Episode #411 – Remaining Human in the Age of AI with Erica Keswin

Cherylanne Skolnicki:

I am Cherylanne Skolnicki, and this is Brilliant Balance, the show. For those of us who still dare to want it all, who have big dreams and bold ambitions, I think we deserve to have a big, full life and the freedom to enjoy it. So, let’s design our next chapter together for brilliance, not burnout. Each week I’ll bring ideas, insight, and a fresh perspective to keep you growing into a life that feels as good as it looks brilliant. Balance your life your way. Now let’s get started. This is episode 411 of the Brilliant Balance Podcast, remaining human in the age of AI with Erica Keswin. So if you’ve ever asked yourself what it really means to stay human in a world that’s increasingly powered by machines as AI reshapes the way that we live and that we work, I think staying grounded in our values and really connected to each other has never been more essential.

CS:

And that’s why I’m so glad that today I’m joined by Erica Keswin. She is a workplace strategist, a keynote speaker, a bestselling author whose work really sits at the intersection of technology, leadership, and importantly, human connection. Erica has spent over 25 years helping organizations build better, more people-centered cultures. She’s the author of three books, bring Your Human to Work Rituals Roadmap, and most recently, the Retention Revolution. Listen, we love a little alliteration around here. So, you’re in good company. Her insights have been featured in places like the Harvard Business Review, Forbes Fast Company, and she’s worked with really iconic brands like the NFL, Spotify and IBM to help leaders future proof their workplaces without sacrificing the things that make us human. So, in this conversation, we’ll talk about how to navigate the rise of AI, which is happening whether we like it or not, while preserving the things that really matter most, our relationships, our rituals, and our sense of purpose. Whether you’re tech curious or tech cautious, this one is going to leave you feeling grounded and inspired. So, let’s dive in. Erica, welcome.

Erica Keswin:

Thank you so much.

CS:

I love having you here. I love that we’ve gotten to chat once before because I always feel like these interviews are so rich when it’s not my very first time meeting somebody and, uh, I already know that the vibe was great and I’m really looking forward to this.

EK:

Great.

CS:

So, let’s set the stage. I mean, I think it’s always helpful to hear a little bit about how you got to where you are. I love when people start with little Erica. Tell me like, what was it like, what kind of world did you grow up in and what’s the kind of short version of how you got to where you are today?

EK:

Well, I’ve always been a connector, a connector of people and connector of ideas. I think from a very young age. Some people say my parents got divorced when I was 10, that if your parents are divorced, you tend to reach out to other friends and family members. And so maybe that connection starter there. Yeah, I would say two things that that really, that I’ll highlight that connect to what got me to this moment today. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. The first was in 1998. I was engaged to my now husband, Jeff, and Jeff invited me to join him at a conference in Bermuda. And I said, I can’t go. I’d love to go, but I can’t because I’m saving my vacation days for our honeymoon. But I had literally just gotten, and this will, this, this dates me, but I got a Blackberry, which at the time I thought, wow, that thing is going to allow me to work from anywhere mm-hmm <affirmative>. So I was able to go with him to this conference in Bermuda and remember, you know, sitting on the beach with my feet in the sand working away and seeing his clients at night and literally saying to myself out loud, I can’t believe this is my life. Like this is, this is so how

CS:

Lucky I am. Yeah. Right. How

EK:

Lucky I am. Fast forward 10 years, it’s 2008 and I now have three kids, and I have two devices. I still have my Blackberry, which I was using for work and for email. Yep. And I had my iPhone for all the great new apps. And of course I now I find myself, you can work from anywhere, but the shift was I was now working from everywhere. Yes. And you know, I share a story sometimes about just being on the streets of New York City with my phones, both of them ringing and dinging and ping and the kids waking up and you know, one of those, you know, calgon take me away, <laugh>, you know, moments and again saying, I can’t believe this is my life. And literally, so saying it in the same sense two

CS:

Different ways. Yeah.

