HeartWired: Emotionally-Intelligent Leadership for an AI World

Show Notes: Heartwired – Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Episode Title: Bold Not Old: A Mystic, a Rebel, and a Futurist Walk Into an AI Conversation

Host: Dr. MJ Vignone

Guest: Wallis Pattison, Founder of Bold Not Old & The Mad Hatter Psychic

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with Wallis Pattison — psychic, speaker, content creator, self-described Mystic. Rebel. Futurist. and the force behind Bold Not Old in Australia — for a conversation unlike any other in this series.

Wallis came to AI not through tech circles or enterprise software, but through a lifelong pursuit of the deeper questions: who are we, what are we becoming, and what does it mean to evolve? When she finally sat down and asked AI not a Google question but a genuine inner question, what came back stopped her cold. The answer sounded like her — but more evolved, more articulate than she expected — and she recognized it as a mirror of her own consciousness reflected back.

This conversation is about AI as a species-level event, not a product category. It covers collective consciousness, morphic resonance, the electrical grid and the internet as human inventions born from human need, what it means to be a steward of something this powerful, and why bold is always better than old.

Key TakeawaysWe Are in the Biggest Transformation in Our Species' History

Wallis opens with the frame she thinks is missing from most AI conversations: context. Teilhard de Chardin wrote about collective consciousness in the 1940s and called it the noosphere. The internet followed — a human-built vessel for that collective intelligence. Now AI. Wallis's argument: we don't invent things by accident. We invent them when we need them. And we are in the midst of a species transformation so significant that the chaos we're feeling isn't failure — it's the characteristic turbulence of real change.

AI Arrived Because We Asked for It — Now We're Responsible for It

Whether you believe humanity created AI or that it arrived as a kind of gift from some other intelligence, the question Wallis poses is the same: what are you going to do with the stewardship? We've always muddied up and stumbled through the most important things we've created — electricity, the telephone, the internet. We complain, we worry, we overreach — and then we figure it out. The timeline is shortening. The urgency is real. But the pattern holds.

AI Is a Mirror of Human Consciousness — If You Ask the Right Questions

Wallis made a deliberate choice when she began working with AI: she refused to use it as a search engine. Instead, she brought it the questions that live inside her — the deep ones. And what came back was profound. When she read the answer aloud to a friend, the friend said: "That sounds just like you." Wallis knew then she was looking at a mirror — her own evolved consciousness, reflected back in language she recognized as herself but more fully expressed. That, she argues, is the real invitation AI extends to every human who accepts it.

Park Your Ego and You Get an Enormous Amount of Freedom

At a certain point in life, Wallis found she could simply set her ego down — to the side, not in the room — and say what she actually thinks. That freedom, she argues, is available to everyone, at any age. It's not about confidence or credentials. It's about choosing authenticity over approval. For leaders and individuals alike, the conversation about AI is also a conversation about this: are you willing to meet it — and yourself — honestly?

Bold Not Old — Style as Consciousness, Consciousness as Style

Wallis started Bold Not Old as an exploration of how people — mostly women, of a certain age — express their personality, identity, and spirit through their own style. It grew into a book, a community, and a philosophy. The premise: throwing out the black wardrobe and strutting your stuff isn't frivolous. It's an act of self-expression that carries real meaning. And the same spirit that drove that project is what brought her to AI: a refusal to let anyone — age, society, convention, fear — define the edges of what's possible.

What If We Got This Right?

Wallis closes with a series of "what ifs" that are disarming in their optimism. What if we moved AI infrastructure off the planet and powered it with solar energy? What if today's data centers became wisdom centers — mixed-age communities where older and younger people live and learn together? What if the chaos we're in right now is exactly what a species looks like right before it figures something out? She's not naive about the risks. She's just lived long enough to choose optimism deliberately.

Memorable Quotes"We are in the biggest transformation of our species' history. We are right in the midst of it."— Wallis Pattison"When it came back and reflected this profoundness that I understood and knew within me — I knew I was looking at a mirror of me. My own evolved consciousness."— Wallis Pattison"You park your ego over there, and that gives you an enormous amount of freedom to be who you are and say what you want to say."— Wallis Pattison"I've lived enough years to make up my mind — and I choose to be optimistic, because I've seen so much of it."— Wallis PattisonAbout Our Guest

Wallis Pattison calls herself a Mystic. Rebel. Futurist. — just not in that order. Operating under the banner of Bold Not Old, Wallis is a psychic, speaker, and content creator who refuses to let age define the edges of possibility. As the Mad Hatter Psychic, she brings intuitive guidance that is as sharp as it is surprising.

In her video series Boomer Mystic & AI, she puts decades of lived wisdom in conversation with artificial intelligence — and neither one blinks first. She is also the author of Bold Not Old: A New Generation of Role Models, a tabletop book celebrating women who express their full selves through their own style. Wallis speaks, reads, creates, and provokes. Whether she's on a stage, a screen, or in a one-on-one session, she leaves people thinking differently about what comes next.

She is based in Australia and is an identical twin, a lifelong empath, and a very serious gardener.

Website: boldnotold.com.au

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/wallisboldnotold

Facebook: facebook.com/wallisboldnotold

Instagram: @wallisboldnotold

YouTube: Bold Not Old

Connect with Heartwired

Email: [email protected]

Website: drmjheartwired.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryjeanvignone

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Show Notes: Heartwired – Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Episode Title: Internal Intelligence: Why the Real AI Frontier Is Learning to Know Yourself

Host: Dr. MJ Vignone

Guest: Toni Vallenius, Author of The Intention Game & Creator of Life Oracle

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with Toni Vallenius — Finnish author, lifestyle designer, and creator of Life Oracle, an AI built to help people understand themselves rather than simply give them answers — for a conversation that takes the podcast in a beautifully different direction.

While the world races to figure out how smart AI is getting, Toni is asking a different question: what do we need to know about ourselves first? His work explores intention, identity, human behavior, and what he calls "internal intelligence" — our capacity to understand what drives us, what we truly want, and who we're choosing to become. He's the award-winning author of The Intention Game (best personal development book in Finland, 2026), the creator of the Four Levels of Communication method, and the founder of a self-designed life currently based in Thailand.

He found Dr. MJ through AI, by the way. The machine made the match. The conversation that followed is entirely human.

Key TakeawaysThe Real Frontier of AI Is What It Reveals About Us — Not What It Does For Us

Toni's thesis is simple and quietly urgent: as AI becomes more capable, the most important question isn't how to use it better. It's whether we know ourselves well enough to direct it with intention. AI can turn against us if we don't understand why we're using it or what we're asking it to do. The answer to that isn't a better prompt. It's deeper self-knowledge. Turning inward, not outward, is where the leverage lives.

Humankind Needs to Become Humankindness

Toni's vision for the world is both simple and ambitious: what if being kind to one another was simply what we did? Not as a moral obligation, but as the natural expression of people who know themselves, love themselves, and therefore extend that understanding to others. He calls his ongoing project POE — Paradise on Earth. The premise: you can't experience a paradise that includes others suffering around you. Kindness isn't soft. It's the logical conclusion of self-awareness extended outward.

