301: Using AI To Make Us Better Managers; with Reagan Helms

Your calendar says “1:1s,” but your brain hears “context switching.” Charlotte Ward sits down with Reagan Helms, VP of Customer Experience at Planning Center, to unpack a practical way AI can make us better managers: a management assistant that strengthens one-on-ones without turning leadership into autopilot.

We get specific about how Reagan built his system and how it evolved, from separate AI chats per employee to a persistent copilot that can pull the right notes at the right time. We talk about the real-world plumbing behind “AI for managers” including Notion as a human-friendly interface, why Notion can be painful as a retrieval layer, when spreadsheets are the simplest high-performance backbone, and how a vector database can unlock faster search across qualitative coaching history. We also dig into meeting transcription, prompt refinement, and the discipline of verifying outputs so the manager stays responsible for the data and the decisions.

Then we zoom out to the leadership impact: fuller agendas, fewer forgotten commitments, and an “impartial mirror” that helps you sanity-check whether you communicated clearly or whether an annoying behaviour is actually your coaching taking root. We also tackle the trust side head-on, with boundaries and consent so AI support doesn’t drift into surveillance or creep your team out.

If you’re leading customer support, customer experience, or any growing team, hit play, share it with another manager, and subscribe for more. After you listen, leave a review and tell us: what would you want an AI management assistant to handle first?

Transcript

Welcome And Why AI Helps Managers

Charlotte Ward 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 301 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today, welcome Reagan Helms to talk about using AI to make us better managers. Today I'd love to welcome back Reagan Helms. Reagan, thank you so much for joining me again today. It's been, I think we established probably about three years, give or take, since you were last on the podcast. And it's lovely to see you again. Thank you for coming back.

Reagan Helms 0:46

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Charlotte Ward 0:48

Uh, do you want to reintroduce yourself for our new listeners?

Reagan Helms 0:52

Sure, that's great. Uh, my name is Reagan Helms. I'm the vice president of customer experience at Planning Center. I've been there almost 16 years, 16 years this year.

Charlotte Ward 1:02

Oh, wow. Wow. Uh sorry, that's just wow. Um, I I I figured I would sorry, I'm just a bit over. I I knew it was a long time. I knew you'd uh you'd uh you'd kind of grown up there in some respects, right?

Reagan Helms 1:15

But uh, quite literally.

Charlotte Ward 1:18

Half of my life has been there. Wow, wow, yeah. I mean, uh long tenures are really unusual now, and this isn't what we're here to talk about, but but how great to spend so long. Uh some something you I hope and uh enjoy.

Reagan Helms 1:32

Oh yeah, I love doing it. I wouldn't have been here this long if I didn't like it.

Charlotte Ward 1:36

Yeah, yeah. Um, I think my previous longest tenure was about 12, 13 years, but that was a long time ago because I think um I'm doing the maths mentally as as we talk. I think I'm quite a bit older than you, but but let's gloss over that. Um moving on. Sweep right past. Sweep right past it. Uh yeah, so uh so I've been in my current place oh six and a bit years now, which is which isn't too bad either, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, given the current landscape. Um we um we chatted a couple weeks ago about some things we wanted to talk about, and I wrote down four solid topics. So I know I've got you uh pretty much booked in for potentially three return chats, locked in. I I I take no prisoners when it comes to topics and locking them in, but today was the one I wanted to prioritize because it just feels so now, and so um it's such a personal topic, I think, as well. But um, we are here to talk about AI, but we're here to talk about uh not just AI in support, which I think you know everyone has an opinion on about you know the chatbots, about the metrics, about the the quality and the tone and the accuracy and the deflection and all of the other support-related things, but you pitched something to me that was um uh really deeply applicable to my own place, you know, right now. Uh my day job, and now I'm experiencing leading a team. We talked about um using AI to make us better managers, right?

Reagan Helms 3:12

Right.

Charlotte Ward 3:13

Yeah, what does that mean? Like at a high level, what what what are you doing? What what brought brought you to kind of pitch that

Fixing One On Ones With AI

Charlotte Ward 3:20

as a topic? Let's start there.

