S1E11 Artificially Intelligent

Welcome to Everything Is A People Problem; a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community, uncovering how every business problem has a people-centric solution with host Dia Zafer-Joyce. 

In this episode, Dia uncovers how AI will foster the future of human-centric leadership, calling all leaders to switch from an either/or mentality to the both/and method.

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Hi there. Welcome to Everything is a People Problem, a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community, uncovering how every business problem has a people centric solution. I'm your host, Dia Zafer-Joyce. Let's talk about people. 

Hello, friend. I'm Dia, and welcome back to Everything is a People Problem. I am so excited for today's episode, which is about AI and the role it will play in supporting leadership in the future, but first I want to talk about gratitude.  

Gratitude is something that makes you a better leader. There's a lot of interesting research out there about gratitude and its benefits. It has physical ones like allowing you to lower your blood pressure and exercise more. Psychological ones; when you're thankful, you're more alert. You're alive and awake, maybe more joyful. And social ones; you're more forgiving and you feel less lonely and isolated because of this gratitude.  Similar to how we talk about putting the oxygen mask in the airplane on yourself before helping others put theirs on, leaders need to practice gratitude first so that they can enjoy that positive physical, social, and psychological impact. That impact inevitably influences how they lead and how they treat other people.  Nicole Lipkin, who does a lot of research on the connection between leadership and gratitude, identified that gratitude breeds employee engagement and fosters more positive interactions. That gratitude helps us acknowledge our accomplishments and gives us a level of thankfulness that encourages us to focus on successes over failures.  

What's interesting is that we often suffer from an apology-reflex over a gratitude-reflex, where instead of being thankful, we tend to be sorry.  One of the easiest ways to challenge someone to improve their self confidence is to ask them to replace, “I'm sorry,” with, “Thank you.” So instead of, “I'm sorry I was late,” you change that with,  “Thank you for waiting for me.” A connection between two people is deepened when you replace apologizing with expressing gratitude. I'm sharing all this so you know there's a lot of knowledge, history, and research behind  why gratitude is important because I have an apology-reflex,  because all I want to do is say, “I'm sorry for taking a few weeks to get a podcast episode out.” “I'm sorry for being a little radio silent on social media.” I want to apologize for my own shortcomings, which actually doesn't do any favors to anyone. Mostly myself. So instead, I'd like to deepen the connection between you and me and say, “Thank you for being patient while I researched and prepared my next episode.” “Thank you for listening to this podcast and providing your comments and thoughts so that I can continue to create something that we all can derive value from.” 

And in addition to your comments, I would love your questions. So friendly reminder, if you hop to diazaferjoyce.com/podcast, you'll see near the top of the page, “Do you have a question for the pod?'“ and a link for you to click and submit yours. I'd love a voice recording where you can include your name, if you'd like, and your question, or if you don't want to be on the air, please feel free to write down your question and email it to me.  

Let's dive into today's topic, which is AI and leadership. AI is the hotness. It is everywhere and being embedded into everything. It's actually been a part of our lives for longer than we realize when we think about the kind of ads that get marketed to us through various websites and social media that we use, but Forbes was talking about recently how the rise of machines creates an even greater demand for a rise in creativity. CF Su, Vice President of Machine Learning at Hyperscience, says, “Regardless of the industry or how the tech is adopted, workers will increasingly need to adjust and learn to embrace soft skills to excel in tomorrow's workplace.” Ultimately, CF is saying that  we need to bring the people skills. Artificial intelligence is going to bring the automation and the amount of information that can be processed, more so than humans can do, but we have to bring the human element to the AI. 

There is a new type of leader that is needed today, and that is the AI-Augmented Leader. That's someone who integrates the use of AI into their leadership in ways that enhance and expand positive human impact. Nhlamu Dlomu, the Global Head of People at KPMG,  says that leaders in this age of AI have a rare opportunity to rethink and redefine how we work and how we lead. We can  focus on ourselves and our people while simultaneously improving financial results by leveraging the benefits of AI-Augmented Leadership. 

But AI is scary, so what does this really mean? Because we don't really associate AI with humanity today, so this is a very new thought. Well, AI can strengthen our cognitive, emotional, and social powers. Intellectually, it can process vast amounts of information and help us make quick decisions as leaders. Emotionally, it can deepen our understanding of an employee and help us choose the best path forward in a challenging situation. And socially, it can help us understand team dynamics and foster diverse thinking. The key here is that AI helps. It is a tool. It cannot alone make us better leaders. You don't just work with artificial intelligence and then bam, you're amazing. It's not going to happen that way. 

There's this part of leadership now that embraces AI augmentation. So augmentation, this is defined as the process of enhancing or improving something by adding to it. AI augmentation happens when we use AI to augment our perception our discernment, or our actions. 

