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ELE is a peer-powered community where people leaders don't just reframe challenges — they leave with decisions, next moves, and 30/60/90-day commitments to move real work forward.&nbsp;For 22 years, leaders from Fortune 1000 companies have brought their hardest problems here — and left sharper than they arrived.

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This is where people leaders get sharper — and their teams get smarter.ELE is a peer-powered network of people leaders who accelerate business results through shared intelligence and real-work collaboration. Learn more below about why ELE has been the trusted choice for leaders building high-performing teams for over 20 years.

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Find the peer conversation that moves your work forward.The right exchange builds better leaders, closes capability gaps, and cuts through what internal meetings can't.

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Get answers about how Executive Learning Exchange (ELE) works — peer-powered leadership development that fixes real work issues, reverses burnout, and accelerates business value. No programs. No vendors. In the flow of work.

Where people leaders share what's working, ask what's hard, and learn from peers navigating the same talent challenges right now. Search before you post. When referencing a resource, paste the key insight directly into your response with a link to the source.

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Insights on Talent Challenges | Captured Peer Conversations | ELE

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Executive Learning Exchange (ELE)

<div style="font-family: 'Calibri', 'Candara', 'Segoe UI', 'Optima', Arial, sans-serif; color: #333; line-height: 1.6; max-width: 800px; margin: auto; font-size: 1.1rem;">
<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 20px 0; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #f8f9fa; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"It's not going to be by developing courses. It's going to be those human-centered skills." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/patricia-ouzounian" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Patti Ouzounian</a></blockquote>
The real work in the room wasn't abstract. L&amp;D professionals and people leaders were trying to reframe a moment of genuine disruption — AI reshaping job markets, role definitions, and hiring expectations — into a concrete career opportunity they could act on before the window closed. The work was getting stuck in the same place for most people: they knew their value was shifting, but they didn't have a repeatable method for mapping what to protect, what to let go, and how to communicate what they bring now. That's what this live in-person working exchange was built to move forward.
Who was in the room:
Andrea Nunez (Discover/Capital One), serving as the Internal Client — anchoring the challenge in the real business pressure L&amp;D professionals face when AI disrupts both their work and their market position. Mike Hoyt (ELE), as the AI Strategist — guiding the technical workflow live, step by step. Patti Ouzounian (ELE), as the Real-World Skeptic — testing what would actually work, not just what sounded promising. Alongside them: a room of practitioners from L&amp;D, talent management, OD, and knowledge management — some in active transition, some navigating rapid internal scope expansion, some trying to build an internal business case for the first time.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 30px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Designing the CRIT Prompt Loop</h3>
Most people in the room had used AI for routine tasks. What the lab exposed was the gap between using AI and briefing it well.
The framework at the center of the working exchange was the CRIT Model — from Geoff Woods' The AI-Driven Leader — distributed as a physical card in the room. Four components: Context (give AI everything about your role, function, team, industry, company), Role (tell AI it's your career advisor and playbook builder), Interview (instruct AI to ask you exactly three clarifying questions before it builds anything), Task (specify the deliverables — a 30/60/90-day action plan, a stakeholder map, objection handling).
Mike Hoyt walked the room through each component live, then made the critical distinction: the only section most people needed to customize was Context. And context, it turned out, was where most people were underinvesting.

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"The more specific you are about your role and function, the more effective this playbook will be." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/mike-hoyt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mike Hoyt</a></blockquote>
The proof came from the tables. One participant — Natalie — had her actual job description on hand and pasted it directly into the prompt. Her playbook came back precise and usable on the first pass. Others who described their role in general terms got general output and had to restart. The room named it cleanly during share-out:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"If you're not heavy on context, you have to go back." — [Community Voice, table share-out]</blockquote>
The Interview step — the "I" in CRIT, and the step Mike noted most people skip — turned out to be where the real diagnostic work happened. AI's three follow-up questions didn't just fill gaps. They surfaced things participants hadn't consciously mapped. One practitioner shared two of the questions her AI generated. The second one stopped the room:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"Where are you currently spending time that feels necessary but you suspect is not actually where you create your highest value?" — [Community Voice, participant sharing AI-generated interview question]</blockquote>
That's not a course-building question. It's a career architecture question — and it came from the prompt, not the facilitators.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Safeguarding Highest-Value Energy</h3>
The 30/60/90-day playbooks that came out of the live exercise weren't all pointing in the same direction — and that was the signal.
An OD consultant in the room described what her playbook reframe actually looked like: "It's not how do I grow my consulting business — it's how do I design a business that protects and amplifies my highest value energy." The shift she named was from change management executor to organizational redesign architect in the era of AI. Bigger market position. Cleaner scope. Different conversation with clients.
Another participant described a role with significant legacy creep — doing operations work inside HR, manual processes that had accumulated over time. Her playbook gave her the 30/60/90 structure she needed to make the business case for what belongs where. Not a career development document. A stakeholder presentation with a path to executive sign-off.
A third came in planning to use the playbook for an external job search. She left thinking about how to use it to pitch her CHRO on an internal AI initiative — building the business case, anticipating objections, framing the ROI.
Same tool. Three completely different applications. All grounded in the same core move: stop describing what you do and start protecting what only you can do.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Beyond the Prompt: Building the Personal Agent</h3>
Patti Ouzounian closed the working exchange with a move most of the room hadn't considered yet.
After the previous Design Charrette in this series, she'd taken the playbook output and done something with it: she built a custom ChatGPT agent. Not a new chat. An agent — with persistent instructions, a defined role, and an automated task running in the background.