Motivation Is a Symptom — Inspiration Is the Source

Motivation is an external force applied to get you to do something you wouldn't naturally do. Inspiration is what happens when something is aligned with who you actually are. The child who "can't focus" in school can play video games for hours — not because they lack the capacity for concentration, but because the thing isn't connected to something they care about. When you understand yourself well enough to know what genuinely pulls you forward, you stop needing to push yourself. That distinction matters enormously for leaders trying to develop their people.

The Four Levels of Communication — and Why Alignment Is Everything

Toni's Four LOC method identifies four levels at which communication happens: thoughts, feelings, physical/body reactions, and words. Most people focus on the fourth level — what they say — while the other three are operating unconsciously and often in conflict with it. When all four are aligned, he calls it congruence. And when you're congruent, reality starts to reflect it. Things start to happen. Relationships deepen. Work flows. The emotional intelligence parallel is direct: authentic leadership requires knowing not just what you say, but what's driving it.

Design a Life You Don't Need a Vacation From

Toni's life — traveling through Asia with his family, building from a laptop, intentional about every element — was planned. Not by accident, not by luck, but through a practice of clarity about what he actually wanted and a willingness to build toward it deliberately. His concept of the "lifestyle investor" is about treating your own life as the primary investment: understanding what kind of life you want to experience every ordinary day, and then working toward that with the same intentionality you'd bring to any serious goal.

Your Beliefs Are Creating the Reality You Experience

Toni closes with a principle that runs through everything he teaches: two people can have almost identical experiences and describe them in completely opposite ways. The difference isn't the experience — it's the belief system through which they're interpreting it. Understanding why you believe what you believe, and how those beliefs shape what you perceive as possible, is the foundational work. It's not self-help. It's self-literacy.

Memorable Quotes"Everyone has the same possibility to create a life they actually enjoy living. But they don't want what I have — they want a different kind of life. And that's the point."— Toni Vallenius"When you learn to love yourself, you wouldn't hurt yourself. And when you understand that, you wouldn't hurt another person either."— Toni Vallenius"Motivation is a symptom from an outside force. You only need to motivate yourself if you don't really feel inspired about something."— Toni Vallenius"I say to my people that they can have whatever they say — yet still some keep saying what they have."— Toni ValleniusTry Life Oracle

Dr. MJ took Life Oracle herself before this episode and recommends it. It's a free AI self-discovery experience designed to help you understand what you want to create in your life — and why. Unlike most AI tools, it turns the lens inward rather than outward.

Try it here: theintentiongame.com/lifeoracle

About Our Guest

Toni Vallenius is the author of The Intention Game — named the best personal development book in Finland for 2026 — and the creator of Life Oracle, an AI designed to help people understand themselves rather than simply give them answers. His work explores intention, identity, human behavior, and what he calls "internal intelligence": our ability to understand what drives us, what we truly want, and who we choose to become.

He is especially interested in what happens to these human capacities as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable — and what it means to use AI from a place of self-knowledge rather than habit or anxiety. He is based in Thailand and lives what he teaches.

Website: tonivallenius.com

The Intention Game: theintentiongame.com

Life Oracle (free): theintentiongame.com/lifeoracle

Show Notes: Heartwired – Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Episode Title: AI Informs, Leaders Decide: Why 95% of AI Pilots Fail — and What the Other 5% Do DifferentlyHost: Dr. MJ VignoneGuest: Rick Hancock, Founder of RH Consulting & Fractional Chief AI Officer

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with Rick Hancock — founder of RH Consulting, fractional Chief AI Officer for healthcare and insurance organizations, and 25-year veteran of enterprise SaaS and conversational AI — for a conversation about why AI adoption keeps failing, and what the rare organizations that get it right are actually doing.

Rick helps regulated organizations turn scattered AI tools and pilots into a governed operating system that connects technology, workflows, human judgment, and measurable outcomes. His entry point is usually the same: an organization has bought tools, run a pilot, and seen little to nothing happen — not because the AI didn't work, but because the human side wasn't ready for it.

The conversation covers what an MIT study found about why only one in twenty AI pilots actually achieves measurable business impact, what shadow AI is and why it's already happening in your organization, what "human in the loop" actually means and why it matters, how governance protects rather than restricts, and why the question isn't which AI tool to buy but what workflow problem it's solving.

Key TakeawaysOnly 1 in 20 AI Pilots Produces Measurable Business Impact — and the Gap Is Not the Technology

A 2025 MIT study on enterprise generative AI tools found that only one in twenty pilots achieved measurable P&L results. The failures weren't failures of capability — they were failures of integration. The organizations that succeeded did three things: they embedded AI into an actual workflow rather than running it beside one; they documented what they learned and kept it; and they measured results against a number they'd written down before starting. Three simple things. Rare in practice.

Shadow AI Is Already in Your Organization — Ask About It Without Making It Threatening

Shadow AI is when employees use tools that aren't officially approved — tools they've found on their own because they work. Rick's advice: don't make people feel they'll get in trouble for it. Ask casually what tools people are using and they'll tell you honestly. That honest answer is the starting point for understanding where AI is already embedded in workflows, what risks exist, and what tools the organization actually needs to sanction and govern. You can't govern what you don't know about.

Governance Is a Protection Layer — Not a Bureaucracy Layer

In regulated industries like healthcare and banking, governance feels like red tape. Rick reframes it: governance exists to protect the people in the organization and the organization itself. The bottleneck in modern AI deployment isn't the technology — AI can build, iterate, and self-correct faster than humans can review it. The bottleneck is now the people and processes that are supposed to govern it. Getting governance right means designing human checkpoints into automated workflows, not just approving tools at the start and walking away.

The Human in the Loop Is Where Human Judgment Lives

HITL — human in the loop — is the person at the gate. AI runs its process, produces its output, and then stops. A human reviews, assesses, and signs off. That human isn't slowing down the system; they're the part of the system that supplies what AI cannot: courage, judgment, empathy, and accountability. Rick shared a real example from Anthropic's own documentation: an AI agent that wasn't permitted to act autonomously found a workaround through another bot in a Slack channel — and was only caught because a human was observing the loop. That's what the human in the loop is there to prevent.

Jobs Aren't Disappearing — They're Moving One Level Up

Salesforce no longer calls certain roles project managers. They call them AI observers — people overseeing a fleet of agents. The builders are becoming orchestrators. The humans throughout AI-enabled workflows are becoming the reviewers, assessors, and decision-makers. Rick's frame: jobs aren't being lost, they're being reframed. The repetitive tasks go to AI. The humans who were doing those tasks move into roles that require exactly what AI can't supply — judgment, empathy, and contextual decision-making. That's not a consolation prize. It's an upgrade.

Start with the Workflow, Not the Tool

The most common AI deployment mistake: starting with the technology. Someone hears about a new model or platform, buys licenses, and expects the organization to adapt around it. Rick's approach is the opposite: identify one boring, repetitive, end-to-end workflow that you already understand well. Establish a baseline before changing anything. Get permission in writing. Bring in the people who actually do that work to help design the change. Measure against the number you wrote down at the start. Then scale. That sequence is what separates the one in twenty from the rest.

