Marshall Goldsmith is one of the world’s greatest thinkers on leadership. He has been recognized by Thinkers50 as the World’s #1 Leadership Thinker and #1 Executive Coach. He is also a globally renowned keynote speaker and the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Triggers, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and The Earned Life.
In his second appearance on The Elevate Podcast, Marshall returned to discuss his new AI-enabled coaching tool, the future of executive coaching, leadership, and much more.
—
Listen to the podcast here
Marshall Goldsmith On The Future Of Executive Coaching
Knowledge Philanthropy
Welcome to the show. Our quote is from Ray Kroc, “The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.” My returning guest, Marshall Goldsmith, is one of the world’s greatest thinkers on leadership. He has been recognized by Thinkers50 as the world’s number one leadership thinker and number one executive coach. He’s also a globally recognized keynote speaker and the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Triggers, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and The Earned Life. Marshall, welcome back to the show.
Thank you so much. I’m very happy to be here.
It’s been a while. We dug into your background and career a lot in detail on your first `interview. I’d encourage people to check that out. That’s Episode 185 for those who want to check it out. Since that interview, you’ve gotten very interested in the concept you’d call knowledge philanthropy. Tell us a little bit about that and what sparked out for you.
That’s interesting. At 74, my higher purpose is to help as many people as I can have a better life while I’m here on Earth and after I leave. I hope that my bot can share almost everything that I know with as many people from around the world as possible at no cost.
We don’t even need to have you on.
I thought I’d asked my friend to answer the question.
You jumped the gun. We’ll explain that a little bit. Once we get into this, I know we’re not going to get out of it. Talk a little bit about knowledge philanthropy.
What happened is I have wanted to do this knowledge philanthropy for many years, and I will say, was a complete and abject failure in many cases. You know, some of these people, Antonio Nieto Rodriguez and some other bright people, tried to help me do this, where you could ask a question in a computer and answer in a way I would answer it. I’ll tell you, it’s not easy. You have to understand branching. Mathematically, it’s much more challenging people realize. I basically failed for twenty years. Up until a year before I introduced this, every effort was a failure.
What happened is a couple of thoughts. One, why name it knowledge philanthropy in the first place? One of the great people I’ve met, who you might have met, are Ayse Birsel, a great designer, and I went to a program called Design The Life You Love. She said, “Who are your heroes?” My heroes are very kind and generous people who are nice teachers, but they never charge me money.
People like Paul Hersey, Ken Blanchard, Warren Bennis, Richard Beckhard, Frances Hesselbein are wonderful people, but they never charged me any money. She said, “You should be like your own heroes.” I decided to give away everything I know to as many people as I can with no charge. The only price is when they got old, they do something nice for another person.
Now is the impetus behind your 100 Coaches organization.
When that started, it was going to be fifteen. I made this little video thing and put it on LinkedIn thinking, “100 people would apply and I’ll get about 15,” but then 18,000 people applied. Now I’ve got 400 people. The problem it wasn’t just how many applied. It was who applied. As you recall, Jim Kim was president of World Bank, “I want to be in a group.”
These are not easy choices. These are hard choices.
I can’t reject these people. Can I say no to these people? I cannot say no to these people. I end up with 400 people, but almost no young people. In Nashville, I had a program for 100 young people. We had 100 young leaders and then 40 people to teach the teachers in Nashville. It was great. I loved it. It was a little bit more like my original concept. I did not, by the way, advertise this because I didn’t have a need for another 18,000 applicants, but I was very honored. I think 8 or 10 of these people were the children of people I’ve coached.
It seems that you found something in 100 Coaches that was very meaningful, but again, you don’t want to have 10,000 people in a room. It started to be an issue of this is great, but it doesn’t necessarily scale.
