106: How to AI-Enhance Your Drama Ditching at Work

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Reality Based Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dorr, CEO at Reality Based Leadership. And in this episode, I want to bring one of those conversations I had from an event I did recently that was on some comments about AI and how it can be used with Reality Based Leadership in creative ways. And for those of you For those of you that are new, uh, to the podcast, what we do on this venue is we look at the interferences of drama. And we found the average person spends 2.5 hours per day in drama. So we give you the latest tools, insights, my thoughts on how to ditch the drama at work, build alignment in your teams, and call people that you lead to greatness. And we either take responses from fans that are asking us questions. Um, topics that we haven't covered before, or a lot of times I'm bringing from my speaking engagements what leaders that are in the trenches right now trying to respond to all the ambiguity and the uncertainty out there and the questions they have about how to lead forward in this modern reality. So it's a really cool feedback loop where we can hear those questions. A lot of them are questions that we have in all industries, all professions. And then how can we bring reality-based leadership with a lens into finding clarity about those challenges? What's maybe the source of that interference? And then my favorite part that I always try and give you is what's the tool that you can use right after this podcast to address it, to bring it up, to have a conversation around it, or in my favorite cases, manage energy away from why we can't and where you're stuck into how we could. And that's what modern leaders do. All of us listening here is we're energy managers. I want you thinking that we don't really manage the work of people. Anymore. That should be increasingly left up to our software, our systems, our standard operating procedures, whatever processes help us get a lot of the grunt work done efficiently. That frees us up for reality-based leadership, which is about hearts and minds and calling people to greatness, to move beyond where they're stuck in their thinking or in their approach. And so that's what we focus on here. And in this episode, I want to bring one of those conversations I had from an event I did recently that was on some comments about AI and how it can be used with reality-based leadership in creative ways. Now, for this podcast episode, we're not going to get into the drama and some of the fears many of us have around AI and all that stuff. That's, that's a different episode, not the topic today. Today's episode is I had seen some really intriguing ways to use our tools that we teach in Reality-Based Leadership to help people ditch the drama, find clarity, and take next right action with their teams. I was playing around with how to AI enhance some of the ditch the drama tools. I thought after hearing a separate conversation is around an expert was talking about how a lot of our customers, the challenge with AI is they're going to demand from us that we're AI enhanced. Meaning a lot of the reports we send or a lot of the, uh, a lot of the support they need, they're going to want at least some sort of, of bots or agents for customer service. Like they're going to want our processes to be supercharged with some sort of AI to be able to get them what they need faster. And so you're going to be competing against some of your customers and competition on how speedy we can be in an efficient way. With some of these, these new partnerships with the robots, so to speak, internally in your business. And so when I was thinking about AI enhancement and this requirement of being AI enhanced, I was working with a couple of my favorite reality-based leadership tools that I teach most frequently in keynotes and trainings on, could we AI enhance these tools when teams are stuck or when people are getting closer to The truth and how they could solve a longstanding issue, but then people get quiet because they realize it might lead to, yes, we got to take action on this. And I find with, with our tools that we teach, again, they're all visual and they really get the drama and the, where we're stuck as a team out of our heads and verbal dialogue. They get them onto paper, onto PowerPoint, onto flip chart, onto marker board. You know, on even a piece of paper so we can get the problem clearly in front of us frozen in time. And so we can add to it and build it to say, that's our current reality. And now that we're all looking at the same thing together, we're not talking past each other. How could we, with this mental process, this tool, get into next right action? And so in that process of the tools we teach, which I'll link the toolkit and a few of these tools I covered today in the podcast notes. Once you have those, then I thought instead of just having the team think through them, which is really good innovation and creativity and brainstorming, what if when we were stuck, we could add in whether it's ChatGPT, Claude, some of that ideating? Because what I have been joking about is when we're trying to ditch the drama and we're getting clear on a problem and we're figuring out what our constraints are, what our excuses What are the risks we need to mitigate? And we're getting into, given all of that, how do we get into next right action? This ego can come trickling back in and the ego does not like self-reflection. It wants to keep venting and saying it's