Why Business-Savvy Communicators Can Lead in the Age of AI - with David Albritton

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Daniel Nestle: Welcome, or welcome back to the trending communicator. I'm your host, Dan Nestle. We've been talking a lot about the future of work and how the constant, accelerating changes in the communications marketing professions have dramatic implications on how we manage our careers. But it's not just ourselves, right? The rapid decline of trust in our institutions, the advent of AI and the deluge of content, good and bad, misinformation, disinformation, call it what you will, it all has a cumulative effect on the nature of work for all work functions and at all levels. In other words, the very nature of what it means to be an employee, manager and a leader is changing. And I think any trending communicator needs to grasp this as they deal with employee stakeholder comms, executive positioning, crisis management, culture transformation, reputation, anything having to do with outward facing messaging.

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Daniel Nestle: All of this is why I've asked today's guest to come back to the show. Longtime friends of the Pod will remember him as the quote unquote rare find the communicator who became a commercial leader, president of a major company, a multi billion dollar global company. But allow me to reintroduce him. A graduate of the US Naval Academy and former naval officer, after a decade in the military, embarked on a public relations and communications career that would ultimately lead to roles such as chief communications officer Nixellus and president of General Motors defense. After launching his own consulting practice, as it were, he joined CRA as a managing director, where he continues his work advising and counseling Fortune 500 execs and organizations on communication strategy, leadership, change management, crisis management and culture evolution.

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Daniel Nestle: He's a public speaker, counselor and coach to dozens of leaders and strategic advisor to major corporations. One of the leading voices in the field of strategic communications has been for nearly three decades. It's my honor and pleasure to welcome back to the show David Albritton. David, how are you?

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David Albritton: I'm doing great, Dan. Thanks for having me back, man. I really enjoyed the first time and look forward to engaging with you today.

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Daniel Nestle: Or you're a glutton for punishment. I don't know, the way it works now.

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David Albritton: I mean, last time, communications, that's just the nature of the beast.

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Daniel Nestle: It is. And you know, better than most. I mean, you know, you've been in the beast in government and in public sector and in private sector, and, you know, you've run the gamut and now you work, you know, as a yemenite, as a coach, and as a counselor and an advisor. So you're really getting a lot of the inside scoop that most people really.

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David Albritton: Don'T also add another responsibility. So I'm an independent board director on a company called Imbekta.

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Daniel Nestle: Oh, right.

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David Albritton: So, Invecta is a $1.2 billion diabetes care business. It spun off from Beckton Dickinson officially in April of 2022. So I've thoroughly enjoyed the last two and a half years learning the new skill of being a board member. The big difference there, as compared to being an operator inside a company, is you got to operate nose in, fingers out. So I got to know enough to ask smart questions to really understand the strategic nature of the company and where we're going. But my responsibility is to the shareholder and not necessarily to the team inside first. And so it's a different, very unique perspective. And I've learned so much. My colleagues on the board are phenomenal, and it's been a great professional and personal learning experience.

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Daniel Nestle: So let's add that up into the whole rare find situation, because, you know, it's interesting, and I know we have a lot to talk about with the future of work, and there's certain things that I certainly want to ask you about your thoughts as they've evolved over the last few years and with the way that technology and the way that everything is changing around us, there's so many pressures and implications on leadership and on management, especially within communications. But before we get there, this whole idea of becoming a board member or being on a board, I think it's a whole other topic to cover. But I've recently separated from my previous employer, and I started my own company, inquisitive Communications. That's not a commercial, but it could be, I suppose.

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Daniel Nestle: But anyway, I started my own company, and one of the things that I've been looking into heavily is, at this stage of my career, I want to give back and I want to help others. And I've been looking into board positions, and it turns out that having a comms background and being in communications isn't necessarily what a lot of boards are looking for. Right?

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David Albritton: Traditionally, no.

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Daniel Nestle: Right. So, I mean, I did. I was very fortunate and was recently appointed to a nonprofit board, which is really, I think, an excellent, first of all, the cause is fantastic, called conversations to remember. And it is an organization that combats loneliness among the senior population, especially seniors who are really suffering, have nobody to talk to, nobody to speak to, many of them with neurological conditions. And we train students, student volunteers. They go through a process. There's a technology platform involved, and we set up very directed and positive experiences for the seniors by working or talking with these kids a couple times a week. And I think it's a tremendous cause. We all have aging and elderly parents at some point. Anyway, my point is, I didn't really mean to plug those organizations. I'm glad I did.

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Daniel Nestle: But my point is that getting on a board is another thing that, you know, communicators now, I think with the way that everything is changing around the world, in the world around us, there are certainly challenges, but there's tremendous opportunity to round out our skill sets to, you know, venture into areas of that have heretofore been either restricted or uncomfortable or, you know, kind of not even in our wheelhouse and them in our wheelhouse and, you know, more comms people on boards. I think it's a distinct possibility in the future because of all that, it.

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David Albritton: Actually is happening a little more as people, you know, who select executives for boards, contemplate what the needs are in the changing marketplace. But one of the critical factors for any communications professional to be considered for a board, they've got to be a great steward of the business. They've got to be a business partner. They've got to inherently understand how business operates, you know, well beyond just the lens that we have as corporate communications professionals, I coach my clients in that way. Across the board, it's increasingly more important for communications professionals who aspire to even become a chief communications officer one day or a senior leader inside of an agency or wherever we're serving as a senior comms practitioner.

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David Albritton: But for consideration on a board, it is very critical to establish what your value proposition is in terms of how different that voice can be. Amongst others, many who have board experience as you're joining new boards, etcetera, or being considered for those. Traditionally, a lot of financial experts, certified financial experts, serve on boards because boards are trying to fill up their audit committees, etcetera, because it's so important. You know, that's a critical function of a board because of the fiduciary responsibility that we have as board members. But companies are facing very unique situations as they go out to the marketplace, crisis types of situations, or, you know, a wide range of situations that traditionally, maybe 30 years ago, they didn't have to face.

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David Albritton: And so having a diverse set of skills on a board to kind of diversify the conversation, to allow, you know, all board members to think about problems differently, to solve them differently, to make different suggestions, that's a valuable skill set to have on a board. And so, you know, many are seeking additional types of voices. And so for those that aspire to do that. You're doing the right thing, Dan. And as I can, you know, encourage other people to do, you know, get your feet wet by serving on a nonprofit board.

