Your Leadership Voice Is at Risk. Your AI Comms Are Why.

Hey friends, I am Jill Griffin, and this is The Career Refresh. And today I want to talk to you about where I'm seeing a tool that could be used for good be totally overused and kind of create a disconnect both with our uh building of trust, our effective communication, and really taking a hit on our authenticity. And if you haven't guessed, it's the overuse of AI as a writing tool. So let's dig into what I'm talking about.

All right. When writing is too polished or perfect bullets, where there's no typos, the language sounds like it's coming from your high school English class, the heart of it starts to feel like it was cut out, right? We're not talking about proper literature, which is a completely different place of proper writing. We're talking about like they're this level of so polished, there's no soul.

And I know you've experienced it. You're scrolling through LinkedIn, you're getting an email or a newsletter, and you're like, yeah, this person didn't write this. You feel numb to it. You're, you don't like, you don't even know what to say to it because you're like, I don't know what to do with this.

And then if it's in human correspondence, meaning it's not a um an automated newsletter and it's like someone coming coming from your company or your a colleague and you're writing back and forth, you kind of also don't even really know what to say or where to go next because you're like, where's the human in this? We used to strive for polished, right? I kind of run a little dyslexic at times. I might have typos, you know, I'll write the way I speak, which informal uh corporate communications was not the way to do it, right?

So that skill that we built up was a strength, right? It was a strength to have really good, you know, oh, he's a really good writer or she's a really good writer or she's an effective communicator. That was really helpful. Or if a company was putting out copy either for their website or any of their promotional materials, again, it was a sign of strength to be that buttoned up.

And it it really showed the effort and almost the respect for the end reader. I'd also say that copywriters and editors were the gods of written communication. But over time, our conversation and correspondence became less and less polished. And one would say even more human, right?

And in many cases, even more authentic. Love it or hate it, we started writing almost in like shorthand, using emojis, SMF speak, bringing in a lot of slang and you know, good use of an urban dictionary and bringing it in and just kind of making it sound more real and more human, where our communication stopped sounding like the corporate prospectus or the bank website and started sounding more like relatable. And that was a really good thing. But now what I'm seeing is that we're sliding back into this super polished, but not because it was done by a skilled or thoughtful writer who's crafted it.

It's this comparison speak. It's not this, it's that. You think it's this, but it's really that. Like you can see it a mile away, the overuse of M-dashes.

And look, I love my an M-dash, but all of a sudden there's they're everywhere. And even if you're using them and you're writing yourself and not using AI, of course, now everybody is like, oh, if it's an M-dash, you know, she must be using AI. Perfectly formulated bullets, everything is in like threes and in symmetry and equal numbers. And maybe it was carefully written.

Maybe you really did tap into uh a copywriter to do it. But more often than not, I'm going to say it was the use of effective prompting, or maybe now not so effective prompting. The recipient of the communication doesn't always know who's doing the writing. Is this a person?

Is this one of our servant robot tools? This starts to create a trust problem. There's a low-grade suspicion. I read recently that distrust is now the default on everything, which just kind of makes my heart a little sad.

We are communicating more, but are we engaging, connecting, building relationships, leading with intention? Everything sounds the same. And if you're thinking about following up with the individual who wrote you that email, let's say, in person, or you're having a live conversation, you know, you're on video, the writer now you'll notice sounds completely different. Or worse, they don't necessarily remember what they wrote because they didn't write it.

MIT did a study on ChatGPT and your brain. And Chat GPT users had the lowest brain engagement and consistently underperformed at neural at neurolinguistics and behavioral letters. I mean, this is real, right? If you've used AI, and I know you have, to write something, you probably don't totally remember what you wrote.

You might you're gonna remember hopefully the whole theme of what it is, but you don't remember the nuances of what you wrote. What the MIT study found was that the overuse of Chat GPT undermined critical thinking skills. And I'll put the link to that study in the show notes if you want to read it. Because there's so little effort done into the written communication, the recipient of it is also gonna put the equal amount of effort into consuming it or engaging it.

Which brings me to the deeper problem that I'm seeing under all of this. Most leaders right now are adopting AI without first getting clear on what they're actually trying to accomplish, right? So this need, this urgency of we have to use more AI, we have to bring it into everything we're doing outside of written communication. Okay, fine.

But AI starts to fill this vacuum, and people are using it in lots of areas and it's shaping the output, it's setting direction. At some point, the AI becomes the writer, the thinker, and the human then starts to become the editor. But based on how AI works, it's someone else's vision. It's not your vision.

And that's where you start to have a clarity problem. When you know your why, your purpose, your personal mission, and I'm talking about the individual as a leader here, and then how they will impact the company and the team and their peers. When you know the reason behind what you're doing, and you start to use that because you know your reason and you know your purpose and you know your personal mission, that starts to be woven into the decisions that you make, including how you work and how you communicate.