impossible and it doesn't want to get it visual. So then we have to take accountability and take action. So then it can be the innocent victim and leave us believing that there's nothing we can do about it. It wants to keep us in low self. All of our tools get the team or anyone involved self-reflecting. And considering given this challenge, how could we? Not just why we can't, but into how we could. And so the ego is going to want to trickle in there and it's going to not want to at times offer ideas for how we could. I've seen where we set up a tool and I'll get into it. And we have the constraints, we have the goal, we have people actually in the audience smiling because they see where you're going. You're embracing, given all of this, here's how we could, what ideas do you have? I want your input towards how we could. I want your opinion towards how we could. And I start to see some people smirk, or I even start to see the audience, if it's a fairly large group, like a table will lean back and disengage. They'll start to get almost mad. And what that is, without me knowing for sure, is dang, you kind of called us out on our typical derailer of ideas for how we could. And you held that center as we went to the extremes and made excuses. And now you're calling us to, given all of that, I want to acknowledge that's not ideal. How could we? And that's the ego trying to bow out of accountability. And so what happened in, as I was doing this, is I had a situation with a client that we had a really good thinking inside the box setup. There was a goal that they were not making progress on, and there was a lot of moving factors and a lot of just Lack of accountability challenges. And so we were working in the workshop of drawing the box. If you just imagine a box on a flip chart, and I just started to list out with compassion, all of those excuses are where we missed the mark so far. And we clarified as a pretty large group, what is the goal? And we got clear on, we're trying to get this figured out by the end of the month. And it basically was given this goal and given these challenges, what ideas do you have in the box? And in that session, it got a little quiet. It was around break time. So I had us, you know, let's take a break on this. Uh, I use my exit line. And if you don't have an exit line, I encourage you as a leader, make sure you have an exit line. If you're ever going into a leadership coaching conversation or you're trying one of these tools that we teach in Reality-Based Leadership is to have an exit line because it might get quiet. That ego might get a little bit You know, scared of accountability. So I like to say something like, you know what, great work so far, everybody. You've given me a lot to think about and we got a lot of good work on that tool so far. Let's just take a 15-minute break. Let's go, you know, um, use our break here and we'll come back to this later in the session. And so I had done that. And as we brought it back later in the session, there was still just a little bit of this, this obstacle we couldn't get through. And so as I was going back on, you know, to the plane and heading home, I'm like, Let's, and I left it as an assignment. Let's keep thinking on this with the group. It's called an assignment for self-reflection, and we're going to look at it in our follow-up. But I just took that inside the box we had created, put the goal into ChatGPT, and I kept it general. So there was no like acronyms or it wasn't giving away their strategy or anything. So of course, keep the privacy. And I said, well, here's kind of the situation and here's the excuses or the constraints that were brought up. And now act as the top expert that's super creative in this and don't budge those constraints, but just give me your ideas inside the box that would be so good. I even put this in the script. They'd be so good that people that saw that, that were in this industry, they'd be like, whoa. And they'd start to write that down. They'd look at the box and be like, I got to write that down. And it was fascinating because it gave me 3 ideas and I looked at the constraints and their excuses and it would be possible to follow what inside-the-box ideas there were and move towards the goal. It was literally 3 breakthroughs of things they could do. And then I was just playing around. I go, oh, none of those will work. I don't like them. Give me 3 more. And then give me 3 more. And I found out a big truth in all this, that there's one thing that things like AI, ChatGPT, that it doesn't have that we have sometimes as humans, which is a lack of willingness to offer new ideas. It's always willing to say, given those constraints, here's how you could, here's how you could, here's how you could. What I found with some groups that are tired or it's a longstanding issue, or they're into a why we can't mindset, they can't find a single idea towards how we could. Now, my preference always with our tools is I want the most human response. I love to leave those tools set up and we got our thinking clear. We got the constraints and now we're channeling it inside the box. I like to leave that for an hour, have teams walk with it for a few days, come back, ask around. I love when people take the tools we've set up, ask their network of good relationships, what's your one best tip given this situation? What ideas do you have in the box? That human response is always the best response I've found. But in the meantime, if we're stuck, I love to bring in that AI enhancement. And it'll just keep offering