Role‑playing tough conversations with voice AI

Being prepared is one of those things that sounds straightforward until you actually look at a leader's calendar. Back-to-back meetings, a constant stream of reports from different teams, and negotiations that require you to know the full history of a relationship before you've even said hello.

The pressure to be across everything is massive. The time to actually get there rarely is.

In this episode, I sit down with Joseph Lyons, President of ELMO Software, to talk about how he uses AI in genuinely practical, day-to-day ways. From personalised daily briefs for his exec team to turning a six-hour strategy workshop into clear, actionable outputs, Joe shares how AI is reshaping the way he prepares, thinks, and leads.

We also get into how he uses AI to prepare for tough conversations, role play negotiations, and synthesise complex information across teams into something actually useful. If you’re curious about how AI can go beyond simple productivity hacks and genuinely improve the quality of your thinking, this episode is full of practical ideas you can apply straight away.

Joe and I discuss:

• The ELT productivity agent Joe's team built, and how it delivers a personalised daily brief to each exec member every morning via Slack
• Why Zoom's AI summary wasn't enough for a six-hour strategy workshop, and what Joe used instead
• How he prepares for negotiations by feeding customer history, contract details, and commercial positions into AI to map out the game theory before the conversation begins
• Using Claude Voice in the car to think through difficult performance conversations and build a talk track before arriving at the office
• Why giving AI as much context as possible upfront is the key to getting useful output
• How Joe is using AI to synthesise reports from five or six different functions into a single, coherent weekly view with clear recommendations

Key quotes

"It's increasingly becoming my assistant in pretty much everything that I'm doing."

"We were really conscious while we were in the meeting, like no one needing to take notes. We would actively talk to the AI and make sure we were clear on capturing actions."

Connect with Joe Lyons on LinkedIn and check out ELMO Software at elmosoftware.com.au.

Today's podcast was brought to you by ELMO Software. And they have a gift for you.

If you work in HR, this free five-minute assessment is worth your time. ELMO Software's AI Maturity Assessment benchmarks you across two dimensions: whether you have the right foundations in place, and whether AI is actually delivering results. The assessment was built from research with 1,200+ HR leaders across Australia and New Zealand, so you're benchmarking against people navigating the same landscape as you. You'll get a personalised report with where you sit against ANZ peers, your biggest opportunities, and concrete next steps. Basically: it tells you whether your AI investment is paying off (or going nowhere).

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Credits: Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler

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