Ep 38: Kirsten Stendevad - Don't Upgrade Your Technology, Upgrade Yourself!

SHeCOMMERCE

In this episode of SHeCOMMERCE, hosts Cristina and Jacqui interview Kirsten Stendevad, founder of the Illumina International Future Leadership Academy, about the critical need for leaders to focus on personal evolution

Key takeaways

• The most critical upgrade for leaders today is not technology—it's personal evolution and self-awareness.
• AI adoption fails when leadership alignment is missing; only 26% of employees report clear AI direction from leadership.

Main topics

• Future-fit leadership
• AI adoption challenges

Notable quotes

"Don't upgrade your technology. Upgrade yourself."

"We have choice. As opposed to a plant or an animal, there's a little distance between stimuli and response. And in that little distance, we can choose how to respond."

Conclusion

True leadership in a rapidly changing world isn't defined by tools or technology but by inner

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:08) Welcome back to SheCommerce, where power, women, and real talk collide in the world of commerce. I'm Christina. And I'm Jackie. Every episode, we sit down with leaders who aren't just navigating change. They're creating it. And today, we're talking about something every leader is wrestling with right now. The future. Dun, dun, dun. AI is definitely transforming work we do today. The industries we work in are being disrupted overnight. You know, this pace of change really does feel relentless. It's kind of unprecedented. And everywhere you look, we have leaders asking and brands and companies, how do I stay relevant? But what if that's the wrong question? What if the real question today is not how does technology evolve, but actually, how do we evolve alongside it? Oh, my God. How many times have you and I had this conversation, Christina? I had a dollar. You know, today's guest. Speaker 1 (1:24) perfect for this, right? Because she is one of those leaders who speaks about the importance of evolving. And not only does she speak about it, but she has embodied it and lived it. But we'll get to her in a bit. And one big thing she talks about is the need to upgrade your operating system. So before we dive in, let's let's fill some tea, though. And today's tea definitely has one common thread, and that's around the future belonging to leaders who can evolve faster than the world around them first. So let's start by maybe celebrating a trailblazing female leader, Jackie. Oh, I thank you. I like that you call me a trailblazing female leader. Not you. It's not you. Damn it. It's not about you. It's always about me, Christina. Do you not know me at all? I do, yeah. As soon as I came out of my closet, I was thinking. Speaker 1 (2:28) And you better believe it. But also, enough about me, but really more about me. Let's raise our mugs for this one. It is so brilliant. Disney Cruise, the Disney Cruise Line, has officially named Captain Maria Godor as its first ever female ship captain with Maria taking the helm of the Disney Wish. Yay. First of all, love this so much. And I have such a great idea. Us to do a podcast on the Disney Wish inside the whatever the engine room, right? The room there. That would be so much fun. So Captain Maria. Call us. Call us, Maria. We love you. No, but. Speaker 1 (3:20) Her story makes it so like even better, right? Maria actually started her career, get this, as a lawyer in Spain. And then a chance encounter that she had with a ferry captain opened her eyes to this entirely different career path. So she went back to school, earned a master's degree in nautical engineering and maritime navigation. Literally changed course. Oh, boom, boom. I love that. But fast forward to today and she's commanding 144,000 tons, baby, of steel. That's not just breaking a glass ceiling. That's like smashing it to pieces and taking the wheel. Oh, yes. Speaker 1 (4:16) We love obviously seeing women step into roles where for far too long they simply weren't represented. And I can't believe this is the first female captain. That's crazy. But we especially love a reminder that the career you started with does not have to define the leader you became or be the career you are in now. Oh, 100%. I mean, look at us. Right? You're never, ever too old. But Captain Maria, we see you. We salute you, ma'am. Now that is a SheCommerce power move. Yes. And we'll be sliding into your DM shortly. Oh, yes. All right. Our next three stories may look pretty different on the surface. We're going to talk about commerce, AI and women at work, but they all point to the same question. As the world changes faster, what actually gives us an edge? And spoiler alert, it might be a lot more human than technological. Speaker 1 (5:27) Absolutely. So team number one. Today's lap song, Sushong, on commerce is TikTok is coming for the whole damn funnel. Now, Christina, this one really caught our attention, right? So TikTok shop, no longer just a cute little social commercial experiment. No, it is according to Consumer Edge data reported by Business Insider, TikTok shop accounted for about... 2% of U.S. online retail spending in July, up from about 1.2% about a year ago. And get this, U.S. spending on TikTok shop was actually greater, greater than online spending at retailers including Target, Costco, and Home Depot. That's crazy. And I think we've talked about this before, but like a lot of companies see TikTok as a marketing, you know, tactic, social media activity. And no, like they have cemented themselves as a channel, right? The clue is in the name. Right? TikTok shop. Yeah. Speaker 1 (6:41) But it's wild to think about like where they started, right? TikTok owned discovery. You saw the product, you wanted the product. And then very often you went somewhere else outside of TikTok shop. Hello, Amazon to buy the product. That's all changing. Yeah, it really is. But saying that, you know, TikTok just doesn't want to hand off that conversion anymore. It's now introducing Prime style membership perks, including free shipping. Wow. While continuing to invest in logistics, seller services, and creator-led commerce. It's basically right. Speaker 1 (7:21) And that's the part that commerce leaders need to be paying more attention to because it isn't just another channel getting bigger. It's a reminder, again, that these lines between media, discovery, community, and transaction are disappearing right in front of our eyes. It's un-siloing the silos, right? I love that. And your future competitor may not look... Anything like your current competitor. And that five-year strategy you built for that stable marketplace? Hello, out the door. The marketplace did not get that memo. So the question isn't just how do we keep up with TikTok? It's how do we build an organization and leaders that are capable of adapting when all the rules of play keep changing? Speaker 1 (8:18) Which I think brings us very nicely to tea number two. What flavor? I'm going to make this a zesty mint tea. Ooh, zesty