Laura K Spencer, Ed.D.

Tag: Leadership

  • Moving Too Fast to Notice Your Life

    Moving Too Fast to Notice Your Life

    Sandstone Canyon is easy to miss if you’re moving too fast. It branches off Fish Creek Wash without much announcement. A sign. A turn. If you weren’t already in the mood to slow down, you’d keep going.

    Once you’re inside, the walls come up quickly. Fifty, maybe seventy feet. The wash is still sand and crushed dirt, still not what anyone would call technical, but there isn’t much extra space. You notice that right away. The way the canyon quietly narrows your choices.

    We’re used to places that reward momentum. Sandstone doesn’t. It rewards paying attention. And not just in the “don’t hit anything” sense. This is a canyon that took millions of years to become a canyon. The walls hold light differently depending on the time of day. The color shifts as you move. If you’re only focused on getting through it, you miss most of what’s actually there.

    Most of the time, you’re moving slowly through it a little stunned, watching the walls change and trying to take in how improbable it all is.

    Every so often, you have to wait for someone coming the other way, or ease past a narrow section. That part isn’t difficult. It just makes it very clear that you don’t get to decide the pace.

    Most days, you do.

    In normal life, days are mostly a series of things to get through. The goal becomes finishing. Clearing. Moving on. You move from one thing to the next at a speed that feels efficient and, over time, becomes automatic.

    Nothing is wrong, exactly. You’re just always moving. And living at that speed flattens things. Even good days start to feel thin.

    Out in Sandstone, that’s harder to maintain. The canyon keeps interrupting you. The walls keep catching the light. The scale of it keeps insisting that you’re moving through something that does not care how quickly you’re trying to get to the end.

    You leave, of course. You always do. You go back to regular days and regular weeks and all the usual noise.

    But places like this change your sense of tempo, even if only briefly. They remind you what it feels like when time has texture again.

    And then, slowly, you start moving too fast.

    Until the next place makes you notice.

  • Stop Romanticizing the Grind: Why Misery Doesn’t Equal Meaning

    Stop Romanticizing the Grind: Why Misery Doesn’t Equal Meaning

    I’m done pretending that being miserable proves I’m doing something important.

    I’ve tried it. It just breaks things. Usually me.

    I ran into this quote on Instagram and it put words to something I’ve been feeling for a while now…

    “My competitive advantage is I’m having more fucking fun than you. Not because I don’t care. Because I care so deeply that I refuse to make it fucking miserable… I stopped romanticizing my suffering like I was some kind of war hero, and started romanticizing the kind of work I go to bed excited to wake up and continue.”

    That line about romanticizing suffering like a war hero?

    It stung.

    I care about the work. A lot. Learning… leadership… building things that actually help people. That part hasn’t changed. But my tolerance for the idea that being exhausted, overwhelmed, and quietly fried is proof of commitment?

    Gone.

    It’s not commitment. It’s just… unsustainable.

    Think about it like being out on the trail. You don’t need to know Land Rovers to get this… but if you’re off-roading and you hit unfamiliar terrain, you don’t floor it. You don’t try to smash through obstacles just to prove your vehicle is tough.

    You slow down. You pick a line. You let the suspension work.

    White-knuckling the steering wheel feels like you’re doing something… feels intense. Productive. But it isn’t. It just means you’re tense, you’re missing the view, and you’re probably going to break an axle.

    Somewhere along the way, we decided work had to hurt to count. That joy meant you weren’t serious. That if you weren’t struggling, you weren’t trying hard enough. I’ve had bosses that equated pain to dedication, to success.

    I bought that story. For a long time.

    But I’m not interested in being a war hero for a meeting agenda or a quarterly report.

    I want to build things I actually want to come back to. Momentum. Curiosity. Room to breathe. Not “easy” work… just work that doesn’t require self-betrayal to get through the day.

    This isn’t about doing less. It’s about not burning the engine out before I get to the destination. Or even worse, not even see the view along the way.

    I used to think the misery was the point. But Jude’s right… “enjoying your life makes it much easier to keep showing up.”

    And I want to keep showing up.

    So, you can grind until you hate the work.

    “I’m gonna enjoy the work until I win.”

    That’s the plan for 2026.

  • How AI Helps Leaders Uncover Blind Spots and Build a Culture of Thinking

    How AI Helps Leaders Uncover Blind Spots and Build a Culture of Thinking

    I was working with a new leader recently who said, “I know I’m missing something, but I can’t tell what it is.”

    She wasn’t lacking skill.

    She was bumping up against the part of leadership nobody likes to admit.

    Our brain fills in missing pieces without asking permission.

    That’s a blind spot.

    Not the thing you didn’t notice, but the meaning you assigned without realizing it.

    This is exactly where Cultures of Thinking shows up in real leadership work.

