AI and Leadership: Transformative Perspectives from Chris Hood

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:00:57

Well, hello everybody and welcome to another edition of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast. I am Jaclyn Strominger, your host and on this podcast we hear from absolutely amazing leaders and their game changing insights.

And today we are going to hear from Chris Hood.

Now, what you are going to get from this, I just want you to understand, listen to this, because this is going to be your change in your belief in AI. Whatever you're thinking about, trust me, it's probably not the right thing. Or maybe it needs to be changed.

Chris is a wealth of information and will get you thinking about AI in the absolute right way. So why should we listen to Chris?

Well, he's a strategist, he is an author, he's a speaker, and he has become a pivotal thought leader in integrating customer success with digital Strategy. With over 35 years of experience in business and technology development, Chris has built a reputation for fostering customer centric cultures.

And he is the author of Infallible and Customer Transformation, which offers profound insights into aligning businesses with technologies like AI and evolving consumer behaviors. So, Chris, we could talk and I could go on about all the great things you've done, but welcome to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.

Chris Hood: 00:02:22

Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:02:25

Yeah, so we were talking, you know, obviously pre show and you know, AI as I was, you know, we shared. I don't think there is a day that goes by in the media that you don't hear somebody talking about AI.

So how you, you wrote this great book, I can't wait to read it. So I have to apologize, I have not read it yet. But AI in the workplace brings fear, excitement and a whole bunch of things.

What is the thing that you would like leaders to know and understand about AI?

Chris Hood: 00:03:07

Yeah, I mean, I think the fact that it's in the media every single day is part of the problem.

You know, if, if there's one thing that all people listening to this podcast can take away after this conversation, I'm hoping it's to shift your mindset to do a little bit more exploration and learn a little bit more about what the true capabilities of AI actually are.

And I think because as you mentioned, not only in social media, but also we've grown up with movies like Terminator or War Games for the last 40 plus years that all focused on various elements of AI. So I've often said that we've gotten our understanding of AI through movies and media and television.

One of my favorite shows of all time actually is Person of Interest, which follows along with that show. Yeah, it follows around with an AI that predicts people's fate.

Like, so when we start to buy into this belief system of what we are told about AI, most of which is hype, then it clouds the actual understanding and true capabilities. So all of the fears that you kind of touched on, I'm going to lose my job to AI or AI is going to take over the world. Right.

All of those things are being perpetuated because of the media and marketing and, you know, everybody talking about it at conferences and so on.

And so, yeah, I hope that in the short time we do have together that we can really start to dissect this and shift some of your understanding so that you can be a little bit more critical in your thinking and approach to how you want to integrate AI into your business.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:04:59

You know, I love what you're saying and I, you know, when you're talking about person of interest, obviously that's, you know, it's following your AI, is following the person around. And of course, war games, all I keep thinking about is, do you want to play a game? Right. You know. Right. And that's not really what AI's AI.

I mean, it is, but it's not, it's not the be all end all. So if I'm a leader today, what do you think is the best way to. I'm going to start with the question of how do you bring AI into the workplace?

And, and as a leader, do it with, without the fear of your team.

Because also on the other side of it, you know, the customer side of it, and I, and I will ask your opinion on this too, is like the first customer any company has are the employees. So how do you know? How do we not keep their fear out?

Chris Hood: 00:05:58

Yeah. So there's two elements that you're touching on here. You've got the employees and you've got your customers.

And I think actually you handle them mostly the same, but slightly nuanced. Right. And it does start with full transparent disclosure. We talk about open communication and transparency within leadership.

You have to come into this and be honest.

Imagine if you were selling something to a customer and you basically said, yeah, I spent the last five days working on this project for you, and really it only took you five minutes because you shoved it through some artificial intelligence to generate it. Would your customer appreciate knowing that you used AI to do it? And yet there's a stigma.

Like, I'm not going to tell them, like, I'm, hey, I did this work. I didn't use AI to do this work, you lose trust in that process. And there's really no difference with employees.

