At the Intersection of AI, Leadership & Communication

Speaker A: Welcome to Connecting to Admired Leadership, where twice a month we explore the behaviors and routines that make great leaders extraordinary. I'm, um, Wes Bender, and I have the distinct pleasure of hosting some of our firm's partners, coaches and clients to discuss leadership in ways you won't hear anywhere else. Let's dive into this episode and make people and situations better together. All right. We will give everyone a minute or so to log in to today's webinar, um, at the intersection of AI, communications and leadership, uh, with the man, the myth, the legend. Alan. Alan Nelson.

Speaker B: What are you doing?

Speaker A: I'm just trying to loosen us up, Alan, for, uh. We got a. We got an hour. We got an hour together here.

Speaker C: So still on my second cup of

Speaker B: smart juice, so don't expect too much.

Speaker A: That's awesome. I am very enthused. I want to jump into our topic today, uh, at the intersection of AI, um, uh, leadership and communication. In order to do that, I'll introduce Alan. Many of you on the call. Those of you listening to the recording, uh, you're probably aware of Alan. He's certainly been on this, um, uh. Uh, webinar in the past. And, uh, then of course, um, has been around our firm for over 30 years. Almost since its, uh, inception. Alan's, uh, led thousands of client engagements, uh, with some of the most consequential leaders, organizations in the world. Um, he's really, uh, one of the few advisors in this space. Works fluently with, uh, Fortune, uh, 500 companies, uh, as he does with all kinds of, uh, really multilateral institutions, uh, like World Bank, IMF and others. Um, what makes Alan the right person for today's conversation, specifically, uh, of three decades, uh, thinking about what leadership actually is, um, what developing leadership actually requires. And, uh, what it means to communicate. You talk about somebody who communicates with a unprecedented precision and intention at some of the highest levels. Um, um, it's Alan. Uh, he's also an AI super user. I would say a key driver and thought leader, uh, in the development of Alex. And, um. Uh, Alex, of course, is the world's first, uh, and we'll get into this. But I would argue, uh, the only true, ah, AI executive leadership coach. Uh, that that's really been put out there. So. And, uh, that's the lens we're bringing to AI today. Uh, not a technology lens, uh, but a real leadership lens, uh, in regards to what this means, uh, to do executive leadership coaching at scale. So, uh, with all of that as an introduction, Alan, uh, who are you? If, uh, you. Any introduction you want to do for yourself. And then, uh, could you give all of our listeners really just a quick summary of how we play most effectively in the AI space? Right. We are not necessarily AI coders, uh, but we of course will be talking and alluding a lot to Alex today. But uh, we also have Confluence, AI short courses and some other places that we play too. So just a quick, quick introduction of where we play would be great.

Speaker B: Uh, okay.

Speaker C: Well, I mean, other than what Wes has already mentioned, I think the most important thing is that I'm a husband and a father and um, have a couple of kids who I think still like me. I still like them. And uh, this weekend taking uh, the oldest off to college, uh, for summer session. And so, uh, I think that's the only other stuff I would add other than some of the professional context that you added, Wes.

Speaker A: Great.

Speaker C: Um, I think we sit in an interesting intersection. You're right, we don't. We're not computer, ah, scientists. Um, but we do have a development team now and we have software engineers. Uh, and we're not AI specialists, but we have a group of people. I think the whole firm is thinking about AI quite a bit now, but we probably have a core group of seven or eight people that have really been thinking about it very deeply for three or four years now. Um, and so I think it's placed us at this interesting intersection between a lot of content expertise on how organizations and leadership work, which is independent of AI, um, being in a position to see how many of our clients, because some of our clients are, you know, organizations that are very much on their front foot with this. Both organizations in Silicon Valley as well as large organizations that are clients that are, are really wrestling with how they deploy AI. And we're working there in advisory capacities. So we're seeing how organizations are really working with, and figuring out and trying to struggle with some of the implications of AI. And then third, you know, we've, we've been on our front foot ourselves. We've, we've had a set of operating principles for the use of generative AI in our firm for three years. That's three years longer than most places. Um, everybody in our firm is uh, has access, uh, to leading model or models. Uh, we've got uh, recurrent training that happens in our firm every 14 days. Um, we've changed how we think about our own talent development because of it. And then we've developed our own, our own product. So Alex is know, given us an insight into the applied use of AI around a set of content and domain that I think is unique. So, so I think we sit in an intersection. I don't think that makes us specialists in any of those things that are AI specific, but I think it gives us a unique perspective that a lot of other people don't have and that I even think some of the large consulting firms don't really have. And uh, and through that we've started to do things related to it. So um, we do have Confluence, which is a weekly substack, goes out on Sundays, which what we're paying attention to at the intersection of leadership and communication and generative AI. Um, I think it's very much worth reading. It's very well written. Uh, it has a podcast version which actually AI creates, which is sort of interesting. Um, we've got uh, some uh, proficiency programs that we lead for leaders and communication professionals. Eight week sort of open enrollment courses that are about creating generative AI proficiency. Uh, and then we're helping clients, uh, in terms of thinking through not just their own, um, processes and how they think about AI, especially in certain domains like communication and hr, but what they think about it means for the organization. So we're doing advisory work, we're changing how we do our own work and we're trying to give assistance and knowledge to clients as much as we can.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Perfect. Thank you for that. And just, uh, so you know, in the chat box, uh, Sophie has dropped for us the links to Confluence and the links to those uh, AI short courses that Alan just alluded to. If you want to take a look at those. Confluence, uh, especially of uh, course is in a podcast form too. Uh, so uh, that's a great way to stay up to date with some of the trends that are happening in um, the AI space as a whole. So uh, as we jump in and have Alan, uh, frame this a little bit, would love to go ahead and utilize the chat box. We'd love to know who you are, where you're from, if you're attending live. We've got a good number of folks on the webinar today. Uh, make sure to click that drop down to everyone when you uh, when you shoot that message, uh, out. We'd again love to know who, who all's on the call, where you're coming from as well. So uh, really some themes I want to hit at. And again I, uh, want to talk about leadership in particular and then move into this space of AI leadership coaching and what that means. So some themes we're going to try to get after Today, uh, what, what is executive leadership coaching from our perspective, that's a really important piece. If you're ever going to take a look at something like Alex or any other leadership coaching that's out there, you really need to step back and say, okay, what is this organization's perspective on leadership as a whole? Uh, the second is, what is it actually, uh, what's actually new in relation to executive leadership coaching? You know, AI is there, is there, you know, what's new there? Uh, then what do we not know yet?