    Ron Ritchhart talks about creating a culture where people examine their own thinking, question their interpretations, and stay open to multiple perspectives.

    But leaders rarely do this for themselves.

    They are too busy moving on to the next thing.

    Here’s the good news.

    You don’t need an AI note taker or a perfect transcript to start seeing your blind spots.

    You just need a way to challenge your own first read of a situation.

    Here’s what I showed her.

    After a meeting that felt heavy, instead of replaying every detail, I asked her to write a few sentences about what she thought happened.

    Not the whole moment.

    Just her interpretation.

    Then I had her ask AI:

    “What’s another possible interpretation of this situation?”

    That’s it.

    No magic.

    No pretending AI “knows” the meeting better than she does.

    AI simply widened her lens.

    It offered alternatives she hadn’t considered:

    “Maybe the questions showed engagement, not doubt.”

    “Maybe the tension was about workload, not your leadership.”

    “Maybe the silence meant processing, not disagreement.”

    She looked at the screen and said, “I didn’t even think of that.”

    And that moment is the core of a Culture of Thinking.

    Not the right answer.

    Not the perfect insight.

    Just the willingness to look at your own thinking and stretch it a little.

    Blind spots aren’t signs of weakness.

    They’re signs that our assumptions are running ahead of us.

    AI helps you pause long enough to ask,

    “What else could be true?”

    If you’ve ever walked away from a meeting feeling uneasy but unsure why, this kind of thinking might give you the clarity you didn’t realize you were missing.

  • What AI Revealed About My Biggest Leadership Weak Spot

    What AI Revealed About My Biggest Leadership Weak Spot

    I saw this question reposted on a friend’s Instagram and decided to ask AI, since it knows me well:

    “If a competent CEO got to run your life in 2026, what is the first thing they would eliminate?”

    The answer wasn’t subtle. AI was quick to call out my chronic overcommitment.

    Not my ambition or creativity, just the part where I say yes to things that don’t move my life or work forward.

    A CEO would open my calendar, scan the clutter, and immediately notice the pattern that I’m a top performer doing work that doesn’t require my level of expertise… simply because I can.

    The Sneaky Part About Overcommitment

    It rarely looks like chaos. It looks like competence. Things like a quick review of a friend’s manuscript that turns into a redesign or a small favor that becomes a six-week long advisory council commitment.

    Helpful? Sure.

    Strategic? Not even a little.

    What Needs to Go

    So since I am the CEO of my life, here’s what I need to cut:

    – Automatic yeses that steal time from the work that matters.

    – Unpaid emotional labor that solves problems others could handle.

    – Tasks I absorb because someone else is moving slowly.

    – Volunteer brilliance that drains the energy needed for my long-term goals.

    Why This Matters

    Because 2026 isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing the right things.

    VR/AI curriculum.

    Leadership writing.

    Consulting.

    Growing the work that actually changes lives requires space. Space I keep giving away out of habit.

    And here’s the part that ties back to my work guiding others:

    I can’t coach people toward intentional, human-centered leadership while running my own life on overdrive. Clarity creates integrity and boundaries create authenticity.

    And if I am committed to being a leader, then modeling the hard choices gives others permission to do the same.

    So yes, my AI bestie called me out. But it was the nudge I needed.

    So in 2026, I’m firing the overwhelm. Not because I can’t handle it, but because I finally know I don’t have to.

  • When the Waiting Room Becomes an Echo Chamber

    When the Waiting Room Becomes an Echo Chamber

    This morning I find myself in a packed dealership service waiting room because apparently every single one of us had the same “brilliant” idea: get the car checked before Thanksgiving travel.

    I’m sitting in a living, breathing echo chamber.

    We all had the same plan, same timing, same logic.

    No one questioned the obvious. We all just… showed up. Ugh.

    And as I sit here watching the room fill beyond capacity, it has me thinking about work, and the fact that this happens in leadership far more often than we admit.

    We fall in love with alignment. We assume shared thinking means we’re on the right track. But when everyone is thinking the same way, no one is actually thinking. Consensus feels safe, familiar, efficient even. But more often than not, it’s a sign we’ve stopped asking the harder questions. It’s actually exhausting to sit in meetings with everyone just saying “yes” to whatever idea gets put out there.

    True leaders who move things forward aren’t the ones who blindly follow the pattern everyone else defaults to. They’re the ones who pause long enough to ask:

    “Is this actually the best move, or just the expected one?”

    Strategic divergence is underrated. It’s not rebellion for the sake of rebellion; it’s curiosity with a spine. It’s the awareness that if you only ever make the same choices as everyone else, you shouldn’t be surprised when you end up in the same waiting room at the same time, frustrated for the same reasons.

    A little intentional questioning goes a long way, in both car maintenance and in leadership.