I would suggest that the very first thing you do is you say, hey, everybody, we're thinking about looking at AI and exploring ways that we can use AI. We haven't made any decisions yet because we really don't understand what this is capable of for our business. So we're going to bring it in.

We're going to let everybody play with it and we're going to set up sort of a sandbox. And look, we're going to potentially reward people who come up with new and original ideas, creative ways that they can leverage AI for their job.

We're not talking about replacing your job. We, we're looking at this as an enhancement for your job. But because we don't know everything and we don't. You don't really fully grasp this yet.

Let's play with it. All of us together.

That openness, that transparency, that learning process, that procedure, the psychological safety of leveraging other people in the process are all going to help you be a little bit more beneficial from introducing it into your organization.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:08:03

Yeah, I love what you just said. Said for a bunch of different things. And I just kind of want to pinpoint a couple of key, like listeners.

As you're hearing this, I want you to really take away if something that's, I, I think is at the crux of everything and that is transparent and disclosure and being honest. You, you. To me, great leadership starts with sharing that vision of what you want.

So when you're bringing AI in or you're bringing something new or whatever, the next new thing is letting your team know about it and sharing it versus the surprise and getting their buy in.

Chris Hood: 00:08:47

Yeah, you just touched on something. You said sharing the vision of what you want.

It's okay to share a vision of something you don't know anything about and you don't know if you want it yet. I think too often as leaders, we come across as well. I have all the answers. This is my vision. Follow along with me, you know, be humble about this.

I have no clue what we're going to do with this thing, but hey, let's figure it out together. I think both approaches are excellent.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:09:16

Yeah, and that's the point. It's like, because as a leader, the best thing you can do is to share that, but you're empowering your people.

Leadership is about empowering people and helping them rise up. And I love the idea of sharing that. So, you know, in that same vein, what would you say to A leader.

How do you, you know, how do I, how do they empower their teams? As you just shared, like, here's what we're going to do.

But are there any other key points that you would say, you know what, here's a flow, here's a process?

Chris Hood: 00:09:51

Yeah, I think again, you start to look at areas of your business where you might want some sort of improvement, where you might need some enhancement, maybe, maybe you need five people doing a particular role, but you currently only have three people. Could AI help you offset some of that?

So you could start to strategically look at the business and areas where you might find opportunities and then explore can AI help us in these areas? We are potentially struggling in the other side of this. Going back to the customer, I would argue don't ever start with the customer.

Don't ever start with saying we're going to bring AI in to fix this customer thing. And I think that's the knee jerk reaction.

A lot of what I'm seeing out there is like how AI can personalize experience, how AI can help us with customer success, how AI can help us with support calls and so on and so on. All of those are actually flawed in reason because those all require some sort of uniquely human capability that AI can't actually duplicate.

And this is where we get into that balancing act is understanding what AI can actually do versus what you need a real human person to do and then trying to figure out where you can help the human person be better at their job and which it's communicating with consumers and not hand that over completely to an AI. We've all been on a phone call where it says press one to reach this person, press two. And we're all sitting here £ £ £ real person, real person.

Right. This is also why you look at somebody like Discovery that has an entire campaign that's wrapped around, you can speak to a real person.

They are going anti AI and robots and it's working for them because there are plenty of consumers out there that genuinely just want to talk to somebody. I also use this as an example. If you go to a grocery store today, you usually have an option. Yes.

There are self checkout lines where you can easily, conveniently and, and maybe you don't want to talk to somebody, go out and do your own self checkout. There are plenty of people who despise self checkout and want to actually go and have somebody, you know, support them.

But in both of those, in that situation you actually have the choice, you have the choice of not talking to somebody. Or talking to somebody. And right now a lot of businesses are looking at this as well. We're going to shove AI down people's throats.

We're not going to give them the option. And what it's actually doing is it's alienating those customers from your business.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:12:52

Yep. You know, I am so kind of glad that you brought this up because I think this is it. Is it. For me personally, it's a pet peeve.