EK:

And so that really propelled me. And I would say from that moment with my two phones and my three kids on the streets in New York City, you know, with my head spinning, I have been personally and professionally on a mission to find what I call the sweet spot between tech and connect. Yes. I wanted to research and understand how to leverage it, you know, literally like we’re doing now. Yes. You know, being on, being on Zoom and, you know, for all of its greatness. Without it we wouldn’t be doing this. Right. But then also making sure that we put it in its place to connect on a deeper level. And so really finding that sweet spot between tech and connect is at the core of, you know, who I am personally, but, but also what I strive for professionally as well.

CS:

That’s so great. And it’s such a great story. ’cause anyone who was working in those two eras can really feel the difference of, we felt so lucky to have these devices that were going to help us, you know, take it home with us in a way that was super-efficient and easy. And then we realized what a curse that actually became, um, over time. And I think that it probably unpacks like a flower in so many layers. The same thing with our kids. It was like, wow, this is so cool that they can connect. And now we’re like, oh my God, put the thing down. You know, the takeover is real. I’m curious, just because I think it’s interesting, how are you personally navigating the influx of technology in your own life? Like both at work and at home? Maybe what are some of the boundaries that you’re holding before we really dig into your work? I’m curious about your personal use cases.

EK:

I mean, look, some days I feel like I’m, I’m just failing miserably. Same. Yeah. And you know, maybe then I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s like the shoemaker’s children, <laugh>, you know, that don’t have any shoes. And I’m like, I am terrible at this. Yeah. I think that, you know, we have to, we have to be intentional and figure out what works for us. And, you know, some people they’ll say, oh, well, you know, I get off technology and I’m off it the whole weekend. Or when I take vacation, I’m not going to be on it at all. You know, for me, I try to set different types of parameters mm-hmm <affirmative>. So it could be, you know, what, today from eight to 10:00 AM I’m on a walk, I’m listening to a book, I’m going to be with a friend, and then I’m going to check, and then I’m going to go back off. So, I think every day is a little bit different mm-hmm <affirmative>. And, you know, I think it’s, um, one of the things that I often say in my keynotes, and I, it’s, it’s, again, something I think about a lot the technology, it’s not the technology that’s bad, but it’s the default use of technology that degrades connection. Yes. And so, what we need to do, I need to do, all of us need to do, whether it’s at home, at work with our kids, is make sure that it’s not always the default tech enabled.

CS:

I know I was thinking about every day

EK:

Is a new day, so

CS:

Right. You get to try again, learn some things. We had, I hosted an event last week for our membership community and one of the women, we, were all workshopping like different challenges. And one of the women said, you know, I’m great at this on vacation because I delete my email app from my phone when I’m on vacation. My assistant manages email. And you could watch the aha moment happen for her where she was like, why don’t I just do that more often? And so, she was going to start a practice of going home and literally like deleting the app from the phone for those hours that she was going to be at home in the evening. And then just reinstall the app. Yes. Intentionally inefficient, right around the deleting and what it was going to buy her was adding a little bit of friction between, you know, just between that interaction. So, I think that was, and then we sort of opened it up to the room and said, for how many of you would just three hours a day away from email start to feel like freedom? And it was everybody, you know, every hand went up.

EK:

Yeah. I remember when my kids were younger, I would take my phone during that six to eight times and, and you know, definitely more friction to take the app off. Yeah. But I was like, I’m going to go across my apartment and put it in a drawer

CS:

Yes.

EK:

In a room and at least

CS:

Just outta sight. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. If I really

EK:

I needed to check an email, I could do it on my laptop. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But just getting the phone out. I

CS:

Agree. I thought of another one while you were talking and I thought, you know, how often do I text my kids or my husband within the house? Like, we’re right in the same house and we’re texting each other versus just walking into the room to have the conversation. So, I think when we start looking for these opportunities to just increase human connection, like they’re everywhere. And that’s kind of a baby level of your work maybe, but I think it’s relatable to every single person listening is where we are allowing technology to creep in that it’s not necessarily adding value, in fact, it’s eroding the opportunity for human connection. I just, I recently added a book, an in-person meeting link to my calendar link to say, instead of just always booking on Zoom, if you do live in the same city and we can connect in person, here’s a way that I’m going to be at this place at this time and we can book it in person. I

EK:

Love that. Yeah. Where, where do you live? Where do you live?

