Building Better Developers
Facilitative Leadership: Why Modern Teams Need Guides Instead of Heroes
The traditional image of leadership is built around the hero. When problems emerge, the leader steps in. If uncertainty appears, the leader provides answers. Finally, as pressure increases, the leader shields the team. According to leadership coach Daria Rudnik, that model is becoming increasingly ineffective. In a world shaped by constant disruption, Facilitative Leadership is replacing heroic leadership as the capability organizations need most.

About Daria Rudnik
Daria Rudnik helps overloaded leaders build self-sufficient teams in an AI-driven world. Through her proprietary CLICK Framework, she works with fast-growing technology and finance organizations to improve team ownership, decision-making, knowledge sharing, and adaptability. Daria is the author of CLICKING (International Impact Book Awards – Leadership Category), co-author of The AI Revolution, and founder of Aidra.ai, an AI coaching platform designed to scale leadership development.

The Problem With Hero Leaders
Most hero leaders start with good intentions.
  • They protect their teams.
  • They solve problems.
  • They absorb pressure.
  • They remove obstacles.
The challenge is that this approach eventually creates dependency.
Teams begin looking upward for every answer. Ownership decreases. Decision-making slows. Leaders become overwhelmed because every challenge funnels through them.
The leader becomes the bottleneck.

Facilitative Leadership Creates Shared Responsibility
Facilitative Leadership takes a different approach.
Instead of acting as the central problem solver, leaders create environments where teams solve problems together.
The shift is subtle but powerful.
The leader’s job becomes:
  • Creating alignment
  • Encouraging dialogue
  • Supporting learning
  • Clarifying priorities
  • Building decision-making capability
Rather than protecting people from challenges, leaders help teams navigate challenges.
Great leaders don’t remove uncertainty. They build teams capable of operating within uncertainty.

Why Facilitative Leadership Matters More in AI-Driven Organizations
Technology is accelerating change faster than leadership models can adapt.
  • New tools appear constantly.
  • Markets shift quickly.
  • Skills become outdated faster than ever.
No leader can personally absorb every change and translate it for the entire organization.
The old shield approach doesn’t scale.
Facilitative Leadership distributes awareness across the team. Everyone participates in learning, adaptation, and decision-making.
That collective intelligence becomes a competitive advantage.

Signs You’re Still Operating as a Hero
Many leaders unintentionally remain trapped in hero mode.
Common indicators include:
  • Constant one-on-one problem solving
  • Feeling overloaded every week
  • Making most major decisions personally
  • Believing the team isn’t taking enough ownership
  • Acting as the communication hub for everything
Ironically, these are often signs of a caring leader.
But caring and enabling are not always the same thing.
Protecting people from every challenge can prevent them from developing resilience.

Building Team Ownership Through Conversation
One of Daria’s strongest observations is that ownership grows through participation.
Teams become empowered when they contribute to solutions, challenge assumptions, and engage in meaningful conversations.
Leaders who dominate discussions often reduce engagement without realizing it.
Facilitative Leadership encourages leaders to ask more questions than they answer.
That approach develops judgment throughout the organization.

Facilitative Leadership and the Future of Work
As organizations become increasingly distributed across cultures, time zones, and technologies, leadership must evolve.
The future belongs to teams capable of adapting without waiting for permission.
Those teams require leaders who coach rather than command.
Leaders who connect rather than control.
Leaders who facilitate rather than rescue.
The strongest teams are not the ones with the smartest leader. They are the ones where leadership capability exists throughout the team.

Conclusion
The hero leader may still be celebrated in popular culture, but modern organizations need something different. Facilitative Leadership creates ownership, resilience, and adaptability—qualities that become increasingly important in an AI-driven world.
Daria Rudnik explains why the era of the heroic leader is ending—and why facilitative leadership is the key to building resilient, self-sufficient teams.

  • Hero leaders often become the bottleneck, creating dependency instead of ownership
  • Facilitative leaders coach, align, and enable teams rather than solving every problem
  • Ownership grows through participation, dialogue, and shared decision-making
  • In an AI-driven world, leadership must distribute intelligence and adaptability across the team
  • Great leaders ask more questions than they answer, building judgment at every level
  • The future belongs to teams that can adapt, collaborate, and lead without waiting for permission
(00:27-00:55) Rob Broadhead
Hello, how you doing? Hi. Hi. Hi, Rob. Hi, Michael. Let's see. Sorry, I'm just getting my background fixed here. Oh, I need to get some background lighting. Let's see if I can get this changed out. So I think we talked about it, Daria, about basically what we do.

