093 | The Dirty Secret About AI No Female Executive Wants To Admit—And Why It’s Hurting You | AI Series Day 12 | 12 Days of AI | Leadership, Delegation & Systems with AI Frameworks

Too many female leaders are secretly avoiding AI, downloading tools but never using them, delegating it away, or pretending it’s not urgent. 

That silence is costing influence, credibility, and growth.

This episode is about stripping away the perfectionism that keeps founders stuck on the sidelines of the biggest business tool of our lifetime. You’ll see why leadership has never been about having every answer. It’s about asking better questions, learning out loud, and modeling the kind of fearless innovation your team and investors are desperate to follow.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The hidden psychological cost of perfectionism in AI adoption
• Why your value isn’t expertise — it’s asking better questions
• How to shift from “I don’t know” to “I’ll figure it out” without losing credibility
• Why learning in public actually builds trust and authority
  
  
  

This episode at a glance: 

[00:00] – The silent fear female execs carry about AI
[01:30] – Client story: dodging investor calls out of AI panic
[03:00] – Why your reputation for always knowing the answers works against you here
[04:15] – The mindset shift: from perfection to fearless learning
[05:00] – How asking better questions makes you the AI-forward leader your team needs

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

• 10 Ways AI Will Make You a Better Leader – Free Guide
• More leadership insights and resources at dawnandrews.com
• You might also like to listen to:
  • How Female Founders Delegate Like a CEO Before They Burn Out
  • Say It Like a Leader: The Feedback Framework Every Female Founder Needs
  • How Smart CEOs Build SOPs Without Boring Themselves (or Their Teams)

Want to increase revenue and impact? Listen to “She's That Founder” for insights on business strategy and female leadership to scale your business. Each episode offers advice on effective communication, team building, and management. Learn to master routines and systems to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Our delegation tips and business consulting will advance your executive leadership skills and presence.

Transcript

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She's That Founder
093 | The Dirty Secret About AI No Female Executive Wants To Admit—And Why It’s Hurting You

Real talk. There's a dirty secret about AI that no female executive wants to admit. And if it's happening to you, it's costing you everything. 

Welcome to She's That founder Thursday edition.

These are the quick rants Kick in the pants, velvet boot. Moments that represent me standing in the future, pulling you toward the even stronger, better, more powerful leadershipy version of yourself with AI as your co-pilot. 

So let me ask you something. Have you downloaded chat GPT, but haven't really opened it or engaged with it? Have you been to AI demos where you nodded along but left feeling more confused than when you started? Are you delegating the AI stuff to someone else? Because you don't wanna look like you don't know what you're asking or what you're talking about. If that's you, here's what I want you to know.

You're not behind. You're definitely not alone. But here's what's happening that nobody's talking about. You didn't get where you are as a founder. By winging it, you got here by mastering your domain, by being the dependable one, by doing everything backwards and in heels.

Like Ginger Rogers, as they say, you have proved yourself over and over again in environments that constantly questioned you and questioned whether as a woman you belonged. 

You built your business and your credibility by being the expert in the room and the one with the answers and the one who rarely had to say, I don't know.

And the advent of AI flips that entire script. 

I had a client last week, a brilliant founder, four and a half million in revenue, a team of 15 who confessed something that made my heart hurt. She'd been dodging the monthly check-ins with her investors because she knew that they were going to ask about AI and whether she was incorporating it, whether she was using it to help, streamline operations, reduce overhead, team and the business forward faster.

And she was dodging them because she was terrified they'd discovered that she didn't know the difference between chat, GPT and Claude, that she couldn't write a decent prompt to save her life and that she felt like a fraud every time her COO mentioned automation. 

This is a woman who bootstrapped her way to seven figures who can spot a cash flow problem from three months out. She built her team from scratch and knows every one of her clients by name. But she was staying up late after her investor calls, frantically watching YouTube tutorials on her phone. I get it. 

Suddenly you're back in beginner mode. I mean, the whole world is right, but unlike when you were actually starting out or could figure things out quietly or things just weren't moving at this speed, now you've got a team looking to you for direction and headlines every single day with some new feature, some new moment in the world of AI that just makes you feel like it's a tsunami. The weight of that expectation is suffocating.

So what happens? Maybe you avoid it. Maybe you delegate it. Maybe you pretend it's not urgent, but admitting you don't know how to use the biggest business tool of our lifetime when you're supposed to be the leader that feels like career suicide. Yeah. 

But here's what I want you to consider.

What if your value as a leader was never about knowing everything? What if it was always about learning faster and smarter than everyone else? What if the leaders who are winning right now are not the ones who knew AI first, but the ones who said, "I don't know this, but I'm gonna figure it out faster than anybody expects me to, and I'm gonna be transparent while I'm doing it."

What if your team doesn't need you to be perfect? They need you to be fearless because here's what I know, after 23 years of working with powerful women. Your real expertise isn't in having all the answers. It's in boldly asking questions that nobody else is asking.

The ones that may even seem stupid. Your value is in seeing the problems that matter it's in knowing which direction to point the team when everyone else is spinning, and those skills, those translate perfect to AI adoption. 

Instead of asking, how do I use this? Start asking, what problems could this solve for my company and my team?

Instead of asking, what's the right prompt? Ask, what outcome am I actually trying to create and how can AI help me with this? 

Instead of, am I doing this right or am I doing this wrong? Ask, what would good enough look like so that I can start learning?

When you model that, it's safe to not know something and learn it anyway. You give your entire organization permission to innovate. When you show them that expertise isn't about having all the answers, it's about asking better questions, that's when breakthroughs happen. 

So maybe it's time to stop protecting your reputation and perfectionism and start building your future.

The women who figure this out, not just first, but overall, they're not just adopting AI. They're positioning themselves as leaders who can navigate uncertainty and who can learn in public, who can lead through the unknown. And, ooh, sister, that is what life is these days. And I want you to also know by learning, you're bringing a feminine perspective to a tool created almost exclusively by men, and that's the kind of leader that everyone wants to follow.

So here's what we covered today, the hidden psychological cost of perfectionism when it comes to AI adoption. Why your leadership strength, which is asking better questions is exactly what AI needs and how learning in public actually builds credibility instead of destroying it.

Those better questions I mentioned the ones that will immediately position you as the AI forward leader your team needs. Well, I've got 10 specific AI use cases that don't require you to be an expert first. They just require you to think like this strategic leader you already are.

Grab my free guide, 10 Ways AI will Make You a Better Leader. At hellodawn.live/10ways. 

Remember my love, your superpower isn't knowing everything. It's learning faster and leading through the mess. Let AI amplify that, not threaten it. Okay, I'll see you next time, Lovie.