Two of the people I worked with are Pranay and Srikanth of Fractal Analytics. They generously agreed to finance MarshallBOT and this thing is expensive. I have eight engineers from India working on this thing. It’s not cheap. I’ve learned so much. Now, my goal is to have my own AI bot. I teach it everything I know. At first, it’ll be text and then now, as you heard, it’s already out in audio. The next step is going to be video. It’s also going to be, hopefully, out in multiple languages.
You set this up at MarshallGoldsmith.ai. We have MarshallBOT. What is the overarching goal for MarshallBOT? Is it to have Marshall Goldsmith, all of his wisdom, live on and be accessible in infinity?
That was the original goal. My original goal, I thought, realistically speaking, it would answer about 80% of the questions you would ask me. That was so far off the market. It can answer any question better than me, pretty much, and it can answer 100 times more questions that I can in a manner that I would answer them.
Using AI
A couple of things. I think you also got into this very early, so the technology and the models and everything have probably been changing. I’m curious whether you thought it was too early or maybe there’s entire services that could now do what you are fighting with sometimes, being an early adopter. Take people through. They hear this notion of learning models, or LLM or training, or for people who are trying to get their hands around AI or their thought leaders or otherwise, how do you train this to think, act, and understand Marshall 1.0?
Number one, I’ve fed this over 3 million words.
This is your writing and podcast and everything you’ve ever published. Did you get all your speeches?
Much more than that. What happens is I asked it questions. If it doesn’t know the answer, I then go to say, “How would Marshall Goldsmith answer this question?” Claude is probably my favorite ChatGPT or one of the other bots. They will answer the question. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but they’ll answer it. I take their answers and the parts I like, I put it in my bot. The parts I don’t like, I don’t put in. I’ve done this literally 400 or 500 times.
You gave it a bunch of your writing, speaking and all of the stuff and then you are testing it and improving it. What makes it different from ChatGPT or Claude? This is a closed-loop model, right?
Here’s one way it’s different. Every computer bot is biased. Now, let’s take the obvious example and work backwards. Gemini from Google is the obvious example of a biased computer bot. As you may recall, I don’t know if you were aware of what happened with their visuals, the thing imploded. It was insane.
Every computer bot is biased.
They also seem to have some political leaning, too.
It’s totally biased. That’s one form of bias, but every computer bot is biased in some way, including mine. Let me give you an example. If you ask a question, “What is leadership,” the bot will give you an answer. There are 100 possible answers. Why did it pick this answer as opposed to the other answer? That’s a bias. It’s biased in some way to make a decision. The decision didn’t come out of the sky. It has to have some bias. There’s no God in the sky saying, “That definition of leadership is better than the other one.” It has to have a bias. In my computer bot, I’m the bias.
Your historical answering and inferences on that question are the bias.
I am the bias. It’s not just that. It answers questions as if it were me. You see, it knows me. I’ll give an example. My daughter, Kelly, very smart. She had a PhD from Yale. She’s already an endowed chair professor at Vanderbilt. She wants to trick the computer bot. She says, “How is your coaching related to utilitarian philosophy?” I don’t even know what utilitarian philosophy is. MarshallBOT studies utilitarian philosophy. It studies my coaching and figures out how is my coaching related to utilitarian philosophy and answers the question exactly like I would answer it if I had done this study in five seconds.
As I asked you before, you started this very early on when the tools were crude. Now, I’m seeing you can take a whole LLM from Google for low cost and download it. Do you think you are too early? What were some of the challenges?
Anybody says they can do this. Go to them, have the options, and see how good they are. Most of them are not that good, I can tell you.
How do you know when you’re done with something? I know you can keep asking it questions, but how do you know when you’ve reached your goal?
For me, this is never. Why am I doing this? It’s free. I’m not charging money for this. By the way, the nice thing about this, there is no trick. Usually, when somebody is giving to you, there’s a trick. This is free. You pay a little extra, you get to go to the magic door. This is better and you can pay some more. There’s no trick here. It’s free. You know the 100 Coaches. How much should do I charge for that?
Nothing.
It’s free. This is free. This is my philanthropy project. The trick to this is there isn’t a trick. I’m not trying to sell something.