(00:56-01:06) Rob Broadhead
as I'm sort of setting some lighting up as I'm going here. What we do is we have a, this is video plus audio.

(01:06-01:29) Rob Broadhead
Um, so we'll have a, we start out in a, uh, you know, YouTube video kind of approach. And then we do a couple of minutes. It's sort of like our pre-show. And then we come in and do our, oops, let me get this light. Um, and then we go into audio. And so when we do the audio is when we essentially kick it off for real. Um, I'll introduce myself, I'll introduce the show, introduce myself.

(01:30-01:49) Rob Broadhead
introduce Michael, and then give it to you to introduce yourself. And then we will take it from there. It runs about an hour. We'll end up turning it into two episodes. So it'll be about 25, 30 minutes apiece. They'll come out in about towards the end of this month.

(01:49-02:15) Rob Broadhead
and when we get towards the end then we'll we'll wrap up the audio portion of it and we have like a bonus section essentially that's afterwards that is that is the video stuff that will be out on youtube and we'll ask you either to share a like a nugget of wisdom that you want to give to everybody or if you have a challenge that you want to give to our audience the audience is

(02:16-02:45) Rob Broadhead
junior to mid-level, some senior level, technically aware founders, side hustlers, and things like that. So these are people that are, some have a real, I can call it a real job, they're employed, they work in big organizations and have big teams. Some of them are smaller companies, and then there are some that are gonna be on the point of building a team or trying to put one together, or maybe are managing a team right now. Questions or comments?

(02:47-03:12) Rob Broadhead
Yep. Yep. Okay. I want to think about it. We've got to adjust the height of my arm if I can stretch back in the camera. A lot of our pre-shows are just this. It's Rob trying to get quickly set up. Yeah, since I went mobile, it is very difficult to have. I'm always having to reset my place.

(03:13-03:38) Rob Broadhead
And Michael's just drinking his coffee, so, you know, he's not... You could, like, liven this up. You could make it more than me, just, like, getting myself prepared. Oh, dude, I have to get up at 5 a.m. for this call, and the dogs decided to go chase deer, so... I'm just not getting my first cup of coffee. Oh, okay. Well, we'll try not to get you, like, we're trying to put you onto the hot seat too soon, so...

(03:39-03:47) Michael Meloche
All right. Can you say something real quick, just so I can get a quick check for you? And it came okay? Yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you.

(03:48-04:14) Rob Broadhead
excellent so here we go tres dos uno well hello and welcome back we are continuing our season uh or maybe by now we're not we'll have to see how we go with this um right now we'll assume we're continuing our season where we're talking about moving forward momentum getting unstuck you know the best way to start your year even though now we are solidly into 2026 as we record this

(04:15-04:31) Rob Broadhead
That's what long seasons will do for you. Today, we have an interview, and we will get to our guests shortly. But first, I should probably introduce everybody around here, including Develop a Nord, Building Better Developers. Oops, this is a Develop a Nord podcast. Also,

(04:31-04:50) Rob Broadhead
I am the founder of, gosh, I'm having a day already. Rob Broadhead, the founder of Building Better Developers, also the founder of RV Consulting, where we sometimes get a little tongue-tied and we jump in a little sooner than we should have. But more importantly, what we do actually is help you when you get a little tongue-tied or jump in a little sooner than you should have.

(04:50-05:10) Rob Broadhead
When you're thinking that the tool is the solution, we're going to help you realize that maybe there's something you should do. And actually, most of the times, there's something you should do before you just throw that new tool or that new technology into your business and disrupt everything. And we're going to make sure that that investment you make is one that leads to success and is one that's worthwhile.

(05:11-05:36) Rob Broadhead
Good thing and bad thing. This is a fun little, I'll give you a little insight into us is that, cause it is a good thing and a bad thing. Michael and I are seven hours different in time zones. And this is a good thing and bad thing every time because sometimes we have me at the very end of my day and I am just crashing while he's like solidly where he needs to be. Or like today,

(05:36-06:00) Rob Broadhead
I am like well into my day. I am multiple cups of caffeine into my day. I'm ready to go. And Michael is just crawled out of bed. He looks great for doing so, but you know, and there's good and bad on both sides of that. So that is just part of the fun part of being able to work wherever you want to within the world. And now more importantly, I'm gonna allow Michael since his caffeine is kicking in to introduce himself.

