[upbeat music] Welcome back to the Chief of Staff Network Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Amenta.
Today, I'm joined by Michaela Zhukova and Carl Miller, co-founders of The Purpose Project. Michaela is a former chief of staff and COO who's led AI transformations firsthand.
Carl also spent years helping companies navigate AI adoption and stumbled onto something unexpected along the way.
While using AI for his own personal growth, he realized that these tools could help leaders reconnect with their purpose and show up more authentically at work.
Together, they've built a program that blends self-reflection, somatic practices, and AI to help individuals and teams find alignment, all starting from within.
In this conversation, we explored why chiefs of staff often feel the pressure of organizational misalignment first, and how AI can actually be a tool for deeper human connection, and also what it looks like to slow down in a world that keeps speeding up.
If you ever felt stretched thin or disconnected from your work, you'll really enjoy this episode. Michaela, Carl, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you here. Thank you. Thanks, Scott. Excited to be here.
Before we kick things off, I'd love to just have a quick introduction from both of you.
Tell us a little bit about your past, what brought you together, and what forced you or coerced you into starting a company together. I just wanted to react on the force you. I think that was a great one.
You're definitely- [laughs]...been forced. [laughs] With, to The Purpose, we've been forced to work together. But Carl, go ahead. Good point. I mean, I think it's like the universe giving birth to something in a way.
It started last year when I was reading the Book of Joy with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu, and I was underlining stuff in a book, and then I put that into my AI platform because I work with companies and do a lot of work with AI in terms of AI transformation.
From that, basically, I started to explore myself with those quotes, and I started to feel a little bit different. And I was like, "Wow, this is really cool," like this exploration that I'm doing.
And so I took all that information and condensed it down into what I now call my inner compass document, placed it into my AI workplace, and everything changed in an instant because I started to calibrate against my truth.
And so it was like this guiding light, this tuning fork, however you want to think about it. So really, for the first time, I felt like I was working in a space of sovereignty and trusting myself in a different way.
And that's how The Purpose Project, I think, was born, [laughs] and the collision of Michaela and I was she was in the first cohort, and I invited people in the cohort. I was like, "Oh, who wants to join?"
And we met, and from then on, we've been co-founders of this amazing project where we support people in their personal growth and what it means to be an exceptional leader in the age of AI. Awesome.
Michaela, tell us a little bit about your background. Before you met Carl, what were you doing? Yeah. So life was very different before that.
So I was a former chief of staff and a chief operational officer, so I understand constant moving between strategy and operations.
I have led an AI transformation, and kind of the pressure around the speed and performance, uh, led me to believe that I want to stay in the AI universe and transformation, but I want to look at it from a different perspective.
So I was just about to kind of starting my own practice and seeing, like, how would I approach AI transformations inside a company that is really human connected and kind of slow down.
And I actually met Carl at the exact same time through The Purpose Project, and it was mind-opening and very transformative to go through the cohort.
But also, I recognized this is the way that AI needs to be deployed inside the companies and for the individuals as well.
It's interesting that, you know, we're talking about AI already, [laughs] even though the entire kind of premise of the organization is all about how kind of chiefs of staff and other operators and, and people in kind of high-pressure situations can really find the meaning behind the work that they're doing.
And so I guess when you look at where chiefs of staff are today, what pressures are new? I mean, we, we know AI is kind of dominating the workforce.
It's fundamentally changing everything we do and, and the way that we do it. Is it just an intensification of kind of what's already existed? How do you kind of look at how the environment has changed?
I think it's almost like even more of acceleration, right?
I mean, there's always been those, like, polarities between strategy and operations and holding the systems and holding the people and, like, kind of accountability.
But sometimes decision are not really made for the chiefs of staff, right? They're kind of holding their leaders.
So now AI brings even more accelerations and opportunity, but often for productivity, and I think it really stretches the chiefs of staff.
