The Team Check-in
Building Remote Teams Effectively with Daria Rudnik
In this episode of The Team Check-in, we welcome Daria Rudnik to the show! Daria is one of the premier voices when it comes to team building. Emre and Daria go deep into what it means to be a team architect, the effects of leadership in team chemistry, her interesting venture into an AI leadership assistant, and so much more! If you are currently running a remote team or planning to in the future, this is one episode you can't afford to miss!
In this episode of The Team Check-in, Daria Rudnik shares what it really means to build strong, future-ready teams:
- The role of a team architect — how intentional team design shapes trust, chemistry, and performance.
- Leadership and team dynamics — why leaders have a disproportionate impact on how teams function and collaborate.
- AI in leadership — insights into Daria’s AI-powered leadership assistant and how technology can support better team decisions.
- Remote team success — practical guidance for building high-trust, effective teams in distributed environments.
(00:25-00:51) Emre
You're listening to The Team Check-In, powered by Team Black. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Team Check-In. And with me today, a very fitting guest. This is The Team Check-In, and we have the premier team architect in the house, Darya Rudnick. Darya, welcome to the show. Thank you, Emre. Thank you. It's great being here. Thanks. Thanks for inviting me.
(00:51-01:05) Emre
Awesome. And let's just start right there with the team architect. Where does that come from? What does it mean? Well, it's a long story. I mean...
(01:05-01:31) Daria Rudnik
My old background was about leadership development and developing leaders and teams and organizations. I studied my career in Deloitte and then I was HR director for tech and telecom companies. And every time I worked with people, I kind of helped them grow in the organization and help them more effective and help them be more productive and feel well and perform well.
(01:31-01:38) Daria Rudnik
And what I've noticed that when we work with leaders and we help leaders lead their teams,
(01:39-02:05) Daria Rudnik
It kind of slows down the process rather than when we work with teams directly because a team is a unit, is a much stronger unit and they can create a much greater impact when they are a real team, not a work group, not a certain team, like something that thinks they're a team or functional. We call functional teams, but most of them are not teams. But when it's real team, when they're interconnections,
(02:05-02:22) Daria Rudnik
They can create an amazing impact. And that's what I'm focusing on. I'm creating, designing, engineering, building those high performing teams. Awesome. And yeah, there's a line between the whole, you know, we're just people who work together.
(02:22-02:52) Emre
But then there's the other side of it, which feels kind of fake to me, where people go, oh, no, we're a family. This company is such a family. We're all just, you know, so, I mean, I think there's like a nice line in between those ends. And yeah, so you're out there helping people build these very functional teams. And you have quite the...
(02:52-03:21) Emre
You have quite the resume, right, coming on to the show. And you have worked at Deloitte, and we're talking World Ethics Organization, and you're a full-fledged Forbes council member. And I've been reading up on all your articles, and we're going to be going over all of them. So how do you feel your influence is helping in the whole team-building space in LinkedIn? Well...
(03:22-03:50) Daria Rudnik
That's a great point you mentioned, that family is not a team. Family is never a team. And that's one of the reasons why it's so hard to build a great team, because we never learn how to work in teams. Family is not a team. School is not a team. University is not a team. And when we join the workforce, it's kind of the first time we're expected to be like to work in a team, like be a team player, be a team. What does it mean? People don't know. And that's like they come to the idea that, well, let's be like a family.
(03:51-04:20) Daria Rudnik
But no, you cannot fire anyone from a family. No, you have a family for your kind of different type of relationships. And team is the unit of people who are connected by a shared goal, who want to reach this goal and they share this goal and they are interconnected in reaching this goal. That's the team. And they feel good about working together. They feel safe about working together, but they also feel good going home
(04:20-04:49) Daria Rudnik
spending time with their family, spending time with their friends. And they don't feel any guilt of leaving the team for evening, for weekend, for vacation, for whatever reasons they need to, because they know they are supported by their team members who can keep working on their goal. So this relationship between the team at work has a more nuanced, a different nature, as opposed to what people are claiming, the whole family thing.
(04:50-05:16) Emre
because every time I hear, it's such a pet peeve of mine, right? Every time I hear the whole family at work, oh, you know, Ralph, I just try to think back and say, like, how would it actually feel to be working with my family? And I would rather not. I would definitely rather not. And we've had previously on this show, we've had Tarja Furiani and Justin Boggs on the show. They host the Not the HR Lady podcast and
(05:16-05:41) Emre
they're a very tight-knit family they're they're a married couple and they have five kids and their home is where they work from and that's where they host the podcast and that was my very first question like how are you guys managing this right how uh how are those lines not being crossed and yeah they told me all about how they were like trying to keep the dinner table separate from like the podcasting table yeah
(05:42-06:04) Emre
Those are some crazy, crazy tight lines to walk. So you are, as we said, you are a team architect and you're helping people build these functional teams. Now, what would you say is the biggest challenge in building a strong foundation for a functional team?
(06:08-06:25) Daria Rudnik
I tell you what good leaders tend to fall into when they're trying to build a good team. And I'm not talking about bad leaders, disengaged leaders. I'm talking about really good leaders who want to build great teams, who feel for their people. Mm-hmm.
(06:25-06:46) Daria Rudnik
The biggest mistake they make is when they focus on building one-to-one relationship with their team members. They're having those one-to-ones. They're supporting them. They're providing them with help. They say, if you have any questions, come to me, which is amazing. So far, it all sounds very good. Everything you're saying sounds very good. Yeah.
(06:46-07:12) Daria Rudnik
But in the end, the leader becomes a bottleneck. So whenever a team member has a problem, they go to their leader and they need to wait in line where other team members go there as well. And team leader also has the agenda, there's work, building relationship with stakeholders. They can't do that. So they're overwhelmed with work, with supporting their team members. What they're not doing
(07:13-07:19) Daria Rudnik
is they are not creating peer-to-peer relationship between the team members. When
(07:19-07:49) Daria Rudnik
Whenever a team member has a problem, an issue, or like a question, they go to their team members first. And then together, when they couldn't find the answer, they reach for their leader, for the outside of the organization. And they become interconnected. And they have much more support rather than like, okay, I have my manager supporting me. But I have my whole team and every team member supporting me. And that's especially important for remote teams when people don't meet each other in the corridors. They don't drink coffee together.
(07:49-07:59) Daria Rudnik
So even more, they need this peer-to-peer relationship on the team. So they work together on their challenges together first and then go to their leader.
(08:00-08:23) Emre
I love that analogy. I love what you said about the leader becoming the bottleneck. And that's exhausting for the people who are like trying to reach the leader. But that's also I feel I feel like if you're a leader, I think that can lead to you burning out very fast. Right. Everyone coming to you instead of, you know, having the traffic directed direction.
(08:24-08:46) Emre
All around. It's kind of like, this is going to alienate most of the audience, but if you've ever played Dungeons & Dragons or any kind of tabletop role-playing game, and if you're running the game, the most satisfying thing is you step back and the players can just sort everything out, do the role-playing, and you as the game master, you just step back and you watch them go, okay, okay, like...