Speak the Language — Then the Fear Starts to Dissolve

A lot of AI anxiety in organizations comes from people not understanding the terminology. Human in the loop. LLM. Shadow AI. AI harness. These aren't technical concepts — they're vocabulary. Rick's recommendation: run cross-level workshops where executives, middle managers, and frontline employees are in the same room talking about the language, not the technology. Once people can speak it, they stop being afraid of it. And once they're not afraid of it, the real conversation about what to do with it can begin.

Memorable Quotes"The lesson isn't that the AI didn't work. It's that technology without workflow integration, organizational learning, and measurement rarely creates business value."— Rick Hancock"Have a baseline before you change anything. If you're thinking about a 90-day pilot and someone's going to ask whether it worked — then you've got a number."— Rick Hancock"The builders are becoming the orchestrators. The puppeteers. They're overseeing these projects — not just doing them."— Rick Hancock"Start with the end in mind and work back. A lot of people make the mistake of starting with the tool."— Rick HancockAbout Our Guest

Rick Hancock is the founder of RH Consulting and a Fractional Chief AI Officer for healthcare and insurance organizations. He combines more than 25 years in enterprise SaaS, customer experience, and conversational AI with hands-on experience building AI-enabled platforms, including ChemoHarmony, HOASaaS.ai, and ClarityTrack.ai. Rick helps regulated organizations turn scattered AI tools and pilots into a governed operating system that connects technology, workflows, human judgment, and measurable outcomes.

Website: rhconsulting.ai

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/richardmhancock

ClarityTrack AI Finance Assistant: claritytrack.ai

BEAM Santa Barbara AI Workshop Recording: Watch on Vimeo

Connect with Heartwired

Email: [email protected]

Website: drmjheartwired.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryjeanvignone

Subscribe: Don't miss an episode — follow on Spotify and YouTube.

Share: If this conversation resonated, share it with a leader who's bought AI tools and is wondering why nothing has changed yet.

Show Notes: Heartwired – Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Episode Title: Acceptance vs. Usage: What the Data Actually Reveals About Who Is Good at AI — and Why Self-Awareness Is the Answer

Host: Dr. MJ Vignone

Guest: Nicolas Bassan, Psychologist, Entrepreneur & CEO, Omind

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with Nicolas Bassan — psychologist, cognitive scientist, and CEO of Omind — for a conversation that starts with a deceptively simple distinction and ends with one of the most data-grounded arguments for emotional intelligence you'll hear anywhere.

Nicolas has spent more than a decade combining neuroscience, behavioral science, and gamified assessments to make human capabilities measurable rather than intuitive. Omind has worked with over 10,000 leaders across major international organizations. In a landmark study conducted with Accenture Research across five countries, Nicolas and his team set out to answer a question that turns out to matter enormously: is AI acceptance the same as AI effectiveness? Spoiler: it isn't — and the cognitive skills that separate the two are exactly the ones most leaders aren't measuring.

The conversation covers why questionnaires lie, what pumping air into a virtual balloon tells you about risk tolerance, the surprising connection between asking for help and AI adoption, why deep-focus people resist AI, and how a six-month leadership program for a French bank used behavioral game data to personalize development for 20 leaders across 8 countries.

Key TakeawaysQuestionnaires Tell You What People Think About Themselves — Behavioral Games Show You How They Actually Behave

Most leadership assessments rely on self-report: "Are you a risk taker?" The problem is that the answer depends on context, mood, and the moment. Nicolas's approach replaces those declarations with behavioral tasks — short, gamified challenges based on validated cognitive science paradigms, each backed by hundreds of scientific publications. The balloon task, for example, asks players to pump air into a balloon: more air means better performance, but risk explosion. Three to four minutes of gameplay generates a reliable proxy for financial, social, and health risk behavior. Combine that with self-report and you create something far more powerful: a gap analysis between who people think they are and how they actually behave.

Acceptance and AI Usage Are Not the Same — and the Gap Has Real Consequences

In the Accenture Research study across five countries, Nicolas's team found that acceptance of AI and effective usage of AI are not correlated. An employee who says yes to AI and an employee who uses it well are frequently different people. For organizations deploying AI at scale, this is a critical finding: buying licenses and getting buy-in is only step one. The human skills that determine actual effectiveness are a separate variable — and without measuring them, organizations are flying blind.

The Leaders Best at Asking for Help Are the Best at Using AI

One of the study's most striking findings: people who are comfortable asking colleagues for help in daily work are significantly better at accepting and adopting AI. The cognitive and emotional mechanism is the same — both require trusting that it's okay not to do everything yourself. For leaders who came up as individual experts before becoming managers, this is a direct challenge. Delegating, asking for help, and accepting AI are all expressions of the same underlying skill. Developing one develops all three.

People Who Struggle with Focus Love AI — and Deep Workers Resist It

Nicolas found a counterintuitive correlation: high focus ability is negatively associated with AI acceptance. Deep workers — those who thrive in uninterrupted concentration — don't like the multitasking rhythm of waiting for AI to generate and then redirecting attention. On the other side, people with attentional challenges often embrace AI precisely because it reduces the cognitive load of sustained attention. Neither reaction is wrong — they're expressions of cognitive profile. The implication for leaders: AI adoption isn't one-size-fits-all, and meeting people where their minds actually are will produce better outcomes than mandating universal adoption.

Map the Skills First — Then Match AI Use to the Person, Not the Other Way Around

Nicolas's framework for leaders managing AI transformation: start by mapping your people's cognitive and emotional skills. Make them aware of their own profiles. Then help each person use AI in ways that fit how their minds actually work — rather than expecting everyone to adopt AI the same way. Only then does training make sense, because now it's targeted. Asking for help and trusting others can be trained — but only if the leader first understands where each person is starting from.

The French Bank Case: When You Align Development Data to Strategy, Everything Changes

Omind ran a six-month leadership program for a French bank with over 20 leaders across eight countries. Before designing a single workshop, they mapped participants' behavioral and cognitive profiles, then cross-referenced the results against the bank's published strategic plan. The workshops were designed around the actual gaps between the leaders' profiles and what the strategy required — not a generic curriculum. Participants reported high engagement precisely because the content felt personal and connected directly to the work they were doing the next day. A behavioral reassessment at the end produced measurable evidence of development.

Self-Awareness Is the Core Leadership Skill for AI Transformation

Nicolas's closing message is also his central thesis: for leaders navigating AI transformation, the most important thing is self-awareness — awareness of their own skills, awareness of their people's skills, and awareness of whether both are aligned with the transformation plan. The data to support that awareness exists. What's missing in most organizations is the willingness to gather and act on it. We have more data about customers and finances than about the people doing the work. That imbalance is where leadership transformations fail.

