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My New Limited Leadership Series: EQ Answers to AI Questions

by Douglas R. Conant | Jul 30, 2024

Doug Conant, Founder & CEO of ConantLeadership

Introducing Doug Conant’s new limited series: EQ Answers to AI Questions.

To My Fellow Leaders and Learners in the ConantLeadership Community,

Before we get started, one caveat: This limited series talks about, and leverages AI, but it is not primarily about AI. Like all of my writing and teaching, it is first and foremost, about the craft of leadership.

AI, particularly generative AI, is a powerful and hotly debated tool that my team and I are just beginning to explore, but it is not our area of expertise (although we are committed to becoming more fluent in the technology and to embracing its utility as a resource).

Even if I were an expert in AI, I likely wouldn’t have definitive answers about its core functions or its future: According to a recent deep-dive in MIT Technology Review, “no one,” even the smartest AI scientists in the world, “can agree on what AI is.” The MIT piece defines AI as “a catchall term for a set of technologies that make computers do things that are thought to require intelligence when done by people. Think of recognizing faces, understanding speech, driving cars, writing sentences, answering questions, and creating pictures.”

The MIT article wisely notes that this definition sparks fundamental questions like, “what kind of tasks could we ask such machines to do?,” and “how much should we trust the machines to do them?” Not surprisingly, no one can agree on the answer to these questions either. And if the smartest minds in technology can’t tell you one way or the other, I won’t pretend to be up to the task. I will, however, commit to staying abreast of the technology and continue to enthusiastically learn about the ways it can improve our work and lives.

Consider this my maiden voyage, dipping my feet in AI’s waters.

Now, leadership on the other hand, which I’ve devoted most of my life to studying and practicing—is a topic that is entirely in my wheelhouse. I’m excited to expound on the craft of leadership, using AI as a tool to facilitate the conversation, which is the idea behind this new limited series.

A Guiding Thought

Think of a person who impacted you deeply—a coach, a parent, a boss, a friend.

When you reflect on how they inspired you, it will likely be as a result of your unique shared understanding, relational chemistry, and connection. They are special to you because of your history of interpersonal interaction, because of how they saw and responded to you in a thousand connected moments, because of the reciprocal interplay between your two human spirits.

No matter what the futures holds, this rings true: The more omnipresent machines become in our lives, the more differentiating it will be for us to lean into our humanity as we engage with the world as leaders, teachers, friends, and family members.

We cannot be “artificial” in any way in our leadership; we must be authentic—true to ourselves and true to the people with whom we live and work.

In fact, if you’ve ever engaged with any of my leadership thinking, resources, or content, you’ve probably heard me say these words: Leadership is all about the people.

The centerpiece of my guiding philosophy, and of the six steps in our BLUEPRINT process for lifting your leadership impact, is fiercely, unwaveringly people-focused.

At ConantLeadership, my boutique leadership agency which empowers modern leaders with the tenets of “leadership that works,” we define leadership as the art and science of influencing others in a specific direction.

Our definition is not limited to hierarchical organizations; it applies to collaborative work as well. We believe that leadership is about influencing people in any direction—up, down, or sideways.

In my almost 50 years of studying, practicing, and teaching leadership across the breadth of my career—from the associate level to the Fortune 500 C-Suite—I’ve learned that the “science” part of the equation can be studied, measured, mapped, and analyzed. It can be represented in research metrics, and charts and graphs, displayed in splashy PowerPoints, and explained in thousands of books.

And now, the best leadership practices, as discovered and articulated by human beings across millennia, can be aggregated by large language models powered by AI and neatly summarized for our convenience—which is a very promising use case for the study of the “science” of leadership.

That said, it’s the “art” side of the leadership equation that endlessly fascinates and inspires me.

“Data and information are the domain of machines. Relationships are the domain of humanity—and of leaders.”

Art v. Science

It seems to me that the “science” of leadership is primarily about input—learning what works, studying other leaders, staying up-to-date with best practices, and gaining and honing mastery and knowledge in your specific area of expertise etc.

But the “art” of leadership is primarily about output—how you uniquely metabolize your knowledge, experience, and values, and apply them to your interactions with the people with whom you live and work. (As my co-author Mette Norgaard and I wrote in my first book, TouchPoints, in leadership, “the action is in the interaction.” And being brilliant in these on-demand interactions is totally dependent on how you leverage the human touch in a thoughtful way.)

I believe the “art” is where the magic lies: It’s how you, and only you, show up for other people in a nuanced way, leveraging your unique relationships and skills to connect interpersonally with the people on your team and in your organization.

Which brings us back to this: Leadership—specifically the art of leadership—is all about the people.