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David Albritton: But when you serve on that board, volunteer for a leadership position on an audit committee or some, you know, you are the chair of some committee where you're increasingly more responsible for the strategic success of that organization so that you're getting that experience, but also being able to articulate that to a public or private board, you know, nomination into governance chair who's considering, you know, adding another board member to the board that they're on.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, that might be the plan. It's funny, I never really even thought about it until I ventured into this whole world of being on my own. And that dovetails really nicely into this whole idea of the changing nature of what communications professionals, even marketing professionals do and what we need to do and how our careers are changing and what does that even mean anymore? So were going to get to all that and I wont drop that thread, I hope.

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Daniel Nestle: But the idea is here that you bring this kind of perspective of not only experience and wisdom and I suppose the different types of industries youve been in, but also as a communicator and id like you to, if you can just, I know you've been on the show before, you don't have to go through the whole background, but can you bring us up to speed over the last couple of years? Just what are the things that you're seeing in the world, I suppose that affect our personal management of our careers and where we're going with comms, what should we know about leadership and the state of work right now, I think is a good way to start.

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David Albritton: Covid changed the world, right. In terms of what we accept, in terms of how we engage with people, right. So if you think about hybrid and remote work environments and how we engage, how often people are going into the office, you think about success in any environment, any corporation, any organization that you're in. It all really comes down to relationships. Who knows you? Who do you know? Do they trust you? Do they have confidence in your abilities and those types of things? A lot of trust and confidence goes into just the personal relationship you have with individuals. Well, if you are 100% remote and you don't really get to engage with colleagues other than through this computer screen, you know, using Zoom or teams or Google Meet or whatever it is, right.

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David Albritton: How authentic are the relationships that you're building if you don't intentionally do that and if you don't have the opportunity to engage in person, you know, it's a tougher challenge. And so when you're, you got people working across different locations, across time zones, you know, you have to be intentional about how you engage and how you connect with other people on a regular basis. Okay.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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David Albritton: And so, but you got to think about, okay, well, how am I communicating? You know, am I communicating clearly, concisely, you know, in a cogent fashion? Am I leveraging the right tools to communicate on a regular basis? Right. So email, I mean, a lot of times, you know, because we've got this fantastic tool called email and we have texting and all that. We send something, and many times we feel like we've communicated, you know, that's not always the case. And so you know, for the particular message that you're trying to convey, are you using the right tool? Is the digital tool the right thing? Or do you need to actually have a manoe mano kind of conversation either via phone or, you know, a video teleconferencing call or something like that?

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David Albritton: But then, you know, there's the informal connections that you have to build as well, so that you're building team cohesion. And it's all critical to the success of a comps function. And broad, and more broadly extended into how comms folds into the overall, you know, overall success of the organization, because unique comms uniquely touches every aspect of every business or every organization that it does. Finance does it, too, in a much different way. But we sit in the unique locus of being able to affect culture, being able to affect efficiency, effectiveness, and just the overall operation of a company. And so that's a privilege. And so our ability to recognize that and operate accordingly is one of the gifts that we have as communicators.

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Daniel Nestle: Somebody said recently to me, like, you know, the role, there's a lot of discussions about the role of comms. How can we, how can we elevate comms? Or how can comms be more strategic, whatever. And I heard yesterday a very good statement at a conference I was at. I think it was, I think Andy Farrow, who is head of, who's the VP of sustainability and communications at Mars, right? He said, he said something to the effect of, and forgive me, Andy, if I'm butchering your quote, but he said something to the effect of the assumption is incorrect or where the question is coming from is wrong. Shouldn't be looking to elevate its role, right? Coms needs to be doing its job to be that strategic advisor and build trust in the organization.

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Daniel Nestle: It's not about elevating, you know, comms is not there to build the brand of comms. Comms is there to build the reputation of the company. And we do that by being good at what we do. No question. There's no question in my mind that's true. I think, you know, there still has to be within, especially if you're a new communicator, if you're working inside an organization, there's a degree. This relationship building, you know, has to be real and authentic in order to become, to get to that level of influence that communicators need to have. And maybe that would have been the best, better way for the questioner to kind of phrase that question is, how can communications achieve the proper level of influence within an organization?

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Daniel Nestle: But where I was going with this is you're talking about authenticity and informal connections and communications kind of being in the, or in the mix. You know, somebody also said to me, and I keep saying somebody said, because I forget who, and I don't want to take credit for things that aren't my words, but somebody said, like comms, we know stuff. Like, that's what it's about. We know stuff. Totally true. You know, you're right. Finance touches all parts of the organization. Comms does, too, but in a very different way. And sometimes, you know, in a, it's either a spy network or an incredibly useful and friendly information sharing network or somewhere in between. And you definitely don't want to be the spy network. You don't want to have that reputation in a company. So we know stuff.

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Daniel Nestle: Since we know stuff, we are committing malpractice. I think if we don't use what we know to further contribute to the company and to move up the value chain, create more value. And that is really the trick here, is creating more value for your team, for yourself, for your function as an employee, as a manager, as a leader. How do we do this? Because, I mean, not asking you to answer the entire question. This whole concept of creating value now has become, I think, major pressure point. Because what, yeah, what is it? Because it's changing. Because the whole idea of concepts, value is changing with everything, changing the world. So, yeah, that's kind of where I'm going with that.

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David Albritton: No, so great question, great context. I think I can answer it pretty simply because I coach my clients this way. If we only think about our value proposition and our offering to whatever organization we're in through the lens of communication. We are failing the organization, and we are truly failing ourselves and our professional growth opportunities. We've got to transition our thinking, our actions, our opportunities into first becoming a business partner and operating as a business partner who, oh, yeah, by the way, does communications. And yeah, we know stuff, and we're looking at things through a different lens and all those things. But what the senior echelon of any organization needs business partners or people who understand inherently how this organization makes money. And I don't care if it's a for profit, nonprofit, etcetera, all organizations exist to make money.

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David Albritton: Somehow coming into an organization, because that's how it pays salaries, that's how it keeps the lights on, pay sports, real estate, does everything, provide services and products and all that stuff. Okay, you know, how they do it, where they do it doesn't matter. But the CEO and the C suite of the organization, right? Even though you have disparate functional responsibilities, when they're sitting around a leadership table, there's a trust and confidence amongst them as business professionals, men and women, to say, hey, look, I trust you. We're going to go into this war together, and we're going to come out the other side successfully because we concurrently are going to come up with the right decisions, you know, with the bait, you know, based on the right strategic analyses, that's going to provide the best outcome, you know, for the organization at some point.

