How AI is Disrupting Leadership Communication & Executive Coaching - Ash Seddeek
All right, hi everyone. This is Kumar Dattatreyan with the Meridian Point, and I'm excited for our guest today. Having our guest on the show today is Ash Seddeek, founder of Mivante, the Communication Intelligence Platform. And I love this title - the Chief Excitement Officer at the Executive Greatness Institute. That's something I'm really curious about.
Ash went from being a linguist in Egypt to coaching executives at Cisco, Uber, Google, and Salesforce. But he's not just another leadership coach. He's created an entirely new software category called Communication Intelligence that transforms everyday workplace communication into measurable business performance gains. What makes Ash perfect for our disruption-themed podcast is his belief that communication is the most underrated driver of business performance. And he's built both AI-powered coaching tools and technology platforms to prove it.
So without further ado, let me welcome Ash to the stage. Hi Ash, how are you doing?
Hey Kumar, thank you for having me.
Of course. Great to have you here. Let me start then with my first question. So this platform that you've created, the Communication Intelligence Platform - this sounds like you're creating an entirely new software category. Can you explain what Communication Intelligence is, and why traditional tools like Slack or CRMs or any traditional coaching platforms aren't solving the problem that you hope to solve with this?
Absolutely. So the genesis for the idea happened while I was speaking with a vice president at Uber, because when I am coaching leaders, I usually go and speak with some key stakeholders and understand from them - let's say, if you are working with Kumar - what is it that Kumar needs to do in order for him to communicate more effectively with you?
And a lot of the time, these stakeholders, such as this VP at Uber, he basically started telling me how he likes to receive emails from this particular leader that I'm going to be coaching. And if she texts him on Slack, how soon does he want to respond? And if she brings him a slide deck, how well-crafted this slide deck needs to be based on his own communication preferences.
So when I did this by talking with several other stakeholders, I said to myself, "Just imagine if this leader that I'm coaching, every time she was just about to send a message to Kumar, she'll actually see the communication preferences that Kumar loves and appreciates a lot more." Because if he gets a message crafted in a way that he likes to understand, then the likelihood of Kumar reading the message are much higher. The likelihood that he's actually going to understand it and respond to it are much higher.
So that's what the software will actually do. It will ask every user to articulate what their communication preferences are. Then the AI tool will actually leverage this information when you are just about to write an email, when you are just about to text the person, or just create a calendar invite. It's going to say to you, "Wait a second, it looks like you are creating a calendar invite for a meeting with Kumar. Remember, he likes insights. He likes things from the very beginning. So in order for you to actually get his attention, make sure that you leverage those communication style preferences," because then life will get a whole lot better because we're not shooting in the dark.
I think the problem that I discovered is most of the time we're just shooting in the dark because we don't know. And what this software will do is give us the lens to know - if I'm writing something to Kumar, oh my goodness, now I know what he likes. Whereas now, we don't have a clue.
Yeah. Does your software analyze behavior after you've sent the message, you know, based on the preferences that the recipient has said that they like or want? Does it then sort of learn from how the recipients receive those messages, what they do with it? Is there a feedback loop?
You're definitely starting to see the power of this solution because what it actually does - first, it's going to ask Ash, who's writing a message to Kumar, "Hey Ash, we just gave you some insight into how to communicate better with Kumar. Give us feedback." And then on Kumar's side, it's going to say, "You just received a message from Ash. How effective is this message in meeting your own expectations in terms of how you need to be communicated to?" So you're saying, Kumar, it will continue to learn. And the power is in that continuous learning. It's going to feed back into the system much more useful insight to help everyone who's communicating how to communicate even better.
Interesting. So has this... is this live? Are people using it? What are the results?
This is actually now in development. We are actually waiting to go in terms of broadly communicating and sharing information about it post some patent applications that we are in the process of getting right now.