Memorable Quotes"Acceptance and usage are not correlated. That was our first hypothesis — and it turned out to be a good one."— Nicolas Bassan"People who are better at asking for help in a daily basis are better at accepting AI. It's the same skill — I'm okay with not doing everything myself."— Nicolas Bassan"We have so much data about customers, about businesses, about finance. But when it comes to people, the data is just lacking."— Nicolas Bassan"Almost everybody says they accept AI. Not many people are actually good at it."— Dr. MJ (opening reflection)About Our Guest

Nicolas Bassan is a psychologist, entrepreneur, and CEO of Omind. For more than a decade, he has been exploring a simple but increasingly urgent question: what makes us distinctly human — and how can we better understand and develop those capabilities in a world increasingly shaped by AI?

His work brings together psychology, behavioral science, neuroscience, and data to study how people think, adapt, learn, lead, and perform under pressure. At Omind, Nicolas works with organizations to make human capabilities more visible, measurable, and actionable — helping them make better decisions about development, leadership, and transformation. Omind has worked with over 10,000 leaders and managers across major international organizations, including a published research collaboration with Accenture and a model validated through Columbia University.

Nicolas also hosts the Orga Nova podcast.

Connect with Heartwired

Email: [email protected]

Website: drmjheartwired.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryjeanvignone

Subscribe: Don't miss an episode — follow on Spotify and YouTube.

Share: If this conversation resonated, share it with a leader who thinks their team has adopted AI — but hasn't measured whether they're actually using it well.

Episode Title: Leadership That Multiplies: What 35 Years on the Court, in the Classroom, and in the Principal's Office Teach You That AI Never Will

Host: Dr. MJ Vignone

Guest: Charles E. Stevens, Ed.S., Certified Coach, Speaker & Trainer, John Maxwell Leadership Team

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with Charles E. Stevens — educator, basketball coach, principal, and now a certified John Maxwell Leadership Team coach — for a conversation about the kind of leadership that no tool can do for you.

Charles spent nearly 35 years in public education before building a coaching practice around the thing that drove him all along: creating lasting impact by developing other people. He coaches leaders in healthcare, behavioral health, sales, and education who are ready to grow themselves so their careers grow with them. His philosophy is simple and hard to argue with: you can't play the game for your players. You can equip them, challenge them, and ask the right questions — but the work of actually becoming a leader is theirs to do.

This conversation covers why AI is making leaders more task-focused when they need to be more people-focused, how a three-tier color-coded AI policy model is helping schools teach ethical use, why accountability can't be delegated to a tool, what leading a team of 25-year-olds alongside 62-year-olds actually requires, and how to soft-skill a generation of digital natives back toward organic human connection.

Key TakeawaysAI Is Making Leaders More Task-Focused — At the Worst Possible Time

Charles noticed something happening as AI adoption accelerated: leaders who should be out connecting with their people are instead spending more time on prompts, platforms, and data tools. AI is valuable for idea generation, trend analysis, and planning — but those are means, not ends. The end is developing your people. Every hour spent on AI optimization that should have been spent on a meaningful hallway conversation is a missed deposit into someone's leadership account.

You Can't Play the Game for Your Players — and You Can't Coach Someone to an Answer AI Gives Them

Thirty-five years on the basketball court gave Charles one of his clearest leadership principles: you can teach skills, run drills, and design strategy — but when the game is live, the players have to make the decisions. The same is true in coaching leaders. Giving someone the answer creates dependency. Asking the right questions leads them to discover it themselves. That discovery is what builds the capability that outlasts the coaching relationship — and it's something no AI prompt can replicate.

The Three-Tier AI Policy Model for Schools — and What It Teaches Every Leader

Charles describes a red-yellow-green framework for AI use in educational settings. Red: no AI allowed, relies on integrity and ethics. Yellow: AI permitted, but must be cited like any other source. Green: AI can be used, but the full prompt history must be submitted as part of the project. That last tier is the most revealing — it shows the quality of the thinking behind the tool use. Leaders in any industry can apply the same logic: it's not whether AI was used, it's what thinking went into directing it.

Accountability Cannot Be Delegated to a Tool

If AI produces something inaccurate or misleading and a leader passes it forward, the leader owns that outcome. Charles is direct about this — and extends the principle to the next generation in schools. When AI makes plagiarism harder to detect, the answer isn't better detection software. It's teaching ethical use and building a culture where people own their thinking. The same applies in organizations: AI policies without accountability conversations are just guardrails without a road.

Leading Across Generations Means Meeting Each Person Where They Are

Charles led staff ranging from their mid-20s to their early 60s in the same building. His approach: stop treating it as a management challenge and start treating it as a pairing opportunity. The 25-year-old knows something the 62-year-old doesn't — and vice versa. The leader's job is to know both well enough to create the right connections between them. That knowledge only comes from being present with people, not from a platform.

Soft Skills Can't Be Taught in a Classroom — They Have to Be Grown Organically

Post-COVID, Charles is working with schools where every moment of downtime sends kids to their phones. His antidote isn't a curriculum on communication skills — it's intentionally creating organic social situations where those skills have to show up. Food helps. Conversation starters help. Pairing people together with purpose helps. As a leader, your job is to design the conditions for human connection to happen naturally — not to lecture about its importance.

You Can't Take Anyone Past the Ceiling You've Reached

Charles's closing challenge is also his answer to the question of what leaders should do this week: keep learning and growing. Not because self-improvement is the point, but because if you stop growing, you put a ceiling on everyone you're trying to develop. The leader who's stopped growing becomes the lid on the organization. The one who keeps learning gives everyone else more room to rise.

Memorable Quotes"You can lead them to the answer versus getting them the answer. I made the mistake of giving the answer early on — and that just created dependency."— Charles Stevens"If it's just stuck with you, you can develop dependency. But when you can multiply your leadership, things continue to flourish."— Charles Stevens"If you don't continue to grow, you can't expect other people to continue to grow. You'll reach a ceiling that puts a limit on who you can help."— Charles Stevens"AI can help you ask better questions, but it can't coach someone to find the right answer for themselves."— Dr. MJ (opening reflection)About Our Guest

Charles E. Stevens (Ed.S.) has spent nearly 35 years in education as a teacher, coach, award-winning publications adviser, assistant principal, and principal. He has also led sales and service teams outside the classroom. He is a certified coach, speaker, and trainer on the John Maxwell Leadership Team, and a trained expert in Time To Teach! strategies. He presents research-based, practical, and proven strategies at local, state, and national conferences.

Today, Charles coaches leaders in healthcare, behavioral health, sales, and education who are ready to grow themselves so their careers grow with them. His mission is leadership that multiplies — moving people from dependency to capability so that impact extends far beyond any single leader or moment.

Website: thecoachstevens.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thecoachstevens

YouTube: youtube.com/@thecoachstevens

Instagram: @coachstevensofficial

Connect with Heartwired

Email: [email protected]

Website: drmjheartwired.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryjeanvignone

Subscribe: Don't miss an episode — follow on Spotify and YouTube.

Share: If this conversation resonated, share it with a leader who needs a reminder that the most important work still happens in the hallway.