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David Albritton: It has nothing to do with the functions. It has everything to do with being a trusted voice around that table. And the more that we as communicators can kind of shed that communications first title and better become business partners, then you get invited to the table to be part of that dialogue, right? So it has nothing to do with reporting structures. And I don't care if you report directly to the CEO as the chief communications officer, you might be two or three levels down. Doesn't matter. Your individual ability to influence outcomes, influence individuals, influence the influencers, is what we uniquely can do if we are intentional about it. So learning the business, understanding the nuances of how and why, paying attention to the things that business people pay attention to, right?

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David Albritton: I asked communications folks that I work with, a coach and mentor, how many times have you read the proxy? Right? You read the ten k, you know, do you know what the ten k is? Do you know what our investment thesis is for this organization? What are the analysts on Wall street saying about this public company? What's our future look like? What's our strategy? Right? You gotta understand the basics of the business so that you can tie your functional skills, knowledge, expertise, ability, you know, to how this organization makes money. And when you communicate that effectively with other people who don't, you know, work in communications, then you can, you know, slide into being that trusted voice around a table.

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David Albritton: I found, and I'll say this jokingly, when I go back to when I was actively in communications, you know, all the other functions know how to do our job very well. We hear it all the time. They tell us how to write. They tell us what we should say. Right. They've got opinions about it, but I can't tell you. One time when I was a chief communications officer, I told the CFO how to do his job or told how to do her job. Right. But we get inputs of it like that all the time. It's because we do sit at the locus of everything inside an organization, a very unique, you know, kind of ledge.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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David Albritton: And so us being able to leverage that is the unique value prop that we bring. And so all corporate communications folks who aspire for greatness in their career, that should be one of the earliest understandings that they have and starting to build that skillset over time. They're not going to be able to do it in a vacuum. Right. You've got to create mentors. You've got to have relationships with people inside comms, outside comms, so that you are absorbing everything that you need to know things, yes, beyond what you know in comms, but also to build trust and confidence so that when you're sitting in the room, you feel confident enough, even if you're in the cheap seats.

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David Albritton: Okay, you're, you know, there's the, you know, the proverbial, you know, boardroom and the CEO sitting at one side of the table and all the C suites sitting around it. But even if you're in the cheap seats along the wall, I. Okay, you got a smart question. You have a smart comment because it's based on research and understanding those types of things. What tends to happen, particularly as we are more junior, we become part of the furniture, we become part of the wallpaper, and we don't share a voice. So we're just in the room taking notes and we're happy to be there, but we aren't contributing anything. Well, you might as well be another chair in that room if that's all you're going to do.

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David Albritton: So if you aspire for greatness going forward, then how are you know, sharing your voice in that room when you have the opportunity? That's a critical skill. For communicators that we don't develop. And I've coached over the last three and a half years since I came, became a full time coach, a lot of pr, communications professionals. And this is one of my key messages for folks as they think about long term growth in their career.

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Daniel Nestle: I keep thinking about everything. Well, everything you're saying is just, it's hitting hard. And I'll tell you why it's hitting hard. I've been in high level comms roles and certainly in public companies, never CCO. I reported to CCO, and I've been part of the leadership team. An executive by name, by title, whatever. I have been a chair on the wall, you know what I mean? Like, I've been that person who comes into the room and is, for one thing or another, reluctant to offer an opinion or advice or knowledge because, well, they're talking about finance now, and I don't want to get over my skis. And fair enough, I need to do more work on understanding finance. Okay, I take that on.

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Daniel Nestle: But you start off and maybe you feel brave, and then after a little while, the dynamics of the room sort of get to you and you're comfortable or complacent, just waiting for your turn, which often doesn't come. And this comes and goes in phases, by the way. It wasn't always like that, but I've been guilty of this on occasion, for sure. And I can't help but think about all of the knowledge and information that's out there that you can grab, and you should be absorbing about your own company if you are seeking to be a true advisor, a true strategic advisor, and also knit yourself in, or be a naturally admitted part of the fabric of the executive and leadership team, part of the decision making fabric of the company.

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Daniel Nestle: And I think now, with all the changes around us, with the way that companies are evolving, and there's a lot of things, the need for speed, for example, there's so much happening in all industries where companies are being asked to do things faster, deliver faster, communicators have to write faster, create messaging faster, the need for speed, the need for relevance and resonance. Just straight up on the marketing communication side, we're failing at resonating with our audiences. There's a thousand reasons for that. People are going to blame AI. AI has a big role to play here, but I think there's a whole, there's a dynamic among audiences where they're shifting so rapidly, it's just hard to keep up, and they're inundated with content. How are you going to get in front of them? How are you going to get to what they need?

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Daniel Nestle: And, you know, and then on top of that, learning to be a steward to the business, as you said, right? Learning. Like if all you can offer is, well, hey, I know how to put that into words and make a nice story out of it. Great. Maybe that's all the company needs at the moment, but that's not going to get you anywhere.

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David Albritton: Well, that's great. When you're a specialist, a manager, senior manager, if you aspire for executive level roles, then you've got to learn a new trick. One thing that I'll say, and this is a secret sauce that I reflect on my own career and as I coach and mentor folks, I kind of put it this way. Your job and what you do all day, every day as a communications professional, if you were looking at me, it's on the left. Okay? That's why you get paid every two weeks. That's why you have a check, that's why you are gainfully employed and everything else. For me, there is no special reward for doing your job well. That's called keeping your job, right? They are paying you to do your job well. There is no special bonus and benefit of that.

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David Albritton: You keep doing your job well, you get your bonuses and all that other stuff. The whole other side of that on the right for me is all this other stuff you're talking about. And if you aspire for greatness in your career, you've got to spend equally as amount of time doing all the stuff on the right besides your core job and your responsibility to become proficient at learning the business and these things, you can't do that in a vacuum. You've got to build trusted relationships with people and other functions and learn as much as you can about, you know, how the operation is growing, is going, you know, what the strategic relevance is, what's the Internet, you know, what are the international issues? You know, are there regulatory issues? Are there, you know, are there outside influences? Are the competitive issues, whatever.

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David Albritton: You've got to be a good steward of all those things. I tell folks on Tom's team, one of the best functions to develop a deep relationship with is investor relations. On a daily basis in a public company, investor relations is thinking about how to tell this story to Wall street, all the shareholders, all the investors, all the analysts, because of how important this is for continued growth, for the function of a public company, right. When you understand that, you know the function of a public company is to create, you know, value for shareholders, and everything else is secondary. That's a change in, you know, in thinking and understanding. And it's great that you sell all these widgets, and it's great that you provide these services and, okay, that's fantastic.

