to go. But we will be talking about today team architecture in an AI-driven world. But before we get into that conversation, Daria, if you wouldn't mind letting the audience know a little bit more about you. Sure.
(01:17-01:32) Daria Rudnik
Well, my background is since I help HR, my background is HR and organizational development. I started my career in Deloitte. And then I was chief people officer for tech and telecom companies. And like, after a few years of
(01:32-01:53) Daria Rudnik
Doing lots of corporate stuff like mergers and acquisitions, setting up offices in other countries, cultural transformations. I decided to focus what I love doing best and what I can do best, which is building self-sufficient, high-performing team and help leaders go through various disruptions with the help of their team so that they don't have to do it all on their own.
(01:54-02:21) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
And that's very critical to all that we do in terms of leadership by execution of mission and what we do in that regard. So thank you for that. Now, speaking about the topic, you describe yourself as a team architect. In an AI-driven world, what does team architecture really look like? And how's it evolved in the last few years?
(02:22-02:50) Daria Rudnik
Well, that's a very interesting question. Because, I mean, to be honest, we never learn how to work in a team. School is not a team. University is not a team. Family is not a team. And the first time we join a team is when we join a workforce. And they say, be a team player. Work with your team members. Have this team spirit. But we don't know what it is and how to build that. And the same goes for leaders when leaders are...
(02:50-03:13) Daria Rudnik
expected to build amazing teams, but how do you do that? What you've always seen is someone setting tasks, delegating, controlling, and they go the other way around. So we don't know what the team like, and most of the units and groups and departments in organizations are not teams.
(03:13-03:36) Daria Rudnik
And then I've seen a huge disruption where many teams became remote and hybrid teams, and it broke a lot of processes that were never actually in place in the first place. And then AI is entering the workplace, and again, it's shifting team dynamics. So when we talk about team architecture and team design, we need to understand that team...
(03:37-04:03) Daria Rudnik
need to be created and they need to be built. They don't happen just because you get people together, give one manager to them. And how you do that, every team is defined by a shared purpose, something that they can only do together collaboratively that cannot be achieved by just summing up their individual contributions. So this shared purpose is the first thing every team need to have.
(04:04-04:29) Daria Rudnik
The second one is how you communicate. Like what are the linking connections between team members? And many teams and most teams, they don't have those connections. They talk to their manager. They talk to a few employees. But especially if it's a remote team, a lot of team members feel isolated. And until they have those linking connections between themselves and with their stakeholders, they cannot be called a real team.
(04:30-04:56) Daria Rudnik
And then the third point is integrated ways of work, how you work together as a team. What are your team norms? What are team rules? How do you have your meetings? How often do you have your meetings? What are the communication channels you are using? So all these small things, they bring clarity into your work processes and remove frustration and people are not anxious anymore.
(04:57-05:16) Daria Rudnik
The fourth point is collaborative decisions. How do you make decisions on your team? Some decisions can be made by a leader, some decisions can be made by individual contributors, and some decisions need to be made collaboratively as a team. And having clarity on that, like who is making what decisions is very important.
(05:16-05:37) Daria Rudnik
And finally, the fifth point is knowledge sharing and feedback. How you grow together as a team, how you give feedback, how you collect feedback. So when you have those five pillars, which is clear purpose, linking connections, integrated work, collaborative decisions, and knowledge sharing, that would make your team click.
(05:37-05:56) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Absolutely. Now, you mentioned integration. And as we're talking AI, the future, how it's working, as AI becomes more integrated into daily operations, what are the biggest structural mistakes organizations make when building or reshaping their teams?
(05:58-06:12) Daria Rudnik
We are going through a process of trial and error. There's a lot of experimentation in most of the organization and we're trying to see how AI would fit into our workplaces. How would that benefit?
(06:12-06:32) Daria Rudnik
And although about 78% or even more of organizations are actually using AI, according to Stanford research, the other research tells us that only 98% of all AI initiatives do not bring any return on investment.