Now they have to deploy a new playbooks, and they have to even, like, look for the new processes.
So I think where I see a huge benefit of slowing down and looking at the alignment is ultimately what I believe in purpose and AI and alignment is just gonna follow what's already existing in the organizations.
So if I bring AI into the organization where misalignment lives, the AI is not going to fix it. Carl, you talked a little bit about the inner compass kind of document that you produced.
When you look at kind of the landscape of chiefs of staff, operators, just your general employee, is that what's kind of fundamentally missing from most people's lives? Is it just a lack of direction?
And is that what The Purpose Project is really aiming to bring to these individuals? Well, we're obviously all running really fast, and there's all different levels of, of self-awareness, right? And that's all good.
You know, we're all exactly where we're meant to be, right? And when we're working with organizations, one of the areas that we work in is like, okay, what's my work core? How do I present myself at work?
How do I show up? What is my work inner compass area? And in knowing that-I can start to trust myself more as well. So I think it all starts with ourselves, obviously.
You know, the whole story of, like, putting the oxygen masks on first before you help others type of thing. It has to start here, you know?
And so people are looking outward and they're like, "Oh, how can I be productive?" Or, "How can I trust these other people?" Or, "How can I start to build and develop an amazing, you know, high-performance team?"
But it has to start here, it has to start within.
And I found that these tools, AI, and honestly as well, we do these in small cohorts, even within teams, within organizations, we like to do small team work or group work there.
The key is, is that AI is so wonderful at being that mirror that Michaela shared. In some ways it's a great coach, a mentor.
Obviously, we can assign any role we want to it for those of us that are working at higher levels of proficiency and know how to play with that in that way.
It's important to do in small groups because that way we see, seen, and validated through the experience.
So if we're just doing it in an isolated way, I think, yes, there's some lessons to be learned, but in the group setting, it's almost like this spiral of wisdom and this spiral of understanding and being seen that really brings people into more of like, "Oh, okay, this isn't an isolated experience.
Here's how I show up for my team. Here's how they accept me in this new space." And where do those breakthrough moments typically come from? Is it just that kind of deep self-reflection?
Is it hearing from other people's experiences and being able to relate that back to my own experience?
Is it simply, uh, better prompting of AI and, [chuckles] you know, having that AI reflect back on me what I was trying to say, but maybe not in the right words? I think it's a combination of all of it.
Like, for me, doing a lot of reflection and giving a permission to be vulnerable led me to the place of almost like returning to my own home, rediscovering what's already inside me, what really sparks the joy in me, what alignment actually means for myself and how am I showing for myself, right?
And amazing part is I get to show up as myself in the small group, and I'm being seen and I'm being valued, and then other are reflecting and being vulnerable. And often there's a lot of tears with the discoveries.
One of my favorite quote is, "It wasn't lack of courage or confidence. It was misalignment with myself."
So I think it's a combination of self-reflection and permission to be vulnerable, but also in the group setting, kind of the wisdom, as Carl was referring, the wisdom of the room. Yeah.
And I would add, the inspiration comes from all different places. I mean, right now we have two nuns that are going through the program, [chuckles] so maybe there's gonna be divine inspiration.
I mean, the thing is, is that we don't necessarily know how the group evolves or how teammates, you know, will see this work.
But what we do know is that there's this truth about AI, is it helps people and it helps teams, and that's what we've seen over and over again.
In that way, we trust that space and we trust the programs that we put together, and we allow the wisdom to come forth in the room, and the growth, not pretending to know exactly how it's gonna hit or who it's gonna hit when.
Let's put ourselves in kind of the chief of staff shoes for a moment. If I'm feeling stretched, you know, stretched thin, too many tasks, juggling too many plates at once, what is your diagnosis for kind of misalignment?
And is it personal misalignment? Is it misalignment within the business, within my team? How do I think about those three modes? I think it can be all of those.