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David Albritton: But it comes down to the bottom line and how you are, you know, creating, you know, growth for your shareholders. So understanding through their lens what the story is, what's the narrative, what's the feedback. Right. Is a great place as a basis for basically understanding how and why we operate in this organization.

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Daniel Nestle: A. Yeah.

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David Albritton: To get there, you've got to be intentional about upnotes relationships and understanding. One trick as you prepare. And this is something that we just don't spend enough time doing before. And we'll use your example of going into some of those meetings, Dan, and you were sitting in the cheap seats and you were part of the wallpaper because I would say many times you didn't prepare before you got in there. And what I mean by that is, okay, now you've got these relationships. You know, I mean, the agenda is promulgated a week ago, two weeks ago, and, you know, on Thursday, next week, here's the agenda. And SVP is going to be speaking about topic x. Okay? Now, you may not have a relationship with SVP X, okay?

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David Albritton: But you have relationship with the vice president and the director and the senior manager on his or her team. And generally the SVP didn't put the slides together or the presentation together. It's the folks below him or her that did. And so they know about the issue that they're going to be communicating about on the agenda very well. When you leverage your relationship with them, you know, say, hey, you get an additional 1530 minutes to walk me through what Tom Jones is going to be talking about on Thursday in that meeting. Right. I want to understand the nuance of it. Oh, yeah. By the way, can I wink, nod, nod? Can I get a copy of that so I can study? Right. So the preparation you put in before you get to the meeting is going to make all the difference in the world.

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David Albritton: Because now you're educated, now you're confident. Now you can raise your hand and ask a smart question so that you aren't just a part of the furniture in the room. Okay? So prior preparation is a key for that. And to your point, let's say it's a finance meeting and, you know, it's not an area of expertise for you. You talk to and learn about at least the basics of that for yourself to be confident and comfortable, you know, I'll do a plug for two of my favorite people. You know, I got out of the navy to work for Ron Colp, as you learned on the last show, and he and Matt Ragas have now put out their fourth book as of a couple of weeks ago. You know, just dealing with the issue of business acumen for strategic communicators.

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David Albritton: Probably the best series of books on the planet for folks that, you know, in our profession that want to increase their acumen around, you know, finance issues or business issues. And it's a great study guide. It's a great, you know, tool to have on your desk to understand, you know, just the basics, a balance sheet.

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Daniel Nestle: What's the name of the book, David? I'm sorry? What's the name of the book again?

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David Albritton: Shucks, because I'm 58. Can't even remember what I had yesterday. I got to look, you know, but Ron Culp and Matt Ragas.

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Daniel Nestle: Ron Culp and Matt Ragas got it.

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David Albritton: They're both professors at department Paul University, you know, excellent guys in our profession. They teach and train. And Ron is just a stalwart inside of our. In our. And that legend inside PR communications, and been one of my strongest mentors my entire career. So the first book is business essentials for strategic communicators. Second one is business acumen for strategic communications. The third is mastering business for strategic communicators. And the one that just came out is business acumen for strategic communicators. The workbook, I've yet to purchase that one since, I mean, it's like a week old since it formally came out. But I'm looking forward to getting my copy. But I can tell you that first book, business essentials for strategic communicators, I've given out more than 100 of those might.

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David Albritton: When I was, you know, working in comms, people on my team got copies of it, but I've given away copies of that book to people who don't work in communications as well. It's that.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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David Albritton: And so, you know, as you think about growing your career opportunities, the more you know about business outside of just communications and how we interface across the business, the more success you're going to have in your career. It is essential for future career success just because of the changing nature and what they expect from us.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah. So even though we have all this chaos around us, new technologies, changing audience behaviors, changing patterns, regulatory environments going nuts, we have regulations. We don't have regulations. New areas of technology that are utterly unknown and with ethical dilemmas and legal frameworks coming out the wazoo, these are, these things that comes, is really central in dealing with, at the same time, understanding, keeping on top of your business. Now, David, you're talking a lot. The things that you are talking about are really enterprise level public company must dos. But even in smaller companies and even in smaller operations, the lesson should be the same. Know the business. And one thing that has come up a lot, certainly, as you know, is the role of artificial intelligence, generative AI, specifically in our jobs and in our companies.

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Daniel Nestle: But I want to add to that or kind of keep enhancing this part of the conversation, which is the role of generative AI as a career enhancer and as a personal, in this case, personal career or personal knowledge enhancer. And let me tell you what I'm thinking here, because this is something that is not the straight up Ford use case that people think of when they think of AI. They think of, okay, I'm going to use this to take care of a lot of the grunt work. You know, get to efficiency and productivity. That's your basic use case. It'll write things for me. It'll, you know, it'll do my emails, whatever it is. And, but I pose this with the advances that are there now, everything that you're talking about getting up to speed on your company, understanding the finance, right.

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Daniel Nestle: While it would better, I think, to go to be in an environment where you have a, you build a relationship with the finance people and you say, hey, I have a question. Can you explain this to me? That's best. If you can sit down with CFO or VP of comms, a finance, and say, hey, look, Jennifer, I'm thinking about this and I can't quite make sense of it. Can you just sort of work this out for me as a layman? What does this mean best. But as you said earlier, we're in this kind of hybrid world where things are moving so fast, hard to get on people's calendars, that's no longer an excuse not to get up to speed or learn things.

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David Albritton: Right?

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah. So now, though, with the tools, like, I wouldn't have said this two years ago, but now I could go to any of the tools I have available. Perplexity probably is where I would start, but I would say to it, I need to prepare for a board meeting or I would go into chat, GPT or something, and I'd upload the publicly available documents, say, look, here's last year's financial report, here's this year's financial report. Here's the ten k here. The things that are available to the public because I don't want to breach any security issues. I would ask it to walk me through it, give me, you know, talk to me like I'm an idiot, tell me what I need to know. I would give it all kinds of context to tell to.

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Daniel Nestle: I would, I would even tell them, here's who's on the board, and I might describe each person's Persona on the board and ask it to say, hey, walk me through what possible questions I might get, you know, and scenario and role play. Now, this is a time. This takes time. It's not like, you know, it's not like, oh, I'm going to cheat. Instead of reading the book, really what you're doing is you're creating an interactive experience that's going to educate you. Ideally, you should still read the book. But now with this week even, I don't know if you've been watching, but Google LM the Google, sorry, Google Notebook LM. I don't know if you've seen this yet, David, where you upload a incredible amounts of data and information into a Google LM instance, a notebook LM instance.

