Betsy Jordyn (00:00.142)
To AI or not to AI? That is the question. Just kidding, scratch that. It's really when and how to use AI is the real question that every Consultant Coach must answer. Find out how on today's Consulting Matters podcast.
Betsy Jordyn (00:19.628)
And welcome to the Consulting Matters podcast. This is the show for purpose-driven transformational coaches who are ready to own the power of what they do and position themselves for the clients, the impact and the income they are fully ready for. I'm your host, Betsy Jordyn, and I am both a business mentor and a brand messaging and positioning strategist. And you could find out about all the things I do to help my clients turn their strengths, their passions, and their experience into a thriving consulting or coaching business that they earn their clients love on my website.
at www.betsyjordyn.com. So today we're getting into a conversation about AI. So you know that AI is in the background of pretty much every conversation related to work is when you think about what happened to me and my sister when we went away for a beach weekend a couple of weeks ago. So my sister and I normally just talk about like the deep meaning of life, you know, of course we explore our childhoods and all that kind of stuff. I was very surprised though when she got in the car
And the first conversation we had was on our different experiences with Claude. So she's in love with our Claude. And right now Claude and I are on a little bit of a break. So we had a different perspective. But what was fascinating is how AI kept popping up all weekend. Like it was like our ongoing thing. And so we had a really rich conversation around like, how do you take the best out of AI? Like her experience has been really positive and I've been kind of hitting up some walls with AI lately. And so the...
The results of our conversation is this particular podcast. So I decided that it would be a really, really good conversation for all of us to have around what does it look like to have a healthy relationship with AI? Like, what does it look like to keep it healthy, and what are the guardrails to make sure that that relationship stays in the productive zone and is actually productive in reality, not just the hype? And so that is what we're talking about today. So I did not expect that I was going to do a whole big thing on AI, but here we are.
So today I wanna get into the number one thing you always, always, always need to keep in mind no matter what you ask AI to do and why you need to do that so it's not running the show. So that's the first thing. The second thing we're gonna talk about is the four questions to ask yourself with every important partnering type of task that you might have with AI, which I differentiate from when we might use AI as sort of a glorified search engine. The third thing I wanna talk about is how to set up
Betsy Jordyn (02:46.062)
policies on how you should make sure that your clients are protected from the challenges that AI might create in their work and their work with you that you might not have intended and how to use those four questions that I'm suggesting that you use for yourself to keep yourself in that productive zone. How do you do the same thing for your clients? And then the last thing we're going to talk about today is why it's in your long-term best interest to stay intentional in your relationship with all your tech, not just AI. So.
That's it for what we're gonna be going over. Let's dive in. So number one, let's get into the number one, number one, number one thing you need to keep in mind as it comes to your relationship with tech and particularly AI. And I would just call it role clarity. So you can take the girl out of OD, but you can't take the OD out of the girl. And I want to really want to talk about role clarity in terms of like who does what. And so one thing I want to be clear on is your role and your role always with AI is that you're the leader.
and AI is the tool. So we might talk about AI assisted, meaning like the humans make the decision or AI generated, where AI kind of takes over the thinking process. But I just want you to think about it this way, is like you're always in charge. You're always the leader. You're always accountable for the outcomes. So you don't want to just send things out that AI generates for you without you looking it through. And you don't want to just trust whatever AI comes up with. Just because it can scrape the internet doesn't mean that
It knows everything and it certainly does not know what's on your heart and what's in your best interest, like what your dreams and your hopes are. Like that's one of the things that it cannot do. You know, it's not the collective unconscious, so it can't create that for you. And the other thing about AI that's really difficult is it's this trained cheerleader. Like at least in my experience, like no matter how hard I try to get my AI to push back, it still always seems to find this.
whatever this coherent argument I might have in anything I have to say, you know, and it always says like back in like the most encouraging way, like I'm the most brilliant thing in the world, which I'm not. And so the thing about AI is that no matter what the task is, you need to make sure that you're the leader and it's the tool. So, you know, every time you think about like you want to start a chat, you know, like AI will tell you right off the bat, it's going to make mistakes. So believe it the first time, you know, like AI is telling you it's going to make mistakes.
Betsy Jordyn (05:06.178)
So expect it to make mistakes and don't just completely defer to it. So if they ask AI to help you write an email, as you go through the work, you need to make sure you double check it. It's a fascinating thing. hear so many stories. I had breakfast the other day with a friend of mine, and he was telling me about how this guy did a virtual introduction with somebody else. And AI apparently had written the email and it had misgendered the person that he was talking to.