mint. I don't know all the things you want to make tea with. I'm in the U.S., so, you know. Ooh, stir away, darling. Stir away. I'll take it. All right. So because companies are all racing to adopt AI, we know that there may be a much bigger issue hiding underneath all that technology. And we're going to touch on it today, too. But that leadership alignment, we saw that Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index, which surveyed about 20,000 AI users across 10 markets, showed that only 26 percent. said 26% said that leadership is clearly and consistently aligned around AI, which means 74% of the time they are misaligned or not clear. That's a big number. First of all, 26%. Secondly, that's good mathing. Excellence on, you know, on the go math. Well done. So we're spending... Speaker 1 (9:38) gazillions upgrading the technology. But are we upgrading the organizations and the people leading them at the same speed? No. Microsoft describes a kind of transformation paradox that employees are feeling this pressure to adapt and reinvent how they work while the systems around them, the incentives, the expectations, the old ways of operating are still reinforcing business as usual. So how it's a, you know, it's a lose-lose. Yeah, 100%. And this is where I think it gets really interesting, right? We've spent so much time asking what AI can do. What can I do? But are leaders actually spending any time asking, what do we need to become so that AI can do more? Are we thinking about how to properly and efficiently and intelligently and in a future-proofed way? using AI for our teams, our organization, our product line, our service line. Speaker 1 (10:55) Yeah. Because, yeah, we know that those barriers to entry are removed here and it's leveling the playing field. We all have that similar access to technology. So the differentiator isn't the tool anymore. It's how you're using it, right? That curiosity, your adaptability, the courage to lean in there and knowing which questions you should be asking in the first place. In other words, maybe the AI transformation is not actually the technology transformation. It is a leadership transformation. Aha. I believe so. All right. Lastly, the she. And this is our final T. Speaker 1 (11:39) Because one of the things we can, oh gosh, sweet tea. Oh, yum. Milo's. Milo's, sweet tea, hey. All right. So one of the things we keep hearing about the future of leadership is the so-called human skills, right? They're becoming more and more valuable around like empathy and emotional intelligence, ability to trust, connection, et cetera, right? That all sounds great. Oh, yeah, totally. Except who is actually doing that work? A recent Business Insider piece looked at something researchers called the empathy tax, the largely invisible work of absorbing anxiety, supporting colleagues, and tending to people's emotional well-being at work. Oh, dang. I feel this. And it appears to fall disproportionately on women. Shock, horror, I'm so sorry. Yeah, and I think there was one stat in there that really surprised me. The Harvard Business... Just that bench. Speaker 1 (12:55) And seeing it back to my computer too, I was like, what's happening here? All right. Well, Harvard Business School researchers surveyed more than 350 professional women in managerial roles. And more than 80% of them said that they spend at least 30% of their work week on caring tasks. Caring tasks defined as like listening, encouraging others, checking in, managing the emotional temperature around them for others. So that's more than a full day every week that is spent on that, which is kind of crazy to think about. Yeah. And that's just the average, right? Many women provide so much more. And this creates really uncomfortable tension. We're suddenly calling leadership and empathy and sorry, empathy, a leadership superpower. But women have been doing this work for years, often. Speaker 1 (13:51) invisibly, often without it appearing in the job description. How many times do you see empathy in a job description, Christina? Never. Never. Exactly. And very often without being rewarded for it. potentially being held back from it because maybe they're seen as not as productive as some of their counterparts because of it. So I think maybe the conversation isn't simply should leadership become more empathetic? Maybe it's how do we value these deeply human leadership capabilities, especially as differentiators in a world of AI without simply loading even more invisible work onto women disproportionately? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I need a bell. I need a bell, Christina. Swag. I need a bell. I need a bell. And absolutely, yes. Because we don't want feminine leadership to become another way of saying, congratulations, ladies, here's even more emotional labor. Speaker 1 (14:54) Oh, I like that accent. I like that too. Yeah. It's cute. It's like your French accent. All right. Well, TikTok is rewriting the rules of commerce as rewriting the rules of work and the qualities we're starting to value most in leadership may be the very qualities we've historically dismissed as just soft skills and non-essential. Speaker 1 (15:16) Which brings us to today's guest, because maybe the common thread through all three of these stories is this. The more technologically advanced our world becomes, the more valuable our distinctly human capabilities may become. And maybe future-proofing yourself isn't about trying to compete with the machines. Maybe it's just about becoming even better at the things that machines can't replace, like judgment, wisdom, intuition, creativity, connection, and the ability to lead through uncertainty. So perhaps the biggest upgrade leaders need right now isn't another piece of technology. It's themselves. And nobody has been thinking about that question longer than today's guest. Today's guest has spent more than 20 years helping executives, founders, and changemakers prepare for a future that many people are only beginning to understand today. Speaker 1 (16:20) Kirsten Stenebad is the founder of the Illumina International Future Leadership Academy, where she helps leaders develop future agility, resilience, purpose, and what she calls AI complementary skills that enable people to remain indispensable in an age of exponential change. She's also an Amazon, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. And if that's not enough, an executive coach, speaker and founder and CEO of International Leadership Academy, where she works with women leaders to cultivate authentic power, wisdom, proactive leadership and the uniquely human capabilities that AI could never replicate. Now, that is a huge and very impressive resume, but it's not that's not the thing that drew us to Kirsten. Speaker 1 (17:13) It is her fabulous perspective, which you will hear more of as we go through this episode. She believes the future isn't something that happens to us. It's something we shape from the inside out. and in a world obsessed with technology.