78. AI Is Here. Now What Kind of Leader Will You Be?

AI and leadership development folks, it’s real. It’s a conversation. Yes, they go hand in hand. Let’s talk about it. Leaders can bring AI into your leadership development practice, folks. Um, I’ve been talking with a few people about this conversation. Uh, as of late, lots of senior leaders who I work with. How do I do it?

What does that mean? What are the ethics? I’m gonna put the ethics aside. Yeah, they’re important environmental and ethical considerations when using AI. But here, like, do your due diligence folks. But for here, for today, let’s focus on exploring how, um, let’s explore how AI can be a thoughtful companion in your leadership development and the practice of, of your leadership.

What does it look like to have AI, uh, help you, uh, along your leadership path? What does that. What does that mean? And not in some shiny, gimmicky way, but as a real tool to help you become a better leader and I’ve thought through, you know, [00:01:00] four or five things and I mean, to start off with, here’s why it matters.

AI is here and AI is useful. Um, as long as you put parameters around it and as long as you know that it’s not correct, what you decide is correct, but it can Sure. Um, it’s not going anywhere, but, and it can Sure, um, help you have, you know, some of those first initial ideas. Um, we probably can’t ignore it folks.

Some of you are ignoring it. Um, uh, um, but we can learn it. Learn it in a way that’s useful for us, and we can learn how to use it to grow, right? And so bringing AI into how we develop ourselves as leaders, um, it’s not necessarily. Uh, optional anymore if it’s required, if we wanna stay up to date, if we wanna stay relevant, um, and if we wanna lead in this new era, and if we want to use a really good tool to help us in our own development, much less in our work.

Right? So let, let’s start here. Yeah, there’s, there’s probably about [00:02:00] four that I wanna share first. One is, as a thinking partner, right? AI as a thinking partner is pretty, pretty powerful. Um, let’s use it in terms of a thinking partner in terms of our own leadership development. Let’s start there. Um, you can sit down with a tool and choose your platform of choice here, right?

ChatGPT, Claude, uh, perplexity. There’s the choose your own adventure here. And different tools have different purposes, right? So anyways, just work to do to figure out what tool is useful for you. You know, ChatGPT seems to be like the duct tape of the AI world. Everybody seems to know it and be able to use it at least at a basic level.

And it does basic level of great things. Anyways, choose your own adventure. It literally is changing month by month. Um, but um, if you think about it. Uh, AI is a thinking partner. You can ask things about it to help you, to help you prompt and get reflective on like, what does leadership mean to me? Help me figure that out.

Uh, what kind of leader do I wanna be? Uh, guide me through a conversation of surfacing that, or what [00:03:00] behaviors matter to me? What does that look like? Right. We can. We can, we can, we can go even deeper actually. Like, where, where am I getting stuck? Help me understand where I’m getting stuck in this relationship, in this, in this pattern that I’m repeating.

Um, help me find patterns that I’m repeating in the way that I converse with this person or how I show up at work, or whatever it is, right? Or I can get to a really practical place, like, um, suggest a small shift I could practice this week or give me a mantra for the week that helps me stay in a growth mindset or, um, uh, any number one of these, right?

Like it’s, it can even get you into a place of like a, a practice plan, right? Something like, um, help me explore the leadership challenges that I’m facing right now and how I can approach them, right? Help me get creative around that. Or, um, uh, communication. Effective communication is really key, right? A lot of people ask about that and want to explore that, and so just simply asking like, how can I communicate more effectively with my [00:04:00] team?

Um, help prompt me and guide me through a conversation to explore three practices that I can start using to communicate more effectively, right? Um, or even leaning into your leadership strengths. Like, um, I just did this assessment, or I have feedback around these strengths. Help me lean into this one this week.

Right? Gimme some practices so it can, it can do some of that work for you to just be that thinking buddy and be a guide for you in, in figuring out your leadership development. Um, which is really great. It. It’s, it’s a bit challenging ’cause you still want, on the other side, you want someone to help sense make with you.

Like, staying at the surface is really great, but you still want, uh, colleagues, uh, working with your team, working with a leadership coach or a facilitator, uh, working with your best friend on a Saturday, like whatever it looks like for you to be able to sense make or mirror or ask some hard questions.

’cause you know, they know you right? Or hold you in [00:05:00] accountability, like you still need all that there. But again, this is just a great place to surface. Another, a second place actually that’s really great is to get into role playing. Um, uh, especially through tough scenarios, we don’t have a lot of places to practice and safe spaces, right?

