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Redefiners
The Truth About Talent, AI, and Why Some Leaders Get It Wrong with RRA Chief Science Officer Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
00:33:07
Welcome back for Season 6 of Redefiners! What better way to kick off the new year than introducing Russell Reynolds Associates’ first-ever Chief Science Officer, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. And if that wasn’t enough, Emma Combe from the Leadership Lou...
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- [00:00]
A
Call them change makers.
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B
Call them rule breakers.
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A
We call them Redefiners. Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Redefiners. I hope you all had a great holiday break. I'm Marla Oates, a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates. Before we get started, just a quick reminder to all our listeners that you can find all the episodes of Redefiners and Leadership Lounge on YouTube. And if you're watching on YouTube, just hit that subscribe button below so you don't miss an episode. And for our audio listeners, don't forget to write Redefiners. We love to see your feedback. Today we have a very special surprise in store for you. To help us kick off season six of Redefiners, we're teaming up with our sister podcast, Leadership Lounge to talk with a very special guest. For listeners not familiar with Leadership Lounge, each episode features insights from our leadership advisors as they lift the curtain on how great leaders think, act and lead. Joining me in this bold Redefiners adventure is my incredible colleague and dear friend Emma Koum, host of the Leadership Lounge.
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C
Hello Mala and hi everyone. It is great to be here with you on Redefiners.
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A
We're so happy to have you. How fun for us both to be together today. Our guest today brings a cornucopia of leadership and talent insights collected over a very impressive career as a CEO, university professor and executive. Along his journey, he's written 15 books and over 250 scientific papers on the psychology of talent, leadership, innovation and AI.
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C
That's right, Marta. Our guest is an international authority in several areas. Leaders spend a lot of time dealing with people, analytics, talent management, leadership development and the human AI interface. This is someone I followed over the years through his books, media appearances and his TED talks. And we're thrilled to share that he recently joined Russell Reynolds Associates as our new Chief Science Officer. In this role, he'll lead our research and development and innovation initiatives and drive the firm's data strategy.
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A
Our guest today is Tomas Chamorro Primusic. In addition to those books and TED talks you mentioned, Emma, Tomas work focuses on the creation of science based tools that improve organization organization's ability to predict performance and help people understand themselves better. Before joining us, Tomas was Chief Innovation Officer at Manpower Group and co founder of Deeper Signals and My Trudy. He was also the CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems which we use here at the firm. It's our proprietary leadership span model. Outside of his corporate leadership roles, Tomas is a Professor of Business Psychology at University College London and Columbia University Tomas, we are so thrilled to have you here today. Welcome to Redefiners.
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B
Thank you. Thank you. It's great to see you and so good to be here. Let me start by saying that I've been listening to both of you for a while, so it's sort of like being starstruck and also, you know, nice. And I have butterflies in my stomach for being here with you. It's great to be here.
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C
We're also so happy and we have so many questions for you. Before we get into the thick of things, we wanted to give you a chance to introduce yourself to our listeners. So why don't you take a few minutes, if that's okay, to share a bit about your background, where you're from, career highlights, anything you'd like to share to help our listeners get to know you a bit better?
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B
Yes. So I am born and raised in Argentina, Buenos Aires, and I spent exactly half of my life there before leaving for the UK for one year to kind of start my second career stint. So I went to London for one year and ended up staying 15, became an academic in the first part of my career. Started as an organizational psychologist at university, but always really cared about the applied side of things. Then moved into consulting, started businesses at some point moved to the US where I started running R and D and innovation for Hogan assessments, then became CEO there. That's how I became acquainted with Russell Reynolds. Originally, Leadership Span was a co creation with me being on the other side and a proprietary leadership advisory assessment tool was created maybe six, seven years ago. And then still in the US I moved on to run analytics and then innovation for Manpower Group, which is a large hiring and staffing company. So I changed quite a bit in terms of the platforms where I operated. But I've always been obsessed with talent and leadership and sort of like bridging the gap between science and practice, making organizations more data driven when they think about selecting or developing leaders. That has been my obsession and it's still what keeps me up at night.
