[00:00:13] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Hello and welcome to Lessons from the Leap. I’m your host Ghazenfer Mansoor. On this show, I get to sit down with entrepreneurs, founders, and business leaders to talk about the bold decisions, pivotal moments, and innovative ideas that shape their journeys. This episode is brought to you by Technology Rivers.

At Technology Rivers we bring innovation through technology and AI to solve real world industry problems. If you’d like to learn more about us, head over to technology rivers.com and tell us more about your work. Today at Lessons of Leap, we have Tom Krieglstein Global speaker facilitator. Tom, can you just introduce yourself?

Tell us a bit about your journey and what are you working on? 

[00:00:57] Tom Krieglstein: Well, thanks for having me.  I appreciate being on, it’s always good to talk about what I’m most passionate about, which is the value of the human connection.  So the quick journey that got me here, the pivot moments, if you will.

 I was born on a farm in the middle of nowhere, Michigan. I now live just outside New York City in the concrete jungle.  and the journey that brought me there was,  Chicagoland area. I was not a good high school student. Went, got rejected from almost every four year school I applied to, ended up at a two year institution that was closer to my home than my high school was.

I stumbled into student activities and it changed my life. I was surrounded by a group of international students who thought about going to this school. They thought about it as a, a, a, a privilege versus a right, and I was entering into it because everyone in our community made fun of it. It changed my life to have me surrounded by a group of people that thought about life in, in the higher direction.

It was my first taste at this concept that you are the people you surround yourself with. They lifted me up, graduated valedictorian,  and then got into a program called Super Camp, which Tony Robbins, built the curriculum for. It’s a youth program. I was their lead facilitator for several years.

Spoke all over the world. There I met a friend who ended up becoming a business partner and we launched our tech company called Red Rover. We’re in the Techstars program here in New York City. Moved from Chicago to New York. Was in the incubator program for that with Bloomberg tv, doing a TV show on it.

 ended up leaving that company, selling out of it and ending up relaunching Swift Kick, which is the current company I run, and it’s called Swift Kick Leadership. We do leadership team development programs for teams of organizations, both at the higher ed level and the corporate level.  all over the world.

Have eight national speaking titles. Have the two and a half books. I haven’t finished the third one. It’s close. It’s sitting there every day, working away at it.  and  yeah, that’s my, that’s my journey to where I’m at right now. 

[00:03:15] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks for sharing that. So we’ll get to your books and other things, but I’m curious,  I read somewhere that you were named after a cat,  which is unforgettable.

What’s the story there? 

[00:03:28] Tom Krieglstein: Yeah. Two months before I was born, my parents found a cat on the side of the road and they named it Tom Cat. And then I was born. And they thought, h Tom’s kind of a good name for a human too. So they named me Tom. That cat lives to be 22 human years old, and if anyone knows cats, that’s absurdly old, that cat loved me.

And just by default I became a cat person because that cat was constantly by my side. I guess we shared the namesake. And so that’s the connection to the cat. Uh. It is all from the farm days. 

[00:04:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Did that influence you at all in your leadership or speaking style? 

[00:04:09] Tom Krieglstein: The thing that influenced me not would be the cat, but it would be the farm life.

 I always describe country life as there’s more freedom, but less opportunity. And here in the city there’s more opportunity but less freedom. Meaning I have a lot more rules and regulations around me compared to what we had on the farm. I am so thankful that I had that experience in the countryside.

 It taught me a sense of freedom. But I do genuinely love cities and I love opportunity and so I’m, I’m here on the East coast and, and fully loving it. 

[00:04:46] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Oh, thanks for sharing that story. So,  you have trained. A lot of people over 1 million outta how you did that and once you hugged 114 people in a minute, which is wild.

What is the story behind that moment and how does it reflect your philosophy of connection? 

[00:05:06] Tom Krieglstein: There is a Guinness World Record for the most hugs by one person in one minute. And I was like, I think I can beat it. It was this guy originally in India who had it, I think he had like 66 hugs in a minute, or 67, 6, 7.

And I thought to myself, I think I can beat that number. And so I was at a program and we set it all up. There’s a video on YouTube and we submitted at like 113 or something. Guinness has all sorts of regulations, believe it or not, for every single one of their,  their, their Guinness records, and they ended up docking a bunch of my hugs to the point where I didn’t get it.

