Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
What if I told you that burnout has almost nothing to do with your workload? Most leaders I talk to aren’t exhausted because they’re doing too much. Rather, they’re doing too much of the wrong things. Many leaders are operating from an outdated script that equates busy with effective. Today, we’re tearing up that script. We’re going to show you how to stop leading from obligation and start leading from authority, which might be the only way to survive the AI era. Intact. My guest today is Carmen Seda, Vice President of Operational Talent Solutions at Randstad USA. Carmen leads staffing and talent strategies for the manufacturing and logistics sectors in Northeast Georgia.
Bernie Borges [00:00:48]:
And what you’re about to hear goes way beyond talent acquisition. Carmen is bringing a bold, insightful lens to what’s really holding back leaders and how we can all lead more powerfully by reprogramming the way we think, Think, Choose, and Act. And spoiler alert, everything Carmen stands for aligns totally with my fulfill leadership mantra, and I’m excited for this conversation. Carmen, welcome to the LifeFulfill Podcast. Let’s get right to it because you have said that most leadership challenges are not operational. They’re about identity, timing, and authority. What do you mean by that?
Carmen Seda [00:01:30]:
First and foremost, thank you, Bernie, for having me with you here today. I couldn’t agree more with your last sentence before. I think that’s why we connected the way that we did. And getting right to it, right? The challenges are in operational. And when I say identity, timing, and authority, they’re three very distinct things. I say identity first because understanding who we are and how we are responding to our current life work challenges is a strong identity theme that requires a lot of self-work, self-actualization from a leader. So that identity, who they identify with, how their own operating system translates, it’s first and foremost the most important thing that a leader needs to self-assess themselves to work in an area of life where, like you mentioned, AI is coming in., right? The human factor of our work is coming in, and it starts with that leader themselves truly knowing and understanding themselves. The next word that I use is timing, because where we are with things and understanding that not everything is a pressure.
Carmen Seda [00:02:46]:
We’ve just come from big-time hustle nature where everything had a deadline, everything has like this rush factor to it. And I mean, there’s a part if you’re strong in your identity and you’re strong and you’re embracing the AI, you can kind of help yourself in some ways. But understanding what is truly important for me to know at this time, what is really gonna drive my business? Chances are it’s not KPIs, it’s something else underneath there that is actually the core of what’s driving it. And the last one is authority, because when you master who you are, when you master what is truly important in that timing, you master your own authority. And our own authority and our discernment in that authority, in that authoritative state that we take, is going to be so important. And it doesn’t encompass just power. It’s also sensitivity. It’s also imagination.
Carmen Seda [00:03:42]:
It’s also just truly understanding teamwork and what that really means.
Bernie Borges [00:03:47]:
OK, you said a lot there, Carmen. So thank you for unpacking that, and very succinctly as well. I do want to put, I don’t think this is going to surprise you, I want to put an exclamation point on the very first one, the identity one, because as I said in the introduction, we’re totally aligned and identity, self-awareness is so important. I think I may have shared with you, I know I’ve shared this with my listener before on previous episodes, that according to a Harvard study, only 15% of us are sufficiently self-aware. And that really impacts leaders. So I love the fact that you begin there with identity, and then of course, you add the other timing and authority. And what I want to ask you as a follow-on question to this is, what kind of expectations do leaders have? Have they inherited a playbook that maybe doesn’t recognize this or maybe is out of.
Carmen Seda [00:04:46]:
Date? They’ve inherited a playbook. And I think to some degree what you said, I mean, it’s so critically important when you said that 15%, right? We’re just operating from this like different dynamic and we’ve got boomers getting ready to like retire out and we’ve got Gen Xers who have had to be like this middle place of where we are. But we are realizing, I don’t know what if it’s the AI or if it’s the pandemic in action that We don’t have to work the way that we did. But when a leader has been in, this is how it’s always been done, and doesn’t understand that we’re all being challenged to learn differently, to act differently. Like, I like to tell a lot of my clients and people that I work with is, we’ve mastered that other script already. We’ve seen the results of it. We’ve been practicing it for years, right? Industrial revolution came in, and it just, you know, it has been this churn ever since. What about if we could make it happen differently? What would that take? What would that look like? As a leader, if you’re not self-aware, you’re not gonna be aware of the engagements in your team and how to engage your teams properly because the newer generations, right, millennials set the standards for balance, but we’ve got the Gen Zers and the Gen Alphas coming in.