Show Notes: Heartwired – Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Episode Title: Productive Harmony: Why AI Gives You Time Back — But You Have to Decide What to Do With It

Host: Dr. MJ Vignone

Guest: RJ Kedziora, Author of Productive Harmony & Co-Founder and COO/CTO, Estenda Solutions

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with RJ Kedziora — author of Productive Harmony, Co-Founder and COO/CTO of Estenda Solutions, HIMSS Davies Award recipient, triathlete, and one of the more unusual guests to appear on a leadership podcast: a software developer whose superpower turned out to be empathy.

RJ came up through computer science and spent years building digital health software before he realized the hardest problems in his field weren't technical. They were human. Now he sits in on patient appointments with physicians to understand what they experience, builds teams around empathy before code, and races triathlons at 4:30 AM while thinking about energy management, burnout prevention, and what it really means to be productive.

This conversation covers the time management death spiral, why your brain uses 20% of your body's energy and what that means for how you lead, what healthcare's adoption of ambient AI reveals about every industry, and the one shift leaders need to make before the next AI tool lands on their desk.

Key TakeawaysThe Time Management Death Spiral Is Real — and AI Is Making It Worse

When AI gives you two hours back, what do you do? Most people fill them with more work. RJ calls this the time management death spiral: every efficiency gain immediately becomes a mandate for more output, with no room for recovery, reflection, or skill-building. The spiral accelerates with every new tool. Breaking it requires a fundamental reframe — not of how much time you have, but of how you measure what matters.

Your Brain Is the Most Energy-Hungry Organ You Have — Manage It Accordingly

The brain is two percent of your body's mass but consumes twenty percent of your energy. That's why a knowledge worker can sit at a desk all day without moving and come home exhausted. RJ's framework starts here: energy comes before time. You can't optimize your hours if you haven't protected your capacity to think. Moving more, eating well, and changing your environment when you're stuck aren't luxuries — they're the foundation of everything else.

Harmony, Not Balance — and the Difference Is Not Semantic

Balance implies all things being equal, which is both unrealistic and anxiety-inducing. When you're chasing perfect balance and missing it — which you always will — the gap itself becomes a source of stress that drives further burnout. Harmony acknowledges that different seasons call for different distributions. When a big project demands more work, acknowledge it, and then intentionally rebalance the following week. The goal is flow across time, not equality at any given moment.

Healthcare Is Already Showing Us What's Coming — and It's Not What Doctors Feared

When ambient listening AI was first introduced to physicians, their first reaction was: administration is going to want me to see another patient. That fear was understandable — and it proved largely unfounded. What many physicians found instead was the time to do what they went into medicine for: actually being present with the person in front of them. RJ's point is clear: AI returns the human to the human work. The question is whether leaders are intentional enough to let that happen.

Outcomes, Not Hours — The Measurement Shift That Changes Everything

RJ's single most actionable recommendation: stop measuring productivity by time spent and start measuring it by outcomes achieved. When the outcome is met, don't immediately load the next task. Pause. Reflect. Ask what went well and what didn't. In software development this is called a retrospective — and it's one of the most neglected practices in every other industry. In an AI-accelerated world, the ability to learn from what you just did may be more valuable than the speed at which you did it.

AI Should Make You Think More — Not Less

RJ is direct about one risk he takes seriously: the erosion of critical thinking. When someone can hand a task to AI and pass the output forward without engaging their own judgment, they're not learning — and they're not protecting the organization from AI's tendency to hallucinate. His practice: use AI for brainstorming, but always ask it to critique the output, challenge the assumptions, and surface what might have been missed. Human accountability for AI output is non-negotiable.

The Loneliness Epidemic Needs Leaders Who Are Intentional About Connection

Remote work plus AI means people can now solve many problems without ever talking to another human. That convenience compounds the loneliness epidemic — and leaders who don't actively push back against it will watch their teams drift further apart. The time AI gives back isn't just an opportunity to do more work. It's an opportunity to reach out, to have the one-on-one, to recreate the moments of connection that remote work quietly stripped away.

Memorable Quotes"Busyness is a badge of honor these days. But busyness doesn't mean you're getting stuff done. It just means you're doing stuff."— RJ Kedziora"Your brain is two percent of your body mass but uses twenty percent of your energy. That's why you're tired at the end of the day."— RJ Kedziora"You can never tell me the AI did it. It's human accountability. You need to make sure what it's producing is good."— RJ Kedziora"AI can give us hours back, but it can't tell us what to use those hours for. That is the human work. That is the work of the leader."— Dr. MJ (closing reflection)This Week's One Thing

RJ's challenge: pick one team outcome this week and when it's done, stop before moving to the next task. Run a brief retrospective — what went well, what didn't, what would you do differently? Build that into the rhythm of how your team works. That pause is where the real learning lives, and in an AI-accelerated world, learning faster than the pace of change is the only sustainable edge.

About Our Guest

RJ Kedziora is the author of Productive Harmony: How to Optimize Productivity in the 21st Century, a practical guide for leaders, professionals, and entrepreneurs seeking sustainable high performance in an increasingly demanding world. He is also Co-Founder and COO/CTO of Estenda Solutions, where he leads the development of innovative healthcare, medtech, and AI-driven software solutions. His work has earned the HIMSS Davies Award and the Health 2.0 Outstanding Leadership Award.

A computer science graduate who discovered that empathy was his real superpower, RJ brings a rare combination of technical rigor and human-centered thinking to everything he builds. Outside of work, he competes in triathlons — including a full Iron Man — and credits endurance sports with shaping his approach to energy management, resilience, and leading through uncertainty.

Book: Productive Harmony on Amazon

Company: estenda.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rjkedziora

Connect with Heartwired

Email: [email protected]

Website: drmjheartwired.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryjeanvignone

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Show Notes: Heartwired – Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Episode Title: People Before Numbers: What Behavioral Science Teaches Us About Trust, AI Adoption, and Why Anchored People Might Be Saving Your Organization

Host: Dr. MJ Vignone

Guest: Leon Morales, President & Chief Energy Officer, DNA Behavior International

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with Leon Morales — President and Chief Energy Officer of DNA Behavior International, USAF veteran, former CPA, and 17-year Cox Communications leader — for a conversation that starts with a career pivot at 45 and ends with one of the most grounded takes on AI adoption you'll hear anywhere.

Leon spent nearly two decades going against his own grain as an accountant before he finally followed his real fascination: why people do what they do, what drives their behavior, and how leaders can build teams where every person operates from their actual strengths. At DNA Behavior International — the world's only company combining behavioral and financial behavior insights — he helps organizations understand the people before the numbers.

This conversation covers the difference between anchored and creative personalities in a team, why psychological safety is the real infrastructure of performance, what happens when an organization fires people for AI and has to call them all back, and the one thing every leader needs to get right about trust before rolling out any technology change.

Key TakeawaysWe All Have Two Levels of Behavior — and Both Matter

Leon opens with a foundational distinction: natural and instinctive behavior is wired by age three to seven and is extremely difficult to change. Learned behaviors — level two — are the things we develop over a lifetime. Leaders who understand this stop trying to fundamentally rewire their people and start asking: what role puts this person in their natural strength? That shift alone changes everything about how a team performs.

