What AI Can’t Replace: Leadership Brand, Human Voice & Trust with Mike Kim

What does your leadership brand say about you when you’re not in the room?

In this episode of Culture Secrets, Chellie Phillips sits down with business strategist, speaker, author, and personal branding expert Mike Kim for a practical and deeply human conversation about reputation, trust, storytelling, reinvention, and the leadership signals we send every day.

Chellie first met Mike through one of his workshops while she was trying to figure out how to turn her books, ideas, and experiences into a business. What stood out then still stands out now: Mike is real-world, genuine, honest, and practical. He’s worked with some of the biggest voices and thought leaders out there, but remains humble, approachable, and refreshingly human.

Together, Chellie and Mike explore why personal brand is not about becoming an influencer or chasing attention. It’s about reputation. It’s about values. It’s about how people experience you, how you communicate, and whether your actions match what you say matters.

They also dig into the role of AI in today’s workplace. Mike shares why he sees AI as “a calculator for words” — a powerful tool, but not a replacement for human voice, lived experience, taste, empathy, or discernment. In a world where technology can help us create faster, this conversation is a reminder that leaders still have to do the deeply human work of building trust.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why every leader has a brand, whether they intentionally shape it or not
• The difference between recognition and attention
• How values shape influence more than information alone
• Why storytelling is one of the most powerful tools leaders can use to connect
• How leaders can become more aware of the signals they send
• What AI can help with — and what it can never replace
• Why reinvention often starts by recognizing the skills and experiences you already carry
• How to think about your reputation, voice, and leadership presence with more intention

Mike also shares practical questions leaders can use to get clearer about what they stand for, including: What bothers you? What breaks your heart? And what problem are you trying to solve?

If you’re a leader, communicator, entrepreneur, author, or professional trying to show up with more clarity and authenticity, this episode will help you think differently about your voice, your values, and the reputation you’re building every day.

Because culture is shaped by trust — and trust is shaped by how we show up.

Connect with Mike Kim

You can learn more about Mike Kim and follow his work through his newsletter and LinkedIn.

Newsletter: Mike publishes his newsletter every Tuesday. Sign up at mikekim.com/letter.

LinkedIn: Connect with Mike on LinkedIn. His handle/screen name is realmikekimtv.

Website: Visit mikekim.com to learn more about his books, speaking, workshops, and resources.

Thanks for listening. Grab the book the original podcast is based on at https://mybook.to/culturesecrets . Want more quick leadership tips? Sign up for my FREE bi-weekly newsletter: Coffee, Culture and Common Sense.  

Check out my website www.chelliephillips.com for more great content. Follow me on LinkedIn.  