(08:46-09:15) Emre
this flows without me being involved and I can actually start because it will also save a lot of time for the leadership as well, right? And they can focus on what really matters. And you kind of went into the whole remote side of the team building experience and that's an entirely different challenge. And now I feel like more than ever, and we always keep talking about this, but with the pandemic, everyone just,
(09:15-09:44) Emre
Dove into remote work. And then I feel like only like 40% of those people went back to the office. And now, you know, it became like a new standard. And very soon enough, and I think we still have them right now, we will have people in the workforce who have never set foot in an office. And personally, I'm very jealous of them. Like personally, I'm jealous of anyone who has never had to wear a tie. Just
(09:44-10:11) Emre
bless their hearts and their necks. So that does come with its unique challenges and that whole feeling of not feeling like you belong in an organization, not feeling like you have those very same connections with your team. So what are some of the ways in which people can form those strong relationships in between peers when you're working remote?
(10:14-10:44) Daria Rudnik
like from my personal experience, the best team I ever worked in was remote team. And the worst team I ever worked with was the remote team. And offline, like office teams, some kind of in between, in the middle. So it is, it really is a big challenge. And if I were to pick only one thing to do to support your remote team, it would be over communication. Like literally,
(10:44-10:52) Daria Rudnik
communicate, use all the channels you have, like messengers, emails, video messages, podcasts,
(10:54-11:20) Daria Rudnik
Sometimes meetings, like anything you have and over communicate, deliver information to people because information gets lost. And if they don't have information, they feel isolated. And if they don't meet their team members or other people in the organization, they feel isolated. So like over communication is key in remote settings. And there are lots of like other steps that you need to make, but like if you want to focus on one, that's over communication.
(11:22-11:47) Emre
Okay, so you're suggesting that people have all these different avenues to reach each other within the team just whenever and just making sure those communication lines are always open. I like that. For me, I feel like oddly enough, some of the best and the worst teams I've ever been a part of were teacher's rooms. I used to be an English teacher and
(11:47-12:05) Emre
I've been in some great teachers' rooms with some incredibly idealistic, awesome people, but then I've been in some horrible teachers' rooms where we were always minutes away from board markers flying across the hall. But...
(12:07-12:23) Emre
To me, I'm not going to name any names, but one company that I worked for was like this big website that just output a lot of content. And technically, I was part of the writers team. But the way the writers team kind of felt like was...
(12:24-12:53) Emre
I feel like we were just fighting over topics. It, it was very scary to me, right? We had every, every month we had to output a certain number of content, but you know, there's always, and it was about like movies and pop culture. And there's always like so many things you can, there's only so many things you can talk about in the pop culture sphere and so many topics that will be approved by the editors. So just think about this, like 200 plus writers online in front of a project management platform and
(12:53-13:21) Emre
waiting for like the editors to drop like the new list of topics they drop and we attack it like docs just like I I did not like it was a bit too competitive for my taste and I loved all the awesome work they put out and I still love the website I'm a huge reader of it but and I loved working for them but that to me was a bit too much and
(13:22-13:27) Emre
I feel like when you start working remote and when you join a team remotely,
(13:28-13:56) Emre
that sense of, oh, I need to stand out, that sense of, oh, I need to go the extra mile to stand out amid this crowd of people behind their screens, it just might become a bit too overwhelming. So I feel like organizations need to do something to foster that sense of camaraderie, that sort of friendship. It doesn't have to be the family, but there still needs to be, oh, hey, we're on the same team.
(13:58-14:21) Emre
And yeah, there are plenty of different things people can do for that. But what are some of the most positive experiences you've had when you were like building a team remotely? I want to just address what you said about this, like writers fighting for the topics. Sometimes you don't need a team. I mean,
(14:22-14:52) Daria Rudnik
Some people like that. I'm sure there were people who felt, okay, I'm going to do that. I love this fight. I love this energy. Some people would love that. They pick the topic, they write the article, they send it over. It's on a team because they don't work together. They don't collaborate. There's a new shared goal of them. There's a goal of writing this piece of content for the article and get my money for that. That's it. Sometimes it's very important to tell people, we're a working group.
(14:53-15:19) Daria Rudnik
We're not a team in the team meaning. And that makes people understand, okay, we're not a team. We are just colleagues working on articles. Because when you have a team, the first thing you do is you define a shared goal that everybody accepts. And when people know we are together, the only way we can reach that goal is by collaborating and working together.
(15:20-15:41) Emre
that automatically creates this understanding, okay, we need to collaborate. Otherwise, we cannot do anything. I feel like that is a very nice differentiation we need to make. And I feel like that's something that goes missing a lot, right? People that work for the same company, people that work under the same umbrella
(15:42-15:54) Emre
They don't have to be a team. More often than not, they're not. But we see them, okay, they work together, they work under the same roof. So this is a team. So are they? So...
(15:55-16:21) Emre
I think those boundaries to set on what defines a team are very, very important. And they're very important if you're planning to turn a group of people who work for the same group, for the same company, into a team. So, yeah, let's talk about that. What are some key, you know, criterias you would need to set in order to turn a bunch of colleagues into a team? I love that question.
(16:23-16:44) Daria Rudnik
I'm writing a book about how to turn a disengaged, alienated team into a high-performing team. Spoilers. Okay, let's go. Yeah, and there are five, not that simple, but five steps that any team should go through to build a team. So the first one is clear goals. Like I said, the team needs to have this clear goals, clear shared goals.
(16:45-17:06) Daria Rudnik
Then comes linking relationships. When those people work together, they know like how they're working together. But the other thing is they know their stakeholders and they're connected with the team stakeholders, not only the leader, but only all the team members know their stakeholders, what they expect from them and how they build relationship with those stakeholders.
(17:07-17:27) Daria Rudnik
Then come integrated ways of working. So how do we work together? What are our team rules? How do we hold our meetings? What are the agendas? How do we make decisions? How do we solve conflicts? Like what are the basic team rules? Then come collaborative decision-making.
(17:27-17:47) Daria Rudnik
When the team decides, okay, how do we make decisions? Sometimes leader makes decisions, but most times on the team, you need to agree, how do you make those decisions collaboratively? And the final part is knowledge sharing and feedback. How do we grow and learn as a team? How do we seek feedback from each other and from our stakeholders?
(17:47-18:16) Daria Rudnik
And those five elements, clear goals, linking relationships, integrated ways of working together, collaborative decision-making, and knowledge sharing and feedback, which come with the acronym CLIC. So they make your team CLIC. I like it. I like it. I love the acronym. And yeah, it all makes so much sense. And hearing you talking, everybody can sense, I think, you have
(18:17-18:46) Emre
a very strong background in coaching and consulting people. So moving from the team building side to another question that I have for you is I loved reading your piece on performance versus workaholism, driving high performance in a team versus workaholism. So how do we
(18:46-19:13) Emre
So how do we differentiate them? Because I feel like there are lots of people who are performance oriented, who are very driven and ambitious. We're saying, oh no, we just have very ambitious goals and we're just driving performance. But in fact, they're just displaying workaholism. So set us straight, Daria. Well, I think the,
(19:14-19:39) Daria Rudnik
If we're not talking about like the medical terms like of hauling... No, we're not diagnosing it. I mean, just like regular conversation. Well, the main differentiator is what is the impact you're creating? If you do some work and you create an impact, well, that's probably a performance. But if you're just busy with something, with work...
(19:40-19:47) Daria Rudnik
whatever it means and it's not productive it's just like confusing being busy with business with doing business
(19:50-20:10) Daria Rudnik
It's easy to work on operational tasks because it gives us sort of a boost of dopamine when we, okay, check, that one's done, that one is done. And it gives us a feeling, okay, we're doing something, we're accomplishing something, some small tasks, sending emails, having meetings, having those conversations. It gives us a feeling we're doing something.
