Can AI Replace Leadership?

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

Kristen: \ Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm 

Mike: And 

I'm Mike. 

Kristen: And it's that time of the month where we put out an episode so you guys still know we're alive.

Mike: It's so hard. Oh my

God.

Kristen: we're

figuring out how to do all this stuff. 

Mike: again. why did no one tell us? That

parenting was hard?

Kristen: was fine. Yeah. This is a running, this is a running joke of ours 'cause.

Oh, when I was like about to give birth, we were so fed up from people in our lives telling us how hard parenting was. It's like, well,

Mike: I mean, I still like, I didn't love that. You know, like only Nicole was just like, yes. Everybody else was like, good luck, motherfucker. You know?

But I wouldn't trade him for the, like, he's the best 

Kristen: thing.

No, he's the best thing 

Mike: He's So great. 

Kristen: he's, yeah, he's amazing.

So yes, we. We're busy, but we're here. we're 

Mike: we're not even that busy. I mean, we're busy, but like he, he plays by himself for like two, three hours at a time. 

Kristen: Yeah. 

Mike: know, like 

Kristen: just very noisily. So we can't really record during 

Mike: I mean Yeah.

But you know, like we can do other things. 

Kristen: Yes. Which is a blessing.

Mike: so nice. 

Kristen: Anyway,I'm actually really excited to do this episode topic. I think this is, 

Mike: dun dun. 

No. 

Kristen: Something that we surprisingly have not really talked about much, on our podcast that I think is extremely relevant to the times obviously. And that is ai.

Mike: Oh my God, I feel like it's exploded.

Really like in the last six months. I don't even feel like it's a year now. 

Kristen: There's been so many developments. Yeah. I think the biggest one recently was Claude Code, like getting fully rolled out, which is.

Yeah. 

Mike: I mean.

I know Claude, 

Kristen: I think Anthropic said that like they're using it internally has it's already taken over, like 50% of their coding or something like that.

Yeah.

it's huge from like a coding perspective and just the ability to create like anything.

without needing to actually 

Mike: Oh. code,

like, call. Okay. That makes sense. Well, I knew that was happening. 

Kristen: Yeah. And that's been, I've heard so much about that in the last couple weeks.

And just how like it will just, you can just tell it to create a website and it'll create a pretty decent website, 

Mike: Mm-hmm. just like 

Kristen: among many other things. Um, so that, that's been talked about a lot because especially when it comes to replacing or ~like~ taking, like what does that mean for like software engineers?

especially, 

Mike: I don't think it's good, 

Kristen: which, used to be a very consistent, lucrative, always in demand job. And I think it still is at a lot of levels.

but it's the entry level. 

Mike: Yeah. But how do you get to those middle level if you don't have any entry level people? 

Kristen: Exactly. Yeah. That's a whole other thing.

Mike: There's also just been a lot of, there's been a lot of layoffs again, end of last year, early this year. And companies have been maybe truthfully or not truthfully in some cases, saying it's because of ai. I think mostly it's not 

Kristen: Yeah. I think it's, yes.

Mike: I mean, there's

some right, like, but I, I mean, I am not an expert in this field, but I, I.

You know, I come from a field that people would love to automate some of the line level, jobs, right? Like they'd love, they'd love to like not have housekeepers in hotels. because That's where all their money goes. But in order to do that, you have to have robotics, robot. Yeah. That go, you know, and, and, and cooking too.

Like, can you create a robot that cooks? I'm sure they can, but they haven't yet. You know, there's, you know, I, I think I've seen a video circulating recently with like this Chinese robot that's really doing very successful kung fu.but it's not, you know, it's not on the front lines or anything like that yet.

So Will, will AI eventually like replace your plumber? Probably, but not as quickly as the, the computer programmer. Right, right. Like, 

so 

Kristen: Yeah,

it's very interesting and there's so many things we can talk about from this. I'm sure this will be the first of many episodes. but what kind of inspired me for this particular episode is, Like a few months ago we were having lunch with a couple friends of ours who both happened to be, very successful leaders at major tech companies. And they had made a comment about like when AI takes over our jobs, 

That really made me think about AI and leadership and I have some pretty strong feelings, about what AI can and cannot replace. So,what I wanted to talk about on this episode is, can AI replace the role of a leader?

is not a yes or no answer. there's some things it can replace and some things it can't.

