Leading with Human Skills in AI Age

Everyone asks how to keep up with AI but women leaders should ask: what can I build in myself that AI cannot replace?

Explore the human skills that matter most as AI reshapes work and leadership. Lemon Price digs into ethical responsibility, relational intelligence, and trustworthiness as the irreplaceable edges of intentional leadership.

A Book on Data: https://amzn.to/4ucWMeh

An Episode on Self-Trust: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2106156/episodes/19113390

Descript: https://get.descript.com/zximu1iffxy5

Guided Journal: https://www.lemonprice.co/product/future-you-journal/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Everyone is asking how to keep up with AI. But I think as women, we really need to be asking a better question. What can I build in myself that AI cannot replace? Welcome back to the Well Lived Society. I'm your host, Lemon Price. And today I want to talk about really going against the grain of AI because yes, I think AI can make us faster. It can make us more efficient. It can help summarize and draft and analyze and automate certain things, but it doesn't make you trustworthy. It cannot make you ethical. It cannot build a kind of relational intelligence that makes people feel safe enough to follow our leadership. And I really want to dive into this because this, to me, is a growing epidemic. I am seeing it all over LinkedIn. People who have put 20 years into a career learning marketing and communication and psychology and all of these really wonderful things. I just saw a woman who had spent, I mean, five weeks talking to the sales team, talking to just everybody on the team about what the homepage needed, doing heat maps, all those kind of things to figure out what the end user needed and what the sales team needed to close that gap. And after presenting this, the CEO said, great, let's put this into Chat GPT and see what it thinks. They took an expert who had been doing this for 20 plus years and said, Let me feed it to AI and get feedback. So what is the point? What is the point? I see it now in school all the time. I'm having conversations with my professors and they are telling me, especially with the undergrads, that they are getting, I mean, just full AI content. I mean, sometimes accidentally leaving the AI prompts in there. And so I do think the pendulum is gonna swing. If I'm gonna be completely honest, I think the pendulum is gonna swing where we are not so reliant on AI anymore, where we are doing just more things in person and less on our computer. We're almost too plugged in. I have seen lawyers be cited. I just saw a lawyer be cited in the Supreme Court here in Georgia a couple weeks ago because her subordinate, whoever it was, a junior associate, whatever, put together a brief. She didn't proof the brief, and she cited fake cases that clearly came from Chat GPT. And here's the thing ChatGPT clawed all those things they will tell you that you're you it's not completely accurate. Like it's not truthful. One of my professors was complaining a couple weeks ago because somebody handed in a paper with fake DOI links. And so I don't think that AI is ever going to replace people. I just don't, I don't think that's gonna happen. But what I do think is that we need to stand out and be different from AI. We need skill sets that are different from AI. And so I do see it as part of our everyday workday. I use it for, I mean, my email list uses AI, right? I use it for to automate some tasks for me. My podcast planner uses AI to see what is trending in my niche. So I know what other people are saying, what podcasts I should be listening to, some articles that I maybe wouldn't have thought to read. And so I think there is an ethical way to use AI. And that's not the whole point of this episode, but it really is so that you can be different, right? I think, I think you can use it to write. So I've talked about this with my professors because I podcast and I'm publicly speaker trained and all those things, I can talk my ideas out way better than I can write them out, which is funny because my bachelor's is in English and I started out blogging, and I still do, but I can talk through my ideas so much better than I can if I'm just sitting down and typing and writing. And so I use descript. I'll link it if you guys ever want to use it, but I use descript is literally how I record podcasts and how I do every single paper that I write. And I will sit down after I've like outlined it out, I know what I want to say, and I will talk through my entire papers that I'm handing in. I just handed in one that was 26 pages long and I talked through the whole thing. And then what I did is I took the transcript, I put it into AI, and I because when I do it through like talk to text, there's filler words, there's the long gaps, there's there's me talking like, oh my gosh, what was I saying? Or I'm sitting here really like thinking through something out loud. So the transcript might sound really long. So I ask it to just like go in and clean it up for me. It's still my words, it's still my thought. I'm like, I just need you to clean it up. Or we're using it to plan. I've used Chat GPT or Claude, usually Chat GBT, but I use it to, I just rearranged my house last weekend for Mother's Day weekend. Glenn got me a new china cabinet and a new bar for my dining room. And so, because of that, I was like rearranging the house and I took a picture of my dining room and I was like, here, and here's the exact pieces of furniture. Help me like think through different layouts because these are two solid wood pieces and I'm not dragging them around my house. So I'm like, help me think through this. That is handy. So again, I think there's a right and a wrong way to use AI. And so because it's in our everyday, people are using it. Like, I think the workplace is being reshaped around speed and efficiency because of it. I think leaders feel a pressure to keep up, which is why I brought up like this whole, you know, CEO who took five weeks of somebody's work and put it in a chat GPT just to cross-reference it. And what I want to say is speed is not the same as wisdom. So AI can accelerate your output, but it can't deepen judgment. It can't all AI is it does is it's programmed to affirm you. And so I want to talk about some skills that you need to cultivate that AI can't replicate. So the first one is trust building. And trust is a foundation that AI will never be able to automate or duplicate. And so I have said this for years, but people follow leaders that they trust, not leaders who produce the most. It's