Transcript

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If workplace culture is your jam, you're in the right place. Check out this episode of Culture Secrets, the podcast dedicated to creating workplaces where both employees and the companies thrive. Today's guest is someone I'm especially excited to welcome to the Culture Secrets podcast, because he's not just someone I admire from a distance, he's someone I've actually learned from personally. I first met Mike Kim through one of his workshops back when I had written my first couple of books and was trying to figure out how to turn all those ideas, stories, and experiences into something bigger, something that could actually become a business, not just a passion project. And what I appreciated about Mike then is the same thing that I appreciate about him now. He's real-world, genuine, practical, and honest in the best kind of way. He doesn't ever complicate things, he doesn't hide behind buzzwords, and he doesn't hold back when people need to hear the truth that will help them move forward. Mike is a business strategist, speaker, author of You Are the Brand, and one of the most respected voices in personal branding and messaging. He's worked with some of the biggest names and thought leaders out there, but what stands out most to me is that he remains humble, approachable, and truly human, and that's why I wanted to have him on the show, because when we talk about culture, we often talk about values, vision, engagement, and leadership, but underneath all of that is trust, and trust is shaped by how leaders show up, how they communicate, how they tell the truth, how they share their stories, and how consistent they are between what they say and how they live. In a world where AI can help us create more content faster than ever before, I think we need a deeper conversation about what it means to keep our human voice, our lived experience, and leadership presence intact. Mike has lived a lot in his years, professionally, personally, spiritually, and entrepreneurially, and that's what makes his wisdom so usable, real, and relatable. So, today we're going to talk about leadership brands, trust, reinvention, voice, and why the most powerful thing you bring to work may still be the one thing that no technology can replicate, that's you. I know I met you because of what you're most famous for in my world, and that's the brand you are, the brand. And so when we apply that to leadership, not just entrepreneurship or marketing, but to leadership in general, what do you think that really means today? I think the word brand can get in the way of what we're really trying to convey when we say it, and it's really about just about your reputation, like what do people say about you when you're not in the room, what did they say about you between each other when no one else is listening, that's really the reputation we've all had leaders that we love, we've all had leaders that we don't like at all, we all have leaders that we avoid. Sometimes it's a blend of all three of those things, and many more things, but usually it boils down to like one dominant trait and one secondary one, because that's all we have room for in our brains. Oh, he's a good leader. Well, what does that mean? Oh, he's fair. Oh, okay. If you say he's fair, that also probably means that he's not a pushover, that he's strict, that he holds you to some standards. Oh, he's really kind, but you don't want to mess with him. That's just sort of how we talk. So, I think what's happened, especially because of social media all these years, is that people have become an online personality, and that online aspect has separated us from what we're really just trying to convey, which is just your reputation. So, when a leader has a certain reputation of a bad temper or chewing people out, but they also get results, the team will usually baseline that sometimes into not so nice language, like, dude, that guy's just an a hole. I mean, but he gets things done. I was recently listening to an interview with Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank, and he was talking about Steve Jobs. I had no idea that he had done so much work with Steve Jobs earlier on in his career. That's how he became rich, like he, like a software company, and they were selling this video game, the Oregon Trail, or whatever it was. I think that's what it was. Yeah, and O'Leary was basically like, yeah, that guy was a total expletive, expletive, expletive. He would talk to me like this, this, and that. He would talk down to me like this, this, but dude was always right. He was always right. You can't argue with it. And, like, is that a good leader? Is that not a good.. this depends who you ask. So, brand, right? Brand identity, reputation, that's it. And I think a lot of times people wrap that up, and when you hear that, they also think of it's just self-promotion, and so you know, but on the flip side of it, you know, I'm a VP in the organization that I work for, my day job, and you know that comes with some responsibility, and like people automatically assume there's a role, there is a way that things are done, and everything because of that title that comes with it and. So leadership branding to me is also important in the fact that I want people to really understand who I am, the values side of it, that what really matters to me and what I hope for my team. So it's not necessarily self-promotion when I'm talking about it, and when I'm doing workshops and everything like that, it really is the core of what I think make good leaders, just like you were talking about the interview, like the perception that people have of people is what you see in front of them, and so how do you think, how is it best for leaders in a workplace to go about representing themselves and making sure that people understand, I do have these ideas, I do have these values that are important, and I want people to embrace them, and it not be self-promotional or aggrandizing in some kind of way. Yeah, I think it's so interesting. If I were to, like, bring that down to street level, when I talk with corporate leaders, I'm like, "Hey, personal brand, and we talk about all this stuff. Here's what they say, Challie, but I don't want to be an influencer, that's really what it reduces down to, right? You are every day in front of you, you are an influencer, you are an influential person, but that word has been hijacked by this online internet culture, right? And really, what we're saying about that, if what I don't want to be an influencer is not what they're really trying to say, I don't want to be inauthentic, is what they're really, really saying. I don't want to be known for