When we use AI to augment our perception, let's say, that's leveraging AI to help us understand team dynamics and to foster diverse perspectives. When we're asking AI to augment our discernment, that's where we leverage AI's ability to process those vast amounts of information so that we have more evidence at our fingertips before we make a decision. I recognize that this relationship between leadership and AI sounds idealized, but this adoption of augmentation is centered around an existing principle called a both/and mindset.  

A both/and mindset is the opposite of an either/or mindset. Good leaders today are consistent in their decision making. They stick to commitments and they stay on message, but the problem is as much as we say we value consistency in our leadership, we don't actually reward it. The goal of leadership is to maintain balance in an organization.  Either/or choices are creating paradoxes that leaders need to solve with that both/and mindset. 

The innovation paradox comes from the question, “Are we managing for today or for tomorrow?” There's a tension between existing offerings and new ones and a balance that needs to be struck between stability and change.  The globalization paradox asks if we are adhering to boundaries or crossing them. There's a tension between global interconnection and local needs. Going wide with breadth versus going tall and deep with depth; we need to find a balance between collaboration and competition. There's also the obligation paradox, which asks if we're focusing on creating value for our shareholders and investors, or for a broader set of stakeholders. Who, in the end, are we obligated to serve? 

The both/and leader has to put these two ends of the spectrum together. It's not, “Are we managing for today or tomorrow?” It's, “How do we manage for today and tomorrow?” It's not, “Which do we adhere to boundaries or do we cross them constantly?” It's, “How do we both respect boundaries as well as push them outside their comfort zone?” The both/and leader is exactly that, both, and. And the AI augmented leader is also a both/and leader, but they're bringing the best of both human and machine into their leadership practice.  

Phew, chonky topic today, but what do we do with all this information? How do we become an AI augmented leader? Well, from a neurological perspective, almost all scientific cognitive models have three qualities. They perceive, they discern, and they respond. And those can be classified into three categories. It's awareness, wisdom, and compassion.  

Awareness is the perceptual capacity of the mind to observe internal and external experiences.  The AI Augmented Leader We'll skillfully provide context to AI generated content. When we're talking about this AI augmented leader, there is an interactivity happening here between the leader and the AI because the AI won't make a good leader and the leader brings humanity to the AI.  So again, with awareness, the AI is bringing the information and the exposure at a level that a human can't match. But the leader is providing context to that AI so that they understand what the parameters are for the information that they need.  

Wisdom is the capacity of the mind to discern and form sound judgment, and that's by understanding reality as it is today.  AI will provide answers based on enormous amounts of data, but the AI Augmented Leader uses wisdom to ask thoughtful questions so that they can discern the answers that are provided by AI. AI provides Information, the leader uses their skill to discern and identify which information is pertinent to their situation.  

And finally, compassion, which is the ability to provide genuine care with the intention of being to the benefit of everyone around and contributing ultimately to the greater good. AI contributes by providing algorithmic knowledge and insights, but the AI augmented leader leverages that power to analyze employee data and provide authentic, heartfelt, and human experiences.  

So how do we become AI augmented leaders? We use AI.  Technological advancements are taking off, and us as leaders have to stay on top of things. We cannot fall behind, because if we do, then we become outdated and useless. And that's not the kind of leader I know that I want to be, and I don't think it's the kind of leader that you want to be either. There's an incredible book I just picked up. It's called, “You Look Like a Thing and I Love You, How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place,” by Janelle Shane. She is brilliant. She has a PhD in engineering and an MS in physics, and she had a blog called AI Weirdness, where she was trying to test AI algorithms and teach it so that she could really learn about AI and its limitations. In her book, the first thing she says is that AI learns by example, and many AIs learn by copying humans. The question that they're answering is not, “What is the best solution?” but instead, “What would the humans have done?”

I want to leave you with two quotes. One is from Sultan Saidov, who's the co founder and president of the talent management company Beamery. And when they were interviewed by Forbes, Sultan said, “Professionals and managers should view AI as an opportunity versus something that should be feared.” At the beginning of the show, I talked about an apology-reflex. AI augmented leadership is happening now, and let's not have a fear-reflex for something that could revolutionize human-centric leadership  and human-centric leadership is  focused on humanity. And I can't imagine a better way to illustrate this than Barbie's quote in Greta Gerwig's “Barbie” when she says, “I want to be a part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that is made.” AI is the thing that is made, and we are the people that make the meaning. So let's do it. Let's be that new generation of AI augmented leaders and make meaning together.

You've just finished the latest installment of everything is A People Problem. You can find episode transcripts with work cited on diazaferjoyce.com/podcast. Find me on Instagram @EverythingIsAPeopleProblem, and tell me what you thought of the episode.  If you like what you heard, please subscribe so that you're notified when new weekly episodes become available. Once again, I'm your host, Dia Zafer-Joyce.

Today’s episode was written and produced by Dia Zafer-Joyce. It featured insights and statistics from Entrepreneur.com, Forbes, Hartstein Psychological Services, Harvard Business Review, IMDB, and LinkedIn, , and Royalty-free music provided by Sarah, the Instrumentalist from Epidemic Sound.