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"I have it scanning 35 to 40 job posting sites — it ranks positions according to the descriptors I put in." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/mike-hoyt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mike Hoyt</a></blockquote>
The agent monitors the market continuously, ranks opportunities against explicit priority descriptors, and surfaces alignment without manual searching. The setup, it turned out, didn't require a tutorial. Mike Hoyt framed it: "I didn't need a video. I just had to follow the instructions. It's like a recipe."
The room immediately surfaced the next question: what makes some agents work well and others not? Same answer as the playbook — precision of the brief. Vague instructions produce vague agents. Explicit descriptors, a clearly named role, and a specific task structure are what separate a useful agent from one that needs constant correction.
The prompt builds the playbook. The playbook briefs the agent. The agent does the scanning while you focus on the work only you can do.


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<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-bottom: 15px;">What to try next</h3>
<ol style="padding-left: 25px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">In the next 30 days — load your context and run the full CRIT prompt. Don't describe your role. Paste your actual job description, your team size, your industry, and your company context. Let AI ask its three questions. Answer them slowly — especially the ones you didn't expect. The playbook you get back is only as precise as what you put in.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">In the next 60 days — define the ROIs your business actually cares about and map your stakeholders. The base prompt doesn't automatically generate financial framing. Add an explicit instruction: "Factor in the objections I'm likely to receive and the ROI indicators my business cares about." Whether you're making an internal case or an external one, the business outcome language is what gets you in the room — and keeps you there.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">In the next 90 days — brief a personal agent on your highest-value descriptors. Take the playbook output and turn it into agent instructions. Be explicit about the type of work, organizations, and opportunities you want it to track. Start with one agent. Test it. A well-briefed agent running in the background frees you to focus on the diagnostic and design work that no prompt can do for you.</li>
</ol>
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Bring your work into the room
If this connects to real work you are trying to move forward — a career repositioning, a business case that keeps stalling, or a role that has accumulated more scope than it should — bring it into the ELE community. Share the challenge, compare signals with trusted peers, and leave with practical next moves you can use.
Submit My Challenge Now: <a style="color: #0056b3; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges">https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges</a>

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AI Practical Lab | Career Opportunity in a Time of Disruption