Reagan Helms 3:22

Well, one of the things that I've always uh struggled with as a manager is the concept of a one-on-one and the ownership of that space, because you know, that's where most of the work gets done. I think anybody that is a manager knows that you know you're you're helping unblock people, you're helping collaborate with people, coach people, advance them in their career, give them the skills that they need to progress as an employee, and all that stuff can be pretty heavy when you um are just doing it for the first time or doing it solo, or you're both in uncharted territory. And so as uh this technology becomes more and more prevalent in our space, I just kind of took a step back and said, How does this help me in my role? Like I can think of ways that it can help all of my ICs in their roles or even in in uh streamlining processes across the company, internal documentation, all those things. But I was more thinking about it from what are the things that I always wish I could have as a manager? Um and it when I when I started thinking about how frequently I how how much of my time is spent in optimizing and planning for one-on-ones, I started thinking about how AI could be a big service to me in that area. So I basically have an AI sidekick um co-pilot that is running with me all the time that I just call my management assistant. Um, and it has access to all the internal places and knowledge sources that I have for those meetings. Um, and obviously with the approval of all my employees, so they know that that's not used for anything outside of me and Quad and them, right? So but it's made uh it's yeah, I've been running it for about three months now, and it's been a huge improvement to making sure that whenever we are getting together in those semi-monthly one-on-ones that what we're talking about is the most relevant thing, and that we're both following up on the things that we need to follow up is the short elevator pitch for that.

Charlotte Ward 5:26

Yeah, yeah. Um, I I there's a couple of threads I want to pull on. One is um, you know, we're we're I know you have quite a big team at Planning Center, right? How many direct reports are we talking? Or or or people that you're managing inside this one-on-one system?

Reagan Helms 5:43

I have six. So it's yeah, but it's also handling my upward one-on-ones, so seven if you're counting my CEO, and then I also have it ride along on um external coaching sessions that I have with a mentor. Right, right, right.

Charlotte Ward 5:58

So a bit of yeah, yeah. So a bit of an ecosystem to manage at the best of times for anyone. Um, yeah. Um and and the the uh the the other thread I wanted to pull on is like it's it's super interesting that you talked about all of the other problems that um AI can solve around you, but I think one of the the biggest uh lessons I've learned personally in terms of like almost the blank page problem, you know, we've got this awesome technology with these like increasingly unbelievably powerful capabilities. Um and we should be using it, we should be leveraging it, and and particularly for you know, in AI native, AI-first organizations, I don't know how far Planning Center is along that journey as an organization, but but my day job certainly is. Um is almost like the blank page problem is the biggest problem to solve. And I think I kind of having I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna say at best tinkered with AI for several months over the course of last year, you know, everyone gets it to write a better email or you know, maybe kind of connect to a couple of systems or whatever and help you help you figure out that formula for a sheet, all of that kind of thing. Having tinkered for almost all of last year, actually, one way or another. First of all, the technology itself and the capabilities have accelerated rapidly in 2026 and particularly in the last couple of months, but but the blank page problem kind of persisted, I think, even despite and actually perhaps was also uh made to feel more burdensome if that makes sense. And and I I think what I realized about three months ago is the problem to solve is the problem in front of you, and and so like you know, I think yes, yes, I've got Vin, I'm sure you have too got vendors coming out of my ears, pitching their AI solution for every single thing to do with running a support team, running a support function, delivering support. But there are problems in front of us as leaders, and this is one of them that you're talking about that like actually just that little step back that you talked about, like, yes, there's a whole landscape, but this is the problem in front of me right now. This is the thing that I'm finding challenging and maybe even increasingly challenging as you go from six to seven to eight to more. Um so I think that's um that that was a big unlock for me, is like stop trying to think about what should I do and just solve what's in front of me.

Reagan Helms 8:38

Right. Yeah, and it was um I think that the unlock for me was that I uh uh want the best outcome for these meetings, they're very valuable, you know. So it's kind of to your blank page problem thing. This has been a problem for a long time of I have six direct and reports and all of them have different contexts, and sometimes I'm jumping from one one context to the next context without any in-between. And so being able to make sure uh invest the time to ensure that those meetings are the most profitable that they can be for both of us was really val valuable to me, right? Like like you said, there's there's problems that I already have to solve. And the problem was I just need to make sure that these meetings are productive.

