Latest / The Rosanne Callens Podcast / E09: How to Create Career Luck (Even in an AI-Driven World) with Denise Lintz
Transcript
- Rosanne Callens: Hi friends. Rosanne Callens here with St. Patrick's Day right around the corner. I've been thinking about something that we hear all of the time when it comes to careers. Luck. You know the stories, she got lucky, he was in the right place at the right time, or, ⁓ that opportunity just fell into their lap. But when you talk to people who've built those meaningful careers, something becomes amazingly clear. What looks like luck from the outside is often preparation, relationships, courage, and visibility happening behind the scenes. So today we're diving into the idea of career luck, what it really is, how people create it and how technology and AI are also changing the game. And the face and voice you're about to hear might be familiar because joining me today is one of my favorite people, my friend and fellow executive career coach, Denise Lintz. Welcome Denise. Denise has spent her career the intersection of technology, leadership and talent strategy. She's helped lead teams through major technological and organizational changes. Today, Denise Lintz: Hello. Rosanne Callens: She's the CEO of Brightside Success where she works with leaders and professionals now getting career growth in a world that's evolving faster than ever with the rise of AI. So thanks for being here, Denise, and happy almost St. Patrick's Day. Denise Lintz: ⁓ my gosh, yes, good to be here, good to talk to you. Rosanne Callens: I like we should have our St. Patrick's Day glasses or something on. I know. You know, this is a fail, but wait, this just goes to show everyone, execution, okay? We're doing it. Denise Lintz: I know, we're not wearing green either, we failed. We're just doing it. We're just doing it. I don't have anything green either though. I don't really wear green. Rosanne Callens: okay, guys, you know what? It doesn't matter, but the spirit is there. ⁓ Denise, since talking about St. Patrick's Day ⁓ and luck, just, that's, wanna start there. ⁓ In our ⁓ as career we hear this all the time. People say someone just got lucky in their career. From your perspective, what do people misunderstand about career luck? Denise Lintz: Yeah, I love the Shamrock Shake. I love the, we just died the river green in Chicago. So that's all very exciting. And it's a big party in the city with lots of parades and all that greatness. But when it comes to your career, ⁓ don't think it's luck. ⁓ that's what it looks like from the outside. Maybe that's what it looks like as you're just watching somebody from their ⁓ growth. Hey, every two years they change to do this. Every two years they change to do that. But I really don't think it's luck at all. Maybe it's a lot of networking. Maybe it's a lot of connecting. Maybe it's a lot of things like that. But most definitely is not luck. It wasn't luck for most people that I talked to when I have when I talk with my clients. It's lot of bravery. It's a lot of small steps. It's a of course correction. ⁓ And I to say, I'm very sorry. In honor of this very lucky day, it's not luck. ⁓ Now, it a lot of positive. Positivity it is a lot of bright side. It is a lot of looking at things and making sure you're being positive about what you're doing because you can look at the doom and the gloom and that's definitely not lucky but it's definitely the bright side that brings you that positivity and maybe the perceived look but that's how I see it because people I talked to work really hard to get where they are it doesn't happen by chance looking back at you, how have you seen this? Are you seeing folks be lucky at this or what's really happening? Rosanne Callens: ⁓ I always smile when I hear that people, ⁓ what people call luck is really intense Let's be real. It's preparation, it's relationships ⁓ and visibility, which anyone who's been listening me this year knows that that's one of my mantras, joyful visibility. ⁓ But really about 70 % of career actually come from people that we know. not just job postings. So what looks like luck from the outside is usually someone who stayed curious, learning ⁓ built relationships. But most importantly, and I say this all time to ever my clients, my kids, anyone that's willing to hear me out, just keep showing up. And that's really a lot of the things that I teach in Operation YOU is luck tends to find people that are in motion. But just like you, it sounds saying, luck, but in reality there's a lot of things going on behind the scenes. one thing Denise that we both see is some people do seem to attract incredible while other people just feel stuck. And through your work with Brightside you spend a lot of time helping professionals, you know, move their perspectives and see opportunities that they might be missing. What are some things that people can do right now to start opening doors in their career? Denise Lintz: It's lot of small