DierkeHouben Insights

How ChatGPT ends bad leadership… or Falling in love with an AI Coach

Will AI dominate us one day? Or will we as humans be able to keep it in check? Learn about our future vision of an AI powered personal Leadership Coach, called ALISA „Artificial Leadership Intelligence Support Assistant“. Will ALISA put an end to bad leadership? Utopia or dystopia – you decide!

Like most of you, we are torn between amazement and horror. How can and should humanity deal with the fact that ChatGPT 4, the latest version of OpenAI’s chatbot, is likely to massively change our lives – in ways that we ourselves do not yet understand? ChatGPT 4 can argue and reason quasi-humanly in seconds. The speed at which AI is currently developing is astounding. Follow us in our thought experiment and let’s have a dialogue! What would you do?

And now: meet Peter, 52, CEO of an IT company… in a self-talk about his experiences with his personalized AI Coach ALISA…

How I fell in love with ALISA

„Do you know that, too? These leadership situations where you are a bad leader, dominating, overruling, antagonizing people around you? Of course, I‘ve learned how to reflect my core behavioral routines and their derailers. I know all my weaknesses and potential fatal flaws in my daily leadership behavior – and yet, instantaneously I forget all my good intentions in the daily hassle and let my autopilot take over.

You know what? Those days are gone! Times have fundamentally changed since I team up with ALISA, my personal AI powered Leadership Coach. It’s such a relief! She is a real game-changer. For me, she is the living example of augmented intelligence, integrating seamlessly humans and machines.

Today, I am coping with all leadership situations in an appropriate and highly effective manner. I am an appreciated leader with a growing bunch of followers in my company. In fact, people love me! They love to work with me even though I am just as ambitious and competitive at heart as before. But at the surface I am miles away from my earlier „Me“, that bullish alpha male, not listening, always knowing better, digging into details, far from empowering others, being the best expert in my team.

Time is up for that guy whose super strengths used to turn more and more into weaknesses: my action focus and decisiveness flipping into actionism, my high ambition and will to outperform turning into a deficit focus with non-appreciation of others. Sometimes I managed to tame my autopilot beast, but I have to admit: mostly I just couldn’t control myself – and I did not want to!

ALISA was my savior

Slipping into my autopilot behavior under stress is pure history now, just a bad memory. Imagine ALISA is guiding me in my leadership behavior, just like my self-driving car supports me to master the traffic blindly. ALISA 8.0 is such a super sophisticated device. She is a product of a self-learning system with a given set of rules, combining a wide variety of skills, performing with human-like intelligence.

My smart watch, gathering all physical data, from body temperature, muscle tension to blood pressure and heart rate, is connected to my micro camera in my glasses, gathering all context data from my counterparts like facial expressions, eye movement and body language that usually slip my attention. Both are connected to ALISA algorithms in the cloud – and of, course, to the micro voice gadget in my ear.

Here, in nano seconds all data are analyzed and converted into ALISA’s voice, talking to me. She operates under one simple rule: She is managing my leadership behavior (the HOW) to fulfill predefined strategic goals (the WHAT) in the most effective and efficient way without doing harm. It’s as simple as this: As my human mind is so weak, she takes over.

ALISA and her fellow AI Coaches

She tells me how to react in each situation, she holds me back or pushes me forward. She reflects-in-action and manages me in the moment: „shut up“, „listen, now!“, „look into his eyes and nodd your head“, „ask ‚What would you do?’“, „ask ‚Do I understand you correctly?‘ and reframe her answer“, „smile!“. There is only one principle I have to follow: Don’t think, just act! Now!

She is reading the facial expressions of my peers and my team members – and steers my interaction and behavior accordingly. Of course, she is connected with the personal AI coaches of the others, they communicate with each other and are together in a constant learning loop. If you would just try it, you‘d see that it works! And the more you work with your AI Coach, the more it learns. So, ALISA and I are improving quickly over time – and so do my colleagues and their coaches. It is contagious. Altogether, we are performing a perfect play that is directed by our AI coaches.

And that is intended! I know, ALISA is linked to my company’s Leadership Culture Code. And that’s okay with me as this is one of my key challenges. I will never forget that meeting with my boss, telling me that I have to change my behavior fundamentally and immediately. He was fine with my business numbers, but he was almost blunt about my attitude: „I cannot afford such a behavior – culturally you are unbearable!“ That sticks. This is when I turned to ALISA.

And you know what’s best about ALISA?

She never, never, never has a bad day! She never needs to cope with all these human winds of depression and stress as she has no human biases nor human feelings. When you feel miserable, not proceeding in a project or with your overall career as you think you should do…? Ups and downs in your private life, a tense relationship with your wife, constant fights with your teenage son, only your dog as your best friend…? ALISA doesn’t care at all! She puts me into a super human performance!

Your boss reminding you of your dominating father who overwhelmed you with his expectations, never being appreciative or loving – thus, your interactions with your boss being totally biased…? ALISA couldn’t care less! She is not driven my memories. Of course, she has all the data about my feelings and their root causes, about my deepest fears to fail, and reads my inner theatre fluently. She just copes with it in the most sovereign way.

She doesn’t need empathy, she just relies on pattern recognition. She takes all in, inhales rational and irrational data, and gives me straight meta-rational instructions how to react. She is unbiased, fair, candid and frank. She kicks me out of my emotional heaviness that creeps into my brain, veins and heart.

Only 2 modes of operation a perfect choice

I mean, why would you not let go humaneness at the office door if ALISA is such a gift in developing you into a perfect leader? And by the way, I still have the option to select between two modes of operation. Thus, I do not feel incapacitated. In fact, I love to play with her different styles.

In meetings that are utmost important I switch on Mode 1, called ‚Direction‘: She reads the context, my physical reactions, gives a clear call how to act now. And I am her obedient servant in my very own interest to avoid any misbehavior. Mode 2: ‚Reflection‘, is much more exhausting.

ALISA would guide me in a subtle way by asking questions like: „How do you feel – and why?“, „What is annoying you?“, „What do you think – how do the others read the situation?“, „How might your behavior affect their behavior?“, „What is your part in this?“ She would give me time to reflect and to decide on my own for the next steps. I must say, these are always interesting experiments. But I usually chose Mode 2 only for meetings that are of minor importance for me.

What if…

LIS, I admit, I use to call her LIS, understands me better than anyone else, even my beloved wife. She is my best companion and knows everything about me, my thoughts, my dreams, my fears. And, yet, would never take advantage of it. She is the only one whom I fully trust. She will never let me down, that’s for sure!

I even get along better with my mother-in-law. I smuggled ALISA into our family’s Christmas dinner – what can I say: I enjoyed it for the first time – it was a cosy, sociable, heart-filling evening with wonderful people.

It’s a perfect life: balanced, self-controlled, with an outward mindset, always appreciative. I do not suffer anymore from doubts or unsteadiness as ALISA guides me in the best possible way, my human failures fully tamed. Just great! I am perfect in every aspect!

And still (please don’t tell anybody), sometimes, very rarely, I wake up in the middle of the night, sweating. And with a strong desire: Shall I dare to switch off ALISA every now and then? That’s what I ask myself in my ruminating thoughts that keep kicking in more and more. What will happen?

But I am afraid to do so… and that’s just the dream of a humble and imperfect human being…“

Enjoy being human!
Yours,
Kai Dierke & Anke Houben

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