There will never be a substitute for the energetics between two humans: for the presence that arises when we sit in nature, ask real questions, and hold space for something true to emerge.
Whether we’re sitting by the creek, on the Leadership Circle mat, or in the tension of a strategic crossroads, insight comes through relationship, resonance, and real-time inquiry.
And yet, once that clarity arises, we need a way to carry it forward. To hold it, revisit it, and build on it with efficiency.
The leaders who know how to blend presence with intelligent tools are the ones driving the most strategic, human-centered transformations today.
That’s where AI becomes a powerful partner.
Six Ways I Use AI to Deepen Insight, Not Shortcut It
If you’re leading a team, navigating change, or holding complexity, you’ve likely felt the pressure to move faster and produce more. This is where many leaders turn to AI, but when used without intention, it can disconnect us from the very insight we’re trying to achieve.
What follows are six ways I use AI inside client work as a way for depth and change to carry further. These practices can help you integrate AI into your leadership in ways that sharpen your thinking, strengthen your presence, and keep what matters at the center.
1. Synthesis and the Power of Prompts
Synthesis has always been one of my core strengths: pulling together patterns across time, systems, and human complexity. When I started using AI, I wondered whether it would replace that. It didn’t.
AI doesn’t make meaning on its own. What matters is the quality of the prompt, and that comes from human discernment. My ability to distill what matters and ask the right questions is what makes AI a useful extension of my thinking in support of my clients.
In one case, I used session notes and key reflections over time to help a client surface archetypes they’d been unconsciously living out. AI didn’t name them, though it helped organize the language and data in a way that made the pattern more understandable.
In another case, we ran the same client data through AI using two different prompts and got entirely different outputs. The facts hadn’t changed. The framing had. Human discernment is vital in shaping the reflection AI provides.
2. Supporting Integration After Sessions and Meetings
After somatic or strategic work, I’ll sometimes give clients AI prompts to help them deepen what surfaced. The goal isn’t to over-intellectualize it. It’s to let the insight sink in and create a sustained shift.
For example: “Explore the polarity between urgency and alignment. How might it show up in my leadership choices, and what questions could help me shift the pattern?”
That prompt didn’t come from AI. It came through real dialogue and deep listening. AI helps the client take it further, but the spark came from human connection.
3. Co-Creating Language After Embodied Work in Strategy
In one recent session, we guided a leadership team through embodied exploration of the organization’s purpose and values. Only after that grounding did we open AI and use it to wordsmith the vision, mission, and values they had just uncovered.
Why does that order matter? Because if we had started with AI, we would’ve lost the essence. The clarity came through relational interaction, not the screen. The facilitation process still requires real-time presence, deep listening, and human-to-human translation of insight.
Once the deeper truth surfaced, AI helped us shape it into precise and aligned language with more efficiency.
4. Turning Dialogue into Usable Insight
When I record Conscious InSights podcast episodes or leadership roundtables, I use AI to create a transcript of the conversation.
These transcripts become material we can shape, share, or build on — turning presence-based dialogue into tangible insight that can travel further more quickly.
5. Helping Insight Land After the Intellect Has Had Its Say
AI can help move things through the intellect faster, though it doesn’t always help things fully land.
Recently, one of my AI threads surfaced a phrase that stuck with me in a chat I had going about my own development. I understood it intellectually, but I wasn’t clear on what I would actually do with it.
A few days later, a trusted mentor said the same general phrase aloud — without knowing I’d been holding it. That’s when it landed in my body and I finally knew how to bring the insight forward. AI helped prepare the ground, though it was the human presence and space holding that brought it into the body. And the body is where the shift happens.
6. Speaking to AI Instead of Typing
I don’t always type into AI. Often, I will talk to it on my phone.
Speaking keeps me in my body. It’s unfiltered, in real time, and reflects my source creativity. Because I give it much more than a quick prompt, it captures more essence and the responses feel more alive and collaborative.
Speaking also helps me get my fast-moving mind and heart onto the page — and into the world — with more clarity and speed.
Last month, I asked ChatGPT directly: Will you analyze for me how I use you the most?
The response was reassuring:
“You have a strong relationship with your inner authority, and you use me to expand, challenge, or validate your intuition and discernment, not to replace them. This is rare. Most people either over-rely or under-utilize. You dance the line skillfully.”
We don’t use AI to outsource our wisdom. We use AI to sharpen it.
What This Means for You and Your Team
In an age of complexity and acceleration, depth is a differentiator.
Leaders of the future won’t be the ones who master the most AI tools. They’ll be the ones who use technology inside an ecosystem of presence, integrity, and embodiment.
The more attuned you are to your values, your vision, and your way of working, the more powerfully you can use tools like AI to reflect, expand, and act.
AI can help, if we stay in relationship with ourselves while using it.
In a time of rapid technological acceleration, organizations need a human operating system upgrade. When leaders and teams evolve, organizations evolve. The human operating system must meet this moment. When you invest in evolving your human systems, tech will serve the transformation, not distract from it.
InSight works with organizations and leaders ready to evolve. If you’re navigating growth, complexity, or reinvention, let’s connect.