Spotting AI-written posts by their clipped rhythm, tidy takeaways, abstract jargon, and lived-in detail that isn’t actually lived in.
The story
Patterns that read AI:
– Same clipped rhythm over and over, with many short paragraphs landing the same way.
– Clean before-and-after setup: “Old me” does one thing, “new me” learns the lesson.
– A few abstract work words, like “structural,” “emotional intelligence,” and “agenda item,” where one concrete image would do more work.
– Nearly every paragraph ends with a tidy takeaway, which can feel polished in a machine-made way.
– The examples are broad and universal, but thin on lived detail.
It was a quarterly review. Numbers were down. Tension was high.
My top analyst, sharp and reliable, sat across from me and said, “I don’t feel like what I do matters here.”
Old me would’ve reached for performance data like it was a life raft. I would’ve pointed to her impact scores and steered us back to solutions.
Instead, I paused and said, “Tell me more.”
She did. For twelve minutes, she talked. I didn’t fix it, redirect it, or clean it up. I stayed with her in it.
By the end, nothing structural had changed. But the space between us had.
She’s still on my team. Now she’s mentoring two junior analysts. Last month she told me that conversation is why she stayed.
I didn’t solve anything that day. I made someone feel *seen.*
To me, that’s emotional intelligence. Not a leadership trick. It’s choosing to treat the person in front of you as more important than the slide deck.
Your team doesn’t need a perfect leader. They need a *present* one.
And this works on people who get under your skin too: the difficult client, the peer who undercut you, the family member you avoid at holidays.
Understanding someone isn’t agreeing with them. It’s setting your filter aside long enough to see what they see.
The payoff is less resentment, cleaner judgment, and ripple effects you won’t fully track. Kids, people on your team, peers – they watch how you handle conflict.
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