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A
What an impressive career you've done and accomplished so much. Tell us about the decision to join Russell Reynolds.
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B
How.
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A
How do we find ourselves so fortunate to have you on the team?
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B
Well, I had been meaning and wanting to join for a while. Our mission, which is to influence and improve how the world is led. What is more important than that? Nothing else. And you know, I was born and raised in a country that has uniquely been in economic decline for 150 years, courtesy of Bad Leaders. So I'm a little bit traumatized. I have ptsd, which with making bad leadership choices, I can't fix my country. But if I can contribute to improving how organizations and business are led and the world is led, when you operate at the top of the house C suite and the most successful companies, that's amazing. I think it's a fantastic culture. I'm really, really looking forward to this adventure and spending some time also with the two of you. And I'm really looking forward to working together with you and everybody else. So it's an exciting new chapter.
- [06:19]
A
On behalf of mni, we are thrilled to have you here at the firm. Look on redefiners. We always ask our guests, tell us about your redefiner moment. Tell us about a moment in your life that really shaped how you think about leadership. And was that pivotal moment really the.
- [06:35]
B
How you think about leadership started very early. For me, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was the Dubai of the times. So super rich country. You know, in Paris they had an expression to be rich, like an Argentine. And most Europeans were emigrating to Argentina to make it through a series of bad leadership choices. We managed to almost devolve. I remember vividly being eight years old and holding the equivalent of a $20 or 20 pound note and suddenly being told is now worth two cents in the next three or four weeks. Again, I was only eight. We had four presidents rotating one after the other. That and the combination that Buenos Aires was still a big, big center for psychoanalytic therapy. I always tell the story. I grew up in an area, Buenos Aires, called Villafroid, which boasts still today the highest concentration of psychoanalysts per capita in the world. So I kind of was predetermined to study the psychology of leadership. So that's on a theoret. Many, many years later, I had the opportunity to, you know, finish my studies, get a scholarship and leave Argentina. Instead of kind of trying to make it better, I got a scholarship to go to the uk, to London. Deciding to leave was the redefining moment. And I always tell people, including my students, if you look at the population of the world, only 6% of people work in a country other than the one that were born. Guess what? They tend to be more open minded, more curious, more resilient, more hardworking. I'm not bragging about myself, but you have to adapt. And in the beginning it was super hard. But then if you make it, everything is better and easier. So there's a lot to be said also about having the capacity as an economy to absorb People who come from other places because they have an appetite to make it, and they're not able to make it where they come from.
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A
I'm obviously super intrigued in that, as someone who also left her own country, Canada, to come to the U.S. so, no, that's fascinating. Thanks, Tomas.
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B
You're part of the 6% look at us.
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C
And I was lucky enough to live and work in New York for a bit, and it certainly does open your mind in a totally different way. So, Tomas, you grew up in Buenos Aires. You've lived in London, New York, and now Miami. In that time, you've met and worked with leaders all over the world. What are some of the common challenges that you see leaders facing today?
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B
When you spend time not just living, but also operating and working in different places, it's inevitable that you are very sensitive to the differences. But it's also inevitable that you see what's similar today. When I think about the conversations I have with executives, CHROs, CEOs, board members, there's a couple of things that are universal. They're all thinking about how to navigate the human AI era, or interface, you know, which goes from translating investment in AI into adoption first, and then roi, and also how to humanize their culture so that they can have an augmentation strategy and not an automation kind of outcome or result. The other thing is the fundamentals, the essentials of leadership are the same anywhere. Can you persuade a group of people to collaborate effectively in pursuit of something that is higher under individualistic or selfish agendas? Can you create a winning team, a winning organization? What's your legacy? You know, at Russell Reynolds, we have our wonderful leadership portrait model, which looks a lot at leadership potential. That's something that happens everywhere. I think leaders everywhere understand that it's less and less meaningful to look at what leaders have accomplished in the past. Their past performance, their expertise, their experience. And more and more, we're needing to look at their potential, the soft skills, leadership capabilities, their ability to span and so forth. Then you have the differences. And of course, the cultural nuances are important. You know, my latest book is on authenticity, which if you go around the globe, has such different connotations and implications. You know, in. In the US Especially in the west coast, bringing your whole self to work, just being yourself, it's kind of a worship celebrated, et cetera. You go as far as New York and people are more skeptical. You get to London and are like, my God, Really? I mean, come on. So I think the how varies a lot. And also, even if you look at certain things, like how hierarchical cultures are, interest in diversity, inclusion, which is changing even in the same place as you go from one year to the next. So I think the how and culture vary a lot, but the what and the why are basically universal.