(20:11-20:25) Daria Rudnik
I know leaders sometimes feel guilty. They say, okay, I feel guilty when I step back and think because it means I'm not doing my work. They do understand that thinking and planning and strategy is part of their work.
(20:25-20:49) Daria Rudnik
But somehow it's not part of the workplace culture. So they feel guilty stepping back and thinking and working on their strategy. And that, like, it is an effort from them to steal this time for personal development, personal well-being and strategy. And I feel like I recently...
(20:50-21:05) Emre
helped co-write a piece on why the modern leader is very much afraid of delegating. If you ask anyone on LinkedIn or anyone with a platform,
(21:05-21:28) Emre
on, hey, like how important do you think is, you know, for a leader to be delegating, you know, their tasks, their responsibilities, everything. I don't think if, you know, you know how those commercials are with toothpaste where like nine out of 10 dentists approve. I don't think we will have like one dentist saying no to this. Everyone will say, you know, leaders should be delegating the responsibility.
(21:28-21:49) Emre
because it helps with empowering your employees and distributing the workload, all that. But if we start looking at how these organizations actually function, we will see that nobody's actually using the toothpaste. It's sitting there. We're all loving the idea of the...
(21:50-22:18) Emre
Okay, enough with the toothpaste. But yeah, we're loving the idea of delegation, but nobody's actually doing it. Everybody's like trying to, oh, you know, I'll take all of it on myself. And I thought about it. And like, I think it goes beyond a sense of like, oh, you know, the quality is not going to be as good. Because more often than not, like you were part of hiring these people, you know, they're capable. I don't think it's just quality concerns. But
(22:19-22:41) Emre
I think we have now a false narrative behind people's definition of leadership. The definition of leadership is, you know, it's a very, even though the world of work has evolved, the definition of leadership, I think, still somehow stayed in, you know, the Middle Ages, where, you know, we have, you have a king who is, you know, first to ride into the battlefield, last to retreat during it.
(22:42-23:10) Emre
But that's not the way. That's just, again, it will cause burnout in leadership and it will, I think it results in a lot of employees feeling redundant and feeling that, hey, like my skill and all the things I'm able to do, they're going to waste. So what is your opinion on that? Why do you think leaders are a little too like, let's say shy of delegating their responsibilities?
(23:11-23:39) Daria Rudnik
This is an amazing question. And there are two things there. Like the first one, like you mentioned, this heroic leader who saves it all. And like, we need to admit that the era of heroic leadership is gone. Like you cannot, there's no person who can in this ever changing, like in ever changing environment can save organizations. It is the time of the empowered teams. But the second thing is,
(23:41-24:10) Daria Rudnik
Delegation is a totally wrong concept. There's no such thing as delegation. When we think of delegation, it feels like, okay, here's a leader who has a bucket of work that he needs to distribute to their team members, which is not the case. It's not true. If we come back to the shared goal, the team has the goal and the team with the leader, obviously, but they identify the roles or the leader identifies the roles that needed to be on the team.
(24:11-24:17) Daria Rudnik
and the responsibilities for the roles they come naturally so whenever tasks come to the team
(24:17-24:47) Daria Rudnik
there's no need to distribute it to some team members. Okay, who should I delegate it to? No, this work task goes directly to the team member who has the role that is responsible for performing this kind of tasks. And it means the leader doesn't have to be someone who is kind of distributing the tasks. It's the structure of the team itself helps the tasks being distributed. And okay, no delegation. Perfect. And
(24:47-25:14) Emre
I have to normally, when I sense the opportunity for a moment to plug our product, TeamFleg, I just jump right into like a commercial-like monologue thing. So are you looking to build your... I just go into that. But I think, yeah, I'm just going to be like very open and honest about this. This is something we talk a lot about when we're developing a performance management software or like a goal-setting platform.
(25:14-25:42) Emre
or task management tool and a lot of our discussions were about how do we make sure when we're like developing developing a product for like teams to use whether they're remote or you know in-house how do we build a product that makes sure everyone is aligned with the goals everyone is everyone sees those okay these are our big organizational goals and this is our team's goal and this is my individual goals and ambitions and
(25:42-26:07) Emre
everything that I need to do. But how do all of these contribute to the big goal, to the big like our, whether that's your North Star metric or whatever you want to call it? I think, yeah, that sense of alignment and everyone seeing the big, you know, the big picture and goal is very key because right now it's not
(26:07-26:32) Emre
it's not the day of the company people anymore, right? People, I mean, my father worked at the same company for over like 15 years and he was all in, he was all in on it, right? We had, you know, company merch all around the house, like Bristol, Myers, Squibb, like we had like everywhere. I knew, I knew the acronym when I was like five. It's still, it made like something in my brain because it's,
(26:33-26:55) Emre
back in the day was like just the era of the company people. It's not like that anymore, right? People, whether it's the whole uncertainty of everything that's going on in the world, whether it's like the alternative revenue streams of like the options to strike out on your own, it's very hard for an individual to internalize a company's goals.
(26:55-27:19) Emre
And I don't blame them. I don't I don't want to go like, oh, these kids these days, they don't take ownership of their. Why should they? Why should they? What's what's in it for them to, you know, be fully invested in the goals of this huge company that they're probably a part of? And I think defining those structures, defining, hey, look, this is your role. This is the part you can play in.
(27:20-27:48) Emre
us, like in the organization, reaching our goals. But also, I think what comes with it is, okay, so what? I help do this, I play my part in it, but what's in it for me? Other than the paycheck, which is not just, which is not a reward, it's like the agreement we have, but what comes next with all this extra dedication and all my, you know, commitment to these big organizational goals?
(27:53-28:23) Daria Rudnik
Well, that's exactly what a leadership job is about, is aligning individual values of team members with team goals and organization goals. So when I worked for the companies, I was lucky enough to work with some really great companies. And when I joined a startup and I knew they're growing, I wanted to create an environment for people where they feel safe and they feel this development.
(28:23-28:52) Daria Rudnik
personal ambition to do that. I like that. And the company actually provided me the opportunity to do things I love doing. So in the ideal world, which I think is very possible in most of the organizations, okay, what is it that you love doing? What is it you want to do? Find role and company that can give you that and do together. You have similar goals, just work together on those goals.
(28:52-29:15) Emre
And I think it's also vice versa, right? If you're a leader, if you're running a team and everyone is like, employee engagement is such a huge buzzword now. And I mean, I've used it like I think gajillions of different times on our blog. Obviously, like we are an employee engagement software too, but I think
(29:16-29:36) Emre
And I think, again, once again, Tara Furiani said the best. Pizza parties aren't employee engagement, right? Giving people pizza, coupons, whatever, those are fun, whatever, that's not employee engagement. And we were talking about the role of the leader. I think a huge aspect that goes into leadership is...
(29:37-30:07) Emre
creating a workplace where you can channel the things your employees are excited about doing, like they're also, they're talented, they have their skills and just things they want to do, things they feel passionate about doing. So, okay, how can we channel that into something that contributes to our big organizational goals and just drive everything together? So, I think, so the question here is, and we talked about how we take, you know,
(30:07-30:33) Emre
a group of random individuals who work for the same company and turn them into a team. So how do we get these people excited about the common goal? How do we install in them the sense of what's in it for me other than the paycheck? It's co-creation. When they co-create the goal and they co-define the goal,
(30:34-31:00) Daria Rudnik
And they agree on their action plan. And they feel excited about that because they are part of this thinking process. That's the first step. And then kind of... If we take the self-determination theory of motivation, what motivates people is autonomy when they have the right to choose what they're doing. It's...
