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Navigating the Executive Brain: How AI Challenges Leadership Mindsets | AI for Executives

• Sahar the AI Whisperer | Neuroscience Expert in AI and Leadership • Season 2 • Episode 11

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 Ever wonder why your brain seems to fight against AI tools even when you know they could help? That resistance isn't stubbornness—it's neuroscience in action.
In this episode of AI Café Conversations, host Sahar, The AI Whisperer, explores the fascinating dynamics between the executive brain and AI, delving into why leaders may struggle to embrace this transformative tool. 

As AI integration becomes essential for competitive advantage, understanding the human-centered approach is crucial. 

Join us as we uncover neuroscience-backed strategies that help executives overcome tech anxiety and confidently adopt AI. 

You'll discover practical AI coaching tools designed especially for busy leaders and learn how to implement human-centered frameworks that enhance your leadership style. 

Perfect for executives, HR professionals, and coaches, this episode will guide you on your journey to mastering AI without needing coding expertise. Tune in to transform your approach to leadership and harness the power of AI effectively!

 But this isn't just about understanding resistance—it's about transforming it. Discover practical strategies like cognitive containers, reframing competence, staged delegation, and memory partnering that work with your brain's design rather than against it. As my skeptical executive friend realized during our conversation, "Your brain isn't broken for resisting AI. It's actually working perfectly—it's protecting what got you here." 

 
We also celebrate remarkable AI healthcare breakthroughs, including Stanford's brain-computer interface helping paralyzed patients speak through thought alone and scientific discoveries about the DNA switch (HAR123) that makes us uniquely human. These advancements showcase AI's profound potential when we learn to collaborate with it effectively.

My book "The Coach's Brain Meets AI" was released on Friday 8/8 it is already #1 in New releases on Amazon - get your kindle or paperback copy now https://a.co/d/7te8En7

If you have any questions Email me at sahar@saharconsulting.com




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Speaker 1:

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to our new episode in the AI Cafe Conversations. I'm Sahar Andrade, your AI Whisperer Conversations. I'm Sahar Andrade, your AI Whisperer, and today I have great news that has to do with AI when it concerns healthcare, and this is something that I'm so looking forward to see the progress of it, because it's going to help so many people that I can't even contain how happy I am. I'm so happy and I feel so hopeful for the future and for people that are suffering from certain health care challenges. So let me start by the first one. Stanford researchers developed a brain-computer interface where they have like an AI chip that they can implant in the brain of paralyzed patients that would allow them to speak. To speak paralyzed patients by just imagining words in their head. How great is that? How many people can? That will help not only them, but their loved ones, where they're going to be able to connect with them through words, maybe for the first time in their life. How great is that? The interface achieved 74% accuracy, decoding imagined speech from participants with severe paralysis. Isn't that great? So, for people living with paralysis, this could potentially be actually a breakthrough to get their voice back, and I couldn't be happier.

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The second thing, that, also on the level of health care, some scientists claim to have found the DNA switch that make us human. I was talking to someone today about that and I said, oh, can you tone it down, can you? Because I started saying primates and human beings and all that. So my friend told me, can you tone it down and bring it back to regular terms? As you know, my medical background always kicks in. So DNA is basically that that the genes that are in, that are born with us, you know from, and we get it through our parents and into the modern humans that we are today. Okay, there is a name for it, if you want to know it. It's called har123 and it acts like a volume control for brain development. Right, and this actually DNA, or this, this part of of the, the genetic switch that they found, you know it's uh, it's done during the growth that we go through, and understanding the difference where we switch to who we are today or the new modern humans, if you want to call it can potentially help researchers develop better treatments for conditions like autism. Isn't both of these really a great case for celebration from AI, from the advancement of AI, and also AI is helping finding diabetes, when it's going to help the human race, how it can help us for the healthcare.