Mike: I i, mean. We're like a couple hours into this, you know, to the AI revolution. Even To the computer revolution, you know, 

I remember a time when there were no computers in, in homes or anything like that, you know, and now we, you know, we have smartphones. And so I.

I don't know what is possible. I don't think anybody knows what's possible at this moment. 

Kristen: Yeah, and I agree. I mean, this is, it's changing so rapidly and I think in particular with like the Claude Code stuff and just, it's accelerated, like what AI can do today is accelerated faster than even the people who are working on those products anticipated.

Mike: So, of course, because it's, it's, it's. probably log logarithmic or something. The scale. it's, 

Kristen: yeah, and it's and that linear.

it can create, it creates advances itself. Right? 

Mike: what what I will say as, as an overarching statement, a computer cannot replace a life form. It cannot replace a human because a human has a spirit and a soul and actual feeling.

And though you can replicate what feeling looks like.

I, I, I don't wanna say you can't, so we go back to like Star Trek, the next generation, and the whole like saga of Data.

you know? Th those 

Kristen: I think like sci-fi is where we have 

Mike: dealt Well sure. But, you know, 

histor, historically, but, you know, Yeah. The original Star Trek, you know, the, the character without feeling with Spock.

Right. the Vulcans actually had very powerful emotions They had just learned to control them. But then Next Generation, you, you have the robot Data who is very lifelike and very funny and very charming, and his, he is in a long quest to become human. I don't know that that's not possible. 

You know, also, like there, you know, the series goes on long enough and Q gives him actual feelings at some point, and he has an emotion ship. I don't know, 

I don't know what's possible or not, but I do know that, you know, a robot doesn't have actual

Kristen: Yeah. 

Mike: doesn't have actual empathy. You know, we're trying out this, this AI companion at my senior living community.

was developed originally for, soldiers with PTSD, like as a companion. They can, it texts, it calls.

It's very good.and you know, the, the designers I have stated that it, it, it displays more empathy than an actual human. 

And I've interacted with the AI bot and it does, but it also doesn't feel real.

So even though it's saying things that are empathetic, I know that there's no actual feeling there. 

So can. can a robot cultivate long enough to like earn a,

earn a soul and a human body attached? to it? Maybe. I don't know. I don't have to discern the cosmos, But like, 

Kristen: yeah, I mean, that's a large philosophical question that I don't think we're gonna answer in this, 

Mike: Well, we Have 45 minutes.

I think we can answer.

Well, 

all I know is like what I see in sci-fi and 

know, 

Kristen: that's like the possibilities realm.

And then there's kind of like, what do we have today? Which are exceptionally powerful, like LLMs are extremely powerful, but they also have 

Mike: their reputation. What's, what Is it L-L-M-L-M. 

Kristen: L, LM. So that's, ChatGPT, Claude. 

Mike: what does LLM stand 

for? Large language model. Yeah. I mean that seems to be where their, that encoding seems to be where they are very strong right now.

Kristen: Yeah. And and an LLM is fundamentally.

It's trained on this massive amount of data and it's primarily predicting what the next word, like likely word is based on all this information that's been fed. So there's different types of ai, but that's the one that's really been revolutionary in the past.

Mike: I mean, I use, I use it a lot, three years. I use, I use chat PT or copilot a lot. I use it to read contracts. I. Use it to read very complicated, you know, bond indentures that would take me, can I understand them? Sure. But I feed this, you know, this 300 page document into chat, GPT. understands it perfectly, can answer questions and extract exactly what I need from it.

It's, it's a brilliant, you know, executive assistant with like an didactic memory.

Mm-hmm.

