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For years, email, texting, and messaging apps have ruled how we communicate. But one timeless human skilloften neglectedis quickly becoming a true difference-maker in the digital age. Active listening. Its both an art and a discipline, and its what separates average leaders from exceptional ones (while making them instantly likable in the process). The truth is, active listening is the foundation of effective communication and the heartbeat of strong relationships. Yet as technology consumes more of our attention, were losing touch with this skilland with it, a powerful competitive advantage in business. When you focus on your peopletheir growth, their needs, their challengesnone of it works without listening deeply first. Listen more than you talk After 25 years of coaching leaders, Ive learned that the most effective ones know when to stop talking and start listening. Few things elevate a conversation more than genuine attentiveness. When you truly listen, you show respect for people at every level, demonstrate curiosity, and practice humilitythree traits every great leader needs. I call this authentic listening. Its the ability to understand whats really happening on the other side of the conversationto sense the will of a group, help clarify it, and create alignment around it. Management thinker Peter Drucker said it best: The most important thing in communication is hearing what isnt said. Authentic listeners do exactly that. They listen intuitivelynot just for facts or responses, but for meaning. They lean into conversations with empathy, seeking to understand what matters most to the other person. This kind of listening is selfless, not self-centered. It always circles back to one powerful question: How can I help this person right now? The hard part of listening Good listening always requires humility. In my coaching sessions with executives, I make one thing clear from the start: If you want to grow as a leader, you have to embrace the humble responsibility of inviting feedbackand then have the courage and openness to truly listen to it. Thats a tall order for many leaders, especially the higher you climb up the corporate ranks. There are several approaches to successfully listening for feedback. For example: Be open. Listen without interruption, objections, or defensiveness. Be responsive. Listen without turning the tables. Ask questions for clarification. Be accountable. Seek to understand the effects and consequences of your behavior. Be self-aware. Be aware of your own emotional reactions, body language, and how youre coming across in the listening. Be quiet. Refrain from making or preparing to make a response, or trying to explain, defend, or fix. The last part of listening A lot of people think listening just means sitting quietly and absorbing what someone else is saying. But according to the authors of Radical Listening, the best listeners dont just nod alongthey ask great follow-up questions. For example: Questions that connect to the speaker. This shows youre paying attention to what was just said and engaged in the conversation. Open-ended questions. Instead of a simple yes or no, open-ended questions invite deeper insights. Questions to encourage more sharing. Great follow-up questions help people open up about their plans, emotions, and perspectives. At first, asking questions might feel like the opposite of listening. But research tells a different story. In fact, studies show that employees consistently link good listening with strong leadership, a connection that holds true across cultures and organizations worldwide. As you move forward, embrace listening by relating to others with more curiosity and intent. Treat it like a human experiment in your professional development journey, with listening as a key tool in your toolbox. Speaking of toolbox, heres a roadmap to develop your listening skills and master your interpersonal communication, with steps straight from my coaching sessions with top global clients. Like this article? Subscribe here for more related content and exclusive insights from executive coach Marcel Schwantes. Marcel Schwantes This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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The most obvious use case for generative AI in editorial operations is to write copy. When ChatGPT lit the fuse on the current AI boom, it was its ability to crank out hundreds of comprehensible words almost instantly, on virtually any topic, that captured our imaginations. Hundreds of “ChatGPT wrote this article” think pieces resulted, and college essays haven’t been the same since. Neither has the media. In October, a report from AI analytics firm Graphite revealed that AI is now producing more articles than humans. And it’s not all content farms cranking out AI slop: A recent study from the University of Maryland examined over 1,500 newspapers in the U.S. and found that AI-generated copy constitutes about 9% of their output, on average. Even major publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal appear to be publishing a minimal number of words that originated from a machine. I’ll come back to that, but the big takeaway from the study is that local newspapersoften thought to be the crucial foundation of free press, and still the most trusted arm of the mediaare the largest producers of AI writing. Boone Newsmedia, which operates newspapers and other publications in 91 communities in the southeast, is a heavy user of synthetic content, with 20.9% of its articles detected as being partially or entirely written with AI. