Leading Through Change: Our July Encore Series Begins
Every summer, we take a short pause from new interviews and revisit a handful of conversations that deserve a second listen. This year's theme is Leading Through Change, four encore episodes chosen because the world keeps handing leaders more change than any playbook prepared them for, whether that change comes from AI, from a merger, from a market shift, or from something no one saw coming.
(San Francisco summers can be quite cold, windy and sometimes foggy like we had on July 4th. This is me last week on Ocean Beach.)
We're kicking things off with a conversation that could not be more timely.
Episode 300: The Human Is the Loop, Not Just In It
To mark our 300th episode, we're re-releasing one of the most resonant conversations of the year: Leading Authentically in the AI Revolution with Allison Shapira.
Allison is the founder and CEO of Global Public Speaking, an adjunct lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School, a trained opera singer turned executive communication advisor, and the Washington Post bestselling author of Speak with Impact and, most recently, AI for the Authentic Leader: How to Communicate More Effectively Without Losing Your Humanity.
Her core message lands harder every month AI adoption accelerates: don't outsource your voice to a machine. Leaders who lean on AI to think and speak for them risk losing the very thing that makes people want to follow them in the first place.
In this episode, you'll hear:
- Why "the human is the loop, not just in it" reframes how leaders should think about AI
- The AI Authenticity Loop, Allison's framework for using AI to amplify your voice instead of replacing it
- The one question, "why you?", she asks every leader before they craft a message
- A concerning trend in how AI voice assistants are being trained, and what it means for the next generation
- How to know when using AI has crossed the line from tool to crutch
This conversation sits at the exact intersection our audience lives in: the pressure to move fast with new technology, and the responsibility to lead in a way that still sounds, and feels, like you.
Why We Revisit These Conversations
Encore episodes aren't filler. They're a chance to sit with an idea again once you've had more time to live with the questions it raised. Change management theory tells us the same thing behavioral scientists have found in learning research: people rarely absorb something fully on the first pass. A second listen, months later, in a different season of your leadership journey, often surfaces something the first listen missed.
Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing the rest of the Leading Through Change series. Each one was chosen because it holds up, and because right now, in the middle of so much organizational and technological upheaval, these are the conversations worth returning to.
Listen Now
Find the episode wherever you listen to podcasts, or head to the show notes for full timestamps and Allison's links.
Find Allison Shapira at her website.
Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a leader who needs it.
Visit aworldofdifferencepodcast.com for more resources.
Podcast Host &. Executive Producer
Lori Adams-Brown is Director, Global Talent Development in a Silicon Valley tech company. She hosts the top 5% global podcast A World of Difference, where she interviews authentic leaders about their unique differences and encouraging us all to make a difference around the world together. She is an international speaker and consultant with over 20 years of global management work experience from living and working on 3 continents. She sits on the Silicon Valley Executive Board of How Women Lead and on the board of Justice Revival in Washington, D.C.
Raised in international schools in Costa Rica and Venezuela, and having lived and worked in Southeast Asia for 20 years, Lori has led cross-functional global teams to do everything from tsunami relief to community development to business. As a former international relief & development leader, she has led distributed global teams in multiple countries where she learned to speak six languages. She has spoken to audiences in Singapore, Venezuela, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, and all over the US. She holds a BA in both Sociology and Spanish and a Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies.
Her happy place is sipping a flat white coffee and having a deep conversation while enjoying either a beach or mountain vacation with the love of her life, Jason, their urbanite TCK teens, and rescue dog.
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