You know,

It's like that kid in, in Suits, right? Like, if you ever watched that show? like He impresses Harvey because he he like reads law books and he remembers the entirety of the law books. But then there's that funny meme that's floating around with ChatGPT where somebody asks it, can I eat this mushroom

And chad, GPT goes?

Absolutely. That looks delicious.

And then it kills him because it's a poisonous mushroom. And chat. GPT goes, oh no, you are right. I'm sorry.

That's

my mistake. let me know if you'd like to learn more about mushrooms. Yeah. So, you

know 

Kristen: there are li there are 

Mike: There are limitations. 

Kristen: yeah. At least as of right now.

Mike: But it is developing, improving extremely rapidly. Oh, it's, it's it progressing so 

Kristen: Yeah, 

it's crazy. 

but yeah, it's, so,what I wanted to go through. Today is talk about what aspects of a leader do you know? And this is primarily my opinions and this can change based on what happens with ai.

But but what I think and be interesting to see if you agree with me on some of this, what I think it can and can't. Replace from leadership. Spoiler alert, I do not think it can replace leaders becausethere's a human element to that So,

Mike: I, I, I agree. 

I think the conscience, your conscience is something profound and spiritual. And although you can probably program. A computer you know, mimic that you can't actually program it.

Yeah.

Kristen: yeah. Computers don't actually have feelings 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah, 

I don't think so.

Kristen: so.

I do think there's a certain type of leader who. Should be concerned. and we've talked about this type of leader, like people for whom like leadership is really tightly linked to having more information than others. Being the expert in the room, just like being the person with all the answers. And that's like their. That's the foundation of leadership for them.

I, I think that is, 

Mike: I feel personally attacked. 

Kristen: I mean, of course there's like institutional knowledge, but even like when you're talking about integrating AI into enterprise software, like there's all sorts of things that. That becomes, that even that can become less of a concern over time. So if your differentiator as a leader is information based, I think that is a concern because AI is extremely good at information.

Right?but when it comes down to deciding what matters, making meaning. Being present and like taking accountability in situations where there's not a perfect answer. I do not see AI being able to take that role over, at least as of So going more into this, I think things that. Like leadership roles that AI can automate or replace or at least do much of the work of? I think it's most useful. you called it like an executive assistant. sure.

I think of it as like an always on thought partner. 

Mike: Mm-hmm. 

Kristen: And it can generally like replace or automate functions that are information heavy, pattern based, structured repeatable.

Draftable, like, I think these are areas, so I would say like five areas, I think particularly apply to leaders. So information processing, I think this is the one most of our minds jump to right away, But the researching topics, summarizing reports, scanning large inputs, pulling out key insights, that is, definitely an area where AI can.

Save a tremendous amount of time and do a arguably better job. a way better job. Like way better job 

Mike: way Better job. Yeah. But you still need a human to, at the, at least at the moment, to, you know, put the guardrails and the, and the direction Of the thought,

Kristen: Yeah. 

Mike: that's my 

Kristen: Yes. I think it's more leader like the shift here is leaders moving from information holder to information interpreter. And then the second 

Mike: one, so it's interesting, I don't remember where I heard this, it was maybe like 10 years ago, somebody talking about, you know, there was like a quote about this new invention, completely degrading a human's ability to think and remember. 

And the way it was phrased, everyone thought they were talking about the internet and Google, but it was actually a quote. I think from Plato talking about writing. And before, like, so if you don't know, like our alphabet comes also from, from like Carthage and the Venetians, and that's the phonetic alphabet, which was eventually adopted by the Greeks.

And you know, those are, you know, the origins of Western writing or in. in, you know, the, in Sumer, and I'm not, I'm not this type of historian, but you know, before this became like a thing, you had to remember the Odyssey. 

You had to remember the Iliad and that was part of like being a scholar or something, is you could remember these, these giant compendiums of like, you know, be stories or what, whatever.

And the, the thinking of the day was like this was gonna completely like mess up. the human's ability to like remember stuff because before writing was in vogue you had to just, commit everything, to memory. And it very much pertains to our modern time where everything is now remembered by Google. The Google, right.

And and the entirety of, you know, Western, especially civilization is available on Google. So did that make us dumber? I don't know.