Speaker B: What.

Speaker A: One of the things I love, uh, in regards when I talk to Alan, what do we not know? What are some things we're assuming just to kind of have some good conversation around that, uh, what do we already know? There's some, perhaps some early signals, I hope Alan, in regards to what we're learning about rolling out something like Alex, uh, and then finally what's not going to change? Uh, and I think all that is bring some high utility in uh, what we're doing. So that's the direction, uh, we're headed in uh, in the next uh, 51 minutes that we have here. So let's start at the found. When we say executive leadership coaching, Alan, what are we actually talking about? What does it do, uh, that other forms of leadership development perhaps don't. What. Why is executive leadership coaching and especially one on one coaching so, so, so important?

Speaker C: Okay, well, I, I think in some ways the way we feel about it is common with how other people feel about it. I think in other ways the way that we think about it is different than how other people think about it. I think what's common is that it's a relationship, um, and it's a relationship that's supposed to help you get better and improve. Um, uh, you know, I think that if you look at people who are high performers in almost any critical domain, they almost all have coaches. Um, we may not think of them as coaches. It's easy to think of them as coaches in sports. Um, but you know, even pilots, you know, pilots do recurrent training on a regular basis. Um, that in essence is coaching. Uh, it's a process where somebody is, is uh, providing hopefully to you resonance and feedback around what you're doing and helps you get better as a leader. And I think most coaches would tell you that that's sort of how they think about it and what they do. I think, I think what we, we our take on it and it's a take that informs how we would think about something like Alex is that number one we believe that coaching should be very advisory. So a lot of coaching, and in fact there are, you know, a lot of coaching comes from a therapy background. And we certainly think of therapy as important and, and we think therapy has great value. But the general cardinal rule of therapy is to, is to remain impartial around certain actions and to not be advisory. Whereas we think if you're seeing a coach, a uh, coach is there actually to instruct. I mean, imagine going to get a lesson in something and the person you're getting a lesson from doesn't instruct you in what to do or what not to do. So there is some coaching, and I think there are in some domains quite a lot of coaches who believe that they are a thought, they're a foil for clients. Uh, they're there to provide reflection to clients, they're there to provide questions to clients. And I think we would do all of that, but I think where we go, and we're not the only ones by the way, but I think we're a subset, where we would go is beyond that. We also think we're there to be advisory, to say, yes, have you thought about this? And I've noticed that you do that and how do you feel about this? And what's your motivation there? What does that come from? But ultimately what we would say is you need to do this, or here's three choices, like the choice is yours, but, but these are actions we think you need to take. So for us, good leadership development and coaching is highly advisory. And because that's personal and because there's a high level of context, and because it's a one on one relationship, I think there's just more efficacy with that than there is in terms of group training or other forms of leadership development.

Speaker B: I think the other place where we're

Speaker C: a bit different is we believe that advice should be highly behavioral. So to tell you actually what to do. And for us, it wouldn't just be behaviors, it could be routines, it could be messages, it could be actions, it could be decisions. But your leadership is a function of your, of your actions, what you do every day, not your internal state alone. And so ultimately for us, good leadership development, good executive coaching is somebody who you have a strong relationship with, that has a lot of context for who you are and what you do that has some history. Although, although you don't need a lot of context to give good advice right away, by the way. I think we also believe that, and not everybody does, but uh, you, who you trust, who you expect is going to, uh, do all those things that coaching would normally do in terms of being a mirror and a reflection and cause introspection and the rest, but ultimately say, if we want to get better at X, we should try doing Y. And that, that Y is highly specific and not, you know, you need to, you know, if, if you want to have a better relationship with the board, you need to be more trustworthy. Like, like how. Like, what does that mean? How do I. We would be far more specific, you know, if you want to have a better relationship with the board, you need to be more trustworthy. And one of the things you need to start doing is X. And one of the things you need to stop doing is why that is how we would think about executive coaching. That, I think is a bit different than how most other people and most other coaches think about it. And I don't know that it's the best, but it's our way and it's the way that we think has been highly efficacious for people for 40 years.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's perfect. Um, so with that in the chat box, I would love to know, based on that description of executive leadership coaching, I'd love to hear the people that are live, do you have a great leadership coach? And you can just put that in there. I have a great leadership coach or no, I don't have a great leadership coach. I'd just be interested in how many people have, uh, that type of coaching relationship, uh, within the, uh, within our chat box there. So, so let's pivot a little bit out. Um, when I talk about this, sometimes I talk about the, uh, real. I'm going to say distaste. That's probably extreme. But with my son's current high school basketball coach, okay.

Speaker B: Oh, boy, oh, boy.

Speaker A: So he is wonderful, you know, works with the guys, develops the guys as individual. Just a, just a phenomenal human being in a lot of ways. Um, his coaching technique is, uh, run faster, uh, shoot better, right. Rebound more, uh, rather than the real skills that it takes to rebound. Position your body this way.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Move your elbow in just, uh, just a bit. So, and I'm setting you up to say that's a lot of how we approach leadership. The small tweaks in leadership that can be made to make people in situations better. Now, when I was, if I was to look at. Does an AI in some ways play a complementary role to the development of my son's basketball? Is that possible for an AI to see what they do? I have a hard time doing that. So I Tee all that up in a way to say how does a, how are we learning that AI, um is helping or working alongside or complementing or taking the place of a leadership coaching situation.