- [11:39]
C
To double click on this piece around authenticity because there's so much literature around how being authentic is impactful. To your point that even within the same country, like the U.S. the geographic breadth means that different types of behavior are expected in different regions, would you say that there's one perspective you have that actually would allow you to be more effective across all these geographies, or does it depend on where you are in the world and the culture you're operating in?
- [12:09]
B
It's a little bit like, you know, how spicy do you like your food? Or, you know, I mean, if you have no salt, no pepper, no condiments, it'll be like bland and like airplane food. But then, you know, I have a lot of Mexican friends and Indian friends, and if I don't give them the Tabasco or the chili, they're like, this is very plain, right? So how direct you can be is a little bit like, how spicy do you want your food? The universal bits are really important because anywhere in the world, if you want to be an effective leader, you have to be seen as authentic by others. Now, there's no way to know whether that perception that other people have of you is accurate or not. But what's interesting if you look at the research is that the people who are seen as authentic actually are really good at impression management. They have high emotional intelligence, they know how to self edit, and most most important of all, they know where the right to be themselves ends and their obligation to others begins. And what makes you trust somebody, whether they're a leader, a co worker, or I would even say a spouse is not whether they are brutally honest, but whether they are safe, reliable and predictable. In the end, we have to read between the lines and we have to care about others. And then you still have a lot of leeway and room to be you. And you're always going to be you and not other people. But to demonstrate that you have empathy and you care about others and, you know, have the capacity to self edit in a way that helps the team and the organization is a fundamental accolade or leadership skill.
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C
I'm going to take that quote with me. Where your right to be yourself ends and your commitment to others begins, that is gold dust in my view.
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A
Let's shift gears a little bit. So you wrote this Book titled Human AI Automation and the Quest to Reclaim what Makes Us Unique. So as we're interacting more and more with AI at work, at home, it's tougher and tougher to distinguish. Are we talking with AI versus are we talking with a human? Did that email come from a human? Is it from AI? And so there's a growing call from some leaders, including AI and tech experts, experts for companies to just take a step back in this effort to create super intelligence. This kind of makes me think about that conversation we had with Brad Smith, and he talked about how every technology can either be a tool or a weapon. How can people adapt and stand out in the sea of technology?
- [14:47]
B
Yeah. God, there's so much going on and, you know, I always feel, like, uncomfortable trying to predict what comes next. Most of the times our predictions are off. But if time stopped now and AI development and technological development stopped, we would still need quite a while to kind of absorb it and make sense of it. Like, let's start with very, very concrete and simple examples. So we may have some human listeners, but probably a lot of people are feeding this podcast to their large language model, the Genai model, and getting a summary of it. Right. And that might be fed into another AI. And so we could have made this podcast not being ourselves, but having our agents or our deep fakes or our digital clones doing it. I think AI is incredible to some degree, is the clearest demonstration of how smart we are as a species, that we have managed to create something that can think and create for us. On the downside, that also means that we can be without thinking and creating, and that creates some existential anxiety, at least in me. You know, it's like the card says, I think therefore I am, and now we are, but we no longer think. That was the premise of the book. But what worries me is that during the same time, AI has become more humans, but we have become more robotic. If you think even about knowledge work, it's all optimized for efficiency. And, you know, we are kind of entering more data and being more standardized and, you know, it's like everything goes to the cloud. So I think the call to action is okay, AI will continue to advance and be superhuman if you like, but we should not turn into machines, especially if you're a leader. I think the IQ part of leadership can be outsourced to AI, but you need to provide the eq. So long as there's humans at work and human in the world, they will crave validation. They would crave attention. So in a way. Even if we created the AI version of this podcast and the season seven would be all AI generated, that's great. But then that's an opportunity for us to rediscover how to reinvest the time we save into something that is human and humane. And that, in a way, is the big challenge that organizations face with their digital transformation.