(31:02-31:31) Daria Rudnik
Okay, I might be messing up the different concepts, but again, it's autonomy, it's the growth opportunity, and it's social connection. When people feel that they work together with people who support them. So those three things motivate people at work. So if you give people opportunity to co-create, if they feel they're growing and they're doing it with their team members, well, that's a big, huge part of the employee engagement. Perfect. Perfect.
(31:32-31:57) Emre
I think most of the ideas you push forward and everything, again, they do obviously have their roots in, you know, coaching and consulting and just helping leaders elevate their team. And I think after this conversation, you know, 30 minutes in, I am trying to, I'm starting to understand, oh, so that's what a team architect is. But
(31:58-32:27) Daria Rudnik
Apparently, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I probably am, you are actively trying to replace yourself as a coach with robots. What's going on in there? It's about replacement. It's about supporting and enhancing. Like we all know, AI will not replace humans, but humans using AI will replace those who don't use AI.
(32:28-32:55) Daria Rudnik
I like that tagline very much. So, yeah, I'm building my AI coach who can support people when I'm not available, who can provide easy answers to, like, most common questions. But when it comes to change, when it comes to, like, real organizational change, I don't see AI can replace me in that part. Okay. So...
(32:55-33:12) Emre
For those who don't know or aren't familiar with your current work, we are talking about, what's the name of your AI coaching assistant? Aydra. Aydra. Aydra. So what does Aydra do? Because I think that's very interesting so far.
(33:13-33:42) Daria Rudnik
Well, for now, I'm just playing with it and just starting working on it. But for now, what it does is it answers most common questions people ask. Like, what is a team? What is team architect? What is delegation? How leaders can do delegation? And basically what I'm sharing with you right now, I would reply in the chat. Okay. Okay. So how does it feel to be heading into this, the new
(33:43-34:09) Emre
AI space coming from your background. And when you're seeing results incrementally, what does that feel like right now? It's so exciting. I mean, I love playing with it. I love working with it. I love using different tools for my personal performance. Yeah, super exciting. Not a tiny bit scary, no? No, I'm not.
(34:12-34:29) Emre
I'm technologically optimistic. Okay. Okay, so... We know who to call out to when, like, in 20 years, Hydra takes over, like, the entire world, I guess. But...
(34:30-34:57) Emre
I think that leads us to my like, I'm like wrapping up questions. I feel like it is such a huge part of the conversation these days, right? Using AI in the modern workplace, the place of AI in the modern workplace. We know that one of our competitors caused a lot of waves by discussing, you know, just AI employees overall and creating profiles for AI employees and
(34:57-35:24) Emre
and just the role of using artificial intelligence in the modern workplace. And where do you stand on that? You're clearly an optimist when it comes to, you know, the use of AI, but what are some lines that you think, you know, that have to be maintained when AI is being implemented into the daily flow of work? Again, I'm not an AI expert. I'm an active AI user, and...
(35:25-35:51) Daria Rudnik
What I see is happening is there got to be a very clear disclaimer on what AI can do and what it cannot do and what mistakes it can make. It's okay to try different things. We've seen examples of biased AI decisions. We know that that happens and that will happen because we're still learning how to use that. Whenever we implement AI, we need to be
(35:51-36:10) Daria Rudnik
um cautious about the decisions and the results and they producing and also communicate it to people hey we're trying this out we're monitoring it everything is going to be under control but when i when we see it's kind of performing well we'll let it go but when not we'll just change and replace it
(36:10-36:38) Daria Rudnik
so i believe especially when we will be using ai in hr space of people development emotions uh redundancies and all these things they need to be very clearly communicated that it's not just we give it to ai whatever like how many how biased it is we don't care but that it's it's being monitored yeah uh like over the ever since you know the large language models they
(36:38-36:53) Emre
went public and they just became a part of the mainstream. I feel like there was this wave of over-promising and delivering something pretty cool, but...
(36:53-37:20) Emre
not along the lines of what's promised and people again, not just, you know, the developers and the CEOs over promising, but people, you know, we have that built in us. You know, I am a huge sci-fi nerd. I have a dune tattoo right here. I am in it. I am all for that future. I think people got way too excited for, for a very, very sophisticated collage creator.
(37:20-37:44) Emre
At the end of the day, that's what it is. An incredibly sophisticated word collage creator became just huge and people leaned into it too hard. And now we are at a place where an everyday employee going about their day will have ChatGPT open or like another large language model open on the side.
(37:45-38:09) Emre
at any given time. And we're seeing these huge investments into the AI space. But it's an amazing tool and it's an amazing product that, like you said, I think your line of AI won't replace humans, but people using AI effectively will replace people who don't. I think that just sums it all up perfectly.
(38:10-38:40) Emre
especially in the HR and leadership space, it's really important that we never lose the human element. I, you know, we here at TeamFlect, we are a Microsoft partner and we work very closely with Microsoft and we've done plenty of stories with them. And we are all for everything Microsoft and we love following those news. When I saw the announcement video for a co-pilot and I saw people just drafting emails left and right, responding,
(38:40-38:57) Emre
to someone's emails through just an AI generated response. And then it just looked, it felt off to me where, you know, we talk about, you know, these remote communications where you draft an AI generated email to me,
(38:57-39:21) Emre
I respond to it with AI, and then suddenly we're not talking anymore. So that one, it was never about, to me, like, oh, you know, robots are going to take my job. I'd love to see one try to host this podcast. It was never about that. But it was more about, oh, like, are we at some point going to lose the human connection element? And that was pretty scary for me.
(39:25-39:51) Daria Rudnik
I mean, I think we're still learning how to use AI correctly, like those AI-generated LinkedIn posts, AI-generated emails, and then some tools that prevent from receiving or publishing AI-generated content. And I think it's just the noise that, but most major things happen, not in the space of creating text, but mostly in understanding how it works.
(39:51-40:21) Daria Rudnik
Like in HR, what skills need to be developed in the organization? In this one, you have thousands of people. How do you know which skills need to be provided to which part of the organization? And these kind of things. And AI could help there. Like hugely can have huge impact, but not in generating emails. Definitely, definitely, definitely. Like there are some clear and incredible benefits to just integrating it to your like everyday workflow.
(40:21-40:41) Emre
And it's awesome how, you know, a new skill just arose called, like, prompt engineering. Are you good at giving, like, creating good prompts? Because the results can be just miraculously different. And it's, again, it's fun and exciting and fun.
(40:41-40:59) Emre
Yeah, we still don't know where exactly it's going. And awesome. So Daria, I'm not going to keep you here any longer. So before we wrap up, you were just talking about a new book that was coming out that you were working on. So can we learn a bit more about that? And when can people expect to read it?
(41:01-41:19) Daria Rudnik
Well, sure. I'm still working on it. It's a work in progress. And I'd really love to hear real stories that I can include in my book so that it's not just me thinking about out loud, but other people, what they think. So if anyone wants to be a better reader,
(41:19-41:48) Daria Rudnik
like read some chapters give me some feedback that would be amazing but mostly it's the book about how to turn a disengaged alienated alienated team into a high-performing team going through those five steps of uh clear purpose linking relationships integrated ways of working together collaborative decision making and knowledge sharing and feedback all right and it's all about making that theme click click loving it all right uh
(41:49-42:04) Emre
Daria, thank you so much for coming on the show. I think people can find you on LinkedIn as Daria Rudnick. Yes, absolutely. And thanks for inviting me. It was fun. It was great questions. I love talking about that. Thank you so much.
