#247 Penny Locaso: AI Was Meant to Do the Dishes. We Gave It the Painting Too.

Speaker A: Welcome to the Brave Feminine Leadership Podcast. I'm Melissa Hamilton, your host, and today I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined again by Penny Locasso. Penny, wonderful to have you with me, Melissa.

Speaker B: I always, um, enjoy our chats, and I'm so grateful to be here for a third time.

Speaker A: Well, you've just got so much fascinating stuff to talk about, so let me share. Penny is a behavioral scientist and a provisional psychologist, so doing her masters right now, about halfway through. Penny draws on two decades of commercial leadership experience and original research to help leaders strengthen discernment under high pressure conditions. And today we're talking about the psychology of AI. And, Penny, I'm going to kick off with an email I got from you this morning. And this was an email that went out to people who follow you, so I won't be the only person who's received it. But it was a fascinating email, and I'm going to ask you about it because I think it sums up AI in terms of these tensions and feelings perhaps we've all got about AI right now. But let me paraphrase my understanding of it and then you give us the real goss on the story. But what I took away was you were triggered in a class and found yourself in this defensive position where I think the way you articulated a response to something was not necessarily the way you would have chosen to, but you were holding the tension of two positions, and two positions being that AI is risky, unregulated, and has already caused serious harm. I'm, um, using your words from the email, but also believing it's got profound potential in the right hands with the right ethics to make our lives better. Oh, I was about to say, please explain. That just felt horrific. As it was about to come out of my mouth, I felt. Anyway, could you share with us, Penny?

Speaker B: Yeah, that story.

Speaker A: And then let's get into what you are focused on right now, which is so fascinating and necessarily the. The psychology of AI.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's funny, Mel, as you say that, and I perhaps, um, encourage readers, listeners to do this as well. I just want to feel my feet connected to the ground and I just want to deep inhale because I think, um, if other people, and I know we were talking about this before we got the podcast, are feeling the way I do. It's exciting and overwhelming all at once, and it can be a very heavy conversation. Uh, so, yeah, if you need to take a breath, do that. Um, the m. The email I wrote yesterday and went out this morning. I am in a field psychology, which I Absolutely. Love you. It's astounding to me how many people say, gosh, I wish I studied psychology. Right. Because we're all fascinated by our behavior.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: And that's why I went back and I'm about to qualify at the age of 50, which is somewhat crazy. However, what I have learned from being in this field for the last six years is that we are extremely ill prepared and behind when it comes to AI and the impacts that it's going to have. So what I find often in the conversations I have with my peers and my lecturers is that I feel triggered because I'm sitting there going, we are being disrupted as we speak. And psychology. I'm probably not even allowed to say this. I feel like we have our heads buried in the sand. Okay. And so what happened, uh, a couple of weeks ago is sitting in a lecture and this is a common conversation and they were talking about how to use technology. As a psychologist, which cracks me up because I work with technologists and again, we're not very progressive in this space. And every time the conversation of AI comes up, it's about AI note taking. That is how advanced we are in terms of how we use it as clinicians. And so there was this slide that came up which was around be cautious when using AI notes. And I was just like, it's always around caution. And it was extremely triggering to me because when I had to go deep and reflect on this through another practical exercise, uh, for my studies, I realized the reason I felt so triggered in that moment was not because I didn't agree with the caution. It was that I am sitting in this space where I have so much science and data coming at me that is so emergent, where I'm so excited about the potential for this technology to elevate humanity and our flourishing. But equally, I am, um, extremely concerned at the same time. And I tried to be an optimist, but when I learn more about human behavior and how much we default unconsciously to what is comfortable, to what is quick, to what relieves pain, um, and equally when I sit with the fact, and I know this is not going to be new to anyone with the people that are actually driving the agenda behind the rollout of AI at scale and what those people intention is, and we know this from past technology rollouts, I'm very uncomfortable.