What we've seen is that most individuals, whether they're chiefs of staff or not, many individuals are feeling disconnected from work or burnt out.
And oftentimes, again, it starts with them and ultimately it starts with setting boundaries, having clarity around what their work is and what it isn't, and how to operate in a world that is continuously asking more of them and speeding up that process.
So until they really just understand that and have that clarity around, "Oh, this is my truth, this is who I am, and now I have more confidence and way of being in the world," it's gonna be next year before they know it, right?
Instead of really saying, "Oh, okay, this is how I slow down my world. This is how I take back my life and the energy that I'm meant to be bringing into this organization." I think chiefs of staff often feel it first.
If there is misalignment inside a company, right?
If there are underrepresented voices, they see how the decisions are being made, the chiefs of staff feels it first, but not often they have a permission or are equipped with the tools to, as Carl was saying, slow down, notice.
So even though they feel that pressure, then it often goes into the friction if they don't slow down and name the pressure. I wanna highlight that something Michaela said, is that we have the diagnostic tools.
Like part of the way we work with teams is we share with them, "Oh, here's where you're operating in terms of psychological safety.
Here's where you're operating based on benchmark data of what it means to a high-performance team around decision clarity or around voice distribution." So the diagnostics are there.
You know, we can absolutely help them get a better understanding of, oh, this is how the team, like, for example, the executive team is operating, and here's some micro-coaching moments to help the team operate at a high-performance level.
And this is all with the goal in mind of kind of finding purpose through alignment, right? How does that create more capacity within the team or within the individual?
Like we've said, if you're setting boundaries and if you have clarity around who you are and how you're showing up, then things like the way that decisions are made...
Like, I'm sorry to say, but most of the companies that we've analyzed, decision creep, nobody really taking, you know, accountability.
And so these are the first measures of whether or not a team is working in high performance.
But as you can imagine, in terms of creating more space-And innovation and clarity of roles, if you can't, like, operate with that decision clarity button sort of clear, then it starts to blow up, [chuckles] you know, our time and the way that we're doing our work.
And it's the same thing obviously with voice distribution.
You know, if somebody's just cubbyholed into the side of a meeting and doesn't really have the opportunity to, you know, or the authority to voice their opinion, then what you're doing is you're sort of just taking away from the organization in terms of why that person was hired and, you know, the voice that deserves to be heard.
So all of these things sort of create a chaotic environment that I think a lot of people are used to working in. It feels like, "Oh, we're getting stuff done."
But when you really sit back and you have the data to measure, like, what's been getting done and how many times have we made the same decision over the last three months, you start to see, oh, wow, we're not necessarily acting in that high-performance area that we thought we were.
I will add to that from my personal experience as a chief of staff, the chiefs of staff are often the glue, and they stepped in to fix, because it needs to be done, it needs to be fixed, it needs to just, you know, be dealt with.
And I think what I have discovered, how often I have held something that wasn't mine to hold, and how often I would overstepped and perform because it needed to be done, but actually creating the environment of not creating that accountability for other people.
So that's to the diagnosis tool and to kind of like talking about the purpose, like knowing what my individual purpose is, knowing what the team purpose is, and how is it connected to the company purpose, that's where the alignment really starts flowing in.
So if the model starts with purpose, and I believe that makes a lot of sense, where does AI kind of come into the framework in terms of amplifying either the program that you run through the purpose project or in more tangible ways amplifying the ways that I find and express my purpose, you know, within my organization?
So there's several different layers within an organization, as Michaela mentioned. Here you have chief of staff, you have the executive team, you have all the operators within the business.
And for them to have clarity, again, like let's say it's a four-week cohort within an organization, starting with that work core of the individuals.
But then very quickly going into like, "Oh, wow, now that I understand myself a little bit better, and Scott understands him a little bit better, and Michaela understands her, it's now I can actually use AI to translate."