- [17:13]
A
We'll be right back with Tomas. But first, let's hear from Amy Sissons. Russell Reynolds, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer. Amy also co leads our firm's AI transformation, overseeing the activation and integration of AI capabilities across our firm. Today she's highlighting the AI challenge many leaders are only just beginning to notice.
- [17:36]
D
If you've been using AI, you already know how much faster it can make your work. But faster isn't always better. Lately there's been a lot of talk about workslop, the flood of AI generated output that sounds impressive but lacks the accuracy or insight to actually move things forward. Instead of helping teams, it can lead to confusion, extra revisions, and a lot of wasted effort. The issue isn't the technology itself, it's how we use it. When AI is applied with the right intent, by the right people, in the right ways, it can be an incredible accelerator for innovation and impact. But when it's used without purpose or oversight, quality takes backseat. That's why leadership matters more than ever. Leaders set the tone for how AI is integrated and how standards are upheld. In our latest article, we explore three leadership qualities that help organizations reduce instances of workslop and focus on producing meaningful, high quality work. You can find the full article in our show notes or@russellreynolds.com now back to.
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A
Our conversation with Tomas.
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C
We hosted a dinner Tomas in London last week on AI for a group of CEOs and it was really interesting. One of the CEOs leads a business called Wingstop, which has become super popular over here. I'm sure you both know it in the us and he's under pressure to develop kiosks and he is refusing because he's finding that his workforce gained so much even within six months of actually engaging with customers in a restaurant setting. They all say their confidence has increased hugely and he really believes in that as a mission of the organization. So he's not going to move to kiosks in any form of delivery. And it was a really nice counter to this whole piece about efficiency and taking out costs.
- [19:28]
B
Exactly, Emma. I think you're absolutely right and efficiency is great, but it's often the opposite of humanity. It's like it can be inhumane. Right. Even when you are happy to download your, you know, Starbucks app and your coffee will be ready there and then you pick it up, which will optimize your day by 30 seconds and maybe your barista decides to say, hi Emma, how are you? And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're gonna waste now two minutes of my day? Yeah. That is human to human interaction. Let's not kill it.
- [20:00]
C
And could you maybe Thomas, talk a little bit about entry level jobs? Cause I'm really curious about how we are going to have enough critical judgment in those coming up through the workplace workforce if all the entry level jobs don't exist. How are we going to protect or develop critical judgment in the workforce? What are your views on that?
- [20:16]
B
We are seeing a worrying trend whereby if organizations aren't seeing significant improvements in output and then they see that they can reach the same output with allegedly less input, the easiest thing to do is you cut interns, paralegals, apprenticeship or entry level jobs. Which is kind of ironic because I'm sure younger people who are digital natives are more likely to instill and inject digital adoption and show other people how to use. It's a problem because you lose the pipeline. I mean, there is a great benefit in learning the trade and learning while doing if you start. I mean, lots of companies from McDonald's to Ford had CEOs that emerge from assembly lines and from kind of learning the trades or if not, they put people through that kind of training. Secondly, you get the richness of different generations interacting. And I would say third, you actually learn from younger people that just enter what's wrong, what could be done differently. People who haven't been institutionalized and who are outsiders see a different perspective. So it'll be a real shame. Also at a societal level, if you have a lot of young people who are idle and unemployed, it usually doesn't end up very well. You get unrest or antisocial behavior, etc. So I think some organizations are getting it, but the temptation is like instead of cutting senior roles to cut that. Let's see. But at the moment it's looking a little bit concerning. I think on that spectrum. I don't know what you're seeing. If you're seeing the same, what's your experience?