Carmen Seda [00:06:07]:
They’re driven by purpose. And so, as a leader, you’ve gotta be aligned with that.
Bernie Borges [00:06:15]:
Just to put one other exclamation point on the whole concept of the outdated playbook, you and I are recording this on a platform, happens to be Riverside. Shout out to Riverside. I emailed you the link to it. I didn’t fax it to you, Carmen, right? Faxing is so out of date. Once upon a time, faxing was very common, but it’s out of date, right? But yet, yet so many leaders are faxing. It’s a metaphor, meaning they’re working with an outdated playbook. And it’s mind-blowing. Where I want to go next, because I want to cover a few aspects of this while we’re together, is I want to talk about burnout because burnout is something that I see a lot of.
Bernie Borges [00:06:57]:
I’m sure you see a lot of it as well. And so speak to that. What are you seeing in the way of burnout? Why are leaders burned out? How are they handling it, et cetera?
Carmen Seda [00:07:09]:
I’m gonna share something that an attorney that I recently met with mentioned, and I think his line really encompasses that. It’s that the dream that we were given to grow up with wasn’t really true. And I think for most people here, maybe not so much of the newer generation, when I say this, it’s gonna really track. And that is that We grew up learning to do well in school, to go to college, to be the first one at work, to be the last one to leave. We’ve acquired so much debt for our education to get to where we are, and then we have to pay that debt and the rise, the costing, the rising costs, right? And we can get a little bit into that too, is still a factor. And so this lawyer who would’ve been in business, now he was in his 60s, He was like, “I’ve not gotten out of the cage yet,” right? And my response to him, it’s like, we thought we were asking for freedom, but we wanted freedom to do those things, not freedom from. And those are two very different things too. The freedom to be who we are, to do how— to do the things that we want, and how does that look like? The freedom to love what we’re doing, right? That is the true thing.
Carmen Seda [00:08:35]:
If you love the work you’re doing, then you’re, you’re living free. But if you’ve mastered the script that we’ve been given, just to realize you’ve just fallen into the same cage of the power grid that got you there, you didn’t master your authority. And now we go back to that identity and authority work, because that’s what’s at the core.
Bernie Borges [00:08:59]:
So in your experience in working with leaders, how are they overcoming this? Because that’s huge. And it’s not something that sometimes people will come to understand quickly. And even when they do, Carmen, I’m sure you’ve seen this, sometimes there’s some denial that’s going on because it’s a realization about something that can be painful and can be kind of difficult to break through and work through from a leadership freedom standpoint. Point. So how are you seeing leaders, you know, break through that?
Carmen Seda [00:09:33]:
That question is so rich. Why? Because that’s it, right? Especially like if you followed this path and you’ve gained this leadership, you’ve done so much work to get there. And there is this still amazing level of knowledge that is there. But as we’re bridging this, we’re being factored— it’s not the same world that our parents lived in. Let’s face that, that’s first and foremost.
Bernie Borges [00:09:59]:
That was the, that was the fax generation.
Carmen Seda [00:10:01]:
That was the fax generation. Exactly. And the fact is we’re not in that, we’re not in that anymore. And with inflation, with the current landscape of business and what we’re seeing, right? The changes of work, the proliferation of AI and automation and technology like that has in a lot of ways given certain freedoms to certain people who have known how to utilize it. And now leaders in big companies are having to pivot. It’s not that their knowledge isn’t warranted, it still is, but they’re being challenged right now. We’ve gotta master the human autonomy right now. We’ve gotta master what humans do we have working under us? What do they wanna do? How do we enrich our organization with what they have to offer versus the old script of it’s gotta be done this way and this way and this way, because that doesn’t work anymore.
Carmen Seda [00:10:57]:
And The test is here. The test is here. There are organizations out there who are honoring that and are seeing some of that pivot, that changes with that, or they’re being made to change the way that they run their organizations. But that’s the challenge that they have right now. The script is clearly not working any longer, and we’ve had to change it. A lot of companies are also doing restructures, recalibrations, and this is again, they’re at least trying. They may not be getting it right. It’s going to be a lesson, but it’s going to be the story of our generation.
