As a coach and consultant that helps leaders and teams foster great cultures and navigate change, I’ve been thinking and talking about AI adoption. AI adoption is more than the next tech thing -- it’s challenging people professionally, existentially, ethically, and environmentally. This is making the human side of change all the more tricky.

Humans make sense of change -- especially change as confronting and disorienting as AI -- through conversation and reflection. While people often don’t realize their need for sense-making and meaning-making, they absolutely need it.

Resistance is the signal to activate your relational infrastructure. Read more about what I mean in my article Relational Infrastructure: The Key to Getting AI Adoption Right.

Bonus: It includes a link to my AI Adoption Leadership Discussion Guide.

A few years ago, I participated in a weekly listening practice that completely shifted my perspective. Initially, I approached listening through the lens of Steven Covey's principle: "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." I believed my job was to grasp context, details, and the why behind someone's words.

Then I heard something revolutionary:

Understanding isn't required. Presence is.

This blew my mind.

I was in a Zoom meeting recently where the AI notetaker said something like, “The group became confused but after some discussion appears to be back on track.” We all laughed -- it was right and it was helpful to have that reflected back to us. It led us to check -- is everyone clear enough to continue? And that right there is the human nuance that makes all the difference.

Investing in our emotional intelligence has never been more important. AI is getting really good at it so we have to be better.

Lately I’ve really been paying attention to how present I am and deepening my abilities to stay present, especially when I run into impatience and discomfort.

I have had the joy of doing a lot of organizational culture work these days. In fact, one organization I worked with this last year just won best place to work on the west coast in its industry and size.

It is so energizing and fulfilling to work with leaders who invest in culture building with their heads, hearts, hands and dollars. And so is being a part of helping people co-create more positive, life-giving workplaces.

Culture is kind of a mysterious thing. We all know its importance and impact. And yet, it is tricky to work on. Well, I believe we have made it tricky to work on and that it doesn’t really need to be. I’ll be talking about how to make it less tricky and practical over the coming months.

This was an incredibly timely question for me, actually. I am part of a team where I have never felt so incredibly myself — and, this is with people I did not know 3 months ago. Even more remarkable is that my sense of ease and connection held up even as we came under the pressure of some intense work together.

So, this experience has my attention.

Living a soulfull, purposefull life is an on-going, daily practice. For years I missed the role that self-trust played in this practice.

What is self-trust? Self-trust is relying upon one's inner guidance. It’s trusting the tugs of our heart, the whispers of our soul, the hunches of our intuition, the truth of our needs, the call of our dreams and imagination.

Thankfully, self-trust is a learned skill that we can develop and a state of being we can choose.

People were telling me that I was really good at it so it must be a reflection of my gifts. 

Right? Wrong. 

I was good at it because I had developed a strong set of competencies — but our competencies are not the same thing as our gifts.  I wish I had known that then.

The Soul Purpose Program is built around the process of Identity Mapping®, created by my colleague and friend, Larry Ackerman, author of The Identity Code. I went through Identity Mapping® with Larry in 2008 and it was transformative.

I navigate by my Identity Map to this day, 15 years later. It has truly stood the test of time and grown along with me.

My Identity Map has helped me create an identity-based life -- a soul-full life that is rooted in my authentic, core self. The self under my conditioning. With my true self in the driver’s seat, I can more confidently give my gifts and work towards living a purpose-full life.