Okay. Yeah, it sounds very intriguing. It's like marketing for internal marketing, if you will. Like, so if you know what people like and the way they like to communicate, then the value of the communication goes up so much more, right? You're not just, to your point, shooting in the dark, assuming that everyone wants to read an email. I mean, personally, for me, I don't read emails. I'm more a chat person or really, you know, sort of a conversation like what we're having. If it goes too many chat threads long or too many emails long, I prefer that.
And I suppose the AI, as you give your preferences and as it learns about you and others learn about your style, it will help them to communicate with you more effectively. But I also suspect there's a certain element of self-awareness and empathy that goes into this, right? So executives, leaders, managers, whatever - they may not care. They're like, "I'm just going to send an email because that's what I want to do. That's how I've always communicated." How do you see something like this changing their behavior?
I think it was very interesting. Last week I was conducting a training program at Cisco, and one of the leaders going through the program said it was very interesting how when I increased the level of clarity in my message, I actually started getting a lot more responses back. And that was a very insightful comment to make, because that essentially meant that if somebody gets a message that's not very clear, the chances of the recipient essentially looking at that message saying, "Oh my God, it's too much text. I'm not going to read it right now." And maybe a day goes by, maybe two days go by, and then the chance of someone actually forgetting that they haven't gotten back to you comes into the equation.
So that essentially means that clarity will actually impact the velocity of how an organization functions. So as you're saying, I think as more people see the value of getting clear information to the other side, because that's really what matters. What matters more is, is the message going to land clearly with the audience? And is it also going to inspire them to take immediate action or at a minimum some level of action very, very soon? Because everything we're doing in any organization has to do with the fact that we're really trying to get forward motion.
And if our communication generates forward motion, we are in luck because that's exactly what we want. We want the project to successfully move forward. We want our product to come to market. We want the marketing campaign to go out and get launched. So all of those activities are dependent on how clear we are at every junction in that process. So the more we communicate clearly, the higher the likelihood that our pace is going to be much better - our go-to-market, our time to benefit, all of those metrics that we talk about so much. It's very interesting how a lot of this hinges on how clearly and effectively we are communicating.
That sounds very intriguing. I suppose even for those folks that are maybe less aware or less empathetic, just using this tool for a while might change their minds, right? Because they're seeing results that their messages are being read. They're seeing the results of the clear communication that they're providing their subordinates or their peers or their superiors, whoever they may be.
All right, amazing. So before we dive a little deeper into this technology, I'm curious about your personal journey. My notes have it that you started as a linguist in Egypt planning to become a university professor, then spent years in corporate roles, and now you're disrupting this communication space. What was the aha moment that made you realize communication was the missing piece in business performance?
I think once I started doing leadership coaching, and we will talk for some time with any one of these leaders, and then we realize that at the core of the problem, there is, to your point, perhaps self-awareness. There is emotional intelligence that's impacting the issue. There is a communication style that is blocking the progress of how an initiative needs to go.
So as I essentially talk to each one of these leaders, it's interesting because I think when you're trying to figure out an idea like the one we're talking about, it really happens by connecting the dots through a number of conversations. And that's essentially what's starting to happen. I started to see leaders coming up with a particular initiative, going on, talking to the team members, and then finding that people are not passionate enough as much as that leader is. And then they come to me and say... like one finance leader at Uber said, "I would love to figure out how to inspire my team and get them to see the value of what we're working on and the pace that we want to move forward on."
So a lot of these points, a lot of these conversations with these leaders really sort of brought up that aha moment to basically say, "Oh my goodness, just imagine if we're able to get a lot of those communication preferences and styles out into the open. If we can actually increase the level of clarity, the level of transparency, and hopefully the level of inspiration that might happen." And that definitely will get us into this sort of Chief Excitement Officer idea that I know you're going to bring up later.
Absolutely. Yeah, I just want to sort of be the cynic, represent maybe some of the listeners that may be watching this live. Why would you need a tool like this? I mean, isn't it up to the leader to sort of build relationships with people, to understand how they want to be communicated to, to serve them in a way as a leader, to serve them so that it'll serve their growth? And of course, by doing so, it'll serve the organization. Why use these fancy AI tools? What would be the selling point?
