It used to be that to stand out in the workplace, you had to be fast, polished, and pleasant. In the age of artificial intelligence, all of that is turned upside down. Now anyone can create something quickly, calmly and resourcefully.
For nearly 20 years, I’ve coached CEOs and senior executives on how to communicate, collaborate, and stand out as leaders. But over the past few years, I’ve started noticing something troubling. The very qualities that once made people successful at work are becoming easily automated. If everyone has access to the same intelligence, what actually makes someone memorable?
For my upcoming book, Use Your Brain, I interviewed CEOs, scientists, artists, parents, and students from five continents. Increasingly uncomfortable with my own use of AI, I sought to understand what separates those who use AI to sharpen and improve their thinking from those who succumb to it and lose perspective.
What I’ve discovered is that people who maintain autonomy and make their work memorable develop these counterintuitive habits.
1. Speed decreases when starting
It turns out that good critical thinkers don’t rush. When using AI tools, they employ what psychologist Smolna de Graaf calls a “thought sandwich”: think, AI, think. To create your own “Thought Sandwich”, take 5 minutes before the prompt and answer 3 key questions.
What do you believe about this? What problem is it actually solving? What are the negative outcomes?
The first forces you to establish your own perspective before the AI gives you one. Second, it prevents you from getting great answers to the wrong questions. And third, it makes us think about the risks and consequences that a sophisticated AI response might overlook.
Without these, you risk solving the wrong problems, accepting unquestioned assumptions, and mistaking a convincing answer for a good one.
Once you answer these questions, consider using AI to review your research and first drafts. You can also lead them to attack your arguments or poke holes in what you’ve written. However, you can also get an intuitive check from another human who knows the context in which you are working.
2. Not very polished
My coaching client, a recently promoted senior vice president at a large company, started having an AI assistant draft email responses.
A few months later, he received his annual review from his direct reports. He told me that one of his colleagues wrote to him that it was becoming harder to tell where he stood. Another said his words sounded “sophisticated” but didn’t take it as a compliment.
Polish used to be a sign of trustworthiness. The proliferation of AI tools can make their sophistication seem cheap or empty. But being unpolished doesn’t mean leaving your work with bad grammar or typos. It will look like this:
Start with an email or text message with details that only you will know. Instead of clearing your throat in small talk, indicate your stance on the subject in your first sentence. What’s one thing you’re not sure about?
This week, before you send your next important email, ask yourself, “Could someone else have written this?” If the answer is yes, look for a more specific method. Authenticity will resonate more than perfection.
3. They go looking for disagreements.
When everyone has access to the tools to test their ideas, we risk creating a workplace where assumptions are challenged and the wrong ideas sound great. That makes healthy disagreements in the workplace more important, not less.
People who stand out are those who actively challenge prevailing thinking, including their own.
Here’s how to look for disagreements in a constructive and helpful way.
Ask questions instead of giving a verdict. Start where you agree and work your way up to where you get stuck. Appoint designated skeptics to conferences to normalize dissenting opinions. Be the first to criticize your own work. When sharing a draft with a colleague, say, “Tell me the weakest part.”
These habits make disagreements feel less like personal attacks and more like a joint effort to come up with a better answer. Asking questions lowers defensiveness, finding common ground builds trust, and inviting criticism allows others to feel safer speaking up.
4. Protect independent judgment
When you ask executives who is most at risk of handing over their ideas to AI, they typically point to Gen Z or younger employees. Ironically, I think about the opposite in my coaching work. This is because the role of management has changed from doing work to reviewing it. AI makes the review process even easier, providing sophisticated summaries, recommendations, and decisions in seconds.
The danger is that leaders who spend their time just approving answers will have a hard time identifying bias in their team’s work. This gives you ostensibly A-level work and C-level understanding of the problem at hand.
The higher the position, the more severe the loss of independent judgment. To intentionally protect their thought processes, we recommend that leaders:
Every week, do one meaningful task from scratch. Before you present, explain your core logic out loud with AI assistance, without a screen or notes from someone else. Ask yourself the questions you typically ask your team. “Explain how you got there. What assumptions were you based on? What alternatives were rejected? What evidence would change your mind? What am I missing?” If you can’t answer these questions without looking at the AI-generated summary, you may be accepting a conclusion you don’t fully understand. Have your team members give a 90-second presentation to explain, defend, and remind themselves of their point of view.
5. Choose to have a live conversation
If the message involves emotion, conflict, disagreement, or requires a difficult decision, pick up the phone or hold an in-person meeting to have a real-time conversation. They don’t just show up to convey a message. Start with a question you don’t know the answer to at all, and ask without planning your response or rushing the bot.
Notice what isn’t being said, whether it’s a hesitation, a change in tone, or a concern that someone doesn’t want to express. Before you end the meeting, reiterate what’s most important to the other person so they feel heard.
It turns out that the conversations that people remember aren’t necessarily the ones where you said something great. They are the ones that made you feel understood by someone, challenged their ideas in a thoughtful way, and had the courage to say what needed to be said.
AI can help you craft the perfect message, but it can’t replace the trust you personally build in that moment.
Erica Dhawan is a leadership expert, keynote speaker, and author of the Wall Street Journal bestsellers Digital Body Language and Get Big Things Done. Her new book, Use Your Brain: Think Deeper in a World on Autopilot, will be released on January 12, 2027.