Bernie Borges [00:11:31]:
Yeah. Part of what I’m hearing you say, Carmen, so tell me if I’m understanding you correctly, because this is how my mind is sort of interpreting your commentary, is that because we’re in this fast-moving, evolving world, which a lot of it is evolving through technology and notably, of course, AI, but there’s a ripple effect there because so much AI is being deployed in the workplace, the ripple effect is multifaceted. It’s on processes, it’s on culture, and that impacts how people work. It impacts what the expectations are. It even brings up the question of what should the expectations be. So is that what I’m hearing you say, that the impact on leaders is so multifaceted and a lot of it is impacted by AI in particular and the impact that it’s having on workplace?
Carmen Seda [00:12:27]:
You know, it, it’s so, again, just such a dichotomy right now. And it makes me think of as I was leaving the office, we have a marketing visitor in our office and we were just having this conversation about, I work in the manufacturing and logistics sector and I have seen some automations take place and it’s been really exciting to see a robot picking and packing things. But right on the corner of the two robots were two computers for the people who need to work. To program them. And I was sharing that story and thinking about how when the tractor came out, farmers thought they were gonna be out of work, right? And he, like, just, he mentioned that, like, when this came out, when the computer came out, we thought we were gonna be obsolete, right? We’ve had to learn how to do things differently. And so leaders are mitigating the fears of work, and the workplace is needing to understand they didn’t come here to do administrative tasks. If you think about a purpose of life, it isn’t to sit there and write down numbers. Maybe it is to analyze that and to decipher what those mean, which AI can help with, but it’s never going to take over the human component.
Carmen Seda [00:13:41]:
We live in a human world.
Bernie Borges [00:13:45]:
Right? So on that point, the point about how we live in a human world and yes, we use technology in business, but humans are the ones that are using it. Doesn’t this come full circle back to identity? Doesn’t this come back to this whole concept of who are we in this current world and how do we manifest that, harness it, and succeed?
Carmen Seda [00:14:10]:
Yes, that’s exactly, exactly what this does. And this is the work that I do in my private coaching practice as well. I use something called BG5, which is the business application of human design. And whether to some people it may be a little out there, to some it isn’t, I still think it’s such a great exercise in identity work. It’s based on one of the oldest texts, which is called the I Ching, and the I Ching drives purpose into work, right? And it’s like, for example, what are the shadow sides versus what can I, what can I learn from this? What, what is this really teaching me? When there’s a lot of discord and I’m not wanting to listen, Right? That’s a call for me to practice discernment and to listen in. And so we work through that through these very like unique ways and it’s self-identity.
Bernie Borges [00:15:01]:
Work. And, you know, I’ve had a little bit of exposure to human design, just a little bit. And it’s funny you say that some people think that it’s a little out there. It’s, I think the reason, ’cause that was my first reaction, to be honest, Carmen. I think the reason is because it’s just so different and I’m wondering, as you work with people and discussing the human design, and I think you said BG5. BG5, yeah. Yeah. What’s the learning curve? How are people embracing.
Carmen Seda [00:15:34]:
That? It’s a bit of self-work. And what I start with is at least 70 to maybe about 89% of us work in a state of frustration. And bitterness because we can’t make the things we want happen. We’ve been taught and felt that we just need to control, control, control. And this may sound easy when I mention it, but we all know that the layers that we’ve built to be in this hustle, hustle, go, go culture have taken years to create. And so it’s really is truly like the peeling of an onion is to realize that most of the things that drive successful feelings with us, like satisfaction, happiness, peace are driven because we have been in an energetic zone of our genius and we have honored it. We’ve said, this is what I wanna bring to the world. This is what I wanna do.
Carmen Seda [00:16:26]:
And it oozes out of us in a certain way. Will that test our capacity to not get frustrated at it sometimes? Absolutely. But that’s the man in the arena, right? If you’ve read that tale of like you fighting and you keep fighting for what you believe in, and that’s the tenacity. So when you can identify that, out within yourself and create your own clarity concepts around it, that is what to me drives it. And I’ll make this small note too, like, I have taken so many assessments in the workplace. Every time I do those, they’re always the mood that I’m in for the day. They just tell me who I am in that day. They may drive some behaviors that I may be helpful for and notice, and I have got— I have gained insight from that.
Carmen Seda [00:17:13]:
But it doesn’t help me to explain the why behind it. It’s just like, I need to change X, Y, and Z instead of why do I feel that way? Why did I come to believe that this doesn’t matter? And what are the things that do matter? And that is the difference in the way that I work with helping leaders identify their identity and gain their authority voice.
