Why Your Mid-Level Leaders Are Your AI Champions

[00:00:03] Welcome to the Quick Take Podcast, the show where you get targeted advice and coaching for executives by executives. I'm Susie Tomenchok. And I'm James Capps. Give us 15 minutes and we'll give you three secrets to address the complex topic of issues that are challenging executives like you today. Hey, welcome to Quick Take. I'm Susie. And James? I'm both. I'm both. I'm me and you. Oh, that's weird, but okay. Hi.

[00:00:33] How are you? I'm great. Sweet. Let's talk about who is embracing AI? What generation? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting topic. If you were to ask me versus what the data says, I think I would have been wrong. I would have thought, but just by default, it would have been the younger you were, the more likely you were to embrace it. What do you think?

[00:00:56] Yeah, that's exactly. Just because you grew up at a time where being digital and all the technology, it really makes a difference, significant difference. And you're able to grasp. I think about just the concepts that are hard to grasp if you come from different generations. Like for music, going from iTunes to Spotify. I'm like, what do you mean you're not? I don't own mic music. I did not understand it.

[00:01:25] And now it's like, it's so liberating to live it. But even being described, you know, how it was going to feel. I didn't understand it until I was able to. And I think AI is kind of the same as if you don't understand it, you can read about it, but you have to do it.

[00:01:42] Yeah, but the data suggests the opposite, though, that while 75% of CEOs believe that this will impact the way that they do work, 50% of people think it will be positive. And the generation that is actually the least positive about it is the younger generation. There is something beguiling around that assumption that just because you're young, you get it. And I think that's a great, interesting opportunity for us to discuss today.

[00:02:10] We have often talked about the challenges of that middle management layer, but it may be that that middle management layer, that generation may be the one that are more uniquely positioned to bridge the gap for this AI revolution. Yeah. And I guess, do we know how successful it's going to be? Like whether you feel like it is, that's the other part of that data is it's a little bit like only half baked at this point.

[00:02:40] Sure. But I agree with you that millennials will likely be the best positioned to be able to be kind of the, as you said, the interpreter. Yeah, exactly right. And I read a really interesting snippet of the McKinsey 2025 AI in the workplace report that basically had a really interesting point,

[00:03:01] which was the generation, the millennial generation came from a world in which technology was introduced and they learned to leverage that to make their tasks easier to do. And so they are willing or more comfortable using tools and blocks to improve their situation. Whereas perhaps a digital first generation isn't as inquisitive, isn't used to trying to apply these things to different challenges.

[00:03:29] So that millennial generation who are now your middle managers, you know, your late twenties to late early 40 managers are the ones that maybe your real secret weapon in the AI rollout. And they can also see the possibilities. They can imagine what is possible so they can scratch at it and go, Ooh, I wonder if I could be more productive here. How can I make this easier? So it is like that curiosity too.

[00:03:57] It's the technology and curiosity are like the perfect blend. Absolutely right. I hate when we talk about generations because I do think it's a huge broad brush that overstates and oversimplifies. But I do think it's fair to say middle management, which coincides with that generation. There are certainly middle managers in their fifties and there are middle managers in their twenties. But that middle management team, they are stuck between the surface level workers and the visions of the executives.

[00:04:23] They are the ones that are often carrying the burden of making things, doing more with less, dealing with whatever layoff, merge, additional customer, whatever kind of chaos is thrown their way. That is the team that has to carry that burden. And so the ability for them to take advantage of these tools really will be a game changer for most companies. Yeah.

[00:04:44] I wonder if the percentage of feeling like it's going to change so much at the senior level is driven by the fact that, because I'm seeing that adults, adults, meaning not older than millennials, trust it. Just believe that everything's correct. Whereas my kids always remind me, mom, this is only as good as it is.

[00:05:10] There's somebody that I work with that never writes anything and he never produced anything. He was always the person that would verbally give comments. And all of a sudden he's giving these long email things back that you can just tell he put a prompt in. Right. And it was done. I feel like there is a little bit of psychology around it too. And that's dangerous. We joke anecdotally that Facebook is a cesspool of bots and misinformation.

[00:05:38] And there's an entire generation that consumes that without any sort of critical thinking. And that is at the end of the day, how we as people get beguiled into believing things that are not true. You know, we are in a post-truth era where the truth is even in question. Even if you see it with your own eyes, it's not good enough. Thanks again to AI. But I think a generation that is skeptical is going to be better off. A generation that is always second-guessing information.