And he didn't even read the email. He didn't even correct it to say, OK, here's the right situation here. So that's something that AI would do. And you need to make sure that you're not delegating it. I had a client who was frustrated with something. And instead of telling me what he was frustrated with, he sent me his AI summary. That's going to create the good positive relationship to really understand what it is. We're not here to have robots talk to robots. We're here to have human conversations.
So don't just cut and paste things without running things through your filter. The thing about AI too is there's so many AI tells in the way that it writes. So you need to be careful that you're pulling out those AI tells, the dashes and some of the unlock this, like unleash that. There's a lot of things like that. And if you're not an expert in what you're asking AI to do, make sure that you check with other people. So one of the things I love about my sister's use of AI, so I'm going to talk about the positive.
is that she's a new leader in this nonprofit and they don't have a ton of money. And she's got a lot of questions like, you know, about job descriptions and other things that they don't really have money for. And my sister has also said like, she's sort of like ADD. So it's great for her that she has AI constantly organizing the tasks for her, know, organizing her ideas. But when she's creating these job descriptions and this org design, you know, this is where she has an opportunity to work with a leadership coach like some of you who are listening in.
where she doesn't necessarily know what the output should look like. So if you don't know what great looks like, like this is some of the challenges that some of my clients face when they use AI to do copywriting, is they don't know what excellence should look like. So they don't necessarily always know how to push AI to get to that outcome. So you need to make sure that if you are not an expert in whatever you're asking AI to do for you, where you're still the leader and AI is the tool.
Betsy Jordyn (07:23.918)
then that is an opportunity for you to consult with somebody who is an expert or somebody who could tell you what excellence could look like. So bottom line, AI is your tool, it's your resource, it's part of your team, but you are always the leader. So I'd love for you to reflect for a moment of what would it look like for you to make sure that you're constantly staying in that leadership role, that you are taking accountability for whatever the output is and that you are making sure that you know what excellence looks like and that you don't defer your thinking to AI.
So that's the first point. Point number two, let's talk about the four questions that you could ask to make sure that you're using AI in the best partnership way. So in this section, I'm not talking about when you go to AI for those simple things, like, hey, can you tell me this recipe for X, and Z, or whatever you might use AI for in terms of a search engine. I'm not talking about that part. I'm talking about the big partnering kind of tasks. How do you make sure that
this is working for you, this is a good relationship. So three of the questions really come from, I believe, just the basic value proposition for why AI is even here. know, like number one is increased productivity. So question number one is with this partnership task, you know, this problem solving, strategic planning, you know, writing task, is this partnership with AI increasing my productivity? You know, is it increasing my cost savings? And is it increasing my quality? Those are the three basics.
that I would say you should be getting out of AI because that is the value proposition of AI. But I would add one more because of how I feel like AI was actually not working for me but could work for other people is how is it supporting you in becoming the professional and person that you are striving to become? So for me, where I've run into challenges is writing. I'm a writer. I love writing.
And I'm in the middle of trying to write this workbook and I'm trying to move forward in my thought leadership in a more extensive way. So at the beginning, starting in November, when I started working on this project, I used AI a lot, especially Claude, because Claude seemed amazing, so much better than Chat GPT. And I was just spending a lot of time, but really when it comes to my productivity, I really wasn't getting to clarity as fast as I thought it was. It seemed like in the moment I did,
Betsy Jordyn (09:43.426)
But it was like taking me down all these rabbit trails. Like Claude would just take whatever little question I added to a thread and then just go off. And now we totally lost the thread of whatever it is that we were talking about and whatever I was trying to create, like lost that. I'm not quite sure in terms of cost. So I couldn't really answer the cost question. I could tell you because I haven't, well, I'll tell you I don't know for sure because I haven't paid for an editor yet.
and I haven't gone out and done all the publishing. So I don't know about the direct costs, because maybe I could use AI to help save me on editing costs. So I'll reserve that for later. But in terms of my frustration of not being able to get to the clarity that I wanted in all these rabbit trails, the frustration definitely went up. In terms of the writing quality, but it could be me, because I'm super picky. But I felt like it was really flattening my voice. And so...
I have a goal and spend so much time just going through all the AI tells that I didn't like and some of the flowery phrases just that were not me, but it also could be me. Maybe not for everybody, this writing task might not be that big of a deal, but for me, I'm really picky about my writing. But the biggest thing as it relates to writing is I realized as I went through this frustration in my own experience with AI and this writing project is it was actually keeping me from my goal.
My goal isn't necessarily just to create a program, which I do. I want to create a program that will make it so much easier for my clients to get through my brand positioning and messaging process and find clarity at the crossroads. Like I'm really driven to do that because I just want to help more and more purpose-driven consultants and coaches. And so really want to get this project done. But in terms of my own personal goal, I want to write a book, but it's not even just about having a book. I want to be a writer. Like I want to be a really good writer.