(06:01-06:15) Michael Meloche
Hey, everyone. My name is Michael Molosh. I'm one of the co-founders of Building Better Developers, also known as Developer. I'm also the founder of Envision QA, where we create reliable, tailored software that helps you work smarter, scale faster, and stay in control of your business.

(06:15-06:35) Michael Meloche
Good thing and bad thing. As Rob mentioned, the bad thing today is it is early for me and my dogs decided they were going to instead of just go out and quickly do their thing, they decided to go chase some wildlife this morning. So I am on my first cup of coffee. So if I'm a little dragon, that's why. Good thing.

(06:35-07:04) Michael Meloche
As Rob mentioned, we're at the end of our year, and the weather here is finally getting to the point where everything is nice and green, the pollen is almost stopped, and it actually looks like I live in a place not a barren wasteland of dead trees. That is always a plus. Barren wastelands are usually not considered the best place to live and hang out. Today, we have our guest, as I mentioned before, Daria. I'm going to let you just go right in and introduce yourself.

(07:05-07:25) Daria Rudnik
Well, thanks. It's great to be here. I mean, in the middle of my day, since we talk about that. My name is Daria Rudnik, based in Israel. I'm a team architect and executive leadership coach, working with teams and leaders, helping them navigate all the disruptions that are happening in the world right now, technological, economical, global, whatever it is.

(07:27-07:54) Rob Broadhead
And so that's exactly where I want to go first off and starting into the discussion today is so that we are, as you alluded to, we are in a, and maybe we've always been that way, but we are definitely in a season of disruption. There's a lot going on. There's the geopolitical stuff going on. There's the technology stuff going on and the world is continuing to get smaller and smaller. So you're getting into the cultural things and the national things of,

(07:54-08:20) Rob Broadhead
Now you're not just working with your people that are local to you that live your life the way you do. You're dealing with people in different time zones, different cultures and everything else. So how is that? How do you even begin to start with that when you walk into a team and talk about the dynamics of it? Well, like you said, it's a lot. And the thing I'm seeing and I'm noticing is that

(08:21-08:46) Daria Rudnik
a lot of good leaders out there people who want to be there for their team people who want to support their team and who want to help their teams grow but what they're doing is they're actually trying to save their teams being there for them doing some things for them protecting them from the challenges and from everything that's happening because well that's how we like used to think about leaders leaders protect their team members

(08:46-09:10) Daria Rudnik
But the world is changing and the world is changing so fast that you cannot be a shield or otherwise that's the only thing you do. You like being a shield for your people. But while being this shield, you're not protecting people. You're basically isolating them and then losing this connection with the outer world. They're losing connection with what's happening with all the changes that's happening. So instead of kind of being the go-to person for every question,

(09:10-09:32) Daria Rudnik
leaders need to look into their teams and say, hey, we're there together. I'm not here to kind of be the one who is out there. We all need to be out there. We are really a team and they can only be a team when leaders stop being heroes and trying to save them and start facilitating meaningful conversations so that team members can actually solve problems and navigate those challenges together.

(09:33-10:00) Rob Broadhead
That is excellent. And so what would be for a leader if you start with that and you say, hey, you're being a hero. This is not the best way to do it. How do you start that conversation? And I guess from the first part is let's start with what are some key indicators that as a leader that they can say, oh, yes, I do that. And then you can sort of lead them down the way of being, well, you're being a hero.

(10:01-10:29) Daria Rudnik
what I'm seeing, like, again, I'm biased. I work with leaders who want to be good leaders. That's why they come to me and they want to be there for their teams. But when I see them saying things like, I constantly talk to my people, I have lots of one-to-ones, I don't have enough time, or like I'm there to protect my team members, or I feel like I'm overloaded and I need to solve this and that so that they can grow, so that they can kind of fulfill their goals. But I don't,

(10:29-10:48) Daria Rudnik
I know that they're capable of more, but I don't know how to make them do more. How do you know how to make them more empowered? I don't know how to give ownership back to them. I know that they're capable of it, but they don't just don't take it. And I don't know how to give that to them. So I don't want to push them.