And so, and leadership is full of hard conversations, conflict, feedback, negotiation. Most of, most of us don’t get into places of practice where we can get. Like before we get thrown into the real thing. So AI can help you, role play, can help you, um, it can help you, uh, prompting it. Uh, say something like, help me practice giving constructive feedback to someone who’s underperforming, a direct report of mine who’s underperforming.

Right. Help me figure out or rehearse, uh, a tough conversation I need to have around boundaries that I, that I need to have with a peer. Right? And it can start to be that guide with you. So it, it helps [00:06:00] you get the words outta your head and, and hear how they sound and test some approaches, some language, a lot of it sometimes is around framing before you just walk into a room.

Right. Um, it can also, um, help you gain perspective. You can kind of audit some of your ideas and some of your approaches for, for bias you may have. Um, so you know, used well, AI can be a good partner for just some perspective taking or bias checking, so it can help you surface maybe some of your own dominant narratives that you’re operating from or generate missing perspectives on a project or just in your own thinking or, or contrast.

Um, or, or, or. You know, as I’ve learned in some of the AI training, um, that I’ve done it, it only does this if you ask it, right? If you say, Hey, can you check my bias here? Oh, hey, what you just generated? Can you check it for bias? Right? Asking it to check bias on itself. [00:07:00] Um, when you, when you approach AI as something that can help you get some perspective, it can be good for critical thinking, right?

You can, you can prompt AI in a way to spot uh, potential blind spots, challenge assumptions offer, offer viewpoints from different, from, from different stakeholder perspectives or marginalized perspectives. Um. Something like what’s an alternative perspective that I should consider on this issue? Or what voices or opinions am I overlooking in, in some of the thinking that I’m having?

Uh, walk me through that or, um. What are some assumptions that I’m bringing to the table or that, what are some assumptions that could be influencing my decision that I’m making here? Uh, let me give you some context and help me, uh, surface some, some assumptions. Assumptions for myself or assumptions from my organization or cultural assumptions.

I, I live in this place with it that I, you know. You can give it some context. So it just, it can be, um, a bias checker, [00:08:00] right? Or an, an a lens expander, I don’t know, maybe that’s the word. To get some more perspective and just, um, help, help have a, a little bit of a, a of, of a practice there. And I guess, fourthly, that comes into a place of reflection, right?

Um, you know, it’s, it’s a muscle to build self-reflection, um, into, into our practice, into our days, into our weeks. And AI can be helpful here. Just as you know, providing prompts on growth mindset. Help me have a mantra to practice growth mindset for the week, or, um. Uh, journal prompts, right? Provide me a journal prompt on where I’m, I’m holding myself back as a leader.

Or, um, um, help me understand what’s energizing me now, or what’s draining me. Uh, or, or you can even ask it to transform that into worksheets or frameworks if, if you work better in those ways, right? Or step by steps, like, um, gimme a five point process on how to give feedback, how to receive [00:09:00] feedback, right?

Um. Uh, give me a, um, um, a, a skeleton of an idea of how to lead my team through change, right? Um, how to lead my team through change as this person has just left, right? It can be, it can be helpful there. Now, it just to say like, it’s, it’s great and it does not have the right. Answers only. Again, I just have to underscore this, so many times we’re used to plugging things in and there, there’s the correct thing.

Okay? Find me a coffee shop near me and it, and Google will provide you a coffee shop near you. And it is factual, right? This is not factual. I. This is not correct. This is one place for you to get some ideas so that you can then lift it into your own practice so you can analyze it and go, oh, that was a good idea.

I’m gonna take that, but I’m gonna leave this, oh, I’m gonna bring this to my leadership coach. I’m gonna bring this to the team. Let’s see, let’s play with this. This is great. Let right, well, this, this is off, right? Oh, hold on. It [00:10:00] is not correct. Right? You, you, you definitely pick up what’s useful. And, and on that note, actually, the fifth one I I’d like to share is that AI can really help us do our jobs.

We’re all, we’re all learning that, which frees us up to, to work on what matters, which is our relationship, right? Uh, that’s AI can’t replace that human connection, that, that kinetic energy, that all the, all the humanity, goodness, um, uh, or challenging-ness. But what, what it can do is it can help us get our jobs done.