Speaker C: So I think that depends on the AI and uh, you know we are heavy uh, users of all the models. Um, we have our deepest uses with Claude and Anthropic and Claude is the large language model that is the engine underneath Alex. Um, but at the end of the day uh, they don't know anything that is distinctive about leadership that isn't available in the general training corpus and what they've been trained on is the text of the Internet. So uh, so I think the first thing is it depends on what the AI knows. And uh, one of the things we think that's distinctive about Alex is is it doesn't search its general knowledge as a first place to answer question about leadership. It searches. It's what we've given it which is about 2 million words of our content which is not in the training corpus. Like it just simply knows things that Claude doesn't know. And, and just like I could retain a coach that knows things that other coaches don't know. So I think the first question about where we're seeing it, you know, AI be helpful with leadership is it depends on what the AI is and what it could tell you. Now I think there's lots of stuff that is, you know, helpful in that general knowledge. Like there's a lot that we know about feedback that is not about what we know, it's about what everyone knows. Like using person, you know, centered communication as opposed to position centered communication. You know, there's all kinds of stuff about how you, you know, make things more practical for people and the rest. And it's general knowledge and, and chat GPT knows it and it's, and it's helpful. So, so I think where we're starting to see that it can uh, complement uh, coaching is in some cases I think it can actually replace it. Like, like I think Alex is distinctively good and I think there are lots of coaches who especially for the fee. Alex makes a very strong argument of value over time and money for. Because it knows things that those coaches don't know.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: I think there's all kinds of coaches where Alex could not possibly compete, including some of my colleagues and not just my colleagues but coaches from other places who are very experienced and have lots of depth of context and understand. You know, you just think about people who have lots of exposure to high level boards or private equity or things like that, like, you know, those people have value. I think though, that in those cases, Coach, uh, AI can be very complimentary. So for example, what, what I can do but would not be a good use of my time would be to sit down and say, okay, Wes, I'm helping you get better at relationships and in particular I want you to get better at keeping relationships alive. And I'm going to sit down and I'm going to take a lot of time and I'm going to write a 60 day plan for you that has a different exercise for you every day. That it might be something to read, it might be something for you to do, it might be something for you to journal, but I'm basically going to have you every day do something for 60 days that makes you better at this dynamic of keeping relationships alive. Alex can do that in 45 seconds and can probably do it with equal or better creativity than I can. Um, something that Alex or an AI can do is it can offer alternative perspectives very easily.

Speaker B: It's very hard to get out of your own frame of reference.

Speaker C: Uh, so I think about my problem and I go to maybe you and I say, hey, how do I think about this problem? And I can help you think about maybe two or three different explanations for that. But you can go to a good AI and say, here's my explanation of the facts. Give me 10 alternative explanations of those facts. And AI will do that very well. Um, adopting multiple Personas, like here's six different roles I want you to play. There's so many ways that it can be a complement to great coaching that plays to its strengths. And its strengths are speed. Its strengths are ability to adopt multiple perspectives from multiple facets in multiple ways. Its strengths are equal to human or in some cases different than human creativity. Those are places where I think it'd be highly complementary to human coaching. Coaching. But I will say that, that I think that, that there will be other AI tools and not just coaching. We're seeing it in some, in design, we're seeing it certainly in computer, uh, engineering and software engineering, where AI with specialized knowledge is good enough that it can replace certain people who are mid level practitioners. And I think, I think Alex is as good as a lot of coaches. But, um, I don't think it's as good as all coaches, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: Yeah. So speak to this real quick. Ah, that comes to mind. Somebody asked the question, well, what, you know, I have a human coach. Uh, so. But now I see Alex, I don't need this human coach anymore. Why should I, why should I continue with this, with this human coach? Um, the answer that I heard one time, well, what's better than the best executive leadership coach in the world that has instant access to proprietary research based content? What's better than that? Uh, well the uh, the. Maybe the only thing that's.

Speaker B: This is Second West.

Speaker A: No, you're fine.

Speaker B: Later. I'm on a webcast. Yep.

Speaker A: Tell her, tell her. That's a first.

Speaker B: My daughter, My daughter making a guest appearance.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Who. Your daughter's probably the best coach for you, uh, in the, in the household.

Speaker B: Certainly a source of honest feedback, I will say that.

Speaker A: So anyway, what I was getting after was the answer to that was what's better than the. Than you know, uh, the world's best executive coach has instant access to all this proprietary information and all those kind of things that Alex is. And the answer was two leadership coaches. Two, two folks, you know, that could bring that, that to the table. Um, and one of those really can pick up on some things that an AI just can't yet necessarily. What would you say to that, that answer?

Speaker B: Oh, I mean, look, I mean as wonderful as they are, at the end of the day, like an AI doesn't have true conviction. Like it does not truly care about you. It may act like it cares about you, but it does not truly. Like Alex is not laying awake at night, you know, thinking about you. Yeah, uh, if it is, then we've got other issues. But, but, but you know, a person can bring conviction and also a person can bring a huge amount of context of context. And I don't historical context, but the ability to read like the look on your face, to see your measure of uncertainty, to, to pay attention to your non verbals. Now as, as sight and imaging gets better, I would not be surprised that we are talking to AIs that have cameras on that are reading all that context. But, but uh, like, absolutely. Like there are certain things that humans can do that AI's can't. And thank God, by the way.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but the question is, is can you afford it?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, and can you afford it? And can it. And it provide value for the dollar. And, and I just think like anything else in any other market of talent and professionalism, there's, there's, there are solutions that can be just as good or better than what you have access to. And I think Alex is that. Yeah, but, but that is a place where I think human coaching will continue to be important. I mean I do lay awake in the middle of night thinking about people that I work with. And uh, and I do have conviction around them and I do genuinely think to ask them how that conversation went. And that's something that at least for now, is the realm of humanity and I hope continues to be. But I think that, you know, the best scenario is the best of both worlds. And you know, you have. I certainly have people I coach who use Alex all the time, talk to it every day. But, but when I get on the horn with them every three weeks or something, they're ready to go. Like they got things they want to talk about. Um, because there is something that uh, I provide that the AI can't. That said, you can't scale me to 7,000 people.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And that's where I think there's power in a solution. And Alex isn't the only idea. We could have these in legal, we could have. In marketing. You could have lots of domains where ah, what is unique is if you can take an AI and give a distinctive process and distinctive content, it can

Speaker C: now allow you to help a lot

Speaker B: more people than you could help with humans.

Speaker A: Okay, yeah, that's good. Uh, so just a couple quick reminders and then one more question kind of around this, just framing the whole space. And then I want to get into what you alluded to is this breakthrough of scale now which, which AI has brought to, uh, to our firm. Um, uh, just a couple of quick housekeeping things. Alex is in our chat box. So if you have questions, insights, uh, and get a conversation going in the chat box, we, we're monitoring that, uh, watching that. If you have any questions or anything you want us to bring into the conversation, happy to monitor those as we go through. Uh, so one more piece on the framing around this space in particular is this idea of critical thinking. Uh, you know, and we're watching real closely just some of the skills, uh, that we. That, that um, that employees or staff or um, uh, people were developing leaders within an organization. Uh, some of those skills that are potentially eroding because of AI. Um, uh, in your idea, what can leaders do really to ensure AI enhances things like critical thinking rather than erode as people continue to rely on it for creation, for research, for writing, all those kind of things. I think that's a real important piece, uh, that we think about, you know, that a lot of potential AI developers and chatbots aren't thinking as much as about perhaps.

