AI, Leadership Behavior, and Why People Still Drive Performance | Stephanie Sylvestre

Welcome to the Behavioral Profit. I'm Debbie

Longo, and today we're exploring how AI is reshaping

the workplace and why the human mind is still

the most powerful driver of performance and growth.

My guest, Stephanie Sylvester, a leader who has

built solutions people said weren't possible

and someone who specializes in AI leadership

and team empowerment. She helps organizations

navigate major technological shifts without losing

sight of the qualities that truly evade results.

Resilience, creativity, resourcefulness, problem

-solving, and critical thinking. Today, we're

talking about how AI, when configured the right

way, can uplift people rather than replace them,

and what leaders need to understand about empowering

their teams in this new era. Stephanie, welcome

to the Behavioral Profit. Thank you for having

me. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to our

conversation. I'm glad you're here. Let's start

at the beginning. You've built things people

insisted couldn't be done. What pushed you to

move forward anyway? And what did that experience

teach you about human potential? I operate in

the space of, if I can think about it, it can

be done. I don't think I'm the smartest person

in the room. So I was like, I'm thinking about

this. I can come up with it. I can see it. I

can talk about it. it can be done. I think it

goes to self -agency and the belief that if you...

the belief that you can make a difference. So

I went to person A, they said no. Person B, I

said no. I just kept asking and asking and talking

about it. And it's kind of funny because people

will say, oh my God, you were talking about this

stuff way before this stuff was a thing. You

were talking about AI. Such a long time ago.

We didn't understand what you were saying But

it's just crazy that you believed in it so much

as you keep it talks about human potential, right

and we believe in ourselves if we have people

around us that believe in us then we can we can

achieve and I will say that I'm very fortunate

I was talking to somebody last week and and I

said I'm very fortunate and I I'm aware of how

fortunate I am because I've had a really good

life. I've had lots of people around me that

mentor me, that believes in me. My dad used to

say when I was growing up, you're a Sylvester,

you can do anything you want. And my mom would

be like, not so fast. You can't just be doing

anything you want. That's not how that translates

to real life. And so I think that That's been

like a foundational thing and now being able

to use AI to help people who maybe weren't as

fortunate to have people that believe in them.

I mean, even as an adult, I have like these amazing

people that believe in me. I have a friend of

mine that she's like, I don't know what you're

saying. I don't understand what you're saying,

but I know that because you're it's you, you're

going to make it happen. And to be able to walk

around the world with that is such a such a blessing

and being able to then lean into that has been

incredible. And that's why I would say that from

a human perspective, it's helped me understand

how to persevere, how to move past the failures,

how not to stop when something doesn't go as

planned. I mean, I've been at this for nine years

and I finally feel like I now know what I'm doing.

So Yeah, that was good. So one of the reasons

why I have this podcast is to explain and describe

and give definitions of how behavior affects

the workplace in hundreds of different ways.

And I have, if you look at my podcast, I have

all of these different topics of all these different

people that are in different fields, and they're

all connected to one thing. And the reason why

I did that was because maybe somebody's in the

field of AI, maybe somebody's in an entrepreneur

and wants to have a business, maybe somebody's

in retail. And I want them to be able to identify

if that's a certain person that's curious about

how does behavior affect the workplace or maybe

can. So they can scroll through my podcast, hopefully,

and then they can see, oh, this is the career

or the industry that I want to work in or become

a part of. So now I want to see if I could be

able to relate to this. And that's the whole

thing. But. The thing is that behavior will affect

every workplace. So it really doesn't have to

do with what type of workplace it is, but a lot

of times people don't know that they associate

it with that type of industry. So I have had,

you're probably the third person about AI. Now

I pretty much take anybody that wants to be on

the podcast. Sometimes I'm busier than others.

So this has been coming up a lot. So this is

the thing. So we can see now that this is going

to be a very important point in the future of

the workplace. The future of AI, that's true

because there's a whole future to AI because

we don't know a lot about it. So you learn as

you go. It's like riding a bicycle and stuff,

but How does this affect the workplace your home

behavior and the stuff that you're mentioning

is very true i personally feel that i should

do whatever i feel and that's just my own take

on it could be right or wrong whatever because.