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Daniel Nestle: So you create a notebook and then it uses the LLM to process all this stuff in ways that are kind of novel and interesting. One of the immediate ways that it's been used recently is people uploading text like old articles or new articles or something. It then it creates your AI summaries like AI does, but then it does an audio file which changes the entire thing into a conversation between two voices, a male voice and a female voice. So it turns it into essentially a podcast and you can listen to all the key takeaways of whatever you've uploaded as its interpreted through the AI in the form of a very easy to absorb conversation. Thats amazing, Jeff, its fantastic. And again, how can we use this?

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Daniel Nestle: Youve just pointed to one of the greatest and most important ways that this can be used to advance our careers. I, like many communications people, did not grow up with a financial education. I was never, I didn't go get an MBA and God bless the people who have. But I've always felt on the back foot when it comes to finances. I know a thing or two and I know enough to be dangerous, but I'm not going to go out there and make pronouncements. But if I have all the IR materials and I upload this to something like notebook Lm, and I say, okay, talk me through this it will literally talk me through it, and I will get better at my job.

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Daniel Nestle: So the point of all this is that changes the entire nature of our job and changes the nature of work, and it eliminates excuses, I think, for not knowing about your business. So don't you think that's going to like, well, it should help any professional, really increase their ability to contribute to the organization, but it's going to open up, I think, new areas of expertise or allow people to suddenly start connecting dots that they've never connected before, which is going to change what they can offer and how they process their job and how they break up their hours during the day. Fundamental changes to the way roles are created, to the way jobs are sort of done. There's a lot to connect there.

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David Albritton: Yeah, lot to connect there. And I agree 100%. So, yeah, what I'm thinking is, it's all true, 100%, but I'm going to put an asterisk, a huge asterisk on it.

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Daniel Nestle: All right, I was waiting for that.

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David Albritton: What an AI tool can't do is give you nuance in human interpretation of the actual situation that's going on. Because regardless of how much knowledge you have, you're still dealing with human beings who have their own idiosyncrasies, who don't have their own views of the world, who have their own opinions and all these things. So you can come in armed, you know, up to the teeth with all this great information that you just collected from all the, you know, dissection of, you know, all the documents and everything else and come out with a clear narrative. Okay, this is great, but the interpretation of that other person to what you just communicated or how it gets absorbed or understood, you know, is going to be different. The physiology of any human being, and I'm guilty of this, right? David Albritton is different at 07:00 a.m.

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David Albritton: Than he is at 10:00 a.m. Than he is at 01:00 p.m. Than he is at 07:00 p.m. Okay, just because at that given time of the day, I've got different things going on in my world that my brain has to process. Okay, I got to get up, get dressed. I got to do this. I got to take the trash out. I got to get my son to school. You know, all these things are happening while I'm trying to dissect something related to work. But that's different at 10:00 when I'm at work and I have all these deliverables and have this meeting coming up I'm worrying about and all that other stuff. So the human condition, you know, is forcing you to deal with situations and knowledge and information differently based. And that's just your own physiology.

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David Albritton: Think about the people that you're engaging with, too, who are going through that situation as well. And so their decision in terms of what you say to them at 10:00 a.m. In terms of how they react to it based on what's going on in their context, could be different than 02:00 p.m. Based on their physiology and what their attention span is and all those types of things. If did they hear you clearly, did what you say, you know, was it clear? Was it concise, was it cogent? You know, those types of things. So there's so much nuance to this that you guess you have a ton of basic information, but when you add on the human condition to the top of it, that's the important piece of it. And then I'm going to add on another piece to the top of that as well.

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David Albritton: You can be the most knowledgeable person in the world. You have all this data, all this information, etcetera. But if you're doing it in a vacuum and nobody gets to hear it, then it doesn't count. Another reason you develop these relationships outside is, you know, another thing that's hugely important for career growth, for communications professionals managing what people are saying about you when you're not in the room, period. All stop, right? When you go develop these relationships and you're asking smart questions and all that kind of thing. Right? The fact that you're doing that and stepping outside your comfort zone, those types of things, becomes part of the narrative about you that Tom Jones tells to Sally Smith. Hey, you know, Dan was here talking to me. You know, he's a comms guy. Why is here talking about, know, the upcoming earnings call.

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David Albritton: Wow, that's impressive. Right? So now from a third party perspective, you've just, they've just shared, intentionally, unintentionally, something very positive about you. Right? And so as you manage your narrative and manage how people are thinking about you when you're not around, your active involvement in that is critical. So it doesn't matter how much base knowledge you have. The tools are fantastic to help develop knowledge. Yeah. But you also have to exhibit that so that people who are the decision makers and the influencers know this as well. And so how you engage and what you do with, who you do it with, it's got to be very strategic as well. So there's levels to this that are still going to be impactful on how successful you're going to be going forward.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, I mean, as I said when I started, that little diatribe that, you know, the best thing is to go straight up to Jennifer and say, hey, I don't know why I've chosen Jennifer as the name, but why not? I mean, there's a lot of gen. That's probably because I'm Gen X. And every, you know, every woman I know is named Jennifer in some way. But regardless, you go to your VP of finance or your CFO and you say, hey, Jen, can you walk me through this? This is that human part that is and always will be, I think, you know, just critical and important and necessary not only for your career, but for your own sanity in this hybrid and virtual remote.

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Daniel Nestle: All these situations that people are working in, building those relationships becomes much bigger challenge due to the media and the mode of your interactions. But doesn't mean you can't interact with me. Correct? Correct. And I totally hear what you're saying. The last thing anybody wants and what I've seen people be accused of, and earlier in my career, I may have, full disclosure, been accused of something like this at some point. Which is. Which is. Damn it. That dude's just the know it all. What the hell? Like, you don't. That's a horrible thing to happen.

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David Albritton: Absolutely.

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Daniel Nestle: You know, you don't want to go in there like a. No, that's terrible. So, you know, respect others. And, you know, what you hear all the time is just chill out, listen first, understand the context, get those nuances, but have that information in your head, because then you'll process in the moment and at the time in the way that's appropriate, and you'll be able to back up any kind of ideas you have.