Bernie Borges [00:17:36]:
Okay. Now we open this conversation by speaking to the three pillars, if you will, and pillars is my, my my way to frame it up. Identity, timing, and authority. We spent a lot of time talking about identity. So let’s spend a little time unpacking timing and how that fits into that equation of those three.
Carmen Seda [00:18:00]:
Pillars. There’s a bit of a different approach to that. I think that if we look at the seasons of life, we have to realize we’re all in a collective dynamic together. A lot of us, many of us are dealing with the shifts that AI is gonna bring into the world, dealing with the shifts of a world that, you know, the way that we do business globally is changing from both a political landscape, but we’re all faced collectively with these challenges. And so the timing piece is critical for two reasons. What is important in this moment? And how many leaders operate from every week I have followed XYZ and I’ve got to get to this goalpost without discernment. Timing, the timing factor helps us discern what is it that is really important in this moment? What are the behaviors that we have to achieve? You can have a set of KPIs each week, and for the weeks where you maybe don’t have that much client activity, those things can help work. But if you’re still driving KPIs when your staff is full of client activity, you’re not really honoring that timing in that moment of what’s truly important for your team.
Carmen Seda [00:19:18]:
What are the things that, that needs to be, that needs to be in place? And that’s when understanding that we don’t, we’re not just, we are not the robots. We can let the robots do the robotic work. We are the assessors of where we are in time and space right now to really drive what’s.
Bernie Borges [00:19:35]:
Important. What’s interesting, Carmen, is that I still see a connection to identity because of the self-awareness factor. You use the example, if my employees are driving KPIs, but it doesn’t align with a particular client priority, well then I need to be self-aware of that.
Carmen Seda [00:19:54]:
Yeah. Well, identity is the first part of the work.
Bernie Borges [00:19:57]:
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Carmen Seda [00:19:57]:
Think how to apply it, how to apply it, how to like, You’d be surprised. It’s like, okay, this is what I am, but how do I do this in this world? Well, we got to learn how to apply it. So maybe timing is the application of it.
Bernie Borges [00:20:10]:
Okay. All right. And then what about authority? Because authority can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people in the context of what we’re discussing here today. Why don’t you frame that.
Carmen Seda [00:20:22]:
Up? So we deal with many levels of leadership. And Sometimes leaders that have gotten, especially middle leaders, they outsource their authoritative voice to others. And that to me signals, again, probably identity work, right? They haven’t done the identity work. And it’s almost like if you’ve mastered your identity work, if you are living in the now and the present and driving the things that matter in this moment, then you are using your authority. And claiming that authority is very not only self-empowering, it’s like deep wisdom within yourself. And so it’s like I said, it’s not authority of power, it’s almost an authority of discernment, of understanding different points of views of people and not becoming divisive, honoring different voices.
Bernie Borges [00:21:17]:
Yeah, I don’t mean to be a broken record, but it still, to me, connects with self-awareness. But it also connects with what I call authentic leadership. And authentic leadership and self-awareness are very interconnected because to be authentic, it means not just to be yourself, but to be true to others and to be true to the situation. And that connects to your authority as well. So the situation you spoke of earlier, right? If I’m driving KPIs with my employees, but client priorities shifted on Tuesday afternoon, right? Then I need to have the authentic leadership to get with my team and say, hold on a second, we have a shift in priorities. And now I’m exercising my authority to say, let’s shift over here a little bit in the moment because that’s what the situation calls for. So I’m harnessing my authority, but I’m doing it in a way that’s authentic.
Carmen Seda [00:22:16]:
Yes. Yes. I think it leads into the word that I’ve really applied to that, which literally means the same thing, but it’s sovereignty. Are we sovereign? Maybe that’s the deeper question. Are we, in this moment, are we being sovereign or are we being driven from things that we feel are beyond our control? I love that. I love authentic leadership.
Bernie Borges [00:22:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. Great. Okay. So as we get close to wrapping, we’re not there yet, Carmen, I want to ask you big picture crystal ball, you know, where do you see us going in this world that we both live and work in, which is leadership, right? What do you see as the future of.