(10:48-11:13) Daria Rudnik
but i still need to give some more to my people so these kind of questions that people come like leaders come and ask me and that's a clear signal something is wrong i mean you are definitely doing more than you should deciding more than you should and instead of deciding and doing it for them you need to stop doing it and shift to deciding with them and go back to your team and ask them what do you think

(11:13-11:30) Daria Rudnik
when they come to you with a question ask them what do you think and it's not like you're pushing back it's not like you you don't want to be there like you don't want to support them you're just supporting them in the other way helping them that's the real growth when they can solve their challenges and not just come to you for questions and and for answers

(11:31-11:45) Rob Broadhead
Now, do you see the aforementioned rapid change that we're in, do you see that maybe highlighting those issues sooner so that maybe the heroes that were successful before now no longer can be heroes?

(11:46-12:05) Daria Rudnik
It's not just the speed of change. It's also the complexity that we're in. It's that leaders are expected to serve the customers. They are expected to manage transitions. Like again, we all talk about AI, what leaders, like general middle manager do, okay.

(12:05-12:32) Daria Rudnik
They have a goal. We need to implement AI in our work processes. So it's another level of complexity. They need to satisfy their stakeholders. They need to engage, motivate their team members. They need to be there with their families. So it's not only the speed, it's also the complexity and multiple demands that are falling on one person who needs to deal with it all by themselves. And that's not fair and that's not effective.

(12:34-12:51) Michael Meloche
It's interesting that you say that because I've had multiple roles, leadership, team leads, management. And I've seen that constantly. The biggest challenge, and I'm curious how you helped your leaders is

(12:53-13:09) Michael Meloche
when someone steps up to a leadership role or moves into that role and kind of that's the first thing they want to do right they want to kind of be there for the team they want to help their team they want to grow their team but typically i find that new leaders

(13:09-13:36) Michael Meloche
as they move into this role aren't prepared for the role like their management isn't helping them isn't supporting them and it causes kind of bad leadership skills or lack of leadership skills and there's just that lack of support so it kind of has that downward effect how do you work with leaders to change that how would you work with those younger newer leaders to

(13:36-14:00) Daria Rudnik
kind of get them in the right place, in the right mindset while they work with their teams? Well, I love that question. And I mean, the leadership development needs to start not with your first management role. Leadership development starts like early on. And to be a great leader, you need to understand how to be a great follower. You need to know what it is to be a team member because

(14:00-14:15) Daria Rudnik
The life is that we never learn how to work in teams. School is not a team. University is not a team. Family is not a team. So the first time people start really joining a team is when they join the workforce, unless they are in the sports.

(14:15-14:43) Daria Rudnik
I mean, for majority of people, okay, I go to work and that's my team. And it's expected for me, be a team member, be a team player. But how do I do that? I do not have example. And it's not just, I like being with those people or I want to be with those people and help them. It's a set of skills, it is skill set where you know what you're doing, how you design process, how you give feedback to those people, how you communicate with them. People don't know how to be team members.

(14:43-15:08) Daria Rudnik
And they kind of expect their manager to teach them how to do that, but those managers, they have absolutely the same experience. They never learned how to be a team. And then when they become leaders and they get their first leadership training, or they get their first management training, when they learn how to delegate and control and set goals. I mean, AI can do that now, like don't bother.

(15:08-15:32) Daria Rudnik
But they never learn how to build a real team, how to build this team dynamics where people not only talk to you as a manager and trust you as a manager, how they talk to each other, how they build trust with each other. And since you mentioned like different locations, people working part of my team in the US, another part in India, how do you make sure that those people know each other and communicate and collaborate?

(15:32-15:55) Daria Rudnik
and create some value all together. So it all starts with the team and team members. So the best approach that worked best for me and my clients is when we work as a team, a team coaching session or a team session, where we all get together and we all talk and we all figure out what's working for us as a team.

(15:55-16:14) Daria Rudnik
Because if manager, if a leader defines that, that might work for them, but that's not necessarily what works for the team members. So the first step is go back to your team and ask them, how can we bear by the team? How can we improve that? I love that. And I've seen that work so many times.