you ideas. Now let's say as you're offering ideas, some look good. The team comes in and they say, oh, but there's a couple more things that it's not thinking about. I just add those to the outside of the box as an additional constraint to consider. And this is a way to enhance and accelerate that tool with the power of AI as a thought partner, as you're finding ideas. And it helps to break through that lack of willingness because in any of the tools that we teach, what I love that they reveal for teams where they're stuck Is 3 areas. Where are you not updating your skillset? Are you still using your old skills for the new reality? And you're not partnering in this example with AI and the power of it in an, in an interesting way or with Copilot or whatever it is. Is it your approach? Are we using the same approach to this longstanding issue that we've been doing for 5 years and wondering why we don't get any better results? We got to update our approach, modernize our approach, find a new way to look at it. And if it's not skillset, it's not approach, you might've found the dirty little secret. It's a lack of willingness to do what's needed for the organization to achieve that goal. Now, if the goal's illegal, immoral, unethical, or it's against our values, well then call it out as a team. But a lot of times that lack of willingness isn't that I don't see this goal as, you know, not illegal or immoral. I see it as something I just don't like. It's not my preference. And preference can't trump potential. And so I like when that mindset's locking in and we're getting stuck. The job as a leader is to just break through that and get us into a couple of ideas towards how we could. AI enhancement helps you do that. Another way is when people are stuck. One of our other favorite tools is the SBAR. That's when people say, hey, do you have a minute? Or they have a problem that they're bringing up a lot of issues around it. I say, I love that you've identified this challenge. Let's put it into an SBAR. S-B-A-R. And again, I'll link this. Situation, one sentence, relevant background. What's your analysis? Who have you reached out to? What's the data? What's our approach to this? What's the law behind this? What's the regulation? You know, what's our systems say on how to handle this? And then what are your recommendations, plural, for how to handle this? Now, the ego, if it's in low self and lacking willingness, Its recommendations are not very creative. It sometimes just dumps it on the leader's desk and says, it's, you're, you're the one that gets paid the big bucks. You figure it out. Or it just gives you the one recommendation. Here's the only way to solve it. My preference, I again like to use AI enhancement. Again, put out anything that would be confidential in that SBAR. Don't put that in there. But then what would be some recommendations that are creative to approach this in the short-term, midterm, long-term? Ask the AI to throw out some ideas. If you got one recommendation and you're stuck, it'll give you 4 or 5. If the A, you don't have good analysis, ask it, what are some ways to analyze this problem at a more holistic level? What departments should I be reaching out to? And it gives you some prompts and some ideas to get more context in the A, the analysis, to offer better recommendations. So these are a couple of ways for those of you that are really Starting to practice our tools. I wanted to start with the, start with the SBAR and the box tool, because in nearly every keynote that our team delivers, we're trying to deliver one of those tools that you can immediately put into action. And that those 2 tools ditch like 95% of the drama. Now imagine if you're using them consistently as a thinking habit, along with the power of AI enhancement. Very fascinating place that I'm playing with myself in our own business. And as I support our clients in helping to find breakthroughs and, uh, you know, my grandma Mary used to always say, let's just keep thinking on this. So sometimes you're stuck. Sometimes these tools, they need some time to breathe and marinate and you got to ask around, but why not ask some of these superpowered tools like AI to help us find some innovative ideas we haven't thought about? And sometimes that direct idea is not the idea. It just opens up a different way of thinking for you. And so staying curious a bit longer, adding more self-reflection curiosity into the structure of these tools will take your reality-based leadership and your coaching to the next level. Try it out. Let me know your thoughts. And I'd love to hear some creative ways that you're mixing reality-based leadership and maybe some of these, these new tools out there. Thanks for listening. We appreciate all the work you're doing as a leader. We know it's challenging out there. We know at times there's everywhere you look. There's places to disengage, toggle into low self, and not help to reduce drama in the workplace. But please stay in there, love people up. And at the appropriate time, we got a duty to call people up to greatness. And I hope all these podcasts help you to continue to do that. If you're looking for training, if you're looking for opportunities to support your leaders and evolve them to the next level, we do keynotes, we do in-person, we do virtual. We do, um, full cohorts that can be a longer experience. We got certification. Reach out to our team. We got team members that are happy to help get you connected and find the best resource to meet you where you're at. See you on the next episode.