AI Café Conversations | AI for Executives: Leadership Insights | Transforming with AI

The Perfectionist Executive: How Human-Centered AI Can Transform Leadership

• Sahar the AI Whisperer | Neuroscience Expert in AI and Leadership • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Join Sahar, The AI Whisperer, on AI Café Conversations, where we navigate the complexities of AI for executives through a human-centered lens. This podcast offers AI leadership coaching insights designed for non-technical leaders eager to integrate AI without losing their human touch. 

Discover practical strategies for AI adoption, neuroscience-backed approaches to combat tech anxiety, and tools that enhance your leadership effectiveness while embracing AI integration. Perfect for executives, HR professionals, and coaches seeking to gain a competitive edge in today's tech-driven business landscape, our episodes feature expert interviews and actionable frameworks that convert AI capabilities into real-world success. 

 Perfectionist brains and AI learning often mix like oil and water, but this conflict is rooted in neuroscience not personal shortcomings. High-achieving professionals expect linear progress and predictable outputs, while AI requires experimentation and iteration to deliver optimal results.

• Executive brains are wired for success through "executive efficiency pathways" that expect linear progress
• Perfectionist tendencies trigger the brain's error detection center when AI outputs aren't immediately perfect
• Many executives operate under an "AI omnipotence fallacy," expecting mind-reading capabilities
• AI should be approached like training a brilliant intern with no context about your business or goals
• The key shift is measuring learning velocity rather than output perfection
• First drafts from AI should be viewed as raw materials for your expertise to refine
• Each AI "failure" provides valuable data for improving future prompts
• Your perfectionist brain is actually perfect for AI when applied to the learning process
• The opportunity cost of not learning AI far outweighs the temporary discomfort of mediocre outputs

Email me at sahar@saharconsulting.com with questions or topic suggestions for future episodes. My book "The Coach's Brain Meets AI" is available on Amazon, and I'll send extra guides if you email me after purchasing. Follow me on LinkedIn (Sahar Andrade) and Instagram (Sahar the Reinvent Coach). 

Subscribe now to start transforming your leadership with Human-Centered AI!

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




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Speaker 1:

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to AI Cafe Conversations. I'm Sahar, your AI Whisperer, and I am here again with one of your favorite episodes that we're gonna go through today. So I have been asking a lot of people and throughout the week what I have been doing. I have been talking to my clients about AI. Some are actually excelling with AI, some are doing, honestly, magic with AI, and some are very, still very skeptical and some they don't really see the value of it. I had a conversation with one of my clients yesterday. She's actually doing a product and it really helped her finish all the research that was supposed to take her six months in less than a month. And what I really helped her with yesterday is trying to create a GPT for her that will be like her lab research agent or can be her virtual assistant that can help her go through it, which is awesome. I will try to have her as a guest in one of our podcasts very soon. But I have been also talking to a lot of people that are still skeptical about it and I ask them questions and I love to listen to them and most of the time I play devil's advocate for them. Listen to them and I, most of the time, I play devil's advocate for them. But today I want to say that I want to go a little bit deeper with uh analyzing and even sharing with you the questions that I have been uh asking a lot of people around me that, especially the ones that have been having ai frustrations. So one of one of my clients, when I asked her what is your latest AI frustration? Show me how are you using it and I always like to share screen when we are on Zoom so I could see exactly the steps that they go through and that gives me some light into how their brain is working with their AI intelligence. And when I asked the client what is frustrating you? He looked at me and he goes like, really, where do I even start? He said that he spent three hours trying to get ChatGPT to write the perfect project proposal Three hours and he said he could have written it, written it in like five minutes and he could in the three hours. He could have done five proposals in that time.

Speaker 1:

You know when someone tells you that, oh, my phone just did this, or Facebook just posted this, or like this, but I didn't do it, you know I have to stop myself. I'm like iPhone doesn't act on its own. Iphone doesn't act on its own, facebook doesn't act on its own. You must have triggered something that triggered that action. But I didn't want to say anything. I said, okay. So how did it turn out? At the end of three hours and my client said mediocre, generic at best, nothing like he had in his head that if AI was supposed to be so smart, why can it read my mind with only a few words and give me exactly what I want? And I had to stop for a second.

