The show’s guest in this episode is Dr. Torben Noerby. He is a leadership expert, CEO of People & Performance, author of The Contextual Leader, and creator of CLAI – The Contextual Leadership AI Bot. With over 30 years of experience spanning the military, retail, and global consulting, he helps executives adapt their leadership to organizational context, driving performance and transformation.
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Leading in Context: Dr. Torben Noerby on Adaptive Leadership
Hello and welcome to the show. I am Melanie Parish. I am an executive coach, and I coach empire builders, thought leaders and unicorns.
I’m Mel Rutherford. I’m McMaster University’s first transgender department chair and the co-host of the Experimental Leader podcast.
Well, it’s great to be here today with you. Mel, what are you thinking about today?
Well, we’re having some fun in our department this summer, because there’s a record number of faculty members applying for insert grants. So 1010, of us are applying for insert grants, and we’ve decided to be really collaborative and cooperative and support each other in our applications, we’ve already had two meetings that were pitch meetings, where we got together and individuals pitched their ideas for what they were going to write about. And now we’ve organized a whole network of reviews, so we’ve got a list of who’s going to review each other’s grants before we turn them in for funding.
How does this change? I mean, I don’t know enough about the grant process, and I’ve known you for a long time, but how does this change things?
Well, first of all, it’s a lot more fun, but it’s also a lot less mysterious. When I first wrote my first grant, I had never seen an insert grant application, and I went through the whole process without ever seeing anybody else’s grant application. And I, you know, read the instructions and did what I thought I was supposed to be doing, and, you know, turned it into the abyss without ever knowing if I was on the mark. But this is so this is more more fun, more collaborative, and it feels more safe and secure too, because we’re not just working without any any feedback.
It’s interesting how much energy is created just by doing things with others, as somebody who’s been self-employed my entire career. You know, I love working with my assistant, Christine, who manages our podcast and all of the projects in my little, tiny organization, and it’s always more fun to do it together.
What are you thinking about in your leadership?
Well, I’m thinking about AI, and I’m thinking about how, you know, I’ve been playing with AI a little bit in my, you know, organization, my little company, and that’s fun. But then I’ve recently been playing with it, with clients, and it’s like, when we get to the edge of a dream, it’s really fun to put some prompts into ChatGPT or an AI program and see how we can flush out the dream really quickly so that they get something to react to. So if we put something in and lay it out, like, let’s try this all out, and then I say, “Well, tell me all the places this is wrong,” we can iterate really quickly to expose the dream. And I think it’s fascinating to use it in this way. It’s the curiosity about self, rather than the abdication of thought to some ChatGPT bot; it’s about learning more about yourself as you inquire with AI.
Interesting, very interesting. Do we have a guest today?
We do, and I am super excited about our guest. His name is Dr. Torben Noerby, and he’s a seasoned leadership expert. He’s the CEO of People and Performance, the author of “The Contextual Leader,” and the inventor of the Contextual Leadership AI bot. So I’m super excited.Â
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Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, and thank you very much for having me so an amazing conversation. You just kicked off there because you had two key drivers. You had co creation now, and you’re the grand at the. Process that’s amazing. And then you talk about AI melon and combining those two. Well, that’s right down my alley. We can go into that.
What is contextual leadership?
Well, conceptual leadership is basically a term that captures that when we are in an organization, there’s a lot of performance that is sustained by the structures, the culture that’s in the organization. There are external factors that raise a requirement for responding to that if you’ve got high risk intensity on the outside, or very dynamic organization or environment on the outside, or very open organization with a lot of people going in and out. All of these contextual factors have an influence on how you should lead optimally. But there’s another dimension to it, the organizational intention. So if you want more innovation, you need to align your organizational setup to support that, both on the culture side and on the structure side, on the people composition side. So there are two handles in contextual leadership. One, understand and the context and adapt your leadership to match that best possible. Two, shape the context to optimally support the intentions you have in the organization, so we become intentional and not just repeating old habits or repeating old leadership styles. So those are the two hands
What was the reason, or what was the problem that you saw in the marketplace that made you want to solve it with this book?
