Consider yourself warned about turning to AI to help you lead your team, have difficult conversations or reflect on your leadership abilities. To quote Claude: “I don’t feel, have empathy, care about people.” The very traits that make an effective leader. Join Gavin, Meghan, Nicki and, once again, Professor Nelson Repenning as we think out loud about whether or not AI can help leaders.

We’re delighted that Professor Nelson Repenning joins us again for this episode. Nelson is Faculty Director of the Leadership Center at MIT Sloan School of Management. And in a breakthrough moment, Nicki uses one of Ed Schein’s frameworks to express the difference between therapy and executive coaching.

It is helpful to explore the origin of these idiosyncratic patterns so that we can learn to tone down our internal and external reactions. It’s tricky. In this episode we try to provide some useful strategies and tools to help you receive feedback and lighten up about your very human nature.

In his 30 years at Sloan, Nelson’s perspective on how leaders can change and develop has evolved. Exploring your history, how it helps or hinders your leadership today, and knowing what you need to work on just isn’t enough. He considers this the diagnostic phase. He now has years of evidence that real and sustainable change occurs through intentional, small experiments. Listen in and, by all means, DO try this at home.

More and more, we hear that CEOs want employees back in the office. According to research recently published in the NYT, contrary to the publicly-stated defense of this as the need for employee collaboration, the real reason is because the leaders’ ego needs it to happen.

Link to the article that this episode is based upon.

I know that the team will be more effective, more productive if I have a functioning relationship with my colleagues. And to build those relationships, I need to be more open with them about who I am. But, that is emotionally risky and I don’t want to be exposed. How far should I go?

This podcast is all about self-awareness as the root of successful leadership. So, needless to say, we take issue with this perspective.

You can read the story in The Atlantic here.