The Chore Cast - Development for Everyday Workers

Is Followership the Most Misunderstood Role in the Workplace?

We’ve all heard the saying, “Great leaders create more leaders, not followers.” But what if we’ve been looking at followership all wrong?

In this episode of AI Chore Cast, we explore why talent development needs to move beyond its leader-centric mindset and embrace Smart Followership as the counterpart to management.

Drawing on the work of Robert Kelley, Joseph Rost, Matthew Chodkowski, and David Elser’s book, Doing The Chores, we challenge traditional thinking and introduce Talent Development 2.0!

Because the future isn’t about creating more leaders. It’s about developing better collaborators who know how to cooperate, contribute, and succeed together.

That’s Doing The Chores!

Please consider supporting my work by ordering a copy of my books: Doing The Chores - Creating The Groundwork For Success or my Children’s book: Doing The Chores - Be Like A Farmer.

Thank you!

David Elser

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What is the difference between leadership and management in the Intelligence Era? And have we been thinking about the popular manager vs. leader debate all wrong?

In AI Chore Cast #8, we challenge one of the most common ideas in leadership development: that managers and leaders are two different types of people.

We explore how industrial-era thinking helped create the familiar “leader vs. manager” comparison and why many of those popular social media posts may actually be describing a good manager vs. a bad manager.

Drawing on the work of Joseph C. Rost and the principles behind Talent Development 2.0, we examine a different way of thinking:

Manager is a position. Leader is a role. Leadership and management are both important, but they are not synonymous.

As AI changes the future of work, organizations need more than traditional leader-centric development. They need people who understand their roles, build stronger workplace relationships, and become better collaborators.

It may be time to rethink leadership development.

It may be time for Talent Development 2.0.

And it starts by Doing The Chores.

By David Elser

#LeadershipDevelopment #ManagementSkills #TalentDevelopment #FutureOfWork #CareerGrowth #AI

Thanks for reading Doing The Chores Academy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Podcast Readiness Statement:

Best for: Talent Development professionals, Learning and Development teams, HR professionals, trainers, managers, and contributors who want to prepare people for an AI-enabled workplace.

Current challenge: Many organizations focus on AI tools but overlook the human competencies and intrinsic motivations that enable people to learn, collaborate, and adapt.

Expected payoff: You’ll discover the AI competencies highlighted by Katja Schipperheijn, understand how they connect to Professor Steven Reiss’s 16 fundamental motivators and the Reiss Motivation Profile®, and learn why Talent Development 2.0 begins with understanding people before developing their skills.

It’s Time to Do The Chores!

What are the human competencies AI cannot replace, and why do they matter more than ever?

In this episode of AI Chore Cast, we explore how Talent Development 2.0 moves beyond traditional leadership development to build stronger collaborators for the modern workplace. Drawing from Katja Schipperheijn’s book, Learning Ecosystems, Steven Reiss’s book, Who Am I?, the Reiss Motivation Profile®, and the DTC Academy talent development strategy, this episode connects AI readiness to the people skills that help individuals learn, adapt, collaborate, and create meaningful change.

The competencies discussed from Schipperheijn’s book, include curiosity, openness, entrepreneurship, resilience, optimism, empathy, and consilience. These competencies matter because AI can support knowledge work, but people still need to ask better questions, stay open to change, solve problems creatively, recover from setbacks, understand others, and connect ideas across different fields.

This episode also connects these competencies identified by Schipperheijn to Steven Reiss’s 16 fundamental motivators, measured through the Reiss Motivation Profile®: acceptance, beauty, curiosity, eating, family, honor, idealism, independence, order, physical activity, power, saving, social contact, status, tranquility, and vengeance. These motivators help explain what drives human behavior, values, relationships, and workplace collaboration.

At Doing The Chores Academy, we believe AI can accelerate learning, but lasting success still depends on developing the human capabilities that help people collaborate, innovate, and grow in the future of work.

Ready to discover what motivates you?

The Reiss Motivation Profile® is one of the world’s leading scientifically validated assessments of intrinsic motivation. Complete the assessment and receive a personalized report plus a one-hour coaching session with David Elser to help you better understand your motivations and apply them to your career, work relationships, and personal growth.

Learn more at DoingTheChores.com

References:

Elser, D. R. (2024). Doing The Chores: Creating The Groundwork For Success.

Reiss, S. (2000). Who Am I? The 16 Basic Desires That Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personalities. Berkley Books.

Schipperheijn, K. (2022). Learning Ecosystems: Creating Innovative, Lean and Tech-Driven Learning Strategies. Kogan Page.

Thanks for reading Doing The Chores Academy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Has talent development really changed in the past 50 years? I don’t think it has—until now.

In this episode of the AI Chore Cast 🤖, we challenge traditional leadership development and explore how AI is forcing a shift into Talent Development 2.0.

This podcast is built for HR Managers and Professionals, Chief Learning Officers, executives, and talent development professionals in corporate who are looking ahead to the future of work.

We explore the origins of Talent Development 1.0, challenge popular leadership quotes, and rethink them through a modern lens. The big idea: we must move away from leader-centric thinking and start recognizing the contributors—the people doing the chores every day.