(06:32-06:43) Daria Rudnik
So again, it's a lot of experiment. It's a lot of trial and error. So in terms of team dynamics and kind of mistakes organizations can make is thinking that AI can replace humans.
(06:43-07:03) Daria Rudnik
No, it can't. And we've seen that. There are organizations saying, we are laying people off and we want to replace them with AI. And then a couple of weeks later, they say, okay, no, it was wrong decision. And they rehire the people back because AI cannot do everything that humans do.
(07:03-07:14) Daria Rudnik
So that's kind of the myth number one that AI can replace humans. It can replace some of the work we're doing. But again, I'll tell you a story about...
(07:14-07:43) Daria Rudnik
a team, it's a customer success team. And they were early adopters of AI. They were super happy about it. They implemented AI in various stages of their work processes. They had conversations with their clients. They had AI transcribing those conversations. AI was generating summary and insights based on those conversations, generated items for the backlog, analyzed data, created reports, created agenda for the next meeting.
(07:43-08:06) Daria Rudnik
It was fun. I mean, people said, OK, finally, we have some time to do some other projects. We can focus on something else. But something shifted over time. And people started to feel that they are kind of the operators of AI. Like, what is the meaning? What am I doing here? Am I just the person who gives some input to AI and AI does all the job?
(08:07-08:33) Daria Rudnik
And the other thing is when they had team meetings, those people, those customer success managers that used to know their clients in and out, they couldn't recall what happened during last conversation. They didn't remember what matters to their clients and they couldn't prioritize backlog and send those priorities to the product team because they didn't know, they didn't remember. AI was doing all the work for them. AI was making all the decisions for them.
(08:33-08:39) Daria Rudnik
And they lost this connection, they lost engagement, they lost motivation, and they lost productivity.
(08:39-09:06) Daria Rudnik
Why? Because they were using AI wrong. They delegated too much and they offloaded too much of the work process to AI. So what we did with this team is we created team norms and rules on how they work with AI and how they collaborate with AI. And one of the rules was that when they have a conversation with the client,
(09:07-09:30) Daria Rudnik
They first talk about, after the conversation, they talk through what they remember. They talk about insight, their own insights, how they felt, what they think is important. Then they uploaded it to AI and together with transcripts, AI generated some summary, which human custom success manager approved or like made some changes.
(09:30-09:56) Daria Rudnik
Why is that important? It's important because the way we work with AI matters and the cadence matters. There's a research called your brain on chat GPT. And according to this research, when you ask AI to give something to you and you use this output and you kind of edit it and interact with it, your brain stays disengaged or at least less engaged than if you do otherwise.
(09:56-10:17) Daria Rudnik
So on the other hand, if you think it through first and then give it to AI and ask for AI's comments, recommendations, edits, and then kind of go this back and forth, your brain stays engaged because you thought of it first and you have like keep those relationships. You have this connection with the output. So that's why this customer success team,
(10:19-10:32) Daria Rudnik
talked about the insights and feelings first, and then I uploaded to AI. So it really is important on how you use it so that it doesn't change team dynamics and it doesn't derail your performance.
(10:33-10:50) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
And that's so critical as a manager, as a leader, executive, those that are making those type of decisions for the team on which way they should or should not go. It's critical for folks to remember that what you give away is
(10:51-11:06) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
It's often hard to come back. You know, it's like when we sit and say, hey, we have a budget meeting. We don't need these thousands of dollars anymore. And you say, I'm giving it back.
(11:06-11:28) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Well, that's very dangerous. And so is the workload when you talk about that. So how can leaders discern which responsibilities should remain human-centered versus those that can be augmented or fully handled by AI? Well...
(11:28-11:56) Daria Rudnik
I do believe that teams can decide it together, what they wanna keep us as humans and what they wanna delegate to AI. But what generally happens and like my recommendation would be is always like decision-making always, always stays with human. Like final decision and final word always stays with human. And because they, I mean, we know the context, we have more information, we can connect the dots and AI cannot yet.