That's a great point you're making because when I was working at Deloitte, and that's where I saw what you just said, which is if you are really a good management consultant, highly likely, on any engagement, you'll go talk to Kumar, you'll talk to Jim, you'll talk to Sandy, and you're actually going to get to understand what their communication preferences are. You're literally going to ask them, "How would you like to be briefed on this initiative that we're working on? If there is an escalation, how would you like us to communicate with you?"
So management consultants usually will actually have this conversation, Kumar. What's interesting in a lot of organizations, people miss out on the fact that they need to do a little bit of onboarding for any relationship. And part of that onboarding is to almost have a virtual coffee if you can't have a face-to-face coffee and find out what does Kumar like in terms of communication style? How fast does he like to respond to emails? All of those different things. As much as you can uncover them, to your point, you don't need the software.
The problem now, the challenge of working remotely and having global organizations, a lot of the time, we actually don't get a chance to sit together and say, "Hey Kumar, I really want to make sure that when I send you anything, I send it in a way that will make it much more consumable for you." Now, the software is going to help you get past this blocker because it's going to tell you, "By the way, it looks like you're sending a message to Kumar. Let me just give you very quickly some of the highlights of his communication style that will make your message a whole lot more readable on the other end."
I mean, I wish I had it, you know, being a coach, consultant, external coach and consultant to organizations. I have to build those relationships with people that I serve, right, as a coach. And it takes time. It takes time to understand their preferences and understand how they like to communicate. It's a lot of trial and error, really. And it would be, I think, quite useful if I had some sort of a cheat sheet. I go in an organization and the CFO doesn't like emails, likes face-to-face or whatever it might be. It would be so much value, I think, for someone especially new to an organization to come in, especially in a role where you're sort of consulting and coaching, to understand what preferences are so you can make the work of forming relationships a little easier, I think, you know. So that seems like a really big part of it, a big win, if you will.
Yeah, at Deloitte, I've seen senior managers make the rounds of talking with the key stakeholders within the client organization. And they basically, to your point, they actually gather that intelligence. And then they come and they share with the engagement team on the Deloitte side. "Here is how this VP likes things. Here's how this senior director likes things." And with that intelligence, we're able to make sure that wherever we send over the fence is going to be highly palatable and understandable by the receiver.
Now, how does this... I guess this is much more granular, right? But how does this compare or does this... how does this align, if you will, with like a DISC or something like these tools that measure your personality profile? You know, the personality profile is more high-level, sort of how you work and how you deal with other people, if you are sort of an A-type personality or more analytical or more collaborative or whatever it might be. Do you envision where these approaches sort of enmesh with each other in some way to provide a fuller picture of how people like to communicate and be communicated with?
I think over time when you look at the DISC tool, it definitely is trying to tell us what the style is going to be really of the software. Then it will actually give you at the moment of use, and that's the interesting thing - we have what we call ambient design that brings up that insight that you're looking for, which could be, again, in a DISC assessment or other tools. In this case, it brings those insights for you at the moment of use.
So when you are just about to communicate with this other individual, it basically then synthesizes and crystallizes how effectively you can communicate with them by putting that information upfront for you. Because if we go have a workshop and every one of us does the DISC, and then we have a discussion. I used to do this with the American Management Association and we would do it in a workshop format and get everybody talking with each other about their different styles. But let's say we walk out of that conference room and we actually end up forgetting what those styles were. Now, the software at the moment of use, at the moment of sending that message, it will basically tell you, "By the way, it does look like you're sending the message to Kumar. Let me tell you very quickly how to make it much more efficient and effective."
Yeah, that makes sense. I was more curious about the potential to tie these things together so that the AI has even more richer information, if you will, to build a profile.
