When leaders delegate the critical thinking process to AI, they may produce polished text but lack the underlying knowledge. This creates anxiety and a "comprehension gap," as they struggle to answer follow-up questions or defend the position they've presented.
As AI makes communication more polished and uniform, leaders risk sounding inauthentic. Stanford's Matt Abrahams advises "signaling humanness" by allowing for imperfections like filler words or sharing personal thought processes to prove a human is behind the message.
Zapier's CEO discovered an unexpected benefit from AI voice-to-text. The tedious process of editing his own transcribed speech held a mirror to his communication habits, compelling him to think more clearly and speak more deliberately to produce cleaner initial transcripts.
To prevent a flood of low-effort AI content, organizations need clear etiquette. Zapier's CEO suggests rules like ensuring the author invests more effort than the reader and signaling AI's role (e.g., "quick query" vs. "I stand by this 100%"). This clarifies the weight and stage of an idea.
Stanford's Matt Abrahams warns that outsourcing difficult conversations like performance reviews to AI leads to "empathy atrophy." These high-emotion moments require personal investment to maintain genuine human connection and leadership credibility. AI can help prepare, but not execute.
When employees substitute generic AI-generated content for their own critical thinking, it lowers the overall quality of work. It is incumbent on leaders to identify this "AI slop," call it out, and push their teams to articulate what they actually think, thereby maintaining a high standard for originality.
AI can be imbued with different roles and perspectives (e.g., a skeptical board member) to simulate challenging conversations. This allows leaders to practice answering tough questions and pressure-test their arguments before a real meeting, without needing to memorize scripted answers.