And if you know what you're building, you know why it matters, you then know which tools to choose, the systems, and everything starts to fall into place because you're starting from that strategic center, that personal mission, that that why, as Simon Zenek would say. Even AI. So again, starting with that why and then deciding which tool to bring. Deloitte uh did a 2026 study that found that only 14% of organizations are effective at designing how humans and AI should work together.

But everyone's talking about it, but only 14% are effective. And those that do this are two and a half times more likely to see better financial results. They're twice as likely to provide meaningful work to their people. So the gap there isn't about the technology.

It's really then about the clarity of how we're going to use it. If we're deploying the technology first without actually thinking through, we're not just plugging the technology of AI into our process. We need to pause and have like a full systems reboot route and go about from a system thinking and thinking where are the best places to deploy AI so that AI is being used as a strategic thought partner to the human. And therefore, it is generating right the two time, two and a half times more likely financial results, and then also having uh people feeling more meaningful work.

Meaningful work is not coming from, you know, learning how to write better prompts, it's coming from knowing what meaningful work looks like to you. And meaningful work, again, is a really a personal choice. For some people, meaningful work might be I want to use my strengths and skills today. For other people, it might be about making a difference or connecting with others or being of service.

Like meaningful work is a very personal thing. So understanding that about the teams that you're overseeing and the people that you're working with is going to create a big difference in the impact of the output and the overall morale and happiness of your team. To get to a place where more people are feeling the impact of doing meaningful work, you need to understand what meaningful work means to them. Within your team, sure, your division, your division, your department, your company has a mission and a goal.

But understanding what is really going to motivate your team and your peers, are they coming from a place of making a difference, being of service, uh, making an impact, putting cool stuff out in the world because that they love the curiosity and the innovation, the creation behind it, understanding what meaningful work is to your team and then thinking about again, how are you integrating the AI into it versus starting with AI at the center and building the human bits around it.

It doesn't necessarily work. So, in order to do this, you really need to start with your why. Again, through the Simon Senex way, starting with your why and getting clear on your purpose. As Simon says, that's kind of funny, right?

Um, as Simon Senex says, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. So if you're a leader, understanding your why and the communication that you're putting out there and how you're approaching things and leading intentionally, that is gonna help your team understand why they're there and who they're following. It's also gonna help your end users and your end customers do the same thing. This requires a level of pause, of clarity, getting really clear on who you are and who you want to be in this moment.

And then the courage, right? To speak your opinion when everyone's like, oh, we need to do this, ah, you know, it's to address uncertainty. That's how you build trust. That's how you build authenticity, that's how you get a place where people are uh working better together, collaborating better, having that meaningful work, and increasing, you know, your overall financial results within your ability.

As leaders, we need to lead intentionally, and this is going to require clarity and the courage to speak your actual opinion, not from the AI bots. It's going to be needed to call out inequities, understanding what meaningful work looks like to your team. Is it using their strengths and their skills? Is it aligning to their values?

Is it being of service? You know, that intellectual curiosity, innovation, clarity, they want to be able to stretch and flex every day. What does meaningful work mean to them? And then how are you building your processes to really take the best of both human and AI and integrate it versus starting with how do we plug AI into the system?

That's how you build trust. And in this time of great uncertainty and continued baseline of distrust, that's what we need from leaders. So starting with your why, getting clear again as who you are as a leader, knowing your leadership identity and why you want to do the work that you do and coming back to that purpose, that needs to be the center. We need to put the heart and soul back into things.

I also recently read that Reed Hastings from um Netflix was talking about how humanities, that his prediction is that the studying of humanities is going to become really important in the next couple of years, especially because everything is so bots and robotized. Again, I use AI regularly in my work, but I think first, I get clear in what is it that I'm trying to say. And sure, maybe I need to lean on AI a little bit to optimize a headline or something to get it to perform better in our very algorithmic world.

Sure, but I'm not outsourcing my brain to AI. I wouldn't be working with people consistently and referrals if I was, because people don't want to talk to robots. They want to talk to humans. And if you want to also think through what your why is, what your purpose, what your leadership identity is, who you want to be as a leader in these moments.

And as I say, leader, you it's not about a title. You're a leader at all aspects of an organization. You choose to be a leader, it's how you show up. It's a lifestyle choice.

All right, friends, if this sounds like something you're curious about, understanding your why, your leadership identity, how do you lead with intention? How do you navigate the complexities of today's workplace? How do you deal with the team dynamics? How do you upskill your team so that they're not coming to you and then you're inadvertently being the bottleneck for anything?

Is this work that you want to talk about and actually integrate this into your career strategy so we can create what you want to do next? Reach out. I'd love to talk to you. Each month I open a small amount of spots to bring on new senior leaders to do this work.

And we also have a lot of fun together. So, friends, reach out. And as you think about this week, lead with intention, really think through clarity and always, always, always be kind. All right.

I'll see you soon.