#91 | How To Become AI Unshakeable In 7 Days (And Turn Your Imposter Syndrome Into Promotion-Ready Influence)

Are you worried that AI is making your role less valuable—or wondering how to stay relevant as workplaces rapidly change?

The conversation around AI often focuses on automation, productivity, and new technology. But the professionals who remain indispensable aren't necessarily the ones producing the most output. They're the ones who know how to demonstrate their judgment and make their invisible work impossible to overlook.

In this episode, you'll learn three practical moves you can implement immediately to strengthen your position, increase your visibility, and future-proof your career in an AI-driven workplace.

You'll discover:

1. How to shift from being seen as a producer of work to the person trusted to evaluate it.
2. Why Invisible Work—relationship-building, trust, and contextual knowledge—is becoming more valuable as AI adoption grows.
3. How to reposition your experience, CV, and professional story so your unique value stands out.

If you want to become more visible, more valuable, and more difficult to replace in the age of AI, this episode gives you three actions you can start using this week.

New episodes are released every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.

Stuck, simmering, or onto something juicy? I want to hear it. Drop me a line at caroline@inspireyourgenius.com - I read them all.

And here is the Spotify Playlist to accompany UnShakeable Her.

Unshakeable Her is the podcast for women in leadership who are ready to build real influence, earn the promotion they deserve, and lead with confidence in systems that weren't built for them. Each episode tackles the challenges that shape leadership from the inside out, including imposter syndrome, resilience, credibility, boundaries, conflict, and feedback, while unpacking how pressure, workplace politics, strategic thinking, decision-making, and visibility affect the way ambitious women grow, lead, and get promoted without losing themselves in the process.

Transcript

So this week AI tried to take a seat at the table. And today we're going to talk about how to make sure it's not yours.

If you're new here, welcome and you've landed on a good one. This week on Unshakable Hair, we've been unpacking the AI question that's keeping people up at night. Monday, we met Justine, whose role got AI'd and who came out the other side stronger with a promotion. Go back and listen, it's a good one. Then Wednesday, we went into the science of exactly why her move worked.

Who AI is hitting hardest, and the irony bomb that should make every woman in work feel genuinely vindicated. If you've been here all week, you know what's coming. Let's land it. Three moves, real ones, this week, and no certification required. Before we get there, clue number one about today's song. It's by a group who

Absolutely know a thing or two about being written off and who didn't stay written off for very long. So by the end of today's episode, you're going to have three specific

And before we get there, clue number one about today's song. It's by a group who know thing or two about being written off and who didn't stay written off for very long. Can you think of any? So by the time of today's episode, you are going to have three specific concrete moves you can make in the next seven days that absolutely shift how you're seen at work. Not in theory, not someday.

Not manana, right now. You're gonna hear a career dilemma that I suspect is sitting in more than a few inboxes this week, and we're gonna sort it out properly. And of course, today's song. I'm not telling you what it is yet, but here is your second clue. It's for everyone who's been underestimated by something that had absolutely no idea what it was dealing with. Is that you? Let's go.

Right, let's start this week with a what would Caro do?

This one is from Annie from Altringham. Dear Caro, my company has just announced that AI is being rolled out across an entire department. My manager keeps calling it an exciting opportunity, and I do keep nodding along, but honestly, I'm terrified. I don't know if my job is safe. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to look like. I'm not coping, but I genuinely don't.

Dear Caro, my company has just announced that AI is being rolled out across the entire department. My manager keeps calling it an exciting opportunity. And I keep nodding along, but honestly, I'm terrified. I just don't know if my job's safe. I want to look like I'm coping, but I genuinely don't know where to start. What would Caro do? Right, first, thank you for sending this. And I want to say something before I answer it.

The nodding along while terrified? Well, you're not alone with that. This is the most common career experience of 2025 and 26. And I put my money on it, being the experience of most people in your department, including quite possibly that manager that says it's an exciting opportunity. So here's what I would do: I would stop trying to feel less terrified and start getting more specific. And what I mean by that.

It's really subtle because terror is almost always about the vague, the unknown, that you know, the headline. And the antennote to vagueness is precision. So I want you to sit down with one question, somewhere quiet. Ask yourself: in the last month, what did I do at work that required me to make a judgment call? Not about producing something, making a call, reading a situation.

Know something from experience that isn't written down anywhere. Write it down. Every single example that you can think of. Because what you're doing right now is making an inventory of what you have that the tool just doesn't. And I promise you, if you are a thinking, experience, relationship-building human being, the list is longer than you think. That is where you start.

Not with retraining or a course or a new job title with your list. The terror doesn't go away immediately, but it really does get smaller every time you add something to it. So you've got your list started. Now let's talk about what you actually do with it. Because knowing your value and being known for your value are two entirely different things, and only one of them pays the mortgage.

So here are your three moves.

Move one. Shift your focus from being a maker to judge. This is Justine's move, and it's available to every single one of you, regardless of your role, your industry, or how AI is landing in your organization. Stop defining your value by what you produce and start defining it by what you decide. Practically, this week, this means one thing.