when they say I don't want to be self-promotional, I'm like, yeah, you do. You want to be recognized at work, you want to be recognized for a good decision that you made, or contributing to a project that is self-promotional as well. You just don't want to be seen as some online Instagram influencer that's hoarding for attention, recognition is different than attention. So, when I try to work with executive team members, I'm doing a lot more in the corporate space these days. Along those lines, you want to be recognized. I can't think of a single person who wants to have their work go unrecognized, especially when they've done a good job. So, this idea of self-promotionalism, self-promotion, I think that is a misnomer. They just don't want to be seen as like a used car salesman or like an attention hog. So, I think this kind of leads into a lot of around what we're seeing on LinkedIn these days, and it's just everybody's like this thought leader or whatever. Yeah, because they're sharing insights and ideas, but they need to communicate values. That's the more important thing, because AI can spit out all that content for you, can write whatever you want it to, it can curate 20 of the top business books and write something that makes it sound like you came up with it, but what are your values? Because ultimately influence isn't like curried through knowledge, it's through values, it's how you lead the team, it's the things that make you who you are from a personality standpoint, and where you stand, and I think that's what I try to move teams forward on. Don't major on your knowledge or your insights when you're talking about identity and reputation, and curating that. Lead with your values, because at the end of the day, everybody has a brand, you might as well own it. Everybody has an opinion about you, as a leader, as a team member, as a colleague. Everyone's got an opinion about you, good, bad, or somewhere in between. So you might as well own it. And if you're going to own it, own it with something that is intrinsic to who you are, not something that can be updated with the latest knowledge update or 2.0 upgrade on an app, right? Lead with your value, because your values probably aren't going to change over time. At least the good ones aren't going to.. I don't meet a lot of people who are really generous and then become super stingy, right? So you want to lead with that. That's how I frame that. I want to talk a little bit more about that, a little bit, because I think one of the best ways that we can share our values is by sharing our stories, and a lot of people think, no, that's personal, I keep personal, personal, I keep work, work, but in my world, and the way I work, and the way my brain thinks is like it's, I'm all one person, what happens outside work has made me who I am, and what happens in work makes me who I am, and I think one of the best ways that I'm able to show my team what matters to me and how I handle things are through sharing stories, whether those are wins, whether those are how I've screwed up before, and how you fixed it, and how you come back from it, and even the things that matter. So when you're working in corporate and that kind of thing with with different leaders, what is your opinion on sharing stories and the value that they have to bring your team together and then give them that insights of what really matters to you? Yeah, I think the stories like everything is contextual in that in that regard, right? But what is the purpose. Of sharing the story, so the way that I look at it, and because I've spent so much of my career in storytelling for marketing, right, marketing people, marketing their ideas, marketing their services is very much predicated on who they are as a person. If you have 10 lawyers and they're all the same skill wise to close on your real estate property. What differentiates them from one another is how you connect with them. Do you just like this guy or this gal? There's something about their vibe, right, that you really take into account that we don't always - we're not always aware of. So, is the story that you're sharing in to connect with that team member, so you, as a VP, if you're sharing a story about a failure, what I would read that as is that it's multi-tiered. You're sharing a story about your own failure after maybe they've goofed up, and you're, you're, you're extending empathy to them, letting them know you're not alone. Number two, letting them know you're not mad, I mean, you want to correct it, but you're not going to, you know, scold them or anything. Go sit in the corner. You are connecting with them because you recognize at that time if you can be a salve to the wound instead of salt in the wound, you are going to grow in your connection with this team member or this colleague in that moment, and that story is the way that you do that. It is the bridge by which you can do that. Right? Is it a story to rally the troops? This is how our company started. This is where we're going. This is the big vision that a story can galvanize a team. Sometimes stories are just trauma dumping, that's not helpful. So, what I'm saying is that, like, when you think about a story, there's always usually, if you can, if you can actually look deeper into it, there is some sort of purpose behind the story when you're sharing a fun story at a networking event, or a team dinner, or something, you're just doing it for rapport, or you're doing it to break the ice, if you're one of the social people on the team, right? You're just doing it to make everybody comfortable. Or when you share a funny story about a coworker, when you're celebrating a big win, you're doing that to get everybody to laugh and to celebrate this other person, there's always purposes behind the story. I think what you're saying is so true in that people, when they hear about, "Oh, you got to share your story, they automatically think it's to promote myself, and what I'm saying is that no, there's.. I just rattled off four or five different ways and reasons and purposes for which we share stories every day in the workplace, so I just want to give a more well-rounded version and understanding of what storytelling at work really entails, and that's it. Yeah, does so much for connecting, and it's funny, I tell people, like, when I got the VP initials after my name, like all of a sudden people that I could use to have conversations within the break room would be like, as soon as you walk in, they're like, not gonna say anything right now, because the VPs here, and I'm like, I'm still the same person that I was two weeks ago that you were having all these conversations with, and so I'm still the same one that you went