Charlotte Ward 9:30

And so that was a big um a big win in the so you have your AI assistant, your management assistant. By the way, I have one, he's called Harvey, just saying I tend to personalize my AIs. I'm I'm I'm I'm that person.

Reagan Helms 9:46

Um I anthropomorphize AI in other ways. I call Claude him, and people say that's weird. So well, yeah. No, I I'm all in. And he said, yeah, yeah.

Charlotte Ward 9:55

Yeah, I'm all in. I'm like Harvey, I I will have Harvey sign directives in Slack, and and some people are like, who the hell is Harvey? Just it's all right, it's me really. Um, yeah, maybe I maybe I do take it too far. Um, note to self on that one. Um however, um like I suppose um you've got your management assistant in co-pilot with you. What does what does the process of of like coming online to the state you are now look like? If we rewound three months and you have that blank page, is it an open claude prompt? I've got this pro because that's where I tend to start. I've got this problem, I don't even know where to start, help me.

Reagan Helms 10:42

Yeah.

How The Management Assistant Is Built

Reagan Helms 10:43

Uh it originally started as a project. So in in Claude, you have chats and then you can group chats into a project. And so what I did is I I was basically having a separate chat for each employee that looked to the project file for like overall guidance. Um, and then when Claude launched co-work about at the first of the year, um it was more a oh, how can this this seems better because it had persistent um the ability to persist across instances, right? So you could kind of say this is a task that I do regularly, and then it would just have its own reference files and local markdown files and things like that. And so um that was when I really switched over to could I create a single cowork agent that would be able to reference all of these sources of knowledge depending on the context of the person? Um, so that was that was kind of how it was originally built was you know, I was using whatever features uh anthropic gave me at the time, and then I re-evaluated when there was a new feature available, which you know, I don't do that all the time because I think that I'd be re-evaluating everything every single day at the rate that they released new features. Um you could do this in code as well. Cowork just has a little better UI. Um, so you could you could do that way.

Charlotte Ward 12:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and and so you began to systemize it, you began to um take these individual conversations, all of the information that you kind of gathered that Claude was synthesizing for you, surfacing for you from tools, and built that into an ecosystem effectively inside clo inside co-work.

Reagan Helms 12:28

Uh yeah, it's a little bit inside co-work and then in some other some other systems as well, but it definitely was also a revamping of how am I storing things on the front end um in a way that is uh easily accessible by MCP so that Anthropic can get that stuff when it needs it. Um yeah, there was a little bit of rebuilding that that went into that.

Charlotte Ward 12:49

So is there is there a user experience for you here and a user experience for the people on the other side of these one-to-ones?

Reagan Helms 12:58

Um not much has changed there. So we've always conducted our one-on-ones through Notion. I have private Notion spaces for each employee. Um Claude was having a really hard time with that, mostly because of how Notion's AI uh or uh yeah, AI optimization is, but more like their MCP and their API is not everything's a block. So it had a hard time looking up content around, you know, hey, today's one-on-one. Well, what what's the difference there? And some of my employees, we had a one-on-one database that went back three or four years. Um so it was it was really slow. So I ended up just reorganizing that based on some Notion features that would be a little easier, and so now they're all stored in one central notion database and then scoped down depending on the employee. Um so they only have access to their one-on-one still, but I have access to all of them and what in one place. And so that was that allowed me to point Claude there and give him um here I go, anthropomorphizing again. Um, we're gonna I gave Claude the ability to look up, you know, oh, based on the date column in the database, that would and the attendee column, you he would know which which employee was which.

Charlotte Ward 14:08

So yeah, yeah, yeah,

Notion Versus Sheets Versus Vector Search

Charlotte Ward 14:10

yeah, yeah. That's pretty cool.

Reagan Helms 14:11

Notion is a very human-readable thing, but it's not the best database. And so I think that like my my advice to people who are new to this type of stuff is to be thinking about what what is the best tool for the problem you're trying to solve with AI and not just the best tool for you as a human. Because I find a lot of people on this side of the vibe coding spectrum are reaching for the tools that are the most familiar to them or the easiest for them to understand, but it can get really expensive token-wise if you're using like a Notion database. Notion's not. It's good for humans to read and customizable for you to edit, but it's not great for uh computer science.

