AI for leaders starts with the leader. Learn the tools yourself, name AI a priority, and put in your first 20 hours of hands-on practice. Then use it to build systems, think through decisions and compress the time work takes. Your team adopts AI at the pace you set, so going first is the job.
- Two things stop most leaders: "I don't have time" and nobody inside the company championing AI.
- Twenty hours of hands-on practice gets you going. Learn by doing.
- Use AI for systems, for thinking through decisions, and for compressing time.
- Stay human first. Take what AI gives you and make it yours.
What does AI mean for leaders?
AI is changing how we work and lead for the next decade and beyond. It will reach your business either way. Your part is deciding how you use it, when you use it, and what it looks like in your organization.
More with less, faster.
I used ChatGPT the first week it came out. Within a minute it felt like using the internet for the first time, and I went all in.
How are leaders using AI right now?
My co-host Arturo Gomez has led teams for 25 years and uses AI several times a day. These uses come from our own businesses and clients.
| Use | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Systems and process | Writing SOPs, shaping an org chart, and drafting job descriptions in seconds |
| A thinking partner | Talking through scenarios and asking the questions a leader hesitates to ask out loud |
| Sales | Drafting outreach and responses that once took a much bigger team |
| Relationships | A CEO's 52 weekly client emails, built in three hours where it used to take three weeks |
Leadership can be lonely. A tool you can ask anything, at any hour, changes that.
What stops leaders from adopting AI?
- "I don't have the time" AI gets filed under nice to have, and someday never comes. Comfortable is always comfortable.
- No internal champion A company rises or falls to the level of its leadership. When the person at the top skips AI, the team skips it too.
One CEO told me, "If I don't work on this for the next year, I'm a year behind." That awareness is the starting line.
How long does it take to get good at AI?
Start with 20 hours. That much hands-on practice puts you ahead of most people on almost any skill. Learn by doing. I simply kept going, and the hours became the foundation of how I coach it today. Each new wave of AI builds on the reps you already have, which is why starting now beats starting later.
Should you learn AI yourself or bring someone in?
Those are the two options, and both work.
- Learn it yourself. Look at your week. Did you learn, read, listen to or try anything with AI? A week with nothing is a hole in the boat.
- Bring in someone who has done the reps. A coach compresses the learning curve for you and your team, the same way a coach does in any other skill.
How do you write a good AI prompt?
- Context. Tell it who you are, how you sound and who you serve.
- Task. Say exactly what you want it to do.
- Specifics. Get the details out of your head and into the prompt.
- Stretch. Ask yourself what you have never thought to ask it. That question breaks your belief ceiling.
The only limitation is our own creativity.
Rob Cressy, Episode 67
How do you align your leadership team on AI?
Alignment starts at the top. Say out loud that AI is a priority for the next decade, and name a champion inside the company. Have every leader put in their own 20 hours. Then pick the first projects by asking where you can do more with less, faster. Leaders who keep learning see the strategy and the landmines ahead. The approach is the same one you use for leading through change.
How do you stay human first with AI?
Let AI do the first draft and keep the judgment. Arturo's team creates job descriptions in seconds, then goes back in to make sure each one sounds like them and fits who they are. The speed comes from AI. The standard comes from you. Staying curious about each new tool takes a growth mindset.
Is it too late to start with AI?
You are right on time. This episode was recorded in June 2024. Back then I said AI images had arrived, AI video was next, and AI agents that do work on their own would follow. All three are here now. The leaders who started early built on each wave as it came, and the same will be true of whatever comes next.
Do this today
- Commit to learning. Block your first hour this week and count it toward your 20.
- Get in and play. Open an AI tool and ask it a question you have been struggling to think through.
Listen to the episode
AI for Leadership: How to Future Proof Your Success
Questions people ask
How is AI changing leadership?
It speeds up systems and decisions, and it lets small teams compete at a much higher level. Leaders who learn it first set the pace for their people.