(42:04-42:29) Emre
Thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been very fun for me as well. And if you're listening to us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts, leave us a like, subscribe. It really helps the show out. And if you're looking for a performance management solution that is fully integrated into Microsoft Teams and Outlook, you can just click the link in the description to try Teamflake for absolutely free with no time or future limitations. That's about it. Bye-bye, everyone. Have a great day.
You're listening to The Team Check-In, powered by Team Black. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Team Check-In. And with me today, a very fitting guest. This is The Team Check-In, and we have the premier team architect in the house, Darya Rudnick. Darya, welcome to the show. Thank you, Emre. Thank you. It's great being here. Thanks. Thanks for inviting me.
(00:51-01:05) Emre
Awesome. And let's just start right there with the team architect. Where does that come from? What does it mean? Well, it's a long story. I mean...
(01:05-01:31) Daria Rudnik
My old background was about leadership development and developing leaders and teams and organizations. I studied my career in Deloitte and then I was HR director for tech and telecom companies. And every time I worked with people, I kind of helped them grow in the organization and help them more effective and help them be more productive and feel well and perform well.
(01:31-01:38) Daria Rudnik
And what I've noticed that when we work with leaders and we help leaders lead their teams,
(01:39-02:05) Daria Rudnik
It kind of slows down the process rather than when we work with teams directly because a team is a unit, is a much stronger unit and they can create a much greater impact when they are a real team, not a work group, not a certain team, like something that thinks they're a team or functional. We call functional teams, but most of them are not teams. But when it's real team, when they're interconnections,
(02:05-02:22) Daria Rudnik
They can create an amazing impact. And that's what I'm focusing on. I'm creating, designing, engineering, building those high performing teams. Awesome. And yeah, there's a line between the whole, you know, we're just people who work together.
(02:22-02:52) Emre
But then there's the other side of it, which feels kind of fake to me, where people go, oh, no, we're a family. This company is such a family. We're all just, you know, so, I mean, I think there's like a nice line in between those ends. And yeah, so you're out there helping people build these very functional teams. And you have quite the...
(02:52-03:21) Emre
You have quite the resume, right, coming on to the show. And you have worked at Deloitte, and we're talking World Ethics Organization, and you're a full-fledged Forbes council member. And I've been reading up on all your articles, and we're going to be going over all of them. So how do you feel your influence is helping in the whole team-building space in LinkedIn? Well...
(03:22-03:50) Daria Rudnik
That's a great point you mentioned, that family is not a team. Family is never a team. And that's one of the reasons why it's so hard to build a great team, because we never learn how to work in teams. Family is not a team. School is not a team. University is not a team. And when we join the workforce, it's kind of the first time we're expected to be like to work in a team, like be a team player, be a team. What does it mean? People don't know. And that's like they come to the idea that, well, let's be like a family.
(03:51-04:20) Daria Rudnik
But no, you cannot fire anyone from a family. No, you have a family for your kind of different type of relationships. And team is the unit of people who are connected by a shared goal, who want to reach this goal and they share this goal and they are interconnected in reaching this goal. That's the team. And they feel good about working together. They feel safe about working together, but they also feel good going home
(04:20-04:49) Daria Rudnik
spending time with their family, spending time with their friends. And they don't feel any guilt of leaving the team for evening, for weekend, for vacation, for whatever reasons they need to, because they know they are supported by their team members who can keep working on their goal. So this relationship between the team at work has a more nuanced, a different nature, as opposed to what people are claiming, the whole family thing.
(04:50-05:16) Emre
because every time I hear, it's such a pet peeve of mine, right? Every time I hear the whole family at work, oh, you know, Ralph, I just try to think back and say, like, how would it actually feel to be working with my family? And I would rather not. I would definitely rather not. And we've had previously on this show, we've had Tarja Furiani and Justin Boggs on the show. They host the Not the HR Lady podcast and
(05:16-05:41) Emre
they're a very tight-knit family they're they're a married couple and they have five kids and their home is where they work from and that's where they host the podcast and that was my very first question like how are you guys managing this right how uh how are those lines not being crossed and yeah they told me all about how they were like trying to keep the dinner table separate from like the podcasting table yeah
(05:42-06:04) Emre
Those are some crazy, crazy tight lines to walk. So you are, as we said, you are a team architect and you're helping people build these functional teams. Now, what would you say is the biggest challenge in building a strong foundation for a functional team?
(06:08-06:25) Daria Rudnik
I tell you what good leaders tend to fall into when they're trying to build a good team. And I'm not talking about bad leaders, disengaged leaders. I'm talking about really good leaders who want to build great teams, who feel for their people. Mm-hmm.
(06:25-06:46) Daria Rudnik
The biggest mistake they make is when they focus on building one-to-one relationship with their team members. They're having those one-to-ones. They're supporting them. They're providing them with help. They say, if you have any questions, come to me, which is amazing. So far, it all sounds very good. Everything you're saying sounds very good. Yeah.
(06:46-07:12) Daria Rudnik
But in the end, the leader becomes a bottleneck. So whenever a team member has a problem, they go to their leader and they need to wait in line where other team members go there as well. And team leader also has the agenda, there's work, building relationship with stakeholders. They can't do that. So they're overwhelmed with work, with supporting their team members. What they're not doing
(07:13-07:19) Daria Rudnik
is they are not creating peer-to-peer relationship between the team members. When
(07:19-07:49) Daria Rudnik
Whenever a team member has a problem, an issue, or like a question, they go to their team members first. And then together, when they couldn't find the answer, they reach for their leader, for the outside of the organization. And they become interconnected. And they have much more support rather than like, okay, I have my manager supporting me. But I have my whole team and every team member supporting me. And that's especially important for remote teams when people don't meet each other in the corridors. They don't drink coffee together.
(07:49-07:59) Daria Rudnik
So even more, they need this peer-to-peer relationship on the team. So they work together on their challenges together first and then go to their leader.
(08:00-08:23) Emre
I love that analogy. I love what you said about the leader becoming the bottleneck. And that's exhausting for the people who are like trying to reach the leader. But that's also I feel I feel like if you're a leader, I think that can lead to you burning out very fast. Right. Everyone coming to you instead of, you know, having the traffic directed direction.
(08:24-08:46) Emre
All around. It's kind of like, this is going to alienate most of the audience, but if you've ever played Dungeons & Dragons or any kind of tabletop role-playing game, and if you're running the game, the most satisfying thing is you step back and the players can just sort everything out, do the role-playing, and you as the game master, you just step back and you watch them go, okay, okay, like...
(08:46-09:15) Emre
this flows without me being involved and I can actually start because it will also save a lot of time for the leadership as well, right? And they can focus on what really matters. And you kind of went into the whole remote side of the team building experience and that's an entirely different challenge. And now I feel like more than ever, and we always keep talking about this, but with the pandemic, everyone just,
(09:15-09:44) Emre
Dove into remote work. And then I feel like only like 40% of those people went back to the office. And now, you know, it became like a new standard. And very soon enough, and I think we still have them right now, we will have people in the workforce who have never set foot in an office. And personally, I'm very jealous of them. Like personally, I'm jealous of anyone who has never had to wear a tie. Just
(09:44-10:11) Emre
bless their hearts and their necks. So that does come with its unique challenges and that whole feeling of not feeling like you belong in an organization, not feeling like you have those very same connections with your team. So what are some of the ways in which people can form those strong relationships in between peers when you're working remote?