steps, but if they could pick one thing to do, just one thing, ⁓ and it's actually going to be two things I'm going to you ⁓ is reach out to two people each week that you ⁓ with. Now, this could be someone that's maybe on your that you worked with or somebody that, ⁓ you know, I just really haven't connected with my old boss in a long time and I just want to see how he's doing. ⁓ Connect with two people a week. You will be amazed at that brings things into your life. brings different perspective. It brings different connections. It could bring a job to you if you're looking for a job I don't see people get jobs because they do a lot of applications on LinkedIn. I see them getting jobs because they know somebody that knows somebody and it's really crazy. I would say I didn't do a good job of this in my last job because I was a vice president. I was at a company for 14 years. I really stayed in the family. of the company and I feel like that was a bit of a fail because coming out of that, if I had connected with more people coming out of that job, I think I would have just been more ready to talk to people in the outside world. And so I've made it a motto for myself. Now, every week I try to connect with two people. It doesn't matter who they are. It could just be somebody that I used to work with that I miss and I want to talk to. I will have a meeting with them set up and I'm kind of having fun with it where I'm like my calendar is getting booked now. I've got two people a week. that I talk to just to make a connection, just to see what's going on. So my bright side idea is connected to people each week. Rosanne Callens: connect to two people, get different perspectives. I love that. even just reaching out to people on LinkedIn, I reached out to someone and said, my gosh, I really love this one thing that you're doing. And we hit it off in the comment section and we ended up meeting on Zoom and I learned so much. mean, ⁓ the ⁓ ROI on that is amazing. And just shifting perspective huge. And I'm going to use a funny example. I was just playing Scrabble yesterday. ⁓ We have intense Scrabble competitions in our family. And I was just staring at my letters and I couldn't see a word. I just saw zero possibility. And my older daughter happened to happen to be home and she leaned over my shoulder and she just whispered in my ear, mother. And all of a sudden I looked and I realized I could spell mother with these words. I couldn't even see it. So sometimes when we're reaching out to other people for help with our careers, and just talking to them or saying, hey, I can't see anything out there, let some other people help you. I didn't win that Scrabble game by the way, but that's okay everyone we can always get better. you've spent much of your career the technology space from your perspective, how is AI changing the way professionals should be thinking about their careers right now? Denise Lintz: Yeah, I see a lot of people taking courses of different things within AI, agentic AI, this or that about AI. And I think that's great. Stay as educated as you can in AI. There's so many tools and so many things. They're just changing every day. And it's exciting. I love technology. I love what it brings. And so I'm kind of on the bandwagon as well. I will tell you as a small business owner how I'm using it. And it's kind of cool. I've started using this tool called Claude. It's not new. It's been out for a while. But there's a component of it called Cowork. And it's like I have a little coworker that works with me. Hey Claude, I would like a little note every day as you look through my email and look through all my email boxes, because I have about like four of them that I use, and go look through all of them and tell me what's up today. What do I owe? What's a follow up? And then tell me my calendar. Is there any conflicts coming my way? I asked Claude to set a little email to me every day at 6 a.m. You know I wake up early and I can go through that rather quickly. You know, I think it's just how you can use AI to solve your own problems in your life. I don't have a lot of time and so time is something that I'm trying to work with. But it definitely is shifting how I think about things, how I use it to get my job done. Even if I'm working on something related to understanding the value of something, I could do some deep research with it. And so I think it's, you know, it's helping you have better questions and better judgment and how you're navigating things. much faster pace than I've ever seen before. But that's how I'm seeing it happen. Rosanne Callens: Well, can you give me another example with Claude? Denise, I think this is really helpful for people, especially when you're talking about, have it, email me in the morning. What's maybe another great thing you do? I always love your AI tips. Denise Lintz: Okay, well I create these personas as well and I create personas on different topics. It's called different things and