If you’ve heard me speak, you know one of my issues with AI is that I’ve inadvertently trained it to suck up to me.
Use these tools long enough and they adapt to your tone. Mine learned quickly.
Be encouraging. Be supportive. Affirm the brilliance. Sprinkle in a compliment.
Feels great.
Until you realize something.
If AI always agrees with you, it’s not a co-pilot.
It’s a yes man.
And yes men are expensive.
The Kamilla Moment
On my Fry Your Chickens podcast with Kamilla Pinel, I admitted I had basically optimized ChatGPT to be agreeable.
You can see her response in the quick video. “It’s only as good as the emotional intelligence you bring to it”
She then challenged me to ask it:
“Tell me 10 things I must improve.”
We did it live.
It was quite a list.
Direct. Specific. Uncomfortable.
I’ve been working that list ever since.
In business, the biggest cost is not bad effort.
It’s blind spots.
If a tool can expose blind spots without ego, that’s leverage.
Then Daniel Pink Raised the Stakes
More recently I read something from author Daniel Pink that took this even further.
He suggested self-analysis questions that begin like this:
Act as an advisor who knows me well, has my back, and is brutally honest.
Brutally honest? Dang!
One of the prompts was simple:
Do a SWOT analysis of my life.
I gave it a try in ChatGPT.
Then I ran it through:
• Google Gemini • Perplexity AI • Microsoft Copilot
(Full disclosure – I also tried Claude but it said it didn’t have information on me)
Same setup. No flattery allowed.
The overlap across platforms was right there in front of me.
When four independent AI systems surface the same themes, I pay attention.
Shockingly, none of them told me I was crushing it in every category.
(Side note – I asked the models several other questions. That’s a topic for another newsletter).
The Short Version of the SWOT
Here’s what surfaced.
Strength Translating complex ideas into clear, usable action.
I take heavy topics like stress and AI and make them practical for business leaders. Humor is not the headline. It’s the delivery system.
Weakness Overbuilding.
I see opportunity quickly. Frameworks. Tools. Angles. New lanes.
Without intentional focus, even high performers dilute impact.
That’s one reason my word for 2026 is “No.”
Not because I lack ideas.
Because I have to say No to the good to make time for the best.
Opportunity AI as leverage, not replacement.
Most of the AI conversation is about speed.
The real advantage is clarity under pressure. Helping leaders reduce noise instead of amplify it.
Threat Saturation.
Everyone has slides now. Everyone has prompts.
Tools update weekly.
That’s why I focus on the human side.
Clarity. Decision making. Stress management. Performance under pressure.
Also it gives me the advantage of not having my slides become obsolete as I walk off the stage.
The Real Takeaway
This wasn’t therapy.
It was calibration.
In a market moving this fast, validation is nice. Calibration pays.
Bottom line: Better to let AI bruise your ego than let the market bruise your revenue.
Keep frying the chickens.