120: Two Concerning Ways AI Is Increasing Drama on Teams

Is the way your team's using AI causing more or less drama right now? Let's talk about it. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Reality Based Leadership Podcast. I'm Alex Dorr, CEO at Reality Based Leadership, and this is the podcast where we teach you how to lead without drama, build alignment on your teams, and call those you lead to greatness. And in this episode, we're going at a buzzword. It's AI, but it's 2 ways that I've seen recently that it's exponentially increasing the amount of drama. And these 2 ways it's increasing comes back to a universal principle or a core principle in reality-based leadership. And so I wanted to connect those dots and get us starting a conversation on this because this is going and increasing drama in 2 directions that comes together to like double the amount of drama. So this is an increasing— problem that I'm seeing that I wanna talk about here. And then again, we'll continue the conversation throughout the evolution of AI and how some of my clients and, and how you're all using it. And so one of the things that I've noticed is this balance between the, the definition, what people are talking about is AI slop and how this is affecting teams. And for those of you that aren't clear on AI slop, I actually went and, and grabbed the definition of this term AI slop from, from BetterUp. And they had a cool definition, which is work slop or AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task. Rather than saving time, it shifts the burden. Here's the key. Shifts the burden of thinking, editing, and cleanup downstream to a coworker. Now as I have experienced some of this myself and then even in our team and groups I'm working with, and then think about it from— with reality-based leadership, I'm always thinking about it through a lens of personal accountability. Now, a couple of things about personal accountability. One, it is a mindset and it's the biggest predictor of happiness and success long term. So that's why we focus on all of our, our work is on how to create a culture and a mindset of personal accountability, because it gives us agency, it gives us choices, it helps us impact our circumstances. And one of the One of the big takeaways, probably the key line in all of reality-based leadership is the same workplace cannot please a high accountable mindset and a low accountable mindset at the same time. We joke that you're always gonna be making one of those groups uncomfortable. As a leader, it's your job to make the right group uncomfortable. Meaning if you try to please everyone, low accountable and a high accountable mindset, you end up pleasing no one. And it's not leadership. And so as we look at this challenge of how AI is being used, I keep thinking, how does a A high accountable in general, and I know I'm generalizing, but a high accountable mindset use the tool versus someone maybe in a lower state of accountability that sees this as a way to do work easier. And this problem of shifting the burden of the bulk of the work to the person they send the AI-generated slop over to. And this gets to the 2 problems I've seen that link back to a core principle with that I call stop judging, start helping. And so, let me go into the first example. So, well, before that, a couple of key characteristics of this idea of work slop or AI slop is it, one has what they call the illusion of progress, meaning the report that comes over or the email that comes over or the work that comes over, it might have some really good graphics or some slick slides, or it's like really tightened up, buttoned up reports. But if you actually read it, and you actually like absorb it, it doesn't have much substance or it doesn't really go anywhere, but it sounds really good until you give it like a second read and you're like, it's not even saying anything here. So that's one characteristic. Another one is the key is it shifts the burden to the receiver. And this is what I'm gonna link to accountability and get us thinking about. And then the last thing is the result of that is usually disengagement from the receiver because there wasn't much engagement on the sender, but there's definite disengagement when you're about 10 minutes in and you're really focused on trying to understand, thinking your colleague spent, you know, a decent amount of time, hours even, on this work they've sent over to you. And as you get in there about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, spent your time on it, you're really putting your energy into it, you realize it's all just basically AI-generated and it has no thought behind it. And so let's look at the first side of this. When you look at personal accountability, there's, you know, it's generalization, but there's some patterns that tend to happen with a highly accountable mindset that's going on when AI-generated work comes over to your inbox or to your desk is a lot of high accountables, like they give benefit of the doubt to their colleagues and they are really into getting results and they wanna use their time productively and they want to really engage and they wanna lean in. And so when something comes through and I'm giving it my time, if I'm a high accountable, I'm really reading that. I've assumed