Okay. So I'm Sarah. I'm the cofounder and CEO at Wagol AI.We are an AI solution that helps managers and leaders, mostly in tech startups, interestingly, improve their team performance and their own performance using AI as a coach. So let's start with a little experiment. Can you guys scan this? And we're gonna run a quick, a quick test just to get a sense of what comes to your mind when you hear about AI at work. What's the most obvious thing that comes to your mind? Oh, Okay. I'm seeing some results coming through. Let me look at whether I can share the link for those who are, struggling with it. And I'm gonna move to Menti to show you guys what's coming through.

World takeover. Automation. Automation is seems to be a common topic, so it's coming a lot. Helpful queries, overwhelming, but good. Nice. I like it. Learning my mistakes. Oh, I like this one. I think you might like what's coming after this. Process improvement, productivity. Process improvements again. Security risks. Nice. It's true. If it's not managed well, it can be a security risk. Brainstorm. I like this. I don't see it often, but I really like it. Okay. I think this is good. So as you guys can see, automation is the biggest topic. Right? And this is what is scaring everyone with AI because we're kind of all worried we're gonna lose our job to AI. But I think there's a better way to think about it, a way where humans get to do what they do best, and AI can help on what we're not so good at as humans.

So let me just go back to my slides, and then we can look at what that actually means and how we can leverage AI to get to become better humans instead of just automating everything. Okay. Sorry, guys. I'm struggling with the technology here, which is funny for an AI founder, but we're gonna get there. Back here. Okay. So like I was saying, AI isn't just for automation. And, like, I know that most people are thinking about it this way, especially as we're seeing, like, content generation being fully automated or, lots of small tasks that we used to do, and used to take us a bunch of time take us way less time because they can either be automated or completely taken over by AI.

So that's the low hanging fruits for me. That's where most of the start ups or products that we're seeing emerge recently are focused on. But I think there's something that is a bit more hidden in how we use AI, but is even more powerful. And it's basically augmentation. What that means is how can we use AI to get to make us better at how we work and make us achieve things we could never have achieved before? Not just do them faster, not just do them, not just, like, not do them because AI is doing them, but actually achieve things that were not possible before because of how our brains work as humans or the data availability that we have. So there's another way to think about AI, and that's an AI that helps humans get more insights, connect better with each other, and collaborate better. And I that's the version of AI I like the most because I think that's where we leverage both AI strengths and human strengths at our, max abilities.

And it's a huge topic. It's not like automation is actually the main, space where we can create value with AI. Currently, organizational friction has a massive cost for companies. So most product failure project failures or team failures fail because of team poor communication, eighty six percent, which is a crazy number. 399,000,000,000 are lost annually just in unproductive meetings. And I'm sure you've had them. I'm sure you were sitting in a meeting where you're thinking, this could have been an email, or we could have gone through this topic way faster, or did we need to be 50 people in this meeting? So this number is huge. It's base it's basically the like, Tesla's market cap. It's a crazy high number, and we didn't fix it yet. And I think with AI, we kind of have a shot at fixing it. And finally, only 20% of our time is spent on mission critical work.

So we can automate all we want, but if we still spend 60 76% even if we automate those tasks, 76% on our of our time in, tasks or jobs that are not moving the needle for our team or our company, we're missing the the spot. So three examples of types of friction that hurt team performance. The one is pretty obvious. It's participation friction. I'm sure, again, you sat in lots of conversations where you have one or two voices dominating the whole conversation, and the rest of the team or the rest of the attendants remain silent. And we're missing out on a lot of ideas and innovation from all of those who are not, participating, not sharing feedback, not, not challenging the people who are dominating dominating the conversation, kind of, like, unnecessarily. Right? Like, there are ways where we could improve those conversation and get more people to participate in the conversation. And if there's a whole bunch of research that show that when there's psychological safety and people can challenge each other, we get to better decisions and more productivity and out better outcomes.