It certainly changed the way the brain works though. 

Kristen: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike: So that's information and, and as you were saying, what made me think about it as like information processing a human is never gonna be as good as a computer at processing information, data, raw data. I mean, there's some people, right? There's some people, there's a couple, you know, there's people who have beat computers in terms of their ability to, you know, do arithmetic and things like that. You know, a large scale like. You know, like quantum computations or like astronomical Trajectories. You're not gonna beat the ples. 

Kristen: and we also, there's also the factor of like cognitive bias that comes into that, which AI definitely has bias, but it's di it works a little differently. Right.

Mike: how does AI bias work? 

Kristen: I feel like I'm not the right person to answer that question.

It's a big, it's a big question.

a lot of it depends on what it's trained on. And 

Mike: So, you know, I, I got a chance to ask questions of the founder of SafelyYou. So, SafelyYou is this really cool AI program that we use in senior living. It involves, they call it a sensor, but it's also a camera that, you know, watches people. And if they, if they fall, it knows they're falling.

You know, what? it, it works for people with de, especially with dementia, who can't report what happened around the fall. And if, and if someone falls, it'll give us like 10 minutes of data to see what really happened. And they're analyzing, you know, tens and tens of thousands of falls to extrapolate data.

And I asked him, I think I had read, just read Daniel Kahneman's book, and I asked him if AI could ever have like system two thinking. Which was like where you reach automaticity. And his view was that the only difference between system one thinking and system two thinking was the number of times his AI model had had thought about something. That it wasn't a different process, it was just more reps and what we take for, you know, automaticity or intuition or things like that are simply

repetitions. 

So that's why I don't, I can't say what AI can do with enough repetitions. 

Kristen: Yeah, for sure. yes. I think even a lot of people who are experts in this field have been surprised by the, the

rate of 

Mike: I mean, this is, how do you want Skynet? This is how we get Skynet.

I, nobody's, you know, you know, and

if, if anybody's watched The Expanse, which is a great. Science fiction, series. I, I think the most like real and potentially painful thing is like nobody has a job.

They're all just, they're all just barely subsisting on whatever government handout that they can get and only the elite class, like have it and, and nobody has a job.

Kristen: Oh my gosh, I haven't watched that. In a while. 

Mike: show. And they don't even really, like, it's not about AI at all, like, but that's, that's the future, you know, and we got, know, everybody's doom and gloom about this and, and there's definitely about to be a major shift. 

Kristen: Oh yeah. No,it's massive. 

Mike: I think the, the the thing though, in order to like truly be a paradigm shift, you need robotics to catch up the, brain Mm-hmm. And Then who knows 

Kristen: Which it will eventually. 

Mike: will eventually, it will, in, it will in our lifetime, probably. You know, will, will I see fully robotic housekeepers in my lifetime?

Yeah, probably. Probably. Yeah. Will I see fully robotic line cooks? Yeah. Probably. You know, will I see a robotic chef? 

Maybe, you know, if you, if you feed him enough recipes and enough like Gordon Ramsey videos. you know, if if the aI watches enough like kitchen nightmares, can it become 

a good chef? I, I don't know. Probably. 

Kristen: Probably. Yeah. I don't know. These are big questions, 

Mike: but I, I, I think there's a, there's a heart and a spirit that they won't be able to really replicate. 

Kristen: I, I think it'll be an approximation 

Yeah, that's my feeling as well.

yeah, so getting back to these, leadership roles or functions that I can do. so information processing was one. Second is around structured analysis and pattern recognition. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah, sure. 

So 

Kristen: like identifying trends and metrics? Sure. Comparing options, running scenario analysis, creating like pros and cons breakdowns. 

Mike: so when I was facing a particularly different, difficult strategic situation, I fed it into chat, GPT, 

Kristen: Uhhuh, 

Mike: and the prompts are all what you know, the prompts are, whether you get like, you know, coal or gold. And I found, I don't know, some instagram account with some cool problems. But the prompt was like, you know, look at the situation that I'm facing and it advised me as five different voices, an optimist, a pessimist, me 10 years in the future.