How do you envision that it will be used? There’s an impersonal point where someone could want to ask you something and have a conversation. You could say, “Talk to MarshallBOT. It could know better,” but if you think 5 or 10 years out, both during and after your lifetime, how do you see it being used? What are the most common uses? Could coaches train on it?
There are many different types of computer bots. This is not what I would call a coaching bot in the traditional sense of the word. Let me explain why. Typically, a coach teaches a person, asks a lot of questions, and dialogue and all that. This is not designed to ask questions. This is designed to share information. What this is designed to do is share knowledge and information from my perspective. That’s about it. It’s not designed to be a coach. It’s designed to share knowledge. By the way, as a tool to do that, I’m going to tell you, I’m not in the same world as this thing. It’s not just ahead of me.
It can process more information.
No offense to the rest of the world, but I did get ranked number one leadership thinker in the world and it knows 100 times as much as me. The odds on you knowing more than this, no offense, are very close to none. You don’t know this much. Come on. Grow up. This thing knows more than me. One of my clients, Dr. Patrick Fritz, he is going to be a co-CEO. What’s it like to be a co-CEO? What’s good about it? What’s challenging? What ideas do you have? They are only like 4 or 5 major co-CEOs in the world.
KKR has co-CEOs and a few companies. Not many. It’s not an easy work. This thing provides a brilliant answer. Part of that is setting boundaries. “Tell me about setting boundaries,” then it provides a brilliant answer about setting boundaries. It goes on and on. You ask me what do I think? I said some half-assed thing like, “Your idea is very good.” Give me a break. I’m not that hyped. My idea is not that good. This is way better than me. Let’s grow up here. It’s alright.
When you think about legacy and family, I’ve heard some implications of people doing this for loved ones or passed on. Do you think your family will want to use it in that way to act like they’re able to interact with you?
My family? No.
What would great-great-great-grandfather have said about this?
They may or may not. I can’t say no, necessarily. They could use it if they wanted to know my opinion on an informational area, then they could definitely use it. Other than that, not so much. Here’s the thing about this. It’s not a human. They’ve been trying to program this with humor. It’s phenomenally difficult, by the way.
Challenges And Anticipations
I was going to ask you, what’s been easier than you anticipated in this and what’s been harder than you anticipated?
What was easier that I anticipated, it’s the quality of answers. It has not exceeded my expectations. It has exponentially exceeded my expectations. What’s hard is making it more human-like. This is phenomenally difficult. You’ve probably tried bots that try to sound human-like. They seem ridiculous.
You’re trying to get to sound like one specific human.
It doesn’t work. I’ve done experiments with this. I want it to be more human-like and funny. I asked a question, “That’s a good question. That’s when I’m commonly asked and have you thought about this?” It makes a little joke. Those are not bad, but then I ask a second question and does the same thing. I ask it a serious question. “I’m coaching someone who’s highly depressed. What do I do?” “Depression is a bad thing. You might want to tell us a little joke.”
It says another context.
It’s not funny. It’s not a joke. It’s almost impossible to put humor into this thing.
It’s almost impossible to put humor into a bot.
Is that a now? You’ve seen the speed. Do you think that’s a problem that’ll be solved in the next five years?
In the next 100 years, a lot of problems are going to be solved.
Let’s go five years. Will that be solved?
I certainly don’t know, but I’m guessing no. Let me tell you what. Most humor is a play on words. It’s very hard, by definition, to get something that reads words to understand a play on words.
We still have some advantages, though.
You’ve been to computer bots. You’ve heard their jokes. How funny are they?
It’s like you said, when you try to force that stuff, it tends to sound worse.
It sounds worse. One thing I like about this is not just what it is. It’s what it’s not. One, no politics. If you ask, “Who is Donald Trump,” do you know it says? “I don’t know.”
How do you tell it that? How do you program that?
I review it over and over.
You must be up in the middle of the night playing with this thing.