Because let's say I'm really low EQ. Nothing wrong with that, right? Just my brain works differently. And let's say, Scott, you're high EQ. Well, for the first time we have this beautiful translation tool.
It's almost like you're speaking French and I'm speaking English, and now we have the AI as the translator back and forth. But to me, that's like, wow, let's start there.
And the possibilities of, oh my goodness, I had no idea that Michaela's brain worked like this or that she would be offended by the way I said, "Go get this done," or whatever it is that I barked out of my mouth, right?
And so it's this beautiful tool to help leaders level up in what we used to call soft skills, right? What we used to do is take leaders off and take them off to the Myers-Briggs or the, you know, the DiSC assessment.
We come back and like, "Oh, you're orange and I'm yellow," and we forget everything the next week because we forget all the orange and yellows and numbers, right, and letters. We don't have to do that anymore.
We have AI, that translator, that contextualized learner. And so that's one piece of the puzzle, and then I'll just add really quickly, but imagine now we can see the system of the team, the team dynamics.
So we have a good understanding of who we are, how we can communicate with the team, and the team dynamics and the richness of that.
And then, Michaela, you can add on sort of the guiding principles off the wall type of thing. So just quickly, I feel like when there is a small team, there is the guiding principles, right?
And, like, everyone's living through it, and it's really aligned with the guiding principles.
As the team grow, my experience is that often the guiding principles are kind of putting on the wall, and we know it about them, and we walk by them, and sometimes we look at them, and then eventually we don't even look at them because we believe we know them by heart because we've been with the organization forever.
Except the guiding principles often are not actually inside the structure. They're not inside the processes. This is know how people operate.
So having those guiding principle part of the purpose and constantly reflecting, are we making decisions that are aligned with our guiding principles?
Are we having a culture that is aligned with our guiding principles, right? Like, very quickly, I would say we often talked about AI as a good hire versus bad hire.
We all have experienced how much it costs when we do a bad hire, and those people can be exceptional on the paper and very skilled, but if it's not connected to the purpose, if it's not connected to the alignment and our guiding principles, it's not a good investment for the company.
Do you believe that there is an internal shift that starts with one of the key players on a team before the rest of an organization can kind of adopt some of the practices that, that you're describing?
Michaela, you said chief of staff is kind of the glue of the organization. I think that's a great metaphor.
Can a chief of staff kind of be the catalyst for the type of self-reflection and change that you both are describing? Absolutely.
I really think that's where the changes can happen because of the accessibility throughout the company, because of the visibility, but also setting up those not processes for system, but processes for people, the culture.
Because I think what it takes, if I show up, I know who I am, and I show up as who I am, and I am seen, and I'm valued, and I know exactly for what I'm valued, I think that's where the performance come from, right?Like now I know why I'm here, what I'm doing, and I'm being recognized.
So I think the chief of staff has the hands-on on these unseen things that are moving actually the needle.
Like, I do believe chiefs of staff are moving the needle regardless if they're going from the processes to structure to operations to people. They are the bridge.
We've painted kind of a rose-colored picture here of, you know, what great outcomes look like.
I'm curious, maybe we can get a little bit more tactical discussing some of the things that happen through the experience that you both have created within the Purpose Project. What do those sessions look like?
What do those conversations, what are they meant to evoke? How do you kind of think about navigating these small cohorts and, you know, what, what each of the experiences are supposed to create?
I can start with, like, inside businesses, right? So working with groups and teams inside a business. Let's take the rose-colored glasses off for a second and know what doesn't work.
What doesn't work is that if there's a leader that isn't completely bought in, the process of this growth and this alignment absolutely doesn't work.
What does work, and what we're seeing a lot of, is a lot of organizations that have a lot of fear and uncertainty around AI, but working with the Purpose Project is-- it's a great tool to overcome that fear because it's a soft landing.
It's a group exercise. It's coming together as a team and building and developing AI proficiency in ways that other teams aren't even thinking about yet. So it's this beautiful sort of gift to these teams.