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David Albritton: Well, it's two key words. Add value, right? So you can have all this information, but put in, you know, put it into the right context at the right time with the right people. That's adding value to the conversation. It's helping those individuals see it differently. Maybe you're connecting dots in a way that they hadn't seen it. Maybe you're augmenting the approach or the thought process or something like that. You're adding to something versus just spitting, you know, out all this, you know, information that, a, they already know, b, okay, they thought about that last week. And to your point, you're coming off as, you know, the subsequent know it all. And that's just not helpful for anybody.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, pain like that changes you. And certainly, I mean, if you're aware enough and you're self aware enough, and you're like, oh shit, I shouldn't have said those things. And you go back and you reflect, and you work with a good coach like David Albret, and then maybe you could knock that kind of know it allness out of your system, you know, and learn to listen. What I was thinking about, though, as we're talking, is, okay, now we have the capability to really dig into our businesses and to understand more than ever as a communicator, not only do we have the capability, we have the requirement. We have to, or else you're just an individual contributor and you have to be kind of satisfied with that. And you know, there's nothing wrong with that.

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Daniel Nestle: But with all this information at our fingertips, and with all the ways in which we can manipulate it and absorb it in ways that are more amenable to our own learning style and our own understanding style. Right. How does this change the nature of comms itself? How does this change the expectations of what comms people should be doing for companies? And I'm asking because there's this constant thread that's been happening, or that I've been talking about, which is that I believe that corporate structure itself is obsolete and doesn't know it yet. Maybe not structure necessarily, because different companies are going to need different structures, but more like the whole fundamental concept of, here's the job description, here's the job.

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Daniel Nestle: You do this, you get this done, you then succeed and move up to the next level where your job description adds these three bullets, takes these three away, and so on, until you finally get to wherever it is in your hierarchy, where it's a completely different set of bullet points, but it's a job description, and that's what people do. I dont think thats going to count anymore, because you could have a so called entry level person and were seeing this more and more, especially in tech companies and things like this, or smaller companies, people who are 24, 25 years old, who are geniuses or just have great common sense, they build their own ecosystems out of the tools available to them, and have figured out some of the secret sauce, which is, hey, I have this job. But you know what?

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Daniel Nestle: That doesn't define me. I want to do what's great for the company. So what if I have my own tool that helps me schedule things, and I have my own tool that helps me understand finance, and I have this whole other thing that okay. I can't do, I'm not really good with excel. But you know what? I have this other thing that's going to help me through that and, you know, make me able to produce and generate charts and reports that are, you know, et cetera. You create your own kind of little workforce of one, and none of that is in a job description that I know of.

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David Albritton: Right, correct.

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Daniel Nestle: So, you know, as that goes up into senior leadership, obviously, you know, the changes or the variability also gets broader and broader. I mean, what you can do and what you should be doing. So how is this going to change? Or do you think it's going to really change the fundamental nature of what the role is of the CCO, what the role is of the CMO? And will there be a role or will it be a kind of cloudy, amorphous remit? I don't know. What do you think?

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David Albritton: No, I think it's a great perspective. Great question. I think, yes, it already has changed with the advent of new companies with new cultures. The traditional people working 30 years, 40 years at a company inside a big manufacturing, you know, retail, you know, type with these tech companies. To your point, they got a 24 year old genius who was a vice president because of how good he or she, you know, does whatever they do, you know, in the area that they work in and those types of things. And then you've got just the changes of structures. Right. You got more flat organizations now, but then, you know, you've got organizations who are more in tune with cultural and societal types of issues in terms of their policies and those types of things. So you've got emerging issues that are happening.

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David Albritton: We've got, you know, political unrest that, you know, companies are deciding to take a stance on or not. And so there's so many things inside these organizations that also have direct implication on outside and external stakeholders and how they look in and engage and all that. So the role of, you know, strategic communications is ever more important because of, I'll use that word, I love this word, nuance, because the nuance of how we're going to have to absorb all these things and help, you know, our leaders, our organizations, our cultures and how we're going to anticipate emerging trends. Right. And issues that are happening, how we're going to have to help organizations kind of navigate, if you will, through, you know, some contentious issues, right? Yeah, very complex issues sometimes.

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David Albritton: And then, you know, with just kind of the addition now of the things that we in corp comms are responsible for, right. That weren't necessarily 1015, 510 years, 20 years ago, sustainability, CsR Dei social justice. Right. You know, all these things. Right. That are just part and parcel to the responsibility today. And so people in our profession are going to have to become very adept at understanding these nuances and then factoring into how we make recommendations on what's happening inside, outside the organization so that we've got a steady flow of clear, concise communications using the right channels to the right stakeholders at the right time. Being able to create and foster two way communications because your employees voice is equally as important these days if you want to keep them engaged inside the organization and not voting with their feet to leave your organization.

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David Albritton: Right. We're gonna have to deal with Ambiguity. There's a lot of times we're not gonna know. And as leaders, we have to be comfortable with saying, hey, I don't know right now, right. Based on the information that's in front of us right now, I don't know. I will get back to you and you authentically have to be able to get back and, you know, help people understand and come along on the journey with you. And so it's different. It's a new world that's, you know, we're going to have to be very agile. We have to adapt. Right. If you go back to Heartbreak Ridge, what eve clinics would. Right. Adapt, overcome, improvise. Right. That's just the world. Yeah. We're going to have to be comfortable living in it. Not one static answer. Yes, no, maybe, sometimes a maybe, but no.

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David Albritton: There's a whole lot that goes beyond that we're going to have to be know, comfortable with in the environment we're going to operate in?

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Daniel Nestle: I mean, would you say, and I'm starting to get conscious time here. Start. Wrap it up here, David. But would you say what you're talking about, there seems to be a kind of a mix of the qualities of leadership within comms and even externally, even across the organization. There are certain things that are solid like, you know, adaptability, agility. Was it adapt, overcome? And I missed what was the heartbreak bridge one. Adapt, because it's great.

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David Albritton: Adapt, overcome, improvise.

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Daniel Nestle: Adapt, overcome, improvise. Right. You know, still, I mean, that's. I don't think that's changing at all. That's ever more important. But is what people expect from leaders changing like Isdev, you know, is the qualities of, are the qualities of a leader different in your experience so far, or do you think they're going to get different? I don't know. It's an open question because I certainly don't have answer. And again, this is an area where, like, AI is going touch every part of our lives. But, you know, AI is not going to, at least not yet. It's not going to be a leader, you know? So, yeah. Is it going to. Is it changing? Is there going to be change? What do you think?

