Clear and precise communication accelerates leadership effectiveness, even before qualities like empathy, social intelligence, decisiveness, responsibility, strategic thinking, integrity, and motivational talent.

All these important qualities of a leader remain largely hidden from employees when communication is weak.

Those who write better lead better. Leaders who provide clear written instructions avoid misunderstandings, foster trust, and ensure tasks are completed efficiently. Only the written word is binding, has a lasting impact, and is – ideally – unambiguous.

How did George Washington lead the Continental Army across vast distances at many battlefields during the American Revolutionary War? Without telephone or radio, only through letters to his highest officers. This example highlights how clear written communication remains essential even today, where leaders must manage remote teams, complex projects, and global operations through precise digital communication.

Instructions and encouragement, praise and criticism have a more lasting impact in writing than when communicated orally. Above all, a leader provides guidance to their employees through precise, clear information. Providing written feedback on questions and requests demonstrates that a leader values their employees and is committed to treating them with respect.

Mastering written communication makes you a more efficient leader. Start improving by refining your emails, instructions, memos, and feedback to inspire and guide your team effectively. 

By the way: “Leading through Writing” is a focus of my “Better Writing” seminars. The feedback on my seminars is very positive – I have that in writing.

Alex D via Midjourney

Literary history would be poor without works dictated by the inner demons of intriguing authors. Some literary experts even claim that not a single noteworthy work of prose has ever been written by someone entirely sane.

One thing is certain, though: In the everyday poetry we encounter on social media, we are exposed to the complete lexicon of psychological deviations—and we rarely perceive it as enriching.

We don’t even need to talk about successful entrepreneurs in the automotive and aerospace industries or stammering real-estate-politics-celebrities on TV. Every one of us occasionally carries a slight, fleeting crack in the façade—triggered by anger, frustration, grief, or maybe a drink too many.

That passes. Unless, of course, we immortalize the moment in an impulsive post on X, Y, or Z.

In fact, it can be quite cathartic to write while angry, disappointed, or intoxicated—but only on paper or in an electronic document that doesn’t reach the entire world with the click of a button.

You don’t have to become a digital hermit to protect the dignity of others—and especially your own. Just follow the advice of Churchill: Write first, and perhaps send later. After all, unforgettable must not be mistaken for unforgettably embarrassing.

Sometimes the news leaves us speechless. Or we have a thought, but the right word stubbornly refuses to light up in our neurons. Or we imagine something that is simply unspeakable.

Thinking in words: For someone who makes a living from writing and teaching writing, that’s an almost impossible reflex to suppress. But of course, human ancestors thought long before language evolved. At first, probably like we imagine our pets think, or dolphins and wolves. And like the way we can’t even begin to imagine how octopuses think — but we know they do.

Thinking without words. We ponder where we left our phone in the apartment. We mentally rehearse the curve of a ski turn before carving it into the snow. We picture a right-angled triangle without ever forming the word “hypotenuse” in our brain. We catch a falling pencil without summoning the phrase “gravity is a curvature in the space-time continuum.”

Artificial intelligence based on generative large language models can also think without words. It performs this magic in the latent thinking space. Reasoning happens without each step being translated into language. This process unfolds in a purely mathematical realm, where words are vectors and thoughts are matrices. Only the finished thought — composed of knowledge and assumptions, much like in humans — is then transformed into language. Because it’s faster that way, and it requires far less computing power and energy.

But this has little to do with human wordless thinking. AI lacks consciousness, intention (though some might argue otherwise), and any physical experience of the world. That’s why building a model of the world is high on every AI developer’s to-do list.

One of the welcome side effects of the AI revolution is that it forces us to confront our own thinking. What scientists have been doing for decades now preoccupies us all. The strengths of our brains become more tangible with every weakness AI reveals. Much like neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, in books like “Awakenings,” uncovered the mysteries of the brain by observing and treating patients with neurological disorders.

Feeling uneasy about interacting with AI? Or perhaps a dark premonition of what might be coming next? You probably know that these kinds of “feelings” and “premonitions” arise from our brain’s statistical analysis of perceived patterns and the identification of anomalies. It’s our brain’s signal that it lacks sufficient information to interpret a situation with high confidence and make reliable predictions. That’s when opinion or belief often replaces knowledge in humans. In AI, we call it hallucination.

Alex D via Midjourney

At present, you can usually unmask the creator as artificial intelligence in most images and videos by counting the people’s fingers. It’s not certain whether AI truly struggles to depict fingers and toes accurately or if it’s a trick designed to give us a false sense of security. Either way, if images look too good to be true, they’re probably creations of non-organic neural networks.

Texts written by AI have been around for quite some time. They’re continually improving and, especially in marketing, are now hardly distinguishable from those composed by soulless product manager aspirants. The human rowers in the corporate galleys produce pitiful work compared with well-prompted LLMs.

Does a promotional text feel stale and formulaic to you? Then it’s probably by a human. By using so-called “humanizer” software, AI-generated texts can be spiced up with slight irregularities and linguistic quirks. That already tastes better than the output of fatalistic wetware copywriters. Such “humanized” texts are also harder for software intended to detect AI authors to spot.

How, then, can we identify AI-generated texts? What’s the equivalent of counting fingers? I propose the following method:

1. Is the text boring, formal, polished to a gaudy gleam? Then it could be from either a human or a machine—it makes no difference.

2. Is the text professional but contains subtle oddities? Then it might be from a worn-out copywriter or an excellent machine. That’s the future.

3. Do you find surprising twists, original sentence structures, and striking neologisms? Then it’s definitely by a human—or possibly by an AI that was trained by a human using extensive examples of their own style.

4. Is the text rife with hallucinations? In 2025, it’s almost certainly by a substance-loving human or the free version of what is otherwise a powerful AI.

5. Could a text like the one at hand be attributed to an AI? Not yet.

So what? Some human writers scratch away with fountain pens on paper. Others clatter on computer keyboards. Others dictate, and it’s transcribed later. And many already engage in a fruitful dialogue with a large language model to create interesting writing—just as numerous significant novels have come from the collaboration of a purposeful author and a capable editor.

Conclusion: Forget about counting fingers. If a text fulfills its purpose, it’s good—regardless of whether it was written by a human, a machine, or both.