    P.S. Safe travels to everyone hitting the road this week. And may your service appointment move faster than mine. 🤪

  • Trusting Reality: The Impact of AI-Generated Deception

    Trusting Reality: The Impact of AI-Generated Deception

    Plato never heard of a deepfake, but he understood the prison it could build for the human mind.

    I remember reading his Allegory of the Cave my first semester of community college. In the allegory, prisoners are chained to a wall, forced to watch shadows dance across the stone. They have never known anything else, so they believe the shadows are the world. To them, the flickering shapes are not illusions but fundamental truths.

    Does the darkness feel familiar? (Hint: It should…)

    In our time, we are all inhabitants of a new, digital cave. The shadows are no longer cast by firelight but by algorithms designed for engagement at any cost. New AI makes it scarily easy to create believable fakes. It can make fake videos of world leaders saying things they never said, or create totally computer-generated news anchors. It can also make videos of events that never happened, or copy the voices of your family and friends so perfectly it’s chilling.

    Our minds, wired over millennia to trust what our senses tell us, are being turned against us. For most of human history, the simple act of seeing was believing. Then, as photo manipulation became common, our collective skepticism adapted. The mindset shifted from “I’ll believe it if I see it” to a more cynical, “I’ll only believe it if there’s video.” We instinctively clung to the moving image and the human voice as a higher, more reliable bar for truth. But now, that final refuge of sensory trust has collapsed. With AI able to fabricate convincing video and clone voices with chilling precision, that instinct has become our greatest vulnerability. The puppeteers casting shadows on our walls are no longer human. They are automated, relentless, and they leave us all asking, “Now what can I possibly believe?”

    The Corrosion of “I’ll Believe It When I See It”

    When Plato’s prisoner was dragged from the cave into the sunlight, the truth was blindingly painful. For us, stepping into the light means navigating a media landscape so fractured that the very idea of certainty feels like a relic. The danger is not just being fooled by a single fake, but the slow, corrosive effect on our ability to trust anything at all.

    This is the new psychological tax of modern life: that quiet, persistent whisper of doubt. Is this real?

    • Deepfakes don’t just create lies; they breed distrust in the truth.
    • Synthetic images go viral, while the corrections are buried, leaving a permanent stain of doubt.
    • AI can replicate the voice of a trusted colleague or family member, turning our most intimate connections into potential scams.

    That hesitation, that constant, low-level cognitive friction, is the true damage. When we can no longer trust our own eyes and ears, the foundations of our reality begin to crumble.

    When Our Shared World Fractures

    This is more than a crisis of information; it’s a crisis of connection. Plato warned that people who mistake shadows for reality will fiercely defend their illusions, even against those trying to show them the light.

    Today, we see that happening in real-time. The consequences are deeply human:

    • Isolation: We stick to our own groups, where everyone shares the same opinions. This makes us feel validated, but it makes it easy to forget that the people who disagree with us are just as human as we are. We start seeing them as simple “enemies” instead of real people.
    • Erosion of Empathy: Social media sites are built to promote posts that get a big, angry reaction because that’s what gets the most clicks and attention. They don’t care about spreading calm or helpful understanding. This just makes everyone more divided and helps us forget that we’re arguing with real people, not just a username on a screen.
    • Learned Helplessness: With so many lies coming at you all at once, it’s exhausting. It feels easier to just disengage and stop paying attention, instead of doing the hard work of separating fact from fiction.

    This isn’t a distant, dystopian future. It is the world we inhabit now. And unlike Plato’s cave, there is no single, easy exit.

    What It Means to Find the Light Now

    Escaping this new cave doesn’t mean finding one ultimate “truth.” It means reclaiming the human capacity for critical thought, empathy, and discernment. It means choosing to be active participants in reality, not passive consumers of it.

    This requires a conscious, human-centered shift:

    • Question Your Emotions. The most powerful misinformation is designed to trigger an immediate, emotional response. If a post makes you angry, fearful, or self-righteous, pause. That feeling is a signal to scrutinize, not to share.
    • Invest in Human Connection. Rebuild trust in small, tangible ways. Have conversations with people you disagree with. Prioritize local, verifiable sources of information that are accountable to a real community.
    • Embrace Humility. The goal is not to be the person who knows everything, but to be the person who is willing to learn, to admit uncertainty, and to change their mind. Certainty is a trap; curiosity is a path forward.
    The Choice We All Must Make

    Plato’s story wasn’t just about shadows. It was really a warning: people often prefer a comforting lie to a hard truth. It’s easy to get lost in the “shadows,” especially when they’re designed to perfectly match our own opinions, hopes, and fears.

    But our ability to connect as human beings relies on us being brave enough to look away from the screens and toward each other. In this age of AI fakes, being able to see clearly isn’t just a skill. It’s a basic survival tool.