If a leader is completely bought in, everybody else follows, and the team AI proficiency levels follows that as well.
So instead of sitting there and saying, "Oh, you have to attend your Tuesday AI training," and all that fear and anxiety is bubbling up around, "Oh my goodness, AI, and I have to learn it. Is it gonna take my job?"
And all the other things that are coming up in the real world here. No, it's a soft landing of like, "Here's how we can become a better team," and at the same time, you're building and developing these AI skills.
Are there any lightweight practices, behaviors, habits that you would recommend to a chief of staff today that they can start implementing immediately with their team that, you know, helps to set up either that soft landing or a easier way to navigate the hard conversations of AI adoption and the very real impacts that they will have on the people of the organization?
I'm gonna share one practice that I truly believe, and it changed my life in a way. I know it's pink glasses back on, but it's noticing the body.
We do a lot of somatic work with AI, which I think it's new for a lot of people because we simply don't have the time for it.
But what I have started practicing that has been a really game changer for me is just noticing what's live in my body when different things are happening, when decisions are being made, when I'm, you know, um, creating processes or whatever is happening inside of my workflow.
I'm also start noticing it's not only living in my head, it's now also living in my body and my heart. So if I notice my shoulders are very tight, I pay attention to it because it's just a signal.
There is a signal in my body, and just starting translating those signals into clarity has been very helpful.
So many of the people who went through our cohorts don't practice slowing down and noticing what's living in their body. I think our body is smart, and we should pay attention to it.
Let me give that example, too, just to echo a little bit of the feeling seen moments, right, and what that looks like in an organization.
So one of our clients is the San Francisco Giants, the baseball team, and we work with different teams within there to help them build and develop their AI proficiency levels.
The CIO of the Giants was in one of the trainings, and, you know, he stopped me at a point. It's like, "Oh, hey," you know, and I thought I was in trouble, right?
But he jumped in with a story around how he is working with AI in this capacity of, like, slowing down and helping people feel seen.
And what he did is he had a review session with somebody that was on his team, had to do a personal review, a yearly review or annual review type of thing, right?
And he knew that person loved Star Wars, so he used AI to do the review Jedi to Jedi.
So he used it to basically say, "Oh, I'm a Jedi, and this person's a Jedi, and I'm gonna share the personal review in Star Wars speak." And he said the person just lit up.
And, you know, I would think that feeling of being lit up just really felt seen by his CIO.
So just wanna interject that that's the specialness of this AI, is that we don't pretend to know exactly how everybody is going to be using the tools, but when we start to put a platform out there where they're starting to work with AI as a thought partner, it's up to them to bring their imagination and innovation to the moment and build and develop partnerships and ways of working that really bring to that high-performance psychological safety level that everybody can perform and, and outperform what they've done in the past.
Yeah. It's an awesome example of, like, AI being used as a communications agent.
As you were saying earlier, Carl, we all have different ways of speaking, not necessarily in language, but in the ways that we communicate and the underlying meaning of that communication, and if AI can be that translator, that's kind of an incredible resource a-and not one that we're, I think, seeing enough examples of used internally within these companies.
I mean, honestly, it's also, like, uh, I love to use Michaela and I and our extended team as the initial pilot because of course, you know, we're a smaller organization, and of course, we have our challenges and growth and, and how we're communicating and the types of things that we're seeing.
And, and Michaela's, you know, over the moon that we're using these tools because she's, you know, helping me realize all the areas that I need to grow as a leader.
So she's like, "Oh yeah, Carl, no, this is a great one over here, and I think that, you know, keep using the tool, Carl. You're getting better." [laughs] But-I'm sort of bummed. I'm like, "Why did we create this tool?
Now I have to grow. This doesn't work for me."
But this is surprise, and it's, you know, what we say all the time is that the more vulnerable we are with these tools and the more we open up to them as leaders with our struggle, the more we're gonna get out of it.
