Leadership Secrets – AI in Decision-Making (Transcript + Summary)
Source: YouTube video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcInhnMACMI
Summary
In this episode of The Leadership Toolkit, Mike Phillips interviews Doug Gray, Ph.D. about using AI to improve leadership decision-making without outsourcing judgment. Doug frames AI as a large library of digitized human learning and emphasizes using it to spark curiosity, generate options, and rehearse communication, while keeping human discernment in charge. The conversation also covers privacy and compliance risks of open AI tools, the value of closed (private) language models for organizations, and how assessment tools and metrics can help leaders make better decisions. Doug also shares a framework for navigating succession planning conflict in family-owned businesses by managing pace, space, and grace.
Key points
- AI as a “right-seat” tool: useful for prompts, options, rehearsal, and question generation, while leaders keep responsibility for judgment.
- Do not outsource thinking: AI output should be tested and reviewed before deployment.
- Define AI broadly: AI can be viewed as digitized human learning that makes vast knowledge accessible.
- Curiosity matters: asking better questions is a learn-faster, decide-better advantage.
- Use multiple models to reduce blind spots: compare responses across tools and ask it “What am I missing?”
- Data privacy and compliance risk: open tools can expose proprietary or personal information if training/data-sharing is enabled.
- Closed LLMs for organizations: a smaller, private model can keep information confidential and limit sources (for example, peer-reviewed sources like Google scholar).
- Organizational maturity: aim for the minimum structure necessary, scaled to the organization’s needs.
- Succession planning: conflict often stems from emotional history, not legal mechanics; facilitation and structure can help.
- Pace, space, grace: a practical rubric for managing succession planning conversations and reducing unnecessary conflict.
Transcript
Welcome to the show everybody.
My name is Mike. This is the Leadership Toolkit. As you know, it’s your definitive leadership growth podcast.
It’s your opportunity to tune in and get in with people that have done it and are doing it. They’re doing the thing that you want to be able to do so that you can grow and listen to their successes. Also, it’s always clear that we grow and we fail forward. We need to have open conversations with awesome leaders from all different verticals of business.
Today is no exception. I have got Doug Gray, PhD, on the show. He’s always been an outcome focused leader. He does leadership development, publishes books. His clients ask what really works. So, we’re going to get into that conversation today. So, nice to have you on the show today, Doug.
My pleasure. I hope it’s useful for folks.
Absolutely. So, if you would just take a moment and if you would kind of share your elevator pitch. What is your background in leadership? How did you get into it? And then we will have some conversation around that.
Well, I’ve always focused on leadership development. It’s the thread line. I’m in my 60s, so now I’ve got gray hair. Now I’m a business psychologist. As a kid, I had formative mentors in Boy Scouts, I was an Eagle Scout, and then coaches. I played hockey and had coaches who were marvelous. That was mostly in upstate New York. And leaders included my family. I was born in Denver and moved a lot as a child. My dad was a Methodist minister for a while and then became an academic. When you’re exposed to different environments, you get different perspectives. In my 20s, I worked with groups of leaders as an Outward Bound instructor in wilderness environments. Then worked in private independent high schools, prep schools, for a decade, four different schools, different geographies.
I met my wife at a prep school in New Hampshire, we married 36 years ago and relocated to Minnesota where my roots were. Then we moved to DC for 10 years and relocated with her career down to Charlotte for 10 years and now we’re in Nashville for 11 years.
But my work focus has always been with business leaders. Started my company in 1997. How’s that for a summary?
Perfect. That’s interesting. So, you said, raised in Denver. I’m in Colorado Springs. You were brought up playing hockey. I played hockey for 20 years and coached for as many years.
As we get into our conversation today, I want to bring up your expertise. One of the things that I think leaders don’t do often enough, we get in and we’re working in the business. We’re working on all the things. We’re doing all the stuff. And one of the notes you put here said, “Hey, let’s talk about identifying threats and opportunities on your team.” I’ve heard that called a SWOT analysis, SWOT, strength, weakness, opportunities, threats. At what point do you get into talking about, you know, threats, opportunities, that sort of deal? If everything’s seemingly fine, why would we go there, Doug?