And so then I tried again and I submitted like 122 and I still didn’t get it. And then,  I found out something because someone broke his record and then someone broke that person’s record. So in the Guinness World, you can get a record one of two ways. You can submit your paperwork and wait months and months and months and hear back, and it only costs maybe a hundred dollars, or you can pay them $16,000 and have someone show up.

At your event and if you break it, they sign it right there. The two people who broke it paid the 16,000 ’cause they were on, there were famous people on TV and they had a whole show around it. So I learned something about capitalism that day that I, Guinness World Record. Sure. For these lower level records, I think they’re a business just like everyone else.

And so they’re looking for people to pay that 16,000. But stay tuned. I will come back. Why does that matter though?  My core message around all the work I do is that we live in a hyper advanced world, but us humans are biologically wired to be socially connected. But all of these tools that we have around us are isolating us more and more.

And there’s a reason depression rates are on the rise. There’s a reason for anxieties on the rise, there’s a reason, isolation, loneliness around the rise. While we have all these amazing tools that make life seem to make life so much better, they also reduce the amount of in-person moments that we used to have in the past.

And when I was doing these programs early on, I was trying to figure out a way to help people to visually understand what it meant to have a human to human connection. ’cause I could talk and talk and talk about it. And, and I decided, I watched this video of this guy named Juan Mann doing the Free Hugs campaign.

I said, that’s it. And so at the next program, I printed off a bunch of the free hug signs and we, we, I, and I said, you know, it’s one thing to talk about the human connection. It’s another thing to actually experience it right now. So if you look under your seat, you’re gonna find a free hug, sign your challenge.

The next 10 seconds is to hug five people ready and go put music on. And the room lit up. And from that moment forward for, decades now, I’ve been doing the Free Hugs campaign all over the world. 

[00:08:06] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Awesome. That’s amazing. I never heard of that before, so I’ll look for it. So,  while we’re on it, I wanna learn more about your desk floor theory.

This is, again, the first time I’m hearing that, so I would love to hear what is that?  so shed some light and then we’ll go deeper on that. 

[00:08:29] Tom Krieglstein: Dance floor theory came out of the clubs in New York City. A friend of mine went to a club in New York City when he had a tech company before ours, and he saw this guy walk into the club that was totally dead, had no liveliness, and this one guy completely transformed the energy in that room.

My friend was like, what is that? And he went up to this guy and this guy took him to the next club and showed him and did the exact same thing. And he said to him, if you look at any group anywhere, you’re gonna realize that there’s a human dynamic that’s at play. And from that experience, me and that friend launched and built what is now called Dance floor Theory.

What dance floor theory at its core is we use the dance floor, obviously as a metaphor for any team, organization, or community. And we say that on any dance floor there’s always going to be different levels of engagement. We claim that there’s six and each level thinks in a different way and needs to be interacted with in a different way.

And so what we do in dance floor theory is we show them the six levels of human engagement. Then we show them how to engage them at that level. That’s the core of dance floor theory. Then you start going into the, the, like the rabbit hole and there’s all sorts of additional levels of dynamic that play out.

[00:09:59] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And you are writing a book on the same topic as well. When is that book coming? 

[00:10:05] Tom Krieglstein: That’s right. The reason I wanted to get the book out was. Gallup Research just launched their latest numbers on employee engagement, and we are currently, as of this, me saying this, right now, we are at a 10 year low for employee engagement, 10 year low.

Yet the amount of money companies are spending on engagement has gone up and up to the point where it’s $10 billion globally spent on employee engagement. You would think that it would be reversing, but it’s not. The reason it’s not is because we are treating people the same way we’ve always treated them.

We’re treating people like the Model T Ford, where everyone’s exactly the same, but they’re not. And Gallup research only gives you three levels of engagement, act,  engaged, disengaged and actively disengaged. The reality is there’s a lot more levels to engagement than just three, and I had it within dance floor theory and I said, I need to get this book out so that leaders have a better model, a better blueprint, especially now in the world of AI and the, even as technology’s rolling out more, what’s gonna matter most is that we, A

know our people really well, and then B, have a strategy to engage them on a one-on-one human to human level. And the book is coming out. It, it was supposed to be done two weeks ago and I missed my deadline, so give me two more weeks and it goes to the publisher. And then from there, I hope within the next month and a half it should be fully done and out.

