There’s lots of chat at the moment about this thing called AI - have you heard of it? Occasionally I bump into someone who has really embraced AI and is using it almost daily, but more often than not, when I ask people if and how they use it, they’re a bit like me - excited by its potential, scared about an AI related apocalypse and baffled as to how to actually integrate it into our lives.
So I set myself the challenge of trying to use AI once or twice a week to help me with something. I used it to get an estimate on what some custom-made bookshelves might cost (the AI’s quotes were considerably cheaper than the real-life ones I’d received - I’m hoping that’s not one of its famous ‘hallucinations’). I asked it to make suggestions of what kind of pictures I might use to illustrate my last blog (although attempts to actually create the picture using AI were less successful). And then, last week, I asked it to create me a bespoke 10k training plan for a running race I’ve got coming up in September.
The first attempt was decent, but gave me 8 weeks plus race week when I needed just 8 weeks - and it had the distances in kilometres, not miles. I asked it to change these things - “Certainly!” it perkily replied - and then noticed a few other things that needed to shift - I wanted a long run on a Sunday, not a Saturday; I needed to see the total mileage each week and, when it added this figure in, some of the calculations were wrong. After noticing this final point, I sighed and turned away from my laptop. I couldn’t keep asking it to tweak things - I’d just have to use what it gave me and adjust it myself.
Then I caught myself. Of course I could keep asking it to tweak things! That’s the point of AI - you give it more and more information so its answers get better and better. They’re not foolproof, they’re going to make mistakes like not being able to count as well as my four year old - you just point it out and get it to correct. And yet, somehow, my instinctive reaction was not to keep giving it more information so it got better, but to feel awkward about being so demanding. Essentially, I was worried about hurting the AI’s feelings.
I found this revelation interesting - and, when I reflected on it, not hugely surprising. I know that this is a weak spot for me - not wanting to be perceived as too demanding as a leader, conscious of other people’s feelings and emotions, willing to just roll my sleeves up and take things on myself when needed rather than keep asking for more amends. There’s probably a multitude of reasons why I’m like this, which I’ll discuss with my therapist another time, but I suspect that being a woman might be one of them. The writer Tara Mohr, in her book Playing Big, describes how, for hundreds of years, women have not had power over themselves or their environments - unable to vote and, if they married, required to hand over all their assets to their husbands - until relatively recently in the history of our species. The repercussions of this won’t simply disappear, they linger in the culture - it’s why I think women are often excellent upward managers, socialised not to ask directly for what they want but finding ways in and around the power structures to make it happen anyway.
One of the ways this shows up for me is in the language that I use when writing emails. Mohr talks in her book about some phrases that we use to soften our language and dial down our assertiveness - “sorry”, “just”, “does that make sense?” and (my own personal Achilles heel) “no worries if not”. Once I’d read about this I realised that my messages were littered with these phrases and that, if I was writing an email that I knew may not be received well, or which contained a particularly bold ask, that language was more likely to slip in.
There’s a fine line here. There are definitely times when clearer, more direct language works better, and the “justs” and “I wonder ifs” are diluting the message, not enhancing it. But I also think that, sometimes, what we think of as ‘best’ - the more direct language more comfortably used by men - is, in essence, another form of misogyny - we value it more because it is used by men. There are occasions where a softer tone might be exactly right - perhaps you’re approaching a delicate subject, and you’re conscious of how the other person might react. This in itself can often be derided too - thinking too much about the other person’s feelings, or being too empathetic or sensitive can be seen as negative qualities in a leader - but I think there’s a growing recognition that, used in the right way, these can also be superpowers. Using the right language for the right situation is a skill. You can communicate in different ways and in different styles to suit your needs - there will be some ways of speaking and writing that come more naturally to me than others, but they’re all available in my toolkit and I can deploy the right one when I need it.
My other lesson from my interaction with the AI is not to feel awkward about asking it to continually redo and improve its answers. The AI literally thrives on feedback - the more prompts you give it, the better the output will be and the more it will grow in skill (which is probably a good thing, but come back to me when the apocalypse comes). To somehow feel like I can’t keep asking for better because I’ve already given it five prompts is entirely illogical. If we translate this into a human, workplace context there are of course many more considerations - if you delegate a task to someone, you can’t expect it to be done precisely the way that you would do it, and asking for tiny tweaks to a piece of work that’s good enough can be both demoralising and a waste of time. But, reader, there may be times when you, like I, have asked for a task to be done, received something that hasn’t been done very well, and, instead of sending it back with feedback, have simply made the adjustments yourself. Sometimes because it’s quicker, sometimes because it feels less awkward than having a conversation to explain the issues, sometimes because you’re not confident that the person you’ve asked will do it to the standard that you need. Most of the time, everyone’s long term interests are better served if you give it back and ask for better. You won’t waste time doing something that someone else could do, they’ll get better at the task and, hopefully, everyone will get a bit more comfortable giving and receiving feedback.
So I’ll go back to the AI and ask it to review its calculations, and add in a bit more tempo work, and suggest some cross-training activities I could do alongside the running sessions. But I won’t feel embarrassed about saying please and thank you to the AI for doing so - maybe when they all take over the world they’ll at least do it politely.
Such a boss move Emma. I agree that vagueness is the worst - either be very specific and directive, or empower people to do it their own way. I think the best leaders have both in their toolkit so they can deploy the most appropriate one for the situation.
As always I find your writing on leadership thought provoking and inspiring.
As someone who has more often been an employee than a boss I can say that there benefits to having a decisive boss, even if they are one that decides things you don't like.
The real killer though is having a vague boss. Someone who can't articulate what they want - just knows what they don't want. I suffered through that at one of the worst times of my personal and professional life and it was hell.
Now, as a consultant I often use all of the 'feminine' phrases you talk about above. Partly, probably, because I am a woman and socialised in all the ways you talk about.
But equally, if I have a certain amount of time devoted to a project, I find accepting the blame the fastest and quickest way to get beyond a problem and to a solution. I can then write that solution into any permanent strategic thinking going forward without it ever becoming an internal blame game for the organisation I am working with which would simply gum things. up.
So while I am not the 'leader' in this scenario, I am leading. And in doing so, sucking up the blame to move past it is, if you'll pardon the phrase, a boss move.