How can AI create more time for leaders?
By compressing repeat work. In one example from the episode, a year of weekly client emails went from three weeks of work to three hours.
What is the first thing a leader should do with AI?
Use it yourself. Put in 20 hours of hands-on practice before asking your team to adopt it.
Do you need a big budget to use AI in your business?
AI lets a small company with a limited budget compete at a higher level, and most tools have a free option to start with.
Full transcript
Episode 67: AI for Leadership: How to Future Proof Your Success
Welcome to Leadership DNA, a podcast for those who aspire to be a better leader. Alongside Arturo Gomez, I'm Rob Cressy. Today's topic, the role of artificial intelligence in future leadership. In Arturo, AI and ChatGPT is a disruptive technology that is going to change the world for the next decade and beyond. And whether we like it or not, it's going to impact our business and our life.
It's a matter of how you use it, when you use it, and what that looks like in your organization. And this is a topic in which I am a world-class expert because I've spent the last year and a half integrating AI and ChatGPT into my business systems for growth, actively coaching entrepreneurs and CEOs on how they can future proof their business, having put in over a thousand hours in this.
And I thought it would be very beneficial to have this conversation candidly in terms of what we as leaders can do to put ourselves in a position of strength, future proof our businesses, as well as what are the things that are stopping us or leaders from integrating this into what we do. And we come from both a similar philosophy in leadership, but also different perspectives in AI.
So let's start with this Arturo. What's on your mind as it relates to AI and leadership? AI and leadership, I mean, God, it's something I think about literally on a daily basis. More so the AI side, right? Just in terms of how I'm personally using AI to enhance systems, create SOP, have almost like one on one dialogue with, you know, with ChatGPT in terms of, you know, exploring the realm of possibilities of certain things.
And I think, you know, in terms of leadership, I think there's a comment that you're always talking about in terms of system scale. There's a real opportunity there for leaders in organizations to be able to tighten up their current systems and process quickly. I mean, insanely quickly. There's no there's no reason not to have structure now. You know, it's actually if you don't implement it or you're not using AI in some way, shape or form to enhance or to update or to create systems and process for your organization, then you're being ignorant, you know?
And so there's a question then around whether or not you should be leading the organization. So I think technology in general, you know, we've been seeing, you know, technology moving at the speed of light literally for the last probably 20, 25 years. And I think organizations that really value their growth have invested heavily in the way that, you know, technology impacts and touches their organization and their people.
And so AI is doing that. I think people are starting to figure out exactly what that means and looks like. I know that you spent a ton of time examining that. You brought a lot of that knowledge and those systems in that process and that understanding from the queries and how to actually engage and interact with chat.
I think for me, that's the biggest thing. And I also think, you know, there's an opportunity the way that chat is evolving. We are probably year or months away from this becoming literally like a consigliere. It's like a person in the corner that you can confidently ask situational questions and you're going to get right now we're embarking on, you know, the next the next great frontier is in this thing in this process is finding the ability to bring in reason.
And so once you crack that one, it becomes it's a scary amount of power that now just has been created. But I think I think a lot of leaders are playing around with that, having this almost this, you know, unilateral dialogue with this thing in flushing out scenarios that I think becomes very helpful when, you know, sometimes the position of being a leader is can be lonely.
And so and sometimes there's people that have that are fearful to ask questions that maybe viewed as, hey, you should already know that. Or maybe it's just a question that isn't frequently asked or that people just don't frequently have the answer to it. So those are the two primary things right now for me that I see or that are currently impacting my life.
But I'm sure there's a lot more. Yeah, so I'll break this down very formulaically to try and help everyone with the light bulb moments that have happened in my mind as a leader and why I am all in on AI. So I first used ChatGPT the first week it came out in November a year and a half ago.
And within the first minute, I was like, oh my God, I feel like I just use the Internet for the first time. This is going to change the world. Immediately, I was all in. A lot of people have to be like convinced, like, oh my God, is it worth my time? I was like, are you kidding me?
