Putting the Human Back in Humanity

Somewhere along the way we decided every single thing needed to be automated, optimized, sequenced and scaled.

And look, I use AI. I like it. It’s a great force multiplier. It can draft, sort, summarize and save me an hour on a Tuesday.

But it can send the message. It can’t build the relationship. Those are two totally different jobs, and a whole lot of us have started confusing them.

Think about how this worked in the neighborhood. Your car’s making a weird noise, so you don’t Google “best mechanic near me” and trust whoever has the shiniest star rating. You call your buddy and he says, “Oh, that’s Joey. Go see Joey. Tell him I sent you.” Done. That one sentence carried more weight than a hundred reviews, because somebody put their own name on the line. Nobody sends a friend to a knucklehead.

That’s word of mouth. That’s vouching. Somebody saying “I’ve seen this person work, I’ve seen how they treat people when nobody’s watching, and I’d bet on them.” You can’t fake that and you can’t automate it. The whole thing runs on trust that was earned the slow way.

And so much of what’s out there now is the opposite. Inboxes stuffed with messages that open with a “personalized” line pulled from your profile. Somebody congratulating you on a work anniversary you didn’t know you had. Sequences, touches, cadences, “just bumping this to the top of your inbox.” I mean, come on. We all know. You know it when you get it, and you delete it in about two seconds.

Meanwhile the stuff that actually moves people is still the old stuff. Picking up the phone. Asking a real question and then shutting up long enough to hear the answer. Remembering that someone’s kid had a tournament last weekend and asking how it went.

That’s EQ. That’s empathy. And I’d argue it might be the most underrated skill in business right now. You can’t see it on a resume. It doesn’t show up in a keyword search. But you know exactly who has it, because after you talk to them you feel better than you did before. They listen. They read the room. They know when to push and when to just be a person. Every hiring manager I talk to says they want it, and then a lot of them write a job description that never mentions it once.

Same goes for the language we hide behind. Storytelling, authenticity, thought leadership, culture, passion. Great words that got beaten up so badly they barely mean anything anymore. Everybody’s “authentic” now, which is usually a sign they’re not. Real storytelling is just telling the truth about something that happened, in your own voice, without the polish. If it sounds like a brand wrote it, it probably did, and people can smell that from a mile away.

So what am I trying to do about it, and what would I love to see more of?

Call someone instead of sending the fifth email. Say a good word for someone who earned it, out loud, to somebody who can actually help them. Ask people how they’re doing and then care about the answer. Tell your real story, the messy parts included, instead of a cleaned-up version that sounds like everyone else’s. And when somebody vouches for you, treat that like the gift it is.

I’ve built my whole business on this. Finding people is easy. Getting the right ones to pick up the phone is the real work, and the only thing that gets them to pick up is that they trust the person on the other end. A database remembers names. A relationship answers calls.

Use the tools. Please. Just don’t let them do the one part that was always supposed to be yours.

At the end of the day, people don’t remember the slickest message they ever got. They remember how somebody made them feel.

Go be that somebody. Then go tell someone how great they are.

Talk Soon!!

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