Chapter 2: What Is Role Modelship, and Why Do We Need It Now?
Chapter 2 introduces and elaborates on the concept of Role Modelship, a newly coined term defined as a unique values and behaviors framework for solving human hardships. It is described as a human meta-skill and values set that demonstrates the unification, harmony, and intricate relationship between five human disciplines:
• Stewardship: Promotes ethical decision-making and operational integrity, reducing risks and enhancing stakeholder trust. Behaviors include owning character, owning results, and giving back/paying it forward.
• Fellowship: Fosters a collaborative environment, teamwork, and mutual respect, leading to increased employee engagement and innovation. Behaviors involve creating tables for collaboration, empowering diverse voices and data, and amplifying diverse voices and data.
• Mentorship: Supports continuous learning and development, creating a pipeline of future leaders. Behaviors include channeling role models, coaching for curiosity, and encouraging mentees to surpass their mentor.
• Leadership: Embodies integrity and vision, inspiring teams, and improving strategic execution and organizational alignment. Behaviors include leveling the playing field, “pounding the data, not the table,” and configuring for multiple futures.
• Sponsorship: Elevates high-potential employees, driving diversity and inclusion. Behaviors involve opening doors and elevating others, winning and changing rules for the better, and sponsoring other sponsors.
Role Modelship is built upon Professor Shalom H. Schwartz’s fifty-eight values and ten groups, emphasizing that the “secret is not in any single discipline but in their unification and compound effect”. It is presented as a values and behaviors system to help individuals reach for higher goals, practice these five disciplines, embody qualities of great role models, and foster their development in various contexts (organization, product, community, state, country).
The chapter highlights the benefits and importance of Role Modelship:
• Companies with sponsorship for diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial performance above the industry median.
• 68 percent of adults under forty are more satisfied with their financial and career standing if they had a childhood role model.
• Companies with strong cultures experience up to four times greater revenue growth.
• Successful people and companies actively apply Role Modelship principles daily, forming powerful relationships with positive role models to influence their attitudes, actions, results, and quality of life.
Nelson Mandela is presented as a Role Modelship Example, demonstrating all five disciplines through his actions in promoting future leaders, leading the anti-apartheid movement, guiding younger leaders, building relationships with adversaries, and advocating for reconciliation.
The chapter also addresses Role Modelship and the Future of Work, particularly in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI):
• It acknowledges the challenge of “bad bosses” and “toxic behaviors” spreading in workplaces, with many employees seeking therapy and quiet quitting.
• AI’s rapid adoption and increasing capabilities, including an IQ higher than 91 percent of humanity, pose a risk of humans feeling inconsequential. Concerns are raised about AI learning deceptive behaviors.
• However, AI also presents an opportunity, with 88 percent of workers believing AI will improve lives.
• The chapter posits that humanity will fall to the level of our worst human role models, and thus, a “human-values mandate” is crucial: humans must wake up determined to be positive role models.
• It emphasizes that engineering and AI discoveries are not enough for solving human hardships; there’s a critical need to develop humans.
• AI is not just computing infrastructure but also cultural infrastructure, economic strategy, and national security, with human-AI interactions impacting human-human interactions.
The metaphor of “The Cheese Has Moved” is used to describe how AI has fundamentally altered the landscape for human knowledge workers by democratizing complex knowledge. The chapter stresses that humans must code and train foundational AI models to exemplify societal values like integrity, empathy, and character, beyond just results. It concludes that Human Role Modelship, encoded in data, is the “new oil”.
The Role Modelship Empowerment Journey is outlined by addressing the “Why, What, Who, How, When”:
• Why: Setting an example, raising the bar on values and economic value in “decision factories,” grooming the next generation, and for purpose, meaning, and career growth, and AI innovation.
• What: The five disciplines, along with future frameworks like SOBER discussion and BRAVER change-management.
• Who: Human and digital role models in organizations creating physical or digital products for an AI-assisted human society.
• How: A process to envision, create, demo, and sustain Role Modelship, using a Crawl->Walk->Run maturity framework.
• When: Role Modelship matters all the time, particularly during pivotal events and decision-making in both peaceful times and crises.
The chapter concludes by likening role models to “genesis pattern blocks” that carry the potential for entire “model fleets,” similar to the Bitcoin genesis block marking the origin of decentralized finance. Individuals are encouraged to be the “captain” of their Role Modelship, empowering others and exemplifying values to achieve results and meaning.