Why Difficult Conversations Are Getting Harder in the Age of AI
Have you run an email you’re about to send through AI yet? Because you’ve almost certainly received one written by AI and if you noticed and felt put off by it, you’re not alone.
McKinsey estimates that we spend nearly a third of our working lives reading and responding to emails, so if we can cut some of that time down by having AI write that response for us it seems a no-brainer to do so. Particularly if AI can also circumvent any pesky typos and word the email in a way that avoids any miscommunication further down the line.
However, in using AI to formulate our emails for us we’re missing out on a massive opportunity for connection and relationship building. And in some cases we might even find that our AI worded, oh-so-professional email puts off a possible client and costs us money. Here’s why:
AI Hides Personality: there is a mantra in sales that humans buy from humans. What this means is that while we think we’re buying a product because we like the product, we’re actually more likely to buy it if we love the person behind it. While AI is getting better at mimicking human tone (and in some cases, mimicking the specific tone of an individual), it still wants to neaten and perfect things. And it is in those little imperfections - the typos or strange turns of phrase - that customers and colleagues get to see who we really are. They start to recognise our cadence, the way we formulate our emails or our tone of voice, and that familiarity creates comfort and connection.
Cognitive Dissonance. Have you ever received an email and for some reason that you can’t put your finger on it just feels… strange? In the old days that email was probably written by someone else (we can all spot an email that has been through the legal team!) and nowadays it was written by AI. As humans we spend our days constantly picking up and logging little clues given off by the people and world around us. We really don’t have to spend long with someone to start to get a feel for them and so when we receive an email that wasn’t written by them, we know it instantly.
Sometimes this isn’t a problem. A colleague might put an email through AI and ask it to be more concise or considered, and if you like that style the email will land well. In fact you might find yourself thinking they’re doing a great job or feeling warmer towards them. They will now have to run all their emails to you through AI to keep it up! However, if they AI tone doesn’t land for you it will feel jarring. You will wonder why this person is behaving strangely or what they have to hide. This is cognitive dissonance, our subconscious picking up something isn’t quite right although we don’t know why - and it creates disconnection.
Forgetting to be Human: We all want to save time at work but there is a gift in spending a few hours going back and forth over the exact wording you want in an email. When we’re really struggling to write something it’s because we know it’s important and we’re using that time to get our thoughts on the matter straight. We look at it from different points of view, think about how our words could be interpreted and in doing so, we start to develop more compassion and understanding for the person on the receiving end of the email.
While asking AI to formulate the wording of an email for you can be a time-hack, it also relieves you of the practice of having to work on a relationship with someone. It makes you a little bit less human. So while we at Lea_p have certainly asked AI to write some emails for us in the past and will continue to do in the future, we want to make sure that we use that time we’ve freed up to focus on being more human elsewhere in our work. Give it a try yourself and see what happens.