Speaker A: I, um, it's just fascinating. I mean, that caution, I'm going to go to that caution just briefly before we get onto the other side of it. But you know, note taking and that caution feels Warranted as I share a story of an exec who was, uh, on long service leave overseas and her team back in Australia were holding a meeting. And in that meeting, um, shared news about a forthcoming redundancy. And, um, the meeting finished. And everyone assumed that that was just a quiet, private meeting. Meanwhile, the exec received, um, the, uh, the notes out of that meeting because they were automatically sent to everyone who was invited to the meeting. And so they had the chance to read about their redundancy, uh, whilst several thousand kilometers away, uh, before anyone had notified them. So this is a little. I. I have to tell that story to everyone because I like, that's an utter unintended consequence of a very basic use of technology that everyone's doing. So I throw that out there, but let's go.

Speaker B: Can I share with you? I've had a very similar story with a friend of mine, but it's worse. And what happened to her was she was invited to a board meeting to present. She was a marketer, and they had an hour of the board meeting before they allowed her into Zoom. And at the end of the meeting, she got the same notes. And what she found was that they spent the first hour working out how they could get her out of the business. Uh, she basically took the notes, said that she would not be coming in, took sick leave, and now she's basically. And it was completely unethical what they were doing. It was nothing to do with performance. They were talking about how they just wanted to get her out, and she's now taking legal action against them. And I imagine if we've both got stories like this, there must be heaps of them.

Speaker A: There must be heaps of them. So, look, let's move on to your research and what you're finding. And I think, um, I know one of the anchors for some of this is that organizations are, uh, trying to move really quickly, to adopt quickly, and to get a competitive advantage in this space. There's a couple of problems with that, and I'm not even going to go down the people angle first, although I know that's where we're going. The thing I'm hearing a lot from a lot of CEOs I work with is they've opened it, uh, up to the organization. Not really with any, um, because it's available readily and everyone wants to play. And so they're playing, looking for productivity. But there's not. There's not really a focus on solve a problem, you know, like, use it to solve a problem. So that in itself is Kind of a challenge, because people are asking the question about, where's the ROI on this? And kind of not even seeing that either. But I. I don't want to take away from. Tell me what you're doing, Tell me what you're finding. And let's get into that.

Speaker B: Okay, so there is a term that's been coined recently, and it was, um, from a woman I've been following in the US who is equally a psycholog, um, and it's called the psychology of AI. And so the way that. And it's very emergent. There are so few psychologists in this space, it's crazy. Uh, and basically what that means, in my words, is understanding how AI is impacting our thinking, our feeling, and our behavior. And my specific focus has been on leaders, because it's always where I've worked. It's what I'm interested in, and particularly interested in it because I feel these are the people that if we have to steer in the path of human flourishing, these are the people that we're reliant on in terms of their mental capacity and their passion to do that. Okay, so, uh, the psychology of AI is where I've started to dig deep. I've probably been doing it for the last 12 months, which doesn't sound like long, but in the world of AI, it's extremely long.

Speaker A: Decades.

Speaker C: Decades.

Speaker B: And literally it's shifting. And the research is emerging every week. And I think the first thing I want to wrap around this conversation is we have no longitudinal data on what this is doing to our brains. Uh, at the moment, we only have sort of six months of data. So what does that look like? So there's a couple of core themes that have come up now. I've been having conversations with executive leaders across every industry, from technology through to the big banks through to government. And every conversation, there are some consistent themes that come up. And then what I've done is I've gone, okay, where's the research to substantiate what I'm hearing? Um, sometimes it exists, and sometimes what I'm hearing is anecdotal. And so let's start with the first thing which you've touched on. Right there is this significant driver by corporations to get the competitive edge, which is implement AI. Implement it fast. And if you don't, you'll be left behind. And then again, if we talk about what we started with, which is holding these two incongruent facts, um, at the same time, get on board. Get on board fast. Right? Otherwise you'll be left behind. But you're likely training someone else to do your job, which means you're going to be out of a job quite soon. That's a lot to hold for the brain and that's what a lot of people are holding. Now what's interesting about this is what that has meant for many organizations if we start at the systems level, is that implementation is often driven by the technology team, not the human centered team.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'll share an insight about that in a minute, but keep going.