(11:56-12:14) Daria Rudnik
The other thing is everything that requires empathy and human connection also is staying with humans, with people. It's like you can hire people with the help of AI, but you should never fire people with the help of AI.
(12:15-12:30) Daria Rudnik
When you're firing someone, when you're letting people go, they need, apart from well-established process, like very well-run process, they also need connection and empathy. And there was a post on LinkedIn from one of the
(12:30-12:56) Daria Rudnik
VPs or, I mean, senior executives of a technological company who was so proud to say that, hey, we're laying people off. And he was an AI chatbot you can talk to if you feel kind of sad about this layoff. And it was huge. He removed this post, but internet remembers everything. So never, never send people to AI bot when you have bad news for them.
(12:58-13:14) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
That is so important. You're saying that my eyes are this big, my head is about to explode because how inauthentic and how brass to let that responsibility go.
(13:14-13:38) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
of that final connection between you and a person that's a part of your organization to a bottomless pit that really won't even care, right? And that's the point, right? We as leaders have to remember that care is still a major part of what we do.
(13:38-14:01) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
And if we remove that for the sake of convenience, now I'll tell you, there's some leaders that would love to have AI just fire you because they just can't have those type of conversations. Right. And which goes to the question, have they actually or are they actually leaders if they can't have those type of conversations with their people?
(14:01-14:30) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
So glad he did pull that. But guess what? Once it's out there, it's out there. And now you got to deal with the ramifications. Now, there's a lot of ambitious leaders that are like, go ahead and let's get this going. And so in your work with ambitious leaders, what mindset shifts are essential for effectively leading teams in an environment where technology is accelerating faster than culture is?
(14:32-14:53) Daria Rudnik
Well, exactly. I mean, the speed of change and the pace of technology is so high and it brings a lot of complexity to the workplaces. So leaders who stay in this old mindset of being a heroic leader and saving the world, saving organizations, saving their teams,
(14:54-15:19) Daria Rudnik
They cannot manage that. They burn out. They fail. They feel bad because they cannot save people. And sometimes it's because of their ego. But sometimes it's because they have well intentions. They want to help their people. They want to protect their people. They want to grow their people. They want to support their people. But being a hero and trying to save them is not the right way to help your team grow and to help your team grow.
(15:19-15:45) Daria Rudnik
become a self-sufficient, high-performing team. So leaders need to let go of this heroic mindset and then focus on doing a lot of things together with the team. Go into the team. If you have a question, discuss it with your team. If you need a decision to make and you don't know what to do, discuss it with your team. If you have something that your team can't do,
(15:45-15:49) Daria Rudnik
give it to your team and let them talk to stakeholders.
(15:50-16:19) Daria Rudnik
I hear a lot of leaders, I coach, they ask me questions, how many one-to-ones should I have with my team? How should I handle conflict between two team members? And although there are some best practices, the best approach would be go to your team members and say, hey, how often do you want to meet? What works best for you? And together you can come up with a solution that works for all of you. And again, I want to tell you a story about
(16:20-16:49) Daria Rudnik
a leader who wanted to save and support and protect her team. She's a cybersecurity leader at the cloud computing company, and she was the go-to person for every cybersecurity question in the organization. She communicated with stakeholders. She, like, gathered their feedback. She asked for their priorities. She was the one who was out there. And when someone made a mistake, she was out there to protect them because she thought,
(16:49-16:56) Daria Rudnik
Like she wants them to feel safe. She wants them to feel good. So she took a lot of work on herself.
(16:57-17:22) Daria Rudnik
What happened is that when she saw the engagement survey results, she saw that her team members were, again, losing engagement. They were not motivated. And she was curious, why? But when we talked about this team dynamics and organizational dynamics, we saw that she had so many connections. So many people knew her, appreciated her. But those people on her team, they were isolated.
(17:22-17:27) Daria Rudnik
The only people they could talk to was basically the small team and their manager.