I don't remember what the fourth one was, but the fifth one was Elon Musk. 

Kristen: Yeah, 

Mike: but you know, it, it. It was pretty awesome. Till 

Kristen: really interesting. 

Mike: was really interesting, you know, and, and UK you throw out the optimist. You throw out the pessimist. You know, you know, I, I sometimes I've asked it to advise me as Juong, who is a very famous, you know, strategist and saint from ancient China.

Like, and It comes up with some pretty amazing stuff, you know, like, yeah. What it doesn't have is intuition. 

You know? Yeah. The Elon Musk one was funny, but it was kind of true, like, 

Kristen: yeah. I mean, in a very, 

Mike: well, it, you know,

it wasn't about being, it was someone who is extremely, you know, business-minded and thinks that they know what's up.

Yeah. And, and it did. And it was like, is this signal or is this noise? And it, it, correctly identified mostly what was noise and looked for opportunity. It was very opportunistic. I. 

Kristen: Yeah, that was interesting. 

Mike: I mean, 

Kristen: obviouslynot the most popular figure,

Mike: again, but

Kristen: but it produced really, but has a very clear, documented voice that, that Claude or GBT able to.

pull in a very clear point of view based on,

Mike: yeah.

So, yeah.

Kristen: yeah, so yeah, things like that, like scenario analysis, it's a great example. flagging anomalies, pro con breakdowns, like these are all things, and, maybe we should do a separate episode where we talk about some, our best, our favorite AI uses from a leader's perspective.

Mike: Yeah.

You, I, I've seen a lot of stuff out there now. There's ways to like. Hack chat

t's like response to you and take out a lot of the noise that 

it, You know, all these stupid emojis and dashes and like Yes.

You know, and I, I, it over time though, I can tell you it's learning my voice. 

Kristen: Oh yeah. It learns it very, Very 

Mike: well I used it to do like my director's performance reviews and it sounds like me. 

Yeah, I didn't even have to feed in that much information, it sounds like me.

Kristen: No, I think that's another, that kinda actually gets into the third one. so yeah, the second one to kind of wrap, so like, leaders move from analyzing everything themselves to deciding what matters and what to act on.

And the third area of like drafting and documentation. So I've, yeah, I've found it incredibly helpful to like feed it bullet points and stuff, and then have it put it into an actual, like coherent voice that sounds like me. Which is, what you're talking about with performance reviews. do 

And for a leader that can be everything from like first drafts of email communications, meeting agendas, meeting summaries.

Mike: This I use the summarize thing a lot. 

Kristen: Yes, I know. Yeah. I, because I know you have an, a AI integrated into your meetings

Mike: Yeah, well, I, like I use it to summarize emails. It's like, as I've ascended in power, if you will, I, I realize how little time I have to, and then I have a child like to, to read your, you know, three page.

I don't have time to read your three page email. Give it to me in three bullet points. And if you can't do that, I'm gonna ask, you know, copilot to do it for 

me. 

Kristen: Create an executive summary for me. Yeah. That's my 

Mike: assistant. Like, gimme the, gimme the, the, what, why are you paying me? 

You're paying me to use my experience and ideally my wisdom to make strategic and 

evaluative judgements. That's what you're paying me for. You're not paying me to like process information. Mm-hmm. That can be done at a much more junior level. 

Or by my, you know, AI assistant.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, there's so much there that it's very useful,for drafting and documentation. So like the shift there is really leaders moving from writing every word yourself to being more of an editor and a voice setter, tone setter for it.

Mike: yeah, if it's longer than like two 

Kristen: oh, yeah, it's going, it's 

Mike: in the chatbot there. 

Kristen: Yeah, for sure. Like, please gimme the key points from this. 

Mike: Well, I'm, I'm teaching the team this stuff too. It's like when my maintenance director gets a quote, like, I'll, I have him putting it in co-pilot and first asking it, the term, the real terms, any, any red flags, and then comparing the quote to known industry standards.

Nice.