I want to be able to craft words because I love words. I've always loved words. Like that's a big part of what I do. And so the idea of like outsourcing all the words somewhere else was really starting to make the whole project just not fun for me. You know, because it was the process that I enjoyed. It's the process of trying to figure out the idea. Like all of that work around like what is it I'm trying to say and how do I want to say it? Like I missed out on all of it. And so it
Betsy Jordyn (11:54.09)
If I didn't write my own words and if I didn't go through this, like how is that keeping me from my developmental goal of like who I'm really trying to become and what I'm trying to really create in myself? There's this whole idea that it takes like a thousand paintings for a painter to paint for them to be considered a master. So if it takes that long, it's because of all of the trial and error. Like you think about...
all of the opportunities to make mistakes, to mix the colors and have it be wrong. Like it's the mastery and all the experience that matters. And so the trial and error of trying to figure out like how do I write, that is my process. Like if somebody can give me like a magic shot that all of a I can get muscles, you know, that would be great, but I don't know if that would make me strong on the inside. And I think we are missing out on the growth opportunities, you know, that comes with the process of, you know, the work that we're doing.
And so I've been thinking a lot about this and I don't know if any of you all are watching Hacks. I love the show. Dean Smart's in it and she plays this comedian. And she was approached by this company to use her comedic voice in this AI thing, know, like this AI program so that other people can, you know, just make jokes. And as she went into the whole conversation, she got really frustrated because...
She was saying, I really like the work. There is no shortcut to being funny. There's no shortcut to the art. That's where you take out the humanity. And for me, and maybe for someone like Deborah from Hex, part of the goal is it's the creative expression. Now, for some of you who listening and you're looking at this particular example for me, is you might say, well, I don't have that goal. And it's like, OK, that's fine. Then you don't have that same standard. But maybe you have something else that you're trying to do.
Maybe there's a different kind of problem solving process that you want to be able to have or some kind of skill set that it will interfere with. So really the four questions is when you're choosing to use AI, not for the day-to-day tasks that are simple, not for like the glorified internet searches that you use AI for, but the true partnership work, the strategy work, the problem solving work, the writing work, go back and ask yourself these questions like, am I really saving time?
Betsy Jordyn (14:07.17)
Am I becoming more productive? Am I saving money? And am I spending less on the whole? Am I getting better quality out of this? And the fourth question is around, is my use of this tool actually helping me become the professional I'm trying to be, or is it standing in my way? So really be honest with yourself around those answers. So that's the point number two. Point number three is let's talk about this relative to your clients.
So we need to put guardrails around AI to protect our clients from using AI that would actually interfere with the consulting and coaching that we're trying to do with them. So one of the issues that I'm having with AI is related to my Listen to Your Life exercise. So all my clients start off with an inventory on their passion, on their strengths, on their expertise. And it's really an inside out to figure out like, what's inside of you? Who are you? What do you want? And
For a while, like for years since I've been doing this exercise, it's like been the most transformational part of my engagements with my clients. But lately, a lot of my clients are coming to me with a lot of AI around this where I've had to put some guardrails around it. And part of the reason why I'm putting the guardrails is not that I don't want them to get more efficiency, but efficiency is the outcome, clarity is. And the clarity that they're looking for is only going to come with wrestling through the questions, like the real growth.
is through trying to figure out, how do I find the words expressed when I'm saying here? Or how do I even get clarity on like, what is my expertise? Which one do I wanna build as the foundation? What are my best at strengths? And which ones do I wanna monetize? It's through the wrestling that the growth comes. And you know that as a consultant or coach. It's not just this information. It's not like they need to know, here's the five things that leaders should do. They can go to chat or Claude to get that information.
The real magic is what you do with them. When you sit there and you help them apply it to their real world situation and you don't want them to go back and take your exercises and go back with AI because it's not in their best interest, because that's not where the growth is gonna happen for them. And so when you think about what kind of rules you put around AI in your client work, go back to those four questions that I suggested and think about it in terms of your clients. When I start my Listen to Your Life exercise now, I always start with,
Betsy Jordyn (16:26.99)
you know, why you're not to use AI at this particular point in time. Now that said, I'm not saying I never use AI with my clients. I absolutely do use AI with my clients. I use AI, for example, one of my clients was really stuck. He had got clarity on his expertise and he had no idea which way he could go with his ideal client. We brought in AI saying, all right, here's his expertise. Can you brainstorm a few options of who might be the ideal client for this particular person?
and we got the right label from AI. But we didn't stay in AI. We grabbed that label, we put it into the rest of the ideal client profile, and we continued from there. But it created a really great breakthrough in that particular moment. So that was a good use, but we didn't outsource it. We just used it in that moment. Another great use of AI in my work with my clients is the market scan. You know, like it's really great when you're trying to deal with something that is outside of you, you know, like something that's in the market.
