Everyone talks about AI in terms of efficiency, and sometimes productivity – but what does that really mean in terms of client value? To me, that’s about knowing the value you were already creating for clients before AI entered the picture – and how AI is able to amplify that now. What’s changed for me is how much more of my hard-won expertise, unique thinking and approach I can now bring to each client relationship, because AI has freed up time to apply more of what I already do well, and to keep improving on it. Here’s what that has looked like over the past year.

More time in my network, and using it with intent

I love to meet people, and I love to connect people – it brings me real joy.

So often I hear people say, “I know I need to make more of my networks, but it’s hard to find the time!”…and I can certainly relate. Now, I use AI to help me quickly create a targeted networking plan as I jump on a plane for short work trip, going beyond ‘Who should I reconnect with?’ or ‘What events should I catch?’ to ‘What strategic connection points can I look for in this list of coffee meetings?’

Even better, AI helps me make more of my network in service of clients, by intentionally connecting people. While AI is helping me with repeatable project management tasks, I now spend real time looking across my networks for the connections that will genuinely help a client with the problem they’re working on – a simple but meaningful way of creating extra value. That kind of matchmaking used to happen by accident, relying on my already overloaded brain to remember just the right referral at just the right time. Now I can build value-adding like this into projects on purpose.

Space to think, and the time to actually build what I think of

Creative ideas are constantly popping into my head, competing for attention with everything else in the week. Some of these are great ideas to help clients achieve even more of what they want and to gain a genuine competitive edge (for example, right now it’s helping them understand how to structure guidelines and processes for their teams to use AI in communications in a way that protects and builds their brand, rather than the brand drift and reputational faux pas we are seeing everywhere).

What’s changed is that there’s now room for me to sit with a business or client problem longer, work through something genuinely different and high-impact, and build it quickly enough to reach clients and audiences in a short amount of time, rather than leaving a great idea on a shelf for a year because the calendar never opened up.

Capturing the words, so I can focus on what’s between the lines

I often use AI to capture the fine detail of a client conversation, in a way both of us are comfortable with, so I’m not half listening while I try to take notes. That frees me to do the part clients actually pay me for, which is thinking properly about who they are, their specific context, and what they need next. I use it to interrogate my own thinking too: what haven’t I considered here, and what else should I be asking? It’s the same judgement I’ve always relied on, just tested from more angles – which provides the client with the advantage of fewer stones left unturned – fewer gaps and blind spots, more opportunities.

More time with the people who need it

There’s more time on the phone when someone needs it, an extra meeting booked in without a fight with my diary, and check-ins beyond the normal program allocation – a closer eye kept on clients, and a closer connection. I get to listen a little longer, pick up more detail in their journey, and provide extra resources and guidance.

New ways to help more people

I’ve conceived, built and launched new tools this year for measuring and planning professional confidence in the age of AI and organisational maturity levels in leadership brand development, the kind of idea that would have stayed in a notebook a few years ago. I’ve also launched and filled new public workshops on professional confidence, leadership branding and AI in communications for leadership audiences around the country, reaching and supporting far more people in a few months than I expected to.

AI has freed up time to apply more of what I already do well, and to keep improving on it.

Every one of these examples comes back to the same thing: what clients get from me is bigger and more useful than it was a year ago. The extra attention and thinking time that AI frees me to do is what make that possible. It’s also given me room to keep sharpening my own thinking on positioning in the AI era, so what I bring clients on that front keeps getting better too.

Want to know how we use AI in our work with clients? It’s in our FAQs.

Further reading

Confidence, Trust and Stronger Human Identity in an AI World

How’s your Professional Confidence in the Age of AI?

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After a couple of hours energetically running around taking photographs, bringing 110% to my engagement with people and to my effort to include everyone in the coverage of the event, providing the best service possible to the host… it was time for acknowledgements and introductions. The host rattled off the bios of the speakers and ‘formal’ sponsors, and then just as he was closing off, he threw in: “Oh, and this is Julissa. She’s a lovely girl, so… yeah, get her to do your photos.” 

My heart sank to my stomach. Where was the business description I had painstakingly written for the acknowledgements, had emailed over, and then had double-checked to see the host had at hand on the night? In this room of mainly businessmen, I was just the lovely girl in the corner, not the professional I had worked so hard to be. I was the afterthought – and the mention I got, I would have been better off without.

I’m now 41 and in my working life I’ve changed careers 3 times, including starting 2 businesses. These changes have represented marked shifts which required learning an entirely new set of skills, building a new network and marketing myself in a new way each time, in order to be confident and credible.

When I think back on the times when I was navigating each new environment, I find there are ‘power’ stories and ‘no power’ stories – times when I felt personally powerful to create change, and times when I felt that the power was in someone else’s hands. But when I dig deeper, I see that there were both internal and external factors that contributed to whether I felt powerful or not – in other words, much of the power resided with me, even if I didn’t recognise it.

For example, a pivotal moment when I was kicking off my brand consulting business was when I took a couple of hours out to brainstorm my ‘superpowers’ – my key strengths that are truly at the heart of who I am, that contribute value to others. I wrote these out in huge letters in chalk, straight onto my office wall! This was an incredibly empowering experience, not simply because it made me feel good, but more importantly because it gave me such clarity on what I offer and the words to communicate that. From that day on, my consulting services and brand really began to take shape, because I was coming from a place of personal power and confidence when I spoke about my work.

On the flip side, as I started to attract larger consulting clients, I needed to navigate the world of writing and presenting significant proposals of work – a whole different ball game to sending off an outline for one workshop! Understanding motivations, buying cycles, budgets, decision-maker dynamics, the art of negotiation… to be honest this is one of the biggest learning curves I’ve experienced and I’m still learning about it. There are times when I have felt really disheartened after putting hours into meetings and proposal writing to find that it falls flat. At these times I have felt like I have no power – and once or twice I was even convinced that I didn’t get the gig because I’m not a man. While that may have been a factor in a couple of scenarios I can think of, when I really look at it, there are things I am learning to do differently to increase my ability to affect outcomes. I am always trying to strengthen how clearly I communicate value and demonstrate proof of results, what questions to set up to ensure my proposals hit the mark, and what steps need to come before I even write the proposal, to set myself up for success.

It is unfortunately not an exaggeration to say that as women, our external environments can put us on the back foot from the moment we are born, and many of us experience this as a part of daily life. Being overlooked, misjudged, underestimated, unheard and mistreated are sadly too common an experience for women – all of these things have happened to me, despite seeing myself as quite a confident communicator. There is now plenty of data to demonstrate the frequency of these experiences for women, as well as the fact that the problem is compounded for women belonging to additional marginalised groups.

It’s important to acknowledge and address power problems as a society, in business, and in the home. At the same time, there is so much value in working to increase your sense of personal power and how you influence for mutual good in all these environments.   

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