Welcome to the new Manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim Nichol. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well.
I want to start by just saying thank you for being here, not just for listening to this show, but for actually caring about how you manage people and by being curious and wanting to learn ideas that will help you be more effective every day and hopefully improve your quality of life as well as improve the outcomes that you're seeing in the workplace with the people
that you work with. You know, I, I live in San Francisco and next week is climate Week and there are hundreds of events happening all over the city, all related to climate and sustainability. I'm going to be hosting an event on manager readiness for climate professionals and for people that work in sustainability. And if that's you and if you're going to be in San Francisco, I'll put a link to the event in
the show notes below. And I would love for you to come and we can could meet and talk about some of this stuff in person. But the reason I mentioned it now is because when I think about what does it take in order for us to address the most complex challenges of our time.
And no matter how great the ideas are or how compelling the vision is, no matter how you know elaborate the solution or how sophisticated the technology or the the innovative ideas, at the end of the day, it requires people working together in order to implement and activate and make things happen. And that's not always easy. It's not always easy, even in the best of times, to communicate in a way that is understood or that is influential.
And it's not always easy to make hard decisions or to delegate work or to, you know, figure out how to reach your goals even when the conditions are not ideal. All of this has been on my mind also because I have started to learn about AI, about artificial intelligence and I will will tell you I, you know, on a scale of resistant to enthusiastic, I'm much more on the resistance side.
I am not an early adopter. I am not someone who is just excited to learn about all of the new technology and tools. You know, I really like getting to foundational principles and skills like how do 2 humans who have different ideas about how things should go? How do they communicate, you know, what happens in that conversation. So I tend to be someone who's more oriented towards the human interaction rather than, you know, the technology.
But because AI is here and I've, you know, been hearing more about it and more about it, and I'm finally starting to get curious. And I was attending an event recently and it was about ways to use AI in performance management and performance reviews and leadership. And that's all stuff I'm super interested in. And one of the speakers said something that's really stayed with me, and she said we can choose to use AI to amplify
empathy. And what that really meant to me was we can use this as a tool that helps us to connect better with each other. It can help us to communicate more effectively with each other. And most importantly, remembering that it's the human who is engaging with the tool that is really important. You know, there are so many tools and there's lots to learn
there. But remember that it's the human at the keyboard who is engaging with this tool and deciding how to implement and how to use it. And there's still a lot that, you know, we're figuring out around this, but the reminder that it's the human when we think about how are we going to use AI in our industry or in our workplace, that gave me a little bit of relief. Like, oh, right, that that's true, right? Like it requires a human in order to wield it, in order to use it.
And that's something that I want to include when we think about what does it mean to use AI in the workplace and as a manager. So for today, I wanted to simply signal to you that I am starting to get ready to talk more about AI and what that means for you as a leader and a manager. There's still so much that I'm learning. So you know, don't expect anything comprehensive anytime soon. I'm still learning what I want to share and what I want to talk
with you about. But it occurred to me to ask you, I am really curious to know, are you currently using AI tools in the course of your work? And if so, how? What kinds of things are you using it for? And if you're not using AI at all, I would love to know how you feel about it. Is it something that's on your radar?
Is it something like, you know, maybe similar to me, you're hearing a lot about it and maybe it just seems overwhelming or you're just, you know, resistant, not very interested in learning one more thing because you feel like your brain is already full. And you know who has the time to learn about this entirely new tool set? I'm really curious to know where you are in your relationship with this particular technology, in this particular tool set.
If you want to tell me about it, there are a couple ways you can do that because I truly would love to hear from you. One is you can find me on LinkedIn and message me there. You could leave a comment on this episode in Spotify. I don't think it's true for Apple podcast listeners, but if you are listening to this show on Spotify, you're able to submit a comment on this specific episode. It's not a review, it's a comment on this episode.
And so you could do it that way. And the third way is I might, I think I might create like a submission form. I'll put a link to that if you know if that's the easiest way to do it. But honestly, I would really love to know because I'm so curious. And if there's a particular way that you're using it or a tool that you're using, tell me about it and I'll check it out.
And if there's something that I can share with the rest of our listeners, I would be delighted to be able to pass along your best tip for using AI if you are, again, a person who's not excited about it at all. If you're actively resistant, you are in good company. You are not alone. And I want to hear from you too. Like, what's your feeling about it? And you know what makes you feel resistant? You know, it's interesting.
When I was working as a manager, the last full corporate job that I had, I was working with a team of people, many of whom were much, much older than I. And to give you some context, they had joined the company before the Internet, before there was e-mail. And I once asked them as part of like a team building exercise. I said, I want you to remember what it was like when you first started working at this company.
And I want you to think about, you know, what's what was different then compared to now and as context to the organization was going through a lot of change and it was just very difficult. And so I was doing a little bit of change management, change facilitation work. And so with my team, I asked them to think about, remember when you you first started working here, remember your first day on the job, what was it like and how is it different
then compared to now? What are all the things that have changed? And so many people said, oh, when I first started working at this company, there was an e-mail we had to, you know, send interoffice, you know, memo communications. And there were certain colors of paper for different kinds of messages and a certain kind of envelope. And you had to put it over here.
And it was so interesting to hear these stories of how technology had changed within our industry and the bigger world just in the course of their career within one organization. And so I feel like for us, we might be, you know, kind of on that cusp. We might be at that place where, you know, one day we say, yeah,
I mean, I used to have this job. I used to work in this organization, and there was an AI, and you had to do everything this way compared to now when we use AI for all these things. So, you know, I think about that because it's hard to know when you're in change exactly how that change is going to play out. But it's absolutely happening and it seems like the kind of thing that is good to get curious about and start paying attention to.
I think the key is to find a way to explore and to learn such that it doesn't become overwhelming, because I think it could very easily become overwhelming. And when we get overwhelmed, we tend to shut down. We tend to not remember things very well. It's not a great learning experience. So we want to activate the curiosity by being a little bit interested in what this technology means for us at work and what you might be able to do with it.
So let me know if you are enthusiastic, tell me why. If you are reluctant or just not interested, tell me why. And in future episodes to come, I am looking forward to sharing more with you about what I am learning that I think will help you to do your work in a way that feels both humane, ultimately, like still want to keep the human part of how we
work with other humans. But perhaps with some of these new tools, it might create more ease or it might change things in some interesting and hopefully positive ways. So that's what's on my mind today, and I'm really looking forward to continuing this conversation. All right, thank you so much for listening. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and your experience. I will talk to you again later. Have a great week. When you're more effective at work, you're happier in your
life. And when you're happier in your life, you're more effective at work. I can help. Go to my website kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult. It can get better.