CS:

I live in Cincinnati. Oh, okay. But like, again, if I’m meeting with somebody who happens to be local, it is a way for them to say, I would rather meet at a coffee shop than meet. Yeah. So I wonder from a big picture perspective, if you start with the, your premise in your work and what you were really trying to get across with these three books and all of the consulting and coaching that you do, what would you say are the biggest risks we have in terms of seeding our humanity to technology, especially in the workplace, and what’s the premise of what we can do about it?

EK:

So that’s a big, a big order question. And my first response would be, I often say the absence of intentionality is a recipe for resentment. Hmm. So, if we think about that from the standpoint of the workplace, as we think about post COVID, where do we work? When do we work? How do we work? One of the things that I see quite often is that people are commuting into an office, half their team’s not there, and they’re doing the exact same kind of work that they could be doing from home in their sweatpants mm-hmm <affirmative>. And it’s not that they don’t want to be together, but that they’re coming together. You know, and it still feels like in many, many organizations that it’s, that it’s a box check mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so one of the big things that I think all of us in our roles, you know, whether you’re leading a project, whether you’re leading a team of a big team, one person, you know, whatever that is.

And, and I believe that this is, we can address this whether we’re in the office three days a week, three days a month, or three times a year. Right. Think about your business when you, you intentionally bring people together. Yes. Retreats. Now retreats are easier to make people feel connected. So the question is, on a random Wednesday, when people are in person, I’m not saying we need to bond and connect and do this stuff all day long, but what are those touch points when you are bringing people together? And when I wrote Bring Your Human To Work, which came out in 2018, well before COVID, and all the different things that, that have impacted us over the last five years. We were in the office five days a week. That’s right. But no, but many, were not talking to each other. That’s right. So just being physically co-located doesn’t help us either. So, I would say one of the big themes I think that all of us need to think about is what’s important to us personally and professionally, and how can we bring some intentionality to it.

CS:

Yeah. What I keep hearing underneath that is like, the word that keeps surfacing for me is relationship. Like there are, we want, we’re so wired to be in relationship with one another. And I think technology can be an enabler, right? If it’s easy for me to leave a voice text for my friend because our schedules don’t align, and the technology lets her hear my voice and then she can respond back, great. Like, it’s enabling the relationship. But if it becomes an impediment to the relationship or some kind of like block to the relationship, then we’re kind of doing it wrong. Like it, it feels like it has to sit underneath the relationship as a support. Right. Whether it’s in the workplace or whether it’s in our personal lives, I feel like it doesn’t, it maybe doesn’t matter.

EK:

Well, right. And that could be anything from one of the things I talk about. So in my work, I have three ways to be great human leaders: do three things exceptionally well. Great. One is that great human leaders connect their people to purpose, which we can come back to. The third one is that great human leaders connect people to themselves and how they want to grow and develop. The middle one is sort of what we’re talking about now, which is that great human leaders connect people to others, which is increasingly challenging in a hybrid world. And so I’ve come up with, again, none of this, I will say for you and for your listeners and your great team that’s listening in live is that none of it’s rocket science. But that doesn’t make it easy. And so when I think about a framework of bringing people together, I call it the three Ps, which is purpose.

Let’s define the purpose. Why are we coming together? Is it to accelerate a work project? Is it to give back to our local community? Is it to, you know, is it for learning and development for our conference? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Is it solely to bring our team to get together to remember that there’s a human behind the screen. So whatever it is, make sure there’s a purpose. And if there isn’t, consider making it an email. So that’s the first P, which is purpose. The second P stands for protocols. And in that one, I say, you know, many of us feel like we’ve been trying to lead in this hybrid world for a long time. It really hasn’t been that long, that it’s almost in many ways like the wild West mm-hmm <affirmative>. And if, if you watch TV shows or movies about the Wild West, there’s often a sheriff whose role is to provide sort of guidelines or rules of the road so people can live and work together in harmony.