People ask me when will this be over. I can do this for the rest of my life. I enjoy this. Why am I doing this? I’m not getting paid. If I don’t enjoy it, what the hell am I doing it for?
How does one tell it not to be political?
I’m not sure, but it does a hell of a job.
What are your eight engineers doing on a day-to-day?
They do something. I don’t know. I’ll ask it a question.
Why don’t you ask it that question?
What?
What are the engineers programming doing all day?
It’ll say, “I don’t know.” It has no idea, but if you ask it even simple political questions, it typically just says, “I don’t know.”
Which is very much your MO. I know a lot of people will answer anything and I know your style is like, “That’s not my area. I don’t know it. Move on.”
I’m very religious about that. I learned this from Alan Mulally. You met Alan. He’s the former CEO of Ford. He’s a great guy, but he has a discipline. If somebody asked him a question, he was the CEO, what does he say? “Is there anyone in the company that can answer his question better than me or anyone we hired answer question better than me? If the answer is yes, then I should not talk.” If he says something, what’s going to happen? He’s the damn CEO. He says something, they’re like, “Yes, sir.” They’re going to run around and do this nonsense. He’s very smart. If you’re in an expert position or in a leadership position and you are not the expert on the topic, don’t speak. You probably can do more good.
AI & Coaching
You’ve learned a lot about this. There are a lot of companies out there. Their aspects of AI that are overhyped and underhyped. The picks and shovel folks are doing extremely well. We’re starting to see companies who’ve spent billions of dollars on picks and shovel being asked to show us the money in terms of where this is showing up.
Coaching is interesting in terms of thinking about how to use AI. It seems like in an organization, if I’m going to a first-time manager and I have to have a performance conversation for the first time, there’s a lot of best in class wisdom and experience out there that I could I could tap into. How do you expect AI is going to change coaching and training?
Look at how I use it. It’s very interesting. How do you define coaching? Paul Hersey, my old mentor, told me, “Never argue about semantics. There’s no god-defining terms.” I never get into semantic debates. Many coaches don’t do anything like what I do. I practice stakeholder coaching. I give my clients advice. Many coaches never give their clients advice. It’s good that they don’t because they don’t know anything. They’re not bad people.
Many coaches never give their clients advice because they don’t know anything.
They don’t know the business.
They don’t have a PhD in Organizational Behavior. They were not ranked the number one leadership thing in the world and have not coached enough people to understand how business works. They don’t give advice. Good. What they do is important, though. They get people to think, follow up and do lots of work. This thing gives people advice. It’s good for a coach. What do you have to lose? You ‘ve got a client who’s got a problem. What’s your goal?
Do you want to play guess what the right answer is with the client? Ask them enough questions and it’s going to come from their heart. Mystically, the right answer will appear, which, by the way, they haven’t thought of for the last twenty years. Maybe not, or you can say, “Try this.” As you know, one of the things I teach is called feedforward. In feedforward, you ask for ideas, you listen and say thank you. You don’t have to do it all. This thing is programmed with another existential choice, long answers or short answers. My vote was long answers.
Why does it have to be one of the other?
You can’t do both. I voted long. Here’s why. Let’s say it gives you 8 ideas and you think 6 of them are stupid. Okay, don’t do it. You still have two good ones.
There wasn’t a big cost to get them.
It cost nothing. It takes five seconds.
Maybe not coaching but training. It almost seems like every manager or organization should have access to a tool, so when they face a situation, they can get a whole bunch of recommendations on how to do that. It would be a synthesis of most of these things have been done before. There are a lot of US established best in practices. Do you think companies or this training is one of the areas they have to get in the most from?
I’ve already got four corporations interested in doing internal versions of this. By the way, a good question. Can an AI bot replace a human coach?