This is going to change the world because so often people will sit there and be like if I was only there when Facebook started or when the Internet first started, it's like ding, ding. This is that thing that is going to change the world. So once I understood that my commitment level was all in and as a prolific creator, I'm sitting there and I'm like, you're telling me you're giving me a magic robot to make me more powerful in everything that I'm doing.
So when the rest of the world was like, oh my God, I can write a blog post like Daffy Duck. I'm like, how do I turn a dollar into a dollar fifty? I was like, let's use this from a lens of a business growth. So I legitimately see millions and billions of dollars in our ability to ask ChatGPT and AI the right question.
So Arturo, when you're talking about better systems and processes, what are the questions that I can ask ChatGPT to create better systems and processes that can allow me to scale faster with less effort and more impact in higher quality? As I like to say, more with less faster. So once that light bulb was created, I was like, holy smokes, I'm all in.
And the only limitation is our own creativity. So if this thing knows in theory everything of everything, the only thing stopping us from creating this impact or these dollars is our ability to be more creative. So now you open up your aperture to what's possible and you're like, wow, this is unbelievable. And it only takes 20 hours for you to be proficient at something more than 95% of people in the world.
And once you understand this formulaically, you just say as a leader, all right, I'm sitting here at zero or one out of 100 with AI and ChatGPT. Let me get in my 20 hours and just play with it, learning by doing because that's all I did. I just accelerated the speed of doing it to where now I've done it for a thousand hours and now I can coach and train people on how to do it.
And with this insight, we oftentimes look at business and you say, all right, there's the gap, the gap between where you are and where you want to be as it relates to your competitors. So if you and a competitor are sitting there in even footing, you say, how can I get a step above them? Well, let me use this technology that many people or businesses are not going to do for years down the road or on the inverse.
There's the market leader and you're behind them. How do you close the gap? Well, icebergs are slow moving when you're at the top. Everything's good. It's like, man, we're always going to be number one, except they don't see that the people who are behind them as competitors, they start integrating AI and ChatGPT into what they're doing.
And all of a sudden, boom, you can blow past them. And the biggest challenge that I'm seeing for leaders right now, and it's two of them, number one is I don't have the time where they see this as sort of a nice to have, not a need to have. And I'll get to it someday. And I think about one of the recent clients that I landed as CEO of a fintech company, and he goes, Rob, if I don't work on this for the next year, I'm a year behind.
And that's why I want to work with you, because I want to accelerate the rate in which this happens. And it's so easy to being comfortable is always comfortable. So why do I need to learn this new thing if things are going well right now? Well, as a forward thinking leader, that is not going to put us in a position to succeed.
And then the second thing becomes there's not an internal champion for AI in many organizations, Arturo. You and I have talked about the success of organizations, oftentimes rises or falls to the level of leadership. So if the leader at the top is not saying this is something that's important for organization, then no one else is going to learn it within the organization.
But the inverse becomes you're a forward thinking leader who says, listen, we know this is a journey for the next decade. Let's start planting those seeds right now, getting in our 20 hours, getting in our 100 hours of this and start playing around with efficiency, effectiveness, where we can create more with less faster. And these are the things that are either stopping or propelling leaders.
And I wanted to share this because this is one of the greatest competitive advantages we will ever have in our life. So the sooner you start taking advantage of this opportunity, the sooner you can start to see the fruits of your labor. Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing is, you know, as leaders of organizations, it's our responsibility to make sure that we continue to evolve and that we continue to understand how the world is changing and changing very quickly.
If you don't, you are unable to create strategy and unable to actually see the landmines that are presented for your business and how to navigate that. So it's just, you know, I kind of equated to, you know, listen, I'm in my late 40s. There are people that I know that have zero idea how to work an Excel spreadsheet or the basic functionality of email like they struggle with it.