Speaker 1:

I remember I was coaching a client in one of the cities and he was like an executive in that city and everybody reported to him and he was frustrated with the reports that everybody was giving him. So when I asked him have you ever shared with them what are your expectations? His answer blew me away. His answer was like I pay them a lot of money. They're supposed to be expert, they should know how to present their reports, and that blew my mind away. It's just like how do you want them to read your mind on? What exactly do you want? And that's exactly. That's parallel to AI. Ai doesn't have a crystal ball, at least not yet Okay, doesn't have a crystal ball, at least not yet okay. So, ladies and gentlemen, that client made me feel like I'm meeting the perfectionist executive brain at its natural habitat. He described and I couldn't say it better okay. He described the number one reason high achieving executive struggle with ai and it's all in the neuroscience, okay, and that's what I keep going back. They are not broken, but executive brains are just wired for success in ways that work against ai learning.

Speaker 1:

Anyone say, oh really, against AI learning. Anyone say oh really, yeah, really. Today we are exploring why perfectionist brains and AI learning are like oil and water. But, most importantly, I'm gonna share with you how to fix it. So when I get something like that, I always like to go to the root. So I always ask when someone tells me that I'm not getting the results I want and I'm like why don't you take me to the root? So I always ask when someone tells me that I'm not getting the results I want and I'm like why don't you take me to the root? Why don't you take me to?

Speaker 1:

How do you work a proposal? What is your usual process like? How do you create a plan? How do you execute it? Do you put predictable results? You have KPIs. How do you work it exactly? And and why? I ask that? Because your brain was built on what neuroscience called executive efficiency pathways. Executive efficiency pathways years of success have trained your prefrontal cortex to expect linear progress. Input leads to predictable output, and that's not bad. Actually, it's not bad at all, but it's just incompatible with AI learning.

Speaker 1:

Ai works on iteration, not perfection. Remember. It's about pattern recognition. Your brain expects mastery. Ai requires experimentation to get you to the mystery. So don't throw a fit right away because you're not getting perfect results immediately, because your interior cingulate cortex or your brain's error detection center goes haywire. It interprets imperfect AI output as system failure, not learning opportunities, and they are two different things. And that's why people get frustrated, especially executives that are used to boom, boom, boom. Right. They get frustrated very quickly because it feels to them like AI is broken. But here is the fascinating part your perfectionist brain actually has superpowers for AI. You just need to redirect them, and I'm going to tell you how to do it.

Speaker 1:

Perfectionists excel at pattern recognition and iterative improvement. You are not failing at AI, you are applying the wrong success matrix. Okay, blank eyes. What does it mean? It means that, instead of measuring perfect output, measure learning velocity. How fast can you identify what doesn't work and adjust? That's why we it's not only about prompting, but it's about prompt engineering. And it's not only about prompt engineering, it's about prompt chaining. Your power, your clarity, your brilliance will come in how well you can do from training. How far can you dig, what can you implement, what can you ask more to lead you where you want. You know, they say all pathways lead to rome. Fine, find those pathways so you can get to rome. Okay, find those pathways so you can get to Rome, okay. So, and it's not about again, it's not about celebrating the bad results, but it's celebrating the fast feedback loops that you're getting from AI. Your perfectionist brain loves optimization.

Speaker 1:

Ai gives you infinite optimization opportunities, and I don't know really what people expect when they use AI. I really don't know when they first try it. Do they expect that it's going to again read their mind? I don't know Magic. Maybe they would type a sentence and get exactly what's in their head, perfectly formatted, ready to send. And this is the most um signaling, uh danger that I see. A lot of people, including executive, they say that they use ai every day. They're good at it, even in my clients, and once they tell me that I kind of like grinch for a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Because if you enter a prompt on AI and it gives you an answer, people think that they are experts at it. But no matter what you put in as a prompt, if you put describe a yellow cow for me, ai will give you an answer. So it's not about getting an answer. That makes you a good AI user. It's about what you put in that prompt and you're really getting the results that you want. The gap between people that are just using uh, ai or chat, gpt or cloud or meta or whatever it is as a google search, is widening between what we call novice and actually the people that really know how to use ai. But people are unaware of that and this is part of their bias, and bias will never get you anywhere near the results that you want or even near the results that you can actually succeed getting from AI. So it's not about just typing a sentence and AI will give you whatever you want. Give you whatever you want. So what people describe as an answer like you push a button and you get a crystal ball at the end is what we call ai omnipotence fallacy.