At ConantLeadership, we hold this truth as gospel: Your life story is your leadership story. Only you can write it. Only you can chart your course. The way you lead is as unique as a fingerprint; nobody else can do what you can do.

In my lifetime of studying leadership, leading people, and teaching other leaders, I’ve learned that effective leadership is as personal a pursuit as it gets. It is about how you understand and leverage your own gifts, experiences, and beliefs to influence a team, an organization, or even the world. Above all else, leadership is about relationships, it is interpersonal, and it is human.

And it’s truer now than ever. In an increasingly computerized world, staying connected to our humanity is essential—both as leaders and as people.

With all of this as background, we’ve been contemplating this question: How does the fundamentally human craft of leadership evolve in a changing business landscape that is increasingly dominated by the conversation around AI?

In our internal discussions at ConantLeadership, we kept returning to this same central concept: We can rely on AI as an aid in the development of our craft.

“AI can help us ask better questions; it can undoubtedly help us improve our leadership. But it’s still up to us to answer the call.”

AI as a Tool

It’s clear that AI has tremendous capacity to deepen our conversation around the “science” of leadership. As Greg Satell recently wrote in his blog Digital Tonto, we should think of AI as “a tool to create dialogues for ourselves. Large language models, by definition, hold a multitude of perspectives. So rather than replacing us, we can use them as sounding boards to help us create for ourselves.”

A recent article in Harvard Business Review builds on this use-case, arguing that AI is not a replacement for human ingenuity, but a supplement to our own intelligence that can help us think bigger and better: “One of the biggest opportunities generative AI offers is to augment human creativity,” and it can help us “produce and identify novel ideas—and improve the quality of raw ideas.”

At the end of the day, AI can help us ask better questions, and it can undoubtedly help us improve our leadership. But it’s still up to us to answer the call. To progress from good to extraordinary, we must use our emotional intelligence (EQ), in combination with our functional (FQ) and intellectual intelligence (IQ), to lead people, make decisions, act on our knowledge, synthesize our wisdom, and build relationships.

AI may be able to analyze data, aggregate information, and summarize talking points, but it doesn’t know you or your life story. It cannot see inside your psyche, your memories, or your relationships with others to draw out your unique purpose or to, say, recall the life-changing advice your parents gave you; only you can do those things. Only you can look within.

More and more, empathy, self-awareness, and connection will be crucial distinctions; they’re what set us apart from the machines.

The more ubiquitous AI becomes, the more we have a dual responsibility:

We must tap into AI’s formidable power to provide knowledge, spark dialogues, and improve our study of our craft. We can’t be luddites or technophobes in the face of innovation.
And, simultaneously, we must acknowledge that AI is not a panacea. We should lean into the vitality of real, authentic self-reflection and interpersonal interaction—to be as humanistic as possible in our leadership life.

And so it’s within that spirit that I’m writing this monthly letter to communicate more directly with you, the people in the ConantLeadership community, in our new limited series.

EQ Answers to AI Questions

If you spend any time on LinkedIn, you may have noticed a feature called “collaborative articles.” These articles give users the opportunity to answer prompts that are generated by AI based on topics that are pertinent to LinkedIn users. The AI helps generate the questions but it’s the human users who are prompted to write the answers.

In the interest of using AI as a tool to spark dialogue and reflection, we decided to choose some of the most relevant AI-generated leadership questions on LinkedIn and offer a thoughtful, emotionally intelligent answer to share with you directly as a gesture of connection and shared learning.

The first installment is on a topic near and dear to my leadership thinking.

The AI question is, “What are some innovative ways to recognize and celebrate team strengths?

And Here’s My EQ Answer.

First, let’s tackle the ‘why’ of recognition.

I share this message on my social media every few months because it’s that important for leaders to understand:

You cannot expect extraordinary effort and performance without creating an environment where people feel extraordinarily valued. This is an evergreen truth.

So, at every step along your leadership journey, it’s essential to ask yourself if you are making contributors feel meaningfully valued for their work. Mutual respect and amity are the keys to building sustainable high performance. It all comes back to trust. Respect is the currency of trust; the more you extend it, the more you receive it.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed the power of celebrating team strengths again and again. Too often, businesses are over-invested in a posture of critical thinking and under-invested in creating a positive culture that supports productivity.

Yes, it’s important to diagnose problems to fix, but it’s equally important to search for the things that are working in your business and to shine a light on those too. I’ve found that, no matter how dire the circumstances, there is always something to celebrate. Otherwise, the entire effort begins to sag under the weight of an overly negative gloom.

