Christopher Gray has spent his career where product and people development meet. He led product for Facebook's enterprise learning tools, then built and led Asana's conscious leadership practice, coaching executives and teams. I met him at an authentic relating training he was facilitating, and I always walk away from our conversations feeling more expansive. He's now the founder of Actually, a platform that runs private AI conversations with people on a team and surfaces what they know but rarely say, without exposing who said it.
We started with where each of us is on AI right now, which for me has been a swing between excitement and dread, and ended up somewhere more honest than either. We talked about leaders carrying out decisions they wouldn't make as citizens, what AI is good at showing us and what it can't do for us, and how teams begin talking about the things they've quietly agreed not to talk about.
What we got into:
- Why "we're all doomed" and "it's going to be fine" might be two ways out of the same discomfort
- Being a business owner and a citizen at once, when those two roles want different things
- What a leader carries when they're letting people go and suspect they're next
- The gap between AI showing a team what's going on and that team being able to take it in
- What a company might be creating every time it lays off a thousand people
- The pressure to pick a side on AI, and what happens when you don't
- Why people are more honest with AI than with each other, and what a team can do with that
If this conversation stayed with you, pass it along to someone who's navigating this too.
– Usha
#OptimizedForHumans #AI #Leadership #FutureOfWork #TeamCoaching #ConsciousLeadership #ChristopherGray #UshaGubbala
What is Optimized For Humans?
Optimized for Humans is a bold, future-focused podcast for senior leaders who want to embrace AI disruption to drive growth and innovation, by making the most of the human potential in their organizations and strategically outsourcing the rest to AI.
Hosted by Usha — an executive coach and organizational strategist with 15+ years of experience guiding complex, bureaucratic organizations through meaningful change.
Each week, Usha brings together provocative thinkers, gutsy leaders, and real-world stories on how leaders are embracing AI, building internal capability and freeing up the humans to do what they do best. Expect honest conversations, practical frameworks, and fresh insights you can actually use.