The next time AI generates something in your world, whether that's a document, a piece of copy, a data summary, don't just approve it or send it. Annotate it. Write down what you changed and why. Keep a record of every time you caught something the tool got wrong, got close to, but not quite right, or produce something technically correct that was entirely wrong for the context. That record is your evidence file.

It's proof in real time, building every week that your judgment is what stands between the tool's output and something that actually works. And then, right, now this is the bit people skip. Share it. Bring it to you one-to-one, referencing your next performance review conversation. Let the people who need to know know. Judgment only protects you if someone can see it. So get it out of your head and into the room.

Move two, put a number on that invisible work. Now, this is something we talked about last week, and I want to reference it again here. This one might feel a bit uncomfortable. I'm pleased about that because it means it matters. I want you to think about the last month, not your deliverables, the other stuff, the conversation you had with a colleague before a difficult meeting that meant it the meeting actually went smoothly. The client who wasn't happy and is now not.

Because of how you handled it, the new starter you spent time with, the stakeholder you kept warm, the political read that stopped something going badly wrong. None of this stuff is on your job description. None of it showed up in your last performance review. And all of it is the work that AI can't touch. Now, I want you to do something radical. You ready for this? I want you to count it.

Not in a spreadsheet, although, you know, if that's your thing, go for it. Just start naming it out loud in your one-to-ones, in your reviews, and how you talk about your work to the people who decide your future. Something like I spent time with ex-client last week, and I want to be really clear about the value of that. Here's the outcome. You have been subsidizing your organization's relational intelligence for years, and it's time to put it on the invoice. Move three.

Rewrite your story in AI era language. Maybe that's your LinkedIn profile or your CV. It could even be the way you answer the what do you do question at a networking event. Right now, most of it is probably framed around what you make, what you manage, and what you deliver. And that framing made complete sense before. Now, however, it makes you look a little bit replaceable. This week,

Do one small rewrite. Take one line of your LinkedIn summary and shift it from output language to judgment language. Change something, you know, like a managed content strategy. And instead try something like, I'm the one who can tell in 30 seconds whether a piece of content sounds like us or not. And here's another one. Instead of a lead client relationships, why not try out the clients I work with tend to stay.

Because you know what? When things go wrong, they know I'll sort it out. You aren't a function. You are a decision maker, a trust builder. The person in the room who knows what the tool just doesn't. Say that in those words on the platforms when people who might need you can find you. Why not ask ChatGPT or Claude to rewrite these for you? May the tool work for you instead. Two millimeters, one line this week.

Okay, so back to the song. Let me give you the third and final clue for today's song. This song is for the version of you that looked at the thing that underestimated you, that thought it was taking your seats, your value, your relevance. And you didn't get angry. You didn't make a scene. You just said, thanks for the lesson and moved on. So what's the song then? See whether you can get it.

Came out in 2016 and went to number one. And honestly, given everything we talked about this week, it has absolutely no business being this perfect for this moment. Any thoughts? You're gonna think this is bizarre? It is. Shout out to my ex by Little Mix. Love it. Because that's what move one, two, and three are all about. It's not about a fight or a defense, a shout out to the thing that.

Thought it was replacing you, and frankly, a clean, unbothered, slightly smug exit. Grab the unshakable her playlist on Spotify, link is in the show notes, and as always, play it on full volume and tap along to it with that smug smile.

So thank you for lending me your ears this week. Here's what I want to leave you with to ponder. You weren't wrong to be scared. The stats are real and the disruption is real. The pattern of who it's hitting hardest is real too. And it's not fair. And we should all be saying so out louder than we are. Yet, the work that AI cannot do is the work that you've been doing all along. Remember, the judgment.

The context, the trust, the relationships, the reed, the invisible glue that holds things together. And never showed up once on a job description. You weren't being strategic when you developed these skills. You just did it naturally. You were just doing your job, but you built something that the most sophisticated technology in human history is struggling to replicate. And that means something. In fact, it means an awful lot.

Three moves we've talked about aren't complicated. They don't require a course or six months of preparation. You can do them immediately. Shift your focus from maker to judge, from invisible to visible, old story to new story. Three shifts over seven days. That's all it takes. And when the thing that thought it was replacing you looks up and finds you're not just still there, but stronger.

More visible, more valued than before. You don't need to say anything. Just give it a shout out and move on. So that's the wrap on the trilogy this week about the topic that is on everyone's lips: AI. And today you walk away with three specific moves that shift how you're seen at work. Remember, I'm gonna say it again: shift from maker to judge, put a number on your invisible work.

Rewrite your CV in AI era language. You also heard a familiar career dem You also heard a familiar career dilemma about AI coming into a department and how to handle it by getting specific. You heard how vagueness can fuel fear. So you got relevance and made a list of all the times you used your skills of judgment, context, and trust in your role. Because the evidence doesn't lie.

And frankly, no one can forget today's song. Shout out to my ex by Little Mix because it's a slightly smug, completely unbothered goodbye to the part of your job that AI actually can have. The rest, well, the rest it stays with you, doesn't it?