In fact, I believe a culture of recognition creates an environment that is better equipped to address critical issues. A team that is energized by positive reinforcement (of important things that are working) has greater capacity to fix problems than a team that is world-weary from constant criticism.

And what’s more human than facilitating joy and pride? This comes back to the interplay of the “art” and “science” of leadership.

We’ve discussed how artificial intelligences are valuable as diagnostic tools—they can analyze data and crunch numbers with dizzying speed. Certainly, we can easily outsource some of the critical thinking of our job functions to AI—the “science.”

But it would be much more challenging and ill-advised to outsource our recognition efforts, which lie squarely in the realm of “art.”

Sure, AI and other software and technology tools can find the busted number in a spreadsheet or analyze survey data and summarize key insights—but does it know to honor Lisa on your content team for delivering a project early despite juggling three young kids and a sick live-in mother? Is the technology aware that Raul in accounting brings his whole team coffee on Fridays to boost morale? Probably not. That’s not its job.

Staying connected to the pulse, the lifeblood of the people who make up your organization is your job, the special duty of leadership. And for me, it has always been one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of my journey.

“It is this give and take between people, the back and forth, that AI can’t replace; this is the ‘art’ of leadership.”

Now, let’s tackle the ‘what’ of recognition.

The name of the game is to make sure your expressions of praise are both personal and specific. My signature recognition practice, among others, has always been handwritten thank-you notes (although I’ll admit to using email more frequently in recent years).

Even when I was a Fortune 500 CEO with a punishing schedule, I would always set aside time to write sincere notes of thanks to associates all over the world to let them know how much their work mattered.

During my tenure, I wrote over 30,000 notes of thanks. Writing these notes was not only a gesture of recognition, it was also a way to signal that I was not disconnected and siloed in some ivory tower. No, I was paying attention, and I deeply appreciated people’s commitment and efforts.

If you’re looking for an “artful” way to boost morale in your team and throughout your organization in a personal way that leans into human connection, this is a good practice to adopt as your own. It is simple, but it requires thought; and it is approachable but unexpected.

As you develop an intentional thank-you note writing practice, keep these things in mind

The notes should not be vague, broad, or gratuitous
For maximum impact, thank-you notes should contain specific recognition of recipients’ contributions and connect back to the company’s strategic agenda (think: what are the things that you know about the recipient that AI is unlikely to know e.g., things about their life story, their personalities, their unique talents?)
Approach the practice as an opportunity to celebrate and reinforce high standards, deepen relationships, and improve employee engagement
Choose a time to devote to the initiative, put it on your calendar, and stick to it
And, most of all, consider it an incredibly rewarding habit to cultivate throughout your lifetime

The Big Idea

If I can leave you with anything as it relates to recognition, it is about the mutuality and the virtuous circle that celebrating people creates. It is this give and take between people, the back and forth, that AI can’t replace; this is the “art” of leadership.

Data and information are the domain of machines. Relationships are the domain of humanity—and of leaders. And that is sacred. We should treat it as such.

As I reflect on my leadership career, it becomes clearer and clearer: An investment in other people is an investment in myself. Lifting people up lifts me up. Creating a more fulfilling experience for others enhances my own fulfillment.

When I was in the thick of things as CEO of Campbell Soup Company, I would write these notes every day on my commute into the office—ten to twenty per day.

No matter how harried I might be when I entered the car, my mood was always improved when the ride was over because I had spent the past hour focusing on all the good things that were happening in the company. The exercise made me grateful and boosted my mood.

As a result, I’d go to work with a spring in my step because the ten to twenty fantastic things I’d written notes about were fresh in my mind—so each day I had the sense that, “Wow! I work for an amazing company filled with incredible people.”

Writing these thank-you notes was not a slog I had to summon the energy for despite being depleted. On the contrary, it was the consistent act of writing these notes that renewed my energy and gave me the vim to tackle the challenges of the day. And it made me a better leader.

I encourage you to find a similar recognition practice that works for you. It’s an art: Celebrate what’s working. Create connections. Generate the human spark.

Remember: Companies are powered by people.

Sincerely,

__

Do you have an insight to add to the EQ answer to this AI question?

We want to hear from you. Drop us a line with your thoughts and we may feature your response in a future ‘EQ Answers to AI Questions’ letter.

Suggested Reading

Join us as we go to “school” on AI. Here are some recent resources we’ve found illuminating on this topic:

Looking for more EQ insights on this topic? Explore these resources from ConantLeadership:

About the Author: Doug Conant is Founder and CEO of ConantLeadership, Chairman Emeritus of CECP, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, former Chairman of Avon Products, and co-author of two bestselling leadership books, TouchPoints, and The Blueprint.