And it will come back and say this quote is on the expensive side, but not unreasonable. And for what you're getting it, it. It tracks 

Kristen: You're setting up these very well. So that gets into like routine and rule-based decisions. So things like applying a standard policies or a framework like saying like, this is a framework where I am standard framework. I'm analyzing this from analyzing this particular contract based on this framework. things like prioritization frameworks, like structured approval flows. Repeatable operating decisions, like basically any kind of decision that really operates off of a very like rule-based routine kind of function and doesn't need that like conscious analysis of is a place where AI can really help.

Like the shift there is moving from, being like a decision executor to, to being more of a decision designer and then an exception handler.

Mike: 

So, something funny, I've been watching everybody who knows watches, right? the movements They're mostly can be very simple but also incredibly complicated. You know, your normal SEKO is a very simple time only watch or it has a gMT a date complication or something like that. But you can get fabulously, fabulously complicated with, with the, the movements, you know, and there are movements that are hundreds of years old that have like perpetual calendars, you know, using no electronics whatsoever. This machine can keep track of the leap years and the leap dates and the 28 day months and the, but I've seen over the last year some incredibly complicated watches coming out.

Incr, like there's, there's, and a couple of 'em are from Autumn, RP gay, and there's this pocket watch that has like, I don't know, 50 different complications. It has all this like ability to track solar movements and it will be accurate for like, I don't know, 3 million years or in the future if you keep it wound.

And I, I can't prove it, but I'm very certain that, you know, these, these movements are being designed with ai.

They're, they're so complicated. I think to some degree they're beyond, you know, the human brain to be able to put a small machine in the, in the size of a pocket watch. I dunno, I was thinking about that.

But it's like, using AI as an assistant for an idea. 

You know, but I think the, the, the question is whether AI will come up. with The ideas on And if you let it, what will it come up with? 

Kristen: You really, you're just, you're setting, you don't have the notes in front 

Mike: me. I don't have the,

so you're

Kristen: you're setting up my, 

Mike: the funny 

Kristen: was areas, perfectly, 

Mike: this is the first time I've ever done an episode without the computer in front of me, and I kind of just asked you if I could do it. But then I thought about it and I, I, I was like, I didn't mean for this to be intentional, but I am.

Actually not using a computer to do this. It's just me. There's something to that Uhhuh. I'm like, I don't need you 

Yeah, yeah. I don't, you know, and then you go to like the Terminator series and there's like those air gap computers in Colorado, like everything else went, went down with Skynet.

But you, you know, the One. one. 

Kristen: Well, and like, nevermind the fact that we're using computer to record this,

Mike: Yeah. but we, we wouldn't necessarily have to, we could use a tape deck or something like that. 

Kristen: okay. Sure. Okay. All 

Mike: I'm just saying like, 

Kristen: anyway. So you're setting these up With, which is where we were, 

Mike: called, it's called Human intuition.

Kristen: So that, that was the last area that I, I have for this, which I think is actually an underrated use for AI for leaders, but around like idea generation and option expansion. And we've, wow, so good for that. Like we've talked about. Up this in a couple of different past episodes where, for most decisions, there's only like two options considered and adding a third option dramatically increases the success rate of your decisions.

Even just a third 

Mike: by like a hundred fold or something 

Kristen: that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I don't remember the exact statistic, but I think it's in our, I feel like that was some of The Coaching Habit, and I think it's again, in our decisions. 

Mike: That, that third option, and we talked about it in politics.

It's like if there was a third party. 

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike: Okay. 

Kristen: and that, that's something where given all of our cognitive biases, we tend to just get locked into seeing two potential options and just running things through AI and having it help you brainstorm alternatives is incredibly powerful. obviously you have to then cut that down.

but that's a really powerful use. Like things like generating, like reframes for things like exploring multiple solution paths, creating like variations on a strategy, like these are all areas where AI can be a really powerful thought partner.So with that, leaders are moving from purely idea generator to more of an idea curator.

Mike: Sure. I, I, I use this in my work. A lot. 