Charlotte Ward 14:54

So that's a really, really good point though, because um I know you and I chatted about this a couple of weeks ago. I've I've been working on a similar or on a parallel system, really, for my team. And um I know that in our organization most business, you know, actually runs in Slack. So, you know, uh, so I was in I I was in, you know, a position where I was managing one-to-one agendas in Slack and things like that, um, even though we have a perfectly good HR system to do that, and and we use Notion, so that was also another opportunity I just wasn't making use of, just because you know, you have to go where the team is. And so the team are in Slack, so we were just running, you know, pinned messages or canvases or whatever. It's kind of evolved over time. But stepping away from that, um I uh I started with like you, just with a project. Um I I went the other way though. I I I ended up landing this kind of whole ecosystem originally in Notion. I used Claude as like the experience and Slack as the experience. So um the team have a Slack bot, which Claude wrote for me, like I just told it what I wanted, you know, and it did it. Um it even told me how to deploy it and everything. Um, but it works really quite well, and so the team can just use a Slack bot to add one-to-one items and manage a bunch of other little things. Um and originally that was landing in Notion. So even though they were messaging a Slackbot and saying, add this to my one-to-one with Charlotte, and it would it would land that in Notion Um because that's human readable and it feels comfortable, and that was where I was happy seeing it land for a while. Um I I did hit a bit of a wall in terms of like performance and and you know, um API limits and things like that, because it's Notion to your point. It's really a document management system, it's not a database. Um, and and so uh yeah, I I kind of ended up winding back a lot of that notion infrastructure I'd put in place for the one-to-one, like agenda management discussion points, KPI reporting, um, which was sort of coming from a bunch of sources like you and from the Slack agenda management and things. Um now that just lands in a sheet. Uh like simplest solution. But what I've done is I've kind of kept Notion as the human readable interface. So Notion is an output. Um, it's not the place where that's managed and read from because that's really slow for Claude. Um so it reads from a sheet and then periodically dumps stuff in Notion. So I keep that human readable interface, but it's downstream of everything, which I I think just it is exactly the experience you're talking about. I think if I had known that at the start, I would have I would have known to say let's let's go for performance in terms of like backbone and then think about the humans after.

Reagan Helms 18:03

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. So Notion still is our our human readable part of it, like you said, the output

Transcripts And The Human In Loop

Reagan Helms 18:10

of something. Um or it is the start of an input. So I I use the Notion Um AI to transcribe all of my one-on-ones. So we just we have the meeting block in there, and we'll just start the transcription when the one-on-one starts. And I even have refined the markdown prompt for Notions AI transcription agent. Um that was a big mouthful, so that it knows how to structure my one-on-one output so that Claude it's easier for Claude to read, which is really nice. Um, because uh I I think that the most important thing in all of this is that you're still the person that is in charge of the data, right? And what's being processed. And so there's still a human in the loop aspect to this for me, where before I before Claude ingests that notion transcription, I'm verifying that all the attributions are correct, that what we said is actually right, the tasks that people are assigned to the right people, all of that. Because otherwise, if you're just offloading the responsibility of this, right, you're abdicating and not delegating, um, then I think that that just creates chaos and it also will ultimately create mistrust in the system because you're not actually verifying anything. But what all that to say, so Notion is the human side of this. And then when Claude ingests those one-on-one uh transcriptions and notes, it has its own database that it's filing those away. And if you really want to get nerdy, it's a vector-based database, which is um even better than a spreadsheet uh performance-wise, because it's going to be able to look up based on the context of a certain thing and not just based on uh the row um that the thing is on. So it's able to kind of file away. We've we've built it over time, so there's there's different uh columns and categories for it to tag things um as far as what people are currently being coached on, what they've been coached on in the past, that type of a thing. So um it's really easy for it to look all those things up in a vector-based system.