Speaker B: Yeah, or, or people leaders or, or uh, or I think a lot of leadership development folks either, by the way. Yeah. So the first thing is, Wes, we should probably offer to share with the group, uh, our recent white paper on the human factors of generative AI. So, uh, if, if so if you can, uh, drag that as an attachment, or if we can just offer to get it to people who are watching, that would be great. Um, yeah, so, so there's, so there's real consequences to this in terms of skills and skill development. Um, it's not new to AI, by the way. It's about automation in general. And the research on it goes back to the 1980s. Um, I won't go into too much detail. The white paper unpacks most of that. But the bottom line is that, is

Speaker C: that there are, like when you start

Speaker B: to use automation or outsource what you do to something else, generative AI included, or the GPS in your car for that matter. Um, a couple of things happen. One is there are certain skills that you get worse at. They erode. Um, there are other skills that you don't get good at and it's because you don't get the reps. Uh, and then third, there's, there's a set of judgment and expertise that develops more slowly because the machine is making decisions that you otherwise would make. So you have a gut, you have an instinct. It's a gestalt. Um, it's not really a gut. What it is, it's pattern recognition. And you know, I, I, uh, I was studying chess for a little while and you talk to grand masters and what they do is they just look at the board and see things you don't see. And the reason why is because they've seen thousands and thousands and thousands of positions. And for them it's an instinct, but it's not, it's a pattern recognition. Well, if, if AI is making the decisions and you're not making the decisions, those are decisions that you have never made. And it slows down how much you develop an expertise. And then finally there's certain skills where they have a lot of friction, like they're hard work, but the work is what sort of changes you and makes you better. So imagine if I had had AI prepare my comments for today. I mean, I could deliver them. I know my stuff, but I don't know the content as well.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And I haven't gone through the process of thinking it through, which might change how I think about it. So there are certain skills where the grittiness of doing the thing is actually the developmental curriculum. And so here's the challenge. We don't know which skills are Most subjected to that.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So the way I think about it, Wes, and I don't know if you've heard me talk about it this way, but is I think, well, there's, there's, there's what I would call cursive writing skills, at least for people in the United States. I know we have somebody from Spain participating, but at least in the United States, public schools no longer teach children how to write. With cursive writing, nobody cares. Like it's a lost art. Nobody cares other than people.

Speaker A: My mother in law cares.

Speaker B: Your mother in law cares? Yeah. And certain people, certain people scared. But it uh, but also 110 years ago everybody would be really good at riding horses because it was the only way to get around, you know. Now so those are things now that are hobbies and interests. But there are lost skills and the world has moved on. Uh, there's other skills that I would call bicycle skills. You develop them and you keep them. You can have not ridden a bike in 10 years and I guarantee you you don't need to go to proficiency training to get on the bike. Like you just go get on a bike. But then there's other skills that I call landing the airplane skills. And, and landing the airplane is not something a pilot, and I'm uh, a pilot, as I think Wes knows, is something that you forget how to do. I stopped flying five years ago. I could, I could still land an airplane tomorrow, but it would be dangerous and, and legitimately so like there's a regulation in the United States that you're not allowed to take up any passengers unless you've had three takeoff and landings in the prior 90 days. So we have certain skills that AI is going to overlap and replace and it'll be good written. We might think fondly about them, but it doesn't matter. We have certain skills where uh, you know, if you've developed them, you can have AI do them for the rest of your lives. And if AI isn't available, you'll be good to go because it's like riding a bicycle. And then there's other skills there. If you don't keep doing them, they get worse. Mhm. And the trouble we have, Wes, is we're not quite sure which ones are which yet. It's really hindsight that tells us, you know what that was cursive or you know what that's landing an airplane. My intuition is, is the harder the thing is for me to do, the more it's a landing the airplane skill. So for me, like I actually don't have AI write lots of like most people will use AI to write their most difficult emails. I don'. I don't. Because I think writing difficult emails is a skill. And if I don't keep doing it, it gets worse. Um, I think thinking of really powerful questions for dialogue to drive group and team conversations is hard. I can go to Alex. Alex knows a lot about dialogue and I can say, here's a topic, give me 20 dialogue questions. It will give me great questions. But, but I need to be able to think of good questions when Alex isn't in the room. You know, um, designing important messages like, how do we say this strategy around? Um, like that's hard to think of those things in crisp, concise ways. I find if I stop doing it, I get worse at it. So one thing I would say to everybody as a leader in the room is you need to be attentive as you start to use Alex or any other tool on these skills to whether or not you're outsourcing something that you need to remain good at, because you

Speaker C: need to be able to do it

Speaker B: when the AI is unavailable and you'll be able to tell if you're getting like. And I think, I think there's lots of skills that are like that. The final upshot that I think nobody's thinking about on that, Wes, is what this really means is that the way you develop people in that world who have AI available to them all time is through apprenticeship. That, that we used to develop people, with the exception of certain professions like carpentry or medicine, which is really residencies and internships are all about. Apprenticeship is the way most professionals are developed on the job is on the job training. Like you do the work and occasionally I sent you to a training program and then you get better and then I promote you and then you do another and then you get better at that and I send you a training program. But if AI is doing a lot of work, what it really means is that as leaders, we need to develop people really through apprenticeship. And the vast majority of leaders don't think of themselves as mentors to apprentices on a day to day basis. And most organizations are not set up to do leadership development through apprenticeship. And I think that's a challenge that we're all going to have going forward. And I don't think the world is really ready for those human factors.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. All right. There's a lot I could dig into. I would love to chat more about. Maybe we'll do it at Our next uh, firm meeting over dinner or something. But uh, I want to continue along our theme line here. So I want to move into talking about what it means to scale leadership coaching like this in the way that AI. So when we look at AI, we are, we are not a technology firm, um, by design. We are not uh, developers by design. We are a 40 year old institution uh, that is expertly positioned, plays in the preeminent way in regards to leadership, uh, and strategic communications. AI just happens to be a mechanism that affords us the opportunity to scale what we've been doing for 40 years. Um, really for large organizations that's a big deal in how we approach it and a big deal in regards to what you've already heard in regards to Alex, uh, providing access is not the same as creating value. What would you say organizations need to understand about rolling executive leadership coaching out at scale? Especially for large organizations that are uh, have never typically had one on one executive coaching rolled out like that.