Kristen: It's very powerful. Yes.So with that, I wanted to give five leadership roles or functions that AI can't replace at this point, in my opinion. So one of them is judgment, because, AI can look at a data set, it can create like a clear, like decision by all the data it has, but leadership often means making decisions when the data set itself is incomplete and the outcomes are unclear.

Mike: in fact, that's the very definition of 

Kristen: right? 

Yes. And like AI can help generate recommendations. It can show you different scenarios, tell you what's worked before, but it can't replace your intuition. 

Mike: It cannot replace your intuition. Yeah, it can approximate it with the size of data. I keep thinking about like military strategy and it's like, know, you feed the entirety of like military history into whatever, and it's gonna come up with a lot of sound strategies, I don't know, there's something missing.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah.

And I think ultimately as a leader, like you are. You are making a choice and you are deciding like what you are willing to stand behind and own the consequences of, and like AI can't really process understand what that 

Mike: or feel it, You know, like, Jocko talked about it a lot in, in, as you know,

my favorite book, Extreme Ownership, how US Navy Seals Lead and Win, but he, talks about it all Well, but sure, he, he, but he talks about. The emotional weight of sending people into battle. The scary thing for him is not dying. It's somebody else, him making a mistake and them dying. and he has To live with that for the rest of his 

That is not something that AI can feel. 

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. The weight of that. Yes. 

Mike: The weight of your decisions. 

Kristen: And

Mike: especially when life and death is on 

Kristen: Mm-hmm. And then second, emotional presence and regulation, like leadership is fundamentally emotional work. This has been one of our main point of view is on this podcast, right?

But like things like reading the room, noticing things like tension, fear. Disengagement resistance, like staying grounded when people are anxious or reactive, like AI can approximate that. And, chat GBT as you were talking about with this bot, right, like chat, GBT can appear like very empathetic depending on which model you're using and how you've trained it.

But AI doesn't have a nervous system, so it's not actually like truly absorbing the emotional weight of change. And when you're talking about like in times of uncertainty, like people are really responding to your emotional steadiness, like not just the brilliance of the plan. 

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Kristen: then. third, meaning making and a critical part of leadership is helping people understand the why, like why this decision, why now, why this matters. And AI can summarize information, but it can't like create shared meaning, like shared meaning is really something that builds over time from like context, trust, relationships, and when you're talking about like times of change or ambiguity, which is like all the time.

Mm-hmm.

These 

Mike: now. Yeah. 

Kristen: Especially now,

people aren't like asking what's happening. They're really asking what does this mean for me? 

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: And while AI can like give you all the information, but only you can really decide what matters.

And I find that that's in using AI for so many functions, I feel like a lot of what I'm doing is going through all of this information and that it's generated and deciding what matters. 

Mike: Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. 

Kristen: and then communicating that. Making other people feel that. 

Mike: My business office manager says, period.

Kristen: And then fourth, this actually goes back to what you said with, the first one, but accountability. Yeah. AI does not carry moral responsibility 

Mike: with the mushrooms. Like, oh, you're right. Sorry. That 

Kristen: was, sorry. Yeah.

Mike: Do you wanna learn? Oh. no, you're dead. 

Kristen: Yeah.

And I mean, and there are some very dark examples to 

Mike: Yeah, no, we 

Kristen: we don't need to get into all that.

but yeah. AI does not carry moral responsibility and leaders are making choices that affects people's livelihoods, their wellbeing, their sense of safety. maybe in the case of a military leader, like their life or death, right? Life or death, and these are, this really involves like values, it involves trade-offs, and sometimes harm, like even when your intentions are good.

and I, I think that's also important, right? AI recommendations do not absolve responsibility. Like as a leader, you need to be able to say, that was my call. It's if it, the back when GPS came out, people would say like, oh, well if like GBS tells you to turn into the river and you run your car into the 

Mike: People died because of Apple Maps, 

Kristen: I mean, yeah,

Mike: not a lot, but a couple.

it wasn't even that, Dr. Like

I, I know one guy like died in the desert 'cause it like turned him into Death Valley or something and he didn't recognize.