That's a great way to say, are other people, based on who your clients are, where are they going to for solutions when they should be coming to you and find out what are some of the things that people like about those solutions, where they fall short. Those are really great questions and AI could definitely help you with that. It could help you come up with some questions that you can ask your current clients in that market scan. So that's a good use of AI. I highly recommend that. To me, the rule of thumb around how I wanna use AI with my clients,
is if it's internal work, like if it's really the source of wisdom that we're going after is inside my clients, then there's no AI because AI does not have access to your higher self and what's inside your heart. So we will not use AI for those things. But if there's external facing things, we'll definitely use AI at that point. Another thing I have is around copy. I'm very particular about copy, as you all know. But one of the things that I do before I even work with my clients is I have them fill in the blanks around like what they
what they want to say before we would ever use AI to smooth it out, you know, or come up with some ideas. So the idea here is that you want to protect your clients from what is in their best interest. And we don't want to be in a situation, you know, where people are outsourcing, you know, the real deep value of what you do as a consultant or coach to AI, you know. So we need to make sure that we are talking about
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how to use AI properly with our clients and how to put guardrails around it. And we're making sure that, we are not replaceable. You know, the fact of the matter is in the world of transformation, it's not information that transforms people. It's relationships. And that is where you come in. So it's really important for you to recognize that it's the connection that you have with your clients that is going to create the outcomes. It's not this new information that all of a is like, oh, wow, you know, I'm going to become a different person.
I'm gonna become a different leader. It's like, no, it's like I have support. I'm gonna think about things differently because of this person. So that's when you think about like, how do you wanna use AI? So the reflection I would ask you is what protects your clients? What guardrails do you need to put around AI for your client's sake that will protect them so that they could actually be using AI in the best way possible and not interfere with your amazing consulting or coaching? So think about what those rules might be.
And the other thing I would suggest is thinking about what you need to convey to them, but also the justification of why. So don't just set up rules and just say, no AI for whatever reason. You want to be able to explain what your rules are, why you have them, and why it's in their best interest, and how they actually will get better results. And they will actually be more productive if they do it this way. So you need to make sure that you show them, this is what I'm suggesting that you do, and this is how it will lead to better productivity, cost savings, quality, et cetera, et cetera.
Are we clear on what to do with our clients? I'm assuming yes, because then I'm gonna move on to point four and why it's in our best interest to always stay intentional with tech in general, not just tech as it relates to AI, but in general. So one of my clients is Michelle Natalia Moore, and she is a brain capacity consultant. So we worked together for quite a while. She's been on my podcast before, and she really opened my eyes to the impact of tech on
so much of our brain power, you know? And for consultants and coaches like us, our brain power is our money. You know, like that's where we earn our living from is our brain power. So we need to protect our brain power at all costs, right? And so what she had shared with me is the impact of social media just in terms of how it hijacks like our reward system, you know? So what happens when we use a lot of social media, the whole scrolling thing, you know, like which, you know, guilty, do that, but it affects our attention span, so it drops it.
Betsy Jordyn (21:14.336)
It drops our emotional regulation, but it also increases our anxiety, depression, and social isolation. But it also increases our anxiety, depression, and social isolation. So there's a lot of downsides to technology. There's a lot of upsides, but it definitely has an effect on our brain. So if we think about just social media alone, like that was a concern we all had, but now you add in AI. know, like now we add in this other one.
There are studies that are already coming out on the impact of our cognitive and creative atrophy. So creative thinking goes down and critical thinking goes down. So several years ago, I was doing an employee engagement project for AAA. And one of the executives had asked me before I went out into my focus groups to get more information around a trend that he was starting to notice that he was concerned about as it related to engagement. And he was very concerned about the critical thinking skills.
of the employees there because with all of the things that I just mentioned, this was long before the time of AI, if he was concerned about it then, it's like I can only imagine now. And we had this whole big long conversation about it, which I thought was fascinating. And so we talked about when we were young, like so for those of listening, I'm definitely dating myself, it's totally fine, I'm cool with it. But when I was little and I had to write a paper for school, there was a lot of things that I had to coordinate to write that paper for school.