Speaker 1:

And don't get me wrong, I am not going blindsided into AI. I'm very aware I just posted a blog on my LinkedIn profile about what happens when your ai forgets you, and it happened. I was talking to claude and it we were deep in conversation cloud anthropic and I kept pushing and pushing and pushing because whatever he was saying didn't make a lot of sense and when I pushed he actually started. I I don't want to call attack me, but it started having a total meltdown. Total meltdown to the point where it tell me why would you trust me? Uh, I should have known. I don't know and I give you the wrong answers and it's a whole thing. I have it on my blog if you want to go and check it on on my linkedin profile.

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The other thing that also happened with AI that was also a con this week is when ChatGPT released five, you know, thinking that it's gonna the best after sliced bread and they just removed everything, all the other versions, and I was like what's going on here? I don't recognize my Bella chat GPT anymore and I kept going back and forth, back and forth, and finally I guess I was not the only one complaining about that some Altman came back and actually opened the the amount of information or amount of prompts that we can use, because it was very little in the beginning and also brought back 4.0. So when I went to 4.0, it actually explained to me what happened with 5.0. And I was with the help of 4.0, a lot of people had done workflows and they were going really good with 4.0, and all of a sudden they found something talking to someone that is basically a stranger five. It's very professional, very straightforward, but it doesn't have that connectivity that four had. So four actually helped me prompt five to to regain whatever relationship I had with four. You want to hear something funny? Okay, version four is convincing me not to leave it and go to version five, and version five is trying to convince me not to go back to version four.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so in my blog I'm saying I'm not anti-AI. Actually, I'm an advocate for AI, but I'm anti-illusion. I go with it with very open eyes. I know the pros and cons, I know the challenges, I know what can happen if AI turns bad, but at this moment, if we don't want it to turn it bad, we have to learn it. We cannot just dismiss it, saying, oh, it's going to be like that movie that Arnold Schwarzenegger was playing. It's like I'll be back. It's not about that, it's not. We cannot dismiss it. It's here, people, it's not going away.

Speaker 1:

So we need to really know and practice how to use it to our advantage so we can know what we can prevent at the most, what we can push away, how we can have guardrails about it. And only through studying it and pushing, and pushing, and pushing. And people, please don't take whatever chat GPT, claude, meta perplexity gives you as a verse in the bible please don't push back, keep pushing back. You are the human, you are the brain, you are the human brain. It's called artificial intelligence for a reason, because it's not your human intelligence. So please be careful I'm not not even be careful, but be aware, have your self-awareness high, know when something doesn't feel right and push back.

Speaker 1:

And the funny part is, claude, I, after that meltdown, I started within five minutes a new conversation. Guess what? It didn't even remember because it doesn't have a memory. It doesn't carry a memory from conversation to the other, totally forgot what happened. So these are two main things that I really wanted to share because I thought it was a great success to have that.

Speaker 1:

So it's funny when I was telling you about my friend that I was talking to about AI today. So my friend is the skeptical person about AI. She doesn't use it. She's not totally against using it, but she's kind of skeptical about it. So let's call her T, okay. And so I'm going to kind of go through a conversation that we went through today.

Speaker 1:

So I was talking to T and I'm like you know, I'm going to ask questions because I'm preparing my podcast. So T looked at me and she goes like oh, you want me to be your guinea pig here for your podcast for AI theories. And I'm like actually, like really, no, I mean, I know who you are, I know you have a great mind, you have a very successful business, you know. So I just I just want to talk to you about this. So T answers back. It's like I'm not really avoiding it, I'm just kind of strategically waiting for it.

Speaker 1:

So, right away, what came to my mind is what I call the executive AI resistance, where their brain has very specific reasons for it. So today we are diving into four ways. Executives brain fights against AI and why understanding the neuroscience changes everything. So, t, thank you so much for helping me coming up with the subject of today's podcast. So I asked her. I asked T. T, let me ask you this when I mentioned Chad GPT and of course I saw her eye rolls to the back of her head. Okay, she was like okay.