(10:14-10:44) Daria Rudnik
like from my personal experience, the best team I ever worked in was remote team. And the worst team I ever worked with was the remote team. And offline, like office teams, some kind of in between, in the middle. So it is, it really is a big challenge. And if I were to pick only one thing to do to support your remote team, it would be over communication. Like literally,
(10:44-10:52) Daria Rudnik
communicate, use all the channels you have, like messengers, emails, video messages, podcasts,
(10:54-11:20) Daria Rudnik
Sometimes meetings, like anything you have and over communicate, deliver information to people because information gets lost. And if they don't have information, they feel isolated. And if they don't meet their team members or other people in the organization, they feel isolated. So like over communication is key in remote settings. And there are lots of like other steps that you need to make, but like if you want to focus on one, that's over communication.
(11:22-11:47) Emre
Okay, so you're suggesting that people have all these different avenues to reach each other within the team just whenever and just making sure those communication lines are always open. I like that. For me, I feel like oddly enough, some of the best and the worst teams I've ever been a part of were teacher's rooms. I used to be an English teacher and
(11:47-12:05) Emre
I've been in some great teachers' rooms with some incredibly idealistic, awesome people, but then I've been in some horrible teachers' rooms where we were always minutes away from board markers flying across the hall. But...
(12:07-12:23) Emre
To me, I'm not going to name any names, but one company that I worked for was like this big website that just output a lot of content. And technically, I was part of the writers team. But the way the writers team kind of felt like was...
(12:24-12:53) Emre
I feel like we were just fighting over topics. It, it was very scary to me, right? We had every, every month we had to output a certain number of content, but you know, there's always, and it was about like movies and pop culture. And there's always like so many things you can, there's only so many things you can talk about in the pop culture sphere and so many topics that will be approved by the editors. So just think about this, like 200 plus writers online in front of a project management platform and
(12:53-13:21) Emre
waiting for like the editors to drop like the new list of topics they drop and we attack it like docs just like I I did not like it was a bit too competitive for my taste and I loved all the awesome work they put out and I still love the website I'm a huge reader of it but and I loved working for them but that to me was a bit too much and
(13:22-13:27) Emre
I feel like when you start working remote and when you join a team remotely,
(13:28-13:56) Emre
that sense of, oh, I need to stand out, that sense of, oh, I need to go the extra mile to stand out amid this crowd of people behind their screens, it just might become a bit too overwhelming. So I feel like organizations need to do something to foster that sense of camaraderie, that sort of friendship. It doesn't have to be the family, but there still needs to be, oh, hey, we're on the same team.
(13:58-14:21) Emre
And yeah, there are plenty of different things people can do for that. But what are some of the most positive experiences you've had when you were like building a team remotely? I want to just address what you said about this, like writers fighting for the topics. Sometimes you don't need a team. I mean,
(14:22-14:52) Daria Rudnik
Some people like that. I'm sure there were people who felt, okay, I'm going to do that. I love this fight. I love this energy. Some people would love that. They pick the topic, they write the article, they send it over. It's on a team because they don't work together. They don't collaborate. There's a new shared goal of them. There's a goal of writing this piece of content for the article and get my money for that. That's it. Sometimes it's very important to tell people, we're a working group.
(14:53-15:19) Daria Rudnik
We're not a team in the team meaning. And that makes people understand, okay, we're not a team. We are just colleagues working on articles. Because when you have a team, the first thing you do is you define a shared goal that everybody accepts. And when people know we are together, the only way we can reach that goal is by collaborating and working together.
(15:20-15:41) Emre
that automatically creates this understanding, okay, we need to collaborate. Otherwise, we cannot do anything. I feel like that is a very nice differentiation we need to make. And I feel like that's something that goes missing a lot, right? People that work for the same company, people that work under the same umbrella
(15:42-15:54) Emre
They don't have to be a team. More often than not, they're not. But we see them, okay, they work together, they work under the same roof. So this is a team. So are they? So...
(15:55-16:21) Emre
I think those boundaries to set on what defines a team are very, very important. And they're very important if you're planning to turn a group of people who work for the same group, for the same company, into a team. So, yeah, let's talk about that. What are some key, you know, criterias you would need to set in order to turn a bunch of colleagues into a team? I love that question.
(16:23-16:44) Daria Rudnik
I'm writing a book about how to turn a disengaged, alienated team into a high-performing team. Spoilers. Okay, let's go. Yeah, and there are five, not that simple, but five steps that any team should go through to build a team. So the first one is clear goals. Like I said, the team needs to have this clear goals, clear shared goals.
(16:45-17:06) Daria Rudnik
Then comes linking relationships. When those people work together, they know like how they're working together. But the other thing is they know their stakeholders and they're connected with the team stakeholders, not only the leader, but only all the team members know their stakeholders, what they expect from them and how they build relationship with those stakeholders.
(17:07-17:27) Daria Rudnik
Then come integrated ways of working. So how do we work together? What are our team rules? How do we hold our meetings? What are the agendas? How do we make decisions? How do we solve conflicts? Like what are the basic team rules? Then come collaborative decision-making.
(17:27-17:47) Daria Rudnik
When the team decides, okay, how do we make decisions? Sometimes leader makes decisions, but most times on the team, you need to agree, how do you make those decisions collaboratively? And the final part is knowledge sharing and feedback. How do we grow and learn as a team? How do we seek feedback from each other and from our stakeholders?
(17:47-18:16) Daria Rudnik
And those five elements, clear goals, linking relationships, integrated ways of working together, collaborative decision-making, and knowledge sharing and feedback, which come with the acronym CLIC. So they make your team CLIC. I like it. I like it. I love the acronym. And yeah, it all makes so much sense. And hearing you talking, everybody can sense, I think, you have
(18:17-18:46) Emre
a very strong background in coaching and consulting people. So moving from the team building side to another question that I have for you is I loved reading your piece on performance versus workaholism, driving high performance in a team versus workaholism. So how do we
(18:46-19:13) Emre
So how do we differentiate them? Because I feel like there are lots of people who are performance oriented, who are very driven and ambitious. We're saying, oh no, we just have very ambitious goals and we're just driving performance. But in fact, they're just displaying workaholism. So set us straight, Daria. Well, I think the,
(19:14-19:39) Daria Rudnik
If we're not talking about like the medical terms like of hauling... No, we're not diagnosing it. I mean, just like regular conversation. Well, the main differentiator is what is the impact you're creating? If you do some work and you create an impact, well, that's probably a performance. But if you're just busy with something, with work...
(19:40-19:47) Daria Rudnik
whatever it means and it's not productive it's just like confusing being busy with business with doing business
(19:50-20:10) Daria Rudnik
It's easy to work on operational tasks because it gives us sort of a boost of dopamine when we, okay, check, that one's done, that one is done. And it gives us a feeling, okay, we're doing something, we're accomplishing something, some small tasks, sending emails, having meetings, having those conversations. It gives us a feeling we're doing something.
(20:11-20:25) Daria Rudnik
I know leaders sometimes feel guilty. They say, okay, I feel guilty when I step back and think because it means I'm not doing my work. They do understand that thinking and planning and strategy is part of their work.
(20:25-20:49) Daria Rudnik
But somehow it's not part of the workplace culture. So they feel guilty stepping back and thinking and working on their strategy. And that, like, it is an effort from them to steal this time for personal development, personal well-being and strategy. And I feel like I recently...