Well, basically, I didn’t set out to write a book. Basically I didn’t even set out to do a doctorate. So back in 15 I started engaging with universities in Europe in order to find someone who could do research with us as a consulting organization, to understand, how do we best adapt the different leadership curriculums with the companies that we develop and implement leadership academies for? And they all said that’s too wide. You can’t you can’t research that. There are too many factors, too much is going on. I ended up with Henry business school and had a dialog with them, and they suggested that I entered their MSC DBA program and did the research myself. So I had to talk a bit with my family about that, and we decided to go for it. And found some super cool people at Henley that helped find the right methodologies. So in 21 when I finalized this. Basically, I had done all the research, but I wanted to convert it into something that is approachable and applicable. So I started writing the book in 21 finalized that in in a couple of years, and then published it last year, and immediately after that, this experimentation with all the AI and what can we do that had really taken an effect, and everyone is talking right now about leadership and AI. So immediately we started looking at, how can we make this super accessible for HR business partners and leaders in the organizations. Well, the book, the book is a bit of a brick, right? It’s 600 pages, so it’s kind of a handbook. Read the first 75 pages and then dive into the contextual factors that you find you know relevant for your context. But adding AI to that and using that repository of knowledge and sewing that together with a language model has proven to be very, very effective, and it also, it also answers some of the question marks in regards to AI, because when you ask chat, GPT or Claude or anyone else, any a high but language model out there, well, it it bases its answers on the learning it retrieves from the internet. And that means that if I’m going to change my organization or choose leadership based on that, I actually need a quite high level of expertise to bed out what I’m getting back and the face validity of what I get back. You know, does it reasonable? Yes, it does. But all the assumptions and all the knock on effects and all the systemic relations underneath. We don’t know whether that’s validated. So the ambition behind try the AI bot contextual leadership AI bot was to combine the power of the language model but secure that we provide answers based on proven. Relations between the knock on effects of optimizing parts of the structure about accountability or voice culture or or whatever. So we tried to get that combination, and that that’s turned out to actually be possible and also very valuable for for all the participants in the beta phase.
So I think you’re talking about your AI bot, which is the contextual leader AI bot. And give me an example of how I might use that as a leader.
So the contextual leadership AI bodies will be accessible for everyone. You sign up for a subscription. We just released it a couple of weeks ago. We have half a year as a beta phase. And what you use it for is like aspiring partner so very many leaders, they want to increase the accountability in their department, improve the collaboration between two departments, ramp up the process maturity, so we get better repeatability and less quality issues or any other process or organizational feature that helps performance and engagement. Now I can post these questions to the AI bot. So I asked client, so I want to increase accountability and involve people doing that. How do I do that? Then what it does is that it answers that question based on the repository of knowledge we put underneath. That’s the book. It is a in depth description of all the figures and all the models in the book that we have added. And it is a repository of the knowledge beneath a tool that is validated to measure organizational context. So, so. And then it pops out an answer, saying, if you want to work with accountability, involve people develop a cultural code and engage in the psi, because we want to know more about cultural code or psi. And I was like, Well, tell me more, and then I get more to feed on. So it’s, it’s like an HR business partner advisor. It’s like a management consultant advisor. It can’t tell you specifically to the point in your organization, but you can get the sparring and you can get the next stepping stone in developing your solution. So that’s proven pretty valuable.
Sure. As it pulls solutions from the internet, is there any risk that it’s going to steer you away from your organization’s values and goals?
The Contextual Leader: Match and Shape Your Leadership Context for Organizational Performance
It’s a super, super, super relevant question. That’s actually the reason that we’ve cut off the client that the AI bought from the internet so that we’ve got a language model layer that’s lifted out of one of the language models underneath that we’ve modeled and worked with the repository and trained that version of the language model To use the repository to base its answers on. And that means that you know that if it says, If you want to increase accountability, you need to work with the empowerment culture. Let me tell you what that’s about. You need to follow a process which is to set the priority, involve people, make them convert that into agreements, and then start working on it with continues coming back to so it frequents, it asks the validated material and then provides the answer. So that also means that once in a while you will experience it. So if say, Can you give me financial advice about how to invest, it will spit out an answer, which is that’s outside my knowledge? I don’t, I don’t know. So, so it’s limited to advising on, how do you develop your organization in response to the external environment to support the strategy to optimize people composition? So another question that came up in the beta phase, I’ve got a team composed of two people from India, two people from the Nordic countries in Europe, and some from us. How do I best understand their leadership expectations? Then? Clive frequently looks into the people composition parts of the research and says, Well, they’ve got different expectations to leadership. Let me just list them here, and now I’ve got a starting point for speaking to my people. It can’t replace, you know, interacting with people and all that stuff, but you get a starting point.
I’m curious how you thought about marginalized identities as you created the spot women, people of color, queer identities, and how your bot handles those?