(16:15-16:36) Michael Meloche
So taking that and let me give you another example. And I'm kind of curious how you would break this down because so many people run into this. This is kind of a common scenario. And I've seen this at multiple companies. I've had friends complain about this multiple times. They start a job and everything's great. Everyone's starting out collaborating.

(16:36-16:51) Michael Meloche
But you do have cultural differences. You have the different time zone differences. For instance, one of the teams I'm on, we literally have a person in every single time zone in the United States and India.

(16:51-17:08) Michael Meloche
So we have some people coming on early in the morning, like this call, and we have other people like you and Rob coming on in the middle of your day or the end of their day. So people are at different mindsets, but they're also at different mental states as they're coming in to work on the team during the day.

(17:08-17:26) Michael Meloche
and the issue i hear a lot is uh yes we have scrum masters that drive our morning teams they kind of set the uh momentum for the day but the problem i run into or they complain about is there's not enough

(17:26-17:51) Michael Meloche
uh not so much hand-holding but there's just not enough guidance on who to go to when there's problems we like you said you have managers that protect our team so you have that one person you have that bottleneck but when that person is kind of a hands-off person it's like well go figure it out go read documentation how do you work with those leaders or how do you work with those teams to help

(17:51-18:04) Michael Meloche
cultivate their leader to get them back on track and say hey you're not helping us you're kind of in the way how are you you know how can we grow around you or with you well

(18:05-18:30) Daria Rudnik
I love the example and I've seen that. The thing is, it's not leaders who need to do that. You need to do that as a team. Because like I said, leaders can do one thing. It's just one set of rules and norms, how you work together, how you grow, how you share information, but it might not work for everyone. I'll tell you an example. There was a team

(18:30-18:43) Daria Rudnik
It's a project management team in Tech University Research Center, and they wanted to be a go-to center expertise on project management in the field, in the organization.

(18:45-19:14) Daria Rudnik
But they all were remote and they kind of lost this understanding of who's doing what and how we share information. So what they decided to do, again, they got together with their managers, not with managers who decided to do that. They were together and said, we want to know more about what each of us is doing because they were working on different steps of the project. So they didn't know what other people were doing. Some were in the law part, some were in the tech part, some were in the other part.

(19:15-19:40) Daria Rudnik
So they paired together and people started to work on one step, not alone as they used to be, but together with the person who takes up the next step and then the other person joins. So that means they understand the whole chain of those steps and they have better understanding. And you might think it takes more time because they not only participate in their part of the project, but in the previous one.

(19:40-20:06) Daria Rudnik
but it happened that they understand the whole project better and it actually saved time and they decided that by just doing that and working together i i have no idea how can they share knowledge the manager has some ideas but the team decided what they want to do so again go to your team ask them and define how you want to share information go ahead rob

(20:06-20:36) Rob Broadhead
I said that is an excellent example that I think a lot of places run into is that some of the hardest work is the handoff, is like, how do I know that I'm done? And then what does the next person expect? Well, if you're part of that, then that allows you to figure out where that hard defined handoff is. And so, like you said, yes, there's a little more time involved in doing it, but now you don't have to worry about the rework and the confusion and where things are not properly handed off.

(20:36-20:42) Rob Broadhead
So getting into this, I do want to do this a little bit in sort of a follow-up to Michael's question is,

(20:43-21:12) Rob Broadhead
You get these leaders that'll come in, like either you'll have a coach, you'll come in and work with them for a while and maybe work with the team, or it's not uncommon to have an offsite where everybody goes away for a little bit, gets somewhere and says, okay, we're gonna be a team, all right? And they come out of that and they're like, okay, cool. We're like, we're rolling the boat in the same direction. And then six months later, they have to have a, they have to do it again. And you're chuckling. So I'm wondering your thoughts on this.

(21:13-21:29) Daria Rudnik
Well, I used to be chief people officer and the worst part of my job was to arrange and organize those rope training or go now, let's have a beer and that's how we become a team. That was the worst part of my job.

(21:29-21:53) Daria Rudnik
No, I don't believe in that. I mean, it's good. It's fun. I love it, but it's not a team building. It's not building a team. You build a team by working together and defining the ways of work, how you work together as a team and what are your norms and rules of working together. So, and it usually takes a few sessions of meeting, like team meetings where we decide norms and rules, and then

(21:53-22:09) Daria Rudnik
The most interesting part is when team members decide, okay, we make sure everyone speaks at the meeting. Let's say I have a team and they have some sort of conflicts and they said, okay, we want to make sure that everyone speaks up during team meeting.