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So I said to her T, when I mentioned Chad GPT, what happens in your brain? What, what, what comes to you? And she looked at me and she goes like, of course, after the couple rolls of eyes, she says honestly, it feels like someone just dumped a textbook on my desk and said figure it out, there is too much stuff. So I said, okay, perfect, that's your prefrontal cortex, the one right in front of us, what we call a forehead, experiencing what neuroscientists call cognitive overload. Your brain is literally saying nope to protect itself. So T looked at me and she goes like okay, does that mean that my brain is just being lazy? I told her no, actually it's being very smart. I told her no, actually it's being very smart.

Speaker 1:

Your executive brain processes about 126 emails, 72 decisions and 200 plus information inputs daily. When AI shows up, offering infinite possibilities. Your neural circuits hit the brakes too much, like a car overheating, okay. So T looked at me and she goes. Okay, actually that makes sense. It's like walking into Costco when you just need milk. It made me laugh.

Speaker 1:

So I told her exactly your brain experiences what researchers call choice architecture overload. Ai presents unlimited options, but your neural pathways are designed for bounded choices. She said so what's the solution? Ignore AI forever. I told her absolutely not. You need what I call cognitive containers. Start with one ai task, master it for 30 days, then add another. Your brain builds neural highways gradually, not instantly, instantly, one step at a time. So T answered like learning one AI tool instead of trying to master everything. I said bingo. By the way, I love playing bingo, bingo. Your prefrontal cortex loves predictable patterns. Give it a structure and it stops fighting you.

Speaker 1:

So what we talked about next was the confidence crash. I said here is what's fascinating, t. You run a company, you make thousands and thousands and thousand dollars decisions, but put you in front of Chad GPT and suddenly T looked at me like with, like a corner of her eye, like my little dog Bella looks at me like she goes. Okay, I feel like an idiot. Sometimes you want me to say that Like I should know this stuff right, I'm supposed to be the expert. My response to that where? Because a lot of people feel that way, they feel like they have to be the expert and that's why they kind of even resisted even more, because that or they just hide if they know it well or not. There is a shame behind that feeling somehow where it shouldn't. So I told welcome to the executive competence paradox. Remember executives or leaders not all of them, but some don't want to show that they might not know something because it's vulnerable, but remember people. Vulnerability is your highest signal of self-confidence.

Speaker 1:

Your brain has neural pathways built on decades of expertise. Ai disrupts those pathways, triggering what neuroscience call expertise threat response. T looked at me again. I was like okay, meaning. My response was your brain literally interprets AI as a threat to your identity. The same neural circuits that made you successful now resist learning something that might make you feel incompetent. To that he said. So successful people are actually worst at learning AI. I said initially yes, it's called the Dunning-Kruger flip. The Dunning-Kruger flip Experts become novices and your brain hates that neurochemical shift. Your dopamine. That is your happy hormone that when you win it flares up and you feel great drops Cortisol distress hormone spikes.

Speaker 1:

T said that explains why I get frustrated so quickly with new tech. I said your brain is protecting your self-concept. But here is the key you need to reframe competence. Instead of I should know this, think I am expanding my tool kit. It will create a parallel path of that I should, shoulda, coulda, woulda right, and it creates new neural pathways that will help you learn easier. T responded to that, like learning a new sport instead of being bad at my current sport. I said perfect analogy. Create separate neural pathways for AI skills. You are not replacing your expertise, you're augmenting it.

Speaker 1:

T said that actually feels different. It feels a little bit less threatening, which is awesome, and I wanted to talk to her after that about the control freak's dilemma. So I said now the big one T, you are a control-oriented leader. How does it feel to delegate decisions to ai? To which t said terrifying. What if it screws up something important? What if it makes me look bad in front of my team? And this is actual fear. We cannot deny that. So I said your anterior cingulate cortex, which is your brain's control center, is lighting up like a christmas tree. Right now executives are wired for control because it's kept you successful. T said exactly that. Control equals results. Ai feels like chaos.