Well, the short answer to that model is that the strengths and weaknesses are at an individual level, and the opportunities and threats are at a team level, right?
Okay.
And you and I can’t control the opportunities and threats. So, what do you focus on? If you choose to focus on your strengths and weaknesses, that focus will suggest certain options and courses of action. For instance, my last call was with a vendor who wants to use an AI assistant coaching program that I developed.
Okay.
My second response to you is why not put into a cleverly written prompt on your favorite AI tool something like just “craft a good prompt for me to audit my business?”
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the leadership toolkit podcast hosted by Mike Phillips? Ask what topics should he consider and who are the guests that he ought to reach out to in the next decade? List their contact names and topics and such. In other words, when we lead toward a larger library, we’re going to get different sets of data, different results.
As you can see, from my background, I’ve got a book problem. There are lots of books in the world. AI is just like a large library.
So, Mike, I’m going to throw a question at you.
Okay.
How do you define artificial intelligence, for instance, in three words?
How do I define artificial intelligence in three words? I need maybe need four words. Machine learning and instruction.
I love it. You did it. Well, thanks for playing.
There it’s three words in a symbol.
You want to goose your definition? I think we often think of tools like AI as something that’s machine driven. What if it’s broader? What if it’s human learning and what if it’s defined as “digitized human learning”? How broad is that? Evolutionary psychologists have that perspective. If you imagine a timeline and as a species we’ve been around for half a million years or so, and we’ve got all this vocal knowledge sharing that eventually was written from Sanskrit to everything we’ve got today.
Sure.
And suddenly all of that data can be digitized.
Now when you reach out and ask that large library questions like “how do you define leadership? What are toolkits for leadership? What really works? What’s a practical tool?” It’s like asking a larger library. I went to some of the finest colleges in the world. So, at some of the biggest colleges, I had access to tremendous libraries with rare books that are only accessible to those students and faculty.
Now, today, we have that access at our fingertips, which implies that we’re either aggressively learning or we’re lazy.
How do you know which one it is? Are we aggressively learning or are we lazy?
Let me ask you. How much do you use AI?
I use it for this show regularly. I will say I use it but and I use the word but sparingly. You can probably appreciate that with your degrees. I don’t think I’m ever going to have a replacement for genuine human interaction and learning. I think AI can make a great right seat. I have it programmed on my phone my preferred AI still is chat GPT. I’ve used probably all of them because I do digital marketing for a living. I’ve tested all the stuff. You commented a minute ago. You said, “Well, you know, pick your favorite AI and so forth.”
Yes there’s the opportunity to have a favorite AI, but there are also some real good niche models. You know, sometimes you might say, “Hey, yeah, this is my favorite.” Like I said, I prefer a chat GPT when it when I’m bouncing stuff off of that or I need a question answered or I need a thought to get started. But there’s plenty of times that, you know, the Google AI will work better on things or especially like with it tied into your email and so forth where it’s offering suggestions or that Claude will work better. There isn’t a replacement in my opinion for genuine, you know, human interaction and input. AI can be a great tool. You know, people fear it right now.
So, let’s not go to the fear-based side of our brains, our limit. Let’s go to the prefrontal cortex. For instance, that we can use it for asking questions like you first stated.
I think curiosity is the currency of learning.
If you use AI, for instance, to ask questions, you can also tweak the prompt. You can take a response from Open AI and put it into Claude or put it into Grok and put it into Perplexity and ask in each of those examples, “what am I missing?”
It’s kind of like asking four experts for some insights into a leadership toolkit. Pick your topic.
For example, you and I are of an age we’ll probably go on YouTube for “how to fix whatever…” I do that regularly. Then I go and attempt it. Most of the time I’m successful.
But our kids don’t do so.
They’ll go to OpenAI and ask, “How do I fix whatever?” In other words, their go-to now is the AI tools. We’ve now got AI browsers that are being piloted.
(The full transcript is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcInhnMACMI)
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