[00:11:48] Tom Krieglstein: Look for the title Dance Floor Theory. 

[00:11:50] Ghazenfer Mansoor: We’ll include it in our podcast information. So what, whatever information you have before we publish it. So, 

[00:11:58] Tom Krieglstein: perfect. 

[00:11:59] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So while we are on it, can you talk about two other books? This is the third one. What are the two other books about? 

[00:12:06] Tom Krieglstein: Yeah, so as I mentioned in my journey,  I graduated high school, not so great.

Graduated college as valedictorian, and,  other schools asked me, they said, Hey, can you come and talk to our students, help them turn around their stories. From there, I ended up launching two. I wrote two books. I have ’em here. This one here is just, this one’s called Perfect Quotes for College Success.

That one is a gift book that is meant for grandma, grandma to give to their child,  who’s going into college. And it basically has quotes on every possible topic that someone a student might interact with. So like,  diversity, dating, belonging, being a commuter, going to class, grades, graduation, Greek life, sleeping, picking a major, every possible topic.

And then this one. As a first year student to first year success, and it’s 27 things that you need to know when starting college. This one is used by thousands of students every year,  at their universities as they’re like, they call it the FYE class first year experience class.  to help guide them and launch them.

Because research shows that what a student does in the first 90 days of their college experience will determine who they are for the next three and a half years. So what, and this is, it is like for anyone listening to what you choose to do in the first 90 days,  it makes a big difference to who you’re gonna be in that world, that community.

[00:13:42] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks for sharing that. So,  you have worked with Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike, and different branches of the US military. What is one misconception you have seen leaders consistently have about building a strong culture?

[00:14:03] Tom Krieglstein: Biggest misconception is that it can be done. You can set a system and set it free. Or build a system and set it free. Culture is a full contact sport. Community is a full contact sport, meaning if you are going to build, try and build community, you have to be in it every single day because humans are messy.

Humans are confusing. Humans are emotional.  and so we can’t just build a system and call it the employee engagement system or the client engagement system. Re rinse and repeat. It has to evolve and adjust as your people evolve and adjust. So I’d say that the biggest misconception I experienced is that they think they can build one system, one structure, and then that’s it and be done.

The second biggest misconception is they forget how valuable the human to human connection is to helping someone feel connected. All the research shows that when a person feels like they belong. Retention rates, engagement rates are higher productivity , at the corporate level, graduation at the college level.

So we’re trying to help our people feel like they belong, feel like this is their place, and as community is breaking down all across the rest of society, which this book right here called Bowling Alone talks about it. Pretty amazing book. And as community breaks down in every other part of our society.

We as leaders need to step up and build spaces that not just employ people, but actually make them feel like this is a place that they belong, that these people care about them.

[00:15:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Cool. So, in the deeply connected team, what does accountability look like in your view 

[00:16:10] Tom Krieglstein: in a deeply connected team. What does accountability look like?  ownership would be the first word that comes to mind on both sides. So I’m claiming I own this project before I start it. There’s not two owners, but one owner.

 the second side of that then is if I mess up, I’m owning the mistake. I’m not gonna pass the blame to someone else and say it’s their fault. Alex Hormozi is great,  he calls it the management diamond, and he says that if someone on your team is not performing to the level they should be, he says that it’s probably one of four things.

And so he likes diamonds. One of them is maybe they’re not clear on what they should be doing, and so they’re not sure about the what of the project. So you as the leader and the manager have to check, fill them in on the what,  the second part is the how. They don’t know how to do it. There’s no SOPs, and you just said, go figure it out.

And they don’t know. So they need some help on that.  The third is who, who are they reporting to? Who is this? Who’s the person they’re supposed to talk to about this? Who’s on the project with them? They don’t know. And the last one is, why? Why are they doing this? Like they have no connection to this and they don’t understand why it makes sense.