(20:50-21:05) Emre
helped co-write a piece on why the modern leader is very much afraid of delegating. If you ask anyone on LinkedIn or anyone with a platform,
(21:05-21:28) Emre
on, hey, like how important do you think is, you know, for a leader to be delegating, you know, their tasks, their responsibilities, everything. I don't think if, you know, you know how those commercials are with toothpaste where like nine out of 10 dentists approve. I don't think we will have like one dentist saying no to this. Everyone will say, you know, leaders should be delegating the responsibility.
(21:28-21:49) Emre
because it helps with empowering your employees and distributing the workload, all that. But if we start looking at how these organizations actually function, we will see that nobody's actually using the toothpaste. It's sitting there. We're all loving the idea of the...
(21:50-22:18) Emre
Okay, enough with the toothpaste. But yeah, we're loving the idea of delegation, but nobody's actually doing it. Everybody's like trying to, oh, you know, I'll take all of it on myself. And I thought about it. And like, I think it goes beyond a sense of like, oh, you know, the quality is not going to be as good. Because more often than not, like you were part of hiring these people, you know, they're capable. I don't think it's just quality concerns. But
(22:19-22:41) Emre
I think we have now a false narrative behind people's definition of leadership. The definition of leadership is, you know, it's a very, even though the world of work has evolved, the definition of leadership, I think, still somehow stayed in, you know, the Middle Ages, where, you know, we have, you have a king who is, you know, first to ride into the battlefield, last to retreat during it.
(22:42-23:10) Emre
But that's not the way. That's just, again, it will cause burnout in leadership and it will, I think it results in a lot of employees feeling redundant and feeling that, hey, like my skill and all the things I'm able to do, they're going to waste. So what is your opinion on that? Why do you think leaders are a little too like, let's say shy of delegating their responsibilities?
(23:11-23:39) Daria Rudnik
This is an amazing question. And there are two things there. Like the first one, like you mentioned, this heroic leader who saves it all. And like, we need to admit that the era of heroic leadership is gone. Like you cannot, there's no person who can in this ever changing, like in ever changing environment can save organizations. It is the time of the empowered teams. But the second thing is,
(23:41-24:10) Daria Rudnik
Delegation is a totally wrong concept. There's no such thing as delegation. When we think of delegation, it feels like, okay, here's a leader who has a bucket of work that he needs to distribute to their team members, which is not the case. It's not true. If we come back to the shared goal, the team has the goal and the team with the leader, obviously, but they identify the roles or the leader identifies the roles that needed to be on the team.
(24:11-24:17) Daria Rudnik
and the responsibilities for the roles they come naturally so whenever tasks come to the team
(24:17-24:47) Daria Rudnik
there's no need to distribute it to some team members. Okay, who should I delegate it to? No, this work task goes directly to the team member who has the role that is responsible for performing this kind of tasks. And it means the leader doesn't have to be someone who is kind of distributing the tasks. It's the structure of the team itself helps the tasks being distributed. And okay, no delegation. Perfect. And
(24:47-25:14) Emre
I have to normally, when I sense the opportunity for a moment to plug our product, TeamFleg, I just jump right into like a commercial-like monologue thing. So are you looking to build your... I just go into that. But I think, yeah, I'm just going to be like very open and honest about this. This is something we talk a lot about when we're developing a performance management software or like a goal-setting platform.
(25:14-25:42) Emre
or task management tool and a lot of our discussions were about how do we make sure when we're like developing developing a product for like teams to use whether they're remote or you know in-house how do we build a product that makes sure everyone is aligned with the goals everyone is everyone sees those okay these are our big organizational goals and this is our team's goal and this is my individual goals and ambitions and
(25:42-26:07) Emre
everything that I need to do. But how do all of these contribute to the big goal, to the big like our, whether that's your North Star metric or whatever you want to call it? I think, yeah, that sense of alignment and everyone seeing the big, you know, the big picture and goal is very key because right now it's not
(26:07-26:32) Emre
it's not the day of the company people anymore, right? People, I mean, my father worked at the same company for over like 15 years and he was all in, he was all in on it, right? We had, you know, company merch all around the house, like Bristol, Myers, Squibb, like we had like everywhere. I knew, I knew the acronym when I was like five. It's still, it made like something in my brain because it's,
(26:33-26:55) Emre
back in the day was like just the era of the company people. It's not like that anymore, right? People, whether it's the whole uncertainty of everything that's going on in the world, whether it's like the alternative revenue streams of like the options to strike out on your own, it's very hard for an individual to internalize a company's goals.
(26:55-27:19) Emre
And I don't blame them. I don't I don't want to go like, oh, these kids these days, they don't take ownership of their. Why should they? Why should they? What's what's in it for them to, you know, be fully invested in the goals of this huge company that they're probably a part of? And I think defining those structures, defining, hey, look, this is your role. This is the part you can play in.
(27:20-27:48) Emre
us, like in the organization, reaching our goals. But also, I think what comes with it is, okay, so what? I help do this, I play my part in it, but what's in it for me? Other than the paycheck, which is not just, which is not a reward, it's like the agreement we have, but what comes next with all this extra dedication and all my, you know, commitment to these big organizational goals?
(27:53-28:23) Daria Rudnik
Well, that's exactly what a leadership job is about, is aligning individual values of team members with team goals and organization goals. So when I worked for the companies, I was lucky enough to work with some really great companies. And when I joined a startup and I knew they're growing, I wanted to create an environment for people where they feel safe and they feel this development.
(28:23-28:52) Daria Rudnik
personal ambition to do that. I like that. And the company actually provided me the opportunity to do things I love doing. So in the ideal world, which I think is very possible in most of the organizations, okay, what is it that you love doing? What is it you want to do? Find role and company that can give you that and do together. You have similar goals, just work together on those goals.
(28:52-29:15) Emre
And I think it's also vice versa, right? If you're a leader, if you're running a team and everyone is like, employee engagement is such a huge buzzword now. And I mean, I've used it like I think gajillions of different times on our blog. Obviously, like we are an employee engagement software too, but I think
(29:16-29:36) Emre
And I think, again, once again, Tara Furiani said the best. Pizza parties aren't employee engagement, right? Giving people pizza, coupons, whatever, those are fun, whatever, that's not employee engagement. And we were talking about the role of the leader. I think a huge aspect that goes into leadership is...
(29:37-30:07) Emre
creating a workplace where you can channel the things your employees are excited about doing, like they're also, they're talented, they have their skills and just things they want to do, things they feel passionate about doing. So, okay, how can we channel that into something that contributes to our big organizational goals and just drive everything together? So, I think, so the question here is, and we talked about how we take, you know,
(30:07-30:33) Emre
a group of random individuals who work for the same company and turn them into a team. So how do we get these people excited about the common goal? How do we install in them the sense of what's in it for me other than the paycheck? It's co-creation. When they co-create the goal and they co-define the goal,
(30:34-31:00) Daria Rudnik
And they agree on their action plan. And they feel excited about that because they are part of this thinking process. That's the first step. And then kind of... If we take the self-determination theory of motivation, what motivates people is autonomy when they have the right to choose what they're doing. It's...
(31:02-31:31) Daria Rudnik
Okay, I might be messing up the different concepts, but again, it's autonomy, it's the growth opportunity, and it's social connection. When people feel that they work together with people who support them. So those three things motivate people at work. So if you give people opportunity to co-create, if they feel they're growing and they're doing it with their team members, well, that's a big, huge part of the employee engagement. Perfect. Perfect.
