I wrote a post on LinkedIn recently. It was a professional rant—strong opinions, direct, and lots of imperative statements.
Out of curiosity, I clicked the “Rewrite with AI” button.
I was curious how close it would land to the original meaning, if it would capture the directness of the original, and if it would work. Or would it turn it into a mushy soup of business platitudes?1
Here are the two versions. I’m interested in your take on them.
Matt’s Original
Leaders: are you with your team?
Do you know them and what they’re doing well enough that THEY would say you’re a positive force for them?
Or are you in Important Meetings with a lot of other Important People all the time? Does your team feel like they can’t get your attention to ask questions or get guidance on what the company needs them to be working on? Do you just swoop in and make a mess, then go back and tell the other Important People about how you really know your team?
Asking because I’ve had conversations with multiple people this week who don’t feel like their leaders have any clue what’s going on. And none of these leaders are new or inexperienced.
Leaders: there are busy times when you’re stuck in meetings. Communicate and prioritize your team when you can.
If you’re “stuck in meetings” and can’t prioritize your team for multiple weeks, admit you’re not with your team and that they’re not a priority. Sometimes it happens. But when it does, have the guts to admit it.
If your directions are undercutting the mission of your organization, and you can’t even get the names of the people that report to you right (YES, there’s a specific leader I have in mind that’s still getting names wrong after 6+ months of working with their team), you need help.
(Shameless plug: I can help. DM me. I’ll charge you for it, because there’s a LOT of value to you and your organization if you stop destroying productivity and morale. But the shameless plug is really not the point of this post.)
Leaders: your leadership depends on relationships. If your people don’t feel like you’re with them or for them, you’re going to find yourself without a team willing to follow you.
Be a positive force for your team. (If you just got all indignant and said “of course I’m a positive force for my team, I’m [your name here] and I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!”, check yourself! Flip side, if you thought about it for a minute, noticed some places you’re doing well and some places you could do better, you’re on the right track.)
How do you know you’re a positive force for your team?
You’ve got to be with them. Knowing what they’re dealing with. Understanding what’s slowing them down. Seeing the problems they’ve been telling you about and you’ve been brushing off.
Be with your team.
Rewritten by LinkedIn’s AI
Leaders, are you truly present with your team? Do they perceive you as a positive influence in their work lives? Or are you constantly engrossed in high-stakes meetings with other influential figures, leaving your team feeling neglected and unable to seek your guidance or address queries about the company’s objectives? Do you intermittently swoop in, disrupt operations, and then boast to other executives about your supposed familiarity with your team’s dynamics?
Recent discussions have revealed that many team members feel disconnected from their leaders, even when those leaders are seasoned professionals. During hectic meeting schedules, make a concerted effort to communicate with and prioritize your team whenever possible.
If circumstances dictate that you are consistently tied up in meetings for extended periods, acknowledge that you may not be as present for your team as needed. It’s essential to recognize when your directives are hindering the organization’s mission and when basic details, like team members’ names, elude you despite months of collaboration.
Your leadership effectiveness hinges on the quality of your relationships. If your team doesn’t perceive your support, you risk losing their loyalty and commitment.
To be a positive influence, immerse yourself in your team’s daily challenges, comprehend their obstacles, and address the issues they’ve raised but have gone unaddressed.
True leadership means being genuinely connected with your team.
Matt’s Commentary
LinkedIn’s AI certainly reduced the word count.
It also enhanced the vocabulary polysyllabically used longer words.
It dialed back the urgency of the original by talking about “risk” instead of cause-effect relationships.2
It also, interestingly, made the vocabulary much more passive. Instead of you-the-reader being told to do things, there’s a handwavy “someone probably should do something” quality about it.
The first sentence of the second paragraph got weird when it removed my first-person experience. Now it sounds more like it’s trying to turn a couple of personal experiences into “studies have shown”.3
The final sentences are a fascinating microcosm of the rewrite:
- Be with your team.
- True leadership means being genuinely connected with your team.
The original was sharp, imperative, 14 total letters in 4 words. It told the reader what to do.
The rewritten final sentence was vague, fluffy, ambiguous, feel-good trash.4
I’m happy to use various LLMs5 to improve my writing.6 But I’m responsible for what I write. I’m not going to post goop with long words that a computer might think makes me sound smart7 just because a computer generated it.8 I read LLM output before I use it, and I judge it every bit as strictly as I judge what I write.
In this case, the LLM failed miserably.
I think this is the problem with LinkedIn’s “Rewrite with AI” feature, as compared to other more interactive LLMs. With ChatGPT, I can ask for reviews of my own writing, or for rewrites in specific ways. LinkedIn gives me a single button9, and I can take it or leave it.
Write. And own what you write.
I want to hear your voice.
- Let me touch base with the team and circle back; I’ll shoot you an email when we can close the loop. [↩]
- I suppose stepping off a cliff comes with a “risk” of falling, but to say it that way is deceptive. [↩]
- Studies have shown that studies cause cancer in lab rats. [↩]
- The whole point of the original post was to move leaders from here (not “with their team” in the very specific ways I unpacked in the original post) to there (“with your team”). The rewritten final sentence is useless for that purpose. It’s got a lot of good words in it, and I don’t disagree with it. But I stand by my word choice: it’s absolute trash. [↩]
- I say LLM (Large Language Model) here because that’s more specific than “AI”. There are a lot of technologies under the umbrella of artificial intelligence that are not related to ChatGPT or “Rewrite with AI”. Does it matter? For most of the world, probably not! But here’s a reason to care, and yeah, it’s buried in a footnote, but that’s because it’s not the point of this post: LLMs essentially work by “predicting” what text belongs next in a sentence or paragraph. That means they’re picking the most likely word; that means they’re converging toward average. If you’re a poor writer, average might be an improvement. If you’re a good writer, consider whether you want your writing to be pulled down to average. [↩]
- And occasionally “vibe coding”, which is using an LLM to help write code faster. It’s simultaneously cool and frightening how fast I can write code in unfamiliar languages for unfamiliar platforms with a little bit of help from a friendly robot. [↩]
- I’d also suggest that there’s a danger in exposing yourself uncritically to this passive, goopy, big-words style. It’ll start to leak into your thinking, then your behavior. That’s the opposite of “smart”. [↩]
- I haven’t done the research on this, but I suspect the LinkedIn LLM has been trained on input from LinkedIn posts. There’s a certain “sound smart” tone that a lot of LinkedIn posts have—vague, big words, semi-passive. So I guess I’m not surprised that the rewrite mirrors that. (To be clear, lots of LinkedIn posts avoid the trap.) [↩]
- Search for “Far Side suck button”, and enjoy the genius of Gary Larson. [↩]
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