to lunch with, is like, and so it was funny, you know, and so story, story for me is easy, because that's what I do for a living, and I'm also, I don't have a problem of making myself the butt of the story either, and grown up doing that, and so it's kind of one of those things. It was the easiest and fastest way for me to connect with people and let them know that, hey, I'm still just me, and like the same thing that mattered to me, I still love my football, I still love all those things, are still the same, we can still talk about that, there's all this other side of me too, that you know that I'm bringing to the table that I want you to know, and I, and, and also I hope it helps my team as they develop to learn how to relate to people that they're going to be leading down the road, like when I'm gone, there's gonna be someone that's sitting in this chair, and so how can I develop that team and and make sure that they're all still moving forward and learning from each other, and still have that kind of cohesion that's left. The other thing that I tell people a lot is, especially working through the culture issues and things that that I've really kind of focused on lately, is that leaders send signals all of the time, and the signals sometimes speak louder than our words, and our words can be signals too, but a lot of times it's the signals that we put out there, whether we've answered an email or whether we've put somebody off, or whether we made them feel diminished in a meeting, or or whatever else is happening, as in those signals sometimes really impact how people feel about a leader, whether they're authentic, whether they're trustworthy, whether they're worth following. Can you maybe take your take on that, and then maybe share an experience where signals have been interpreted one way or the other for you? Well, yeah, they happen to all of us, right? I think it was. I'm thinking about it, was a breakdown about communication. I would think it was something like, was it Albert Mehrabian or something like that? You did a study, it was something like 55% is body language, 38% is like your tone of voice, and just seven are spoken words, and you think about that, and how we have seven percented our communication because of these screens. I Facetime someone, I jump on Zoom with them. We're talking right now through this platform, but we're both looking at screens. We're looking at a screen essentially, and we can only see our body language from our shoulder up, right. So much communication gets lost, and I think what's happened now is that in the workplace, especially when people are physically together, they don't realize how much their body language and their tone of voice actually carries weight. So here we are on these phones, these devices, we are operating in that 7% window all the time. We're on, we're on that phone, and we've lost the ability to understand, like, our body language and our tone of voice is really important. So, we actually become worse communicators, despite becoming more on social media and having all this written content and AI. I have always tried to be cognizant of this, because I'm like six three, most people don't realize I'm that tall, I get that all the time. I didn't know you were this tall, I'm like, yeah, because we only see each other on Zoom, and yeah, and then voice I can project, like, had a music background, like, you know, my voice can get loud, so I realized that that combination, if I step into somebody like when we meet, like I can be a little bit imposing, depending on, you know, their size. So I try to compensate by softening my voice like this. I'm like, "Hey, nice to meet you. Oh, hey, nice to meet you, and like I would just realize that about myself. So I think leaders, if you couple that on top of all of that, that you have a position, you have VP after your name, or C suite, whatever, after your name, or doctor in front of your name, or whatever credentials after your name. You have to realize that you're taking up a lot of authoritative space, is the way that I look at it. It is why, when you became the VP, the same people who saw you two weeks ago, see you as a person, but they now see you through a role first, and it's important to understand roles and differentiate between them, because companies are just armies without the violence. Well, hopefully without the violence and the bloodshed, right? You have corporate takeovers and corporate espionage and stuff, but what is a company? A company is really a military term, a company of soldiers, and so if they don't respect the role, it's life and death. When we come into work during the week, it's profit and loss, it's not necessarily life and death, but those structures I think have been hardwired into us as a species, you know, for as long as we've been around. So, what I try when I work with clients along those lines, work with leaders, and I'll say, hey, you know, I might - I'm not just talking about maybe your physical presence or your voice or anything like that, you know, big, small, loud, soft, whatever it is. I'm really talking about the authoritative weight of what you carry. If we're a scale, you want a scale of one to 10, you get five points alone just for having C-suite on your title, right? And then you got, you know, this big kind of booming personality, or this really quiet, incisive, but you're so smart that everyone already feels stupid when you're in the room with them, because you're so smart, like, dude, that's like another five points you've already maxed out, so we've got to learn to adjust on some of these things. If I can close with one that that particular conversation point with one one example, I've always wondered, what if I were as strong as Superman, and you're just trying to open a door, like, does he ever crush the door? Because they don't realize how strong he is, you know. They never account for that in the comic books, like, that would be like me picking up a feather, you know. And we, as leaders, I don't think we always realize that we carry that kind of weight, kind of that same guy. I'm talking about the weight that leaders carry, so you've had a lot of opportunity to work with some big leaders out there. What do you think has been their key, or maybe what have you seen? Are some of the keys as you have worked with those different people that has allowed them to stay grounded, approachable, and and just kind of human as they've been building their influence and and becoming some of the biggest names in some of the spaces, leadership spaces, and things like that. You're talking, what I would say, honestly, is not all of them are very balanced or grounded or approachable, and the the the