My name is Joy Poole and I am welcome everyone to this session on Tech Posture Syndrome. I am a founding partner at a uh tech consulting firm called Emergence and I am also a uh leadership coach who works primarily with women in tech.I am super excited to jump into this topic. I love talking about Tech Foster Syndrome. It is near and dear to my heart. But before I do, I thought it might be useful to give you some context on how it is, why it is that I speak on this topic at all. And for that, I need to take you back just a few years. And to a time when I was sitting at a conference room table with six other people, I alongside these six others, these six other people, all seven of us, we had bravely decided to launch a new tech consulting firm and this was our very first official company meeting. Some of us knew each other a little bit better than others. And so we started to share some stories around the table, did a little bit of an icebreaker um to, to get to know each other. A little bit better. And as my partner started to share stories of their lives and their careers, I started to quickly realize the breadth and the depth of technical expertise and experience sitting around this table.

I mean, I was hearing about technology that I had very, very little knowledge of some of it I had never even heard of before. And by the time it was my turn to share my story, I have to tell you, I was sitting in a puddle of sweat and anxiety. I was having thoughts like there is no way I'm ever catching up to this crew. I was having thoughts like, what am I doing here? Do, are they thinking, are they wondering what I'm doing here? And what was I doing there? I had a bunch of uh background and experience in business to business, uh business development. I had uh a lot of digital marketing experience. I was my whole career, had been working with companies in terms of how to help them drive change and new use new tools to help them keep their customers, their employees and their shareholders happy. But, and also by the way, I wasn't as if I was technically illiterate, I understood the broad concepts of a lot of emerging technologies and how they're related to business. But none of these facts, none of it stopped me from spiraling into a pit of self doubt and then activating a soul sucking strategy that I like to call smiling and googling.

You see, whenever I found myself feeling sort of technically out of my depth, I would smile and nod and then behind the scenes be furiously googling attempting to Google my way out, out of the discomfort. I was feeling well, this, this just meant lists upon lists of podcasts and books and articles and things that I should know and things I needed to learn about a few months after this, this moment at the bordering table, I was actually watching a video of myself. I had interviewed a tech leader. It was sort of a fireside chat situation and I'm watching an edit of the video back and I catch myself red handed. I catch myself smiling and nodding through something he's talking about that. I, I don't understand and I immediately hit pause because it, it gives me a gut punch and I feel in that moment how I feel watching the video, how I felt in that moment. And that is anxious and completely distracted. I wasn't contributing my strengths or my understanding to the conversation. I was completely outside of myself thinking, how do I not know about this? I should really know about this. Does he know that I don't understand this? And that, that moment observing myself and seeing that on my face, I realized something, I realized that this was not the first time I've done this, that this had happened. A number of a lot in my career. And also critically, I, I recognize that look on my face.

I'd seen it on a lot of other faces too. Colleagues, clients, I got really curious about what was going on and I gave it a name. I jokingly started referring to this sort of relationship with technology as tech posture syndrome. And, you know, I was giving a nod to the more broadly well known and what I saw as a close cousin to it of imposter syndrome. Well, I started to pinpoint the stories that I was telling about my myself uh and, and technology and I started to set them straight. I took steps within inside of our organization to identify and address Tech Posture syndrome for what it was both in terms of our teams and, and clients that we worked with and listen. I've come a long, long way since that puddle of sweat and anxiety. I am now learning about technology a lot more quickly than I used to because I'm having a lot more fun with it. Also, I am probably more importantly, I am able to come to the table completely present and speaking from my strengths because I'm not distracted by it and I educate and advise executives on technology and what's holding back their organizations from leveraging it to its fullest.

And on that point, I speak from experience personal experience when I say that learning about technology, that is the easy part if and only if you can first unlearn the fear that we have associated with not knowing enough about it. And that is what we're going to dive into a bit today. This, this idea of tech posture syndrome as I've named it. And for those of you who are familiar with it, let's just see if I can advance my slide. Now, it is, I will just let you understand that. It is indeed a thing. The the fact is that the the data strongly suggests that we are experiencing low confidence in our tech capabilities with less than half of executives believing that they themselves have what it takes to lead in the digital economy and only 16% of those executives believe that their teams have what it takes.

Now, for me, it's completely logical that this lack, this perceived lack of technical acumen is leaving us very anxious with 61% of us reporting that we're anxious about new technologies at work. And what's more is that we're not, we don't seem to be doing much about this with only 23% of businesses reporting that they are actively engaging in cultural programs that would help to address this issue. So what is it that we can do both as leaders and as individuals about this? Well, the first thing I would invite you to consider is that the tone for this, it is set at the top. Now, before you make any assumptions, when I say the top, please do not think that if you were not CEO of your company, you are off the hook here. I am referring to leaders of all kinds to step up here. So whether you are overseeing an entire company, uh a small team, a project or if you your primary leadership role is to be CEO of your career and your own life. You are welcome to step up to this. And the first thing I would ask you to do is to recognize your influence, you have influence to either propagate or neutralize impost tech posture syndrome and its damaging effects.