Charlotte Ward 20:11

So yeah, and performance, as you say, particularly for the depth and and and nature, like that qualitative nature of the uh the um data that you're capturing. Um and for the the kind of history that you've got as well, I suspect I suppose um mine still just about it fits in a sheet because really all it is for me at the moment is a gender. I'm not doing all of that transcription management that afraid to say most of that stuff still lives in my notebook, physical notebook with a pen. Maybe I'll get there. Um, but but yeah, the uh the for me, the like so I have um I have part of the Slackbot experience is is is kind of like you know, those sort of asynchronous engineering stand-ups, which are kind of what what have you achieved this week, what your blockers are, etc. I've kind of crafted almost a a support specific set of four questions, which the team also respond to. But again, it's quite a small data set, so all lands in a sheet really nicely, which works for for the you know the depth I'm going to right now. Um I aspire to vector databases at some point, I'm sure I'll get there. Um we did dive into the nuts and bolts of this a little bit, but I want to wind I want to wind out a couple of levels in yeah, zoom out, yeah. Um how um how has this affected the quality of those meetings and the effectiveness of those meetings, would you

From Full Agendas To Clear Feedback

Charlotte Ward 21:43

say? Do you feel it like deeply now, three months in compared to where you were towards the end of last year?

Reagan Helms 21:50

I'd say so. I feel like it's a it's a lot uh uh we're able to always have at the surface the things that we need to be talking. about whereas before that would either need to be a little bit mined or you know when when one of us remembered to put it on the agenda it was on the agenda you know um but again i'm I'm bouncing from context to context all the time in my role and I know that they are too just just uh a little bit different right or a little more specialized and so um I feel like it it definitely makes it so that our one-on-ones are always full we never have an empty agenda or we're never showing up and being like yeah so what do you want to talk about? Um we have we have things to discuss for sure. And again that's just the the more context that it can pull the better that that the richer that that uh agenda is right so um and then there's also there's still times where it's like there's nothing really to talk about because we either just met or we've we've kind of addressed all the things that were on the agenda but that doesn't last very long.

Charlotte Ward 22:55

Yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely do you find that carries then uh you know given the headline uh of this uh of this conversation was how it makes us better managers do you think like so the one-to-one ecosystem is improving the qualitative nature of it the effective effectiveness of it um has seen some shift changes since you started this process has that um has that kind of developed in terms of other aspects of your leadership so are you taking even just uh bits of that ecosystem or the like the downstream effects let's say of that ecosystem the surfaces of that ecosystem and and doing better doing good um or have you developed other tooling or ideas for other things you want to do that would uh continue to contribute to your own success as a manager?

Reagan Helms 23:50

Yeah I think it it really has helped me from the aspect of having a a uh impartial audience right so a coach that is independent of what I think or what the employee thinks so an example is um there's always that self-doubt that can come in as a manager of like was I clear was I did I define the expectations for this person um was I uh direct enough you know or too direct like there's always that like how much of what I am I doing is right um and there's nobody riding alongside you to to let you know um and so I've had a few examples recently where I've been like oh man did I drop the ball in communicating to this person how severe that project was um and being able to go to Claude and say like is there something that I could have done better to do this and Claude's like no you brought it up on this date and on this date and on this date. Yeah yeah you know I don't know how much you could have been better on that. Like it's actually citing sources it's not just saying hey good job you're a great boss you know or vice versa that I've had a time where uh an employee was uh doing something where I was like man that's just annoying to me and Claude's like that but that's not what that's not out of uh what did Claude say he was like well you're coaching them to do that like you you want them to do that because you've to ask them to do this this and this and this is an example of them trying to do that for you so you know it's it's more um it has all the context that I can't always hold in my brain of hey because of this person's recent you know uh review or pip or whatever you know how are they doing on that um and I wasn't always holding that context of oh well this one single Slack message was kind of annoying to me um and Claude was able to say like hey but this is showing they're they're trying to lead out and do these things and you had asked them to kind of show up a little bit more in this way and now they're trying it so it's your job to like direct them of like not quite like that like you know so I think that it's that's that's an example of how it's been really helpful for me is being able to hold the full picture when I again I'm bouncing from thing to thing to thing um and I'm not always thinking about like how a meeting a month ago or a review two months ago is affecting this current thing today.