And I'm like, where the hell have you been for the for the last two decades? Like so I think you have technology will be something that we will have to be. We will be required as we grow into our later years. It's only going to be able to enhance our lives, personally, our lives at a personal level.
And so the impact that I think that it can have for us from a business and career trajectory, I think is also it merits. If you put it this way, if you're not paying attention to it now, you are going to be left behind. And so it's critical, it's mission critical that everybody that's listening to this and everybody that's in the outside world pay attention to the impact that artificial intelligence is going to have in all aspects of our life.
Yeah. And one of the things, oh, yes, and that Arturo that I think about is, all right, being able to use it and learn it and experience it in these early days. So often people don't think about one year, three years, five years, 10 years from now and let's call it three years from now when we'll say the majority of people are starting to play around with it right now.
They have not had the unlocks that you and I are getting by getting in the reps right now. So learning what it's like just to have a generic prompt and all right. Now I can make this better. And now all of a sudden they start bringing out AI image creation and on the horizon is AI video. And then after that is going to be things like auto GPT and AI agents in these things where you literally have a AI creative assistant doing work for you autonomously, not just saying, give me the answer, give me the answer and then go do it yourself.
Well, if you're starting three years from now, you're just going back to how in the world do I create a simple prompt as opposed to the real opportunity of the forward thinking technological advancements. So if I'm a leader in an organization, you really only have two options right now. One, learn it yourself or to bring in someone to teach you or train you and or your team.
And once you understand this, there's a lot of freedom in it because then you say, all right, well, let me look at my current week. Have I learned, read, listened or experienced anything with AI or ChatGPT? And if not, you got a hole in your boat because number two, the fastest way that you can accelerate this in Arturo.
We know this one on one for personal development. Bring in someone who's an expert at it. And this is where you can do more with less faster by saying, I don't want to go and put in the thousand hours, Rob, I just want to learn from you. Can you accelerate that in three months for me and my team?
So we can start building those systems and processes for ourselves. To me, that is the level up is understanding where the levers of growth are. And the only thing stopping you from capitalizing this is you. Yeah, yeah. So it's you know, without a doubt, it's it's it's going to be it's it already is a huge game changer and something that's going to impact organizations across the board.
It's going to allow the it'll allow the small guy with very limited budgets to actually compete at a much higher level. And it already is. It already is so exciting stuff. Arturo, I'm curious from your perspective. Let's now look at business deals or who you're working with. And if someone were to bring some level of AI or technology to the table and what that does from a excitement or possibility side, so for example, I'm having new business conversations on a consistent basis in one of the things that becomes an immediate light bulb, I bring up AI and there's either the we're not doing it and we need to or Rob, we're also doing it.
Let's start talking about the ways that we're both integrating in this and what that does to almost find the tribe of people or companies who are forward thinking, and it doesn't mean we're building AI companies. But this is sort of a wavelength of the levels to this game where you get in a room with some other people who are playing with it because this becomes contagious. What are your thoughts on that or how that enters your world?
Yeah, I mean, you know, we're we're using I'm using it in all different ways right now, and so it's it's it's permeated my my world to the highest levels. I mean, I'm on chat multiple times a day, to be honest. And so, you know, give you an example, we have a high level HR operator that we use for one of our one of our businesses, but we're still using chat, you know, in specifically in development of, you know, organizational chart construct in terms of the way that we want to build the the organization, we're using it to push out and create job descriptions as we grow in, I mean, in like two seconds.
But, you know, we also need to go back into that. We need to modify it. We need to make sure it's ours, that it resonates with with us and who we are. But there's really zero reason for people to not have structure in their organization or be able to present, you know, these systems and processes because it's it's so easy to achieve right now with the with the help of of ChatGPT.
So and then on the other side, you know, one of my other businesses, I'm using it for sales process. And so it is enabled me without fear to be you know, a very aggressive cold sales marketing individual. And so, you know, I really don't love the idea of cold marketing, but it's, you know, with now with with with AI, it really has allowed us to, I think, do things that in the past might have been prohibitive and certainly allows us to ideate responses quickly and to be able to automate processes from a sales standpoint that frankly is is it's pretty next level.