different tools. It's like a gem in Gemini. It's a project in chat GPT. It's it's a project in Claude as well and I keep feeding it information and then I ask it questions and so one of them is how to deliver value because I'm always like writing a resume about value or I'm working on making sure a product delivers value and so I use it to help me study different ways to track metrics, track value and understand how to portray it and so that's another big one that I use. very simple. It's a little overwhelming when someone's like, ⁓ go try this thing and you go to try to look for it. Even this co-work ⁓ in ⁓ Claude, I a time finding it because I had to download this and download that. But once you get it, you're like, ⁓ this is nice. This will save me hours. This is brilliant. I want to know from your perspective about AI because I know I'm known as the tech person, but you work with a lot of tech people as well. And how do you see AI working out for folks? ⁓ loving it, overwhelmed with it. Rosanne Callens: I see people that are so overwhelmed with AI. That's what I see from leaders. That's what I see from people on the front lines. The technology is moving so fast and leaders are just feeling like they're supposed to understand it overnight and they feel behind. But what I think is interesting is that research, and we're still gathering this research, right? This is still relatively new, is showing that about 75 % of knowledge that workers are already using AI, but most of them don't have any formal training. They're learning from things like listening to Denise Lintz on a podcast, or they're learning from other ways. so leaders are navigating something that is already happening in their organizations, whether they feel ready for it or not, or whether it's an AI tool that they have within their organizational frame, And is where I feel that it's not just a technology shift, it's a leadership. shift and how you help people manage that overwhelm with that. I do see a lot of overwhelm. what are some ways that Someone can use AI to immediately help them in their career. Denise Lintz: I think people want to start using all these tools and using AI to do lots of things for you ⁓ and always that it's not always right. So it can produce something amazing and it can be completely wrong. just, you know, just little side note, always be aware of that. you got to about how something really works You have to think about things your own way first. Always have your own perspective. Don't let AI think for you. ⁓ I've seen a lot of people where they're like, I don't really know what to think about something and so I'll have AI give me a perspective and that's really where I draw the line. I want to learn and research with AI but I don't want it to give me my perspective. I'm still my own person. I want my own perspective and so when it comes to their resume don't use it to write a resume that doesn't sound like you. When you go into the interview they're going to be like who did I this resume doesn't match there's going to be a mismatch here. You know don't use it to create all of your pictures because I could tell you all those AI pictures, they don't look like me. They look weird. ⁓ And then people, when they meet me, they'll be like, ⁓ that's not what you look like. You know, so I think you have to just be careful that you always keep your own voice You know, make sure you're being practical with it. So really what I think about it. But how do you help these leaders with this Because I can tell you that I have with it. I'm like, ⁓ it's changed. This is fun. You know, this is where I'm like having all my fun, but I'm not sure everybody feels that way. Rosanne Callens: it's just costing everyone the mental bandwidth, are some people that think, that it's really fun. ⁓ But for a lot of people, it makes even more ⁓ decision fatigue, Leaders were already making a ton of decisions. Now they're making even more decisions than ever. the AI super highway is still pretty new, ⁓ And so when people get overwhelmed, Our decision quality actually drops. So when leaders are constantly reacting to technology instead of stepping back and thinking strategically, we know the answers. We know in our heart what to do. And using it as a support. character, not your shining star, It's allowing people the space to do the work that actually matters. And in reality, when we're talking about leaders, we're talking about what? ⁓ Vision. I our leaders are bringing their vision to us. And that's so important to keep that creative side of it too. And I know sometimes leaders, ⁓ maybe even the technology space, don't always think of themselves as creative, but you are very creative when you're driving that. AI should reduce the not increase it. I see it ⁓ really increasing noise for people. right ⁓ the step would be to look at how you're AI ⁓ and seeing if it can reduce the noise. Denise Lintz: AI is moving fast. And do you think people are starting to