Alignment friction. Again, as teams grow and we start working in siloed environments, there starts to creep confusion in who's who owns the topic, what decisions need to happen. Sometimes you have two teams taking completely opposite decisions, and basically canceling each other's work just because there's no alignment bit in between them or good conversations happening between them. And finally, trust. Right? Again, it has to go with participation. If you can't trust, the your team members or other people in your organization, it's gonna be hard to feel like you can challenge their ideas or share your concerns. And that means that the quality of the decisions we make all as a group is lower because we miss, very valuable insights from people who are close to the ground that know what's going on and might spot weaknesses in the thinking of others, but don't feel, like they can, like, share those concerns.

Okay. So what does all of this have to do with AI? AI can help with this. So my the company we've I've built or we're building helps with these topics, but this is not where I wanna take the conversation today. I would like you guys to leave this conversation with a couple of ideas that are super easy to action, super easy to to get value out of, and that make a massive difference in your day to day. So the thing we hear a lot from users is that they're not getting enough feedback, And that's specifically specifically true if you start to lead teams to be more senior. People might, struggle to come to you and give you feedback. And self awareness have been shown to be the leading indicator of performance. Knowing what you're good at, what you're not so great at, and what you should be working on is a great, driver of performance.

So and this is also true for us as women because it's also has been studied that the feedback we get as women is not as, actionable than it would be for men. And so it's hard to work on the feedback we get, and it's hard to make progress out of it. Actually, there's a research that I'm happy to share with you later that shows that, women, don't get promoted as fast as men in part because the feedback they get is not meant to help them, improve on, their, weaknesses or their are areas of growth. So this is a super easy one. If you guys use note takers in your meetings, you can just collect the transcript of that meeting, go into Tagipity or whatever AI you prefer using. One thing I'm gonna highlight, though, is that make sure that whatever you drop into those tools, if you don't have, like, a company, level accounts that is not being used for improving the models, make sure that you're not dropping any sensitive data on the on chat deputy.

Otherwise, it's pretty safe. So, basically, what you can do is take that meeting transcript, drop it there, and use this prompt, which I can paste into the chat as well, to get feedback as if you had a coach listening on that meeting and giving you feedback on how much you were talking versus how much you were listening, whether you asked open questions, which are like a coaching style of, leadership or, presence, whether you helped others participate.

So did you create, an environment of psychological safety and trust, enabling others to part to participate and share their ideas, Or did you, cut people off? Did you dominate the conversation? And ask it to give you feedback on what you did well to basically format it as what you did well, what you didn't do so well, and what you can improve on. Try it, and let me know how it goes for you. But this is such a gem. If you need feedback that you're not getting enough of, the beauty of it is it's also gonna tell you, a lot of what you're doing well, which you might not be aware of. So it's a very good way to actually build self confidence as as women and manage that imposter syndrome we might, be having. Okay. Another one.

We discussed, silos, and misalignments between teams. So this one is slightly different. You could, pull again, make sure you don't have any sensitive data there. But what I use it the way I use it is I would, either drop, two meeting transcripts from with two different teams on a similar topic or adjacent topic or same two, email threads or Slack threads or however you guys work and ask it to look for duplicated conversations, conflicting plans.

Ask it to look for, action items that are not clear in terms of ownership or deadlines, and signs of siloed decision making. And then you can customize it, but, basically, you can ask for one of two ways to get, to clarify the conversation in between the two groups that you, print data from. Again, try it and let me know what you think. I'm gonna now come back to the chat so I can see you because I can't see you anymore, but would love to hear your thoughts or how you've been using AI. And finally, basically, my message here is that we can use AI from, like, being a simple user to being a copilot, and leveraging both our human strengths and the strengths of AI to, get to better teamwork. Okay. This is me. Feel free to connect with me, and ask me any more questions or share feedback. All about feedback.

So we'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic. And I'm gonna go and try and see you guys back here and also check on the chat. Okay. I'm gonna pull you some I'm gonna look at some of the thanks, guys. Some of the questions you guys came up with. So, Mittal, you said, what challenges do companies face when trying to implement AI for performance insights rather than just automation? This is a great question. I think it's because those, the impacts of this work takes slightly more time to be seen and, measured versus basically, if I tell you, okay. I, I used to do this task. It used to take me two days, and now I'm using AI, and it's taken me, half a day. It's super easy to measure.