- [22:00]
A
I think that leaders and us at Russell Reynolds are particularly concerned. You know, look, I'll say in the CFO practice we always talk about where are the next CFOs going to come from if we don't have kids going into audit and public accounting and learning some of that data entry and making mistakes on AP and ar. That's how you learn. And you know, my own experience sitting in a bullpen, you know, in London in investment banking. Right. Listening to the more sen mds at the time. Right. It is concerning about next gen and I think everybody you know has a role to play in, in helping develop that next gen talent. All right, Tomas, let's shift into the topic of confidence and competence. Something you've previously written about. You point out that overconfidence may get some people into leadership roles, but it's probably not going to help them succeed. To quote Marshall Goldsmith, what got you here won't get you there. Tomas, tell us about the relationship between confidence and competence. In order for leaders to be successful.
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B
The best level of confidence is that which aligns with your actual competence. So if you're trying to learn a language or play the piano or be good at sales or business development or executive search, it helps to know how good you are. It helps to know what you know and what you don't know because then you can get better and you can close the gap between how good you are and how good you want to be. Anybody who is an elite professional kind of athlete and sports knows it. Failing that, there is an alternative which is to be overconfident. Overconfident people in general, but more so men than women, often have an ability to persuade others that they're better than they actually are. So if you're interviewing for a job, say, and you have two candidates and one is quite self aware and says, ooh, I've never done this before and you know, it will be tricky but I think I can learn it and I would do it this way, but right now, you know, I have no experience. So you get an honest, self aware candidate whose confidence is aligned with their ability and who doesn't engage in deception. And on the other hand, somebody who says, I'm amazing, I'm the best thing since sliced bread, you know, hire me, whatever. Even they're not even lying to the interview panel, they're lying to themselves. Guess who will get the job more often than not. And the science on this is very clear. The correlation between confidence, how good you think you are at something and competence, how good you actually are is 0.3, which means there's like a 9% overlap. So a lot of the times if you pick the most confident person, they're going to be totally inept. And maybe the more interesting one, if you pick somebody who is a little bit anxious, insecure and suffers even from imposter syndrome, they're going to be the most competent person.
- [25:10]
C
And maybe just to build on this point, I think it sinks into this other piece that you've talked about, which is the power of negative thinking. And this is so interesting because it counters what we're always told about positive thinking. Can you just tell us a bit about how you think leaders can use this negative thinking as a positive force?
- [25:30]
B
So in an ideal world and in a logical world, it really wouldn't matter that much how you think about yourself and how you evaluate yourself. You're either talented or not, you're either competent or not, you either have expertise or not. You're either capable of leading and doing the job and persuading a group of people to become a high performing team or not. But in the real world it matters a great deal because how you think of yourself is kind of contagious. And then if you're riddled with self doubt and very anxious and you question yourself, you probably won't persuade anybody that you can lead. And if you are on the exuberant side of the overconfident, kind of almost delusional spectrum, it's not very good for those who you lead, but you might get the job. So if you want to generalize, it's almost like the ideal instance is moderately insecure internally, so you don't believe your own hype and you over prepare and you have a little bit of imposter syndrome and you're like, oh my God, I have this client presentation, this pitch, this interview, this promotion incident and you over prepare. Great elite athletes do this all the time. But once you're performing, you manage to hide that like, you know, the neurotic ruminations and the voice, you know, and you're like, I am the best in the world right now. I have coached a lot of people in my life and usually you coach them to manage their reputation and to, you know, present themselves in a way that is more favorable and more adaptive and more beneficial to them and then others. But the internal side is very hard to change.
- [27:15]
C
It's massive. I think it's a huge driver and we call it professional paranoia quite a lot.
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B
I like it, I like professional, but it's like, it's annoying and you would rather not have it. But it's also a career enhancing disposition, isn't it?
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C
Well, otherwise you become arrogant and then to your point that if that could then affect those around you or you then create a fat, happy and Lazy culture. And I don't think that helps anyone.
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B
If you suffer from imposter syndrome, the best thing about that is that you're probably not an actual imposter.