(31:32-31:57) Emre
I think most of the ideas you push forward and everything, again, they do obviously have their roots in, you know, coaching and consulting and just helping leaders elevate their team. And I think after this conversation, you know, 30 minutes in, I am trying to, I'm starting to understand, oh, so that's what a team architect is. But
(31:58-32:27) Daria Rudnik
Apparently, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I probably am, you are actively trying to replace yourself as a coach with robots. What's going on in there? It's about replacement. It's about supporting and enhancing. Like we all know, AI will not replace humans, but humans using AI will replace those who don't use AI.
(32:28-32:55) Daria Rudnik
I like that tagline very much. So, yeah, I'm building my AI coach who can support people when I'm not available, who can provide easy answers to, like, most common questions. But when it comes to change, when it comes to, like, real organizational change, I don't see AI can replace me in that part. Okay. So...
(32:55-33:12) Emre
For those who don't know or aren't familiar with your current work, we are talking about, what's the name of your AI coaching assistant? Aydra. Aydra. Aydra. So what does Aydra do? Because I think that's very interesting so far.
(33:13-33:42) Daria Rudnik
Well, for now, I'm just playing with it and just starting working on it. But for now, what it does is it answers most common questions people ask. Like, what is a team? What is team architect? What is delegation? How leaders can do delegation? And basically what I'm sharing with you right now, I would reply in the chat. Okay. Okay. So how does it feel to be heading into this, the new
(33:43-34:09) Emre
AI space coming from your background. And when you're seeing results incrementally, what does that feel like right now? It's so exciting. I mean, I love playing with it. I love working with it. I love using different tools for my personal performance. Yeah, super exciting. Not a tiny bit scary, no? No, I'm not.
(34:12-34:29) Emre
I'm technologically optimistic. Okay. Okay, so... We know who to call out to when, like, in 20 years, Hydra takes over, like, the entire world, I guess. But...
(34:30-34:57) Emre
I think that leads us to my like, I'm like wrapping up questions. I feel like it is such a huge part of the conversation these days, right? Using AI in the modern workplace, the place of AI in the modern workplace. We know that one of our competitors caused a lot of waves by discussing, you know, just AI employees overall and creating profiles for AI employees and
(34:57-35:24) Emre
and just the role of using artificial intelligence in the modern workplace. And where do you stand on that? You're clearly an optimist when it comes to, you know, the use of AI, but what are some lines that you think, you know, that have to be maintained when AI is being implemented into the daily flow of work? Again, I'm not an AI expert. I'm an active AI user, and...
(35:25-35:51) Daria Rudnik
What I see is happening is there got to be a very clear disclaimer on what AI can do and what it cannot do and what mistakes it can make. It's okay to try different things. We've seen examples of biased AI decisions. We know that that happens and that will happen because we're still learning how to use that. Whenever we implement AI, we need to be
(35:51-36:10) Daria Rudnik
um cautious about the decisions and the results and they producing and also communicate it to people hey we're trying this out we're monitoring it everything is going to be under control but when i when we see it's kind of performing well we'll let it go but when not we'll just change and replace it
(36:10-36:38) Daria Rudnik
so i believe especially when we will be using ai in hr space of people development emotions uh redundancies and all these things they need to be very clearly communicated that it's not just we give it to ai whatever like how many how biased it is we don't care but that it's it's being monitored yeah uh like over the ever since you know the large language models they
(36:38-36:53) Emre
went public and they just became a part of the mainstream. I feel like there was this wave of over-promising and delivering something pretty cool, but...
(36:53-37:20) Emre
not along the lines of what's promised and people again, not just, you know, the developers and the CEOs over promising, but people, you know, we have that built in us. You know, I am a huge sci-fi nerd. I have a dune tattoo right here. I am in it. I am all for that future. I think people got way too excited for, for a very, very sophisticated collage creator.
(37:20-37:44) Emre
At the end of the day, that's what it is. An incredibly sophisticated word collage creator became just huge and people leaned into it too hard. And now we are at a place where an everyday employee going about their day will have ChatGPT open or like another large language model open on the side.
(37:45-38:09) Emre
at any given time. And we're seeing these huge investments into the AI space. But it's an amazing tool and it's an amazing product that, like you said, I think your line of AI won't replace humans, but people using AI effectively will replace people who don't. I think that just sums it all up perfectly.
(38:10-38:40) Emre
especially in the HR and leadership space, it's really important that we never lose the human element. I, you know, we here at TeamFlect, we are a Microsoft partner and we work very closely with Microsoft and we've done plenty of stories with them. And we are all for everything Microsoft and we love following those news. When I saw the announcement video for a co-pilot and I saw people just drafting emails left and right, responding,
(38:40-38:57) Emre
to someone's emails through just an AI generated response. And then it just looked, it felt off to me where, you know, we talk about, you know, these remote communications where you draft an AI generated email to me,
(38:57-39:21) Emre
I respond to it with AI, and then suddenly we're not talking anymore. So that one, it was never about, to me, like, oh, you know, robots are going to take my job. I'd love to see one try to host this podcast. It was never about that. But it was more about, oh, like, are we at some point going to lose the human connection element? And that was pretty scary for me.
(39:25-39:51) Daria Rudnik
I mean, I think we're still learning how to use AI correctly, like those AI-generated LinkedIn posts, AI-generated emails, and then some tools that prevent from receiving or publishing AI-generated content. And I think it's just the noise that, but most major things happen, not in the space of creating text, but mostly in understanding how it works.
(39:51-40:21) Daria Rudnik
Like in HR, what skills need to be developed in the organization? In this one, you have thousands of people. How do you know which skills need to be provided to which part of the organization? And these kind of things. And AI could help there. Like hugely can have huge impact, but not in generating emails. Definitely, definitely, definitely. Like there are some clear and incredible benefits to just integrating it to your like everyday workflow.
(40:21-40:41) Emre
And it's awesome how, you know, a new skill just arose called, like, prompt engineering. Are you good at giving, like, creating good prompts? Because the results can be just miraculously different. And it's, again, it's fun and exciting and fun.
(40:41-40:59) Emre
Yeah, we still don't know where exactly it's going. And awesome. So Daria, I'm not going to keep you here any longer. So before we wrap up, you were just talking about a new book that was coming out that you were working on. So can we learn a bit more about that? And when can people expect to read it?
(41:01-41:19) Daria Rudnik
Well, sure. I'm still working on it. It's a work in progress. And I'd really love to hear real stories that I can include in my book so that it's not just me thinking about out loud, but other people, what they think. So if anyone wants to be a better reader,
(41:19-41:48) Daria Rudnik
like read some chapters give me some feedback that would be amazing but mostly it's the book about how to turn a disengaged alienated alienated team into a high-performing team going through those five steps of uh clear purpose linking relationships integrated ways of working together collaborative decision making and knowledge sharing and feedback all right and it's all about making that theme click click loving it all right uh
(41:49-42:04) Emre
Daria, thank you so much for coming on the show. I think people can find you on LinkedIn as Daria Rudnick. Yes, absolutely. And thanks for inviting me. It was fun. It was great questions. I love talking about that. Thank you so much.
(42:04-42:29) Emre
Thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been very fun for me as well. And if you're listening to us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts, leave us a like, subscribe. It really helps the show out. And if you're looking for a performance management solution that is fully integrated into Microsoft Teams and Outlook, you can just click the link in the description to try Teamflake for absolutely free with no time or future limitations. That's about it. Bye-bye, everyone. Have a great day.