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David Albritton: I would say for the most part, no. People still need leaders to show up. Leadership is what you do. Right. People say, you know, got this notion that leaders are born and people, you know, are just born into becoming good leaders. Yeah, to a point. All right. If you were seven years old and you put a group of seven year olds together and one person stands up and creates the game and then drives all the other kids to play, you know, that's just a person who's comfortable leaning into it. Doesn't necessarily make them a good leader when they're 35. Okay? That's, it's a nice core skill to have when they're seven. But leaders deal with issues in, you know, common areas, such as, you know, how do you deliver and receive feedback? Okay, what's your decision making capacity and capability?

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David Albritton: How do you motivate and inspire people to do what they're supposed to do? How much accountability? How do you know, take on accountability? How do you hold people accountable? And what it. How are you accountable? What's your relationship capacity? How are you fostering great relationships? And then how change management. Right? Change is forever around us. How do we deal with change? How do we make recommendations on how, you know, employees can deal with change and all these things. The core essence of a leader helps people get better. Right. People. Leadership is about helping people in situations get better. Okay? And that's the fundamental, you know, aspect of how we coached leadership. Just for a quick plug. It's all about that. So, you know, it doesn't matter what your background is, doesn't matter how senior you are.

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David Albritton: The core essence of leadership can be very consistent. And there are leadership behaviors that are associated with those most admired leaders. Right. The best leaders in the world have exhibited a lot of these traits over time. And, you know, as you think about that in terms of me growing up in my career, how can I continue to be a better leader by just changing my behaviors? A lot of times in traditional coaching, you know, we use psychometric analyses. Right. We take, you know, I'm certified to give the Hogan assessment, okay? And under, you know, the auspices of the Hogan, you know, personality inventory, you know, let's say interpersonal, you know, sensitivity, somebody scores low on that, which means they're kind of caustic. They, you know, don't get along with others well. They have a strong opinion about things.

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David Albritton: And what that does for some leaders is become a crutch in terms of, you know, this is who I am. I know a lot about myself through the psychoanalysis. Right. And so everybody's just got to deal with me because they know I'm this way. Well, that's a crutch that is not going to make you a better leader. A better leader will say, okay, I know this about myself, but leadership is what I do and how I engage. And so I've got to be observant of how I'm engaged with people using leadership behaviors that are going to make them better. Leadership is not about necessarily making me better. I got to make those people believe in me and have trust and confidence in what I'm sharing with them, how I'm making them better. I'm providing opportunities.

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David Albritton: So the essence of all of that remains the same regardless of the industry, regardless of title of seniority of age, of all these external factors. Core solid leadership is really for us. You know, for me, how I'm thinking about it these days is really based on your behaviors.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah. And I would think it's certainly a prerequisite to have solid leaders, good leaders. And, you know, different organizations will require indexing in different directions as a leader. Right. Some will need to be a certain type of person, some will need to be a different type, but they all have to share those kinds of qualities that you're talking about. Right. And timing plays an issue, too. Organization in a growth period versus an organization in decline that needs to turn it around. Good leadership is still good leadership, but the way that the levers you pull and the buttons you push are different, right? Absolutely. That seems to be a solid area that is not going to change like, I think, at all. And it seems to be a prerequisite for creating an innovative organization, you know? Absolutely.

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Daniel Nestle: When you have trust in your leaders and leaders have trust in you and you have a solid relationship and those nuances you're speaking about are understood, then it's a much better precondition, I think, for allowing your employees and people who work with you and for you to run, you know, to run an experiment within whatever limits you need to set.

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David Albritton: Absolutely.

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Daniel Nestle: And I think that's going to be more and more important as we go. Last thing, I think, David, as we kind of come up on it. The last thing I wanted to ask you. So I agree with you that leadership is not going to change for sure. Relationships. So you started this off by talking about relationships, I think relationships. One of the big r's that, again, AI will not help you with, I mean, obliquely. AI can give you some hints and pointers and you can set up tools that are gonna help you coach through things or whatever, but it's not replacing the actual relationship you build with a person. I know you guys are working on something, an AI driven sort of leadership and coaching tool, which is not a replacement for a person, it's an augment or a resource.

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Daniel Nestle: And I'll ask you to kind of talk about that in the closing sort of remarks you're going to make here.

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David Albritton: But.

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Daniel Nestle: The building of relationships is so important through these screens from thousands of miles away, it's challenging. Any final kind of thoughts or advice about getting through that? And is there value in just saying, you know what, screw it, I need to go to an office all the time. I mean, how are we going to keep these relationships up amidst all this crazy chaos around us? And then how's your AI tool help?

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David Albritton: Yeah. No, no. Great. Relationships are essential because at the core of any company, I don't care what widgets we're selling, what services we're providing, it's an organization, you know, even nonprofits, educational associations, you know, whatever it is, it's made up of human beings. And relationships are key and core to success. And so your ability to interface, to be a good leader and leadership, people think about it as a hierarchy. You know, you got this title and you've got these people work for you, and that's your. So therefore you're a leader. Well, leadership is 360 degrees of influence. You can lead your boss, you can lead your peers, you can lead. I can lead. You know, I'm leading my parents into older age. I'm leading my, you know, my kids through college and now onto their, you know, lives after college, those type of things.

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David Albritton: So leadership is nuanced again, and it's about authenticity and it's about being able to just, you know, create a core understanding of what value I bring and what value you bring, too, because many times our relationships are very transactional. Right? We have. We know. I've worked with this person and I know them well. We've had beers and had lunch and all these things, types of things. And think about those companies that you left. How many people do you still stay in touch with on a regular basis as they grow and go in their career and those types of things. And now it's 5610 years ago, right? This last time you engaged with them and now they're the vice president communications at Company X. And your company just got acquired and you got laid off and now you're reaching out to this person.

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David Albritton: Hey, George, it's great. You know, hey, we worked together ten years ago and it was great, right. I'm looking for a job. Is it George's job to find you a job if you truly have not invested in that relationship in ten years? Right. And so then we're surprised when things don't happen because we have these transactional relationships, right. So, you know, an authentic relationship is one built on trust. It's built on, you know, both investing in it, helping each other in ways that doesn't necessarily have to do anything with the job. And so think about that in terms of the relationships you have as it relates to Alex. Alex is a tool that is a virtual AI coach created by Sierra at Meredith leadership. It's a proprietary tool and it's built on Claude. Right. As a coach. Oh, nice.

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David Albritton: One of the more popular AI tools, but the differentiator for this coaching tool has is that it's based on admired leadership content. So admired leadership is the. The context of admired leadership. It is based on the study of more than 15,000 admired leaders over almost the last 40 years. And when you study a leader, it's not just the person, it's the person they work for, the person they work with, the person, their families, their speeches, emails they've sent, anything related to their leadership style in terms of how they influence individuals and situations and make people in situations better. Out of that, we've cultivated about 100 behaviors that an admired leader exhibits across areas like feedback and relationships and decision making and, you know, accountability, motivating, inspiring people and those types of things.