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} Why local papers rely on AI Putting aside any default revulsion at AI content, this actually makes a lot of sense. Local news has been stripped down to the bone in recent years as reader attention has fragmented and advertising dollars have shrunk. A great deal of local papers have folded (more than 3,500 since 2005, according to Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University), and those that remain have adopted other means to survive. In smaller markets, like my New Jersey town, it’s not uncommon for the community paper to republish press releases from local businesses. The fact is, writers cost money, and writing takes time. AI, of course, radically alters that reality: for a $20 a month ChatGPT subscription, you now have a lightning-fast robot writer, ready to tackle any subject. Many unscrupulous people treat this ability as their own room full of monkeys with typewriters, cranking out articles just to attract eyeballsthe definition of AI slop. But there’s a difference between slop and AI-generated copy written to inform, with the proper context, and edited by a journalist with the proper expertise. In a local news context, the use case for AI writing that’s most often cited is the lengthy school board meeting that, if covered, would take a reporter several hours of listening to transcripts, synthesizing, and contextualizing just to cover what happened. With AI, those hours compress to minutes, freeing up the reporter to write more unique and valuable stories. More likely, of course, is that the reporter no longer exists, and an editor or even a sole proprietor simply publishes as many pieces as they can that serve the community. And while it’s not the ideal, I don’t see what’s wrong with that from a utilitarian perspective. If the copy informs, a human has done a quality check, and the audience is engaging with it, what does it matter whether or not it came from a machine? AI mistakes hit different That said, when mistakes happen with AI content, they can undermine a publication’s integrity like nothing else. This past summer, when the Chicago Sun-Times published a list of hallucinated book titles as a summer reading list, it caused a national backlash. That’s because AI errors are in a different categorysince AI lacks human judgment and experience, it makes mistakes a human never would. That’s the main reason using AI in copy is a risky business, but safeguards are possible. For starters, you can train editors to catch the mistakes that are unique to AI. Robust fact-checking is obvious, and using grounded tools like Google’s NotebookLM can greatly reduce the chance of hallucinations. Besides factual errors, though, AI writing has many telltale quirks (repeated sentence structures, dashes, “let’s delve . . .,” etc.). I call these “slop indicators,” and, while they’re not disastrous, their continued presence in copy is a subtle signal to readers that they should question what they’re reading. Editors should stamp them out. Which is not to say publications shouldn’t be transparent about the use of AI in their content. They absolutely should. In fact, I’d argue being as detailed as possible about the AI’s role at both the article level and in overall strategy is crucial in maintaining trust with an audience. Most editorial “scandals” over AI articles blew up because the copy was presented as human-written (think about Sports Illustrated‘s fake writers from two years ago). When the publication is upfront about the use of AI, such as ESPN’s write-ups of certain sports games, it’s increasingly a non-event. Which is why it’s confusing that some major publications seem to be publishing AI copy without disclosing its presence. The study claims that AI copy is showing up in some national outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. This appears to be a similar, if smaller scale, issue as the Sun-Times incident: Almost all of the instances were in opinion pieces from third parties, though it appears to be happening around 45% of the time. That suggests third parties are using AI in their writing process without telling the publication. In all likelihood, they’re not aware of the outlet’s AI policy, and their writing contracts may be ambiguous. owever, it’s not like the rest of the content was totally immune from AI writing; the study revealed it to be present 0.71% of the time. Getting ahead of AI problems All of this speaks to the point about transparency: be straight with your audience and your staff about what’s allowed, and you’ll save yourself headaches later. Of course, policies are only effective with enforcement. With AI text becoming more common and more sophisticated, having effective ways of detecting and dealing with it is a key pillar of maintaining integrity. And dealing with it doesn’t necessarily mean forbidding it. The reality is AI text is here, growing, and not going away. The truism about AI that’s often citedthat today is the worst it will ever begoes double for its writing ability, as that is at the core of what large language models do. Of course, you can bet there will be train wrecks over AI writing in the future, but they won’t be about who’s using AI to write. They’ll be about who’s doing it irresponsibly. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