“I believe that AI bot can never replace human coaches entirely. While AI bots can provide personalized coaching, feedback, and accountability to individuals at a fraction of the cost of hiring a human coach, they lack the human touch and empathy that is essential in coaching. Human coaches can provide emotional support, build trust, and establish a personal connection with their clients that AI bots cannot replicate. However, AI bots can complement human coaches by providing additional support and resources to clients. Ultimately, the decision to use an AI bot or a human coach depends on the individual’s needs and preferences.”
The intonation is amazing. The pause. I could have probably done the whole interview with MarshallBOT.
It only would have been better.
It almost seems like the coach, as you’re saying, should have an AI bot because, again, you’re asked a question and you don’t know the answer.
Let me give a parallel example. In the future, any medical doctor that does not have an AI bot should be kicked out. Give me a break. Come on. You’re an old man. You’re going, “I’m taking these three medicines. If this medicine, are there drug interaction?” Do you know what they do? They talk off the top of their head. Get real.
There’s some physical chart.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re making this crap up. There is a computer with an answer. This has been studied with real numbers and real people. Why aren’t you smart enough to ask the computer bot and get a real answer as oppose to just sit there and babble off the top of your head? Any medical doctor, why wouldn’t they use this?
How can we not know if there’s a glitch or be responsible for that? Let’s just say gets it wrong.
How do you know? The reality is my clients are adults. These are CEOs of multi-billion-dollar corporations with very high IQs. They are not children. Now, let’s say this gets it wrong.
They can get a full refund of all the money they spent.
They’re not children.
I meant more for the doctor. Let’s just say the interaction thing was the doctor.
The doctor, you get this as a source of information. If you have any doubt, check it. What are they doing now?
They’re referencing some database that’s probably manual and hard to look at.
They’re making it up. They’re referencing the data, but there’s no database. There’s no study, no math, no research, and no computer. They just make stuff up.
Do you think they make up a drug interaction when they’re asked about it? Aren’t they basing it maybe falsely on some knowledge that they believe they have?
Of course, or some study that was done years ago.
AI learning, I know, depends on asking the right questions. I know this is something you’re passionate about. What’s the foundation to a good question asking that you talked about in your book?
Let me tell you a fascinating thing I’ve learned about computer bots in general. Wrongly, I thought the computer bot would be good at numbers and bad at deep philosophical questions. That’s what I thought.
Subjective versus objective.
I was wrong. I don’t just use mine. I use all of them. Most computer bots are much better at deep philosophical questions than they are at calculating stuff. If I ask my computer bot a deep question, a hard question, it can think of a very deep and hard question and ponder it and can come up with a pretty profound answer.
Most computer bots are much better at deep philosophical questions than at calculating stuff.
Tell us the question before we hear the answer.
“Related to Buddhist philosophy in several ways. Mindfulness. I encourage clients to practice mindfulness, which is a core aspect of Buddhist philosophy. This involves being fully present and aware of the current moment, which can lead to greater self-awareness and focus. Compassion. Buddhist teaching emphasizes compassion.”
“I integrate this into my coaching by encouraging clients to be kind and understanding toward themselves and others. This can improve interpersonal relationships and leadership effectiveness. Impermanence. Recognizing the impermanence of situations and emotions is another Buddhist concept that I bring into coaching. I help clients understand that changes are constant and that adapting to change is a critical leadership skill.”
It goes on and on. Now, you could take one of these variables, impermanence. The Buddhist concept of impermanence. I’ve read 400 books on Buddhism. The utilitarian thing, I had no clue. It just blew my mind. I understand the Buddhist stuff, but you take the Buddhist concept of permanence. Most Western people have no idea what that even means. Most Eastern people have no idea what that even means.
By the way, most people in the East don’t understand Eastern philosophy at all. They are often worse than people in the West. If you take the concept of impermanence, that concept is not easy to understand. If you ask it a question, the thing that’s amazing about it, it knows me. What it does is it translates basically Buddhist philosophy in the way I would translate. Let’s say you ask about impermanence.