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David Albritton: And so then when you use this behavioral approach, it's something that a leader can use on Monday morning to go be a better leader. Right. How many of us have taken the Myers Briggs or the Hogan or the survey and all of that? Yeah, we do it at the off site and then all the, you know, we've taken Myers Briggs and all the NFJs go off into the corner and they're slapping five. Hey, I'm an NFJ. I know a lot about you now, and that's great, but we'll think about what we just did. We've got these corners of people who are alike. But did you bring the team, the full team together and build camaraderie.

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David Albritton: What you got is a whole lot of like people in these small bastions of groups, right, who know a lot about each other, but what can they take out of that experience to use on Monday morning to go be a better leader? Our approach is behavioral based and we give examples of how we can actually use these behaviors to go be a better leader. Okay. And so Alex is a tool that's based on all of that content. So more, all the 108 behaviors now are involved or you know, as a baseline of Alice. But we also our founder and CEO doctor Randall Stuttmande who's coached more than 500 CEO's, coached more than 5000 people in his career has he writes a daily admired leadership field note which is a short be read in one to three minutes on all kinds of leadership topics.

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David Albritton: And there's more than 1100 of those. So all of those are in all the white papers that CRA has come up with, all the book summaries of major leadership books. All that content is in Alex. Alex is not designed to be used like a search engine, right? It's designed for you to put in the very specifics of the situation you're in. Hey, I am a senior manager at Company X. I've been here this many years and I'm working with this person who got here who is a senior, who is a manager. But I'm having some challenges because his engagement style is very caustic. I mean you go into very significant detail with Alex and then Alice becomes conversational and it's not going to give you the answer right away, but it's really going to engage in a dialogue with you to dive deeper.

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David Albritton: And one of the new features we just added to Alex is you can put your own personality, your own Persona in Alex. So you can drive how Alex is going to give you feedback based on your preferences and those types of things. So we're constantly improving the tool. And so far people have just marveled over the exquisite nature of the responses they get out of Alex. I use it a lot to just validate some of my coaching approaches and it's a fantastic tool.

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Daniel Nestle: Is it available only to your clients and customers or.

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David Albritton: No. So you can go to leadwithalex.com. Oh, and you can sign up for a three day trial run for Alex as well. Dig in and get under the covers and figure it out. It's a subscription based service. It's $400 a year, so it's not overly expensive, but you get access to a lot of content and a lot of, you know, of access to information that, let's say, you know, some of the things were talking about before, you're getting prepared to go to this staff meeting. And the topics are this. What are some things I should be thinking about right now? Come back with some ideas related to that based on the best leadership behaviors that, you know, admired leaders have exhibited. So that's the best way to use the tool like that.

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David Albritton: It's different from chat, GPT and Bard, Google and, you know, the other ones that are on, you know, the market, the copilots of the world. But this leadership behavioral approach is a differentiated one. And so far, since we've launched it, we've been getting tremendous feedback.

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Daniel Nestle: Well, I'd love to check it out and I'll tell you, and I know hopefully our listeners here will go to leadwithalex.com dot. We have a lot of people in the comms world, really, who just, this is an underserved part, I think, of our profession. And to be a trending communicator, as we said in the beginning, you have to have a grasp on the evolution of leadership and the evolution of work in our field, especially as all these changes come. If, if what you're saying is true, and I believe it is, I agree with you that the fundamentals of leadership are going to be one of those things that's not going to change no matter what's around us, no matter all the chaos and uncertainty and the vuca stuff. It's helpful to develop, and you should be developing your leadership skills.

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Daniel Nestle: And I am all for that. Last thing is, I think, David, I just wanted to make sure that people know how to find you, where to find you. Of course, on LinkedIn, follow David Albreton. His name will be spelled properly in the notes and in the title, but David Albreton, he's got a PCC after his name in case there's more than one of them. But I think you'll find the right guy. Great newsletters come out of David as well. How often do you do them? Every week. Is it weekend?

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David Albritton: Every two weeks nowadays? Every few weeks. Every two, three weeks. How much time do I have to write these days?

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Daniel Nestle: Somewhat inconsistently, but they come out. But David, newsletters are great. Go to Cra, his company, Crainc.com dot and is 1988 still active. David, can we just go to better.

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David Albritton: Email address is david@admiredleadership.com dot.

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Daniel Nestle: David@admiredleadership.com perfect.

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David Albritton: It relates to Alex, you go to leave with Alex, you can get a free three day sign up for it as subscription. We don't spam people at all, but if anybody's interested in getting a full week's access, just email me and I can get the team to set that up for you as well.

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Daniel Nestle: Email David. David mired Leadership and I'd say these.

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David Albritton: Admired leadership field notes, they're free that you can sign up for that just search for admired leadership field notes. They come to you free every day. And what I've done, you know, as I engage my coaching clients, people I mentor and just people I engage with, they're so valuable. I forward them a lot to people on topic because they're so topical on things related to things that we're dealing with every day. And so it's a great practice as you want to foster great relationships, you're investing in people by sharing things like this. Okay? So think about it as a great best practice to when you see something cool that you know might resonate with people in your network. Share it.

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Daniel Nestle: Excellent, David, thanks so much. So we've got a, we've got david@admiredleadership.com admired leadership field notes by doctor Stuttman. That's right. Is that correct? Yeah. Leadwithalex.com dot lots of stuff to go and check out David and learn more about what he's doing. And again, go back to our previous episode from two years ago. I think it's kind of evergreen, great conversation. You learn more about David personally in that one. And I can't, you know, there's a reason why I have people on more than once. It's because I value the relationship I have with you, David. But it's also because I think people need to hear what you're saying. And I'm glad that you are, that you're just, you know, you're a voice for the profession. You're a voice for us within the leadership world. And I am just excited to see where you're going.

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Daniel Nestle: So thank you again for coming on and hopefully come back again.

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David Albritton: I will. Absolutely.

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Daniel Nestle: Right on.

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David Albritton: Take care.

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Daniel Nestle: Thanks for taking the time to listen in on today's conversation. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe through the podcast player of your choice. Share with your friends and colleagues and leave me a review. Five stars would be preferred, but it's up to you. Do you have ideas for a few future guests or you want to be on the show? Let me know at dan@trendingcommunicator.com thanks again for listening to the trending communicator.