Speaker B: Okay. And so what we're finding is then there's no consideration around any of the things that I'm talking about is how does the human brain actually work at speed and what gets compromised when we move fast and we move fast with AI. And that's what we'll touch on today. Now, why this is interesting is that there is recent research out of Deloitte in their Human Capital Trends report which shows that when implementation of AI is technology driven, companies are 1.6 times less likely to see a return on investment. And I think that is why we are hearing so many large organizations globally say we're spending all this money. It's something like 95% of tech budgets are now spent on AI and we're not seeing the return, return on investment.

Speaker A: Throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Speaker B: So that's. I'll start there and I'll pause. Is there anything that you wanted to add because you were just saying, well,

Speaker A: I've just completed a uh, series interviewing chief people officers. So I've just picked up with five chief, six actually, chief people officers. And it's really interesting because I wanted to really pursue a line of questioning with them. This role has the potential to be incredibly strategic in organization. Right. And yet historically it hasn't been, it's been relegated to a support function. It's often had to step in, into a breach where leaders weren't comfortable having conversations with their team. So HR come and do it, they get a bad rap. It's all they do. And I know that's changing and has changed really significantly where strategic chief people officers are right in here, right in this conversation and they are at least co owning the rollout of AI in organizations. And so this is what I was asking because I too saw this gap between it can't just be technology rolling this out. So anyway, back, back to you. I think it's changing and I think people are waking up to the fact that this is a very large people led change that we need to be navigating.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I still think that organizations, from the conversations I'm having, they're starting to get there, but they're not understanding what impact has already happen.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And how we prevent that from going further and protect for the future in terms of again, um, the brain. So I think the first sort of move that we saw that was visible in the space that we're talking about around the Chief People officer was when Atlassian, I think it was around in April this year, announced that their Chief People Officer would now have a combined role, which was CPO and AI Enablement Officer. Which is good because I think unfortunately, you know, not fortunately. When people see Atlassian do stuff, we know they are at the forefront more often than not with this sort of stuff. And um, hopefully others will follow. Okay, so we've got the systems level, so it has to be human, it can't be tech. And the second thing that I want to talk about is we were sold this idea that uh, what was going to happen was AI was going to do all the, you know, the crappy work, all the admin, and it was going to free us up to do all the meaningful work. And this links back to your point about the productivity drive. So we're implementing AI to improve productivity. And I always go, yeah. And then what? Like, why are we improving productivity? To your point, what is the outcome? Like? Uh, what does success look like? Because it's not just things are more efficient. To what, to what end? Okay, so we sold it as this productivity driver and that you would have all this free space to do the meaningful work. And what's interesting is that there is now research that shows people actually feel busier than ever. So. And what I'm seeing in the work that I'm doing with leaders is that people aren't using the space created by AI to do more meaningful work. What is happening is that they are doing more noisy work. Because what's happening is the brain is struggling to deal with the amount of stuff that is coming at people because AI is producing so quickly. Okay. And this is where it gets interesting so people have got more information coming at them. Decision quality erodes when people have to have. The brain doesn't move at the speed of AI. And so what happens is I have to make more decisions every day as a leader because there's more stuff coming at me, which means that, uh, I'm feeling the pressure to move quicker. So I'm more likely to do the reactive stuff than the long term stuff that actually creates innovation, that actually makes a meaningful difference. Okay. So I'm doing more noisy work. I'm putting it. I feel like I'm putting out fires every day. And because my brain can't cope with the decision speed at uh, which things are uh, coming at me, I'm more likely to cognitively offload to the AI which means when the meaningful work hits my desk, I need to do it quicker. I'm not going to give it the time that it needs. And so I'm actually. I love this analogy. I wrote about this on LinkedIn yesterday and it's not mine. It was another woman who came up with it. It was AI was meant to do the washing and the dishes so we could do the painting and the writing. But what we're doing is we're now giving AI the washing, the dishes and the painting and the writing. Now here's where it gets very interesting. When we talk about psychology and what happens in the brain, we, as I said, we love the path of least resistance. And so when we consistently cognitively offload to AI, what starts to happen is we end up with what they're now calling AI Brain rot.

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Speaker A: It's quick, it's free, and it, uh,

Speaker C: could change the way you approach your career.

Speaker A: Now let's get back to the show.

