AI can make you sound coherent, but a leader has conceptual intelligence!
AI has made it easier than ever to sound as if you know what you are talking about!
For busy leaders and subject matter experts the appeal is obvious – less time spent fighting with words and more time spent on getting things done.
But sounding coherent is radically different from being conceptually intelligent. Because if you look at the list of ideas, anyone with half a brain would have reduced the list by half!
The AI believability gap
So, here’s the catch. If leaders are constantly using AI to write and think for them, could AI just be making leaders worse.
It’s given rise to an AI believability gap. The gap between how good a message is and whether or not the audience believes that it truly came from a leader. A recent Forbes article “AI May Make Communication Easier, But Is It Weakening Our Leadership?” got us thinking, and a recent HBR study left us gobsmacked!
You will not believe this! The OMG moment revealed by HBR
Harvard Business Review research uncovered alarming results regarding leaders’ judgement (or lack of!) when it comes to using AI: “When the AI tool encouraged human evaluators to reject submissions that the expert panel approved, the humans largely went along with those recommendations, filtering out high-potential innovations. What’s more, they less were likely to override an incorrect recommendation from the AI when offered a narrative explanation. Instead of improving the evaluators’ judgement, the narrative explanation made it worse”
Why lead when you can follow an AI bot!
AI use is indeed on the rise again
Workplace AI adoption continues to grow, and writing is right at the heart of it. Gallup research reports that over half of employees use AI in the workplace with the most common uses of AI are writing and editing (51%), search or research (49%), and general assistance or problem-solving (39%).
Remember our IBA Talking Propeller Heads with Shazam founding CTO, Mike Karliner? It highlighted that the use of ChatGPT and LLMs makes good people smarter, and mediocre people worse.
AI can improve how we express an idea, it doesn’t mean it can improve the idea itself, but more importantly, have the idea in the first place!
I see the words, but what do they mean…
Effective leadership communication has never simply been about finding the right words. It is about judgement, empathy, conviction and understanding the audience.
We recently blogged “True thought leaders step up in a crowded market and stand by their valuable insight!” we explored what sets genuine thought leaders apart. They don’t simply repeat what everyone else is saying, they bring original perspectives, challenge conventional thinking and draw on their experience to offer insights that others might miss.
When trust is at an all-time low, it’s of all time importance
Credibility has never not been important, but the advent of AI has only increased its importance. Yes, content is easier to generate, but credibility has become so much harder to earn!
Audiences are more selective over who they trust, and human oversight and insights cannot be underthought, and certainly must not be an afterthought. People are all too aware of the faux expert!
AI can be a valuable partner throughout the content creation process, from brainstorming ideas and drafting copy to proofreading and fact-checking, but leaders must remain actively involved at every stage – or risk content reading like AI slop, and just more noise in an already crowded market.
Nothing erodes trust faster than a voice that sounds coherent but says very little!
Think like a human, talk like a human – true leaders are human!
One of AI’s greatest strengths can also become a weakness. AI-generated communication can be polished, grammatically perfect, and carefully structured.
It’s coherent, but as a recent Forbes article says: “A voice reveals a way of seeing—what you notice that others may overlook, the connections you make because of your particular breadth of experience and training, what you’ve learned from mistakes and successes, the unique questions you ask, what you believe needs to change, and what you’re willing to say that others may not.”
AI can help turn those thoughts into clearer and more compelling language. It can identify gaps, suggest alternative ways of framing an argument and make complex information easier to understand.
But there is a crucial distinction between using AI to communicate thinking and using AI to do the thinking.
Closing the AI believability gap, not falling into it!
The answer isn’t to just abandon AI, it’s to use it properly.
AI can make leadership communication clearer, sharper, and more efficient, and so it certainly has it’s uses. The challenge isn’t to stop using AI, but to use it without losing what makes a leadership voice unique – because the strongest leadership voice isn’t the one that sounds the most polished. It’s the one people believe, trust and remember.
And no AI prompt can do that on a real leader’s behalf.
Georgia Harris is PR Lead Themes at IBA International