If I really listen to myself and my gut, then

that's going to take me where I'm supposed to

be. That's the whole thing. But that depends

on who you're listening to. Do you know that's

your gut? That's a little bit of another subject

for another day, but that's the point. So let's

take it one step further. When leaders bring

AI into the workplace, how does that mindset

shift affect the way teams respond to the change?

First of all, I totally agree with you. Behavior

drives a lot and based on how a leader shows

up determines how the team shows up. And I've

been in a number of different places where I

show up and say, you can do this. And employees

that have been marginalized before I got there

are now re -engaged and and coming back to me

and saying, wow, I didn't even think I can do

this. And you're making me do this. And I feel

so proud of myself. And in my mind, that's the

ultimate for a leader. So when you're bringing

AI into the workplace, it depends on what your

intent is. So if you're a leader and your job,

your thing is, you know what? I've read all about

AI. It's going to be more efficient. I'm going

to be able to cut head count and I'm going to

make. lots of money and all that stuff, then

your AI implementation and deployment is not

gonna work. It's not gonna work for two reasons.

One, you're gonna need your staff buy -in, and

if your staff gets a whiff of that, they're going

to either consciously or unconsciously undermine

all your AI efforts. Secondly, if you're trying

to do AI... use AI to eliminate people, then

that is not the right way to deploy AI, and ultimately

that will come back to bite you. But if you're

a leader that says, I have a great team of people,

they have lots of potential, and I know that

they can do more if I could figure out a way

to streamline their work. figure out a way to

move away from the low tedious tasks that they're

doing. So now that's a different conversation.

Those leaders are seeing improvements that are

mind blowing. And it's not like you're taking

years. It's like matter of months. Because what

you do is you have somebody that says, my leader

cared about me enough that they got me tools

and solutions that actually make my life better.

And because they're doing that, I am now able

to really excel. I can do what I really want

to do. So think about if you're doing analysis,

you're a business analyst, and you spend 50 %

of your time organizing and cleaning the data

and normalizing the data because the upstream

systems weren't designed appropriately. And so

you only have 50 % of the time to do analysis,

but by the time you finish fighting with the

data to normalize it, you're exhausted. So you're

really not there to really get into the analysis.

Now you have AI that's normalized in that same

data. All the AI is doing is normalizing the

data. So instead of you spending 50 % of your

time, you might spend 5 % of your time just making

sure the AI normalize the data correctly. What

does that mean? It means that now You have normalized

data and now you have 95 % of your time to really

get into it and have fun and you get excited.

And now you're seeing insights that you never

saw before. You're thinking you're allowed to

stop, step back and think. And now you're thinking

about things you had not taught about before.

And you're like, I wonder if I do this. Now you're

willing to start taking some risks. You're starting

to experiment. all of a sudden that analysis

that you were doing that was dry, that was like

didn't really add much value, that like didn't

say much, now you're doing that, plus you're

doing higher order thinking things. And you're

able to see stuff that your bosses really want,

that really helps them. And all of a sudden now

that analysis that you're doing allows you to

do a new campaign or Double down on a campaign

network or be able to to cut costs because you've

retaught a process I mean all that stuff and

you're starting to see this Cost savings because

you're looking at thing and you're thinking this

is the problem But actually the problem was over

here and now because you can see it you can get

to root cost analysis That's what we're seeing

And when employees start working in that kind

of environment, they get excited, they're happy

to come to work, they're not drudgery, and now

they're ready to go. And that's how I see when

a leader takes AI and says, I'm going to amplify

my employees because I have a good team of people,

the employees reward them by becoming more creative,

more resourceful, more resilient. and more innovative.

So your description and your explanation was

perfect about how that can help the workplace

and that can help somebody to want to go to work

and be happy and see that they're actually producing

results through AI. And we don't want to make

it where People think that a i and we're gonna

make robots that's gonna replace their job even

a computer is gonna replace their job there is

no job there is no computer in this world that

is gonna give a personality the human side of

the person people are trying it and they think

that they can. But it's completely different

with the human it's not it's never gonna happen

the things that you're talking about a very good

they're very positive things but the point is

that i want to send a message. When i go to work

even or if i am an executive right i want to

embrace a i and i want to use that to. Excel

in my job, in my career, in my company, because

all that's going to do is benefit me more and

more and more. I could tell you tons of stories

of people in marketing, in social media and all

kinds of things, in coding, all kinds of things

that what used to take them weeks and months,

projects to do now takes them days. And they

are able to go much faster and when they do that

that starts a whole chain of positive events

they make more money they help more people they're

able to advance technologically better. So there

are so many positives to this, but what is the

attitude that the person has when they go to

work every day and they see that they are faced

with AI and that's going to be practically every

single job soon. And that's just the reality.

