How Leaders Use AI Authentically - with Allison Shapira

0:00John Busby:I believe that we could all benefit by using AI to help with communication, but at the same time, when I read things that are clearly written by AI or look generic or read like everything else I've been seeing lately, it erodes trust and authenticity. My guest today is Alison Shapira. She recently published a book called AI for the Authentic Leader. She's also a Harvard lecturer, keynote speaker, communication professional, former opera singer, and we talk extensively on this subject.

0:37John Busby:Hi, Alison. How are you? Good to see you.

0:40Allison Shapira:It's great to see you, John. Thanks for having me.

0:42John Busby:Yeah, really glad you're on the podcast today. There's news every week about AI driven by AI, investments in data centers and whatnot. This week, the big news is a big sell off with tech stocks because of new models put out by Claude and Anthropic, I think, eating into legal software and stuff like that. It made me think of a post that I saw you make on LinkedIn, I think this week, saying that in your mind, liberal arts majors will thrive in the age of AI. That makes me feel good. I'm a liberal arts major. Why do you believe this to be true?

1:20Allison Shapira:I believe it to be true, not just because I was also a liberal arts major, but because of what the sign seemed to be pointing to. So my first major in college was opera performance. And when I left opera and became a liberal arts major instead, I faced what many liberal arts majors faced, such as yourselves, I'm sure, or yourself, which was judgment and ridicule from my family for choosing a liberal arts major. And I remember my father saying, don't you want a minor in business or economics, which in hindsight as a business owner now would have been pretty helpful. But what I realize now that I didn't know then is that the skills we learn as liberal arts majors are learning a lot or learning a little bit about a lot of different topics and then being able to weave together different concepts and connect the dots among those topics in ways we couldn't have if we had a very narrow expertise.

2:21Allison Shapira:And now that we see AI taking on a number of tasks that subject matter experts used to do, it's actually the liberal arts majors who were taught how to flow between topics and ask questions and be comfortable not always being the expert in the room. It's that kind of adaptability, curiosity and flexibility that we need most right now. No doubt.

2:48John Busby:My major was political science, but I mentioned this when we were off camera, that the major activity I did in college was debate. And I didn't end up becoming a lawyer, which many of my classmates or my teammates did. But what I did learn how to do is critical thinking, reacting on my feet, learning how to debate, rebut, et cetera. And I can see that being very, very handy, that creativity, when you have something that can do a lot of the contract drafting and everything else that AI is able to do. You spent a career thinking about public speaking and leading with confidence, et cetera, and wrote a book, which I think you released last year, called AI for the Authentic Leader.

3:45John Busby:And it talks about how we're all going to use something to help us write or come up with ideas, these generative AI engines. But how do we actually use this technology to enhance rather than hurt, replace the human connection side of communication? And so maybe I'll start here. How do leaders that are leveraging AI ensure they aren't losing their personality, their soul? What makes them themselves as they're communicating to others?

4:21Allison Shapira:It's such an important question because I've been teaching communication, public speaking and leadership for over 20 years. And then over the past eight years, as I've studied AI and started using it in my own work, I've realized the challenge is not the technology. It's humans being lazy. So it's always been important to be able to bring your authentic voice or your critical thinking to any message that you deliver. It's just that now in the past few years with generative AI, it's easier than ever to just dial it in, to just have ChatGPT or whatever language model you're using, write a message and send it to your team without any additional thought.

5:06Allison Shapira:And it's that speed that is causing us to lose our soul, so to speak, our personality, our authenticity. And what I have found over 20 years is that authenticity is what builds trust. And trust is what leads to action and results, not just in business, but outside business as well.

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6:12Allison Shapira:So the importance is the intentionality with which we use these AI tools. And in my book, AI for the Authentic Leader, I created a framework called the AI Authenticity Loop, which helps people understand how to use AI as part of the process. And the idea is, it's not that the human is in the loop, which is what the AI experts like to say. The human is the loop. And we bring in AI along that process. And I actually have a download of that framework that anyone listening or watching can use at alisonshapira.com slash AI. They can find that tool. Nice.

6:54John Busby:We'll put that in the show notes for the listeners. I know with me, when I started interacting with AI and decided I was going to use it in a repeatable way, I had to give it a set of prompts and instructions initially. one thing was please stop complimenting me when we're going back when we're going back and forth I don't want to be complimented to talk to me in a direct fashion and then um as it started providing me information which I which I used um there is there is sort of like feeding it relevant information but also in my mind telling it how to be me is that is that a fair is that a fair way of saying it, maybe describe the framework for the audience as the overview, the model or framework and how they can put it to practice.

7:44Allison Shapira:There's actually an even better framework that I just developed after publishing the book that I call AVI, your authentic voice intelligence blueprint. And so AVI is a play on words with AGI, which means artificial general intelligence. But AVI is recognizing you can create a blueprint of your authentic voice. And it's a questionnaire I created where people can write down what their values are, what their leadership style is, how they like to communicate when they're at their best, what are some of their favorite expressions or sayings. then they can take the results of that questionnaire, put it into a language model, and use a prompt in order to create their own authentic voice blueprint that they can then use to create their own custom chatbot based on their voice.

