BetterUp Cofounder Explains The Mental Stability Needed To Lead Effectively

Forbes

Alexi Robichaux is the CEO and co-founder of BetterUp, the human transformation platform and inventor of digital coaching. As CEO, Alexi leads BetterUp’s mission to enable all people to live with greater clarity, purpose, and passion.  Alexi was recently recognized on Forbes Future of Work 50 alongside luminaries and leaders shaping the workplace of tomorrow, today. He regularly contributes to publications such as Harvard Business Review and Entrepreneur, and has been featured in Fast Company, WSJ, Financial Times, and Fortune, among others, discussing the topics most relevant to leaders, organizations and their employees.   Prior to BetterUp, Alexi was Director of Product Management at VMware. He led product and design teams to build enterprise collaboration software that earned Gartner’s “best in class” distinction. He also witnessed the changing relationship between employees and employers that is key to future human flourishing and innovation.   Alexi joins 'Forbes Talks' with Diane Brady, to discuss mental health for workers, and Europe's approach to promoting healthy work environments.  0:00 Introduction 0:23 Better Up Instilling Positive Leadership Changes 1:35 Talent Shortages: COVID And AI 3:08 Technology's Effect On The Workforce 5:21 How Europeans Prioritize Mental Wellness In Workforce 6:54 Necessities In A Leader's Toolbox  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - Hi everybody, I'm Diane Brady.

00:03 I'm here with Alexey Robuchov,

00:05 who is the co-founder and CEO of BetterUp,

00:07 which has a big presence on the promenade.

00:10 Alexey, let's talk about why are you in Davos?

00:12 What brought you here?

00:13 And welcome.

00:14 - Well, thanks for having me.

00:15 We're in Davos because we're at our core

00:18 about helping people build more trust

00:20 and more leadership capabilities in their organizations.

00:22 - The theme resonates.

00:23 - So the theme resonates deeply.

00:24 And I think one thing that's special about Davos

00:27 is you have so many of the world's thought leaders,

00:30 so many of the world's literal leaders,

00:32 and these are folks who can make positive change,

00:34 and we wanna be part of that.

00:36 - So it's a tsunami of stuff about AI here,

00:39 obviously there's the geopolitical conflict.

00:41 Give me some sense of the conversations you're having.

00:44 How much is wellness, mental health, coaching

00:47 actually factoring into what people are concerned about?

00:51 - I think it's coming up quite a lot more

00:53 than I expected in the conversation of AI.

00:55 And I think the context there is people still have

00:59 a very tired, in some ways more fragile

01:04 than they would want workforce coming out of the pandemic.

01:07 And if we could have painted the perfect chapter,

01:10 it would not been, then let's disrupt ourselves again

01:13 with generative AI.

01:14 And so I think there's well-founded anxiety around that.

01:18 And I think as part of this is I wanna equip my people

01:20 to incorporate AI into their lives, to use it for good,

01:25 but at the same time, I need to understand

01:27 that they may not be at the level of resilience I want.

01:29 So how do I foster that resilience

01:31 so that they can actually make the most

01:33 of what is a really powerful capability?

01:36 - So life is about choices and attention span,

01:39 and certainly coming out of the pandemic,

01:40 there was a lot of concern about how are our people doing?

01:44 Are there engaged talent shortages?

01:46 Now with AI, there's this panic to,

01:49 am I investing enough in AI?

01:50 Does that shift the calculus for how much we pay attention

01:55 to the realm that you're in?

01:58 - I don't think in aggregate it shipped the calculus.

02:00 I think it's changed the equation,

02:01 to stick with the metaphor.

02:02 Prior to the pandemic. - Okay, thank you for that.

02:04 - Oh, I'm here to help.

02:05 Prior to the pandemic, I think a lot of CHROs and CEOs

02:09 were investing in employee experience,

02:12 seemingly for the sake of employee experience,

02:14 but in great part because they knew it drove

02:16 better retention and remember, you remember,

02:18 this was the talent war, right?

02:19 - Right.

02:20 - So attracting and keeping top talent was an imperative,

02:23 companies were succeeding or failing based on that,

02:26 and so employee experience was the equation

02:29 for why we invest.

02:30 I think the investments have stayed,

02:32 but the equation has changed.