Speaker 1:

Your brain confused ai capability with ai mind reading. I just tried to explain in a simple manner with ai mind reading. I just tried to explain in a simple manner. Yes, people are under the impression that ai can do anything and it does okay, but this is what I call confirmation bias that I was talking about a minute ago.

Speaker 1:

Working over time, your brain filtered ai marketing through your perfectionist lens, creating impossible expectations. And what does it do? That sets you up for failure. Your brain did what it always does it applied your existing success framework to a completely different type of tool. It's like expecting a hammer to work like a screwdriver Between both of us. I can do that. I have no idea how to use tools, so what should you expect instead? Right, I want you to think of AI as a brilliant intern with no context whatsoever about your business, your style or your goals. Incredibly capable, but needs training. So you need to actually manage AI like you manage people, onboarding anyone.

Speaker 1:

If you get a new virtual assistant or executive assistant, or even a manager or director or a VP under you, it all you know. What all matters is your onboarding. How do you onboard them to get to know your style, your expectation, your goals, your way, what we call rules of engagement. What are your rules of engagement for them? If not, they will be doing whatever they think right and at the end of the day, it might not be what you expect at all. That's exactly the same analogy. So you wouldn't expect a new hire to deliver perfect work on day one.

Speaker 1:

Why do you expect it from AI? It's a superpower. Do you expect it from AI? It's a superpower. Yeah, but not in that way. I hope that makes sense to you, because we usually spend sometimes days and weeks to onboard new employees. So your brain already has neural pathways for developing talent. Apply those same pathways to AI development. So you should give AI feedback, like you give employees feedback Specific, actionable, iterative feedback. Your perfectionist brain loves refinement process. Ai thrives on them too. I never take an answer right away. Whatever ai gives me, I don't take it. I push back, I keep pushing back, and I think I told you in the last episode I kept pushing cloud so much because I wanted to know how far I can go. Ai is still in its infancy. We are all experimenting. Ai x is experimenting on us and we are experimenting on ai.

Speaker 1:

I go using ai with an open eye for the pros and cons. I don't think it's wow, it's fascinating. It fascinating, it's the best it is. But there are also a lot of cons. I kept pushing Claude till it had a meltdown. Okay, it's a case study for whoever wants it. I can send you even a copy of the transcript that I had. You know, the funniest part is that two minutes later I started a new conversation with Claude and it had no idea, because it doesn't have a memory. It didn't carry that into the new conversation, which was like okay, kiss and makeup, haha anyhow. So, going back, that we need to actually really train AI on who we are.

Speaker 1:

Ai thrives on onboarding and training as well. In the beginning, someone asked me if we all use AI and it gives the same exact answers. Where is branding here? Where is unique value proposition here, and how will anyone become different than the other? I looked at that person and I'm like it all depends on your prompts. It all depends on how you onboarding, because at the end of the day, ai is garbage in, garbage out. Whatever you feed is whatever you get, and unfortunately, no one talks about that.

Speaker 1:

People talk about AI either as a technology or coding, which I'm neither. I'm no tech required in this podcast and I am not a coder either. Obviously I'm not a techie, okay, but it's about how to manage yourself around AI, to manage AI to give you what you want, right. So people don't say that. But again, they work either against tech or they talk about prompting. Like the internet is flooded with people that take five prompts that will make you do a million dollars a week and all the charlatans are coming up and I look at these prompts and they are wrongly written prompts and they are wrongly written. People that are wrongly written.

Speaker 1:

People are saying act as or as if you were, and they don't understand that AI is so emotionally intelligent now that when you ask it to act as it will mimic a role. It will never give you the real role. Ok, number one. So most AI training focuses on the tool, not the brain using the tool, and that's what makes me different. I always concentrate on the human brain that uses artificial intelligence. At the end of the day, it's called human intelligence.