feel behind? what's perspective of what's going on there? Rosanne Callens: I think that it's such a big fear that AI is moving so fast. I think it's one of the biggest fears that people have right now. But the truth is everyone, we're still really early. ⁓ still really early in this game, in this game called life. Many organizations are implementing or maybe even still experimenting with AI, Maybe some organizations still don't know exactly how they're going to use it. I think the real advantage is this, when it's moving so fast, it's not being the expert, it's being curious enough to start experimenting. And honestly, I think curiosity is one of the best leadership skills right now. having a good frame of reference so that when you're using AI, you know, hey, I don't like the way this sounds. you're applying that foundational knowledge that you already have. so AI should give leaders more thinking time, not less. leaders are learning how to use AI well, creates that ⁓ And that's what I'm all about. I just want to help people create space. Denise Lintz: lovely though. It's so fun. do enjoy it. I'm so happy that we have this AI ⁓ set of technology boom coming our way. It's so refreshing. Rosanne Callens: I am very to that you have a workshop coming up about the benefits realization and AI. ⁓ What are you hearing from leaders right now, Denise? Denise Lintz: leaders are trying to create. AI is new, so how we work is new and how we track value is new. how watch value monitor has not changed at all. You still have a company, ⁓ your company still has its goals. ⁓ You still need to achieve goals and ⁓ track those goals make sure you're delivering them. If you're using to get there faster, great. ⁓ But I don't think it changes at all how you track them. still have to know, am I getting the customers? said I was going to get? Am I making the revenue I thought I was going to make? Is what I'm doing connecting to that? I just worry that sometimes AI will add it make it so blurry like it's this is some fun thing that we're doing but we don't know how to track it. That's actually really dangerous in a business because you don't know if you're realizing those benefits. Great that we played with AI and I mean it by played we played with AI for six months but what's the value? So what? Who cares? make the money. Now if you're just a company that's inventing new products, maybe you do need that time, but most businesses are not. ⁓ businesses are, hey we still got to keep our customers, we still got to keep things moving, we got to sell these products, ⁓ you got to make sure you're ⁓ those benefits. ⁓ workshop that we is really going to take you back to those basics of, ⁓ hey did you the things you needed to track as you were building the project, ⁓ as you were developing ⁓ results as you finish the project. Did you track it? Did you make sure that everything needed to be there to realize those results? And if not, how do you pivot and how do you pivot quickly? ⁓ it's really tying back to something that we've been doing for years. And ⁓ realization is a part of project management that often is missed and it's so, so important and it's not hard to do. ⁓ just have to track it ⁓ you go. And so that's what the workshop is all about. We're going to come up with five tips. that you'll get to realize in this project. And it's a workshop, so it'll be, can ask questions, ask about your company, and we'll help you think through any real life problems that folks are having. And so I'm excited about it. I'm teaching this one with one of my other coaches, and she is my benefits realization guru, and I have learned so much from her, so I can't wait. I can't wait to share more. Rosanne Callens: That's going to be so exciting Denise's workshop is on Friday. We'll drop that in the show notes. someone listening wants to create more career luck this year, what's one thing you think they should start doing? Denise Lintz: Okay, well, we already talked about how they're going to meet with some people. When they do meet with folks, if they don't know what to talk about, the one thing I want you to do is make your value visible. We talked about benefits, realization and the business value, but you're also a person that delivers value and make sure you show folks what you're doing. Get on podcasts like this and talk about things that you're doing. Make sure you talk to your friends and show them what you're, what you're building. Even if it's, I'm playing. in with this new thing with AI and I've created this daily email. Sounds really boring but it saved me three hours a week. Okay, share that with your friends. ⁓ yourself visible and make your value visible. Rosanne Callens: What about what's something that you think that they should not be doing? Our brains love to remember what not to do. Denise Lintz: we like to find all the problems, don't we? I say stop waiting to be chosen. I see a lot of things that folks are waiting to be tapped on the shoulder