How does the person respond and react to that?

And that's really a message. Also, that's another

message also that I'm trying to send here and

just explain. What's the difference? Because

that's what I hear all the time. I'm not going

to have a job. You know what I mean? Because

of AI. I hear it all the time. It's unbelievable.

And it's just a matter of creating knowledge,

educating people. And so they understand this.

So this is good that we're doing this. So you're

highlighting the human side of this. And I want

to go deeper there. What skill do you see becoming

the most essential as AI continues to evolve?

There's five skills that I believe are most essential

as AI evolves. And I'm defining resiliency from

the perspective of you're working on something

and it fails and you don't just stop. There are

people out there that if things aren't perfect

and it doesn't work right the first time, they

just want to give up. You're not going to be

able to do that in the AI space. You're going

to need to be resilient. The next piece is resourcefulness

and creativity. So people talk about brain rot

and so forth. And every time they say that, it

reminds me about when I was growing up, they

talked about TV was going to create brain rot.

You're not supposed to look at TV. You're not

supposed to spend a lot of time in front of TV.

I did my homework in front of TV every single

day. It's kind of like the same thing. AI does

not cause brain rot if you're using it properly.

What it does is it causes you to be more creative

because instead of me sitting there struggling,

fighting to try and get my words out, I can just

do stream of consciousness into the AI. The AI

mashes up and gives me something back. And I

go, oh, wait, that's I didn't even think about

it. Let's do it this way. Oh my God, I wonder.

And then now your brain goes off and now you

do another shoot and then it comes back. Oh my

God, this is great. So all of a sudden you're

brainstorming with the AI and you come up with

this solution that's like mind blowingly awesome.

I mean, I just spoke to a young man from Trinidad

and he's starting a business. He had an idea

back in June. And he then created some AI agents

to help him brainstorm and think and figure out.

And when he was telling me about his business,

I was like, Whoa, it took me two years to get

figured out out. I didn't have any AI. And I

was just like, Oh, my God, you are so much farther

ahead because you have the AI and AI is not rotting

his brain. What the AI is doing is is making

him smarter. more resilient and more creative

and he's becoming more resourceful because now

the AI might say You should use these things

and then you can say look I can't do this like

I did a little test with the AI said hey I need

to do painting but we don't have money to buy

paint and I'm in I'm in the jungles of Belize.

What do I use and then it said you can take Like

it gave me different things that are very common

to find in the jungle and said, you can make

red paint, you can make black paint and you can

make, I think it was red, black, I think might

be yellow. I wouldn't have known that. And then

I went and I tried it and it worked. So that's,

that's the thing. Like now all of a sudden you're

trying stuff and AI is coming back with it in

a way that you're like, whoa, And if you are

from like a low resource community or from a

place where you don't have people supporting

your ideas, you don't have people encouraging

you because they either don't understand what

you're doing or that's just not how they've been

culturalized. All of a sudden, now you have somebody

supporting and encouraging you in a positive

way, helping you think truly. And then the first

time you try something and it works, you start

seeing their backs. Become a little bit straighter.

They start standing a little bit taller I mean

and this is this is the transformation that AI

does but then the other piece of what AI does

is problem solving and critical thinking you're

going to have to develop that more not less and

the reason why you have to develop that more

not less is because deep fake and the way that

you can do something where we somebody can take

this podcast and they could change up my face

and put somebody else's face put their voice

and then it makes it look like they're the ones

that are saying why they're saying or they can

take this podcast and then they can make me say

something that I didn't say and so Because of

that you're going to have to be critical thinking

and say Debbie Longo from Like this doesn't make

sense. Like she she's she's from Florida, but

she has a different accent like I have to know,

like, okay, she's from Florida, but she wasn't

born in Florida. She must have been, she came

to Florida somewhere. So you're gonna have to

do critical thinking in order to figure out stuff.