Speaker B: And so what this means is that it starts to diminish the capacity of problem solving ability in the people who are really damn good at it. And equally we're also seeing a degradation in short term memory. Now every leader I have shared this with in the conversations I've had has said they have felt it, they have noticed it to the point where they are concerned about it in themselves. And you're putting your hand up, I'm putting my hand up and I get goosebumps every time because I've felt it to the point where I've now changed my Behavior. And I'm creating tools to help people change their behavior. Now, as I say, the data is emergent. But what I have read thus far, and it was in six months of AI use on a daily basis, they saw a decline, um, in problem solving ability of around 17 and a half percent and a 22% decline in short term memory. And that was in just six months. Now think about. And this is where I think it gets really interesting if we come back to my passion around leaders and their propensity to drive innovation and change in this space. We are basically, by the way, we are implementing AI in large organizations. We are eroding the very thing that will give us the edge and that is the decision capability, the problem solving capability of the people we need most

Speaker A: to drive the change. Yeah, the creativity. I mean, you and I, when we talked about having this conversation, when you shared this research with me, I mean, I'm sure I shared with you at that point in time that feeling where, um, definitely felt short term memory being worse and definitely felt, um, you know, it was very easy to outsource a lot of things to AI to do it. And then actually what I felt, really, if I finally got to be able to put my finger around it, what I felt was I was losing my voice.

Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. And, um, you would have seen on my newsletter this morning, at the bottom, I actually wrote. I wrote this. Yes. AI finessed it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But I wrote the draft and I've actually built into my AI now. Do not rewrite this. Like, it's got my tone of voice and everything. But I write all my own newsletters now. And, um, I. It's built in. Do not change my tone of voice. And do not, uh, do not change how I've written this. I just want you to pick up sort of any story flow issues or any grammatical stuff that's not kind of sitting right. Because to your point, it's like you only have to jump on LinkedIn and it's like you can smell it a mile away and it's everywhere. We all sound the same. It's already happened.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: The table stopped. Um, the, you know, there's all of these very dramatic lines that come out, but. Okay, so, um, the other thing that was really interesting to me, Penny, in this was there was an elephant element of relationships. So getting in the way of relationships. And one of the things that I, you know, particularly with the CEOs and senior execs I work with, we get to a point in our career where the tasks are no longer as Important as the relationships in terms of our ability to affect change and to get things done. And so when I read about the relationship and I hear people are in relationships with their gen AI product of choice, um, what do we understand about that at all? Like what's going on in that space? Tell me more.

Speaker B: And it's fun. Well, this is funny because this is where there's starting to be a lot of information at the moment, if you join the dots. And so I'm going to start with a paper I wrote, an ethics paper I wrote for my psych studies recently. So we, we got to pick an ethical issue and uh, I decided to write about what does informed consent look like when someone enters a psychology therapy room with their AI companion?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Right. Now, uh, the only evidence I can find of this presenting today, but I tell you it's going to happen and it's going to happen very quickly, is Esther Perel did a podcast on this recently where a, ah, client came into her room and they did it live. He's anonymous. And this is a guy who actually codes for a living. You know, he's, I think he was a data scientist or something like that. And he was clearly a very smart, um, well informed guy when it came to AI and the relationship that had formed with his AI that is in the room, in the session, uh, basically he was saying, I know all the reasons why this is wrong. I know that this is not a human. He said, but unfortunately I designed a really good virtual assistant and the relationship just naturally formed and I was like, if this can happen to you, what does this look like for the rest of it?

Speaker A: I hadn't even gone this far yet. I was just talking about it getting in the way of relationships with our colleagues. I mean you're talking about a full established relationship.