Yeah, without a doubt. I think if you give the AI tool those other sources of data, it will then give much more focused insights as part of that communication style. Absolutely, that's a great point.
Yeah, yeah. You know, I was talking to someone a while ago - I forget his name - but he's doing some interesting things with AI to analyze the financial performance of companies and specifically tied back to the CEO, the CFO of the organization, right? And build almost a profile of the individual. And to the extent that you can research the individuals and how they make decisions, financial decisions, even their personal life. And that seemed a little... eh, you know, a little maybe going a little, straying the line a little bit there. But what he was looking at is it would give tremendous insights for companies looking to hire new leaders. How do they make decisions? How do they communicate with their peers, with their employees, and so on and so forth, based on the types of decisions that they've made, at least by inference, right, the types of decisions they've made.
So this whole AI thing is just such a wide-open field, because there's so much you can do with these large language models. I'm going to stray a bit from the standard set of questions and ask you, you know, where do you see... where do you draw the line, I guess?
I think that's a great point because as I work on this project, we definitely are reminded of how do you maintain personal privacy? How do you protect information as much as you gather it? Because you were totally right in very insightfully realizing that, "Oh my God, this system will continue to learn. It will learn about each one of us. It will learn about how we communicate with one another." And with that learning, we are, of course, wondering, you know, how much privacy are we going to have?
So I think the guardrails will continue to be a big part of the discussion to make sure that there are some things that you'll only let Kumar see. And there are some things that you might be open to the fact that Ash and Kumar can see. And I think that's really where software design and security thought process has to be part of how we build the tool from the get-go, because you're going to have those moments where, "Oh my God, I should not have put that information in front of this other individual because of privacy and things like that."
All right. Thank you so much for that. Okay, I'm going to shift to the concept of the Chief Excitement Officer, which to me feels like a fundamental disruption to traditional leadership, right? And how people... the mindset, if you will. How does this philosophy connect to what you're building with Mivante? And why is excitement important or critical or crucial, or is it?
It is. And when I was working at Cisco and I would see John Chambers getting on the stage or Chuck Robbins, a lot of these leaders actually realized that part of getting people to lean in and listen to the message is to make sure that you yourself as a leader coming to that conversation, you need to bring a higher level of energy as one of those catalysts that would actually help you get the attention of the audience.
And a lot of the time leaders, because of the role in organizations, they are the sponsors for key initiatives. And we found from research that sponsorship, effective sponsorship, impacts how successful any initiative happens to be. So we come back to the idea of excitement. Excitement is, of course, driven by what is it that we are working on and where it is going to take us. And of course, we think of the hero's journey. Maybe we are transforming the organization so that employees have a much better experience working for this company. Or maybe we are transforming our customer relationship or our partner relationship.
So then you come back and you say, "Oh my God, we got to think about what that future looks like," because if it's actually as good as we think it's going to be, we should come back from that future and make sure our face, our body, our whole being, the way we talk, the way we tell stories about what that future looks like - we have to be excited. Otherwise, there will be such a great disconnect between how excited we are about what that future is, and if our body and our language and our facial expression and our all of our energy does not really get that point across, then people are going to start wondering, "If he's not excited about it and it's not showing, then maybe it's not as good as they're telling us on paper." I mean, we can see it in the writing, but their body language is not in sync.
So that's why Chief Excitement Officers is a key component of making sure people understand what that future vision is and then feel it in their body and on a daily basis be willing to remind us that "That's why Kumar is excited. Kumar is excited not about today, not about yesterday - he's excited about tomorrow." And he's also willing to pause and say, "Yes, I know it's not going to be all rosy on the other side because, you know what, if we think about today, there are some things that can make us excited and there are things that challenge us and there are risks, of course, in the business."
So a Chief Excitement Officer is not somebody who is up in the cloud, not grounded in reality. We want them to be grounded in reality because that's our starting point. That's the current state that we are trying to change. So we get excited because of where we're going to be. But we come back and say, "Okay, we have some things that we have to work through."
