#143 Elevate Your Human Leadership with AI with Rasmus Hougaard

"Any AI you use today will be the worst AI you will use. You need to really learn how to challenge AI and learn how to have AI challenge you."

Rasmus and I delve into the research and questions of how leaders can embrace AI to become more human in their leadership, and how can this accompany them on the journey of navigating uncertainty and a more transactional workplace.

Currently less than 20% of leaders are ready for AI, despite it being a strategic necessity – it is an uncomfortable prospect that AI will take our jobs, but we can counter this by embracing AI and being better human leaders.

AI democratises knowledge, strategic thinking and decision-making - it will flatten organisations and leaders must embrace this, aiming to embody gratitude, humility and selflessness. This shift from ego to eco, and from doing to being is the key to leveraging what AI can enable in our humanity. Leaders must guard against cognitive laziness and human disconnection caused by AI, and actively challenge its outputs to ensure true human engagement.

AI surpasses humans in information access and processing speed, making it unwise for humans to compete in those areas. Instead, leaders should focus on what AI cannot replicate : Awareness involves understanding oneself, emotions, biases, and others. Wisdom is the ability to ask good discerning questions, distinct from AI’s knowledge. Compassion stems from a true intention to support & connect on a human level, which AI lacks despite its ability to process emotional data.

Rasmus shares his research and insights from his latest book 'more human' and from working with leaders and companies across the globe on how to create more human centred leadership in today's workplace.

The main insights you'll get from this episode are :

-      AI augmented leadership requires three core competencies of awareness, wisdom and compassion: AI will have more information and faster processing power than any human brain but cannot be completely human.

-      AI can help make us more aware if we use it as a sparring partner, providing it with everything there is to know about us to help us make decisions based on multiple different perspectives - context and mindset are vital here.

-      Our neuroanatomy is uniquely human in that we perceive, discern, then respond (sentience). In terms of leadership, this translates to awareness (of biases, emotions and systems), discernment (wisdom not knowledge) and compassion.

-      We are formatted to ‘do’, but AI requires us to react using our soft skills and human traits - being human at work is the blueprint for future leadership, driven moreover by purpose.

-      It is the choice of every individual leader to ask not just what AI can do for me, but also to me: AI makes us cognitively lazy given that it is confidently both wrong and right - we must not fall prey to accepting its output without question.

-      AI also has huge user bias – we must challenge it and have it challenge us, deploying mental hygiene when engaging with AI to make us more aware, wise and compassionate, fostering a mindset of equanimity.

-      Having an AI proxy carries the risk of putting information in the hands of a tech firm, but once it has all the requisite information, it can provide very helpful answers in the form of outside-in views with psychometrics, etc.

-      Asking AI for compassion-based responses highlights blind spots and gives actionable feedback to push us back into human compassion and awareness, e.g. asking for the worst possible outcomes of a potential decision.

-      The workplace is more humanly disconnected than ever – despite digital connection – and leaders can radically reimagine communication and collaboration by asking AI for inspiration.

-      We can use the speed of change to act intentionally but must decide whether we do it in humanly healthy or unhealthy ways, i.e. using some of the time we save to pursue human tasks like conversation, reflection, strategic long-term planning.

-      AI democratises knowledge, strategic thinking and decision-making - it will flatten organisations and leaders must embrace this, aiming to embody gratitude, humility and selflessness.

-      The hope is that AI will elevate humans to accomplish more creative work and elevate leaders to become beacons of humanity – we are called upon to reinvent ourselves, learning to toggle between human capacities and the AI algorithms.

Find out more about Rasmus and his work here :

https://www.potentialproject.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rasmushougaard/?originalSubdomain=dk