02:33 Now it's about innovation and performance,

02:35 but the reality is flourishing and well-being

02:38 underpin all these things,

02:39 and so I think the math is different,

02:42 and that it's like, I may not be investing

02:43 so my employees like me more,

02:45 that may not be the equation anymore,

02:47 I'm investing so they're more innovative,

02:48 they're more agile, they're more creative,

02:50 but actually what I'm investing in is the exact same thing.

02:52 I'm investing in their well-being,

02:54 I'm investing in their cognitive agility,

02:55 I'm investing in their learning abilities,

02:57 and I'm investing in their resilience,

02:59 and so that has not changed.

03:00 In fact, we see, I'd say, an aggregate investment increasing

03:04 because in some ways it's easier for business leaders now

03:06 to tie this to business performance.

03:08 - So I'd be remiss not to ask you about AI

03:10 and how you think about it and incorporate,

03:12 how does that change or enhance the nature

03:15 of what you're doing?

03:16 - We think it's an enhancer.

03:17 We're very privileged to work with a lot of leading

03:19 research labs in academia.

03:21 One of our favorite is the Stanford Social Media Lab.

03:24 They don't create AI,

03:25 but they study perception related to AI.

03:27 And what we continue to find is that no one,

03:31 well, I shouldn't say no one,

03:32 very few people want only an AI coach

03:34 and very few people want only a human coach.

03:36 - It wasn't AI coach, it's kind of like--

03:37 - So it's like a coach bot or something, right?

03:39 - Yeah, no, I know, but it just sounds awful to me.

03:41 - Well, that's probably why people don't want it.

03:43 What most people want is both

03:45 and they want both depending on context.

03:47 When they're talking about deeply personal

03:49 and emotional things,

03:50 they wanna start with a human

03:51 and potentially be escalated to an AI.

03:53 And when they're talking about things

03:54 where there's a corpus of knowledge to master,

03:57 salary negotiation, what should I do in this situation?

04:00 That's rather straightforward.

04:01 They actually wanna start with an AI

04:02 and then if they need additional help, work with a human.

04:05 So all of our products, our roadmap,

04:07 actually braids this human intelligence

04:09 and this artificial intelligence together.

04:11 And we think the future is getting really good at triage

04:13 and helping people understand

04:15 who is the right interventionist in the moment.

04:17 Is it a human with a lot of human experience and wisdom

04:20 or wisdom of the practitioners,

04:22 we would say in the industry,

04:23 or is it an AI with a huge amount of knowledge

04:26 and pattern recognition?

04:27 And I think the magic of this is it should be both.

04:30 - Americans, we don't get out that much

04:32 and here we are in Davos,

04:33 we're here, we're out, good for us.

04:35 - Good for us.

04:35 - As you talk to what's like,

04:37 when you've talked to leaders in Europe, Asia,

04:39 other parts of the world,

04:40 how are the conversations different?

04:42 - Yeah, well, fun fact, I'm also European.

04:45 So I get to get out more. - Oh, well, congratulations.

04:46 - I get to get out more. - SMI, SMI.

04:48 - Well, congratulations, yes.

04:50 Of what fair lands are you a citizen?

04:52 - Scotland, ergo British.

04:54 - All right, I'm Greek.

04:55 - Canada, I'm not supposed to keep all those passports.

04:57 - Yeah, well, we'll cut that part out.

04:59 I do think my sense, again, you're asking me,

05:03 is there is more pessimism towards AI

05:07 from European counterparts

05:09 and more optimism from AI from American counterparts.

05:11 - What about the wellness

05:12 and the role of the employer in fostering wellness?

05:15 It feels like it's a very different relationship

05:17 with the state and with one's employer.

05:19 - Yes. - So that must change things, too.

05:21 - Yeah, it's actually fascinating.

05:22 So I think Europeans have a great respect for it

05:25 and they prioritize it,

05:26 but a lot of that is done by the government.

05:27 And so I actually think American corporations have to

05:30 and do put more of that on their shoulders.

05:33 So in some ways, as a general characterization,

05:36 you might say European companies are more progressive

05:38 in valuing it.

05:39 In many ways, American organizations are more sophisticated

05:42 in how they deliver it because they have to be.

05:44 - So one thing that's intrigued me with this,

05:46 I met Edelman Trust Barometer,

05:47 we've seen this polarization, it's manifesting itself

05:51 in how people think about innovation,

05:53 this 40 point difference between Republicans and Democrats.