noble intent that because you sent this over, you're putting your stamp on it. Like you wouldn't have sent unprocessed work, I call it. Almost like venting where you just come in and vent. Like a high accountable will have thought through, well, wait a second, before I spill out all of the venting. What do I know for sure? There's a little bit of self-reflection to accountability. What's my part in it? You know, I'm about to say this always happens and nobody cares and I'm surrounded by idiots. I'm like, well, nobody cares. I guess there's 3 people still asking questions about this product. So I get— I do some self-reflection, some preprocessing my frustration before I go in and grab someone else's time to say, here's what I'm struggling with. There's some reflection there. There's some, what's my part in it? There's some, how did I contribute, help, or hinder? That reflection's happening quite often for a high accountable, and I'm sorting through the information before I grab someone else's time. So, as a high accountable, if I'm a high accountable getting that information, I think that's happening with the AI workshop. Like, I'm trusting that you're putting your signature on this, like you've sent the email. It's a valuable piece of communication that you want me to spend some real focus on. So you can imagine when it comes through and I've asked you to do something or it's part of your role, and it is just popped into ChatGPT, Claude, whatever your copilot, and it just shoots it out. And there's been no auditing it. You're not, you know, you're not adding your piece to it. It, it really has no substance. Maybe that even the figures are wrong, the data's wrong. Like, there's been a lot of stuff out there. And I realized that it just immediately breaks trust. All the burden's over here. And then I have to decide how I'm gonna react to that as a high accountable. Like, am I gonna take the high road? How do I have that hard conversation? And then it leads to my second source of drama that I wanna touch on is now I'm going back and forth whether do I wanna judge you? Do I know for sure that it's AI slop? Like, how do I know? Are you that good of a writer? Do you write with little periods, you know, 3 words, period, 3 words, period? Do you use that, that hyphen that everybody's watching for? Have you used that in the past? Like, what's going on here? So that's all going on mentally as all of us are trying to get the work done that we need to do. So this element here is fascinating about the work slop coming over. And a little bit of a tangent, but one thing I've always been worried about since AI's really picked up speed is The challenge I've had in sessions with our— I call them our leadership tools for self-reflection that we use to ditch the drama. An element of drama that's always there is our ego as the number one source of drama, and it loves verbal dialogue, it loves ambiguity, and it really wants to avoid self-reflection at all costs. So, each of the tools we teach to ditch the drama moves us into a visual tool, and it drives self-reflection into a template or a mental process that takes the world as it comes, the drama, the unpreferred reality, and gives us just one scrub through to clean up that thinking before we go on to next right action or next action. And so, the tools are this self-reflection, 2 to 5 minutes, maybe 10 minutes, to just get past that initial response and reaction that's usually our primitive part of our brain, get a bit more intentional, Reflect, and then feel like what's going on, and then maybe even notice where we're in a story and not reality, notice where we're just blaming everyone but not seeing our part in it, take a little bit of accountability, and then take a good choice forward. And what happens with our tools oftentimes is people have been doing over the last maybe 5 years intellectualizing some of our tools that help you do all of that. And the real The real shift, the real behavior change, the real relief and the benefit of ditching the drama comes from experiencing fully a written-down or team tool where we basically realize what we believed before as a limitation actually wasn't, or the stressful story we were believing actually wasn't true. And the answer is right in front of us as we go through the tool. Like, that is such an empowering feeling, and it's such a transformative experience that happens when you fully see through a tool, take it slow and be intentional, actually do the reflection, actually feel all of that, and then step into next right action and see different results in your life. All this happens from fully going through the process of a leadership tool or some sort of framework, and not just ours, but like any leadership tool. One of the challenges that I've seen happening in the work that I've been doing with workshops and trainings is people that are really smart can say, oh, I get it. Edit your story. It's like, my stress is from my story, not reality. I get what you're saying. Like, I read that book before. I read a book 5 years ago about that. Like, my story causes my stress. I get what you're saying. And I might say, but let's do— let's write down. Like, have you been stressed in the last couple of weeks? They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, but