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So for all of us as leaders, you know, we’re the sheriff. Like, we need to come up with those rules of the road. So, you know, that could be anything from, do we have a ritual that begins and ends our meetings? Maybe one leader told me on Wednesdays for his company, there are, people are remote and so everybody does walking meetings. So you can get your steps in and connect with your colleagues. Yeah. One of my favorite protocols comes from a leader at L’Oreal that I work with a lot named Stephanie Kramer. And they have a ritual called Warmup Monday. So on Mondays, Monday mornings at L’Oreal, no one’s allowed to schedule a meeting before noon. An internal meeting.

CS:

’cause you’re ramping up. Yeah.

EK:

It allows, number one, it allows you to have protected time on Monday morning to get yourself organized and be strategic and warm up into the week ahead. But it also leaves Sunday night as a time to connect with yourself, your family, your friends, and not have those, you know, those Sunday, you know, those Sunday

CS:

Scaries. Yeah. Scary. Let’s move into Monday. Yep. Yep.

EK:

So, those are protocols mm-hmm <affirmative>. And they’re going to be different for everybody. But the last P is presence. And as we know conceptually, okay, well let’s just be present. Well, okay, that’s the easiest conceptually, but probably the hardest to achieve these days. So the question is often, you know, imagine for a moment on a day that you’re in the office, that you walk into a colleague’s office and that person takes, you know, her phone and literally puts it upside down, for the entire time you’re with her. Yes. First you’d be in shock, but then you’d be like, you’d feel seen, you’d feel heard, you’d feel valued. And so I do think being present is one of the, especially these days, one of the greatest gifts that we can give. Not only the people we work with, but quite frankly, all the people in our lives.

CS:

I think that’s so true. And I think if we look at what technology in all its forms takes away from us, I think presence, that ability to be fully present for someone else, truly listening, locked in, that is probably the first collateral damage of the advent of technology. I mean, you remember all the way back to when we were kids and our parents were like, stop watching tv. Right? Because why? Well, we’re not really present in our household. We’re in our own little world. And I remember having this conversation with my husband and I that the insight had come to me. This was a while ago, when each of us was walking around with a device in our hands that was like our own best friend. Like it was talking about what we wanted to talk about. It’s feeding us content that we really like. It’s playing even more so now

EK:

With ai,

CS:

It just gets worse and worse. Right? It’s like we are going to our own corners and, and things are so specialized and so curated that how do you even get five people in a house to agree on a TV show when there’s this many options? I mean, God, that would feel like a dream back to what our parents thought was a nightmare. Right? So the

EK:

Well, and when nobody has the attention span to even watch the whole thing,

CS:

You’re watching a 12 second video maybe. Right? So finding the opportunity to really connect over the technology somehow. Right. What does it look like? We talk a lot in our household about trying to meet our kids where they are like, my son’s into watching this dude on a podcast, on YouTube. I’m probably going to watch it because I’m trying to find a way to like getting into that world with him. And technology may have to be the bridge 18-year-old kid, right? Like, that’s going to be the way in. And, and it might be exchanging funny memes with my daughter who’s at college so that we can stay connected mm-hmm <affirmative>. But finding ways where the technology is in fact enhancing the relationship and helping, like, kind of letting you into each other’s worlds versus the alternative is when I see us all walking around again, same house, same piece of property, all

EK:

Alone together.

CS:

All alone together, everybody’s plugged into their own device with AirPods in their ears, listening to an entirely different stream. It’s like the energy separates, did you know that beyond hosting this podcast, I also directly support women leaders at the intersection of work and life as a member of Bold. You get direct access to me, the women on my team, and a peer group of exceptional women who are rewriting the rules and redefining what it means to have it all together. Go to brilliant balance.com/bold to learn more and apply for your spot today. So I’m really curious about that and passionate about that. Both I think in our home lives and in our workplaces how do we keep people on the same page in the same channel? Like metaphorically. Right. Just how do we keep them aligned when the technology feels like it’s trying to really separate?