I'm one of those people, like I, if I call a credit card company, if I call somebody, I want to know that I can easily speak to a person. I'm like, what's the direct. Like what numbers do I have to press? And I ask all the time, what are the sequence that I can just get right to a person?

Right. And I, and I think this is also really important for leaders to understand. As humans, we need human connection.

And it's really important for us to, I believe as a leader, if you can be like the discover and keep the human connection in with your customers, it's going to make your people happy. It's going to make your, your, your employees happier.

Chris Hood: 00:13:50

Yeah.

Just to touch on that, we talk and I'm sure you've probably had an episode previously about this topic that one of the most critical traits of a leader would be emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, just by definition, is a uniquely human trait.

There is no artificial intelligence on the planet that can have emotional intelligence. It can't be empathetic.

And yet all of these core values that we look at as a human to say, well, I'm going to have a conversation with an employee about a difficult situation or conflict resolution, even from a consumer who is calling you in looking for that support.

And they are frazzled because they've just gone through some chaotic event in their lives that actually has nothing to do with why they're calling in.

And you're going to hand that experience off to some artificial entity, like these types of experiences, the, the emotional intelligence, the empathetic responses, those are all uniquely human. And those are experiences we as humans crave. You are not selling your products or services to a robot. You are selling them to other human beings.

And so why would you ever want to actually hand those experiences off so that they become more artificial?

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:15:27

Yeah, it's so true. It's so important to understand this because I don't ever want it to replace a human when they're talking to me about a product, a customer.

As you said, the emotional intelligence and having empathy and being able to relate to People, People, you know, and I think it's some. It, it's, it's, it's something that we need. You know, having communications verbally is something that leaders need to foster more in.

And communication is so important in the workforce. And we were not meant to just. And I have to, you know, not to go on my soapbox here, but as an older person in my 50s, I still like the phone.

Yes, text does matter for some things, but I think that we need to teach people the art of communication and the art of conversation.

Chris Hood: 00:16:30

It's a trait or a skill that you can call it that we are drastically losing. There are two primary skills that artificial intelligence is corrupting. The first is communication, as you just said.

And part of that is also social media. Right. Technology over the course of the last 10 years has drastically changed the way we actually communicate.

So it's not totally because of artificial intelligence, but it's increasing it. And critical thinking. Critical thinking is actually declining directly because of artificial intelligence.

And so when you start to lose those human traits of basic communication and critical thinking. Yeah, we are dooming ourselves in the process. I mean, to your point about communication, imagine if I showed up.

Or I'll say, imagine I didn't show up. And who you are talking to right now is the agent version of Chris Hood with the artificial intelligence voice.

And you were conducting this interview in that way, the conversation would be completely different. It would be unauthentic, it would be, you know, not genuine.

And yet there are companies out there that are putting in place artificial intelligence agents to run interviewing processes. Like, you get a call from an agent. Hello, I am with this company and I'm here to ask you questions. Thank you for your response. Right.

Like, what's your first instinct? Well, I don't want to work for that company. They don't care about me. Right.

So we have to continuously think about it in these contexts because otherwise we, as I said, we are dooming ourselves.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:18:18

Yeah. All right, so I have a kind of a going backwards a little bit. What made you write the book?

Chris Hood: 00:18:27

Yeah, so the first reason I wrote the book was because I was seeing all of this stuff online and social media about AI and I was like, but that's not true. Like, that's not, that's not how it works. I put the very first sentence in the book in the opening, says, I should have written this book sooner.

And I genuinely feel that way. Like this book. Book is probably something that I, I could have written three years ago, four years ago.

But as I started to See the hype of AI increase. It also started to generate a failure or you know, I call it an ideology around artificial intelligence that was not aligned with actually reality.

You know, you think about like even a belief system.

I'm not going to suggest to anybody who, you know, everybody out there might have different religious belief systems, but artificial intelligence has now become one of these religious style belief systems that it could be infallible or infallible. This is where I, so I shove AI in the middle of it, which gets to, you know, the title infallible.