And that is because when you accept this kind of thinking for yourself or for others around you, you are sending inadvertently as it may be a micro signal to your proximity, that there is shame in not knowing something. Secondly, it is super critical for all of us as leaders to understand what it is that we are up against what is at the root of this problem. Executives. So many of them want to come to me and talk about the the sort of tech skills gap that might exist, but that is not what we are up against. Really. What we are up against is fear itself. It blocks our intellectual capacity. When we are relying on these thoughts of everyone understands this better than I do. I am too far behind to catch up. I really should know about this, these thoughts here. It's our Amygdala that's, that's in charge the f center of our brain that, that piece of nervous tissue sitting at the bottom of our, the base of our brain that's calling the shots. And when we're having fear based thoughts like these, it is impossible to think critically and to think deeply. So what I'm saying here is that Tech Posture syndrome. This isn't just about holding us back from learning about technology.

It's holding us back way more fundamentally from asking good questions and therefore from finding novel solutions to big problems. You know, I struggled with this for a long time and I tried a lot of different tactics to get my Amygdala that fear center of my brain to just pipe down when it came to me and my perceived lack of tech acumen, but only one tactic worked. The only way that I have figured out to turn down the volume of that Fear Center is to crank up the volume of my own cur curiosity. I'm inviting you all of you leaders to recognize that it's time to get openly curious. But that can be easier said than done because our brains, they can sometimes tell us that curiosity is risky itself. If I ask questions, if I don't understand, if I need to learn more, what will people think or what if once I do understand this, I have to do something about it. Bene Brown calls this armored leadership that's leading from a place where protecting your ego or fitting in is at the top of your priority list. And this is exactly where I was when I was sitting at that boardroom table.

The act of getting curious that is about removing that armor and being grounded in confidence, not that you know everything, but that you're a learner that you're someone who's committed to getting it right now. The reason that this making this shift from fear to curiosity is so tricky for so many of us is that we go to, I just need to let those, those thoughts go. Those fearful thoughts, I need to, um, just stop the, stop thinking that. And this is the thing that's not how our brains work. Our brains don't work in a, in, in a vacuum where they, it just, you can just stop believing something. If you're going to choose to stop thinking one way, you have to choose to believe something else because your brain is always believing something. So if, for instance, I was going to stop believing everyone here knows more about this than I do. What was I going to believe? Instead? After much, much searching on this question and a lot of trial and error. This is what I came up with leaders ask questions and I landed on this because I fundamentally believe that the single most impactful action that we as leaders can take is to get vulnerable and to openly admit when we don't understand something this by the way applies far beyond tech, but that's a whole another talk.

The fact is that the best, most transformational leaders do not have all of the answers. They simply ask good questions. I want everyone here to think about the best boss they ever had put that person in your mind. Did they ask good questions? Of course they did. So it's up to us to start asking great questions as well. Some language you could triumph for size as you go down this road. I really don't understand what you just mentioned. Can you walk me through it? This one? I like using a lot. I'm still learning about whatever it is. Can we carve out some time to go over that in more detail and then also appreciating and encouraging this kind of behavior is super important as well. Thank you for asking that question. I didn't understand that either. You modeled the asking really, really? Well, thank you for that. Now, I do believe that asking thoughtful questions, having the courage and the curiosity to do that in the moment is key to increasing our understanding and promote a learning culture in general. And if there's only one thing you take away from this, this talk, I hope it is that. But I do get the question as well as like, OK, but how do I sort of proactively learn and increase my overall tech acumen and the way that most of us have learned is, you know, we went to school and there was a syllabus and there was a plan and, and it's very tempting to sort of say, I'm going to map out my 30 60 90 day plan and hit these milestones and, and try to learn about these specific technologies.

But I'm here to say that I haven't seen that work in the context of how quickly technology is evolving. Instead, what has worked is when I let my curiosity run wild when I actually fed it and I have three tips for you on, on things to try in that vein. The first I would just encourage is just to make it fun. Keep it light. This is not about creating lists of things you should read, watch, listen to consume, learn about it's about increasing your overall exposure to the fascinating world of tech outside of areas that you may already understand because it's fun and interesting lightweight podcasts, Insta Instagram tech influencers, Ted talks, whatever floats your boat.

This is about fun and it creates the ripples for deep and meaningful learning. Secondly, once you have an idea of the types of things you want to consume, you will need some time but not too much. The biggest mistake we make is over committing and then failing on those commitments start with 10 minutes a day gift that to yourself. And as you go through this process, if you find an area where you really want to explore, go ahead and focus for impact. But again, try not to get overwhelmed. Well, I like to just take five basic when I find a area of tech that I'm, I'm really interested in. I write down the five most basic questions I don't understand and I go out and find the answers googling, talking to people. I really try to understand that I'm looking for the broad concepts and not to get overwhelmed by the details as well. Now, for those of you who understand tech um posture syndrome intimately, I'm going to leave you with one final word on this topic and that word is yet. Carol Dweck coined the term growth mindset. And if you're not one of the 12 million people who have already watched her TED talk, I do highly recommend it.

But the gist of it is this whenever you tell yourself, I don't understand this or I don't know how to do this, simply add one word yet it is this kind of thinking that is going to release us as individuals, our teams, our businesses, society as a whole from the shackles of tech posture syndrome.

And that is what will enable us to achieve far beyond our wildest ambitions with that. I will just say thank you to women tech for having me and for all of you for joining, we don't have, this is such a short session. We don't have much time for Q and A. But the most frequent question that I get off the back of this talk is usually about where do I start in terms of finding that tech fund that you talked about? If I've created a starter list, a very general kickoff point for you to um look at some, a list of resources and tips for you. You can access that via the QR code that's displayed here. And also as a leadership coach, I do work primarily with women um who want to get in tech, who want to get the most out of their careers and lives. If you'd like to learn more about that, you can visit Joy pool.com. Thank you so much.