Speaker C: So.

Speaker B: And meaning AI coaching?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So we're learning a lot. Um, and we've got some clients who have given access, Alex, to access to thousands of people. And what they've done is said, here you go. And when we see those scenarios, the uptake in the utilization rates we see are exactly in line with all the, what all their literature says about software as a service tools that are deployed to people who didn't ask for them. Which is 80% of them are going, I don't even know what it is. And 20% ever going I think I've used it. And 10% of them are going this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. And those adoption rates are slow and painfully so. And then we have other clients where we see um, the inverse where we see 80% are going, this is the most amazing thing. And 20% are going I don't know what it is or I don't want to use it. And I think the real difference is how you think about deploying it. So what we've learned is that the best way to do it is not to think about it as top down, but is to think about it as lateral. But I want it to spread this way. And, and what you do is, is even if I'm going to give it to 500 people, what I do is I identify, I parse that group into four groups. I go, who is most likely to be excited about using it first? And that's group number one. Group number two is who's curious but not probably my first users because they're not really enthusiastic. That's group two. Group three is skeptical, busy, not very interested. And group four is never using an AI coach, no matter what you do. Now you got to make some guesses about those groups, but that's your deployment path.

Speaker C: So as much as I want to

Speaker B: give it to all 500 people at once, that's not what I do. I give it to group number one first. And of course they get into it. They love it. We have a large client that started with 26 people. They all happen to be HR business partners, by the way. They were very excited about Alex and they. And after, uh, a month, three weeks of them using it, they were then a proof point for group number two. And so then I can go to the second group and say, we have subscriptions for you. Here's a group of your colleagues who are already been using it. And then they provide some proof and some evidence and some, you know, uh, and some sorts of, of peer feedback and, and how do I do this thing? Well, for other people. And then I get them on board and now I've got 200 people. And then I go to my extra 150 or 200 skeptical people and say, now we're giving it to you. And now they already have 150 or 200 colleagues that are on board. And then my last group, I give it to them and I know they're probably never going to adopt no matter what. Now that doesn't mean that I don't do training and coaching and you know, all the things I would do to, from a change management perspective. But I think what we see with a tool like Alex, and you're seeing this with AI generally, by the way, is that real adoption happens when somebody goes, looks over and goes, what are you doing?

Speaker C: Like what?

Speaker B: Like, like what is that? Like, that's cool. What is that why you were really prepared for that meeting, Wes. I've never seen you so prepared. What's up? And he goes, got a secret weapon. Don't tell anybody. It's called Alex. And he goes, how do I get out? We want it. We want to diffuse inside out, not top down as much as we possibly can. And that would be my advice in any organization. And it slows down the deployment path a little bit, but it increases the effectiveness of it a lot. And that's what we're seeing. And um, to the extent that we can really help clients make those choices, we're trying to help them make those choices. Doesn't mean that there aren't some Places that just go, look, I need to give this to 10,000 people. And we're giving it to them on Wednesday. And we go, that's what we're going to do.

Speaker A: Some of you are like, man, you guys are really going over today. Uh, just so you know, those of you who have joined these in the past where this is an hour long session with Alan so we have plenty of room to uh, move forward. So Alan, I'm glad we started there in regards to this scaling and rollout, uh, because you mentioned uh, and I like the way you did your thumbs there going out like this. But what would our advice be to senior leaders that we know it's not necessarily a top down rollout but what would your advice be to senior leaders that are leading from the front of AI, uh adoption? What does that look like? Are there any best practices you've seen for senior leaders? Modeling this or bringing their teams?

Speaker B: You got to be the biggest users in the organization.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: Um, you know I, I uh, I'm lucky to coach a guy who is the, you know, global sales president for a 30,000 person sales organization. He probably uses Alex more than anybody in the whole place. Um, whatever the tool is, Claude or chat, GPT or anything else. Yes, lead by example. But it's not just lead by example. It's having people see how it's making you better and making you more effective. I think that's one. I think number two is you need to create ongoing conversations around this. That again it's not just I've given you access to this thing, I'm hoping it makes you better as a leader but to create an ongoing conversation. Well, how is it making us better as a leader? What are we doing? Sharing best practices, having people see case studies. There's an idea of proficiency is ongoing and that's important because the models continue to evolve. Alex will continue to evolve. We're working right now, it's in beta and we're waiting for the Apple App Store to approve it. But we're going to have a mobile app app for Alex and you know, you can talk to it, it talks back and it's cool and it's gonna, I guarantee it, change the way people think about using it. And like that's a conversation we need to have. Like how are you taking advantage of

Speaker A: the mobile app and some AI models, you better use them while they're here because they, they may go away in a matter of time.

Speaker B: We don't want to go. We, yeah, uh, unfortunately. So I think yes Lead by example. But I think second is, is if it's something you really want people to be getting value from, you need to be talking about it. Yeah. Uh, and you need to be talking about it not in a directive way like go use this, but in a productive way. How is it making us better? What are we learning? Like what is what? Like what are the best cases for using this tool? And, and again organizations. It's interesting the, the place I mentioned that had the HR business partners be the early group. The first thing they did was set up a uh, teams channel where they were just talking about Alex all the time. Like here's how I'm using it, here's what I'm doing. And that makes the whole other HR community take a different take on it when they see the HR leaders engaged in a conversation around the tool. So there's lots of things that's good change management. Like we don't have to talk about things people can easily know or find available. But I think two things that are obvious is number one, like you got to be a heavy user and intimate with it and have. Number two is, is anything you choose to talk about, we signal that's important. And if the AI tool or the AI coach or whatever it is isn't on your regular agenda of topics, then people think it's not important.