So I often say from accountability perspective, if someone on your team isn’t performing, check in on those four as a way to be able to see what’s broken as to why they’re not stepping up. 

[00:17:52] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So in your experience, what actually causes people to disengage, even with high salaries, perks, benefits, A lot of people initially go towards those and then end up not being happy and leaving.

So what is the main cause? 

[00:18:11] Tom Krieglstein: So let’s step up with, first off, there’s a, a, a, a social psychologist called Frederick Hertzberg, and he was the original creator of a thing called the Two Factor Theory of Employee Engagement. And there’s hygienic motivators and intrinsic motivators. Hygienic is exactly what you just said.

Which is the pay. The pay. Everything here has to be set. The pay has to be fair. The vacation time, fair, the perks equal across the board.  the,  the, the stress level has to be fair. This all has to be taken care of. The gender gap, the pay gap has to be fair. That all has to happen. Your manager has to be a good manager if none of that exists.

I tell managers and leaders to take care of that first because nothing else is gonna be done without that. Now let’s say we’ve taken care of that. Now we can move into my framework, dance floor theory. I also call it engagement based leadership. And in dance floor theory, the six levels, we have to find out what level they’re at.

At the very bottom is where the majority of your workers are. They’re clocking in, clocking out, and we call those the The meh. MEH  employees, the first thing you gotta do is get their attention. And that’s the best way. ’cause they’re not paying attention to anything else. And so we have a strategy called the plot twist.

And a plot twist just breaks up their day, it causes a pattern interrupt.  then you move up. Once they’re done with the meh, they move up to the one,  which means they’re actually paying attention. And there you build a connection. The vertical couple. in a company the number one predictor of whether an employee stays the vertical couple is the relationship between the manager and that employee.

If that’s toxic, sour, that employee’s gone. But that’s the number one predictor of an employee staying is based on the vertical couple. So the fir, the once there are one in dance floor theory, you wanna build a connection, then you move to two. Two is what’s in it for me. These are your free pizza people.

They are only gonna participate in anything as long as they get something back. Then you move to threes, which,  now you’re starting to move into leadership roles.  and so here I always say it’s about building a sense of connection, belonging. You wanna help them connect with other people. My phrase here is, I say as leaders, it’s no longer about you connecting with them.

It’s about them connecting with each other. Fours. Are your leaders in waiting, they’re the next in line. And then  your level five leaders. That’s the ultimate. They wanna run the show. Those are the six levels. Now I wanna add one thing before we move on is if you remember back to Gallup research, it has the three, three criteria: engaged, disengaged and actively disengaged.

My engagement pyramid doesn’t have the actively disengaged on it because those are what are called your negative Nellys. Those are the people who are actively trying to destroy your dance floor. And those have to be dealt with before, like they have to be dealt with. And in the world of dance floor theory, we measure our engagement based on contribution.

Meaning how,  how much do they care? About the entire organization and work and, and the people around them and the mission and the vision and  and then,  competency. How good are they at their job? So I call that the competency contribution framework Negative Nellie’s can be really amazing at their job, but don’t care at all about the, the, the company.

Negative Nellie’s can also be really bad at their job, but love the company and the mission. And then you have the negative Nellie’s who are bad at their job and don’t care about the company that co. That group you just fired got rid of. The other two are tricky though, because one, you have to train on skill.

They love you, they love the company and the mission, the vision, but they’re not good. So can you get them to move up on skill? And the other one though, they crushed their job. But they’re toxic. They steal clients from other people. They talk, they talk,   gossip about people in the office. They make fun of the managers, the bosses, but they crush all their metrics.

So can you get them to like the company? I don’t know. So those are all the different frameworks that fall within Dance Floor Theory. 

[00:22:51] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. We, and we see all these different people in, in the company. So, uh. Good pointers on where to focus. Okay, so you have won seven national speaking titles,  and spoken around the world.

What is one moment on stage that truly chained you? 

[00:23:13] Tom Krieglstein: Oh,  my first big speech was in front of 800 people. And at the time, American Idol was a big show and William Hung was on American Idol, and anyone can Google him. He had a horrible audition. Simon Sinek made fun of him and it went viral. In his clip, everyone was talking about this guy William Hung, and I was supposed to step on stage and my job on that stage was kind of to sell myself.