I know what you're saying. It was just my story. See how they're intellectualizing the idea but not writing down what was really on your mind? Write down the stressful thoughts. Now, let's go back and go, what do you know for sure? What's true and what's a feeling which stays, or what's an assumption, a judgment, assignments, motive? Like, let's really look at what was in your head when you were stressed. Don't just intellectualize it. Don't just read the first sentence of the chapter. Let's read the whole book, feel the whole book. And I think in our Our accelerated world, social media world, all that cliché stuff, we're doing more of this intellectualizing instead of getting into the experience, feeling it in our bodies, feeling the transformation. So, let's go back to what's going on with AI is basically that is happening at scale. It's faster. It's if we have people, not saying high or low accountability, in higher or lower state of accountability, but Passing along AI slop because it felt like it was faster. It felt like, oh my gosh, I can do this work supercharged. I don't have to think about it much, and it shoots it out there, and I get it checked off my list. Well, checked off your list is not always hitting the goal. Like, did you send the email? Yes. That's checked off your list. But did you hit the goal of answering your leader's or your colleague's question with accurate information? that helps the project move forward, that wasn't checked. So that didn't hit the goal. It hit, you know, your list got checked off. And this is something to dance with, this intellectualizing, or now having a supercharged tool that takes even less self-reflection. And self-reflection is the ultimate drama diffuser. It leads to personal accountability. And so what is like my initial thoughts or solution here is, As we ditch the drama, each of those tools that slow us down a bit are a good mental process. I don't know if part of when people are working through AI is it having our closed-off GPT or our own GPT that has some of the good mental process tools baked in or some of the reflection questions baked in so it prompts you a bit to make sure at least A couple of self-reflection moments that lead to accountability poke at what we're working on as we are partnering with AI, that ability to still, as the human, have room for self-reflection, slow it down a little bit, can help raise accountability on the sender side if that's starting to become a problem. So, that first source of drama is when someone who might be using AI enhancements and tools in an inefficient way and just spreading more drama and spreading more unprocessed work. A really important part of a high accountable is that preprocessing. Like, before I go to someone and say, hey, do you have a minute? I'll say, well, I want to make good use of that time. Let me reflect and use a reality-based tool to say, what's the situation? Let me clarify the problem. Let me write down some of the things I've tried. My analysis of it, the data, let me get fact-based, and then let me come with some recommendations so I'm not just venting. That's a high accountable. But someone that doesn't do that as a high accountable, let's look at a lower state of accountability. They'll just grab people and say, hey, do you have a minute? Vent, and then come up with, and maybe even go into 7 different topics that are problems. It's not a good conversation. So now let's take a turn to maybe that second element of drama that's causing it to go double the speed here is on the other side, I, I, I would, it would be wrong for me not to call out some of what high accountables I've been seeing happening that are maybe a little bit more skilled with AI. They're a little bit good at disguising their AI use, so to speak. They're able to use it and still be more authentic and, and sharpen it. Like, what would be used, many people would say, is a better use of AI in that partnership and not, you know, sending over slop. Is there is a pattern I'm seeing where those that are maybe are high accountables, better performers using and partnering with AI that they're getting righteous and judging the judgers. I'll share an example first, and then we'll talk more about the problem. Is a client I was working with, as it was their AI governance and implementation, you know, lead was telling me they're also seeing on the other end that someone might have spent 6, 8 hours on a particular project or report that they're sending over to someone. And because, let's say, they're not very good at design or making graphs or graphics, At the top of this one report, they used AI to help them make the graph that they wanted to help illustrate the points in the text. And because that looked AI-y to the person receiving it, who I'd say is a high accountable, really sharp with AI, they immediately judged that the whole thing was AI, 6 to 8 hours of work and a really long report. So they kind of wrote it off, ended up having a little bit of a confrontation and being like, oh my gosh, like, stop sending me this nonsense. When the person had actually spent like 8 hours and put a lot of effort into it and it was a really good report. And so, in that example, there's this other side where with reality-based leadership, I'm always worried the ultimate