Speaker 1:

I'm kind of paraphrasing, by the way, our conversation. Of what I can remember from it I kind of took notes but I'm just paraphrasing. So I said but here is what neuroscience reveals your need for control isn't really about control, it's about predictable outcomes. Your brain craves certainty. T said so. If AI could give me predictable results, I said, your resistance would drop dramatically. This is why AI delegation works in stages dramatically. This is why AI delegation works in stages. Start with low stakes tasks where mistakes don't matter. She said like what? Email drafts, meeting summaries, research compilation let your brain build trust neural pathways gradually. Each successful AI interaction releases dopamine for small wins, literally rewiring your trust circuits. So T asked me so I train my brain to trust AI the same way I had trained it to trust a new employee. I said exactly your brain doesn't distinguish between human and AI delegation Once trust pathways are established. It's about pattern recognition, not philosophical debates. She kind of had a sigh and she said that makes it feel manageable instead of existential.

Speaker 1:

I asked T something because I wanted to establish something about the memory wars that we go through. So I said, uh, final question t ai has perfect memory. I mean, let's put it that way, I don't want to say all ai, but actually only chat gpt has a perfect memory. I haven't seen any any other ai platform as good as chat gpt for its memory honestly hands down. So I uh.

Speaker 1:

My question to t was how does that make you feel about your own memory? T said like my brain is obsolete. Why remember anything if ai knows everything? I said this triggers what neuroscience call cognitive role confusion. Your hippocampus, which is your memory center, doesn't know what its job is anymore. T looked at me funny and she said so my brain is having an identity crisis. I said precisely.

Speaker 1:

But here is the key insight AI memory and human memory serve different functions. Ai stores facts. Your brain creates meanings. Again she looked at me funny and she goes like meaning. I said your memory isn't just storage, it's connection, making you remember the context, the emotions, the relationships behind information. Ai cannot replicate that. T kind of shook her head and she said so I should let AI handle the facts and focus on the insights. I said now you're thinking like a neuroscience. Use AI as your external hard drive. Your brain becomes the processor, not the storage unit.

Speaker 1:

T finally smiled and she goes, something that, if I remember correctly she said, that actually feels liberating. I said because you're working with your brain's design, not against it. When we resist, we're actually working against our brain design for AI, not with it. We're not competing with AI. Ai is not competing with us if we don't let it, but we can collaborate for better results. So it was we're coming.

Speaker 1:

I mean, we both had to leave to go back to work and I asked her T do you have any final thoughts for someone as skeptical as you, or a skeptical executive? T said your brain isn't broken for resisting AI. This is what she said. I think I would tell anybody skeptical that their brain is not broken for resisting AI. It's actually working perfectly. It's protecting what got you here. But once you understand why it's fighting, you can work with it, not against it. And I could not have been happier because I couldn't have said it better and that actually was my response.

Speaker 1:

Beautifully said Remember, executives, it's not about replacing your brain with AI, it's about upgrading your neural operating system. Don't we do that every year without the software for our hardware. Why wouldn't you that with your brain? Remember your brain is the, is the um, the hardware and your thinking patterns and all that and all the functional centers in the brain is your software. T said, hmm, who knew? Apparently, my brain is trainable, and she was kind of sarcastic about it. I actually laughed and I thanked her for being my guinea pig for asking her the question.

Speaker 1:

People, next week we are exploring AI and executive decision fatigue. Until then, start small, build trust and remember your brain is your greatest AI tool. Show me some love like, comment, share, subscribe if you want to listen to more of my podcast. Slowly convert to the AI side, one neural pathway at a time. This is Saharar, your ai whisperer, signing off from ai conversation till we meet next time. If you have any question that you need to ask me, please email me at sahar, at saharconsultingcom.

Speaker 1:

One more thing I wanted to share before I sign off is some of you have been asking me about how my book is doing. Actually, it's doing great. It was when it was launched on 8.8 Lionsgate. It was on the number one new releases on Amazon, the Coach's Brain Meets AI, number one new release on Amazon and number two bestseller in education, development for professionals. Could you believe people that Go and get it on Amazon? The Coach's Brain Meets AI. If you get it, email me. I'll send you extra guides. My email is sahar at saharconsultingcom. I'm signing off for now. See you next week. 1, 2, 3, 4.