- [27:47]
A
Tomas, we've covered a range of topics, right? Authenticity, confidence, competence, self talk, negativity, AI. As we kick off a new year, what leadership trends or themes are you excited about or discovering this year?
- [28:02]
B
I think 2026, when it comes to leadership, HR organization will be more or less like 2025. So AI will still be the dominant topic. Because I've been thinking about this for so long, I'm getting a little bit of AI fatigue. But the reality is our clients still need help navigating the human AI space. I think another one will be a consequence of that. Is sort of like trying to think about the organizational design, organizational development implications of that. Because I think there are two competing forces. Either AI native companies that are emerging and I know both of you work a lot in this sector and a lot of kind of tech unicorns and upscales, et cetera. Either companies are going to innovate because they start from a different place. And we're still seeing whether we can have a unicorn, a 1 billion market cap up company with one person and that's it, one employee and just agents or more traditional legacy multinationals enterprise are going to kind of reinvent how they structure and organize themselves. Maybe you know, skills powered, seeing employees as portfolio almost gig workers internally and so forth. So that's the kind of the second one and I think a third one might have to do with more, I would say education. What is the feeder into the skill that like you know, the talent that organizations need to absorb? I think universities have been under a lot of pressure for some time to kind of harness, nurture, develop skills that are more relevant to the workplace and make people more future ready. I think the pressure is going to increase. Logically, I think there will be more pressure to kind of show that you're developing and increasing job related skills or employability, you know, as opposed to kind of knowledge, because knowledge is kind of obsolete right now.
- [30:04]
A
Those are great themes. We're excited for 2026. Okay, well we've reached the time in our show called Rapid Fire Questions. And so this is designed really for us to just get to know you better, for our listeners to hear more about you. So Emma and I are going to take turns asking you questions and you need to respond in one sentence or less. Are you ready?
- [30:25]
B
I am. Was that the first question?
- [30:28]
A
Yes. Okay, question one as we begin 2026. Did you make a New Year's resolution? And if so, what was it?
- [30:36]
B
No. And nothing. I can add a sentence. 85% of New Year's resolutions are broken within the first three months.
- [30:44]
C
I'm with you there. Are you a morning person or a night owl?
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B
Oh, I'm now a morning person. I used to be a night owl, but you know, I've hit my middle age kind of right now, hopefully. And you? I'm up early and I go to sleep, you know, very early.
- [31:02]
A
I'm the same. Look, you've traveled and lived all over the world. What's the most unusual thing you've ever eaten?
- [31:09]
B
Various forms of insects in Mexico.
- [31:12]
C
So, Tomas, with so much of our lives now entwined with technology, what's something from your childhood you wish we still had today?
- [31:20]
B
Just going out and playing soccer in the pavements or around the corner and just like the naivety and pleasures of improvised and carefree analog experiences as opposed to watching other people play video games.
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D
Yes.
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A
The Winter Olympics are starting in a few weeks. If you could play any Olympic sport, what would you play?
- [31:48]
B
I guess I would snowboard and not be good enough for it.
- [31:52]
C
So, Thomas, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self when you were early in your career?
- [31:59]
B
Have an open mind and go with the flow and. But you know, work out what you don't want to do and avoid it. And then if you think that you like something, throw everything into that.
- [32:13]
A
That's great advice. Well, look, last question. As we enter into 2026, anything you're excited about, any new role that's coming on the table?
- [32:22]
B
I'm excited about potentially being the co host of a podcast.
- [32:28]
A
Yes. That's great news. I've been waiting this whole episode for you to share. Emma and I are so thrilled to be welcoming you to Redefiners Leadership Lounge and most importantly, to the Russell Reynolds association, its family.
- [32:41]
B
Yes. So I'm really excited. Listen, it's going to be fun and it was kind of really nice to be on the other side, but I can't wait to be on your side.
- [32:52]
C
Thomas, we are also so thrilled and thank you for joining us today. You're always welcome to stop by the Leadership Lounge anytime.
- [33:00]
A
Thank you.
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B
Tomas, lovely to see you. Thank you for having me.