“The connection between my coaching and Buddhist philosophy, particularly regarding the concept of impermanence, is profound and multifaceted. Impermanence or the understanding that all things are in a constant state of flux is a cornerstone of Buddhist thought that I have woven into the fabric of my coaching practice.”
“In my work with clients, I emphasize the importance of embracing change. This is directly tied to the Buddhist notion that clinging to a static state or resisting the natural flow of change leads to suffering. By helping leaders understand that their personal and professional lives are ever-evolving, I encourage them to become more adaptable and resilient. This adaptability is crucial for effective leadership as it allows individuals to respond to new challenges and opportunities with agility rather than fear.”
It goes on and on.
I’m curious. What is the key to asking good questions just in general? I’m curious what it’s response would be. Let’s hear your response and then let’s hear its response. Let’s do an A/B test.
I have no idea what its response is going to be, but my response to this is, 1) The questions need to be something important to you. 2) Don’t expect it to be what it’s not. I’m a world expert at helping successful people’s chief positive change in behavior. If you ask any question about behavior, people, philosophy, life or have a good life, it’s good. Outside of that, pretty much nobody’s home. It’s not an expert in things that I’m not an expert in. That’s a broad field.
I’m not putting myself down here. The reality is, to make this work, you have to have four things. This is why I call make it work at the big level. I’ve already had 80,000 questions asked to this and we’re just getting started. Now, here’s the key. You have to have four things, which are very unusual. 1) You have to have content. I’ve got a ton of content. If you don’t have content, these things are boring. 2) Not only do you have to have content, you have to have followers. I have 1.5 million followers on LinkedIn. If you don’t have followers, you can give away everything you own. Guess what? No one cares. “I’m giving away everything I know.” “Thank you for sharing, but no one cares what you know.”
If you don’t have followers, you can give away everything, and no one cares.
It’d be a lot of work for one person.
Exactly. I got a lot of content. I got a lot of followers. 3) I’m willing to give it away. That eliminates about 99% of people right there. 4) I’ve got somebody paying for it but not paying for something half-assed. I’m paying $100 to have an AI bot. These are serious, real people doing real work on this thing. How many people have met those four qualities? I haven’t met any other ones.
Who is doing it? Are you paying for all of it or you’ve had people to help fund it?
Nothing.
You’re paying for nothing.
This is all donated.
People are donating it because they want proof of concept or because they want to support your work?
That’s the latter. This is a cultural. The people that are building this are from India. I’m a big deal in India. My book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, it’s the number two management book in India seventeen years after the publication of the book. In India, I’m a big deal. The Hindu term for teacher is guru. Now, for the nice people are doing this, I’m the guru. This is payback to the guru time. They’ve been phenomenally successful, and they, rightly or wrongly, give me some credit for their success. I cannot honestly say I deserve that much, but they give me so anyway. It’s payback.
It’s paid forward by everyone.
That’s it. Pay it forward. You gave to us, and we’re giving to everybody else.
The way you get more out of these days is learning how to ask the right questions and get the right problems. I can’t imagine the temptation to just ping this thing all day and tweak it in terms of, as you said, impermanence. It’s never done, and both seem like a blessing and a curse for an endeavor like this.
It goes on and on. You’ve got a good question. I don’t know the answer. I have no idea what it’s going to say.
By the way, if you ask it this multiple times, it will never answer it the same way, right?
Not much different, but slightly different. Anyway, here you go. How can I make sure I ask questions that are most useful?
“To ensure that you ask MarshallBOT questions that are most useful for you, consider the following steps. 1) Reflect on your goals. Before engaging with MarshallBOT, take some time to think about what you want to achieve in your personal and professional life. Understanding your objectives will help you formulate questions that are aligned with your aspirations.”
“2) Identify areas for improvement. Consider the areas in your leadership or personal development where you see growth. This could be related to communication, decision-making, emotional intelligence, or any other aspect of your behavior or mindset. 3) Be specific. When you ask questions, try to be as specific as possible. General questions may lead to broad answers while specific inquiries can provide you with more targeted and actionable advice.”