Future of Work

Digital &amp; AI

patricia.ouzounian

andrea.nunez

ai practical lab

Workforce Transformation

mike.hoyt

wise2026

CRIT Model

Personal Playbook

insights-wise-2026

AI Career Strategy

Career Repositioning

Custom AI Agents

Context-Driven Prompting

L&amp;D Professional Development

Legacy Role Creep

Highest-Value Energy

30-60-90 Day Action Plan

Stakeholder Influence

People Leaders in Transition

AI-Enabled Work

Alter Domus

<div style="font-family: 'Calibri', 'Candara', 'Segoe UI', 'Optima', Arial, sans-serif; color: #333; line-height: 1.6; max-width: 800px; margin: auto; font-size: 1.1rem;">
<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 20px 0; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #f8f9fa; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"We frame it to an audition, not an interview." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/marty-murrillo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marty Murrillo</a>, Precisely.</blockquote>
That line from Marty cracked the room open. The business problem on the table at our May 14 AI Practical Lab wasn't tools — it was identity. AI is shifting where talent professionals create value, and hiring managers are increasingly putting candidates in front of a screen and saying show me how you use AI to solve this. Waiting for a corporate framework to catch up isn't a strategy. Each leader has to actively rebrand themselves as someone who drives business impact in an AI-enabled workplace — before the market decides for them.
Who was in the room: Nicole DeFalco (Upsurge Advisors), serving as the Internal Client who grounded the situation in what the business actually wants; Marty Murrillo (Precisely), our AI Strategist and AI Learning Guru walking the room through live prompt-building; Patti Ouzounian (ELE), co-facilitating and naming the design lens; Dirk Tussing (ELE) anchoring the broader frame; plus senior talent leaders, L&amp;D heads, organizational effectiveness practitioners, and consultants from across the ELE community.
This was a hands-on lab — not a talk. Everyone built their own prompt in real time using the CRIT model (Context, Role, Interview, Task) from Geoff Woods' The AI-Driven Leader, fed it into their LLM of choice, and watched AI interview them before generating a personal playbook. The output was uncomfortable for several people in the room — and that turned out to be the point.
<img class=" wp-image-44940 aligncenter" src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Gemini_Generated_Image_CRIT-model.jpg" alt="Infographic of the CRIT model for AI leading, breaking down Context, Role, Interview, and Task with icons and descriptions for each step." width="835" height="455" />
The CRIT Model for AI-driven leadership, from Geoff Woods.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 30px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">The interview step is the lever — and the one most people skip</h3>
When Marty walked the group through CRIT, he kept coming back to the same diagnosis: most leaders don't get value from AI because they ask it to perform before they let it understand. Context first, then questions, then output.
The Interview step — telling the AI to ask you questions before producing anything — is what shifts AI from a glorified search engine into something closer to a thinking partner. Dirk named the shift out loud while watching it work in his own chat window:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"We can use ChatGPT like a glorified Google, or we can use this as a thought partner." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/dirk-tussing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dirk Tussing</a></blockquote>
The practical move for senior leaders isn't "use AI more." It's structural: stop treating AI as a generator and start treating it as a coach that surfaces your blind spots before you commit to an answer.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">AI exposes the gap between your title and your value</h3>
When members pushed CRIT into their own contexts, several got hit hard by what AI surfaced — not in a bad way, but in a "I can't unsee this" way. Cecilia Lillegard captured the room's quiet discomfort in the chat, and Nicole read it out:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"The discomfort I felt was how unprepared I was for the self-reflection of my impact." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/cecilia-lillegard" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cecilia Lillegard</a></blockquote>
David Scherer named the same thing after his AI pushed back on his framing:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"These questions about my career strengths are things I’ve never asked myself — and they’re exactly what I should be sharing in job interviews." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/david-scherer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">David Scherer</a></blockquote>
The takeaway for leaders isn't "use AI for self-reflection." It's harder than that: if your AI thought partner is asking sharper questions about your value than your manager or your last interview did, you have a positioning problem — and it's yours to solve, fast.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">The new prep is repeatable — and you do it before the interview</h3>
Marty's audition reframe wasn't a metaphor. It's already showing up in real hiring loops: here's the problem, share your screen, show me how you use AI in real time. If the last time you "practiced" was rehearsing answers to behavioral questions, you're behind.
DeBorah Lenchard surfaced the principle that should anchor all of this — and the way she landed it was that she was quoting her own AI output back to the group:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"It helped me see the strengths I should be amplifying — not in fancy L&amp;D words, but in language that explains what those strengths really mean." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/deborah-lenchard" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DeBorah Lenchard</a></blockquote>
That's the line that separates the leaders who'll come out ahead from the ones who'll get lapped. AI as the accelerant. Judgment, accountability, and business framing stay with you.


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<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-bottom: 15px;">What to try next</h3>
<ol style="padding-left: 25px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Build one CRIT-formatted prompt this week. Context, Role, Interview, Task — draft it in a Word doc, then paste into your LLM. Early evidence: the interview questions it asks should make you uncomfortable. If they don't, your Context block is too thin. Add more.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Run the same prompt across two LLMs and compare. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot will produce noticeably different outputs from identical input. Early evidence: one will already "know you" based on past use — that tells you which one to invest in deepening.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Turn your best prompt into a reusable agent or template. If you're rewriting the same context block more than twice, build it once as a custom GPT, an instructions file, or even a PDF you can drop into any chat. Early evidence: prep time for a strategic conversation drops from 45 minutes to under 10.</li>
</ol>

<hr style="border: 0; border-top: 1px solid #eee; margin: 40px 0;" />

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">A note on what's changing at ELE</h3>
Starting in July, the calendar shifts. Instead of pre-scheduled topics, ELE members will community-source the calendar by submitting real business problems they need solved. Submitters become the Internal Client. We recruit Strategists and Skeptics from the community. Sessions get recorded — and you walk away with portfolio-grade footage of yourself working a real problem with peers.
The May 14 lab was a preview of that model. The room voted with their attention.

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If any of these insights resonate—and you've got a top-of-mind talent business problem you'd like the ELE community to work on—send it our way.
Members can submit their challenge here: <a style="color: #0056b3; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges">Submit My Challenge Now</a>
Looking to turn these ideas into action? Access the <a style="color: #0056b3; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://community.ele.llc/t/pre-chat-post-chat-ai-disruption-career-opportunity/5862" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Idea Exchange Post-chat</a> for an updated Action Planning Worksheet.

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AI Practical Lab | Career Opportunity in a Time of Disruption

✨ AI Practical Lab: AI Disruption = Career Opportunity