You're not gonna get less, you have to do more.

You also is gonna force us to be closer together

because I no need to meet you. I need to learn

who you are. And I can't just meet you in a crowd

of a thousand people. I need to be able to have

small intimate gatherings. So we're going to

go back to the time. Remember when on on Friday

nights and Saturday nights, your parents had

dinner parties and then the two or three couples

from the neighborhood come over or couples from

work came over. You talk, you got to know each

other. So if somebody said something like, you'd

be like, no, that doesn't sound like doesn't

sound like Debbie because you knew Debbie. And

then we kind of slowly pulled away and we're

like all about technology, but it's still you're

going to have to come back either. So I'm going

to be spending more time having one -on -one

conversations with Debbie or I'm going to go

find where in Florida Debbie is and I'm going

to be having coffee with her or something like

that. I have to get to know her as a person.

So when I read something on the internet or I

read something in one of the AI, I know that

it's not Debbie. if it doesn't sound like it's

Debbie or I know it's Debbie, because yes, that's

the person I experienced. So critical thinking

and problem solving is going to be even more

critical. And for me, those five skills, if you

have those five skills and you have intellectual

curiosity and a love of learning, you can survive

AI because it's no more about, oh, which technical

skills are we going to learn what? No, because

you don't know. Like today, you might say, I

need this person to do X. And then tomorrow,

we're like, oh, things change. I need them to

do Y. And you're going to need to have people

that are resilient and can change. So one of

the things that we do at Avatar Buddy is we hire

for hungry, humble, and smart. We don't hire

as much for skills. Obviously, there's certain

roles that we need your skill. But it's hungry,

humble, and smart. Because if you're hungry,

humble, and smart, you're going to willingly

learn something. And we have some amazing young

people. And I just talked to one of them, like,

hey, we're going to start doing scraping. I don't

know anything about scraping. Here, go do some

research. She's like, oh, a new thing we're going

to learn. She was excited about that. That's

who you're gonna need to hire for because you

don't know what skills next week. We might not

need scraping anymore We might need something

else Yes, that was all very good. Thank you.

It really goes back to what we're saying so what

I was thinking of when you were speaking was

have an open mind and Be able to know that you

can use AI that it can become your friends instead

of becoming your enemy and fighting with it and

trying to make it something it's not. So when

you use those five points or either even two

out of the five, it's better than none. That

might help you to learn how to work with it and

be able to use it every day without feeling threatened

or feeling like it's going to hurt you in any

way or hurt your job or anything like that. what

you were speaking about by knowing the person

and Getting to know the person even just a little

bit. I can now know the difference between how

that person is maybe on social media or what

that person does with AI how that person is defined

with AI and If that happens, that's a very good

thing, because now I'm one step ahead of everything,

because that's not going to create any negativity

in the way of me thinking, what is this person

like, whatever, even my boss. And that is very

common, I think, in the workplace. And I've had

a lot of experiences with this type of thing,

people getting misconstrued. people thinking

that somebody or something is what it's not.

People putting negativity into their head. And

this is all tied in to exactly what we're talking

about. So this is good. So that's a strong point.

To ground it for listeners, can you share a real

moment when AI only worked because the people

behind it were empowered? I would say that when

we look at our implementation, of how we're using

AI. It's not the AI itself that really is the

differentiator. It's a bunch of different things.

So I'll share. I think the thing that I'm most

happy about right now is we have a project in

Ghana. We're partnering with this company called,

this nonprofit called Dev Hub Africa. And what

they do is they go around the country sides of

Ghana to teach farmers sustainable farming techniques.

And so we built out some AI agents for them.

And we said to them, you have to load your data

into the back end, into the small language model.

And first, they didn't load your data. I said,

you have to load your data in there, otherwise

it's no better than Chad's GPT. So they load

their data into the AI. And then I said, you

have to test it. You have to make sure that the

AI is bringing back the correct things. You can't

just say, oh, this is like, I put it in there

so it's, so trust but verify. So then what we,

what they did was they were testing it and we

got the test results today. And they said to

me, first of all, they were like, did you know

that the AI provides emotional support as well

as technical information? And I said, yes. We

configured the AI so that when it's providing

help for you, it's doing will and skill. It's

not just about skill, it's not just about will.