Charlotte Ward 26:21

And that's because it has access to the ecosystem you just talked about all of the contexts on those individuals but I I guess also because it has a wider picture of the things you're what you're working alongside Claude with uh I don't know if any of the verbs made sense there but let's go with it. But like because your Claude is is co-piloting with you as a management assistant on more than just the one-to-ones I guess. Right. It has one has access to all those tools so it can look up anything that you know yeah yeah exactly so it begins to kind of synthesize that's the Claude word isn't it uh the AI word to synthesize all of that ecosystem and and become a broader advisor than just some some kind of fairly narrow one-to-one manager like it's it's it it's cross there's a cross pollination right yes yeah yeah it started out as a very uh minor ask of like help my agendas be better and it's grown into this broader context of um another thing that's really helpful for is like that all the things that I think that people aspire for it to be in like a personal assistant because it's a very specific personal assistant but I was for example in a meeting with another executive at the company and I was like I had told this one of my people that I would talk to this person

AI As Context And Recall

Charlotte Ward 27:51

about something but I don't remember what it was I it's that nagging feeling of like I know I have I know I have one more thing to talk to you about and I don't remember what it was. You have the option of like going back through your notes manually or trying to find it be like hold on one second before you go I have this other thing and instead I just asked the meeting assistant uh my management assistant I was like what did I tell Aaron uh what did I tell someone I was going to talk to Aaron about and it was able to say oh you told Sarah you would talk to Aaron about this question and I was like oh perfect that's exactly what I was looking for at exactly the time that I needed it and I didn't have to um disengage from the conversation too much or like go on a hunt for this thing while they were talking and be distracted you know so yeah yeah it yeah yeah yeah um yeah I can see that um I I love the kind of one-to-one prep um I have uh you know a lot of that kind of cross-pollinated context that you're talking about I don't have the transcripts but but access to so many other things is just it's it's way more powerful than we give it credit for even if you're not transcribing meetings like yours mine Harvey my Harvey just has uh you know he has access to Slack and everything else and so can pull a lot of that and fill in a lot of those I mean we're sounding like terrible managers at this point Reagan like we can barely hold anything in our heads but but the point is it makes us better right yeah I mean it really does go to what I said earlier of I'm not abdicating any of the responsibilities of my role to this thing.

Reagan Helms 29:27

What I'm doing is utilizing this tool in the same way that I would use a journal or um any other data right post-it notes like it's it's a it's serving a function and it it still involves me in managing the input and the output of that function right and so um I don't feel like it's any in it can feel like a cheat code in that I think it's much more powerful than you know any analog solution but it's not uh it's not that I can't do these things on my own. One more example that I'll give is um my support manager Sarah she has meetings with all of her direct reports they have a man a weekly management meeting. Sarah has given me access she's not this is no those it would be no surprise to her if she listened to this episode but like Sarah has given me access to those meeting notes as her boss um and all of her managers know that I have access to those. Now in an ideal world every day at 8 a.m or you know every Monday at 8 a.m I sit down and I read those meeting notes before I set the agenda for our one-on-one that happens later in the week. Do I do that? No, because nobody has 40 minutes to go through a whole other meeting that you weren't a part of and try to pull out what should I talk about out of this meeting in our one-on-one. But Claude can do that right and so um it allows me to have much more context or relevance to current issues than I have the bandwidth to do as a human with a with a bound by space and time which Claude is not you know so being able to kind of optimize those things is is is great.

Charlotte Ward 31:09

Yeah

Scaling Without Creeping People Out

Charlotte Ward 31:10

that's such a good way of putting it bound by space and time you know I feel um spread increasingly thin but I um you so um you know we're sort of heading I think a lot of organizations are heading in the direction of operating a much flatter org and like just being able to handle more people more issues broader scope um this isn't just about people it's about you know picking up other functions or other responsibilities or you know even dotted lines up or down right um uh diagonally up or down so like the scope of what I do is increasing rapidly as well as the number of direct reports so I I've gone from three direct reports because I had a manager layer to 11 direct reports um and and I I can only see that increasing to a certain point. And when and when you hear um when you hear the likes of like Meta and places like that that are increasing you know to the tens of direct reports say to a you know a support lead or an engineering lead or whatever um you need this kind of tooling and there's no better time to put it in place than when you have the the the the capacity even though you are bounded by space and time to do all of the things that you're talking about in terms of figuring out what you can delegate and what you still need to be the human there for. And it's um it's accelerating a lot of the admin tasks but it it is exactly enabling me to be in places that I wasn't in meetings that I wasn't I mean I can't remember the last time I I read a Slack message that said here's the recording if you weren't in the meeting and then I actually went and sat through the recording you know right right um so like Claude just unlocks that kind of thing for you who to your point who sits and watches a 40 minute meeting they weren't in and multiple times a week sure sure even on 2x that's still 20 minutes of your time that you have to invest in that so yeah and you know I'm not a fast listener. I cannot listen at 2x I don't know why.

