AI brings the science; Chiefs of Staff bring the art
The art of conversation isn’t lost yet.
A couple of weeks ago I read the excellent HBR article "How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025" and have been thinking about it ever since.
The increase in "personal" use cases (therapy, companionship, confidence-building) blew me away… even though I'll admit to recently having asked Claude if I should become vegan, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. The statistics were genuinely startling - over 40% of regular AI users now engage with generative systems for emotional support, life advice, or simply as a synthetic friend without judgment. This usage has tripled since 2023, with a particularly sharp rise among young professionals and those living alone.
I'll also admit that sometimes I feel anxious about how much and how quickly AI is changing how we live our lives, even as we use it to supercharge valiant efforts. The boundary between augmentation and replacement grows increasingly blurry. When we draft emails with AI, are we still the authors? When we solve problems with AI assistance, whose intelligence accomplished the task?
Later, though, I realised that we still have a safe space to be un-augmented humans, where chatbots should fear to tread.
Conversations.
There's simply no time for ChatGPT in a live conversation between two people (or three, or four). You can't pause a discussion while you frantically type on your laptop and ask it what you should say next. Human dialogue - with its natural pauses, subtle facial cues, and spontaneous pivots - remains resistant to AI intervention. Imagine the awkwardness of saying "hang on" mid-debate while you consult an AI for your next brilliant point. The moment would be irretrievably lost, the connection broken.
The physical presence (or even Zoom presence) of human conversation creates a sacred space where our authentic selves must show up. That slight tremor in someone's voice when discussing something important, the momentary hesitation before sharing a vulnerable truth - these subtle elements form part of human connection that no AI can yet replicate or enhance.
So, that kind of communication becomes more important than ever: active listening, empathising, influencing - these skills come from our bodies and brains. We need to keep working on those muscles. In a world where written communication increasingly bears the polished fingerprints of AI assistance, our ability to connect authentically in person becomes our most distinctly human capability. The executive who can read a room, sense unspoken concerns, and adjust their approach mid-conversation will always outperform the one who excels only with an AI co-pilot at their side.
The irony is that while AI systems excel at teaching us communication theory - explaining active listening techniques or parsing emotional intelligence concepts - they cannot help us in the critical moments when these skills are actually deployed. Like learning to swim by reading a book, something essential is missing.
There are few roles where those muscles are more important than that of a Chief of Staff. You don't want to end up in a conversation with a CEO and feel lost without AI. The relationship hinges on immediate understanding, rapid adaptation, and intuitive alignment that transcends what can be articulated explicitly. When a chief executive turns to their chief of staff with that particular look - part question, part directive - the response must be immediate and calibrated precisely to the moment. No prompt engineering can save you there.
The best Chiefs of Staff I've met have a supernatural ability to anticipate needs, read micro-expressions, and navigate complex interpersonal dynamics without the conversation explicitly acknowledging these undercurrents. These skills develop through presence and practice, through failures and recoveries, through the uncomfortable stretching of our emotional and social capabilities.
As AI increasingly handles our written communications, the conversational gap between those skilled in face-to-face interaction and those who aren't will likely widen dramatically. We may soon find ourselves in a world where written eloquence is democratised by technology, while verbal fluency and interpersonal intelligence become the true differentiators in professional advancement. This shift could fundamentally transform how organisations evaluate talent and build teams.
So, if you've ever felt there's room for any kind of improvement in how communicate with your boss, let's talk. (I've been there, and I can't even blame AI…).
The journey toward conversational mastery is lifelong, but the rewards—deeper connections, increased influence, and a distinctly human competitive advantage—have never been more valuable than in today's increasingly AI-augmented landscape.