source of drama is when our high accountables start to get righteous and judge the judgers. And when from reality-based leadership sense, that's where they're like, well, I'm a high accountable, they're not, and they don't, you know, come along with change and they're not. And so, now I'm judging those that are struggling instead of helping. And the mantra underneath that that's so effective still in this moment, in a different context we're in, is stop judging, start helping. Like, that's not helpful either if we have our best people, our most fluent in what would be good AI practices and uses, now judging everyone that's a little bit behind trying it out, and then they get scared to use it at all when it could be helpful. So I see that this is starting to happen. I've even seen it in my own life where you immediately judge that something Feels and senses a little bit like AI. And then maybe it's not, or maybe they did use it for an element of it, but they did overview it. They didn't make it how they want it. It does have the information you need, but that judgment on top of it closes us off, doesn't keep us open-minded. And then now we're not reading it. And, and, and so there is that balance of sensing in 15 minutes it is AI and calling it out, that source of drama, which is obviously happening a ton. But then on the other side, that, that our best people now judging the judgers, this is the second element. So if you have both of those starting to happen, that's where the drama is just accelerating because unprocessed work's going everywhere. High accountables are receiving it, getting more ticked off, more tired, more over-functioning. That's the other thing is high accountables are always on the verge of over-functioning, saying it's just faster for me to do it. And now they're Again, taking on more work and it's not moving. And, and the whole goal is using this to have us better come together and better move towards the results we're looking for, not get into even more drama and us versus them. And so these are a couple of things I'm seeing, and I'd be curious to see if anybody else has experienced either side of this, where maybe if you're being honest, you got a little judgy of someone else and then had a little bit of a awkward experience when they said, no, that's actually me that wrote this. I know a fascinating one just for us that happened on a client call is we were looking at booking me for a keynote. And we had just— some of you have seen we've just recently updated or redid our website. And one of the pictures is me on a stage with a client that I got to speak with in Dallas for a big massive keynote, one of the most fun keynotes I've done. And they got some awesome pictures. Well, someone had said, well, I didn't realize that Alex, that was him speaking. I thought for the website you did, you just put him on AI and swapped it out with a big audience. And so now there's this whole thing where we all know it's like, is that really him or not? And it was literally pictures from that event that we put up there to showcase what a keynote looks like. And so there's this element of people so sure that they can diagnose AI because they're better than others. And, you know, unless they have a tool that I'm not aware of, in some cases, like, they are basically guessing. And although it could look like it, maybe that is not the case, or it has been really thought through. So, I think this is something for all of us to just find that bridge, be that bridge builder if this is happening, and manage that energy towards how we could— more effectiveness and not more silos and us versus them. And so, I think an element to Remember about stop judging, start helping, and looking forward to see how you're experiencing this. Thanks for listening in. As always, our job here is to love people up and call people up to greatness and keep managing that energy towards what would great look like and how can we get there. And I think this episode is no different in helping us do that. If you love the episode, please review it. 5-star reviews go a long way to help us spread the word. And if you haven't preordered my new book coming out in a couple of weeks at this point when this episode comes out, Be sure to get it for you and your teams. Think of it as the 5-step coaching model that puts together all of our 25 years of research into how to move anyone from why we can't to how we could, from where they're stuck to next right action, from drama to results. It's checkmate to drama, and it is the easiest way that you can walk people through to be beyond drama. And you'll have that at your fingertips if you preorder the book and definitely get it for your teams. We got Book launch, book club discussion guides, tons of fun stuff we're doing. And I look forward to hearing your responses to the new book. And we got a big stamp from Mel Robbins, who's basically the number one most downloaded podcast. She's got the Let Them Theory that was— I think it sold 10 million copies and counting. She put her stamp on the front of the book saying, this book drives results. And it's a way to do it lovingly and connect with your teams and call them up to greatness. I know that's what we're trying to do here. So thanks for listening in, and I'll see you on the next episode.