Speaker A: Mhm. So we get into, so we've gone kind of high level. We've dived into some of the details of the rollout and things. At the end of the day, if we were to jump back up to the, to 10,000ft, what the end goal is. Alex makes people and situate helps you make people in situations better. Right. Is that happening? So we were definitely getting questions. The more and more conversations that we're having on is it making a difference? These organizations that are rolling this out, individuals that are using it, is it actually making a difference? So I'd love for you to speak to that. I also love to hear because when I ask does anybody have a great coaching relationship, a lot of people threw in the chat box. Yes, Alex. Yes, Alex. So I'd love to hear, I'd love to hear the answer to that question from anyone in the chat box too. Do you truly believe that the, the time and effort that you're uh, that you're spending with this executive leadership coach called Alex, is it making a difference? And can you articulate what that difference is? And uh, then as their throwing that in the chat box, Alan, I'll pose it to you. What are we seeing Are we seeing any kind of, uh, returns on this yet that we can we. I know it's really hard to tag that, align that directly to Alex, but what are we seeing?

Speaker B: I, I'm. I mean, I have to be careful because you want to believe your own story, you know, and my story is we built something here that's really helpful and really powerful. Mhm. Um, and I'm particularly wedded to that story because I've like touched every line of Alex's prompts. And so, uh, you know, I've got a strong self interest to find confirmation of that. But I'm surprised at what I hear from people. In a good way. Um, I only have, you know, we only have renewal rates, which are encouraging and we only have anecdotes. But the anecdotes I get are, are surprising and um, uh, a little flattering of just the difference it's made. Uh, there's somebody I was talking to who said, you know, Alex saved our Christmas. You know, and not in a small way, but in a big way. Like somebody in the family had had a really, they had a serious kind of familial situation and, and a reaction and, and this was an intimate family member and they weren't certain how to handle it. And Alex coached them through how to handle it. And this person said to me, alex saved Christmas. I had somebody say to me like, I haven't been able to get a job. I've been trying for months and I finally engaged Alex around it and I got a job. Um, you know, people who, you know, I, I've. I had somebody who was going to quit the firm. Not our firm, but their organization. And I've been engaging alatons and I've saved them. Um, like I hear really surprising stories from people about how, how good it can be. But like anything else, it's about you, how you use it and what you use it for. I tell people, engage Alex on your hardest problems. Now Alex will quickly say, sounds like you need to talk to your compliance department, you know, or this sounds like a, ah, like this is a legal issue. Alex will tell you when it's out of its depth. Yeah, uh, but, but I think Alex is so much more than a help me write an email. And when I see people who are really engaging it, I'm surprised that what people tell me about the difference it's making for them. So I can, we can only hope that it's making a big difference for people. Um, and we only can only hope that we continue to make it smarter. And better for people. Um, but our retention rates are good and for people who really use it, our renewal rates are great. And I hope it's, it's making a difference for people. And, and, and I think any tool like this, like the idea that you can find a way for AI to help people have expertise at scale that they wouldn't otherwise have available to them, like that could be a life changing thing.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: It could be a world changing thing.

Speaker A: Speak to, uh, would you speak to a little bit more about how Alex interacts differently than any other that's out there? You've, you've mentioned some of those things. Some of the talking points that I've used in the past that are just personal talking points is Alex can work me through a very complex situation better than, you know, other LLMs that are out there. Um, Alex really works to get to a very practical high utility recommendation that I would have uh, never thought of otherwise, those kind of things. So could you speak to. And I know we don't want to spend a lot of times on the mechanics of AI, but specifically built on our view of leadership, what really helps people, you know, uh, become better leaders. Could you speak a little bit just to kind of the back end of how Alex is operating and things it can really do that we found that no other LLMs or chatbots or anything out there are able to do.

Speaker B: Yeah. So it has an amazing set of content and knowledge and knowledge that you don't even know it has. I was saying to somebody just yesterday that, you know, I said, you know that Alex knows a lot about boards of directors. And he said, no, I didn't know that. I didn't think I could ask about it. We've got proprietary views on boards and Alex knows what it is. Um, we've got another client that's going through a large merge in integration and we basically have our merger integration playbook in Alex, you know, and so, and so uh, some of it is about great content, but at the end of the day you could give Chat, GPT or Claude or Gemini that same content and its search would surface the same content. The question is, would the interaction be different? And we want Alex to be like working with a real coach. And so I won't get into the mechanics, but basically what we've done is we've given Alex certain uh, fundamental beliefs that we hold about relationships and coaching. Like we need to be advisory, um, like the idea that we believe that um, real uh, relationships are made up by dialogue, an inquiry like seeking to understand A perspective before we define it and uh, that it's about asking really intelligent questions and how we ask questions importantly that we need, we need a certain amount of context to be helpful. I mean if you ask ChatGPT for advice on giving feedback, it'll immediately give you a list of 18 things. And what Alex will do is say well to whom and about what? Like what are we talking about? Which is just what I would do. So there's a certain amount of interrogation that Alex does. Um, we know we've taught Alex how we think about leadership in other philosophical ways than just behavior. Like we, we believe that status is really meaningful and that good leaders try to reduce status. You know, the um, ways uh, that we think about delivering feedback. So what we've tried to do is encode into Alex the general ethos of how we think coaching relationships and coaching conversations should work and how they should go. And that's a very long set of instructions. Like even little things like Alex will never recommend cliches. Alex will never suggest exercises like two truths and a lie. Alex is never just going to say that emotional intelligence is the answer to everything. There's all kinds of things that we would never do or we would always do. And we've tried to, to teach that to Alex too. So, so that's why I think it's different. And again the mechanics on that are highly technical. But the idea is, is that we want it to feel different. Now I have some people who go the thing asked me a lot of questions like I just wanted to give me an answer. And I go yeah, but you know, if you came to me and asked me that question, I wouldn't just say here's what you do. Like I would ask five or six questions also. That said, if you want Alex to be more direct, go into your preferences and there's a field there for how I want Alex to respond and tell it to be more direct, you know, to get more to the point, to give, be more advisory, more early in the con will. But, but it's different because we've really tried to, to, to give it a set of behavioral parameters and a personality and a character that it's very common to our firm. And I think that's one of the things that makes it act the way it does.

Speaker A: So you mentioned uh, Alex knows a lot about board development, uh, boards and um, uh, those kind of things. Uh, as, as a, uh, the leader who is a big thought leader as far as what we're putting into Alex, content wise for it to have Access to. What are some other pretty incredible things that Alex knows just off the top of your head that we as Alex users might not be necessarily aware of, that it holds proprietary uh, uh, of our content. Uh, uh, that it has access to.