But, but yeah, that, that belief system, the ideology of artificial intelligence is completely reshaping how we look at technology, how we do business, how leaders are responding, how consumers are interacting with your business. And I thought that it was a really good reason really to go and dive into this and what that belief system was.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:20:09

Yeah, no, and I really, and I applaud you for writing it.

You know, when I, when I think about, I, I think the biggest thing that we as, you know, as leaders and whether you're a CEO or you're running a team or the, you're the CEO of you to not forget about that human connection, you know, and I'm going to go back to, you know, I don't even know when it was. I'm going to just say in the 70s, this is again, I'm dating myself here, but there was a commercial and I believe.

Well, I'm not going to say which airline it was because I actually don't really remember.

But the gist of the conversation was there was the head of a company, he had his, all his salespeople standing all around him and he said, we just lost our longest customer. And what he did is he handed out plane tickets and he said, we're going to get on the plane. We've gotten used, okay, we've gotten used to faxing.

Right. We've gotten used to, you know, the phone. We need to be in front of our clients and we need to see our clients, we need to shake their hands.

And he handed them all plane tickets. And then, you know, he, they, the sales team asked him like, what are you going to do? He goes, I'm going to go see that client that we just lost.

Chris Hood: 00:21:33

Yeah.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:21:34

And, and that's what I think of AI that way too. Right.

In the sense that we've evolved, but we have to always remember again to going back to the human element and that emotional element, the emotional intelligence. We cannot forget about that part of it as leaders.

Chris Hood: 00:21:55

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Continuing with your Plain story. I've often suggested and I've had conversations with American Airlines and United Airlines.

You know, I've consulted with them and I've, I've asked point blank, when was the last time your CEO flew somewhere coach and sat next to somebody and just experienced that for themselves and talked with a consumer next to them. Most CEOs are void of any type of actual consumption consumer experience. They're, they're not going out into the field.

You know the old TV show Undercover Boss, right. Like no one's actually doing that.

You know, even Undercover Boss, I've argued, is, is an example of how you can get insights into your operations and employees.

But no one is doing that from a consumer perspective is sitting there and it's like, oh well, we have a marketing team, we have some agency who's doing that for us. No, it's your responsibility as a leader.

Your number one responsibility is ensuring that your customers are happy and that you understand what your customers needs are.

And in my first book, Customer Transformation, it talks about this process which as you're alluding to with AI right now, everybody is focused on, well, let's start with AI, let's bring AI in, let's then figure out what AI can do for us and, and then we'll figure out how do we pitch this to our consumers. And it's so backwards that you may get into a position where you are building something that doesn't even require AI.

And so I've kind of started to simplify this where it's, you have to start with your customer first, you then will figure out the technology last.

And even after you figure out what the technology is, maybe you're going to use AI because there are plenty of solutions out there that will solve your customers problems without you ever having to touch AI.

And if you can simplify that process, customer first figure out what their problem is that you want to solve, then figure out what the technology is going to be and then maybe you want to introduce AI in that process. Think you're going to be a lot more successful.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:24:18

Yeah, I love that. You know, customer first should always be that. Always, you know, think of that customer first. It really is important.

So you know, as you're, you know, as we're talking about, you know, AI and the customer, you know, what are you seeing out there like as you're talking to people, you know, what's the, what are other people, you know, experience with AI that maybe can actually go back to the leaders and saying like what other people are experiencing, like or dislike, besides just hitting the phone like, because, you know, we all hate that.

Chris Hood: 00:24:58

Yeah, I do think a lot of it right now is all bandwagon, right. It's like I just have to jump on this because, you know, fear of missing out, if you want to call it that, fomo.

But everybody is kind of just jumping on like, oh, we need AI, let's figure it out.

And that's I think the biggest problem because again, a lot of this we, we talked beforehand, you know, this isn't really anything new in terms of technology. When websites came out, everybody said, oh, I need a website. And, and then overnight everybody became web design experts.

