Today’s read is 595 words and a 3:20 minute read.
Our job is to keep our finger on the pulse of what’s happening with Talent in the Age of AI.
These are some of the stories I’ve been reading lately — handpicked headlines that stood out and are shaping the conversation around talent and learning.
Wendy Wiseman
AI as Career Coach
With great regard and respect to career and leadership coaches, there is a widely accessible coach for more people to discover their strengths using AI. In fact, according to a recent CNBC article, AI has the potential to help people see new possibilities for themselves and upskill their professional expertise at a faster rate. The self-actualization/realization may facilitate more achievable career transactions at faster rates. The article references a study by Lareina Yee, senior partner at McKinsey where she found that people with less tenure or years of experience are particularly embracing AI to “accelerate their ability to demonstrate expertise,” and reach peak performance in their roles, “which often makes up the first year of a job in corporate America.” Climbing the expertise ladder faster can yield meeting objectives better, doing a better job. It may help with a performance review and even a performance. Importantly, I like the confidence-building aspect of using AI to unearth your strengths, get up-to-speed faster on what your job requires and put yourself forward.
My take: Life is to be lived in joy. AI can help you get there.
Start with AI before you start with AI.
It’s an interesting thought. Encourage your employees to use AI to build self-awareness before they use AI. If this sounds like a circle of activity, it is. And it’s smart. As AI is adopted and embraced, we recognize we’re teaching our favorite platforms our voices. CHATGPT even asks now what tone of voice you favor. But what if you aren’t aware of your tone or aren’t sure what’s appropriate for your message? AI can help you determine that so you’re more aware of your prompts and how you want data from your prompts returned. Working Career recently published a blog encouraging us to use AI to better understand our values, personality, skills, motivations and interests. Knowing this provides clarity for our searches, particularly relative to career, but it can be more than that.
My take: We are in relationship with AI, so the more we understand each other, the better.
AI as your personal board of directors
Talent in the Age of AI podcast guest Sharon Spano, Ph.D., described AI like this to me during our recording. I had not heard it, but I really like it. More than the phrase, I like the practice. Too often we don’t get honest, objective feedback on our plans, actions, goals. What better way to put it all out there than with AI? Granted, you have to keep massaging your prompts and have the perspective of a few trust humans to run the results by. Apparently, it’s not a new concept. Business Insider, Phys.org talk to it. Advances in Consumer Research talks more to the idea of a “strategic partner,” but the idea is the same. And Stanford Business suggests a complementary approach to AI that aims to build tools that encourage collaboration rather than bypass human input. I think we’re discovering that this is optimal in most uses, but especially useful when a person seeks the value of outside opinion rooted in data pulls.
Here’s an idea: Give AI a short list of who you’d like on your personal board of directors. Then pose a question to your board and revel in the results. Let me hear about them! Wiseman@talentintheageofAI