A post breaking down telltale AI writing patterns, using a leadership story about cognitive empathy as the example getting critiqued.
The story
Patterns that read AI:
– Stacked fragments for drama: “It was a Tuesday. Mid-afternoon.”
– Repeated three-beat lines: “Not agreeing with him. Not caving. Just understanding.”
– A run of clean lesson sentences after the story, which gives it a polished, sermon feel.
– Too many metaphors packed together: wall, backpack of rocks, muscle.
– The turn happens a little too neatly, so it reads more like a teaching example than a lived moment.
– The book mention feels dropped in, instead of flowing from the story.
“The meeting where I almost lost it changed how I lead.
It was Tuesday afternoon. My counterpart from another department spent twenty minutes picking apart a proposal my team had spent weeks on. I was cooking inside. My jaw hurt from clenching. Not my finest leadership moment.
Then I tried something that felt unnatural. For sixty seconds, I set my opinion aside and asked myself, “What is he worried about?”
Not to agree with him. Not to cave. To understand.
He was not attacking the work. He was scared his team would get blamed if the rollout flopped. His pushback was not about me.
So I asked, “If this goes sideways, what happens to your people?”
He paused. Exhaled. Then, for the first time in months, we had a real conversation.
My position did not change. My values stayed intact. But that one question knocked a hole in the wall between us.
Practicing empathy with someone I had been seeing as an adversary is not about *them*. It helps me think more clearly, feel lighter, and move through disagreement without carrying it into the rest of my day.
Resentment shows up in my sleep, my posture, and my next three meetings. Setting it down, even for sixty seconds, gives me information I do not get any other way.
Today’s adversary often becomes tomorrow’s collaborator. How I speak about them now shapes both futures.
I call this cognitive empathy: understanding witho
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