I’ve been teaching strategic communication at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) and coaching executives for almost two decades. Recently, I’m consistently hit with one concern from students and executives alike: With AI taking over, what will be left for me?
It’s a fair question. When AI can complete many of our administrative tasks better and faster than we can, what will set us apart? My answer: the original, Old School AI, Authenticity and Influence. As technology seeps into every corner of our lives, the characteristics that define us as humans will become our competitive advantage.
Why Old School AI and Why Now?
Creating content is cheaper and easier than ever; LLMs can spew out a cohesive novel in a dozen prompts and your quarterly report in a fraction of that. But the nonstop stream of AI content comes at the cost of quality. When AI slop is everywhere, what matters is the human behind the novel or report. We want to know, are they real? Do they care? Are they trustworthy?
Think about it: We’re deep in the “uncanny valley” with AI agents and chatbots still lacking in humanness. That gap is where we humans find our foothold. The research on persuasion is consistent: people trust people.
AI can mimic caring. It can generate a tidy three-bullet summary or a polished memo in seconds. But it cannot show up in the room or on Zoom the way humans do. It cannot lean in and show empathy when a colleague seems uncertain or uncomfortable. It cannot quickly pivot when the conversation takes an unexpected turn. It cannot pick up on the meaning behind the words, sensing confusion, doubt, excitement, or fear.
The leaders we trust, the colleagues we rely on, and the speakers we remember all share a similar pattern. Their communication is improvisational, creating connection and meaning tailored to the audience’s needs in the moment. While sometimes flawed, it is undeniably real — and that authenticity and influence create trust.
Now is the time to enhance and hone these skills. Just like learning to play an instrument or swim the breaststroke, you can practice authenticity and influence and improve. The benefit: rising above technically accurate but emotionally distant.
Case in Point
One of my favorite examples of Old School AI that I teach in my classes and use in my new MasterClass Certificates course is from one of the 1992 presidential town hall debates. In response to a question about how the current economic situation affected each candidate, then-President George H.W. Bush came off as distant and robotic. In contrast, Bill Clinton moved closer to the audience member and asked a clarifying question. Then he connected emotionally by sharing a personal anecdote, and he ended with a strong call to action. Clinton’s authenticity won over the audience and, ultimately, the election.
What Clinton did in that moment was fundamentally human. He spoke authentically. He slowed down in order to connect and engage with his audience, sensing intuitively that facts and figures were less important than vulnerability and shared emotion.
Authenticity: Tune In and Show Up
As Clinton demonstrated, authenticity isn’t static or binary; rather, it’s fluid and in-the-moment — a way of acting, treating others, and connecting. I have studied, taught, and written about increasing your authenticity for years, and here’s what I’ve discovered: when you provide information that is tailored to your audience and pair it with an emotional hook and a strong call to action, people engage, pay attention, and respond.
The first step to demonstrating more authenticity in a conversation, meeting, or other exchange is to define a clear communication goal that aligns with your beliefs and values. Before you craft any content and commence an interaction, ask yourself, What do I want my audience to know-feel-do as a result of this exchange? Then craft a compelling, audience-centric message that supports your goal.
For instance, let’s say you’ve got a high-stakes meeting with your manager regarding a project that’s delayed due to supply chain issues. You could jump into an explanation of how a shipping issue in Malaysia has had a cascading effect that has resulted in a three-month delay to your biggest client. But instead of going into defense mode, you ask yourself what you want your supervisor to take away from your meeting. The answer: While the delay is unavoidable, she can be confident your team has a workable back-up plan. The needed outcome is for her to approve a transfer of equipment from another location.
By focusing on the desired result, you can keep her attention where it needs to be: on the solution, not the problem.
Now, your assignment: Before any high-stakes conversation (tough feedback, pitch, difficult one-on-one), pause for 30 seconds and ask yourself: What information do I want to convey? What emotion do I want to transmit? What specific action (physical, verbal, behavioral) can I request?
Influence: Use Structure to Move People to Action
As we saw with the Bush-Clinton example, the most successful communicators avoid simply piling up facts and itemizing details. Instead, they do one common thing: they put their ideas inside a structure their listeners can relate to and remember.
Our brains aren’t wired for lists (…as you already know if you’ve ever walked into a grocery store and forgotten the fourth thing on a five-item shopping list). Our brains are, however, wired for structure — for sequences, for stories, for messages with a beginning, middle and end. When you present ideas inside a clear structure, you increase what researchers call processing fluency: the ease with which your audience takes in, remembers, and acts on what you’ve said.
Structures and frameworks are powerful tools for presentations, pitches, speeches, and numerous other formal and informal occasions. My favorite is: What? So what? Now what? Not only is it easy to remember, it has a wide range of applications in both spontaneous and planned interactions. It also dovetails nicely with the question above, What do I want my audience to know-feel-do as a result of this exchange?
What? So what? Now what? helps you get to the point quickly and know your next step:
- What is the idea, the recommendation, or the headline?
- So what is why it matters to your audience, not only to you.
- Now what is the concrete next step?
That’s it. You can use it to introduce yourself in a meeting (“I’m Matt. I help people hone and develop their communication which allows them to further their ideas, passions and careers, and today, I want to share three ideas you can use this week”).
You can use it to pitch a project, give feedback, provide an update, fix a mistake, and much more. The structure forces you to lead with substance, anchor it in the benefit to your audience, and create movement. After all, influence doesn’t exist without others making some kind of internal or external shift.
Your Advantage Is the Part That’s You
The first wave of AI anxiety was about what it would replace. The more interesting question to me, though, is the one I keep raising with my students and people I coach: What will it reveal? The more AI becomes prevalent, the more you’ll need a way to stand out. Skills like empathy, credibility, and the ability to read the room — things AI cannot yet do with accuracy and facility — will immediately boost your value. You don’t need to out-AI the new AI. You need to be more of what only yobe: your authentic, influential self.