In front of all these 800 people so that they book me to come and work with their people. And I’m on stage and I thought everyone’s talking about William Hong, so I should impersonate William Hong on stage. And I didn’t tell anyone except for the lighting guy. And I said, when I get on stage, you shut all the lights off and put a spotlight on me.

 and so he did, and I, I got on stage and I started to do an impersonation of William Hung, and if anyone knows who he is or Googles him now and watches that audition, you’ll realize how offensive what I was doing was on stage, multiple levels and the audience started to boo, and then another larger group booed, and then larger group booed.

I was supposed to speak for 15 minutes, seven minutes into it, I walked off stage. I was emotionally and physically destroyed from that moment, and I remember even though I’m gonna share a little bit of medical information that maybe is too much, but afterwards, my body was revolting so much that when I went to the bathroom, I urinated blood.

That’s how intense that moment was for me, because my body just rejected everything about the idea of becoming a speaker. And in that moment while I was walking around that conference, after that experience, there were a few other speakers who were to me like they were the top of the top. They were the best of the best.

And one of them saw me and was like, Tom, what’s wrong? I’m like, did you see what happened? I just got booed off stage and he, and he laughed. I’m like, this is not funny. And he said, Tom, we have all been there. And you think you could just wake up and be a great speaker. All of us have gone through the trials and tribulations.

The question is, are you gonna be one of the speakers that gets back up? And he said to me, you have to be rebound ready because this is the industry where you’re gonna stand in front of a bunch of people who are staring at you. And nothing biologically says that. That’s a good thing. If people are staring at you and you’re in front of ’em, it means one of two things.

Number one, they’re gonna kill you, so you better run. Or two, you’re their leader so you better say the right thing or they’re gonna kill you if you don’t. And so he said, that was the first thing he said, you gotta be rebound ready. The second thing he said is, Tom, you gotta go get trained. That led to me going to Tony Robbins, a super camp program,  and becoming a lead facilitator there.

That changed. Change everything about how I speak and the delivery that would be the most memorable. I know it’s not what you were thinking, but that would be the most memorable for me. 

[00:26:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. And now another part which you just said is,  the training, we all forget that as we get into the business,  we do self things. So having a coach, having a mentor, getting those training from experts makes a huge difference. 

[00:26:56] Tom Krieglstein: Huge. 

[00:26:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So 

[00:26:56] Tom Krieglstein: huge. Sorry, let me add to that just really quickly. Why that makes a huge difference is because, if the path to success is kind of like these, these are all the paths to success. What a mentor does or what training does is it just shrinks that path down and it pulls out a few of those, the potholes, the speed bumps, the curves, it just pulls a few of those out so that this becomes easier.

That’s what I didn’t know that going into it, but that, that definitely was a huge part of my growth. 

[00:27:30] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Cool. And, and while we’re on it, so you, you mentioned about the audition and all of that,  you have also been kicked off of,  Oprah Show ones. Was that the same one or is it a different one?

We definitely need that story. What happened? 

[00:27:44] Tom Krieglstein: Yeah, this was in high school. I grew up in Chicago. I was a huge Chicago Bulls fan,  obsessed. This is during the era of Michael Jordan. So like you couldn’t go wrong. I was at a game with some friends at a Bulls game, and we were dressed like Dennis Rodman, who was on the team.

If anyone remembers Dennis Rodman. He was like the bad boy of basketball. He’d always colored his hair and had all these tattoos and was always getting in trouble. We were dressed like him at the game. There was an Oprah producer there, and the Oprah producer asked us to be on the show next week because Dennis Rodman was gonna be on it and asked us to be the super fans.

We said, of course. So we go next week, get picked up in a limo, go to the show, and it’s Oprah, Dennis, and then us super fans. And on a commercial break, Oprah asks, says, asks one of us to ask a question. And I said, I’ll, I’ll do it. And she said, the only thing is you just have to be really quick, like get it out and be done, because it’s her show.

And so she comes back and likes, and she goes, we have the super fans over here. And she walks over to us and I believe Tom wants to ask a question. So I stood up. Oprah takes, I’m gonna use my Oprah, takes the mic and kind of moves it towards me. I thought she was handing me the mic. See, mistake number one is like, never take the mic from Oprah because I took my hand, put it here, and there’s this awkward sort of movement back and forth.