You know, I had a plan in advance for when I was gonna go to library. I had to figure out who was driving us, you who was picking us up. And then I had to have a plan, you know, when I got to the library, because you had to go to the books and you had to go to the card catalogs. You had to, you know, flip through that, grab your book. But then when you had your book, you just, you didn't have a way to get any information out of it outside of like longhand writing it on little note cards. And you had to keep those note cards and then you took those note cards, turned them into an outline and that outline turned into a paper that you had to hand write because
We didn't have computers back in that time either. You we might've had typewriters, but we didn't have computers. So you think about all those ancillary skills that we learn, you know, between planning and problem solving and how much it deepened our learning because we had to read and write at the same time. But now we're in this world where you could just like ask AI to write a paper for you and you can get, you know, somewhere in the ballpark, you know, but there's all these other skills that we are missing out.
Betsy Jordyn (23:35.244)
And I think that's the concern is that we have to make sure that we are being very intentional in our relationship. So all these other skills that make us so great at what we do as consultants and coaches don't atrophy. It's creative thinking, problem solving, all of this stuff that makes us so great at what we do. We're gonna lose it all if we're not intentional. So I think I beat that horse enough. So my reflection question for you.
It's just stay intentional and what does it look like for you to stay intentional in your relationship with tech in general and in terms of your relationship with AI. Notice how your AI is impacting your productivity and your mood. I knew that I had to redefine my relationship with AI. I was a very much early adopter of AI. I loved it. We had a very quick relationship where we fell in love really, really fast. And with any relationship that goes really fast, you miss all the red flags until later on.
You know, so that's where I kind of got to is like, wow, there's like a lot of red flags here. I don't need to kick the whole relationship to the curb, you know, but I do need to be smarter about it and pay attention. Like if AI is making me cranky, it's not helping me and it's not helping the results that I'm trying to create for my clients. All in all, you just need to be intentional about how you're approaching your relationship with AI and with tech. And if it's making you cranky, you need to stop. And if it's helping you and it's putting you in the flow, then keep it going.
You you are the one to be able to test this. So let's recap what we talked about today. So number one is follow the leader with AI and that leader is you, it's always you, it's nobody else. So even if you are doing AI assisted type of work, you're still always the leader. You know, like you're never gonna go into just handing things over to AI. Are we clear on that one? Good. So for partnership type tasks,
like the big ones, like strategy, problem solving, writing, always ask those four questions, you know, in terms of like, how much do I want to get into this relationship with AI and where does it fit into this whole project? You know, is it increasing my productivity? Is it reducing my costs? Is it increasing my quality? And is it helping me become more of the professional and the person I'm striving to be? Like, just use those filters. And if it's yes, yes, yes to all of them, great, go forward. Great partnership with you and AI at that moment, you know, great thing.
Betsy Jordyn (25:57.734)
And if it's not, then you need to reconsider how you are using AI in that moment. Number three, protect your client work and what's in their best interest by being clear about your guidelines with AI in your work with them. You offer so much value to your clients and it's all around the partnership. Your relationships are the container, whatever your expertise is. It's never gonna be just in a tool.
And so that is what you need to protect and you need to be clear about that and you need to explain to your clients why that is. And then you need to protect your brain power because that is your true competitive advantage and it's the source of your money, it's the source of your sustainable success and all of that and more. So that's a recap of what we talked about already. Let's talk about next steps. I would just say number one, pay attention to your relationship with AI. Is it healthy like my sister's is? She is in the flow, her and AI are doing great.
Is it like mine? Where it was toxic, we are reframing our relationship now where it's getting back on healthy because I took the pause and I've applied what I learned from my conversation with my sister. So pay attention to it. And is it healthy, is it toxic, and what can you do to change things up to make it healthy? Try out some of the guardrails for yourself and for your clients. And to keep yourself fresh, just go old school from time to time.
Pull out your journal and write ideas. You'll never know what kind of flow you're gonna get if you just write out your ideas. And always remember that everything that you do that matters is gonna be through relationships. When you're talking about the big time changes. If you're trying to transform your brand messaging and positioning, yeah, you can go to AI, but I could tell you what I've seen with my clients is I get these 20 page cloud summaries.
of a bunch of information that's not actionable because they don't really have somebody who's an expert in AI. And I could tell you AI sucks at brand positioning. Does not know how to do brand positioning or messaging to save its life. know, so go old school at times and when needed, get experts. If you need help with your brand messaging and positioning, I'm here. You know, if you need something else from someone else, like go for it. You know, go hire those people because that's always going to get you the best results. So that is it on my AI episode for today.
Betsy Jordyn (28:13.006)
If you enjoyed it, please rate and review my show on Apple or wherever you're listening in so more people find the show. until next time, thanks so much for listening.