Speaker 1:

So when people get mediocre results, what goes through their brain is actually panic, panic, right, like what if someone sees this. What if my team thinks I'm losing my edge? What if I submit something subpar? Your amygdala, or your survival center here is triggering a reputation threat response For executives. Mediocrity feels existential because your identity is tied to excellence. You have tied your identity to excellence because why? Reputation for you is everything. You can't afford to look incompetent. But here is what your brain isn't calculating the opportunity cost of not learning AI is far greater than the temporary discomfort of mediocre outputs. Remember, whatever makes us move, whatever motivates us, is when we feel that we are going to lose more, when we stay where we are, versus then taking the leap to move forward. So what do I mean by that? Your perfectionist brain focuses on immediate quality risk but ignores long-term capability risk. You are optimizing your today's perfection while sabotaging tomorrow's potential. And it's not about accepting bad work. That's not what I'm saying. It's not. You should reframe what work means.

Speaker 1:

Ai outputs are not final products. They are raw materials for your own expertise. You are in control here. Okay, so a first draft is not a final draft. All right, your brain excels at editing, refining and improving. You are the one with the experience. Use AI to generate possibilities, then apply your perfectionist superpowers to polish them. So brainstorming yes, when you start thinking brainstorming, you are pushing towards excellence. I don't like the word perfection because perfection has procrastination under it and procrastination is rooted in fear. So when you think brainstorming, you are thinking exactly like a neuroscience. You are leveraging AI's divergent thinking with your convergent thinking. It's a perfect partnership and it's more strategic, obviously, and it will make you feel less threatened because you're working with your brain design instead of against it.

Speaker 1:

Perfectionists make excellent AI editor. So, instead of expecting perfect result, what if you expected perfect learning? And there is a difference. Perfect results focus on outcomes. Perfect learning focuses on understanding. Your brain can control learning. It can't control AI outputs. So how do you understand AI? Instead of how good the results are, ask yourself what did I learn about how this AI thinks? How can I improve my prompts? What patterns am I noticing? And now it becomes more manageable, like you have control over something, because you actually do. Your perfectionist brain loves control. Give it control over the learning process, not the output quality, and celebrate that when something doesn't work. It's a way of knowing what not to do, because each failure is data about how to succeed next time.

Speaker 1:

Your brain is building AI intuition with every iteration. Brain is building AI intuition with every iteration, so it's more like problem solving instead of hoping for magic, and problem solving is what executive brains were designed for. You're just applying those skills to a new domain. So perfectionism isn't a bug. I, I write, talk. Excellence is not a bug. It's a feature and you need to use it right. Excellence plus iteration equals ai mastery. Your high standards become your competitive advantage.

Speaker 1:

So what is your biggest takeaway today for perfectionist executive? To stop expecting AI to read your mind and don't get frustrated. Start treating it like talent development, like if you would learn a new language. Would you wake up the second day fluent in it? No, it takes time and you learn how to best retain words, how to form phrases and how to sound like a native. Your perfectionist brain is actually perfect for AI if you apply it to the learning process instead of demanding perfect outputs.

Speaker 1:

Remember, executives mediocre AI results are not failures. They are feedback. Your perfectionist brain superpower is turning that feedback into excellence. So stop panicking when Chad GPT doesn't nail it on the first try. Patience, grasshopper.

Speaker 1:

Next week we are diving into AI feedback and why algorithm criticism hits different than human feedback. So, and it's not about having something wrong with our brain. Nothing is wrong. Everything is just optimizable. So this is Sahar, your AI whisperer, signing off from AI Cafe Conversation. If you have any questions or you want me to go into certain subject in the next episode, email me at sahar, at saharconsultingcom. Show me some love, like subscribe, share this episode with someone that needs to see it.

Speaker 1:

My book is. I have been asked a lot about my book, the Coach's Brain Meets AI. It's actually doing really good on Amazon. Go get yourself a copy if you get it, even if you get the Kindle that is selling for $2.99. Now, if you email me at Sahar, at Sahar consultingcom, I will send you extra guides for it that you can use it that are really good. Follow me on LinkedIn. I'm Sahar Andrade. Follow me on Instagram. I am Sahar the Reinvent Coach. On Instagram. Actually, yesterday I just posted something a carousel about how your brain habits are killing your performance, how you lead with better habits. Doing AI and 98% of executive performance breakdown are not strategic. Your brain loves efficiency, but that often means what? So follow me on Instagram. Like I said, I hope you are well and again, if you have any questions, drop it in the comments and I will see you next week. This is Sahar, your AI whisperer, and I will see you all next week. By the way, happy and safe Labor Day. I'll see you next Wednesday.