Speaker B: Okay. Alex knows amazing things about communicating change. Uh, and at the institutional level by the way, not just at the individual leadership level. Alex has an amazing set of content around conflict and conflict management. Um, it's not something that we signal but we've got people in our firm who are thought leaders around conflict management and mediation and Alex knows a lot of that stuff. Alex knows amazing things about message design, um, reducing uncertainty for people, um, delivering bad news. Um, I mentioned the board stuff. It has ways of thinking about most of uh, the ways that we think about key decision making, self management. Like Alex knows a lot about how to make yourself better, habit formation.

Speaker C: Uh, it knows all kinds of stuff

Speaker B: about how to motivate people. Um, like Alex has got uh, more than people think it has in addition to knowing most of what we've written about in our field notes. So if you say to Alex, tell me everything you know. Like you can't answer the question. There's 2 million, 2 million words of content. But, but you could say hey I'm facing like I, I don't know if you can help me with this or not want but from your proprietary knowledge, not your general knowledge, like what do you know anything about X and it will tell you and if it, if it's anything about leading organizations either at scale or leading people one to one. Those are things where we've been involved over 40 years and we probably have points of view or frameworks or content that, that uh, Alex has a sense of and knows of and um, can be helpful with.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. And uh, you'll know that Alex in the chat box says you're doing a great job. One of the uh, answers that you gave uh, as well. So.

Speaker B: Well I'm always try, I'm always very nice to it because I, I don't know if one day it's going to be in charge.

Speaker A: Um, so how do you use AI Alan, Just from your own. Do you use, I mean we have, we, we use quad, uh, uh, you know you're always telling us to watch our tokens around our firms. We use Claude a lot around our firm. But how, how do you, how do you approach AI every day? The situations you bring it, when you use Alex, when you prompt Alex to maybe give you a summary that then you take into Claude and do Something or another AI. Are you doing the same from Claude to Alex? Just in general. Somebody wants to ask you, Alan, how do you. With the mind that you have and the way you approach things, how do you at your level utilize AI?

Speaker B: Uh, so there are three to four ways I'm using it, and I would say in part because of my work with the engineering team on Alex. I'm probably a bit more technical. Technical than most people are on some of this stuff.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and I built things for myself that I test before we deploy them for the firm. You know, I build them and then we work in with the engineering team and in our AI group, and then we decide that we're going to scale them. But for me, I'm using AI usually in three or four ways every day. First of all, I have a virtual chief of staff that I've created. Um, it's not open claw because that's not secure in our environment, but it runs on Claude that basically monitors my inbox, monitors my calendar, monitors my texts. It has a data as basically a knowledge base underneath it with great context. So I can say things like, read the email from West Bender. That's a new lead and opportunity for us. Create a file for me on it. And it will do things like that. So things that I don't need to bother my assistant with and things that I wouldn't bother a junior person in the firm with that sort of chief of staff role. And I think that that level of agency as a virtual chief of staff assistant will become more common for people. So I'm working with it all the time on things like that. That, um, second, I use it to make me smart on areas where I'm not smart. So, like, I need to get smarter on some legal issue. I mean, not in replacement of talking to council. Like, if you need to talk to council, you talk to council. But, you know, somebody sends through a. A unique data privacy agreement. Like, I need to understand this thing. Um, you know, we're. We're doing a lot to advertise Alex, right now. I've used it to make me very smart on B2B and B2C digital advertising and how those things work. So almost every day I'm having AI giving me a research report on something I need to get smarter on.

Speaker A: On.

Speaker B: Um, I use it to do real work sometimes. As simple as yesterday. I had, I had a memo and there were a million bullets from notes in this memo, and they all needed to be reformatted. And I just had Claude do it. And it. You Know, saved me a lot of time to. To real content creation around things that I need content created or thought partnership, you know, help me be my foil. And then with Alex, I use it for advice. Like, I use Alex as my coach. Um, I'll use it sometimes, uh, around client facing scenarios. Like, I'm talking to this group. Um, here's the angle of leadership I'm thinking to taking. Is there anything I'm missing? Is there something that I've forgotten about in our literature or in our data that would be helpful to bring up? Here's the flow I'm thinking about. But what I really use Alex for is, uh, make me better. This has just happened. And help me think it through. It's so fascinating. Les. I have great confidence in my abilities. I try not to take myself too seriously, but I've been doing this a long time. But I had a situation with a client a little while ago, and I, like, I just didn't know. Like, I was sort of stuck. Like, I had to confront this person and say no to something. I didn't know how to say no to it. And in, like, four minutes, Alex. I was like, well, of course, like, that's exactly what I would do. Um, and then I also use Alex. I use Alex a lot, um, to give me alternative explanations.

Speaker C: So there's a.

Speaker B: Something we've written about in a field note. It's called the Rashomon Effect. It's about a Japanese movie called Rashomon. Some people may know it, but basically four people see a crime. They're all witnesses at the trial, and even though they all saw the exact same set of events, they all remember four different things. And Alex knows about that why, by the way. And what it can do is it can give you not alternative perspectives, but alternative stories that explain something. And I was going into a situation, sort uh, of a situation I was negotiating between a couple of client parties within one organization. And I said, you know, here's. Here's. Here's the situation. Here's the story in my head that explains it. Give me a Rashomon on this. Give me four other alternative, uh, stories that explain the same set of facts, not ways that different people see it, but stories. And it gave me four stories, and I got to number three, and I went, I'll be damned. That's it. Like, that's actually it. Like, I didn't see it, but that's it. So I use Alex frequently for coaching, uh, and, uh, and. And not for my, you know, problems where I might go to a colleague that I've worked with for a long time. It was great context, but, uh, I use it a lot as a coach and it's. And I find it's very good at that. Awesome.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, Alex, uh, said in the chat box the Rashomon effect. I know it well and I'm providing a link for that too, which is great. Uh, we've got about six minutes left. Happy to take any last minute questions or things you'd like to, for, for, uh, for Alan to speak to. Um, Alan, where is all this headed, you think? I mean, uh, and everything that we've talked about. I know it's a very general question, but in your mind, where is all this headed?

Speaker B: Um, so I'll answer that and then I want to get to some of the Q&As. Andreas has a question that's been in there since 1108 that I'd like to take on.

Speaker A: Oh, thank you.