umbrella over that is that it just depends what phase or season of career and life they're in. I've met very content people who are in their 30s or 40s, and they've reached that zen period of their life, maybe for a little while before they pick up the second thing that they're going to do, or climb that second mountain of life, and I've met leaders who are in their 70s who still think they're 25 and act like that they're still doing the same things, they're still running around with their hair on fire that way, or they are the gravitational center of everything that happens in the company, the organization, the team, you name it. I do think for high performers, if they are leaders of that stature to begin with, they have an engine that most other people don't have, they have something in that furnace, or like shoveling coal into that fire of the old school trains, locomotives, and that thing has to be fed all the time, and I'm like, hey, instead of burning coal, maybe we switched to wood, maybe it's something different, maybe we just switch the tanks to some fuel instead, you know, you're just really running on a different kind of fuel, and so those are conversations I often have with leaders about, like, what does that look like? I'm not asking you to slow down, I'm just, I'm just asking you, can we burn a different type of fuel? Is it is it sales and market penetration and market share? Does it have to be that, or are you starting to see that you're getting much more fulfillment just in that 10 minute conversation you have with somebody in the hallway, at somebody who might be two or three rungs down from you, but that really kind of touched your soul in a way. Let's pay attention to that. You don't have to restructure your whole position or your work day, but let's pay attention to that, and a lot of times, Challie, it's just helping them become more aware of what's trying to speak to them. I ask them a lot, especially people who've been tenured for a while. What is life asking of you right now? What is life asking of you right now? There is a difference between a job and a vocation. You have a job and you've got certain tasks and you've got responsibilities and you would make certain decisions, and things like that, and a lot of times the things that make you good at that job or help you do that job really well aren't on the job description sheet, and that's actually your vocation, and one of the exercises that exercise that I use with clients a lot is like whether they're, you know, mid management, senior management, whatever it is, wherever they are in the organization, write down everything that you, you know, do at work, including the things that are off the job description. Have you ever hosted a company event? Have you had to have ever had to organize a happy hour? Have you ever had to comfort somebody in the hallway after they just got reamed out by their supervisor, right, and you just kind of take that list and you jot it all down and they realize when they cross off the end of that list they really have done a lot of things that are not on the job description for me, like it would be like I taught high school students. These are just various jobs that I've had over my life. I counsel students on their grades at that after-school academy. I wrote curriculums. I worked at a church as their music director, so I had to recruit music team volunteers. I marketed the albums that we created. I hosted conferences for that place, and then if you just cross out the end at every one of those sentences, it reads something like, I taught, I counseled, I wrote, I recruited, I marketed, and I hosted. Wow, that sounds like a pretty capable person. And I don't think most people realize how many competencies they have. And if you look at just that category of stuff, it probably wouldn't shock most people. Mike tends to mentor a lot of people, he tends to coach a lot of people, he tends to facilitate discussions for groups, and that was never on any of the job descriptions that I had. So that is what I mean by a vocation. I think people have been around for a while in their organization or in a certain lane when they feel like they don't have the passion or the drive anymore, or they're switching fuel to make the locomotive go forward. It's not really about, oh, I hit need at that next sales goal or get the next promotion. You're playing by like the previous era's rules, you need to update to what's really what life is asking of you, if that makes sense. And then the fulfillment comes in, then the job or the position, because a vehicle through which they can do those things in that organization or elsewhere, if they want to move on. So you kind of touched on the thing I know about you is that you've had a lot of different roles, and I love the way you put it. It's like just take off the last part, so look at the actual verb piece of it, the coach, the teach, the all these different kind of things. You know, myself, I've been through several iterations of me. I am definitely not who I was when I was 20. I'm not who I was when I'm. 35 I'm now in my 50s, and for whatever reason, feel like I finally hit like this is me, this is what I should have been doing all of this time, and everything, and like I think there's lots of people out there, like especially those of us that have a little bit of an entrepreneurial streak in us, but then also you know the professional who's like moving through workplace and that kind of thing, but then there's also the personal side of, like, what are you doing for you to grow, you to really embrace who you are, but I think there's a lot of people who that fear of something new stops them from like just going for it, or either they're afraid that people are going to think I've lost my mind if I do this, or I don't have the degree that I'm supposed to have to do this, or, or, whatever. So, if you had some advice for someone, or someone that you know, from someone that's kind of reinvented themselves a couple of times and dipped their toes into two different ponds to see what worked and what was the best place for you at that time of life to go about that, to explore that. How would you kind of talk somebody through those decisions that they were making? A lot of the decisions, like life is all about decisions, right. So one of the things that's helped me over the years is to just learn some different types of mental models. There's a great book by Shane Fanning, I think his last name is literally on mental models, on decision making frameworks. A couple that have really helped me over time, and I totally get what you're saying, because I think sometimes when we think and weigh through trying something new, we