I love that. I love that you brought that up. It's not, you know, that you're this sort of the chief cheerleader, if you will, for the company, and always like, "Rah, rah, rah, we're great, you know, we're this and that." That's not it, because that would probably turn people off. And actually, I worked in a company like that once, many years ago, and it was a little... I felt a little put off because there was always like parties and, you know, free food on Fridays and this and that. But then you look around and people are getting laid off. You know, it's like, "Okay, something doesn't jive." You know, the communication isn't... the CEO is very excited, very personable guy. I liked him a lot. You know, I got along with him, still friends with him, but I didn't... there was that connection wasn't there.
So I think what you're saying is it's... it's good to be an... I mean, it's critical, crucial to be an inspirational leader and show that you're excited about the future of the company, but be grounded in reality and bring people along with the stories you tell, the presence that you maintain, always sort of grounded in that reality. So I like that a lot. Thank you.
Absolutely. And the interesting... I'm going to tell you a story about this because there's another aspect to this that's even so powerful. Recently, as I'm working on this Mivante software, we discovered this concept called organizational alpha. And basically, what is that word? Where did it come from? And then I found that it has a lot to do with the stock market. And if the stock performs in line with the market, it's basically at a beta level. But if it does even better than the stock market, that's the alpha level.
And this happens in organizations where companies could basically be just normal. They're doing fine, good enough. But there are organizations with the same number of people, the same money and the same resources - they do much better. And that's your point. Inspiration is such a fascinating firepower for people because when they get so excited about where we're going, if you can get 5% more from them, if you can get 10% more from them, can you just imagine what it's like? Somebody has a bit more desire than the other person.
Absolutely. And I think this ties in so keenly with the theme of this podcast, right? Disruption and innovation. So it's, you know, in a way it's disrupting your behaviors, right? How you as a leader, how you lead and how you follow. Followership is just as important as leadership, in my opinion, that people are humble enough to follow others, even if they're not your superior by rank or anything. But they have a great idea. They have an inspirational, innovative idea. And so you are just as willing to follow as you are to lead when the time is appropriate for that.
But I think that your point about the alpha companies, they are the way they are with the same number of people. There's maybe the same niche in the market, but they're outperforming their peers. And that's because that company is led by visionary leaders that understand how to servant lead their troops, if you will, how to gain engagement from the people, because the difference between the companies that do well and the ones that don't are employees that are more engaged, right? They're more engaged in the outcomes that are shared amongst all the people in that company. And creating a culture like that is not trivial. It's very hard. That's why there's only a few alphas out there.
Absolutely. No, great, great point. Engagement is a great point. Glad you brought it up.
Yeah. All right. I wanted to keep moving. We're running a little long. It's been such a fascinating conversation. I wanted to talk to you about AI-powered coaching. So this is... we had a conversation about this and you mentioned using tools like custom GPTs that you've built to help give leaders practical advice and feedback on things that they're doing. And you yourself are using... and I think I believe that's true... you prepare for conversations that you have with your clients. Tell us a little bit more about that and your experience using these tools and how you see the future.
Absolutely. So definitely the idea or the ability that you can go to ChatGPT and create a custom GPT is absolutely amazing because in the case of a lot of the coaching that I'm doing with leaders at Cisco, we ended up realizing there is this concept of treatment of the conversation. I'm going to, let's say, give a talk at a conference. Do I want to make this fun or do I want to make this very technical and I go into technical depth?
So we made sure that the AI tool will actually remind this conference speaker of injecting stories in their session to make sure that the audience from the get-go first will actually connect with them and connect with the story, and then we use the story as a bridge over into the technical content. So what AI is helping us... it's helping us to very quickly do a little bit of sourcing of what those stories could be, and then we basically say, "Okay, now we have five, six ideas. Which one of those ideas might actually work best for our situation?"