not necessarily about the production. It is about are you trustworthy? And trust, I've done a whole episode on self-trust. I've done episodes on building credibility, but trust really is built through consistency, clarity, follow-through, honesty, repairing things, repairing relationships, repairing mistakes. Like it is through accountability that we build trust. And so we can build trust by saying what we mean, by doing what we say we're gonna do, and then it created an environment where people know where we stand. Do people know where you stand on certain things? And so, with the workplace and I mean, just in general, the world being so AI heavy, people are looking for leaders whose words are grounded, they're real, it's lived experience. And so I want you to think about your lived experience. What do you have to offer that AI can't do? Right? Where do my actions match the values that I communicate? Am I using AI to communicate faster or just to avoid hard conversations? I want you to really think about how you're using AI and how you could use it differently and stand out and build the trust. Have the hard conversation. Send the email that's difficult. Do the hard thing, take accountability for times where we screw up. Because the thing is, is trust is not built by having the perfect words. Lord knows I trust my husband more than anything, and he does not say the perfect thing all the time, and I don't either. Trust is built when people can experience alignment between your words, your decisions, and your behavior. When people know who you are and where you stand and they trust that you are going to back up the things that you say. The second skill I want to talk about is ethical judgment. So AI can offer options, but it does not carry the responsibility. Right. When I think about this lawyer who just got completely, I mean, admonished by the Supreme Court of Georgia for using AI, it was her who got in trouble, not, and I'm sure that the person she hired, the junior associate or whatever, I'm sure they got in trouble too. But they made a judgment call and AI saw in trouble for it. She was. She had to stand in front of the Supreme Court and look foolish. And so here's the thing AI can give you recommendations, and sometimes those recommendations aren't even real. But you, as a leader, have to decide what is right. You have to decide what to do. I literally just came off of taking an ethics class, and I loved ethics. We talked about all the different ways to dissent, how to make judgment calls, and it was just, it was so good. Ethics was such a good class. It was such a good refresher. But as a leader, you have to decide what is right. And so you have to look at your values, the context, the courage that you may have, the accountability that you may have. You have a duty to the people that you serve first and foremost, and then to yourself, to God, if you are religious in any way, shape, or form, whoever your God is, to your family, your friends, like can you look your friends and family? Can you look your child in the face and be okay with the decisions that you made? So we have to, as women, we have to really strengthen our ability to pause, right? We have to slow down. I know AI makes things so fast, but it also makes mistakes. And so we have to be able to pause. We have to be able to ask questions. We have to check sources. We have to make, we have to check our gut. And then we have to make decisions with integrity. And just because something is efficient does not mean it is aligned. And just because something is possible doesn't mean it's responsible. Again, I'm going back to, let's go back to my professor talking about somebody handing in a paper with fake DOI sources. Fake DOI links. Every article she cited in her paper was wrong. I am so concerned for the future of academia, for research, for all these things, because people are using ChatGPT to generate articles, like to generate these papers. And what does AI do? It scans the internet and it pulls information. And so if the information that it's pulling from is false because it came from ChatGPT, it's like this never-ending cycle that is feeding itself. And so I'm concerned about the future of research. I am like, we're going to need people who are actually out in the field doing the research hands-on, touching themselves, like touching everything themselves. Yeah. We need people are out there like getting their hands dirty, having the conversations, doing the interviews, like really producing good, valuable research. I was just talking to a friend yesterday in class, and I'm like, I have a feeling that because of this, like our campus is going to move to handwritten final exams because I mean, people cheated. It just it is what it is. People cheated. And so I'm concerned. And so I want you to think about like who is affected by the decisions that you're making? What are the values that led you to make that decision? Right? What could AI maybe miss? What could it miss? You know, is there bias or, you know, is there harm being done by this decision? Would I be willing to stand behind this decision, these sources, the strategy publicly? Am I willing to do that? AI can give you recommendations all day, but what it can do is absorb the moral weight of that decision that you have to make because this is a moral decision that you have to make. Third skill. Relational intelligence. So relational intelligence is the ability to understand, navigate, and nurture human dynamics. So EQ. Right? So again, AI can summarize sentiments for you, but it can't understand the emotional context. AI can summarize your notes. It can, but it it's not reading the room. As a leader, you have to know how to listen, active listening. Actively listen. Are you listening to respond or are you listening to hear and understand? You have to be able to sense tension in the room. Is there something underlying going on? AI can't feel that. AI doesn't know that. And so, because of that skill, because you're tuned in, you have to be able to ask better questions and then notice what is not being said in the room. Are there dynamics at play that you are not being vocalized? Again, you could record the meaning, you could upload the transcript to AI, have it summarized, give you key takeaways, but it is not going to know the nuance of the room. It's not going to know the nuance of the conversation. And I think as women, we tend to carry this skill better than a lot of people do. And I'm going to talk about discernment in a minute, but we tend to undervalue it because it's not measured like an output. Those people's skills are not always