[00:06:05] Just because it's in the Google, it doesn't mean it's right. And I think just because it came out of CLOD or it came out of ChatGBT or it came out of Gemini doesn't make it right. I use all those tools, ridiculous amounts all day long. And I'm constantly asking questions. Hey, are you sure you failed to take this into consideration? I treat them as a very smart friend who also drinks heavily. And so you have to use them cautiously, but be careful that you're not always going to get the best answers.

[00:06:35] Yeah, I think that's what I'm most afraid of is we're going to get lazy. Oh, for sure. And not act like that, which I think it goes back to that middle generation as we see them as the middle. Yep. Well, the middle management, I guess, is really the key thing here. We're not about generational politics, but we are about leadership and the management structure that we have at a lot of these companies. And that middle management, that middle layer is the one that data has shown that they are the most inquisitive, but also the most skeptical.

[00:07:03] That could be a secret weapon and a secret combination. So some of the ways to take that secret weapon would be giving them the ability to do like lunch and learns or give them a challenge and see how they come back with it. That can help everyone get more context and can benefit from that perspective and balance. How do we leverage this more and more?

[00:07:31] And then that builds that credibility, that influence for those mid managers to really shine. It gives them that exposure and experience. That's exactly what I've seen work. These AI safe zones, a client that I was working with, basically built on top of whether it's the hackathon idea or the show and tell idea and had a meeting once a week where people would demonstrate or talk about what they were using AI for.

[00:07:57] It gave leadership and the technology team insights into some of perhaps the dangers that we had not been considering, some of the risks that we needed to address. But it also exposed the audience to what the art of the possible is. And, you know, I will tell you that we had a group of people that we introduced co-pilot to. And we said, you're our co-pilot beta group. We'd like you to use it for a couple weeks and we'll come back and we will let's do a show and tell of how you used it.

[00:08:26] A couple of folks were in the beta group, but we didn't get the instructions very well. I'm not sure where we dropped the ball on that. So when we got back, you know, we had what you would expect. I used it to help with my Excel spreadsheet. I helped to do it with this. And again, let me remind you, this was a bank. This was not a software startup. We have a technology group, but it's not a team that I expect us from. But we went through and there was a couple of folks who actually went out and built some AI agents on their own.

[00:08:56] We watched a couple of videos and we did this. And so I built an agent using co-pilot. So it's not doing part of my job. Wow. Well, obviously the show and tell people were, I used it to spell check my email. And then you had this individual over here who was completely ahead of the curve. And just not only were the team, the co-pilot beta group minds blown, you know, the leadership and the software group was also mind blown because they had gone well beyond what it was expected with great simplicity and ease.

[00:09:24] And it really motivated everyone else about what the possible was. So creating that safe space, you're going to get some jewels and really some exciting outcomes, I think. I think what I love about that story too is what you're not saying that's obvious is that it also creates this permission to go to that person and go, hey, what do you think about this? And be curious yourself, especially if you aren't the one that's inclined to understand. If you're the one that just used it for spell check. Right.

[00:09:53] How can you then leverage the people around you? And that's so important. It's like low-hanging fruit that we don't take advantage of because we go from meeting to meeting and we don't think about. But what a great way to network and really get people to unite so that they can learn together and really leverage what's going to work for the company. Well, it's a risks-free zone, safe to fail. You know, you need an environment where you can say, I don't get it. And somebody else can say, yeah, you don't because I did this.

[00:10:20] And it's not coming from an instructor or a manager. Yeah. You know, as simple as it is, you and I have watched our use of these tools change over time. But I've still talked to people who are of the level that I would expect them to be embracing it, and they're not. That they're still seeing it as too complex or hoping it'll just go away. And so just like many things that are intimidating or new, there are going to be folks who need to have given some agency, given some examples, given some safety nets.

[00:10:49] And so I think your middle managers, to kind of bring it back to that, are the perfect people to engage their teams in this space, provide them with the opportunity to do this, to show them what is possible. Leverage that middle management team because I think they're really well positioned for it. Yeah, I think that's so good. It made me think of a visual of a bunch of people looking down at a field, but you only have a peephole.

[00:11:14] We all have a different view of how we see AI and how we use it, and it will continue to be that way. For sure. So we have to be open and curious with one another so that we can help everyone get a bigger view, get a zoomed out view. Exactly right. A deeper understanding. Yep. I agree. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Quick Take, where we talk about the questions that are on the minds of executives everywhere.

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