I want to talk a little bit about the upcoming sessions that we're doing with the Chief of Staff Network alongside Purpose Project.
Michaela, maybe you can talk to us a little bit about kind of what's going to be involved in the next few sessions. What can our members expect?
We've talked about a lot of the outcomes kind of through your work, so hopefully we can see some of those in, in, in these brief sessions. I'm so excited for the sessions.
What we do often and all the time actually is to, we don't talk often about things, we practice. So what we're gonna do is a hands-on workshops, and it's based on immersive experience.
We call our Purpose Project a little bit of like a kingdom, magical kingdom, because things happens there, and, like what I've discovered is gives me permission to dream and believe and follow my intuition.
So what we're gonna do, we're gonna bring a little bit of that magic into those sessions, and through the immersive experience, we will start practicing to slowing down, noticing what's inside of us, and it can be, you know, like maybe decision drag.
Whatever it is, it doesn't have to be only like sparkling light. There's a lot of emotions inside of us. There's a lot of things that are alive.
So we're gonna go, and we're gonna start looking what's inside of us, how can we start naming it, and not only in our head, but in our heart, in our soul, and in our gut. And for business speak, it's all about alignment.
You know, and I think it's important too because we are working with different types of people, and we will honor everybody and how they show up, right?
And some people might not be familiar with somatic work, which is great, you know, but we have on-ramps for everybody.
In the magical kingdom that Michaela talks about, there's a world to visit, you know, and there's different ways to enter into the park, and there's different ways to experience this.
But ultimately, what we're committed to is helping people work to high-performance levels in this age of AI.
And then beyond that, and I would sort of-- this is a real push that I give to everybody is, "Hey, we're privileged enough to go through this experience right now, to uplevel ourselves in AI in this way, is to lead with this."
Guess what? Now, to a certain degree, we'd love people to be in service and to see other people that are struggling and helping them along the way because there's gonna be a lot of struggle, and there already is.
I think that's exactly right. The opportunity ahead is huge, but it can also feel very daunting.
And so to know that you're not kind of alone in that position and, you know, experiencing similar challenges as, as everybody else in kind of the uphill learning curve that we're all going through is really important.
And, you know, I think to bring that back to a self-reflection of, you know, not just why is this valuable for my organization, but how is this changing me as a person and my value and the things that I care about, where I want to spend my time, are all really important conversations to be had in this moment.
Carl, Michaela, any final thoughts? You know, my purpose is to help people create from the space of love and not fear. And so it's very clear now, and it's changed my life in knowing that.
You know, I didn't know that until, you know, six months ago or so. And so as we walk this path, I know how energizing it feels to watch others discover their alignment and their purpose.
So I'm really looking forward to life at this point, honestly, and each day that it brings forward and all the surprises that it brings.
I'm looking forward to seeing people in the, in the Chiefs of Staff workshops and beyond that, at the conferences and wherever we meet up in this journey that we're all on.
I will add from my end, it's beautiful to go back to the playground and find that inner child and give myself permission to spend time for self-care. I think we often don't have permission for that.
And what a beautiful gift if through my self-care I can find my superpower. We all need a bit more of both of those mindsets. Michaela, Carl, thank you so much for the time today.
Really appreciate it and looking forward to the upcoming sessions. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. Thanks again to Michaela and Carl for joining us.
A few things that stuck out with me, one was the idea that AI can be a translator between different communication styles. Also, the reminder that misalignment doesn't get fixed by technology, it really gets amplified.
And finally, the simple but powerful practice of noticing what's happening in your body when decisions are being made.
If you're curious to experience their approach firsthand, Michaela and Carl will be leading hands-on workshops with the Chief of Staff Network over the next few months.
It's immersive, it's reflective, and yes, there might be a little magic involved. To learn more about the Chief of Staff Network, our upcoming events, and specialized programs, head to chiefofstaff.network.
Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next week.
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