And so, getting, like, a green light to spend time and focus on that is quite easy to do because it's straightforward in thinking about what the outcome is. When it comes to teamwork, and as you're probably aware, teamwork, product like, actual team performance, the feedback loop takes more time. At it takes more time for people to change their behavior, and it takes more time to start seeing the impact of these new processes that we're following. And so for that, you need to spend a bit more time. If you wanna push for something like this within your company, you need to spend a bit more time, argumenting why this is gonna be useful, what impact it's gonna have, and, basically prepare the rest of the stakeholders that on the fact that this is gonna take a bit more time to show, but the impact is way bigger than, any automation can achieve.

Right? Like, again, like I was saying, if everyone all of a sudden starts working on highly, impactful work versus, automating something that no one cares about, the impact is massively different. Are these stats based on companies, based on a specific country, or globally? These are global stats. Again, feel free to drop me a message, and I can share more about the sources. But, yeah, these are global stats. The 399 is, companies globally. I think it's only for FTSEIF like, actually, it's only for, like, not FTSEIF. I don't big companies beyond 10,000 employees. So not, small SMBs, but, yeah, it's global. Christie, love your insights on using the feedback, to give bar effects feedback also to your team. That's a great way to do it.

Again, make sure that you don't drop this on, like, a transit account or a cloud account or whatever you use that is using the data to, to train their model. But, otherwise, if it's in a safe environment, you you're pretty good to go. And, yeah, you can also ask it. What the way I also use it on this feedback topic is, you know, sometimes you're a bit, like, annoyed with someone's performance, and you just wanna say things as they are, and it can, not be the best way to share feedback with them. What you can do is drop your feedback the way it comes. I usually even actually dictate it. I don't even type it because this way you can just feel free to say whatever you want. And then ask it to, use best practices to better, structure that feedback.

So you can use, best practices like coin the coin model to structure the feedback in a more effective way, and then you can share the feedback that way. Eleanor is saying unresolved Slack threads are the bane of my life. So this is a really good idea to clearly show if I'm showing ownership or not. Yeah. Let me know how it goes. Yeah. The I get your feeling. I think especially when you're out, off for a couple of days and then come back to work and see Slack threads everywhere, This is also a good way for you to get on top of, what's going on there. Is there a link to the research about women not getting promoted? Yeah. Again, just drop me, a message either on LinkedIn or, through email, and I'm happy to share the that research with you. I should have put it here, actually.

Didn't think of doing that, but there yeah. There is research, showing that. Paulina, do you have any recommendations on how to handle sessions about evaluating AI technology to solve specific challenges? AI is very popular within organizations right now, but it's not always the best solution for every implementation or automation need. Are you also facing these kinds of discussions? Yes. I would I mean, I guess, everyone kind of has these topics, right now, and everyone talks a lot about AI. Like and then I think the people who actually use it are way less. I would say I would say my recommendation is probably to just get to use it, and use it for the simplest things, to get a sense of what it's capable of doing and what it's not great at doing yet, because that's how you're gonna get the best ideas of where to use it and where to implement it for automation or augmentation.

Right? Like, let's not get stuck on the automation bias that's going on everywhere. But, yeah, I think the best way is really to use it as for any tool. Right? Like, the time you used your like, I don't know, whatever software, whatever technology you used, it was hard for to get a sense of what's best for. And when you start using it, then you get a better understanding. Oh, I can use it for this. It's really it's and I'm gonna get good results, but I know I'm not gonna use it for that. Like, it's the, like, logic of, okay, am I gonna use, I don't know, like, a teaspoon or, or a knife? Before you use them, you don't know which is best for what.