Speaker B: Um, uh, where is it all headed? I don't know. Um, I can tell you the models are going to get better and better and better. I can tell you if we have any indication of the past two weeks, they're going to get increasingly controlled. So, uh, you know, the news broke Yesterday that the US government is going to control the release of chat GPT 5.6 and actually control it customer by customer. So, uh, until we can be confident, uh, as to the security guarantees around the future models, I think that releases will probably be more measured and perhaps even slower, but they're going to continue and the models are going to become very, very good. I think that is excellent in terms of what it means for us. And Alex, Um, we'll always keep improving the model underneath. Alex. We test the personality extensively to make sure that it doesn't change Alex's personality. Because every model has a slightly different personality. But I, but I think you know the honest answer. Where does it all go? I don't think anybody knows, Wes. These are general purpose technologies. If you ask somebody standing outside a coal mine in 1743 what that, that steam engine they created to pump water was going to do, nobody would have forecasted, you know, railroads in the United States, so, uh, let alone the Industrial revolution. But what I can say in the short term is that frontier is going to keep advancing and what they're capable of doing is going to continue to increase. I don't think that's going to stop. And I think that, uh, but what I think it may change is what we can pay for them and how quickly they get released. Uh, Based on the economies of scale on the one hand and government oversight on the other. But other than that, I would just expect better Alexes and better A's and better tools coming down the road.

Speaker A: Andy's joining us all the way from um, Madrid. So let me, I'll read his question and then let you get to it.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: Does agentic AI compete with teamwork, making human with human and human with machine AI collaborative tasks more and more obsolete?

Speaker B: Oh, I saw a different question. I was reading the one about how to convince management. Alex is different, but ask that. Let me answer that one though. Answer that question. Ask that question for me. How does it replace human to human versus human agent?

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's interesting. I don't know that anybody knows. Um, you know, people say that one of the values of human to human, and there's a lot of research that shows you get small groups together and they come up with solutions that individuals don't come up to solutions with. Um, I find I have that experience with AI. Um, what I haven't had is the experience of me sitting in a, in a chat, chat room with seven other AIs and what that dynamic is like. But I would think that there are certain parts of what we do or what matters is that you're getting a different perspective and that that different perspective causes insights that you wouldn't otherwise have. I don't see any reason that that perspective couldn't come from an AI any better than a human. That said, ah, just like anything else, like, like people still gather for Thanksgiving, um, people still get together for holidays and celebrations. We could do all family events virtually. And yet we don't. Well, why not? Well, some people, families go, I'd love to do all my family events virtually. But for most of us, even though we could do it like as soon as Covid was over, everybody was eager to get back together. There's a very strong signal in that.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And the signal is that there are certain things that are distinctively human about human interaction and relationships. And they're difficult. They are by their by design, difficult to quantify. They are intangible. I believe that teammate collaboration will do that. Like, I can't have a true esprit de corps with a group of agents. Right. I can't remember the fact that we went through something together that forged something else with a group of agents. Like there's all kinds of things that collaboration and engaging with colleagues can do that agents just won't be able to do. But I don't think that creativity and brainstorming is necessarily one of them. I think there are probably other things.

Speaker A: Yeah. And then I think Andy's other question's a uh, good one to end on as well. I think we probably have lots of people on the call who are seeing the value in Alex and they're trying to push it up to the decision makers basically within their organization. And so uh, Andy asked very specifically how can I convince the management that Alex is different than uh, at bringing a uh, value that CLAUDE Pro can't provide even if we design a CLAUDE project as a leadership coach. Right. Uh, give, give them some talking points there.

Speaker B: Uh, easy. Alex knows things that the generic AI doesn't know.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: Different content. I mean you basically have, you know, not to blow our own horn, but a firm that is was coaching before coaching was called coaching. That is one of the distinctively uh, experienced executive coaching and leadership development firms in the world that has created an agent that knows what it knows.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So you'll get generic advice from a generic AI and you'll get specialized advice from us and then on top of that with a process and a routine that creates real insight and collaboration. Which I find that when you're asking for advice the generic AI struggle with because they don't have our, our ethos underneath them. And that's, that's what I would be, is that it knows things the others don't know and acts in ways the others don't act in ways that both contribute to better leadership development than you would get from a generic tool.

Speaker A: Yep, that's great. Uh, so uh, last thing, Sophie, if you'll just drop some links, that's a great place to end. If uh, you'll drop some links in the chat box there. Uh, if you'll actually drop the link to the previous webinar with Alan last year if you wanted to dive into kind of the foundation of, of AI and real mechanics behind it. Alan and I had a great conversation last year in regards to, to that uh, is a great follow up. Um, at the beginning of our session if you scroll back through the chat, uh, we had Confluence and our AR short courses which would be great. Uh, links to, to grab at there. We'll pull all of the live participants today and send you guys the white paper that Alan alluded to. Uh, I think that would be a great follow up and just a thank you for attending live uh, today. Uh, and then obviously if you wanted to connect around anything more specific, meet with some of our coaches and advisors uh, my email address will be there and then the last thing, which Sophie's already dropped in. If you're not using Alex, you haven't tinkered with Alex. Please, please, please. Uh, she's dropped a link to give you a 30 day, uh, trial of Alex. We would love, uh, uh, to give you that benefit, uh, moving forward.

Speaker B: Um, and then Alex, since I see there are questions that we couldn't get to, I put my email in the chat. I trust nobody will, will abuse it. Um, but, uh, if anybody wants to follow up with a question that you couldn't. I couldn't get to, I'm happy to answer as fast as I can and don't hesitate to send me a note. And, um, and I saw Kate McDonald, a former store student of mine in there. And so Kate, good to see you. I hope you're doing great.

Speaker A: Kate seems to be quite the Alex super user as well, based on some of her, uh, comments there. Uh, Alan, again, thank you so much, uh, for all you do to push us off all forward. Um, and, uh, and just the model example that you are of somebody who's constantly, uh, working to get better himself too. Um, it's a real pleasure to be around you. Thank you for your time. Uh, today we will leave the chat box open here for another three or five minutes if you want to grab at any of those links that we dropped in there. Appreciate everyone, as always for attending live. Those of you who wish listening to the recording, uh, via podcast, uh, thanks for listening as well. Alan, have a great rest of the day. Everyone else, have a wonderful rest of the day as well. And we will see you in the next one. Thanks everybody.

Speaker B: Thanks. Thanks Wes. Thanks for what you're doing.

Speaker A: Thanks Alan.

Speaker B: Thanks everybody.

Speaker A: Cheers.