(17:28-17:57) Daria Rudnik
So what she did instead, she connected those people to the wider organization. And she let them go and talk to stakeholders, present their ideas, ask questions, collect feedback. And that made team more, again, engaged. And that made them understand better what organization needs. And they found meaning in what they're doing because they knew that they're doing it for someone else. They're doing it for those people that they know and they can talk to.
(17:57-18:16) Daria Rudnik
So same thing happens when you have AI on your team. Again, what is the team dynamics? You don't need to delegate everything to AI. You still need to go out and talk to people and ask for the feedback and have these linking connections between team members and with the wider organization.
(18:17-18:42) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Yeah, that's so important, and I'm glad that that leader did choose to go a different route and expose the team. Folks, I tell you that there's been some team members on my team that have been able to run circles around me, and I was the leader, right? But it was my task to identify those people and let them run their race.
(18:42-19:00) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Let them do the interactions and get the most result for the talent that I had in my team. And a lot of leaders, for some reason or another, maybe it is ego, maybe it's a lack of trust. They kind of corral their team.
(19:00-19:24) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
try to control those parameters that they can actually do. And then, and in essence, you cut them off, right? You basically snuffing the life out of them and the potential for them to grow and become better. So thank you for sharing that story. Very relative. Now, when we talk about team dynamics, sometimes leaders are
(19:24-19:39) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
responsible for structuring what that team looks like in the future. So what signals tell you a team is not architected for the future? And what's the first step leaders should take to course correct?
(19:41-20:02) Daria Rudnik
Well, that's a very important question because, again, things change so fast. And once you've established something at some point, that might not work anymore. I mean, you need to restructure, you need to redesign the way your team works. So the first signal to me would be when team members become quiet.
(20:03-20:20) Daria Rudnik
They don't argue. They don't ask questions. They do what they're told. And it can happen for various reasons. They can be tired. They can be scared. They can be demotivated. But if you see a lot of that
(20:21-20:50) Daria Rudnik
that's a very clear sign that something needs to be changed. And the first thing to change here is to get together and start having an honest conversation. It might take some time, it might take a few meetings, a few sessions, it might take a few one-to-ones and a few team sessions, but it is critical for a team to start talking openly in the team session together, deciding how they want to work together. So AI brings a lot of fears and people are afraid that
(20:51-21:17) Daria Rudnik
AI will replace them, or more importantly, that their manager will think that AI can replace them. And it makes, again, when people are scared, they become quiet. So when you start noticing that there is no argument, there are no questions, start having those conversations with your team and establishing maybe new rules and norms of how you work together.
(21:18-21:46) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Yeah, I believe they call that quiet quitting, right? They're on board, but they're out. They don't want to be part of that team. They just don't want to lose their paycheck. And so they'll stay there and say yes and do whatever until it's time for them to pick and go somewhere else. It is a treacherous time for both the manager, the leader, and the worker, right, those that are doing the task.
(21:46-22:07) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
because that's what we call a divorce in progress. This is going to happen. It's just who pulls the trigger first. Do you fire the person? Can they not producing as they should? Or does the person leave because they're disenchanted with the organization or the leader? Because we know
(22:07-22:30) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
that really people leave leaders, right? They leave managers. They usually don't leave the organization as a whole because there may be some good in it, right? Now, we've been talking about AI, what it can do, what it should do, what it shouldn't do, and the responsibilities from leaders. And AI certainly is reshaping workflow, right?
(22:30-22:41) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
But it's also reshaping identity inside organizations. So what do leaders often overlook about the human experience during digital transformation?
(22:45-23:03) Daria Rudnik
Digital transformation, and especially AI transformation, it's a lot of change. I mean, as with any change management project, as with any change, there are people who are willing to do that. There are people who are kind of cautious. There are people who will never change.
(23:03-23:23) Daria Rudnik
And treating this AI transformation as a change management is very important and understanding how people feel and addressing those fears and addressing those needs. And I'll tell you a story about an organization. And then there were a lot of like many small AI initiatives across the organization and
(23:23-23:41) Daria Rudnik
People were trying different AI tools. They were trying different frameworks for testing those AI tools. And again, since we are in this experimentation stage, it's okay to do that. It's okay to try to write out various resources, use different tools.