So using them and just getting comfortable with using them on a daily or weekly basis is gonna start sparking ideas on where best to use it. Do you have any prompts for asking for more actionable feedback? I've definitely had feedback that's not helpful in any shape or form, but have difficulty articulating why I need goal posts from Eleanor. Yeah. You mean feel free to reply, on the chat. Do you mean this is for, like, asking for feed from for more actionable feedback from your manager or someone else in the team? Just ask them. I think that's the beauty of it. They're still human. Right? So just go back and say, hey.

Like, I you shared this feedback, but, actually, I'm not fee I'm, like, I'm not super clear on what I should, what I should do about it or what would your expectations for me to be based on that feedback. Like, feedback is hard, and a lot of people, unfortunately, aren't great at it. We kind of forget that it's a skill that needs to be learned. There are best practices out there. Like I was saying, there's their coin model. There's more, more coaching and feedback, based models to give feedback. So I would probably ask, nicely, that person to be a bit more action orientated. So the the way I like doing it is, when you did x, it had this impact on me or on the team. Going forward, let's do y instead. Or you can even use, like, the stop, start, continue format where you're like, oh, I would like you to continue doing this, or I'd like you to stop doing this, or I would like you to start doing this.

Christie, yes. Start with very, very small stuff, and then you can build on top of it. And and, actually, this is true for me. This is true for me on any any type of automation process. Whether you use AI or not, it's super easy to over engineer solutions, but it's always better to start small and then iterate. Use the solution. Use the automation, and you'll start seeing the gaps in it or what can be improved in it. And then you can go about it again rather than, like, build a massive project to automate, like, I don't know, a whole process. And then only when it's built, realize it's not working. Doctor Shirley Blakensopp. I use AI to check for narcissistic behaviors, language, and toxicity in emails.

That's a slice way to do it. Yeah. I that's a smart way to do it. Actually, I like, let me give you a funny example. I had a very weird conversation with an adviser once, and then I felt a bit, how to say? Yeah. Gaslighted, I would say. And so what I've done is I dropped that conversation in in chat GPT and said, hey. This is what's happened. I tried not to bias the AI because they like, yeah, one caveat to what I was saying, try and be as unbiased as possible when you put the prompts because it's might tend to go your way just to please you. They're, like, people pleasers, these AIs. So and I asked, okay. Look at this conversation. Tell me what's going on here according to you. And then I started asking questions to understand where was the person coming from. Was was that an okay behavior or not an okay behavior?

Try and understand things from their perspective, and then work on what's the best response to that would be, while still, like, feeling good for me because it's I'm the person who's gonna, like, act on it, but taking into account their perspective as well. Yeah. Iman, feel free to connect. I'm not in Paris, actually. I'm in London. I don't know why it showed up as, in I'm in Paris, but, yeah, I live in London. Yeah. Great insights, Shirley. Pros and cons or basically make it making it as neutral as possible is is the way to go about it. Christie, I I get to ask about this all the time. So our product works for team conversations, and I always get asked to, build, like, a similar thing for family conversations or, like, husband, wife or relationship type of conversation because yeah.

I think it would be fascinating to have a look at what it says in that context. Okay. I think we're pretty doing pretty well here. Any more questions or, insights? Mittal, what advice would you give, to emerging women leaders who want to harness AI for better team leadership, not just tech efficiency? Very good question. I think think about it as a way to be more, one, be more self aware. I think it's probably, like, level one. And, how to make yourself, fit well, one, basically deal with imposter syndrome. I think most of us struggle with it, but also most of us don't know what we're good at. Sometimes we no one tells us. So, this can be a good way for you to get a better understanding of what you're good at, and then leverage those those strengths, to to build your career.

And you can also do that to better understand what's going on within your team, what's going on for other people, and try to get to read on what's the best way to communicate with them more specifically. Yeah. That's just one idea. But, basically, just start using it, and you'll learn, what's work like, what works for you based on that. I would say start with the self assessment bits and self awareness. Okay. I think that was it. Thanks everyone for being here and for allowing me to, to share a few thoughts about how to actually use AI to get better at what we do and be better humans, not just get completely, like, automated and sound like robots. Speak soon. Bye.