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Being asked to apply for a promotion is often framed as an unqualified win: validation that your work is seen and your potential recognized. Yet for many high-achieving professionals, that invitation can spark as much ambivalence as excitement. Because the question isnt only Can I do this? Its also Do I want to live this way? Promotions can be career accelerators, but they also reconfigure your days, your priorities, and your sense of balance. The challenge is learning to evaluate the opportunity without being swept away by itto discern whether its truly aligned with this season of your life. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/acupofambition_logo.jpg","headline":"A Cup of Ambition","description":"A biweekly newsletter for high-achieving moms who value having a meaningful career and being an involved parent, by Jessica Wilen. To learn more visit acupofambition.substack.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/acupofambition.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} The recognition feels gooduntil the logistics set in Theres an undeniable thrill in being seen. Someone has connected the dots between your competence and your potential. A promotion can expand your reach and amplify your impact. But recognition isnt the same as readiness. The women I coach rarely question whether they can do the job; they question whether they can do it well while maintaining the life theyve intentionally built. Before saying yes, imagine your typical Tuesday six months from now. What fills your calendar? Whats energizingand whats draining? If the answer feels expansive, thats information. If it feels heavy, thats information, too. Beware the just for practice mindset Many people apply with low expectations, telling themselves theyre just interviewing for practice. But interview processes are designed to entice youthey make you picture yourself in the role and attach to the possibility. Thats not a reason to opt out, but its a reason to stay clear-headed. Know what success looks like before you begin, so youre deciding from intention, not momentum. Ask two grounding questions When youre stuck between ambition and hesitation, two questions can clarify your thinking: Can I live with the outcome if I dont apply and dislike who gets the job?If that thought bothers you, it may signal that you care deeply about the work or the direction of your organization. What looks like ambivalence might actually be conviction. Can I live with the outcome if I do apply and dont get it?If rejection would shake your sense of worth, pause and make sure you have the support to weather it. If you can answer yes to both, youre operating from clarity rather than fear. Readiness vs. willingness When someone says, Youd be great for this, theyre recognizing your readiness. But willingnessthe energy and capacity to take it onis a separate question. You may have every credential yet still feel an internal no. Maybe your kids need you differently right now, or youve finally found equilibrium after years of intensity. Thats not a lack of driveits discernment. Sustainable growth depends on timing. The real cost of up Leadership often brings influencebut also more meetings, politics, and distance from the work you love most. One client put it bluntly: I thought a promotion would mean more freedom. It meant more meetings about other peoples freedom. If the day-to-day realities of the new role sound energizing, thats your green light. If they sound exhausting, its okay to hit pause. Ambition doesnt have to mean saying yes to everything. Build the infrastructure for success If you move forward, do it deliberately. A bigger job requires a sturdier foundationat work and at home. Clarify what support youll need, what boundaries will sustain you, and what you can delegate. Thriving in a higher role isnt about doing more alone; its about designing systems that help you hold more together. Decideand own it If you say yes, treat the process as a two-way interview. Ask about resources, expectations, and what success actually looks like. Enter the role with curiosity and flexibility, not perfectionism. If you say no, do it with confidence. Try something like: Im honored to be considered. Right now, Im focused on deepening my impact where I am and want to be intentional about my next step. Thats not avoidanceits leadership. The paradox of promotion Promotions are both validating and destabilizing. They can expand your influenceor stretch you too thin. The goal isnt to make the right choice, but an honest one. When someone taps you on the shoulder and says, You should apply, take the compliment. Then take a breath. Listen to both voices inside youthe one that craves growth and the one that craves peace. True wisdom lives in the space between them. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/acupofambition_logo.jpg","headline":"A Cup of Ambition","description":"A biweekly newsletter for high-achieving moms who value having a meaningful career and being an involved parent, by Jessica Wilen. To learn more visit acupofambition.substack.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/acupofambition.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
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