(23:41-24:05) Daria Rudnik
frameworks but at some point you need to figure out okay what's best for us like which of those tools are we going to use which of those frameworks are the most useful for us what are the metrics we're going to again use for evaluating the performance and ai output and that is that might become a problem because like in this case in the organization i was working with people are kind of
(24:05-24:22) Daria Rudnik
become attached to the tools that they've chosen or the frameworks that they were using. And they thought they were the best, even though they might realize that they're not exactly the best. But since they've been working and I got used to it, it became very close to them and didn't want to lose them.
(24:22-24:41) Daria Rudnik
So it is important when you are in this experimentation stage and you're trying different resources and you let people do different things, be very clear that at some point you will need to come up with a mutual decision or solution that will be unified for the whole organization so that people are ready for that.
(24:41-24:58) Daria Rudnik
and are willing to contribute to finding this solution, not come to contribute to using their solution as the best one, but kind of contribute to the bigger one. So kind of this, this is what I'm seeing in some of the organizations that are using AI and trying to work with it is that
(24:58-25:13) Daria Rudnik
It's a lot of chaos at first. And then with no clarity, it's hard to get it back together. But when you have a clear process and communication, it's much easier to then choose the best tool for work.
(25:14-25:40) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Yes, very important. I believe a lot of organizations are fearing being left out or fear of missing out on one way or another when it comes to AI and its implementation and how it should be involved in your organization. But it's very important, leaders, to understand that just because something has been created doesn't necessarily mean that you need to jump on it right quick.
(25:41-25:58) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Or that you even have to use a particular thing. Now, there are some that will explore every option and then kind of pick. But I would say that do that in a test and development phase where you don't pull people in automatically automatically.
(25:58-26:25) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
And then all of a sudden you're saying, oh, we're not doing that. And all this time wasted, energy wasted, and then you become or you create an environment where the people just start to say, I don't want to even do that anymore. And then when the good thing comes, you won't have an investment from your people. So thank you for sharing that. Now, we've talked about how –
(26:25-26:54) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
if it should be implemented, how they can think about that. But let's shift a little bit about development. Leadership development is also being impacted by AI because I remember when I was in the Navy and we were creating leadership development, CB, right? CBTs and all these different modules with an AI person speaking. They didn't even look real, but...
(26:54-27:07) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
But in 10 years, the people look real. And now you could truly develop a course where you almost feel like you're being taught by a person. And even still,
(27:08-27:34) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
You have to be cautious because you have to have that kind of connection with that person. But if you could redesign the leadership development path for emerging leaders in an AI-powered workplace, what capabilities would you prioritize and why? Well, since you mentioned how AI can train people, I know I'm in a very good platform, Bongo or something.
(27:35-28:03) Daria Rudnik
What they do is you kind of practice with the help of AI, but then you have a human expert who sees all of your practice logs and can give you feedback on how you developed, what else maybe you need to work on. So the final word stays with the human facilitator or the human coach. So when it comes to AI, one of the most critical things, and I'm really...
(28:05-28:26) Daria Rudnik
I'm worried about that because it's critical thinking. It's how you use AI output. So any emergent leader who is working with AI and implementing AI to their team need to first be aware of their own cognitive biases and how they accept or evaluate AI output.
(28:26-28:54) Daria Rudnik
And same thing, how they support their team members so that they, again, have meaningful conversations and discussions about AI output, how they challenge AI output, how they challenge their own assumptions, how they try to ask questions to AI and how they prompt AI to challenge them back. So we have so, so much information about anything.