think of it as a one way door, like this is it forever. I'm getting married, and it's really most, most decisions are not that. It's usually a two way door. I think Jeff Bezos is the one who sort of popularized this, but the idea is that, like, a one way door is isn't necessarily something that is totally permanent, but it's really difficult to walk back, like selling your company, and then wanting to buy it back from the people you just sold it to. Probably not going to happen. Getting married, and then walking that back. There's a whole multi billion dollar industry about making that difficult for people, right? Getting divorced, you divorce somebody, you're probably not going to marry them again, that same person, right? So these feel very permanent. They're not always irreversible, but they're very expensive and painful, oftentimes to reverse most of the other decisions that we have to make are two way doors, and that's where I, I invite people to experiment with those two-way doors as a way of exercising that muscle of experimentation when you're in a role for a really extended period of time, the same kind of thing, your life feels a little bit like it's stagnant, or maybe you're just not trying new things. This is not the time to go climb Mount Everest or run a marathon, like you're sprain something, you're gonna break something. Do micro expansive activities, try a new drink. Why not try a different type of water, right? Buy a different pair of shoes, right? Try like, if you run a.. like I always tell my, my business clients, test a new price increase, just try it. It's not the end of the world, you know. Try new ice cream, whatever it is, not sticking. You can always go back, and I think that's where most of the paralysis starts, right? Where you start treating two-way doors as if it's a one-way door, and that's the danger of it. One of the other things that I think about, too, in helping people differentiate, that is, there's this great filter that came across, and it's based on this diner in New York City called the Lindy Diner. So, it's called the Lindy effect. It's a filter, which basically says the longer something is endured, the more likely it will keep enduring. So, there's this deli, this diner in New York City, near where I live, it's gone now. It doesn't exist anymore. But in the mid 1900s comedians and showbiz people would hang out there, and they noticed that the longer a show was on Broadway, like Cats or whatever, the more likely it was going to be there, and they would start to say, that's Lindy, that is Lindy, that is going to be around for a long time, and I think we've lost a sense of that because of internet culture, because of social media. I was an 80s kid, so I'm used to things being very physical, like I'm technically a Zennial, I think it is in between Gen X, but not a millennial in that, like, six or seven year period. So I grew up with physical things, you know, phone with a cord on it, and then I sent my first email my freshman year in college, which is kind of crazy to think, and now we have AI, and my generation, we've had this whiplash going through all these sorts of technological revolutions, and I think that we've lost sight of that, like. Like, if you're going to try something new or go down a path, and your word is not going to be there, chances are, if it's been very long standing, it will continue to endure, and that's just a very helpful way to look at it. People will probably always go out to restaurants, they will probably always read books, they will probably always do these things, so, like, when you're thinking about, like, just taking different experiments and different experiences in your life, the things that you've always done, you probably are always going to do. Experiment in other ways, so yeah, there's just some ways that I look at it. Yeah, I think that's fun, and I'm sitting here thinking kind of how that relates to a lot of technology and everything today too. It's like there's a lot of fear around all the new things, like AI, like we were talking about before we actually started recording the podcast, that you're doing a lot of work around that right now, or some of the things that I've read recently about that you've been putting out. We talk about it a lot at work, like how can we use it to make things more efficient? What are the processes that we can look at? You know, I'm also a writer on the side, and there's a whole discussion about AI and writing, and how, like, editing and putting thoughts together, and using it for idea generation, and different things like that. So, I want to kind of go down that path with you for just a minute, too. We have this tool now, AI, that's out there, that can write posts and emails for us, scripts, speeches, whatever, it can learn us, it can mimic our tone, that kind of thing. So, it's almost like it, well, it sounds like it could be them, but is it really kind of thing? So, what do you think AI can really help us do, and what can it never replace when it comes to that leadership voice that's out there, AI. I tell my clients, I tell my audience, AI is a calculator for words. AI is the duct tape that ties all these apps and programs together that no one figured out how to do before. Let me unpack that for a moment. I have an iPhone. A lot of us have smartphones. Most everybody has a smartphone - iPhone, Samsung, whatever. If you really think about this, Apple really dropped the ball when it came to AI. I mean, Siri is terrible. It's a terrible product, right? We all know this, but if you think about your iPhone, and you know, I don't have my phone on me, but you know you're holding this device, and this device has your email, all your email accounts, it has your text messages, it has all of your social media apps, it has the app that you book restaurant reservations on, it has your calendar, it has your photos, you should theoretically be able to say to this device, Siri, tell me what I have to do today. Scan all my text messages, all my emails, all my calendars, all my social media apps, and just tell me it can't do it. So Open AI or Claude has now come along, especially Claude Co-work, right? Some of these productivity tools, and is now the duct tape between all these things, because if you use Co-work, you can integrate it with your Gmail account, you can integrate it with your calendar, you can integrate it with your Zoom account, everything. Now I'm simplifying the argument, but I think people think AI is so special and so transformative, and it is an incredible technology, but at its essence, it's, it's doing things that Siri should have done 10 years ago. That's it. That's the way that I look at it. So, if that feature lived