Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your Modern mentor.

I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, where we help leaders rethink how the work gets done, like in ways that are hyper productive, but that also keep people well and engaged.

We deliver the tools and skills so that leaders learn to build human goodness into the work instead of relying on programs outside the work to fix overwhelm and burnout.

If your organization is ready for some fresh approaches to working, learn more about my speaking workshops and coaching programs@leadabovenoise.com.

Okay.

Onto today.

So I was talking to my friend and colleague, Halle recently.

She was just back from this big conference.

She had been to the same one about five years ago, and she was really looking forward to some fresh, cutting edge content.

But what she got, well, she described it as literally the identical agenda from five years ago, except every single session just jammed the phrase AI into it somewhere.

I laughed.

But also, yeah, AI is kind of everywhere right now.

And I think part of why it's pervading everything from conference agendas to articles to podcasts, yeah, even this one is because of all the uncertainty around it.

Some of us are excited, some of us are afraid, but most of us just don't know where to file AI yet.

So it's become this blob hovering over everything we do.

Too many of us are intimidated by it or we just don't even know how to actually use it in ways that feel helpful rather than gimmicky.

Some of us work in organizations that don't even allow us to use it yet.

And if that's you, I'd encourage you to play with it in your personal life just to get familiar, because ignoring it all together is gonna leave you behind.

Now, I am 1000% not an AI expert via, but I wanna share how I am actually starting to use AI at work.

Not because I have figured it all out, but just to offer a starting place.

It's kind of like the monster under the bed we're all so afraid of, but once we actually meet the monster, we often realize he's kind of fluffy with cartoon eyes and not so scary.

After all, maybe my strategies will resonate with you, or maybe they'll spark ideas for your own experiments.

But either way, let's dive in.

So first, I use AI as my writing partner.

Frankly, I think too many people out there are way too fixated on being able to say, I wrote this.

AI did not write this.

When they post an article, and I don't think the answer should be so binary that either AI did or didn't write this, AI is a tool and we need to know how to use it.

Me, I read a ton for work, and by the time AI came around in its current form, I already had a whole body of work under my belt because the thing to understand is that AI cannot, or at least should not create your voice, your brand, that's your job.

But what it can do is learn your voice, how you structure your ideas, what phrasing and rhythms you prefer.

It can learn how you tell stories, find metaphors, all the things.

I've personally fed a ton of my own writing into AI, articles, podcasts, scripts, playbooks.

I've written for clients, years worth of content.

I've taught it how I think and how I speak.

And now when it's time to write something new, I give it the essence of what I wanna say.

Here's what I want the reader to understand.

Here's what I want them to believe and to feel, and here's what I want them to do.

And then I give it some tactics, some examples, and some stories, and I let it help me build a draft.

It's not writing for me, it's writing with me.

And that partnership is making me better at what I was already doing.

Next, I use AI as my coach.

A coach is a wonderful thing, and there are some pretty amazing ones out there.

Plenty of them, famous as all get out, totally out of my league, no way for me to access them.

But I flagged some of my favorites for AI and I've told it, learn everything you can about these folks.

Read their books, listen to their podcasts, and then I ask it to play them in conversations with me.

Sometimes I need a pep talk.

Other times it's a swift kick in a place, maybe a push out of my comfort zone or just some overall calm and wisdom based on what I need.

I may ask AI to play just one of them at a time.

In other moments, it may be their collective wisdom I'm craving, in which case I'll ask AI to convene all of their minds and to play the collective of coaches.

And then we have a conversation.

I release my head trash.

It responds as the person or group of people I've asked it to play.

And nearly always, I end up in a better place than where I started.

Next, I use AI as my audience stand in.

Here's how I use it to push my ideas to be their best, their most relevant.

So last year, for example, I was speaking at the Global A FP conference, the Association of Finance Professionals, my content, you know, the work design stuff I talk about isn't designed for a specific industry, but I do want it to resonate with my audience, whoever they may be.

So as part of my prep, I uploaded my talk to ai, but I asked it to play the role of a finance person.

I asked it to help me understand what specific challenges are you facing, what questions do you have?

What frustrations do I need to acknowledge and help you address?

And this helped me to tweak and tailor my talk to be a home run for these finance professionals.

I do something similar.

When I'm building a client deliverable.

I'll ask AI to play the executive or the head of hr.

I'll ask it sometimes to be cynical and curious and to push me to make sure I'm delivering something that really resonates and addresses their actual needs.

It's kind of like having a focus group that I can access anytime and it makes my work land better.

And finally, I use AI as my pattern spotter.

Do you ever have these moments of deja vu in your work?

Like you're writing an email, feeling like you have written this before?

Um, maybe a lot of times this is a thing.

I've definitely experienced the same questions or challenges coming up again and again in different words.

So I've started using AI to help me find, even in some cases, predict these moments.

I'll feed it summaries of client challenges or questions over a month or a quarter.

What themes am I seeing?

What's the through line here?

What's emerging that I'm not seeing yet?

And it helps me to spot trends in leadership challenges before they're obvious to me.

It gives me an edge in knowing what my clients are gonna need next, not because it's magic, but because it can process a lot more stuff a lot more quickly than I can.

Look.

I'm not saying AI is the answer to everything, 'cause it's not.

And I'm definitely not saying you need to use it in the ways I'm using it.

But what I am saying is this, experimenting with AI doesn't have to be scary or complicated.

So start small, pick one thing.

Maybe it's writing prep for a tough conversation or something I haven't even thought of yet.

But find your own way.

Because the people who are gonna thrive in the next few years, they're not gonna be the AI experts, but they are gonna be the people who figured out how to use it for themselves to amplify what they're already doing and probably doing well.

I hope something in this episode sparked an idea for how you might experiment with ai.

And if it did, I'd love to hear about it.

Shoot me a note at rachel@leadabovenoise.com and tell me what you're trying.

You can follow Modern Mentor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Find and follow me on LinkedIn.

Thanks so much for listening and have a successful week.

Modern Mentor is a quick and Dirty Tips podcast.

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