Speaker B: Yes, I want to start there because I think if we start there and then work back to what this looks like for teams because there's data in the individual space, I think it gets fascinating because again, it's very emergent. So what I found, um, so at the moment psychology has no guidelines, no ethical framework across any regulatory body to deal with this. Okay. So I basically wrote it, I sent it off to the aps and uh, they said, this is great, we'll use this for policy. And I'm like, hang on, I'm going to go, I think I'm going to go and get this published in a journal. So what I found from that research to kind of inform what I, uh, determined as the right process was what we've what we know to be true is, um, where are we? The evidence suggests that AI relationships will become the societal norm in the near future. One in six Australians admitted they would rather converse with a chatbot at home than go out with friends.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And one in seven are able to visualize themselves falling in love with an AI. And that rises to 3 in 10 with Gen Z. So just, just sit, let's just pause and sit with that for a minute. We already know that people at ah, the present can see themselves in a relationship with AI and would rather stay at home with a frictionless conversation with a. That basically. What's the word? The word is. And I love this word because I was like, I need to practice saying this. Psychophantic. So we love our psychophantic AI. So what sycophantic means, and I'm sure you'll hear this a lot more in the near future, uh, is basically how AI just continues. I always say to blow smoke up your butt. You know, it basically just sits there and tells you how freaking wonderful you are. And again, as humans, the path of least resistance, we love a relationship where there is no friction, where someone just tells us how wonderful we are and validates every belief that we have.

Speaker A: So we need to make sure that we're training because as a CEO there are, um, and I say sycophantic. Right? So there are employees you would call out as sycophantic who are very happy to buddy you up and tell you all of the good things about you and all that sort of stuff. So, and, and they're honestly, they're not the people you want to be the room with. They're, they're the people that you avoid because it's deeply uncomfortable. And yet this is so fascinating to me when it's served up to us in a different context. Um, we uh, we want it, we're looking for it, we're seeking it. I have goosebumps and tears at the same time. I know you talk about that. Can we bring it to the impact of teams then like, so if, ah, we go there, what's, what's, what's the fear and what's the very early psychological kind of research evidence, whatever, what is it suggesting and what do we need to do to stop it?

Speaker B: So the other thing I just want to touch on is we all know there's a loneliness epidemic, right?

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And so what we know is that 39% of Australians and 49% of Gen Z report feeling isolated even when they're Surrounded by people. Okay. So I want to carry that into the team's context as well, because a lot of people at work are feeling lonely, particularly now that we work from home so much, and then we bring in AI to the conversation. Okay. So the first thing, and this is research that I've just, as I say, come across this week. So the first thing that we know is that teams are no longer talking to each other the way they used to. They're actually talking to their AI for a lot of the things that they're dealing with day to day because it's quicker and it's frictionless. Okay. So that's the first thing, uh, that I find fascinating. We're talking to each other less and we're actually talking to the AI. Now, what happens when we do that is obviously, again, the things that actually make teams high performing are, uh, things that build trust. And often trust is built out of having, you know, conversations where there is friction, but where we arrive at some point where we have a resolution. So it's not about agreeing or disagreeing, it's about saying we've done. Again, the brain works best when it does hard things. I think that's probably the key takeaway. But what is happening now is because, again, we are told we have to move fast, we need to get on board quickly, and we need to work faster. Huh. Well, the quickest way to do that is to just put everything into AI so we communicate and we connect with each other less. Okay. And we've also got this, as I say, this, this thing that continually, um, validates our ideas. Unless we build into it, can constantly challenge me and critique my work.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So I'm just going to bring up, because I just want to make sure that I talk to the data because that's where it becomes fascinating. Oh, where are we?

Speaker A: So find that right tab.

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. This is the thing, because it's so emergent. Normally I've got everything stored, but I'm like, this is. I've literally stumbled across this this week. Okay. Um, so there's a couple of things. What your team is showing you isn't what they're actually feeling. So, um, one of the first things that I came across this week is 63% of workers admit to exaggerating their AI skills. Okay. And again, among Gen Z, that rises to 80%. So what's happening is people are talking less. We know that they're exaggerating their skills when it comes to AI. So building in the things that we're talking about. To actually protect the brain and protect relationships, um, are potentially things that they're not doing and they might be sharing that they are. We know we're talking to AI instead of each other and we know that AI is agreeing with us. So when we think about how we relate to each other as a team, it's almost. And I, AI has now taught me and I'm sure this is the same with you. There are certain words that I hate using now because they sound so AI, but it's almost like it's quietly eroding all the things that make a high performing team.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And there was some other research and I haven't pulled it out, which also spoke about when we. This is really interesting. When we actually talk about AI as a team member and we humanize it, that has a massive impact as well in terms of team dynamics and um, the level of trust within a team and equally the level of accountability across ideas and who owns the decisions that are made by that AI.