We know that in order to develop people well,

it's a combination of will and skill, and there's

a nuance to it that sometimes they need encouragement,

and sometimes they need technical support, and

sometimes they need both. And the AI, the way

we've configured it, can do that. So they were

like, that was a pleasant surprise. And they

said, we liked that it had cultural nuances.

I said, well, it has cultural nuances because

you loaded cultural nuances into the AI. And

then they said, I love that it gave examples

that were relevant to Ghana. And I said, yes,

because you loaded information from Ghana. And

so there were like a couple of hiccups like,

Sometimes there were latency issues, which a

little bit out of our control. We have tried

to make our solution very lightweight, but there's

still going to be some latency issues in the

more remote you get. But overall, it was it was

absolutely positive and they were like pleasantly

surprised about how easy it was like a little

bit. They were like, it's this easy. And I was

like, yeah, it's that easy. All you have to do

is put your data into the AI because I've configured

everything for you. I've done all the heavy lifting

for you. And that's an example of how people

were empowered to empower other people. And so

we were in like this little group chat talking

about the testing and somebody says in the group

chat, hey, somebody burnt their farm down and

I told the AI, and the AI was so therapeutic

in its response, it first of all provided a local

Guyanin proverb. Then it said, it's okay to feel

bad and embarrassed, but don't go hide, go talk

to the community, share how you're feeling with

the community. And oh, by the way, here are some

tips on how not to burn your farm dung again.

Don't be completely discouraged before you clear

the land. Give it about two or three weeks because

maybe some new grout would come out. And I was

like, Whoa, that was pretty impressive. Yeah,

that's very good. And again, this is all we're

talking about. How do we make AI work rather

than fighting it? And thinking that it's not

gonna work and for me that's just giving it a

chance taking the giant step to ever hear the

first step is the giant step and just know even

if i don't know it doesn't matter you know just

do it you really see that it's really. It really

will be a surprise and also a lot of people don't

realize that the more that you use it the smarter

it gets. Because if you keep using it, then it's

gonna get to know you and what you do and your

environment and your job and all these different

things. And the smarter it gets, the easier you're

gonna be able to work with it. And the easier

it'll be able to work with you. So that's good.

So everything you've shared points to a deeper

truth about this shift. If you had to leave leaders

with one core takeaway they should act on right

now as AI continues to evolve, what would that

be? I would say to leaders, be curious. You have

to be curious. Your job is to go in front of

your team and remove barriers for them. That

means you need to be curious. You have to be

at the forefront, not force feeding AI to them,

but at the forefront, understanding how AI is

going to help you and how it's not going to help

you. And then you need to help your team walk

through and say, in what situations AI is going

to help, we should use it. And in what situations

AI is not going to help. And then as the leader

say, we're not going to use it this way. And

that's the important piece of it, being able

to go through that space. So be curious. Be curious,

lean into curiosity, and then be okay with the

fact that you don't understand. Yes, that was

very good. Thank you. And that's just the reiterating

of all of these things that we're talking about,

because I wanna use it to my advantage. And the

only way that I'm gonna do that, and I wanna

use it to help me, and the only way that I'm

gonna do that is how I change my behavior. That's

gonna determine whether I'm gonna do it or not,

how I'm gonna act with it, and how I'm gonna

use it, how much I'm gonna use it. These suggestions

and the way that we're describing this is endless

because it doesn't have to do the computer is

the computer ai is ai what i punch into it how

i tell it to behave that's how it's gonna behave

i keep using it it's gonna make it smarter but

people. are the ones that created it. And that's

really the bottom line. Stephanie, thank you

for bringing clarity to a topic that you can

overwhelm a lot of leaders. You've shown that

when AI is set up the right way, it doesn't replace

people, it elevates them. And I wanna leave listeners

with one more practical solution. Start small.

choose one workflow where AI supports your team

instead of overwhelming them, and create a safe

environment for experimentation. When people

have room to learn without pressure, AI becomes

a catalyst, not a threat, and teams rise with

it. Thank you again for joining me today, and

thank you for everyone for listening. This is

Behavioral Profit. I'm Debbie Longo. Till next

time. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you for the

opportunity. I love the summary. Great way to

bring it all in.