And then I start talking. And she said quickly. I talked for like 90 seconds. My friends told me it was like 90 seconds of just nonstop. There was no question, there was no breath, and so Oprah had to physically put her hand on my shoulder and pull the mic away and put me back in my seat. Fast forward now a week later.

We had the whole grade lined up to watch the show ’cause we were gonna be on it. And they go and she goes, and we have our super fans over here and the camera goes to them, but then comes back and just continues on with the show. So kicked off might not be the right word, instead of more edited out of the Oprah Winfrey show.

And that’s my experience with Oprah. 

[00:30:03] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Okay, well, but that’s a good learning experience.  

[00:30:06] Tom Krieglstein: yeah. Never take the micro mobile 

[00:30:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: and,  maybe be quick. 

[00:30:13] Tom Krieglstein: Be quick. Yeah. Be, be good and sound. 

[00:30:15] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. 90 seconds is long. Okay. So,  looking back, what was yours? Biggest leap that you took in your career that you felt risky at that time, but ended up shipping everything that followed?

Is that the story that you just mentioned before about the audition or something else? 

[00:30:38] Tom Krieglstein: No, it would not be that story because that wouldn’t, I mean, it was a big deal financially. To go to that conference. ’cause I, it was a pay to play type conference, so it was a big deal financially, and I was still in college at the time.

 so that was a big one.  The biggest leaps that I would experience was when I was in Chicago and with my friend, who launched the tech company together. We got into this incubator program in New York City and we had, he was in Denver and I was in Chicago. We had to decide, are we moving to New York City and both of us agreed with our partners and we ended up relocating our entire lives.

And I believe that was 2008 or some sometime around there. So as of this recording, it’s 2020, almost 2026 I guess we’re in. And so that would be a huge leap. I had to physically change locations and everyone I knew. To start fresh in a new place. That would be a big leap. A second big leap in that tech company

 I was the minority shareholder, and if anyone’s in a company where they’re the minority shareholder, know that you can be fired at any moment. The company and its board of directors, my, my, my friend who is the majority shareholder. They wanted the cap table clean so that they could bring better talent in.

And through conversations they ended up,   let’s gently say, asking me to leave is the gentle way to say it. And,  I was pissed. I was so pissed ’cause I felt like this was my company. I started as my baby and,  and it was what they needed to do though. And I, and like I can understand it, but that was the second big leap I had to go from that was ever, I moved here, this east coast to do this and this is all I know is this company and now I’m, now I have to figure out what to do.

That brought me back to speaking again and I realized that I’m, I was put on this earth to create content and deliver that content. That’s my core and, and I, so those would, I would say two biggest leaps. 

[00:33:05] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Let’s talk about AI. AI is changing everything, every field. What is your take on it? How are you using it?

Is it impacting your business and personal or is it empowering you? How do you see AI? 

[00:33:19] Tom Krieglstein: Oh my goodness, it takes out everything. So,  let’s go a couple routes here first, for college students. If you’re out there and you’re like, or no, forget college students. If you’re trying to figure out what to do in your career next, and you’re not sure.

I tell people, look for the careers that have the biggest moat between you and AI. What has the biggest space between you and ai? Because otherwise your job will be replaced. Probably eventually all jobs will be replaced and new ones will show up, but we don’t know what those are yet. But of what exists right now, how can you find a job that has the biggest buffer?

So for me as a professional speaker, I have a whole online world and online content, and then I have my whole offline facilitation strategy, retreats, keynotes at conferences, and for me, AI is going to completely dominate this online part of my job. I’m pretty convinced in six months, maybe a year. I’ll be able to get a script that’s in my voice and put it to a video that’s in my head and upload it to YouTube and no longer have to record video for myself.

That’s, I’m pretty sure that’s coming, so that means that I’m doubling down on in-person because that is the larger buffer between me and AI at this point. That’s the first thing I would say about it, for everyone. Out there that’s either debating a new career, looking to launch a career.  Yeah, that’d be my first thought.