Yeah, first of all, super relevant subject in regards to exercising effective leadership. And there are two sides to that. So. When we talk about diversity in any form or shape, that means gender, but also functional diversity or age diversity of TVs, then what we need to understand is that on one side, we need to build the right tolerance and inclusion, but on the other side, the leader needs to establish clear principles that can form a common ground. So what are the rules of the game here in our organization? How do we meet each other? How do we run our meetings? How do we exchange ideas? How do we run decisions so that common ground allows us to attach into something that we can share? And the sharing part is a necessary, necessary part of building the effect of diversity, because without common ground, diversity risks to fragment more than getting the benefits, the innovative benefits, the creative thinking benefits. So on one side, we need to build the tolerance, the understanding, the appreciation of different viewpoints and different standpoints. And on the other side, we need to form a set of common beliefs and a common ground so that we’ve got something to share so we can benefit from the diversity. And it’s a it’s a cornerstone in the when we look at the collaboration culture. So the research showed that when you look at an organizational culture, there are 12 sub cultures that are building blocks in understanding a corporate culture. Inside the collaboration culture, you’ve got tolerance on one side and you’ve got common ground on the other side. And when we work into organizations, we very often see that it skews a little to the one side or the other side. And if you strike the balance, you get benefit from diversity. And very many companies you know are working on on this balance. So I think that what you would find is it can’t advise on a specific minority and what’s important for that minority, but it can tell you, how do you build that common ground, and how do you build that tolerance and inclusion? If that makes sense.
How do you… Sorry, I have a million questions. Mel, I’ll let you get one now. I guess I’m curious how you build this bot and take into account, sort of the the places that you are are unknown to you about your own bias.
So the bias understanding in leadership is, first of all, very, very important for me, personally, as a leader, and I carry biases, so does every people. So if anyone says, I’ve got no biases, well that’s your bias. So that’s that’s the problem, right? But what we need to recognize is that if we focus on the biases, what will happen is that we can spend a lot of time deciphering the biases. So in our experience, when we work with organizational development, is that on one side, back to what we talked about before. If we establish something that we want people to interpret together and find out, how does good look like? What is the behavior we are striving to have in our relations? Then we can talk from a behavioral point of view, and now we can start surfacing the biases, because if they go like, Well, we believe that we should be making the decisions together, and someone else believes that decisions, that’s the role of the leader. Well, if we agree that decisions that influence all of our work lives, that’s taken together, but resource allocation, or any target setting that’s taken by the leader, now we can start discussing, what are the biases in decision making, what are the biases in meeting each other? So if we interpret our values so the organizational values, start working with those and say, What is okay behavior, what’s not okay behavior, that’s a segue to start flagging the biases. And sometimes you need to also establish a language around the biases. So what type of biases do we have? You know, identification bias and so forth. So, yes, but focusing on what we want to do together allows us to surface these biases, and that also means that if I want to work with a leader’s biases is sometimes leaders are not recognizing their own biases, and that means that if we talk about you’re trying to create this collaboration, but you are not really when you know you get a minority view, you are not inviting it in, you’re not investigating it. So. You’re looking for confirmation, right? So your confirmation bias totally distorts your understanding. So by looking at that and saying, but we want decision making to benefit from different views, then we would start by looking at the decision making, and from there, start highlighting and surfacing the biases. If you start with the buy, there’s a lot of there’s a long list of biases. So in our experience, we start with, you know, what are we trying to create? And go from there, that will also be the answers you would get from the book or the AI that is work on the common ground. There’s nothing specific on the leader biases in the contextual leader, because the leaders intrinsic settings is not included in the contextual leader. The contextual leaders is focused on the context, including the people, composition, different nationalities, different personalities, different value settings, but the leader’s own biases of the intrinsic part of the there are people that are much wiser around that than I am. So it’s it’s not included in the contextual.
Mel, do you have a question?
Well, I understand the problem you’re describing. I’m not sure what you do when the bias is held by the person who’s in power in the organization, if the organization doesn’t have any guardrails around the person who may be the person that owns the organization, or the person who has all the all the structural power in the organization, it’s hard to correct bias at that level.
You’re absolutely right, Mel, and if you’ve got the magic bullet on that one, we need to connect after this. Because one of the issues here is, of course, that power and biases are two things that we need to consider together. So that means that the ones that are setting the stage, if they are heavily biased to something, there’s a very big issue in regards to the organizational design. However, what we most see in the organizations that are of a certain size, it is that the culture has evolved, and the cultural beliefs that are distorting collaboration or expanding into a wider understanding of diversity. It’s the culture we need to work with. And here the book is very, very strong in regards to saying, how do you actually involve people in converting culture, shaping culture in a certain direction? So if the owner or the ultimate power holder in an organization is heavily biased, well then we’ve got a problem, basically, but as soon as soon as it’s embedded in the organization, and we can work with the culture, through leadership and involvement, you can find a lot of valuable input, very concrete input, with cases and so forth, both in the in the bot, but also in the book. Because the way the research was done was global Delphi studies, very seasoned HR people, very seasoned scholars that are experts in organizational and leadership development, and very seasoned executives. And then a bunch of criteria for those and everything that went into the book, factors and the effects of it, and what can you influence through leadership, and how do you do that was at a significant level in all three the in all three Delphi panels, but also across so it’s rather well warranted, the approaches and so forth. That’s in the book. And that was the ambition after doing the doctrine. Because could I convert that into something that can be understood by practitioners? So it’s not a magic bullet, but it does give you a lot of stepping stones.