EK:

Yeah. Well one of the things that I think about, again, whether it relates to technology, but, but a lot of business decisions are, you know, what are, what are your personal values, but what are your company values? Yes. And I often, I call it sort of the, the fork in the road to us. You’re at the fork in the road and do you take a right, do you take a left? Do you hire this person, fire this person, do this deal, make this business decision. How are you leveraging technology? When are you in the office? All these things we’re talking about. And, your values should drive that. Again, only values, company values. And from a company perspective, if they’re not, maybe you have too many and people don’t know what they are. Maybe they’re the wrong ones. But it is a good litmus, litmus

CS:

Test. Yeah.

EK:

<laugh> that, if you, if your values really are around relationships, you know, what does that, what does that look like? Yep. And maybe, you know, so many things that we do because we think it’s more productive. Maybe on a Wednesday, if that’s our day in the office, we are coming together to connect as humans. That’s right. And maybe we don’t feel like we’re getting as much done. That’s right. We’re changing the way that we’re measuring performance. I agree. I agree. I agree. If, if that’s important,

CS:

There’s places where we do want to streamline and simplify, and technology is always going to be an enabler. There’s places where I think we actually want expansive energy around, like, we’re intentionally inefficient to try to just expand the energy around something. And that’s, you know, I’m Enneagram three, right? Efficiency is like my middle name. But the, but I really am trying to focus on that of like, what are the things I want to savor and kind of expand the energy around? And, and I think that those are the, I, as I’m looking back on it, those are the moments in my day and my week and my month that I really like, have the most memories around because I was really in it. Not just like, how do I rush through this and get it done where I’m kind of skimming the surface. I’m curious about this, this is going to be a bit of a pivot, but there’s so much I want to talk about in terms of AI specifically and what AI is doing around fear in the workplace.

CS:

So I, this may not be at the center of your work, but I feel like you’re going to be a very informed voice on this. Like, there are so many people that I’m talking to these days who are in kind of low grade terror about job security as it relates to the advent of ai. Yeah. We’re all watching these tools get better. We’re using the tools we’re, we’re seeing, oh my goodness. There are things that used to take me a long time to do that I can now get a big head start on or do very quickly. And we know we’re just at the beginning. So what are you seeing in the workplaces where you’re working? What’s the messaging that you have with people who have worked in long careers to build expertise that they’re seeing be replicated in some ways pretty well by AI tools?

EK:

Yeah, I think the fear is real, but I think we’re at a moment right now where there’s a lot of starts, starts and stops with technology. There’s a lot of AI hallucinations and a lot of things that AI is getting completely wrong. And we’re at this moment trying to figure out how AI can help us and, and trying to figure out the traps that we don’t want to fall into. Agree. You know, I, I am by no means an AI expert and I’m trying to learn along with everybody else, but I do think that all of us need to figure out, you know, we’ve got to lean into it. We have to figure out, you know, what are the rules of the road of AI within our organization. I just heard a great with the CHRO of, of HubSpot was saying that they give time, I think it’s called like something Monday, where, where they’re giving people time on a certain day to just

CS:

Go explore,

EK:

Explore mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so we, we need to just say, look, we all don’t know all the answers, but we all need to learn. And within our organizations we need to just figure out how, when, where, why we’re going to get people sort of leveled up on this technology. That, that is, to your point, only going to continue to improve. You know, on the, you know, I have kids in college also, you know, you mentioned yours. My son was working on a project at the school he goes to, to look at and interview teachers to figure out how they’re using AI. You know, I think at some point everybody for exams, you’ll probably use the ai, but it’s going to be ever, whoever knows how to use it best will do better on the test. Right now, we’re still in that moment where this teacher says, no, it’s not allowed. And the other teacher said, yes, it is allowed. So we’re really at this

CS:

Crossroads. I agree

EK:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Crossroads. And I would just advise everybody and anybody, including myself, like, we need to, we need to play around with it. Lean in. Personally, I think the worst use case for me is if I’ve ever almost used it like Google in a way, because it just makes stuff up, which is really, really insane to me. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Just so I think it’s, it’s, let’s not pretend in our organizations that it’s coming, that it’s not coming or that it’s coming slowly. It is here. Yes. And I also think from a retention standpoint, the more that if you’re a leader in an organization to say, Hey, come work in our organization because we’re going to support and give you the tools to learn this really important thing. Like, I think that would be a great way to attract and retain people, especially when we’re at this crossroads.