Reagan Helms 33:27

I just uh I mean for if you are ever interested in it I think it's like a life changing skill if you can get fast at it but you have to work up to it. My wife is a 2x listener and she listens to like 150 books a year or something like that.

Charlotte Ward 33:40

So it's I I uh yeah no I don't know how is her attention on those things probably not not great but I mean maybe maybe she's great I just know I can't yeah yeah I'm a very analogue thinker like natural speed thinker when it comes to audio for some reason um I'm not even a particularly I'm I mean I'm a smart cookie raise Reagan don't don't get me wrong but I'm a slow reader and a slow listener I just want things at one speed yes yeah normal speed normal speed and then I can fill in all of the noise in my head with you know but to tie that back you know that's an investment so it's like you know you gotta make sure that you're reading the right things and not just everything yeah which is where this is a this is a different unlock if you're never going to be one of those two X listeners then this is the other alternative for you isn't it it's the unlock figure out what what of this don't you have to read and have Claude read it and summarize it for you instead you know but I would you know I would go a step further and say that Claude yeah that say Claude has an awareness of what you might need to pay attention to even if you aren't aware of the slack message that says come and watch this recording like it I mean the thing I find fascinating is this thing was mentioned in this channel that you weren't even in and now it's deeply relevant to you.

Reagan Helms 35:00

You weren't tagged you it wasn't part of your function but now it's deeply important and like I find that kind of um like perspicacity kind of really uh hugely enabling actually yeah I think it also requires cultivation right because that can be creepy like having an employee that feels like you know everything that goes on in a public space um even though you don't obviously is uh you know I think it just requires uh discernment like figuring out what which parts of this should I bring up and how would I organically have known this information if I could have um so again kind of scoping that Slack bot or the the quad bot to not view everything that's going on in Slack just in the channels that you're already in or just in the DMs that you have access to or just in the things you were tagged in, you know, is it is always going to be uh because I think that the thing that we don't want people to feel is that we have uh abdicated our responsibility to an AI overlord which doesn't make anybody feel good about their job or secure and then two that I'm not uh using it to gain access to things that I wouldn't have already gained access to.

Charlotte Ward 36:13

Because that puts you in that puts you in a position of you know having abdicated all of the the responsibility but now you're taking on some kind of micromanagement role instead.

Reagan Helms 36:24

We don't want to damage people's trust in you as a manager either like that you know if you've you're the one that is their boss and you've been charged with their development um and it if it looks like you don't care enough about that and you've just given that away to something else then that doesn't I that wouldn't feel good to me you know to know that I was just being managed by Claude.

Charlotte Ward 36:45

Yeah yeah very true very true so we're not gonna uh not gonna abdicate our responsibility none of our team are going to be managed by Claude or Harvey um even though they are you know they have pronouns they are they he has a pronoun they them he them they them yeah um uh but like uh as always with uh I AI it comes back to I think there are things that a human doesn't need to do and things that a human should always do um and I think that discernment I that you that you mentioned is is ultimately a part of what makes us better managers I hope.

Reagan Helms 37:29

Um hopefully it's what made us a manager to begin

Wrap Up And Next Steps

Reagan Helms 37:32

with.

Charlotte Ward 37:32

Oh my goodness oh my goodness I well it's a different soapbox to get on in general that's another episode let's talk about the discernment that got us into leadership uh it uh we I we hope right we hope uh yeah that would be the hope um well here we are hopefully continue also hope for hoping uh to continue on that journey and continue to be better managers day by day uh Reagan it's been so lovely to have you come and and chew over this uh ecosystem with me and uh so many of the like the considerations I knew you'd have um uh a lot of interesting thoughts on this and uh and you did um will you come back please and talk about all three other topics that I know I've got you locked in for I'd be happy to come back and if anyone has hears this and has questions on details or anything like that you can feel free to reach out to me in support driven or on LinkedIn and I'll be happy to to walk you through anything. 100% thank you so much thank you so much for joining me today Reagan talk to you soon. All right talk to you soon Charlotte thanks that's it for today go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash three zero one for the show notes and I'll see you next time