And then, you know, in: 2000

It's like, oh, well, I need AI and everybody overnight has suddenly become an AI agent or some sort of expert in the topic, which, which none of them really are. So this is a continuous type of cycle that we experience. But because of that, I think right now it's the bandwagon effect.

Everybody is jumping on to we need to figure out how we're going to use AI. And the problem with that is that they're trying to force something that doesn't necessarily need to happen.

And so I, I don't think we've reached quite yet. There's, you know, we, we have this thing called a hype cycle and we're up in this hype, you know, location.

And then the next step is sort of called this trough of disillusionment, which is where you basically realize that all of the investments you've made and all of the rationales you've had to introduce AI are actually not panning out. The ROI isn't there. And now you're like, ah, now what do I do?

So we are slowly starting to reach that point where people are starting to, you know, realize, recognize the analytical or, you know, the results of their process and implementations and you know, it's not necessarily looking good. No matter what you're going to read online, you're going to read a bunch of stuff that says ROI at all time high.

You know who the ROIs are at an all time high. All of the companies who are selling AI to you to use it for something that you don't need. Right.

's the pet rock of, you know,: 2025

And so if you can recognize this, it goes back to what we started with. If I can shift your mindset so that you actually see this and recognize it, then you as a leader are going to be in a lot better situation.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:27:50

Right, right. Well, that is so true. Right. It's, you know, understand that right now it's not the be all, end all.

And don't think that if you're not in it, you're missing out or that you're not, you're not a good leader because you're not using it. You know, use your, use your skills to of true communication. And as you said, customer first.

Chris Hood: 00:28:19

Yeah.

And look for anybody who's listening, who's thinking, oh, this is just one of those naysayers who don't really know what they're talking about or whatever you want to say. Which again, personally, I don't really care. You know, I wrote a book on AI that I spent, you know, over a year researching.

t, my first AI project was in: 1999

I worked for Google for six years where I helped organizations implement AI. And I can give you a whole list of people who I direct. What's funny is that we've been using AI in devices.

If you have Netflix, you've been using AI and may not have realized it. Authors who are like, well, AI is the help you writing. You've been using grammar checkers, which is technically a form of AI for 30 plus years.

Spell checkers, you know, another form of AI. And yet all of a sudden it's now new. It's something, you know, revolutionary. I am working with two companies. I've got two companies.

One is a startup, we've been funded, it's an AI company. I've got another new startup that I've just, you know, begun working on this year, which is an AI company. I'm not against AI at all.

I live and breathe it. I just know what it can do and it can't do.

And that I think is the message that I continuously want to hone in is don't fall for the hype, understand what their true capabilities are, figure out what your customers actually want. It may or may not be AI and most likely right now it's not AI. And then go and figure out how you're going to do it.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:30:00

Right. You know, Chris, I could talk to you forever about and for like keep talking about this for hours and hours because it's such a huge topic for me.

Because I think there's so many things about companies where they do forget about the customer. And it was, you know, even like the, that phone conversation, you know, it's like, I just want to talk to somebody.

And then through all the different aspects of where AI is going right now, you have a wealth of information and knowledge. So how can our listeners continue the conversation with you directly, connect with you, see what you're doing, learn about your two companies?

Because that's always great too, because we always love promoting new companies.

Chris Hood: 00:30:42

Yeah, the easiest way to do that is just find me on my website so you can reach out to me@chrishood.com really easy C H R I S h o o d.com and on my website you will find my blog, previous podcast, my books, how to reach out to me. If you want any, any advice, all of it is pretty easy to find right there. Chrisoood.com awesome.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:31:08

Well, thank you so much, Chris for being a guest on the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.

And listeners, please reach out and connect with Chris and if you have enjoyed this conversation, please hit subscribe, share it with your friends, let your colleagues know about it. Our goal is to create amazing leaders. If we can make great leaders, maybe we can make a change in the world. So I'm Jaclyn Stinger.

I am your high performance coach and the host of Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast. Thank you all for listening and again, make sure that you subscribe and check out Chris's website as well. Thank you so much.