(28:55-29:13) Daria Rudnik
on various topics so if you ask a question if you google a question if you ask chat gpt you'll get you'll get it like straight away but is this the right information for you is this information would that fit your environment would it fit your organization would it fit your team dynamics would it fit your product
(29:13-29:29) Daria Rudnik
All of those things need to be closely monitored by leaders and teams. So I would say critical thinking is an ability to facilitate meaningful discussions is one of the most critical skills for leaders in the AI era.
(29:30-29:57) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Yeah, so important. And folks, we have to remember in our conversation earlier, Daria, you mentioned empathy and the things that are heart centered. There are some qualities that humans retain that you just cannot replicate because it's this, it's the body, it's the mind, the heart altogether working, right? And
(29:58-30:23) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
In developing your leaders, if you rely too much on an unemotional, unfeeling type of system and you cannot bring your people through a development where they learn how to use their heart, mind, soul, body, whatever, spirit in leading others,
(30:24-30:42) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
what you may cause is a disenchantment with even leadership development. And people will not even want to go that route if they're not gonna feel like they're actually changing. And the true leadership development
(30:42-31:05) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
is an inward type of effect that now you can teach somebody else. So very critical to keep an eye on that and not offload almost everything to those things and keep a human touch to developing others. Now, you wrote a book. I want to hear about that. Tell us about your book and what you're working on now.
(31:06-31:26) Daria Rudnik
Well, yes, I have a book. It's called Clicking. It's the book for overloaded leaders who want to build self-sufficient teams and get more trust and get more work done. And the reason I wrote the book is because, again, with the complexity we're facing right now, leaders are so overloaded and stretched. They face so multiple
(31:27-31:40) Daria Rudnik
many multiple demands from their shareholders, from the customers, from their peers, from their team members who say, engage me, motivate me, give me goals.
(31:41-31:59) Daria Rudnik
from the families who want to spend meaningful time with their loved ones. And it's very hard for them to keep going. The burnout numbers are very, very high. I mean, the burnout is really, really going high. There's so many people burning out.
(31:59-32:26) Daria Rudnik
so that's why i wrote this book about how to build self-sufficient teams and like that describes the framework i mentioned click which is about clear purpose linking connections integrated work collaborative decisions and knowledge sharing and once leaders are able to give that to their team members and and create more self-sufficient teams they would have more time for themselves for strategy for relationship building with critical stakeholders
(32:26-32:56) Daria Rudnik
And for other things that they don't have time doing. So, yeah, that's my book. You can find it on Amazon if you're interested. And really, I hope it will help you live a more fulfilled life. And it will actually make your teams more empowered. So it's not just for leaders, but it's for teams as well who will feel more powerful. They are in charge. They do meaningful work. It creates better connections in the team and within the organization as well.
(32:57-33:21) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Well, I'm so happy that you were able to not only fulfill a dream, I'm sure that writing a book is one, something that as professionals we want to have, but also now that someone else can take all that insight, read for themselves and implement it. And a special bonus for those listening right now, if you could tell me what CLIC stands for and DM me,
(33:21-33:39) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
those words, then I'll make sure you get a copy of that book. Daria, thank you so much for the time that you've shared with us, the insights you shared. And if people wanted to get a hold of you, connect with you in one way or another, or support you, where can they find you?
(33:40-33:56) Daria Rudnik
Well, thanks, Evik. It was a great conversation. I'm very open to connections on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. And I'm Daria Rudnik. You can find me on my website, dariarudnik.com. And again, my book is available on Amazon. So I'm very happy to connect, reach out, and let's continue the conversation.
(33:57-34:16) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Outstanding. Well, folks, thank you for joining us today on this episode. Daria, thank you once again for sharing your insights. Wish you well over in Israel. And I know it's the holiday season worldwide. Sometimes you celebrate, sometimes you don't. But whatever your choice, I hope it's a blessed one. Folks.
(34:17-34:39) Developing The Leader Within Podcast
Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. And I also want to highlight Bonefrog Coffee Company, which is our newest sponsor going into 2026. So thank you, Bonefrog, for being with us and supporting our show. Until next time, we bid you farewell. Happy holiday season to everybody. Be blessed.