Yeah, where can people find the book and the bot?
So the easiest way to remember is to go to the contextual leader.com, there you will see things about the book. You can also download the first two chapters. And right beside that, in the menu, there’s an AI dot you can just go there. Else you can go to my the main home page, which is dr, N, O, E, R, B, y.com, and then slash, fly or slash, anyone, anything else that you you’ll get there.
Yeah, and hands on. We’ll put all that in the show notes as well. And, wow, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.
Thanks for joining us today.
Thank you. It’s been a. Thank you very much for having me.
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Well, that was interesting.
Yeah, the contextual leader is a leader who builds, builds out their own internal culture and and uses that culture to support their leadership. I am
left with some questions about me that I should have had before. But, you know, what’s underneath? What? What’s the constraint of the AI bot? The idea that you would keep it separate from the internet is interesting. It’s like, what else do you keep it separate from as someone who’s queer? Do we keep it separate from identity politics? Do we like what? What are we doing from a moral perspective? AI is very much on my mind right now.
It’s a really interesting question. I know that. I know some people who study biases that get built into artificial systems, not through anybody’s intention, but just because those are the people who built the systems.
Well, I know we’ve seen that kind of bias built into things like SATs and standardized testing, unintentionally but still incredibly impactful. As we build technology, we can’t escape our biases, which is just really interesting. I also want to say I’m super excited. I just received a new certification from the International Coach Federation this week, it is the advanced certification in team coaching. And as of May 31, there were about 804 people in the world who had this certification, and I just got it. So I just want to have a little, you know, dance party.
Congratulations. Let’s celebrate.
Yeah. So other than that, it’s been great to be with you today and go experiment. Go experiment.
Important Links:Â
Dr. Torben Noerby
Dr. Torben Noerby is a seasoned leadership expert, CEO of People & Performance, author of The Contextual Leader, and inventor of CLAI – The Contextual Leadership AI Bot. With over three decades of leadership experience spanning military service, retail operations, and global consulting, Dr. Noerby has become a leading authority on contextual leadership. His mission is to empower executives and organizations to shape their organizational context and adapt their leadership styles, maximizing effectiveness and driving performance. Dr. Noerby’s practical approach, grounded in rigorous research and extensive real-world experience, offers senior leaders actionable insights to navigate the complex landscape of modern business leadership.
Throughout his career, Dr. Noerby has held pivotal roles that shaped his unique perspective on leadership. From his early days as an officer in the Royal Danish Army to his tenure as a senior HR executive in global companies, he has consistently driven organizational transformations and developed high-performing teams. As a consultant for over 15 years, Dr. Noerby has worked with thousands of leaders across various industries, helping them adapt to changing contexts and drive successful outcomes. His expertise in leadership development, organizational performance, and talent management has made him a sought-after advisor for executive teams worldwide.
Dr. Noerby holds a Doctor of Business Administration from Henley Business School in the United Kingdom, where his research focused on leadership context and its impact on effective leadership. This work culminated in developing the Contextual Leadership AI Bot CLAI – which is an AI Assistant based on the research behind the book, The Contextual Leader, that advises on how to influence culture, structure and best exercise leadership to optimize performance and engagement. He also holds multiple diplomas in human resources and organizational development, enhancing his multifaceted approach to leadership challenges. Dr. Noerby regularly shares his insights through his website, drnoerby.com, and his LinkedIn profile, offering practical advice on contextual leadership.
Beyond his professional achievements, Dr. Noerby’s leadership journey began in his youth as a Scout, where he learned the foundations of teamwork and adaptive leadership. Based in Denmark but working internationally, he has been married to Karina for over 25 years and is a proud father of two grown-up daughters. Dr. Noerby’s diverse experiences, from building outdoor shelters as a Scout to leading global transformations, inform his practical, no-nonsense approach to leadership. To gain more insights into contextual leadership and connect with Dr. Noerby, visit www.drnoerby.com or follow him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/drnoerby.
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