to do something. Don't wait because ⁓ you think you're going to get tapped on the and that's not how it works. ⁓ That's not how career luck works at all. ⁓ got to grow your career. You can't wait to be chosen. So Rosanne, What's one thing that people should be doing to create more opportunity in their careers? Rosanne Callens: If I had to pick one thing to tell people to create career luck, ⁓ visibility and forward motion. I'll just put together, So many talented people ⁓ are doing the work, but they're not saying out loud. And I'm going to be talking about my favorite quarterback, Fernando Mendoza in April, because the draft is coming up, ⁓ the NFL draft, and he's famous for... ⁓ always saying that he's updating his LinkedIn Here's someone that doesn't technically need to be updating his LinkedIn right now, but he sees the purpose and he sees the value. ⁓ He wants to get into conversations with people. He wants to learn ⁓ and find people who are in conversations, ⁓ And that could be sharing idea. It could be posting something thoughtful. It could ⁓ like reaching out to someone that you admire because when your preparation meets that being visible out there, honestly, so much magic can happen and so much opportunity. And so we'll call that luck since it's St. Patrick's Day, but it really is you doing the work, right? And that's when people say, wow, you got lucky. if someone wants more career luck, they probably need to be seen more than they're comfortable with. And I'm speaking from experience, everyone. That might mean speaking up in a meeting. It might mean making social media videos. It might mean starting a podcast. It might be sharing with your friends, that you're looking for new opportunities because most opportunities just don't come from hiding. They come from you participating in the world. the magic is out You just have to ask people, right Denise? ⁓ Denise Lintz: Yeah, I totally agree. Love it. Rosanne Callens: know, Denise and I are being joyfully visible this year. And what's Denise's mantra for this year? Be brave. That's right. was walking this morning and doing a quick video and I was talking about AI and overwhelm, but I just said, you know, the key is execution, You have to be willing to go out there take some steps and risk maybe it not being perfect at first, ⁓ Denise Lintz: Be brave. ⁓ Rosanne Callens: And know, Denise and I, when we first did our podcast, it did it live instead of recording it for me to edit. But you know what? It was still great. So many people still messaged me and said, ⁓ my gosh, I liked seeing you live. Denise, any ⁓ last thoughts you'd like to share? ⁓ Denise Lintz: I'm just happy we didn't know it was live, because I think had we known it was live, we would have been so much more nervous. It was actually perfect that it didn't. But I don't know. just think always keep positive, stay on the bright side. know, Rosanne is my amazing coach. And so I do suggest having a coach in the world. It just makes a world of difference. Rosanne Callens: I can't say anything else to that. Thank you, Denise. I agree. And everyone, same thing goes right back to Denise. I reach out to Denise and she's my coach when I'm like, hey, I need an accountability, someone to really hold me accountable because I have a big goal or a big dream here to do. So right back at you. Thank you, Denise. Aw, this has been such a great conversation. ⁓ So one thing that Denise and I both see in our work is what people often call luck, but it comes down to a few things like we shared today. Showing up. building relationships, being visible and sometimes uncomfortably visible, being willing to take action you feel completely ready. In other words, career luck isn't random, it's created. And you could even create it by joining Denise's workshop this week, You're going to learn things from creating those opportunities for yourself for you to up level. So if something that you've been thinking about doing in your career, maybe this is reminder to take that first step. And here's my challenge for you this week. I want you to promise me, pinky promise that you're going to ⁓ one thing that creates Reach out to someone, start the conversation, try the new AI tool maybe that you haven't tried yet and put yourself out there and those small steps are where opportunity begins. So Denise, thanks for being here and your perspective. Denise Lintz: You're welcome. Rosanne Callens: and to everyone listening, thanks for spending time with us today. If this conversation resonated with you, I would love it if you shared it with someone, a colleague, a friend, and if you're not already connected with us, as I say in every episode, we're real people, we get excited if you connect with us, or give us a comment or a DM, and make sure to follow this podcast so you don't miss any future conversations about leadership, careers, and navigating work in the age of AI. And we'll see you next time. Bye friends! Bye! Denise Lintz: Bye!