(22:09-22:38) Daria Rudnik
And then since most of the teams I work with are remote, I join, quietly join the meeting and see what's happening there. And if they follow the rules that they agreed to follow, it's all good. But if they don't, I'll just step in and say, hey, you agreed to make sure everyone was saying something, everyone has something to say, and this person didn't say anything. What do you think of that? And what do you want to do with that? So kind of helping them bring this

(22:38-23:03) Rob Broadhead
bring what they decided during team sessions to their real work, and that's the only way people change. Well, I love that, and that's a great example of sort of, and we'll shift maybe a little bit here, unless Michael has a slightly different question, but I think it's the same kind of thing that people run into when you add AI into something, is you still need the human

(23:03-23:28) Rob Broadhead
touch the human review. And that's it feels like that's exactly what you get there is even though it's all humans, it is the you being I guess that will call the human to the processes. So they all agree that this is how we're going to work, we're going to be a team, this is going to be our interaction. But now you're sitting there to say, Hey, we all agreed on this, let's not drift away from it. Let's hold to the rules and the process that we we said we would. And now

(23:28-23:52) Rob Broadhead
with that now because you know you say you'll sneak in and you're you know say sneak but you'll you'll sit in do you see that that that that reinforcement does help them and so that they do uh essentially put the the boundaries and essentially create the habits they need to so that that becomes natural as opposed to you having to sort of like you know poke them and sit over their shoulder and say hey wait a minute we for you know this is what we agreed to

(23:53-24:04) Daria Rudnik
i mean absolutely that's basically we build a new habit of how people work together and like to be honest i mean i i don't like saying that but you don't need a coach to do that

(24:04-24:32) Daria Rudnik
your team of six eight people you can find a facilitator like one meeting is facilitated by one person the other meeting is facilitated by the other person and this it's not so much as a facilitator but an observer so find someone appoint someone who will be observing your conversations you have a list of rules like everyone speaks up no interruptions we talk only about agenda if something is out of agenda we put it on the on the wall and we'll talk about it later

(24:32-25:02) Daria Rudnik
So someone who's actually making sure that everyone is following the rule. So you can have this person on your team. And it's part of the learning. When you decide to do something, you try and then you reflect on whether you've done it or not. You kind of observe whether you've done it or not. And that's how you build a habit. Yeah, I love that. So Rob already kind of touched on AI. We know we're living in that world and is one of the biggest disruptors right now.

(25:03-25:21) Michael Meloche
One, especially for developers, I've worked at a couple of different companies now that have used AI differently. Like one is trying to build like this whole internal model. They kind of have a direction, but they have no idea what they're doing with this. They're just throwing ideas at this. And the other one is

(25:22-25:44) Michael Meloche
literally giving the keys to the kingdom to their developers. They're giving them all these tools and just say, go. But still, the management is so split because the mindset of a lot of individuals, just like culture, you have your people that are for AI, people that are against AI,

(25:44-26:12) Michael Meloche
I have those internal conflicts within my own family because my daughter is an English major and absolutely detests AI because she thinks it's the downfall of the English language. But getting back to the jobs and the teams, how as managers do you help foster that? How do you work with the AI to make sure that it is beneficial to the teams, not a disruptive? It's a huge topic. I love it.

(26:14-26:26) Daria Rudnik
And the thing is, what I'm seeing is when teams approach AI, it kind of starts with the question of what tools are we using or how we're using tools, or even, okay, maybe what part of the process we're using it for.

(26:27-26:51) Daria Rudnik
But it's more than that. We need to look at it at least three layers. And the first layer is how people feel about AI. Like you said, some people are just resistant. They don't want their fear. They don't want to do anything with it. They're anxious. It'll take my job. It'll take my thinking. It'll swipe up my language, anything. Some people have this, especially I see that a lot of people

(26:51-27:11) Daria Rudnik
tech experts when they have this fear of missing out. Okay, I'm not keeping up with the pace of change. Something is happening out there and I'm here. I don't know. I'm feeling behind. And this kind of fear, it makes people rush into it without thinking.