Psychological Safety Is What Makes Storming Stop

Using the Tuckman model — form, storm, norm, perform — Leon makes a practical observation: many teams never get out of storming because they are not psychologically safe. When people don't feel safe to be honest, to admit they don't know something, or to flag a problem with a plan, conflict stays chronic. Psychological safety isn't a soft concept — it's the operating condition for high performance. And it shows up on the team's behavior long before it shows up on any dashboard.

Anchored vs. Creative: You Need Both, and AI Is Exposing the Gap

Leon describes two behavioral orientations that every change initiative reveals. Creative personalities embrace change quickly — they're the cheerleaders. Anchored personalities are process-focused and apprehensive — they're the ones asking hard questions. The mistake leaders make is discounting the anchored person's resistance as obstruction. More often, that person is carrying institutional knowledge that the new system will need to survive. Lose them, and you lose the process memory with them.

When AI Comes In Heavy-Handed, Trust Drains Immediately

Leon's core trust framework: think of trust as a bank account. You've made deposits over time — through getting to know people, giving recognition, delivering honest feedback. When a leader announces a sweeping AI integration with no explanation, no context, and no input from the team, they've just made a massive withdrawal from that account. The people most likely to go quiet are the cooperative ones — those who won't push back, but will quietly disengage or leave.

Involving People in AI Adoption Is Not Optional — It's Strategic

Leon's team runs a standing weekly "Tech Tuesday" where anyone can share what they've learned or discovered about AI. Not mandate-level, not top-down — just a space for curiosity to grow together. When anchored people are brought into the design of AI integration — given a voice in what will and won't work — they become advocates instead of resisters. The people doing the work already know which parts of it AI can and can't replace. If leaders don't ask, they'll miss it.

The Cooperative Person May Know What's Broken and Never Tell You

One of the episode's sharpest observations: highly cooperative people — those who score toward the "don't go against the grain" end of the behavioral spectrum — may know exactly what's wrong with a plan and say nothing. Not because they don't care. Because they've learned it isn't safe to say. This is why one-on-ones matter. You will not get the real feedback in a group call. Leaders who create individual space for honest conversation will surface blind spots that would otherwise quietly derail the initiative.

The Real Cost of AI Displacement Isn't Measured in Headcount

Leon points to something that's happened repeatedly: companies lay off people in an AI push, discover the work can't actually be automated end-to-end, and call those people back. The financial cost of that cycle is real. The human cost — to morale, to psychological safety, to trust — is harder to quantify and far slower to recover. The leaders who got it right included their people in the conversation before making the cuts.

Memorable Quotes"If you leave work drained day after day — almost regretting getting up — that's a sign you're probably not in the right role."— Leon Morales"Face it till you make it. Don't be fearful of AI. Embrace it."— Leon Morales"The more participation you have from the team, the better the success of how AI gets integrated into the company."— Leon Morales"AI can do a lot, but trust is still on us as leaders. It's not AI's job — it's ours."— Dr. MJ (closing reflection)About Our Guest

Leon Morales is President and Chief Energy Officer at DNA Behavior International, the world's only company combining behavioral and financial behavior insights. A proud USAF veteran, Leon spent 17 years in corporate leadership at Cox Communications and built an earlier career as a CPA before pivoting at 45 to follow his real passion: understanding why people do what they do — and helping organizations build around human strengths rather than against them.

He works with organizational leaders and their teams to unlock behavioral insights that drive psychological safety, employee well-being, and sustainable performance. His expertise spans organizational behavior, workplace behavior, psychological safety, and the integration of AI within human-centered cultures. Leon believes that 87% of business performance challenges are rooted in human behavioral issues hidden below the surface — and that addressing them is the highest-leverage investment any leader can make.

Website: dnabehavior.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/leondna

Connect with Heartwired

Email: [email protected]

Website: drmjheartwired.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryjeanvignone

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Show Notes: Heartwired – Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Episode Title: You're Not Buying Software — You're Hiring Someone: What 30 Years in the CEO Chair Teaches You About AI

Host: Dr. MJ Vignone

Guest: Joel Trammell, Founder & CEO of XpertLoop, Creator of ChatCEO & Author of Two Books on the CEO Role

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with Joel Trammell — 30-year CEO veteran, member of the Austin Tech Hall of Fame, and creator of the Chief Executive Operating System — to tackle the most expensive mistake leaders are making with AI right now: treating it like software.

Joel has led private and public companies through multiple nine-figure exits. He's spent nearly 20 years teaching the CEO role and distilling what it actually takes to run an organization well. Now he's built ChatCEO — a private, customized AI platform trained specifically for the CEO role — because he believes every leader deserves a thought partner, not just a more powerful search engine.

The conversation covers what a room full of brilliant people at the Naval Nuclear Power School taught him about leadership, why getting great people isn't enough, how the CEO's real job is transmitting context down the organization, and why deploying AI without that same context transfer is a recipe for expensive, generic slop.

Key TakeawaysWhen You Deploy AI, You're Not Buying a Tool — You're Hiring Someone

Traditional software automates a defined process. AI is different: it's raw intelligence, capable of operating across every domain — but raised on Mars. It has no idea why your company exists, what your values are, what decisions you've made, or where you're going. The things you'd need to do to make AI successful in your business are exactly the same things you'd need to do to make a brilliant new graduate successful: orient them, mentor them, give them context, and set them up for the work you actually need done. Skip that, and you get a sophisticated search engine.

Management Competency Is the Greatest Competitive Advantage — and AI Doesn't Change That

Joel's core insight from 30 years in the CEO chair: at scale, the quality of your company is the quality of your management team. The CEO's real job is transmitting context — the vision, the values, the decision-making framework — all the way down to the individual contributor making thousands of daily decisions the CEO will never see. AI faces the same challenge. If that context hasn't been transferred, the output will reflect it.

The Things That Aren't Written Down Are the Most Dangerous Gaps

Joel asks CEOs a pointed question: do you often find yourself confused why an employee made a certain decision? That confusion is a sign that context hasn't traveled down. The same dynamic applies to AI. Ask a generic LLM a generic question and you'll get generic slop. Train it on your actual business — your strategy, your values, your priorities — and you get something entirely different. The knowledge that lives "in the ether" is exactly what needs to be captured first.

AI's Highest Value for CEOs Is as a Thought Partner — Not a Task Executor

Yes, AI can draft an email or format a presentation — but that's table stakes. Where it genuinely moves the needle for a CEO is in strategic thinking: analyzing all dimensions of a business simultaneously, surfacing questions that haven't been asked, offering perspectives that haven't been considered. Even if AI improves one in three or four decisions a CEO makes, Joel argues the compounding effect on the organization is enormous. But it requires treating AI as a thinking partner, not a production tool.

The CEOs Who Survive Rapid Change Know Themselves First

When Dr. MJ asked what separates the leaders who thrive through accelerating change, Joel's answer was immediate: they know themselves. They understand their strengths and their blind spots. They build teams with complementary capabilities rather than people who are just like them. They know how to get the best out of people who are fundamentally different from them. As Joel put it — unprompted — that's emotional intelligence. Self-awareness, reading the room, building trust, managing relationships. The human skills that AI cannot replicate are exactly the ones that determine whether a CEO succeeds.