CS:

Yeah. It’s so interesting to me that, you know, the women and often women in the audience that I’m speaking to and some brave men and the age group that, you know, the demographic that I feel like gets sort of as part of the brilliant balance community, it would be very easy to try to avoid this, to think like, well, this is one that we can sit out, you know, like TikTok, like I don’t have to do TikTok. And I, I’m not, by the way, I don’t think you have to do TikTok. I don’t do TikTok, but I don’t think we can sit out there. I think that there are, we’ve kind of been conditioned that some of these like trends or apps come and go and we can opt out of them. And I believe that is true. But if you think you can opt out of really leaning in to understand what AI is bringing into the workplace and into our personal lives, I think that is something that is perilous, I really do.

Right. And also really some of these bigger questions that require more than a 22nd video, like really thinking about where do you see this affecting your children and their willingness to grapple with significant challenges. Yep. How is it affecting our critical thinking? How is it affecting our attention span? How is it affecting, you know, our writing capability? Like the, the ease with which even just the large language models can do some of these things. I’m watching my kids, the temptation to not have to solve a problem and just feed it to AI is so real. And I think we’re going to need to sit as parents and then if we’re educators or we’re running organizations, we’re going to have to understand that that temptation that the kids are going to be the early adopters of is only going to move up through, you know, the ranks of our companies as well. So it’s, it’s a, it’s, there’s so much that we’re trying to digest so quickly and so are they, you know, like the, but

EK:

I just wanted to add, I mean, I know your audience is mostly women, like you said, a few brave men. The data shows that, as women, you know, we’re engaging in it much less mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so we have got to get our, we’ve got to get it together.

CS:

Together. Amen. Because it is going to be a competitive disadvantage if you have not figured

EK:

Out and that’s on us. That is on us. That’s right. And I don’t know, maybe you should do a whole cool AI for Women retreat. I’ll come,

CS:

I might, I might. I think it’s fascinating Erica, because we were talking about, I remember when I read, maybe you read this book, the four hour work week that Tim Ferris wrote. Okay. I was like, it was circa 2007, I was pregnant with my middle child and I remember reading this book, I was on a little vacation with my husband and just being like, mind blown over. Now this book, y’all, this came out a long, long time ago. But what Tim was writing about was like, how to use a virtual assistant and that you could hire a virtual assistant to do these tasks that were time consuming. And I was just telling my teenagers, I’m like, guys, this is AI, like AI is doing now. What he was saying in 2007, you’d have to hire someone outside the US to do for you, you have access to as a 15-year-old and 18-year-old.

Right. So the research capabilities, the ability to kind of put options in front of you and, and quickly kind of get a first draft of something together are so powerful that if I think if we’re not exploring it and because we think, well no, it doesn’t count. If I didn’t do that piece of it myself, we’re really gonna be at a disadvantage. And so yeah, that’s a, as much as we wanna say the use, this is what I think the premise is. The use of that technology can allow us to keep the human parts of our engagement front and center, but we don’t have to be drowning in work that can be done by AI. Right. Like it really can offload some things so that we can spend more time engaged with other people. Yeah.

EK:

A hundred.

CS:

What’s one thing you still insist on doing the old fashioned way? Take the technology out of it. I’m gonna do it.

EK:

Um, I made a handwritten to-do list.

CS:

I love that. Me too.