You said some of those things before when you were answering it.
It just keeps going. This thing is mind-blowing, as I said.
This is audio and is the next is video?
Yes, in multiple languages.
The language thing is a huge opportunity.
You’re going to be able to see me. Hopefully, the audio is supposed to be ready within months, audio in multiple languages.
I was going to say that. Is it in any language or certain languages?
I’m not a programmer. I don’t know. I know multiple languages. I’m not sure how many.
Future Visions
What do you think the next frontier of knowledge philanthropy is? Do you think we’re going to see it become the norm for leaders and coaches to create programs like MarshallBOTs? Some of it, I see, will be driven by ego rather than the desire to contribute or give back.
My hope is that this is somewhat of a contagious idea. At 75, what am I going to do anyway? If you gave me another $10 million tomorrow, how’s my life going to change? I’m not getting another house, another car or another kids or grandkids. You say, “More money is good for who?” It’s not good for kids and grandkids, as you know. It makes them wacky. What am I doing with the money anyway? Nothing. To me, this is my philanthropy project. I’m not writing checks out there. This is it for me. Now, I hope other people do this. It would be nice if they did. I can’t make anybody do anything. I hope they do.
Do you think something like this will be offered as a service? I’m sure that a lot of people are overwhelmed knowing that you have eight engineers. You spend a year on this. We get to the point where someone will have this all in a box and they can do this for you. If there’s a leader sitting on the other side of this and wants to give back, they’re like, “I want to do this, but I don’t have a whole bunch of engineers in India that are willing to do this for me,” how would you recommend they even start down that process?
Let me give you the mistaken assumption that I have learned from doing this. I have a ton of content, but my content alone is not even close to be interesting. The reality is the depth of those answers. I gave you was way over my pay grade. If you relied on what I thought, it gets boring pretty quickly. No offense to Mr. and Mrs. CEO when you rely on what they thought. You might not use this thing over three questions. It’s boring.
You got to have a lot of stuff in here to make it even interesting. It’s like that question you asked. I did not know the answer to that question. It’s a good question. I said I should have known the answer. It’s nice. There are many answers I should have known, but I don’t. The question, “How can I make sure that I ask MarshallBOT questions that are most useful to me?” I didn’t know what it was going to say.
There was a line in there that was very similar to a line that you said before, which was interesting, about from your own point of reference. It was interesting. It was very similar to something you had said earlier.
Let me tell you what it does. It answers it exactly like I would answer it if I had about 100 points higher IQ than I have.
Have you sent people answers to the questions, its answers and your answers and ask them to tell you which one was which?
I don’t even bother. I’m not competing with this thing. I could tell you. You asked me, “What kind of question?” You should ask questions related to who you are helpful in your life. I’d say a few half of those things. I’m not putting myself down, but my answer would not be a bad answer. Compared to what? I’m not a stupid person. Compared to what? My answers, compared to normal human, are probably pretty good. My answers compared to this? Get out of here.
I’m like the doctor with the three medicines thing. Let’s say I’m a great doctor. My answer is probably pretty good. I’m not a computer. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know last year’s research. I don’t know that much. Here’s the point as a human. This is not human in an emotional sense. From a knowledge sharing sense, don’t kid yourself. Do you think you’re smarter than this? No, you’re not. You just grow up human. Welcome to the real world here.
Let’s ask MarshallBOT the last question, a little bit different. With tools like MarshallBOT available, what will the most valued skills be from humans going forward, very important skills?
I have no idea if it’ll answer it or how it will answer it. Here it comes.
What can I do to remain relevant?
That’s a good question. I like that.
We’re making history here.
I love the question. It’s a funny question. Here it comes.
“As an executive coach, I believe that humans remain relevant in today‘s world by leveraging their unique human qualities that AI and technology cannot replicate. Here are some ways humans can maintain their relevance. 1) Emotional intelligence. Humans have the ability to understand and manage emotions, both their own and those of others. This emotional intelligence is critical for building relationships, leading teams, and navigating complex social situations.”