8:36Allison Shapira:What this requires is for you to be intentional and thoughtful about what is your voice? What does it sound like? What does it not sound like? And once we can write that down, then we can be more intentional and scalable in the a way that we use our voice in a way we could never have done before.

8:53John Busby:And I think that you talk about authenticity, but also uniqueness, what makes our communication styles unique is really important to setting ourselves apart. I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit. I do a lot of my business networking on LinkedIn. And there's this type of post. It almost reads like a noir detective style, like punchy sentences to, you know, two sentence paragraphs, everything's a platitude. And it's like, it's like whoever, whoever started doing this first, it worked, but now, now it's all, it's all I receive. And what I find myself really honing in on are, are the, the voices where I feel like they're coming out of it.

9:41John Busby:And I honestly don't know whether they're using AI or not. I just know, I just know that it sounds like them.

9:46Allison Shapira:And that's such an important point because I too started initially to use that because I was asking AI to help me reword my posts. And I loved the punchiness. I thought, wow, it's not me, but it's better than me. And I really liked it. But then in one week, I saw four of my colleagues all use the same style. And I thought, if everyone is different, nobody is different. And I believe that as AI smooths out our communication style. It's the jagged edges of authenticity that are going to stand out.

10:20John Busby:What's a way that, or maybe you could talk about some of the ways that you work with generative AI yourself to sort of program your own AVI, I guess.

10:31Allison Shapira:I'd be happy to talk about it. So I wanted to make sure that what I was creating and using with clients was a valuable tool for myself as well. So I created this questionnaire and I created a custom GPT based on it using chat GPT. And I uploaded the PDFs of my books so that I could train it on my voice and my writing style. And now if I want help with a LinkedIn post or one of my weekly newsletter articles, I write it first and then I feed it into my own chatbot in order to streamline it and finesse it, but make sure it maintains my style and tone. So the punchy sentences are one telltale of AI.

11:15Allison Shapira:Another one is the counterpoint. Leadership isn't just about this, M-dash, it's about that. And so I've had to go back and forth with AI in order to say, listen, I don't want you to do that. Give me instructions. Help me update my own instructions so that it avoids this style. And then I'll try it. And again, it'll put in the contrast and I'll say, no, really, you're still doing it. How do I update these instructions so that you stop doing it? So again, what I'm doing is I'm asking AI how to use AI. And this is something I recommend everyone use because you don't have to figure it out yourself.

11:57Allison Shapira:You can just say, it's not right. It's not working. Help me improve it so that it gets to where I want to go. And that's an important process that all of us can use because these tools are evolving and we're evolving in how we use them. And overall, there's terrific benefit in having these tools, but we have to be intentional in how we're using them.

12:21John Busby:Yes, it's true. We often call these our virtual assistants. If we were hiring a human assistant, they need to be trained. We would need to invest a lot into having the assistant really make me more productive. So that's absolutely, absolutely true. You mentioned some things that may erode trust, the M-dash, the contrast, that sort of thing. How would a leader in your mind be transparent, let's say, that they're using AI for internal company messages? Or how can a leader set an example that they're using AI responsibly, ethically, but in a way that helps the business and sets an example?

13:11Allison Shapira:I'm so glad you asked that question because there's research starting to come out now showing the impact of overusing AI. So there was a study last year that showed that when supervisors over relied on AI for routine communication, their subordinates viewed them as less confident, less genuine, less caring. And the subordinates, they judged their superiors more harshly for the same AI use that they did themselves. So it's an interesting situation where now you can understand why nobody wants to disclose that they're using AI because they'll be judged. And if they overuse it, then it can reduce trust and connection.

13:56Allison Shapira:So first and foremost, I recommend that when leaders use it, again, they're intentional about how they're using it. They're creating their own authentic voice blueprints to use with it. And then think about what kind of message is this? How much do I need to have my own personal touch on this message? Because if your employees think that they're not important enough for you to spend the time on the message, that becomes an issue. So I believe in the next few years, attention is going to equal importance. Now, you could say it's probably always been the case. It's just easier to not pay as much attention.

14:37Allison Shapira:So I do believe leaders need to be intentional about when they are and aren't using it. And if they're using it, and I had that happen internally with my own team, a colleague of mine was preparing for a conversation and she said, you know what, this is a really important conversation. I used AI to help me prepare for it. And here are some of the ideas I had. And I loved that because I was also using AI to prepare for that conversation. And so it was interesting how both of us were using AI and we wound up disclosing to one another that AI was helping us with it. And it actually made for, I think, a better relationship between the two of us because we could share that we were using these tools in order to have a more productive conversation.

15:22Allison Shapira:And that, in my mind, was a great example.