So some of the things it can, it can help us draft agendas or summarize meetings or generate ideas, organize tasks, uh, generate an image, um, uh, fascinating, but anyways, you know, ethics behind that and so on. But, you know, uh, just to say, um, you can spend less time buried in some of these tasks, which allows you to spend time, uh, building trust, meaningful conversations, right?

Getting present with your team, present with yourself. Um, and I’ve, you know, so here’s, here’s some examples ’cause I’ve been working with [00:11:00] leaders and, uh, to help use it as a first source of support and brainstorming, asking it questions about HR. Like, Hey, can you write the first draft of this job description?

Here’s a couple of titles. Um, go do some deep research on those titles in this industry, in this pay scale, uh, for this sector and, and come back with a draft drop description. Like you can go off and do that right as your first cut. Uh, gimme some ideas for an organizational structure as we grow from 30 employees to a hundred over the next year.

Right? Okay, that’s great. Giving me some good ideas. Um, gimme some, what’s another one that I use, gimme some best practices to, um, deal with some, creatively, deal with some short term cash flow issues. Uh, given that, uh, we have these digital assets and these service-based assets, what, what’s some stuff we can do?

Um, what was another one? Uh, gimme three debrief questions I can use with my team at the end of this big project. Um. What’s some other ones? [00:12:00] Um, what are some best practices to deal with staff complaints about their colleagues? How do I hold that? How do I, um, how do I maneuver with that and so on, right?

Be a sounding board for this decision I’m trying to make. It’s a way to handle some of that tactical load so you can stay focused on the relationships, but be able to have, um, either a thinking partner or a first draft or like that initial beginning to some of the stuff that we do in our jobs. Now, I will say, I think, you know, one of the things I can’t help myself but talk about resilience, right?

Because so often when we talk about AI, it’s like the, the, the, the essence behind that is like, let’s do more, do more, be more effective, be more efficient. We can be more productive, right? And it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Let’s not just fill the space with more work. I know that’s gonna be tempting, and I know it’s gonna be hard to push back on that, but there’s a place here, uh, a conversation here around resiliency when we get into the use of AI, right?[00:13:00]

Efficiency matters, effectiveness matters, right? Getting stuff done. Sure it matters, but it doesn’t matter at the cost of your sanity. Um, and it, it, it. It allows us, I believe, um, that it allows us, and it begs the conversation of, hold on a minute, how do I stay in, in my intentionality of how I wanna lead in, in greater clarity in, in being able to have humanity here in the room and allows me to show up more consistently regulated.

Being able to navigate uncertainty, being able to have that resilience stay connected, uh, especially when things get tough, right? Resilience is the foundation that supports a lot of the stuff that we’re trying to build, and so it can’t come at the cost of just being more effective and do more and so on.

It requires us to get really intentional about, um, about practices and resiliency. If, if, if you feel like you want more steadiness, more grounding in your [00:14:00] leadership and you wanna practice resilience, I, I’ve created something for you, a self-paced sort of experience design to help you reflect and reset, move forward with greater clarity and resilience, and build, um, a, a, a personalized resiliency framework.

Check it out in the show notes if that’s something that you need, because a practice of resiliency is definitely needed when, when some of the essence behind AI is asking us to go harder and faster, and it’s like, whoa, pull that back. Still need to practice that resiliency in us folks. Okay, so pausing on that.

Yeah. My invitation here to you, uh, offering some of these things here for you is just to start experimenting. Just roughly right. Give it a try. This is not about perfectionism, this is about learning a tool, playing with AI as a leadership tool. Notice where it helps you reflect, where it helps you practice, where it gives you maybe some of your time back here so you can go spend it on the peoples right.

It’s a tool that helps us. [00:15:00] Um. Kickstart into some, some pieces of work, like just start experimenting with it. AI is there and it can help us do some of the things and it, and it can also help us do some of that inner work of, of leadership for ourselves. It can help us come into that practice more and more.

It’s not just about some of those outer tasks, it’s also about, wow, how can it help me develop myself with some intentionality? Right? So folks. Play it well, share, let me know how you’re dealing with it. Would love to hear, um, don’t replace it with, with a whole bunch of other things, but it definitely is a companion here and it can help you surface, but always being true to you and you deciding how to move forward, what’s right for you.

Yeah, keep experimenting. Roughly right. And folks, practice your leadership, all. Stay in the practice.