Mark Murphy / Leadership IQ Blog

Excerpt from The Leader As Coach

How to Get AI to Write Like a Human

H

ow do you actually get AI to write like a human? It's the question more managers and executives are asking themselves as AI tools take over more of their daily writing — and as readers get faster and faster at spotting the machine.

Last month, Leadership IQ launched a free AI writing detector at LeadershipIQ.com, and people immediately started pasting in their own work. Emails to their bosses. Performance reviews. Policy memos. Cold outreach. LinkedIn drafts. The kind of writing that fills a normal workweek.

The submissions added up to 27,645 sentences of real workplace writing, with each one scored as either AI-generated, human-written, or somewhere in between. We then went back and analyzed the patterns. What separates the writing that reads as authentically human from the writing that gets quietly flagged as AI? The answer is not what most leaders assume.

Tool: Does My Writing Sound Like AI?

Test If Your Writing Sounds Like AI Wrote It

HR Leadership and the Role of Human Resources in Developing Organizational Leaders

Only 35% of HR directors trust their managers to handle difficult employees without HR supervision. That startling statistic from Leadership IQ research reveals more than just a management skills crisis—it exposes a fundamental flaw in how organizations approach leadership development. When HR leaders can't trust the very managers they've helped select, train, and promote, something's broken in the leadership pipeline.

What Is Effective Leadership? Defining It, Measuring It, and Building It

Only 20.4% of employees believe their leader can distinguish between high and low performers. That's not a minor management hiccup — it's a fundamental breakdown in what we consider effective leadership. Leadership IQ research reveals that when leaders can't tell their best from their worst employees, engagement drops by 35% compared to organizations where leaders excel at performance differentiation.

Leadership Development: The Complete Overview of What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Works

Only 19% of leaders are adept at reducing employee burnout. Just 26% have mastered developing middle performers into high performers. And a mere 28% are skilled at managing hybrid teams. These aren't random performance gaps — they're the predictable result of leadership development programs that don't actually develop leaders.

Leadership Speakers: How to Find the Right One for Your Organization or Event

67% of presenters refuse to change course mid-presentation, even when their audience is clearly disengaged. That statistic reveals a fundamental truth about most speakers: they're more committed to their prepared content than to their audience's actual needs. When you're hiring a leadership speaker for your organization or event, this distinction becomes critical.

Essential Business Skills for Leaders and Managers: What You Need Beyond Technical Expertise

Leadership IQ research found that only 19% of leaders are adept at reducing employee burnout, and just 26% have mastered developing middle performers into high performers. These aren't technical competency gaps — they're business skill deficiencies that are costing organizations their best talent and their competitive edge.

Leadership Communication: Skills, Strategies, and Why Communication Is Every Leader's Core Competency

More than a million people have taken communication style assessments, and here's what the data reveals: nearly 25% of senior leaders communicate in ways that completely alienate the other 75% of their teams. They're not bad leaders or incompetent executives. They're simply unaware that effective leadership communication isn't about perfecting your own style — it's about adapting to everyone else's.