Talent development shouldn’t just be for managers and high-potential employees. It should empower every position and role.

AI is accelerating this shift and helping us rethink leadership, management, and followership, and how organizations truly develop people.

Learn more at https://doingthechores.com

If 80–90% of the work in your organization is done by contributors, why is almost all development reserved for managers?

In my latest AI Chore Cast, we dive into the $10 trillion disengagement crisis and how a shift to Talent Development 2.0 can solve it. On the farm, we didn’t wait for a workshop to fix a tractor; we learned while doing the chores.

The future of learning is:

✅ Intelligent: Accessing help via QR codes or AI hubs at the exact point of friction.

✅ Collaborative: Using peer-recorded “learning signals” to share localized genius across shifts.

✅ Embedded: Integrating guidance directly into the tools workers use every day.

AI is the game-changer here—not for generating more paperwork, but for acting as a task coach that travels with your mobile, deskless, and remote team members.

Are you ready to stop treating development as a VIP privilege and start treating it as a strategy for the entire workforce?

🎧 Listen to the full AI Chore Cast on Substack and learn more about Talent Development 2.0 at DoingTheChores.com!

#TalentDevelopment #SmartFollowership #FrontlineWorkers #AI #DoingTheChores #LeadershipDevelopment

📚 Sources & Insights

Association for Talent Development (2025) — 2025 State of the Industry: Talent Development Benchmarks and Trends• 13.7 average formal learning hours per employee• Benchmark data on L&D spend and AI adoption trends

Gallup (2026) — State of the Global Workplace 2026: The Human Side of the AI Revolution• Global engagement dropped to 20% in 2025• $10T annual cost of disengagement• Manager support = #1 driver of AI success

🌱 Learn More (Doing the Chores Movement)

For a deeper look at Talent Development 2.0 and how learning must reach contributors where the work happens:👉 https://doingthechores.com/books-%26-blogs/f/why-the-future-of-learning-must-travel-with-the-contributor

Are leader and manager really the same thing?

In this AI Chore Cast, David Elser challenges one of the biggest assumptions in talent development. Since the early 1980s, most workplace training has been built on leader-centric thinking. But in the post-industrial era, that approach may be keeping organizations stuck in the mud.

Drawing on the work of Joseph C. Rost, Dr. Robert Kelley, and Matthew Chodkowski, this episode explores why leadership, management, and smart followership should not be treated as the same thing, and why we are at our best when we become collaborators. If you are ready to think differently about talent development, leadership development, HR, and workplace learning, this conversation will challenge you to rethink how your workforce is developed through Talent Development 2.0.

Take a listen and learn more at DoingTheChores.com.

References:

* Joseph C. Rost — Leadership for the Twenty-First Century

* Dr. Robert Kelley — The Power of Followership

* Matthew Chodkowski — Post-Industrial Institute

* Abraham Zaleznik — Managers Are They Different? by Abraham Zaleznik

In this episode, David Elser introduces listeners to Talent Development 2.0, a fresh philosophy designed for the 21st-century workplace. Instead of focusing only on leadership programs, this approach takes a holistic view of development, exploring the roles of leadership, management, and smart followership to build stronger collaboration across the entire organization.

In this AI-powered deep dive, we also leverage insights from the Association for Talent Development’s 2025 State of the Industry report, connecting the latest data on learning investment and organizational performance with practical strategies for developing today’s workforce.

If you are responsible for allocating training resources, designing leadership development programs, or improving the impact of learning initiatives, this episode will challenge you to think differently about talent development.

🎧 Tune in to discover:

* A new perspective on leadership development and organizational collaboration

* Why smart followership is the counterpart to management

* How Talent Development 2.0 can help improve the ROI of your learning programs

* Forward-thinking ideas for developing both leaders and contributors

You don’t want to miss this conversation.

Learn more and explore the philosophy at DoingTheChores.com

Leadership isn’t measured by followers. It is a relationship built through non-coercive influence, mutual purpose, and meaningful change.

In this AI Chore Cast episode, we break down Joseph C. Rost’s leadership model and take an AI deep dive into 1954, when Sam Phillips discovered Elvis at Sun Studios, a spark point that helped ignite a cultural shift.

You will see what that “before he was Elvis” season teaches us about leadership development, talent development, and organizational culture.

You will also discover the benefit of Talent Development 2.0 and how we all should understand and practice all three roles: leader, smart follower, and collaborator.

Learn more at DoingTheChores.com

Hashtags:

#LeadershipDevelopment #TalentDevelopment #LeadershipPodcast #OrganizationalCulture #ElvisPresley #HR

Welcome to Episode 1 of AI Chore Cast!

I kick off the show by sharing what this podcast is all about—using AI as a think tank to challenge the status quo and explore Talent Development 2.0 for front-line managers and contributors.

Then AI takes over with a fully AI-generated deep dive on today’s topic: my book, Doing the Chores. To wrap it up, I’m back on video with a practical debrief—clarifying what AI got right, flagging anything it missed, and translating the insights into real workplace takeaways you can use immediately.

Learn more at DoingTheChores.com