I mean, you know, in the past would have taken a lot of bodies to be able to duplicate what you're trying to duplicate. Yeah. Now, yes. And then I've got an example. We've got a client that is a CEO of an insurance company and we're coaching him one on one as well as his sales team separately. And with the sales team, they wanted to get better at relationship management.
Hey, staying top of mind for both prospects as well as current clients in a value driven way, not a hey, just checking in. So the CEO for years had created a system where once a week he would send an email that had three things, an inspirational quote, a podcast or a book and some other nugget didn't necessarily have to do with their insurance business more of a man.
I'm looking forward to hearing from Rob or Arturo because here's something they send every week, it would take him three weeks to create the 52 emails that he would use to help do his relationship management in working with their sales team in building this for themselves, leveraging ChatGPT, we were able to get it done in three hours.
Yeah, and they sat there and was like three weeks to three hours. Then you start looking at your business and you're like, what are the other things that we can do to compress time and turn three weeks into three hours? So just mind blowing opportunities for sure. It's it's it's kind of it's mind blowing the the the expansive realm of which this thing is starting to impact and touch.
Yeah. So now let's get to our action item or take away and I'm going to shoot some fire. This is your opportunity to create an unfair advantage in your business, artificial intelligence, because what are you willing to do that others are not? And if you're sitting there thinking, oh my God, I'm already so far behind, you're not.
This is literally the beginning of this. So by design, you integrating this or just committing to learning will pay thousand X million X returns in the long term for this. And if you're someone who wants to learn this faster at a higher level, I encourage you to join my community, go to creating unlimited dot com. We talk about creating unfair advantages and AI and self development.
We've got the tools and the resources. So you don't get to think about it. Just learn and experience and talk about it with us. What about you, Arturo? What's your action item or takeaway? One is going to be for people to jump on this community to listen to what you guys are talking about, because I think it's extremely constructive.
People will find real value there. And then if they haven't if they haven't jumped on chat, they should. There's two options is a free option and a paid option. So there's no real reason for for people not to get in there. I think once you start playing with it, even even if you're giving it very little time, once you understand the capabilities that it has, I think that's where people get addicted very quickly.
So my my thought is get in there, become familiar, understand the possibilities, play around with it, ask questions that you may find difficult to to flush out, whatever it is, just begin to understand what the technology looks and feels like. Because if you're not, you know, like I said, you're going to be falling way behind. Yeah, Arturo, I'll give a quick little tip that will help people when you're starting. It's a very simple framework that I use.
Number one, context. Tell ChatGPT who you are, what you sound like and or your target demographic, because a lot of people just say, write me a marketing strategy versus, hey, I'm an entrepreneur and coach. I do this and this context. Number two, task definition. Tell it what you want. So many people get generic results because they're either super vague and what they ask it or they say, write me a book in four seconds.
It's like, whoa, sit back here right there. And the next thing becomes specificity. Take what's in your head and get it out of your head into ChatGPT. Be very specific, be very detail oriented in what you do. And then lastly, one of the things that I like to do is what are you not asking ChatGPT to do? This is going to shatter your belief ceiling, the thing that just blew my mind when I first started using it.
I was like, all right, let's see how good this thing really is. I was like, I want you to create a personal growth program for Jesus and write me the outline and make this eight weeks. Well, why did I use Jesus? Because if you're to sit here and be like who would be the greatest person to create a coaching program, it would be Jesus and it's like, cool, here's what an eight week coaching program from Jesus would look like.
It goes and I was like, oh, my God, if it can create a coaching program for Jesus, this thing can do everything. So and of course, we chuckle and laugh, but that's the absurdity of shattering your belief ceiling. What is possible if you just literally say, oh, you think you can do this? Literally, it can do anything.
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