The second thought is just on the value of the human connection.  AI is amazing. The number one reason people are using it is for personal therapy.  I get it. I understand it and. My TEDx talk is titled The Value of the Human Connection in a Hyper Technological World, we are biologically wired to be socially connected, and now we no longer have to ask our spouses questions because we’ll just get it

 With Ai, we no longer have to ask our neighbor. We No, I ask the hardware store person, the grocery person, the librarian, ’cause we just all get it from this all knowing, being that we have access to. While each one of those sounds like a throw off, no big deal. Collectively, us humans are losing the chance to interact with each other more and more and more to the point.

We’re just gonna be these isolated little objects. And that is damaging to us because our, our, our health literally depends on the social con, the strength and positive strength of social connections with the people around us. And this AI tool is amazing. I use it all the time and I recognize, oh, look, I no longer have to ask anyone because I just get the answer here.

[00:36:24] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And with hallucination in AI, we can’t even blame afterward how AI gave us the wrong answer. It. 

[00:36:31] Tom Krieglstein: Yeah, 

[00:36:31] Ghazenfer Mansoor: no further conversation. 

[00:36:33] Tom Krieglstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, just simple, even simple things like I, I was making,   I was making chicken noodle soup over the weekend, and I know my grandmother is, she’s an expert at this, or sorry, my mother-in-law, she’s an expert at this, and I could have messaged her.

Had that exchange. But instead I just went to AI and I’m like, Hey, what about this part of the process? And it gave me the answer and sure enough it was the right answer and it worked great. But like I just lost another moment with the mother-in-law. Multiply that by millions every single day and.  there’s some trouble. Trouble brewing. 

[00:37:19] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. And that reminded me,  a talk from Simon Sinek, where he said, in order to build trust, you have to ask for help first rather than offer help. So how do you ask for help? Because now Chat GPT is your first friend, so you’re help from Chat Gpt. No, it is, it’s a really good point.

[00:37:40] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So we should find a way to keep that human connection. So 

[00:37:46] Tom Krieglstein: you, the, the difference now compared to the past is the difference now is just like working out. We actually have to actively go make it happen, which sounds absurd, but like we have to because it’s not naturally happening like it used to in the past.

Naturally, we would have conversations with people at the grocery store. Because we had to go to the grocery store. Now it’s Instacart or Uber Eats or Amazon delivery.  and each one of those sounds ridiculous. That’s like, yeah, but it’s not that big of a deal. But if you go an entire day and you don’t talk to anyone like that, that’s not good for your health over a long period of time.

[00:38:31] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, thanks Tom for all this wonderful conversation.  We could continue for a long time, but we have a very limited time. Tom has been sharing all these golden nuggets about leadership, culture, connectivity. so Tom, one last word for the audience and also let us know how people can connect with you if they wanna reach out to you after listening to this talk.

[00:38:59] Tom Krieglstein: My last word to the audience is to make it a point over this next week to build a human to human moment with someone in your life. The best thing you can do to make that happen is, is some gratitude or appreciation to someone in your life. In person would be best. If you can’t do that, call ’em, video ’em or text ’em and just send some appreciation to someone in your life and watch not only them light up because they just received compliment, but your brain will also light up because it, it is, it’s a, it releases chemicals, positive chemicals in our brain when we compliment other people and give them gratitude.

So that would be my, my, my tip to the group.  you can find me. Swift Kick Leadership is the company. If you Google Swift Kick, you’re gonna find an eighties rock band called Swift Kick that has a revival career. You’re gonna find teenagers swiftly kicking each other, and you’re gonna find my company.

That’s the best way. You can also, of course, I’m on all the socials with this,  with my name. Good luck spelling Krieglstein. But if you just put in Tom Free Hugs, you’ll get to me as well. But Swift Kick’s probably the fastest Swift Kick hq. 

 [00:40:14] Ghazenfer Mansoor: That’s the easiest one. Tom free hugs 

[00:40:17] Tom Krieglstein: Tom free hugs into Google. You’re gonna find it all. Yeah. 

[00:40:22] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks again Tom. It was a pleasure having you on our podcast.  so we will share your book link and in fact, all the three books information are in the podcast detail. Thanks everyone for listening.