on my phone and did a good job. I'd probably stick with that phone forever. It's just too easy to.. it's almost like a virtual secretary. It's just telling me everything I need to do. I would not ask my secretary how to close a sale. I would not ask my secretary what I should say to this person. Give me a bunch of ideas. It might help. It might reflect, but I push my clients, especially because I'm a writer, as well. You have to be the source of truth. You have to be the source of creation. No matter how complex AI is, it has no idea what I'm going to do in the next 30 seconds. Literally, in the next 30 seconds, has no idea what I'm going to do. I could knock over this whole screen and just leave this call. I could just take this coffee cup and just smash it. It has no.. there's an infinite number of things that I could do. It doesn't know, so anytime everyone says, like people say, like, 'Oh, now it's really predicting me. I was like, 'No, it's not. It's just making projections based on past patterns. Why would you use that to create something new. What I really push in the workspace, like in the workplace, we talk a lot about, you know, the AI, and how it's these are the things that are not going to be replaced by humans, and if anything, the deeper down the chain it goes, the more human the skills become. Yeah, and that's where we need to focus on developing those skills. An AI can transcribe my calls and write summaries and write notes. Yes, it should do that. It can't help me get along with Ted, who it's never met, and it's not a human, right? It's like, why are we asking an inanimate object, a calculator. How to talk to this person. It's better if we develop those human skills. Now, you can give you insights, sure, right? And people are uploading literally screenshots of text messages with friends or dates they've gone on and asking an AI what it means, which is kind of wild. I'm not against it, I get it, but it's lazy thinking. We have a whole chapter in a book I put out recently called Own Your Brand, Own Your Career on AI, and we list seven traits there, but the one I want to draw the most attention to, because I think that's the most important thing, is taste, and what I mean by taste is like taste is hard to define, but it's like this ability, this instinct to taste, to pick out what feels right, that is such an indefinite explanation. It's so vague. Yeah, welcome to humanity. That's how humans are. We are vague, we are intuitive, we have lived experience, we have cultural context. I'm not going to wear a Boston Red Sox jersey to a Yankee game, or vice versa. It's just stupid. You're going to get beat up, you're going to get in fight with fans. It's hard to teach, but you can feel it. And I think that's like you, as a leader, I know that you've.. there's no way you got to this position if you didn't have this, and you're probably using it even more. Ted's really ticked off today, man. He got chewed out by, you know, some of the earnings. Maybe not right now is not a good time to grill him on this other thing. Or actually, I think he can take it. I think this is a perfect time to challenge him. And I think that in the business world, in the workplace, we hear about this, like this idea of taste, and you think it's just for artists or creative people, and it's not. It's the project manager who can read a spreadsheet or this data and say, no, this is what's going on here, this is the real story behind the numbers. We all have it, and that's what I want to push people to cultivate just kind of a lot like self awareness too, I think, is that you have to be able to be reflective of yourself and know why you feel the way you feel, where things come from, how you're probably going to react to things, that's something that AI is never going to be able to do like it, I mean, it can give you some generalities, you know, and it can eventually pick up, oh, you use these phrases over and over, so if I'm going to write something for you, then I'm going to incorporate these kind of words and these kind of feelings and everything, but I think that's something that we've kind of lost a little bit of doing that self-reflection and being self-aware, and knowing I know there's certain things that trigger me that I may need to go walk around the parking lot for a little bit before I have that conversation, so I can get back in the right space before I, you know, before I do these things, or, or whatever it is, and I don't think AI, or any, any of those kind of tools will ever really replace that. What do you, other than the scheduling and things like that? What do you think about? I know there's a big train of thought for people, use them as a strategic partnership kind of thing to ask them the questions to walk them through if then then this, you know, like those kind of things. What do you think? How do you think it's doing in that kind of realm? I think it depends on how well the questions are framed from the person using it, and also understanding that just because it gives me probabilities, it does not mean that is what's going to happen. To paint another analogy around this, a couple, there's a lot, and they're all very human analogies. Like, I'm a sports guy, I like basketball, baseball, football, those sports I follow in every major sport in all three of those leagues, NFL, MLB, NBA. The old school players are saying, man, people are way relying way too much on analytics. You have to have a gut feeling sometimes. It's just the gut feeling as a coach or as a player that you're going to make that play, because otherwise you're just trying to map to what a robot would do, would do. If that's what you do, that's the only outcomes you're going to get a second example is Rick Rubin, who's one of the most iconic music producers of our generation, has done everyone from Elton, John, and Adele to the Beastie Boys, like very wide range. He doesn't play an instrument. How is he? One of the greatest music producers already, he doesn't play an instrument. If you see some of the videos where he's working with these artists, like, no, it just needs to be bigger. Now, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? And this guy went to NYU, all he did was go out to the clubs and the bars and listen to music from the time he was a youngster, and he's able to make these judgment calls. I'm going to produce Johnny Cash as he is towards the end of his life, and we don't need any production on his voice, because that gravelly tone is going to come out right. And red out chili peppers, I need that LA sound. It needs to be very raw and in your face. He just knows how to generate these ideas, and one of the questions that I ask a lot of my clients