(27:11-27:33) Daria Rudnik
so understanding what people feel about ai will actually help you understand the decisions they're making and their behaviors some are afraid and they don't use it some are like if afraid that they will miss out they will rush into it some are excited about it again they use it probably sometimes without thinking so the way people feel about it influences the decisions and behaviors

(27:35-28:01) Daria Rudnik
The second layer is how AI is influencing our brains, because it does. And it's not just some automation, it's kind of outsourced mind, outsourced thinking. And there is a research, MIT research, Your Brain on ChatGPT, that tells us that yes, when we use AI, our brain disengages faster. But again, there is a better and worse way of using AI. And when you think about,

(28:01-28:24) Daria Rudnik
something your task first and then give it to you and then iterate and then work on it your brain stays engaged but if you go to you and say give me you know this app or give me this presentation or strategy whatever it is and then you try to edit it your brain disengages first and i've seen examples like there was a team a product team

(28:24-28:42) Daria Rudnik
they didn't recognize backlog because it was mostly generated by AI. And okay, what was it about? Why is it here? Like they couldn't remember why this was on the backlog because the brain disengaged. So you literally stopped remembering things.

(28:42-29:04) Daria Rudnik
and when we talk about teams there is another research that tells us and we probably see that how we adopt ai language it's all over linkedin everyone writes in the same way without probably even realizing it sometimes maybe even without ai we we talk about not human not english but ai language this kind of talk

(29:04-29:16) Daria Rudnik
And when teams use AI a lot, they start adopt AI language and they sometimes don't even realize that the terms or frameworks that AI suggests. And that's why it's critical that you have this

(29:17-29:45) Daria Rudnik
team ritual or norm, when there is someone, like you said, Michael, observing and making sure there is human judgment, that the terms you're using, the frameworks you're using are not the ones like you're using that because they're useful and not because AI suggested them. So, and then comes obviously the designing of the work process, how we work with AI, what kind of, where AI makes decisions, what's automated, what's not, and things like that. So it's, it's, it's complex.

(29:46-29:51) Michael Meloche
Yeah, it's kind of a loaded question. I kind of have a two part follow up to that.

(29:52-30:20) Michael Meloche
I kind of see AI as an employee. If you think about it, you kind of touch on it. So you kind of disengage, you kind of outsource your thinking or your task, per se, to the AI model. And if you think about a leadership or management role, you're essentially handing it off to an employee. You're handing it to someone else to do it. But if you're not a good leader or a good manager, or you don't understand that topic well, like you said, you're going to get garbage in, garbage out.

(30:21-30:37) Michael Meloche
How do you see leaders or how do you encourage leaders to work with the AI to better their teams and their leadership skills with the tools they have instead of, like you said, just disengaging and using it the wrong way?

(30:38-31:08) Daria Rudnik
Well, what we do, again, same thing, get together as a team and analyze what kind of process we're delegating to AI. Where are we using AI and what are we using AI for and how we do that. I was working with the team and they were kind of felt into this disengagement mode because they overused AI, or at least they used AI in the wrong way. AI was doing the backlog, AI was generating summaries, agendas, and they was like, okay, what am I doing here? Am I just an operator of this machine? What's my meaning?

(31:08-31:36) Daria Rudnik
and then when they decided to change the cadence when it's a customer success team and they after each conversation with the client they made sure that they recorded their own insights first what's what stuck with them what was important for their clients what are the pains and only that ai was generating summaries and they checked that everything is correct so they they intentionally inserted themselves in a specific parts of um

(31:36-31:58) Daria Rudnik
of the of the process and you don't need that for everything i mean obviously but you need to make sure okay here is when we need human involvement here is what we need human judgment here is what we need uh like that's only humans and that's we can delegate to ai we don't care what it does let ai schedule our meetings without us even like talking about it things like that

(32:00-32:15) Rob Broadhead
And that is where we're going to pause for right now. This is just episode one. We are going to come back and have another, just continue the conversation with Daria because it is a, we do talk about AI a little bit more as we get into this, but it really is, it's about

(32:15-32:44) Rob Broadhead
And this is a perfect fit. It's about teamwork. It's about leadership. It's about the organizational interoperability and dynamics that are really what matters about all of this, about your team, about your organization, but also if you're going to apply technology and automation and AI. So thanks for hanging out with us and for investing again and becoming a better developer. And as always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time.