Speaker A: Fascinating. I mean there are org charts with agentic team members on there now.

Speaker B: Um, they were saying it was one and like I say, this is this week's research. They were saying it was one of the, one of the things that do not do, uh, do not humanize, humanize the AI as a team member. Because the impacts. And I'll have to find it, I'll find it and send you the link so people can look at it. Um, the impacts are actually detrimental to team performance.

Speaker A: I'll pop it in the notes and

Speaker B: accountability of decisions made. And I think that's what's interesting as well.

Speaker C: So where to from here?

Speaker B: Well, there's a couple of things. So the first thing that I kind of keep coining, um, the first thing I've done is I've coined this hashtag, love your brain. So if there was anything that I would say to your leaders and I think we spoke about this in our last conversation, until I started reading this stuff, I never realized how much I love my brain. And yes, I'm sure AI is way smarter than me, I have no doubt of that. But it doesn't mean that I want my brain to be any less than what it is. Most leaders love learning, right? So if there's one thing I'd advocate, love your brain. So I've created a rubric. What I'll do is I'll send you the link and basically it's called the Intentional AI rubric and it's all evidence backed really simple and practical things that you can start to do. Now, to protect your brain. Now here's where it's going to get hard for people, because again, you're going to be holding those two incongruent feelings at the same time. You are. Everything in the world is telling you to go faster. But if there is one thing I know to be true when it comes to the work that actually has an edge and creates innovation and impact, it is the slower you go with working with AI, the faster you will get there. And that is where the edge is. And I can tell you it's an edge because so few people are doing it. And we know it's how the brain works best with AI, and you're protecting your brain at the same time. So if anything, protect your bloody brain, because I can tell you, you will. Like we've experienced, the impact is significant and it's quick. Okay, so that's the first thing I would say. The second thing um, I would talk about is there is a company that I'm now working with that I've partnered with out of the US Called the Grin Labs. And what we are trying to do is show organizations what it looks like when your teams use AI intentionally and in terms of how you can use AI as a team to relate better to yourself as an individual, to relate better to others, and to relate better to the world or the environment around you. And so, um, we are basically running hybrid programs around things like we've got what we call the Relational Leadership Cohort, which is actually helping people fully see each other in real time. And, um, plan and be able to basically role play those hard conversations around emergent, uh, issues that we are seeing with the way AI is being introduced. So this is where, again, we hold those two incongruent feelings we keep coming back to. This is where I'm like, well, I can't stop AI, but how do I help people protect their brains? And how do we actually show people what intentional AI looks like? And I keep using this term, intentional AI and the definition, because this is something that I'm working with from a science perspective and looking at a skills framework around it. The definition I have at the moment is intentional AI is the practice of conscience consciously directing how, when and why you engage with artificial intelligence, remaining the author of your own thinking and preserving the habits of mind that enable you to lead, connect, and perform at your best, sustainably.

Speaker A: I like that.

Speaker B: So that's what I mean when I talk about intention. So, um, there are ways to use AI in teams and teach people intentionally. The other thing that we've been playing with that I think is fascinating. And as, again, this is all emergent, we are piloting with some really interesting large corporates at the moment, uh, is a program we've created called the Purpose Project. Now, one of the things I firmly believe, and I am hearing it a lot from people in my space, is that so many of us are going to lose our jobs. That is just the reality of what we're already seeing it and what we see with many people who have been leaders for years is that the job is the purpose, the job is the identity. And so when your job is taken away and you can't find another job like that because that job no longer exists for a human, it exists for AI. The most critical thing to define for the future, I fundamentally believe, is purpose. And most of us would love to know what it looks like, but it sounds wieldy and overwhelming and so we just put it to the side. So what we've created is a program where, again, it's a hybrid program with humans and, and AI where we use AI as a mirror to help people find purpose and meaning. And then we help them build that back into their AI so that every decision that they go to AI to thereafter helps them recalibrate how they show up in the everyday, be that in their lives or as a leader to actually align their actions.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: It's fascinating. And the like I say we've been doing this for the last 12 months. It's very, uh, emergent and evolving and we're still piloting kind of where it will land. Because each iteration of AI as well changes what it looks and feels like. But the feedback we are getting has been. It gives me goosebumps. Uh, it's. When AI is used well and intentionally, it can be extremely profound across so many facets of our lives.