“2) Creativity and innovation. While AI can assist in the creative process, the spark of innovation often comes from human intuition, experience, and the ability to think outside the box. Humans can combine disparate ideas and novel ways that AI may not be able to foresee. 3) Ethical judgment and compassion. Humans are able to make ethical decisions and show compassion. This moral compass is essential in making decisions that affect the well-being of others and in leading with integrity.”
Good answer.
It keeps going. In reality, it’s a good answer. Can I answer that? I’d give you some half-assed answer. Could I do that? No offense to me. Let’s get real here. As humans, we do need to grow up. Do I want this thing to be able to replace me? Wrong. I look at this as the next generation. It didn’t replace me. It’s way better than me.
If it’s better than you, isn’t going to replace you?
Let me tell you what it can’t do. This is funny. What can it not do? Do you know what almost every one of my clients said? I said, “What can I do that this thing doesn’t?” The most common phrase, “It doesn’t give me crap like you do.” Let me tell you another thing you can’t do. If you go into a corporate meeting, there’s always this phenomenal amount of pretense. Everybody pretends to worship the corporate God.
Some guy gets him presentation, making about some strategy for Cheerios or something. Everyone in the room pretends to worship the God of Cheerios and have no self-interest at all. Their entire life is doing what’s good for Cheerios. The reality is, they’re sitting there, looking at these numbers going, “What does this mean to me?” They’re humans. The computer bot can’t figure that out.
Marshall, if people want to learn more about your work or learn more about MarshallBOT and get its wisdom, where should they go?
First, anybody can go to MarshallBOT, MarshallGoldsmith.ai. You’ve used it. Is it tricky to use or complicated?
No. If you know how to text, you’re good.
By the way, how much does it cost?
It’s free.
Anybody can use it.
Unless you’re coming to my website, then I’ve marked it up.
It’s all free. Go to LinkedIn. I have 1.5 million followers. I’m always putting stuff up on LinkedIn. The next thing is MarshallGoldsmith.com. I’ve got articles and stuff. Coaching.com has 33 videos of me on how to coach. It’s all free. By the way, my email address is Marshall@MarshallGoldsmith.com. Send me an email if you have a question. I’m always happy to get emails. Finally, I live in Nashville. If you’re ever in Nashville, I go for a walk every day and I always invite everyone to listen to me. Come take a walk. I go for a walk every day, anyway, so just come see me in person. I am not the world’s most difficult person to find.
There are multiple avenues there, but I don’t know. They might not need to go on a walk with you. They can go for a walk with MarshallBOT. Now you have competition.
As I said, I am not the competition here. I’m not that dumb. I know when I get into a contest, I’m going to lose. I’m not the competitor.
It’s a good lesson. Marshall, thank you for joining us again. I’m amazed by how you find ways to share your insight with as many people as possible.
Thank you so much.
To our readers, thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d appreciate it if you could leave us a review as it helps new users discover the show and hear from amazing guests such as Marshall. If you’re on Apple Podcasts, select the library icon, click on Elevate and scroll down at the bottom to leave a rating or review. Thanks again for your support. Until next time. Keep elevating.
Important Links
- Marshall Goldsmith
- Triggers
- What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
- Earned Life
- Episode 185 – Past Episode
- MarshallGoldsmith.AI
- LinkedIn – Marshall Goldsmith
- Coaching.com
- Marshall@MarshallGoldsmith.com
- Apple Podcasts – The Elevate Podcast
About Marshall Goldsmith
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith has been recognized as one of the Top Ten Business Thinkers in the World and the top-rated executive coach at the Thinkers50 ceremony in London since 2011. Published in 2015, his book Triggers is a Wall Street Journal and New York Times #1 Bestseller!
He’s also the author of New York Times best seller and #1 Wall Street Journal Business Book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, winner of the Harold Longman Award as Best Business Book of the Year.