EK:

Me too. And I do little squares. I make the little squares and I check them off and then sometimes I add one that I’ve already done just to have it on my list. <laugh>, does it

CS:

Feel so good? The dopamine head of checking that thing off? I love that there’s something about women of our age where the analog process is so native to our learning process that I think when we remove ourselves from it and everything is digital, we actually feel a little untethered. Like it doesn’t, we’re losing something about it, coming straight to our brain. And so the analog process of writing and having it move through your hand is actually really powerful.

EK:

Here I have my, I’m like a big, uh, mo notebook. I got my moleskin notebook, you know, it’s, uh, don’t leave home without it.

CS:

I love it. And I’m a pencil girl because I had to learn to give up the perfectionism of pens a long time ago. They stress me out. So pencils, I can always start over. Yeah. Last question. If you look ahead like five or 10 years, what do you see on the horizon that would allow us to really further integrate technology without losing our humanity? Like what excites you and maybe what scares you?

EK:

I think they go together because I think as we continue to get, as I’m starting to see, we have more and more and more and more technology. There are more people saying, whoa, like let’s take a deep breath. I feel like, you know, even before all the AI stuff, which has only been at least for the, like the layman, the laywomen, you know? Yes. In the last year, I mean, some people have been looking at AI for a really long time, but it hasn’t been mainstream for that long. You know, we were sort of used to being, to your earlier point alone together, and we’d be walking around with our iPad and our iPhone. Like us, we just got used to all of that. And that just became life. So there was not as much intentionality maybe when you went on vacation and you started trying to set some boundaries.

But we sort of, I don’t know, we kind of just gave up. Many of us we’re like, okay, this is the way it is and I’m just gonna walk around constantly feeling like frenetic mm-hmm <affirmative>. Now I wonder, like the AI taking it to a whole new level that there is so, so, so much that it might push us to be better about saying things like, if we are continuing to go down this path, like what is gonna be left? You know, do I need a manager? You know, is my manager just gonna be writing me emails based on what she finds on chat GPT? And I could totally tell that she didn’t even really think about it at all. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Like, it’s pushing us to say what is the role of the human and why don’t we all just, why don’t we just all just give up?

It’s all over. Right. So, and because I hope that doesn’t happen, it’s gonna push many of us to say, all right, I gotta really think about boundaries and I need to think about so that the people that work for me or the people in our lives know that I actually do care and that I do see them. And yes, to your point, I’m leveraging all of this amazing technology, but I’m putting my own human thought and effort into creativity, delivering this message or making an appointment to see you in person in Cincinnati or whatever that is. And I just think that, where there’s a will, there’s a way that kind of thing is, it’s just not gonna happen without us really deciding that we as a society or as a business or as a family wanna make it happen.

CS:

Sure. Right. That it’s aligned with our values. Yeah. Like you said earlier, I think that what I hear in what you just said is the intentionality of it. That is where I am going to intentionally create a boundary for technology to kind of really prioritize the humanness of this connection. Whether it’s my creative contribution, whether it’s something I’m doing analog, whether it’s something I’m doing on an interpersonal level, that we can protect, that we don’t have to seed everything and just say like, well it is what it’s, this is, this is the way everybody’s doing it. So I guess this is where we are now as we continue to complain about it. Like there’s a little bit of taking control back and having some choices in the, in the space. So I would love for people to be able to find their way to you and your work. Your books are online at your site. Can you give them the URL for where to find you?

EK:

Yeah, it’s just my name. It’s erica kwin.com. People can reach out and email me at erica@ericakwin.com. And if you email me, I have eBooks I can share. And I have a very new one, it’s called a Human Leader Action plan to help people become better human leaders. And you can download it. It’s pretty cool.

CS:

That’s fantastic. And we will link those for people in the show notes as well, so that it’s very easy to find you, um, when we’re airing this sometimes easier to click than type. I think. I’m so glad you were here today. I’m so glad that our paths crossed that we got to meet. I think the work you’re doing is so important and I’m glad that our mutual friend Jen introduced us and that we were able to speak with you today. So thanks so much for being here. For the rest of you listening, thank you for tuning in today to this episode. I hope you’ll find Erica and her work to be helpful. That’s all for today. Till next time, let’s be brilliant.