Carmen Seda [00:22:59]:
Leadership? The future of leadership. I mean, no one can foretell the future, but I do feel that drastic changes are coming to that. I feel the way that we work is not gonna be so more of a job title or position, but an area of expertise, and leaders are going to have to be adept to understand what expertise do I need today, tomorrow, this week, this month, this year for whatever goals I have going in my team, and do I have that correct expertise? I feel we’re going to all need to be working more in that zone of genius. For me, it’s seeing cycles, right? To give an example, I can look and see where something is broken. I bring a bunch of new ideas in to like renew new cycles. And can motivate a team to do them. And once they’re functioning the way that they’re functioning, it’s almost like if I look at even just how ironically this has played out in my life, even with my frustration, it has always been me, okay, great, you mastered this, they mastered this. Now let’s send you over to the next team to do that, right? And it’s like, I, I live in this zone of this is the way that I lead people is seeing what is broken, fixing it, making those judgment calls, and then like helping them, motivate them, seeing who was in that team, are they there, right? And I And I think that that’s going to be a big case of it.
Carmen Seda [00:24:21]:
I have taken teams and pulled them apart where they had specific job profiles and noticed that you guys are all called managers, but you are amazing at training, you are amazing at sales, and you keep your team operational. Let’s forget these titles and let’s do this all together for a regen. And it’s helping everybody see themselves, like, exactly in this is what I love to do part of my job. So if I’m in this role and I love to be operational and technically driven, and I love to make sure that our teams are compliant, why am I spending my time out there selling? We’re not using that salesperson in the right capacity. That’s not their zone. And I really think that this is an area that leadership is going to have to harness in this new era.
Bernie Borges [00:25:09]:
Post-Ai. So, yes and? So the only thing that I would add to that, Carmen, and boy, I’m going to be a broken record here, is the whole self-awareness thing. And the reason that I’m so emphatic about that is because of the 15% number that I shared, right? If only 15% of us are self-aware, then we need to be aware, no pun intended, maybe a little bit, of that fact and consistently encourage people and strengthen people’s ability to be self-aware so that they can harness all the opportunities that are in front of them. And I have to share this thought with you because as we get a little closer to wrapping our conversation, this conversation really to me has been sort of a lens into what leadership looks like beyond the things that we expect in the day-to-day workplace tactics and KPIs and reports. And really more about what it means to lead, as you say, with identity, with timing and authority. And I love that. And I want to say something to my listener right now. And that is, ’cause I encounter this all the time, and Carmen, I’m sure you do as well.
Bernie Borges [00:26:18]:
So listener, if you have felt the strain of leading from obligation, a place of obligation instead of from a place of authority, and if you feel any kind of burnout and you’re not experiencing fulfillment, I hope this conversation really reminds you, first of all and foremost, you are not broken, you’re just misaligned. And it’s really, it’s feedback and you’re on the journey. To fulfillment. And so just remember that and remember this conversation and those 3 pillars that we discussed here today. So Carmen, thank you so much for this conversation. Where can people connect with you and just learn more about what you’ve got going on?
Carmen Seda [00:27:01]:
So I do have a website for my private coaching practice that is called carmensaida.com. So just my name. And you can follow me also on LinkedIn where you get to also, if you are feel inclined, you can subscribe to my new newsletter, which is called The Sovereign Leader, for more of these types of insights.
Bernie Borges [00:27:21]:
The Sovereign Leader. And is that a LinkedIn newsletter?
Carmen Seda [00:27:25]:
LinkedIn newsletter, yes. Okay. I’m actually in Substack as well, but I don’t know how to give you that name. I’m new. I’m new at learning. I’m still also learning new technology.
Bernie Borges [00:27:35]:
Yeah. Aren’t we all? Aren’t we all? Well, one thing I love about, ’cause I have a LinkedIn newsletter as well, what LinkedIn does is when someone connects with you, they immediately, and I mean like in a nanosecond, send that person, that brand new connection, an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter. So anyone who connects with you on LinkedIn will get that invitation. So Carmen, thank you so much. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I have a hunch that we’ll continue this conversation.
Carmen Seda [00:28:02]:
I think so too. I could see so many ways we can elaborate and really provide listeners with so much value. It’s a great conversation and thank you, Bernie, for putting this together and bringing these insights to others. It’s so necessary. My honor.
Bernie Borges [00:28:18]:
No, so not mine.
Carmen Seda [00:28:18]:
Thank you, Carmen. Thank you.