measured as an output. And so I want to encourage you that like that is a competitive edge in the workplace because they are moving fast, but people are not relating better. People now, I mean, their social skills suck, if I'm going to be honest. As a whole, their social skills suck. And then we have these weird parasocial relationships we create on social media and nobody knows how to communicate anymore, and we're angry and we're yelling, or we're just not communicating at all. If you can learn how to navigate relationships, AI will never replace that. And I promise you will do better because of it. I promise you will do better because of it. And so when I say like leaders know how to read a room and then they can build a room that matters more, like not less. Now, I said I was going to talk about discernment, and this one is not just discernment on relationships, but discernment what knowing when you can use AI and when not to. Right? Not every task should be automated. Not every communication should be AI polished. Sometimes I send emails and it literally says, like, sent from my phone at the bottom, like, excuse the typos. There may be some. I sent it from my phone. I don't think you need to delegate every decision to AI. You it you shouldn't. You actually shouldn't do that. I think as leaders, we need the confidence to choose where technology belongs and where human presence is required. Because it is required. I don't know, maybe you're like me and I grew up during what was that movie Will Smith did? iRobot, where they like took over. Guess what? We need human beings. We need people to be present. And because discernment will protect your voice, your values, and your relationships. And so again, you have to decide what you're okay with. This goes back to ethics. Are you okay with this? Can you stand in front of a room of your peers, of industry leaders, and back up what you said? Can you feel confident in what you said? I want you to really like think about that. And then the last skill that I really want to highlight is your voice and your convictions. Again, AI can draft language, but it can't decide what you actually believe. That is not its job. As a leader, you have to have a clear voice, not just polished communications. See, look, I stumbled on a word. I don't want you to let AI oversanitize your perspective. If you have something contrarian that you believe because of lived experience or whatever, because of the data, however you're interpreting it, there's a lot, there's a lot to be said about data. There's a really good book by Deborah Stone, actually, on data and how we prioritize data collection. I'll link it. If you guys ever want to read about data collection and how even data collection says something about what you believe. But anyway, if you're if you're letting AI sanitize your voice, nobody's gonna pay attention to you. Nobody's gonna pay attention. People gravitate to people they can relate to. And if you sound like AI, they're not gonna follow you. I'm sorry, it's not gonna happen. Do you have any podcasts I've stopped listening to because you can tell it is AI because they have no conviction in their voice anymore? Because you can tell they've outsourced their brilliance to Chat GPT. It makes me so angry. It makes me so angry to see women doing this and they are like you can tell it's a script they're reading on their podcast, and it makes me so insane. Do I have notes in front of me? For sure. 110% when I'm recording, there are notes in front of me. Otherwise, this podcast could be four hours long and I would tangent into a million places. Do I have notes? Sure, but do I have it scripted out? Absolutely not. You're getting me real raw, and these are my real honest thoughts. Leadership is like build by using your voice, by sharing what you believe, by sharing your lived experience, by sharing the strategy and the theories that you've put into practice that you know work. And then you have to develop some conviction, which again comes through practice, not outsourcing to Chat GPT. Like AI can help you clean up the messaging. It can help you think about your messaging differently, or if there's gaps, that's fine. But you have to own the message. Again, it's gonna be you who has to stand in front of the public and own the messaging that you give out. And so AI can help clean it up and clean up the punctuation, it can do all those things for you, but you have to own the message. AI can't give you the messaging. It can't. And if it does, then it's gonna sound generic like everybody else, and that's nobody that is being followed. Nobody's interested in following somebody generic and giving generalist information. I want somebody who knows what they're doing. I want somebody who's lived it and experienced it, and that's the person I want to follow. That's the person I want to follow. I promise you right now that your leadership voice will get stronger every time that you practice trusting it. Again, go back to the episode I did on self-trust. So this week, I want you to choose like a human skill you want to strengthen. Maybe it's trust building or ethical judgment, relational intelligence, maybe it's discernment on whether or not to use AI or just really practice using your voice. I want you to look for a moment where you can practice it before you reach for efficiency. Okay. AI, I'm telling you, it's changing the way that we're doing things. But it is not changing the need for leaders who are trustworthy, ethical, relational, discerning, and deeply human. We need people who are deeply, deeply human. So I'm excited. Next week, I'm having a really fun conversation with Maya Rupert. We're talking about, again, women in leadership, talking about things like code switching, which again, I think goes back to this and how we're showing up and how we're always kind of putting on a performance. So I'm very excited to have that conversation next week. If you like this episode, please leave a review. It would just honestly would just mean a lot to me if you would leave a review. It just honestly, I was just talking to someone by commenting on Spotify or like leaving a review, it just tells the algorithm, which I hate, again, it's AI that you're like engaged and listening. And then they'll share it with more people who I think need to have this conversation. So please do me a favor, rate and review it. It would just mean the absolute world to me. I deeply appreciate it. Share it with your friend, share it on you know, Instagram or LinkedIn, tag me when you do, and I will see you all next week for a very incredible conversation. Tootoloo friends.