15:25John Busby:I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about actual in real life speaking. You teach communications, you lecture, you spend a lot of your career speaking in front of people, and anyone listening can tell that you're in the top percentiles of enunciating, articulating, thinking and speaking clearly. And I'd love to maybe hear a couple of tips for in real life speaking, I can say one that I learned from my time in debate is it didn't matter if I was right. It didn't matter if my argument was right. It mattered if the judge who's deciding who wins or loses thinks my argument is right. And one of the things that I learned is to pay attention and look at the people that I'm speaking to to try to pick up cues to understand if they're vibing what I'm saying.

16:23John Busby:So that's something that I learned from debate. I'd love to hear something that maybe you learned if you can think back from the actual opera stage or from all of your time lecturing or talking communications as something that you learned that could benefit the audience.

16:38Allison Shapira:Let's talk about what I learned training to be an opera singer, because while I didn't realize it at the time, opera was actually an incredible preparation or foundation for me for public speaking, perhaps not in terms of strategy and content creation, because opera singers don't write their own material. It's like, who do you think you are, Mozart? But on the delivery side, the most powerful tool I learned was this two sides of the same coin. First, how to breathe in a way that harnesses my voice, and then how to exhale and speak on the breath in a way that projects my words forward. And this is something, it's a challenge I see so many speakers and podcasters face because they might take in a nice deep breath, but then they hold it back

17:30John Busby:and they speak like this

17:32Allison Shapira:and their voice trails off. And it creates a sound called vocal fry. And what's happening is they're constricting the air through their vocal cords. So the vocal cords aren't vibrating and producing a strong, powerful tone. And so when you do that, you withhold the power of your words. So I learned through opera to take in a nice breath and then to exhale in a way that lets the breath project my words forward so that the power of my voice matches the power of my words. And that's something I wish more speakers and leaders would learn because they're holding back their effectiveness through ineffective breathing and speaking.

18:19John Busby:Yeah, and that's really, really great advice. As you were thinking, as you were saying that, I was thinking about my own breathing. I'm not even sure if I'm doing it correctly. I also learned one about enunciation, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts about that. That one thing that we would do is I'm going to reach back here is we would read a book aloud with a pen kind of like kind of like between our teeth as a way of forcing yourself. When it when it came out, you automatically enunciated more. Otherwise, when the pen's in your mouth, you can't actually understand the words. Curious if there's anything like that in the in the opera world.

19:01Allison Shapira:it's interesting that you ask that because I was thinking to myself wow what a great technique to use so opera singers spend a lot of time thinking about diction because a we're speaking we're often singing in a language the audience doesn't speak and we have to be able to pronounce the words in a language we may not speak ourselves and secondly even if we are speaking or singing in English, the length of the tone makes it hard for the audience to necessarily understand what we're saying. So I'll never forget when I left opera and later became a folk singer, a very well-known folk DJ met me at a folk conference.

19:43Allison Shapira:I gave him one of my albums and introduced myself. I used to say I was a recovering opera singer inspired by Joan Baez, and he took the album and I'll never forget what he said. He said, even without hearing you sing, I know I'm going to enjoy this album because because you were an opera singer, I know I'm actually going to understand your words.

20:06John Busby:That's funny. That's true. Also, back to the kind of the boardroom, if we're all spending a little bit extra energy trying to understand what someone is saying, that takes away, I think, a little bit from the speaker. Now, you mentioned singing in other languages. Oftentimes, we're communicating with people from other cultures, other parts of the world, maybe English as a second language or a third language. You've taught communication in places all over the world. Is there some sort of universal truth about human connection that holds true regardless of culture or language in your mind.

20:48Allison Shapira:I absolutely believe there are so many points of connection among us, regardless of where we grew up or what languages we speak. And I've taught communication and leadership on nearly every continent. And in my class at Harvard, I have students from all around the world. In fact, it's almost 75 % international students some years who are in my class. And so what I find is no matter what language you speak or where you grew up, first and foremost, everyone gets nervous speaking in public because everyone's nervous about looking foolish in front of their peers. That's not a cultural difference. That's a universal human trait because it's evolutionary.

21:36Allison Shapira:We survived and thrived as a species because of our ability to form connection with other humans. And so anything that potentially threatens that connection, like speaking up, saying something that might make you stand out from the group, can be perceived as dangerous and has that visceral reaction within us. And I see that everywhere. And also, I see how the potential for harnessing those skills can be used to create a greater sense of connection among everyone in the room. And I see that no matter where I am. Again, it's a human quality. And I love that because what it means is the more I travel, the more I realize how similar we all are on that profound human level.

22:26John Busby:It's so true. And it is also fun to learn how different nuances and communications are important. I won't talk about the specific country or the specific company, but there's someone that I work with a lot. Every email I receive from this person sounds like they're angry with me, to me, to me. And I know after getting to know this person that they're not angry. It's just a type of communication style that I'm not accustomed to during doing most of my business with other, you know, people living in America and having done business in America for most of their, of their, their, their career. And so, you know, it makes me, it makes me kind of, kind of, kind of think like, we don't want to let people down when we speak.