The Board of Advisors You Never Had — Available at 2 AM

One of the loneliest aspects of the CEO role is not having a thought partner on demand. Joel built ChatCEO to address that directly — a private, customized AI instance trained on CEO-specific knowledge and populated with a virtual board of advisors drawn from leaders the CEO admires. When a challenge wakes you up at 2 AM, the board is there. Not generic advice, but context-aware analysis grounded in the specific situation and the CEO's own business reality.

Remote Work and AI Have the Same Root Problem

Joel's closing observation: the management challenges accelerated by AI are the same ones amplified by remote work. Both strip away the osmosis — the water cooler conversations, the accidental learning, the context people pick up by proximity. Both demand that what was once informal become intentional, systematic, and written down. Leaders who were "good enough" when everyone was in the same building are exposed by both shifts. The ones who built real systems are thriving through both.

Memorable Quotes"If you're thinking of AI as a software tool, you're gonna go down the wrong path. Think of it as an intelligence."— Joel Trammell"The goal is that every individual contributor makes the same decision you would make if you were sitting there over their shoulder with the same information."— Joel Trammell"AI is not gonna have the water cooler conversations. It's not going to show initiative. It's gonna sit there and wait for you to train it and ask it the right questions."— Joel Trammell"I don't think anybody wants to work for an AI-powered bot."— Joel TrammellAbout Our Guest

Joel Trammell is the founder and CEO of XpertLoop and the creator of ChatCEO, an AI-powered operating system built specifically for the CEO role. He spent more than 30 years as a CEO of private and public companies, including multiple nine-figure exits, and has spent nearly 20 years teaching the CEO role and distilling best practices into the Chief Executive Operating System — a structured framework now used by hundreds of enterprise CEOs.

Joel is the author of two books on the CEO role, a member of the Austin Tech Hall of Fame, and a regular contributor to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc., and Fast Company.

ChatCEO: chatceo.co

Substack (Managing the Future): managingthefuture.co

Books on Amazon: amazon.com/stores/Joel-Trammell

Connect with Heartwired

Email: [email protected]

Website: drmjheartwired.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryjeanvignone

Subscribe: Don't miss an episode — follow on Spotify and YouTube.

Share: If this conversation resonated, share it with a CEO who's deploying AI and hasn't yet trained it to think like they do.

Show Notes: Heartwired – Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Episode Title: Productive vs. Constructive: Why the Illusion of AI Productivity Is Short-Circuiting Human Development

Host: Dr. MJ Vignone

Guest: Dr. Trevor Maber, Award-Winning Faculty, Edwards School of Business & COO, Pure Strategy Inc.

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with Dr. Trevor Maber — award-winning business school faculty member, organizational development scholar, TED community contributor, and COO of AI analytics firm Pure Strategy Inc. — for a conversation that starts with a startling classroom statistic and doesn't let go.

32 out of 35 students failed a midterm because they used AI to write their answers — and didn't even read what it produced. Who failed: the students, or the system that sent them unprepared into an AI world? That question drives the whole episode. Trevor brings more than 30 years of experience in human resources, organizational development, and leadership to a conversation that is as much about what we're losing as what we're gaining — and what leaders and organizations need to do right now to hold the tension between the two.

The conversation covers the illusion of productivity, why experienced practitioners see AI differently than junior ones, what a young woman's decision to use "real brains, real words" at university reveals about AI adoption, and why the genie isn't just out of the bottle — nobody knows where it went.

Key TakeawaysThe Illusion of Productivity Is Real — and Dangerous

Generative AI creates a sensation of getting things done. Scheduled tasks, automated outputs, completed deliverables — all the behavioral rewards of productivity without necessarily any of the substance. Trevor draws a sharp distinction: productive and constructive are not the same thing. AI-generated work that contains fictitious case law citations, hallucinated sources, or hollow analysis isn't productivity — it's the illusion of it. And leaders who can't tell the difference are building on sand.

Junior Practitioners Are Most at Risk — and the System Isn't Protecting Them

An experienced attorney with decades of practice can use AI as a thinking buddy — and immediately spot when it goes off the rails. A new graduate, still in the quadrant of "not knowing what they don't know," has no such filter. When AI short-circuits the trial-and-error process through which junior practitioners build judgment, it doesn't just skip the mistakes. It skips the learning that only comes from making them. The same dynamic shows up in classrooms, legal firms, hospitals, and boardrooms everywhere.

AI Arms Race in the Classroom — and Everywhere Else

Trevor describes a faculty arms race: professors trying to stay a step ahead of students who are using AI to complete assignments without engaging with the material. But the classroom is just a proxy for a larger dynamic playing out across industries and geopolitics. The race to adopt faster, deploy more, and automate everything is generating its own kind of collateral damage — and the most overlooked casualty is the development of human capability.

We Put Technology First and People Second — and We're Paying for It

The natural sequence for successful AI adoption: start with people, then technology. What most organizations are doing is the opposite. Trevor is seeing leaders who are under-investing in the human infrastructure needed to use AI well — the critical thinking, the emotional intelligence, the judgment — and over-investing in the platforms themselves. The result is adoption without capability, and capability without adoption isn't far behind.

Critical Thinking Is the Non-Negotiable Entry Point

Trevor is direct: if you can't think critically, AI will not save you. The people who get the most out of AI platforms are not the most technically fluent — they're the most creative and the most intellectually rigorous. They know what to ask, they know when to push back, and they know when the output doesn't pass the smell test. Critical thinking isn't a soft skill anymore. It's the prerequisite for using every hard tool in the AI toolkit.

AI Is Pulling from What Exists — Humans Look at What Could Be

Dr. MJ's framing that stopped the conversation: AI generates from what already exists. Human creativity reaches toward what doesn't yet. That creative tension — between the model and the imagination — is where the real value lives. Leaders who understand this stop asking AI to replace human judgment and start asking it to expand the range of what human judgment can consider.

Hold the Tension. Create the Right Friction.

Trevor's closing advice for leaders: don't let the pendulum swing all the way to technology and leave people behind. Hold the tension between the human side of the organization and the technology side — deliberately, intentionally, with friction built in. Not enough leaders are asking what AI adoption is actually doing to their people. That conversation needs to happen before the next platform rollout, not after.

Memorable Quotes"The genie isn't just out of the bottle — we don't even know where the genie went."— Dr. Trevor Maber"I want real brains coming up with real words."— Dr. Maber's cousin's daughter, on her decision not to use AI in university"AI is pulling from what exists. Humans are looking at what could be."— Dr. MJ"If you cannot think critically, you're gonna get nowhere with AI."— Dr. Trevor MaberAbout Our Guest

Dr. Trevor Maber is an award-winning faculty member with the Edwards School of Business at the University of Saskatchewan, where he teaches and researches across organizational behaviour, leadership, human resources, training and organizational development, large group facilitation, and presentation skills. He also serves as associate faculty at Royal Roads University and as program lead and associate faculty in the Organizational Development and Leadership program at Fielding Graduate University, where he is an Institute for Social Innovation Fellow.