Kristen: yeah. Like you are still ultimately accountable for your decisions, even if you're using technology

Mike: You gotta put that, you gotta put that mushroom meme in the notes.

Kristen: Yes. If you can find it. 

Mike: Oh, I can find it. 

Kristen: I'm sure you can.I 

Mike: chat GPT. to find. 

Kristen: Yes. 

Mike: Oh,

It's so good at searching information. though. Oh, yeah. I'll use it to compare metal for long swords. I'll use it to compare like you can just, it just, it it's so 

Kristen: Oh, yeah.

It's incredibly useful if you're using it correctly. 

Mike: It helped me build a, a daily workflow operating system. Based on the long sword guards of,fF fre, yeah, pretty convincingly. 

Kristen: yeah, I, yeah, I remember that.

I'm glad you can have these conversations with Chad, GPT.

Mike: and crying. That makes it sound weird. but

Kristen: no, like you have a thought partner to nerd out about swords with, I mean, you still nerd out it with me, but you know, it's 

Mike: you have no idea what we talk about when you're not around. 

Kristen: Oh my God.

anyway. and I, I mean, that kind of leads into the last area, which is around like relationship repair.

Mike: Hmm. 

Kristen: Because I think this is another fundamental part of being a leader, is you are showing up when things don't land well.

and AI can be very powerful for helping you like draft words, like helping you prepare for difficult conversations, but it can't actually, like repair relationships.

Like repair is something that requires like presence, humility, like genuine accountability and trust is built on how leaders show up in those moments. So I think these are all like, just the very human parts of leadership that I, and maybe I'll be wrong, but at this point 

Mike: I

I don't, I don't see it I Think, we're, I think it's up to us to, to like chart the Right. So what are we saying? Conscience, accountability, responsibility, empathy, feeling, you know, these are things that, you know, AI cannot replace a should not be used to try and replace a 

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. 

I agree.so yeah.

So I think that's a good spot To wrap this 

Mike: Yeah. We should do this again in a year and see where we are. 

Kristen: Oh my gosh. See how much has changed. Yeah. It's, yeah. Crazy times. We're living in many ways. 

Mike: Well, I will say though, if you're a leader and you're not taking advantage of ai, you're falling behind.

Kristen: Thousand percent. 

Mike: And, and I work in a very analog industry.

You know, the service industry, hospitality industry, if you're not using it to, to level up and level up your team, you're leaving a lot on the table. And,

Kristen: And,

you're putting your job at risk. 

Mike: Well, sure. You know, I, I,

oh, 

Kristen: oh,

eventually. it's gonna be like longer in some 

Mike: it's longer in, Yeah. You know, and, and going to like my ed conference and, and hearing what everybody's doing, they're not doing that much, you know, at this point. Like, 

Kristen: but at some point, some industries are gonna be much slower to catch up, but I mean, I think AI is truly like an adapt or die. 

Situation, for 

Mike: sure.

We 

Kristen: all industries. 

Mike: Eventually, we haven't reached that point for most of the industries, but 

Kristen: no, not yet. 

Mike: you know, if you're, I'd say it's, it's a competitive world out there. And if you're not leveraging every opportunity you have for, you know, operational efficiencies I need chat g PD to find the word that I'm looking for. I got dad brain.

I, I really, my, my vocabulary, I don't know It's, it's, I'm having trouble with my search function in my brain now. I Just chat, g pt, What word, you know?

Kristen: Yeah. It has been a nice tool for parenting brain.

Mike: my God.

Kristen: all right, well, 

Mike: well, we use AI to monitor our, our son's breathing. You know, 

I'm watching him 

Kristen: Literally. Mike has it up.

Yeah, and we can see how 

Mike: brother. But it makes mistakes too. It's not a substitute for human man. 

Kristen: mistakes. Yeah. Yep. 

Mike: Okay. Thanks Kristen.

Kristen: Thank you, Mike. And thank you guys for listening and we will see you again next time. 

Mike: Bye everyone. The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

Kristen: You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next episode .