is this: 40:45

like, this is, this is really interesting. Like, would you, would you, um, would you? I know we don't buy CDs anymore, or albums, or anything, but would you spend $15 like, to buy a CD of music created by AI? Like, no. Okay? Would you, would you spend $15 on a movie ticket to watch a movie that was completely created by computer and take your kids to it? No. I'm like, okay, let's go one layer deeper. Would you post a headshot of yourself on your LinkedIn profile that was created 100% by AI, that's a really interesting game to play. They all say no. I'm like, why? You don't have to get a photo shoot, it'll dress you in whatever you want. Why would.. why is it Matt? It looks pretty good. Yeah, you saved your interview. You know what they say, because it's not me, and we all know that instinctively, that's not me. This is then I say, what's the difference between that and an Instagram filter? I asked them that, what's the difference between that and an Instagram filter? They say, yeah, but that was that was like my original photo, that's actually me. Oh, what about airbrushing? What about makeup? Like, no, but that's actually me. See, just that little simple example. Then, why are you putting all your thought leadership, all your content, all your ideas, running it solely through this machine when you haven't written a single word? It's a really interesting thought experiment. It's a really interesting game that I play with the clients, how much resistance they have to putting that out there. Because intrinsically they know that's not me, I didn't do that, and I can't stand behind it. There are few people in the world who are willing to do that. They're the fraudsters, they're the cheaters, they are the Milli Vanillis. When I was a kid growing up who won the Grammys, and they were lip syncing. Right, there are people who are willing to do that. Most are not. That has to originate from them for them to put, yeah, put on the filter, change the lighting, that's fine. But what if it's solely AI-generated? We don't want to consume or put our name behind it, but then, but that's what we put out in the world. It's such a weird paradox to me, and I think it's going to be really interesting to watch over the next few years, with especially as the different platforms emerge and change, because some of them do things differently, better than others, and some of them are being made to do just specific things, and so I think it'll be really interesting to see, and I think that as leaders, I think how we become more intentional about doing the things that we do, asking those questions, like, where is that line that I'm willing to draw us, I'll use the filter, but I won't use the pick, like, okay, so you know, is there that big of a difference, or isn't there, and like, depending on where we, where we fall out on that. I'll kind of get us ready to kind of close out. I've got two questions I want to ask, and the first one is, is on that intentionality. What is your, your message to a leader? Where should they start if they're new to the career, if they're new in the workplace, if they're new to a team, or if they're building their own kind of empire, let's just say, how do they start with their message, building their message, their story, their values, their behaviors? What is the best way for them to start intentionally getting that out there for people? You're familiar with some of my frameworks and stuff, but I always start with this little filter. It's a simple Venn diagram, and I've been surprised over the years, to be honest, at how people have found it really effective. I'm from Jersey, so we talk like this. The first question is, what pisses you off? The second is, what breaks your heart? And the third is, what's the problem you're trying to solve? At the intersection of those three answers is probably who you really are and what you stand for. Going back to what I said about values, right? To phrase it another way, what pisses you off is the injustice that you see in the world. Like, this is this is just ticks you off, right? The, the break, what breaks your heart is the compassion you have for the people. These are very human terms and. What, what is the problem you're trying to solve? That is either your business, that is your role, that is your job, that is the purpose of your organization. If you really study founders, the great founders, like them or not, you can usually reverse engineer the answers to those questions. They have a mission, they want to, they're ticked off about something happening in the world that they don't think should happen, or they are brokenhearted about something that really, really affects them, and they want to change that, and then they start a company, an army, a military, whatever, of people to address it, mothers against drunk driving, all the way to, you know, grass fed beef, all the way to child care services, all the way to HR, any of these things, actually, all of these things have a mission behind them, and I don't think you can go very long if your only driver is to make money and achieve fame. I think for a lot of people, if they're even wanting to do something new, they usually don't say, "I want to do something new because so I can make a ton of money. It's usually couched in something a little bit deeper than that, and I think we lose that, so I actually revisit that, those questions a lot every couple years, and I don't talk to an AI about it, because it's just going to pattern match me, it's just going to, it's just going to pick little bits of past chats that I have in that in that thread or in the AI, and it's going to make me artificially feel that it understands me. That's not true. I will rather invest in a friend of mine or a coach to ask me questions along those lines, so not they're not reading me through that 7% communication style of a screen and verbal, they're reading my body language, they're hearing my voice, they're seeing me wipe my hands with sweat when I get worked up about something. These are all things that I need a human being to reflect back to me. This is also why leaders in any context have to be able to pick up on those things, because the data analysis will say we need to run this play on third down, where we're inside the 20 yard line, but you will, it doesn't, the stupid iPad doesn't know that your players are tired because they've been on the field for half an hour straight, it doesn't know, so I'm just shocked that people can't put AI in its proper place, it's a powerful tool. It's one that Apple should have invented 10 years ago on our phone, and it is like right now. I know he can do some incredible things, but for me, it's just an everyday guy. That's how I view it. That's how I view it. I don't need it to be much more than what it is right now, I don't need it to be much more, so I want to wind this up with a personal question. I've got to experience you on a couple of different levels over the course of the years, through some of the workshops and different things like that, reading your books and listening to your podcast and blogs and things like that. Personal question for you is, when people leave a room with you, or a meeting, or they've taken you in from a podcast or read your social post, what is it that you want them to feel or believe about you, and how you showed up. I don't know that I want them to believe anything about me, but immediately I can tell you, like, I want them to be, I want them to feel disarmingly empowered. I want them to feel like it's, it's so obvious to me, so clear to Mike that I can do this if he thinks that, then I can probably do it. I can give strategy, I can give tips, I can give insights, but those, those things don't really change people's lives, and they don't, they don't really experience it through just written content or through a screen. It's exactly what you said. People will say to me, hey, I've been reading your stuff, it's really helpful, it's really insightful, or that really spoke to me. But after we meet in person, it's a completely different commentary. Dude, I just love being around you and your people. I love being in your community. I just feel like everyone's so encouraging. I feel like everyone's super sharp, but also super encouraging, like they're really successful people, but they're not a holes, they're really kind, and y'all encourage one, like that's what I want them, like you empower each other, you help each other, that's what I want them to feel, and you can't necessarily do. Do that through just reading something, I can try my best to convey those emotions, but again, I'm only communicating through 7% I'm breathing through a straw rather than the fullness of who we are, and I do think because of that, as AI continues to eat up whatever companies are farming out to it, and losing positions, and cutting back the workforce, and so people are going to aggregate together, because we're human beings, we're communal beings, we need that. So that's what I want them to walk away with. They don't, I don't need them to think anything particular about me. I know I'm not always going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I do want them to feel like I think he thinks I can do this. Maybe I should give that some consideration. I happen to think you're a pretty good cup of tea, and if other folks want to learn more about you, find, you know, find some more of your thoughts and different things like that. How's the best way for them to connect with you. Yeah, best places go to be newsletter. I publish every Tuesday, Mike kim.com/letter I just, I'd have no other name for it, just called Mike Kim Letter, that's it. And if you are on LinkedIn, I would love to connect with you there. And the handle is just LinkedIn, and my, my screen is real, Mike Kim TV, even though I don't have a TV show, it just was easier to remember. So, you'll find me on their linkedin.com/slash whatever they have, Mike Kim TV. All right, well, thanks so much. I appreciate you taking your time and talking today, and I hope my listeners take the time to find more about you, do some reading up on some of the things that you have, and I can tell you, as someone who's worked around you, is that you do leave people feeling like they can go after their dreams, they can build something, and they can accomplish what they set out to do. So, thank you for that too. Thanks for listening to this episode of Culture Secrets. If today's conversation resonated with you. We'd love for you to share it with a colleague or friend. And don't forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode. To learn more about building strong people-first workplace cultures, visit Kelly phillips.com where you'll find resources, speaking information, and more insights from Chellie. You can also pick up a copy of Culture Secrets at your favorite online or in-person bookseller. Thanks again for listening. And remember, culture isn't something you talk about once, it's something you live every day, you