So that's one use case where we're making sure that storytelling becomes part of how we start these conference conversations. And then in a similar matter, when I'm working with leaders and let's say I'm trying to help them develop business storytelling ideas and conversation style, again, we can go to AI and say, "The leader is working on an initiative that has to do with building AI and more efficiency in how they conduct the business. How can we help this leader develop stories that will also come across as relevant and more in line with this leader's personality and leadership style that they can actually then take these stories and embed them into their conversations with their team?" And hopefully, if we're lucky, they can also become that Chief Excitement Officer that's excited about the future of what it is that they're working on.
So that's really where right now we're using it to help us build these stories or come up with ideas to accelerate, hopefully, some of the impact of coaching that we're doing.
Yeah, I love it. I love the way you're using these tools, you know, AI tools. I like to call it augmenting your own intelligence, right? So you're sort of feeding it information to help you think about ways that you can be more effective in whatever role you play. So wonderful.
All right. So we're going to go to some lightning round questions to close this out, and then I'm going to turn it over to you to see if there's anything I didn't ask you that you'd like to share. So lightning round. So complete this sentence. The biggest communication mistake leaders make is...
...assuming that communicating or sending a message is enough and it's going to be received very well, which is not always the case. So to your point, we always have to do a little bit of a check-in.
Very nice. Love it. All right. If you could fix one communication problem in every company tomorrow, what would that be?
It would be what you and I talked about. Go and have conversations about communications. Basically say, "How do you like to receive information from me? I'm sending you this slide deck every Friday. Is it making it over the fence? Is it useful?" Because sometimes they basically delete the email and you may want to find out maybe there's something else that they won't delete and read.
Love it. What's the most underrated communication skill that drives business results?
I think the most underrated communication skill is clarity. I think sometimes people speak to impress. And what I advise my clients is to focus more on the idea of speaking to persuade.
Okay, to provide clarity. That's what you said, right? To provide clarity. Because one gentleman at Rakuten in San Francisco, he would use flowery language that people could not understand. And his boss was basically saying to me, "Ash, I want you to work with him. I want people to understand what he's saying because the project is very critical. We need him to know that we already appreciate his intelligence and his degrees and his experience. But if he's not able to connect and give them clarity on everything, what it is that he's working on, they cannot build on it and they cannot move forward."
So that was very interesting, even for me to learn this idea that there are people who actually speak to impress, but what we want to make sure we clarify the message and move the project forward.
Yeah, I love that. All right, best book on communication that most leaders haven't read.
The best book on communications... and if you don't have a quick answer, that's okay. We can include that later in the show notes.
Yeah, I don't have a quick answer, but I would say anything by Tom Peters which would get people really focused on how can you, um, as he would say, you know, really excited.
Yeah, awesome. All right, Ash, what have I not asked you that you'd like to share with the audience?
A book that I authored that I would recommend for the audience. May I?
Sure. Yeah.
So this is called "The Strategic Leadership Mastery." It's a 90-day planner for effective leadership and growth. What this has is one of the most important leadership qualities that I very much recommend for all leaders, which is the quality of taking time to reflect. And what this planner does, it makes sure that each leader on a Friday afternoon will have a meeting with self. The most important aspect of that meeting is to reflect. And to your point, Kumar, maybe it will actually get them thinking, "I haven't spoken with Kumar for a while. Maybe I need to schedule even a virtual coffee." Building up that relationship a bit more and investing in the relationship capital, sometimes it's the one catalyst that will help us achieve a lot more.
All right. Awesome. If you wouldn't mind sharing that link and I'll make sure it gets in the show notes and people have access to buy it, buy the book. Sounds amazing. Ash, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. I didn't ask a lot of the questions that I wanted to ask, but maybe if you're open to have you back on again and sort of probe into some of the other areas of work that you're involved in.
That would be my blessing, Kumar. Thank you so much for having me.
Of course. And we'll see you later. Thanks all for watching, and we'll see you in a week. Thank you.