05:56 That polarization is coming into the workplace.

05:58 Is that something you think about

06:00 or you're seeing with your customers?

06:02 - Absolutely. - How do you deal with that?

06:03 - I think employee activism is one of the CHROs

06:06 and CEOs' top one or two priorities.

06:09 And I think most, in my conversations with them,

06:12 often we're mutually coaching one another.

06:15 People are arriving at, I think, a pretty simple equation

06:18 that we need to get back to civility.

06:20 And if we wanna live in a pluralistic society,

06:22 the number one virtue is toleration.

06:24 And we need to bring that into the workplace.

06:26 We need to be okay with people disagreeing.

06:28 - Are you healthy with that?

06:29 - Yeah, I think coaching is--

06:30 - Am I loading too much on your back there?

06:32 - I, we don't, I mean, it's hard to coach specifically

06:36 around one topic, so to speak,

06:38 but I think we coach a lot around

06:40 how do you have the openness,

06:42 how do you have the vulnerability,

06:43 how do you have the appreciation for other's viewpoints.

06:46 And I think things like, you know,

06:47 techniques like appreciative inquiry,

06:49 these are things that need to go in every leader's toolboxes

06:52 and we absolutely coach related to that.

06:54 - I'd be remiss not to mention,

06:56 you've been building out almost from a research capability.

07:00 You've had Adam Grant join, you've got Prince Harry,

07:02 and very, tell me what the ambition is.

07:05 Why, what are you adding there that you don't already have?

07:10 - Yeah, so we often think about our job at BetterUp

07:12 is to go, to use a pharmaceutical analogy,

07:14 bench to bedside.

07:15 We wanna take the best science in the world,

07:17 and why is science important?

07:18 One, it's truth as a method, but really it's repeatable.

07:22 And we're talking about wanting to positively impact

07:25 the lives of billions of people at scales.

07:26 The most important thing is scalability,

07:28 which is repeatability.

07:29 So we need to start with replicable science--

07:31 - Creating playbooks?

07:32 - Exactly, and then we basically productize that

07:35 into our platform and we are a vehicle to deliver that

07:38 to millions of workers worldwide.

07:39 - So Adam Grant brings thought leadership?

07:41 - He brings research, interventions.

07:43 So what works?

07:43 If we say, hey, we wanna, yeah, he's a professor at Wharton,

07:46 if we wanna change how a leader deals with conflict,

07:48 so they're more open, or they're more encouraging of dissent,

07:53 what do we do?

07:54 Tactically, how do we do that?

07:55 And so we get to work with them on the literature,

07:57 we get to build interventions together,

07:59 and then we get to deploy that and see if it works

08:01 and test it.

08:02 We get to contribute to creating new knowledge and science

08:04 as a feedback loop, and our customers and their employees

08:08 get the benefit of that.

08:09 - So let me ask what worries you.

08:10 I know that, maybe not much, but as you've had

08:13 some of the conversations this week and at home,

08:17 what are you concerned about?

08:18 Any pain points for you?

08:20 - I think there's a general perception that

08:23 the most at-risk populations for disruption,

08:27 job populations for disruption,

08:29 are frontline workers from AI.

08:30 - I think it's the likes of me.

08:32 - Well, I actually think that's the worry.

08:34 I actually think it's creative economy in many ways.

08:37 Not that they'll be completely replaced,

08:39 but they will need less of them because

08:41 so much of knowledge work is iteration

08:43 and throwing ideas against the wall,

08:44 and AI can be really good at that.

08:46 But I'm not sure we're providing the emotional support

08:49 and really the reconfiguration of people's identity

08:52 and value around their career

08:54 to what does your job look like in that.

08:56 And these tend to be the leaders in organizations.

08:58 This tends to be upper middle management.

09:00 This tends to be middle management.

09:02 And I actually think in many ways,

09:03 they will have a more destabilizing journey

09:05 over the next three to four years

09:07 than the common zeitgeist or narrative

09:09 would lead us to believe.

09:10 And the reality is they are in the influential positions.

09:12 And so stabilizing managers and leaders

09:15 is the number one thing you wanna do

09:17 if you're a senior leader at a company.

09:18 - And reinvent yourself.

09:19 - And reinvent yourself.

09:20 - Excellent, thanks for joining us.

09:21 - Thanks for having us.

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