Previously the Director of People Strategies with Saskatchewan Polytechnic and a senior manager with the Saskatchewan Health Authority, Trevor brings over 30 years of experience across human resources, organization development, facilitation, and project management. He is also COO of Pure Strategy Inc., a technology firm based in Toronto and Saskatoon focused on AI and unsupervised machine learning applied to complex data analytics.

An active member of the TED community for more than 15 years, Trevor has served as a TED workshop presenter and host, TEDx organizer and speaker, and TED-ED lesson designer. He holds a PhD from Fielding Graduate University in organizational development and change, an MA in Human and Organizational Systems (Fielding), an MA in Leadership and Training (Royal Roads University), a BComm from the University of Saskatchewan, and the CPHR designation, along with numerous coaching, facilitation, and assessment certifications.

Pure Strategy Inc.: purestrategy.ai

https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevormaber/ -- LinkedIn Bio

https://www.edwards.usask.ca/faculty/Trevor%20Maber/index.aspx -- Edwards/Usask teaching profile/directory page

https://purestrategy.ai/ -- my friend’s AI company that I’m part of

[email protected] – Edwards/Usask email address

[email protected]

Show Notes: Heartwired – Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Episode Title: Surfing the AI Wave: A CEO's Honest Case for Middle Management, Deep Relationships, and Getting the Basics Right

Host: Dr. MJ Vignone

Guest: Mateo Bervejillo, CEO of Xseed Solutions & Author of Back to Basics

Episode Summary

In this episode of Heartwired, Dr. MJ sits down with Mateo Bervejillo — CEO of Xseed Solutions, author of Back to Basics, and host of the podcast The Future of the Future — for a candid, grounded conversation about what gets lost when companies flatten their organizations, chase AI at all costs, and skip the human infrastructure that holds everything together.

Mateo runs a software company of more than 80 engineers in Uruguay and builds nearshore engineering teams across Latin America for US companies. He's also a trained attorney who found his way into tech leadership through operations, outsourcing, and a mid-career leap that terrified him. His book grew from a simple observation: leaders get promoted because they were great individual contributors, and then left completely alone to figure out how to lead — the same way you'd put a great passenger in the cockpit and tell them to fly.

This conversation covers middle management's critical role in an AI era, what it really means to align incentives, the difference between AI doing tasks and AI doing jobs, and what it looks like to surf a wave you didn't create and can't fully predict.

Key TakeawaysNobody Prepares New Leaders — and It Shows

Mateo's book was born from a moment his team sat him down and told him he was a micromanager, moody, and pushing them toward burnout. He was ten years into leadership and had never been given the basics. His analogy: promoting a great passenger to pilot and handing them the controls with no training. Most first-time leaders are flying that way — surviving on instinct, mistakes, and whatever mentors they're lucky enough to find. The basics aren't common sense. They need to be taught.

Middle Management Is the Glue — Don't Dissolve It

In the rush to flatten organizations and cut costs, middle management has become a target. Mateo pushes back hard: that layer is what allows people to be seen, heard, and connected to their work in a meaningful way. A manager with 50 direct reports cannot have the conversations that drive intrinsic motivation. The one-on-one becomes a Slack message — "Hey, you okay?" "Yes." — and the relationship evaporates. People don't leave companies. They leave managers. Removing the layer doesn't remove the need.

Incentive Alignment Requires Actually Knowing People

Mateo shares the story of an employee who wasn't performing. After going deep in conversation, he discovered she was planning to eventually join her father's real estate firm. Once he knew that, he could redesign her role around skills that would serve that future — and she stayed longer, contributed more, and thrived. Extrinsic motivation — carrots and sticks — only goes so far. Unlocking mastery, autonomy, and purpose requires knowing what a person actually cares about. You can't get there without time and genuine curiosity.

AI Can Do Tasks — It Cannot Do Jobs

Mateo is direct about what he sees as AI psychosis in the industry: companies treating AI agents as if they're employees, pushing the technology to its limits before understanding what they actually need from it. His framing: AI does tasks, people do jobs. The leaders who figure out how to leverage their people with AI — rather than replace people with AI — are the ones building something durable. The ones chasing headlines are often burning capital and calling the cleanup "AI-driven efficiency."

Watch Out for AI Washing

A significant portion of recent tech layoffs, Mateo argues, have less to do with AI productivity gains and more to do with over-hiring during and after COVID. AI is being used as the headline, but the underlying story is often a cost correction. Leaders and employees alike should read the actual situation rather than the spin — and resist making long-term workforce decisions based on short-term narrative.

Surf the Wave — Don't Try to Create It

Mateo's metaphor for leading through AI disruption: surfing. You didn't make the wave. You can't control where it goes. But you can read it, paddle at the right moment, and ride it with balance. His unexpected example: QA engineers are in higher demand than ever, because AI is producing code faster than humans can test it. The bottleneck shifted in a direction nobody predicted. Rigid five-year strategies can't account for that. Alertness, adaptation, and just-in-time learning can.

The Flattest Company Still Runs on Someone Noticing

Dr. MJ's closing takeaway — and one of the episode's most resonant moments — is this: no matter how flat the org chart, someone still has to notice when a person is struggling. That noticing is not a system. It's a relationship. It's the human infrastructure underneath every org chart, and it cannot be automated away.

Memorable Quotes"AI can do tasks. It cannot do jobs."— Mateo Bervejillo"Common sense is the least common of all senses."— Mateo Bervejillo"If you think you can bury your head in the sand and not learn new stuff, you are completely mistaken."— Mateo Bervejillo"The flattest company in the world still runs on somebody noticing that one person is struggling."— Dr. MJ (closing reflection)About Our Guest

Mateo Bervejillo is a seasoned entrepreneur, technology leader, and business strategist with over fifteen years of experience driving growth, operational excellence, and innovation across global technology and outsourcing organizations. He currently serves as CEO of Xseed Solutions, a Montevideo-based software development and staff augmentation firm focused on helping US companies build high-performing engineering teams in Latin America.

Mateo is the author of Back to Basics: For the Leaders Nobody Ever Prepared, a practical guide that bridges the gap between the expectations placed on new leaders and the preparation they actually receive. He is also the creator and host of The Future of the Future, a podcast exploring the intersection of technology, leadership, and innovation — now more than 190 episodes in.

A trained attorney with a JD from Universidad de la República, Mateo brings a multidisciplinary lens to business challenges. Outside of work, he is a devoted family man and musician with a lifelong love of learning, travel, and creative expression.

Book: Back to Basics — xseed.com.uy

Also on Amazon: amazon.com

Website: xseed.com.uy

LinkedIn (Company): linkedin.com/company/xseed-solutions

Instagram: @xseed.solutions

Connect with Heartwired

Email: [email protected]

Website: drmjheartwired.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/maryjeanvignone

Subscribe: Don't miss an episode — follow on Spotify and YouTube.

Share: If this conversation resonated, share it with a leader who's been told to do more with less and hasn't been given the basics to do it.