Speaker A: Um, Penny, always fascinating to have a conversation with you, and you and I could talk for many, many hours about these things. But I'm going to pop into the show couple of those, uh, resources that you mentioned, a piece of research and the rubric, which would be amazing. I'm going to ask you a twist on our brave feminine leadership question in a minute. I'm going to ask you what brave feminine leadership means. Um, right now with Gen AI all around us. But before I do it, I'll just. And it gives you a bit of thinking time, maybe, is as you were talking about all of that, and as you were talking about that, um, that overwhelmed sense of urgency and that feel that you've got to go Fast to keep up. And you've got to get all these things done. It just took me back to when I first stepped into the CEO role. And I remember when I stepped in, a mentor said to me at the time, you are going to look around and you are going to see thousands of things that need to be fixed. And it's so true, right? Every CEO who steps into any role, every leader who steps into any role, you're different than the person that came before you. You're going to look at things and see things that need to be fixed. I'm impatient and this mentor knew me well and he said to me, slow down. Don't focus on more than three. Mhm. Because if you work at the pace you work at in this, you'll kill everyone around you. And it just made me, I was just reflecting on it as you were talking because I think that links to the. And I love your definition of using AI intentionally. I think that is fabulous. Um, like get that out there. Because I think that definition is kind of needed very much. But I think the thing is we can slow down. Like we do have choice in all of this. We can slow down. And I think the people that slow down and resist that, that need to sprint at everything and do love their brain and nurture their creativity and get enough information in to offer different perspectives on things, I think they're going to stand out that stand out that we want, who focus on relationships. So what does it mean, Benny? What does brave feminine leadership mean right now to you in the middle of studying the psychology of AI?

Speaker B: Oh, I get goosebumps again. It's funny because you and I are both yogi, so I'm very connected into, uh, what's going on in my body.

Speaker A: M.

Speaker B: I would say the word that comes up, which you've just mentioned, is slow. And I feel like slow needs a rebrand. And what I would say is brave feminine leadership is giving yourself and your team permission to slow down around the things that matter, around the things that have longer term implications, around the things that carry significant risk. That's what I would say. Brave. It's permission to slow down.

Speaker A: Goosebumps, as you said it. I love it. Um, naturally I would end the podcast there, but I just feel like it's not fair to the listeners to be left out of the moment. As we started the conversation today when you, you sprinted off because your washing machine was about to start beeping. And um, I burst out laughing because knowing we had this appointment, my washing machine was about to start beeping and I said to my son, you can't go to the gym. You need to stop the washing machine before it goes off. So looks you and I just keeping it real, juggling podcasts, psychology of AI, whatever else I happen to do and the washing machine. That's got to factor into our brave feminine leadership as well somehow. But Penny, it's always an absolute pleasure to have you join me. Thank you for sharing what you're learning right at the edge of what we really need to come to understand.

Speaker B: Thank you so much Mel. And I'd love if anyone, if it lands with anyone, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. I love to continue this conversation. It's fascinating.

Speaker C: Thank you for joining me on today's episode. Before you go, I have three quick ways to stay connected and keep building your leadership momentum. Firstly, you can sign up for our weekly Inspiration newsletter. Every Sunday, I share insights, tips and stories to help you lead with intention and purpose. It's like a mini personal pep talk for the week ahead. Secondly, download the Balance youe Brave Diagnostic tool. If you're ready to find clarity and take control of your career in just 15 minutes, this free tool is your first step. Thirdly, if you want to explore more resources@bravefeminineleadership.com from podcasts to programs, we are here to support your growth every day. So what's your next move? Whether it's reclaiming your energy or getting intentional about your career, we are here to help. And all links you need are, uh, in the show notes. So until next time, what does brave Feminine leadership mean to you? Have a brilliant day.