Hey Friend!

Hope you had an absolutely wonderful long weekend and that you're staying cool!! Huge thank you to those of you who weighed in and responded to my experiments two weeks ago. It's so awesome and fulfilling to know that there are so many people out there who find value in the things I dream up!

Your responses also reminded me why this work matters so much right now. We are living in a moment where you can't get through a conversation without someone bringing up AI. And I get it. It's "new." It's powerful. And it's helping so many of us in really important ways. As someone who grew up going to libraries to find answers, it's INCREDIBLE to live in a world where I can get a mostly comprehensive answer to almost any question at lightning speed.

Yet, as useful as ChatGPT, Claude, or [insert your preferred tool here] can be, I also see and feel that people are still hungry for the things that chatbots cannot and can never give them.

AI can do and simulate many things. It can role-play a difficult conversation, reflect your words back to you, and generate content that sounds wise or true. It can make us super efficient.

What it cannot do is grow with you, know your history (beyond your chat history), or sit in the mess and complexity of a real moment with a real human being on the other side. There's a difference between practicing and troubleshooting a thing and actually doing the thing.

I also keep coming back to the fact that AI tools are trained on what already exists. They can synthesize, optimize, and reflect back the status quo with remarkable efficiency. But this is dangerous because so much of what exists isn't exactly great. In the professional realm, we have created, embraced, and normalized so many harmful paradigms and systems—structures and beliefs that exclude, shame, whitewash, and reward the wrong things for the wrong reasons, and tools that were relevant and applauded in Machiavellian, Tayloristic, or Welchian times but simply do not work today. That's what AI has learned from, so that's what AI is going to feed us.

So much of what we do through Reloveution and the Millennial Manager Collective is about disrupting the status quo. We're committed to building something different than what already exists. Because we deserve different. And different requires answers that AI tools cannot currently provide.

Today, I want to share three specific things that no AI tool, however sophisticated, can offer you, but that we can. Not because we're smarter than a chatbot, but because these things require real human beings.

Spoiler alert: Humans are our specialty (in a completely non-cannibalistic way)!

#1 - Feedback & Difficult Conversations

Can AI help? Of course! Claude can help you troubleshoot your language, think through how a conversation might land, and talk you off a ledge before you walk into an uncomfortable check-in with your direct report.

But AI cannot sit across from that direct report and tell them the truth with care. It cannot read the micro-expression that tells you to slow down. It cannot hold the silence after something hard is said. It cannot repair the relationship in real time if the conversation goes sideways. Feedback is not just information transfer, but a critical relational act, and the quality of the environment and your relationships determine whether the feedback is effective.

In the age of AI, the ability to give and receive feedback humanly, skillfully, and with integrity is not becoming less important. It is becoming a distinguishing and necessary leadership skill.

Agree? Join us for a public Feedback Lab on August 10. Learn more and register here.

#2 - Compassionate Accountability & Emotional Integrity

Can AI help? Of course! It can give you a script, remind you of best practices, and help you process your feelings before a hard conversation.

But compassionate accountability is a practice that requires you to manage your own nervous system while holding space for someone else's, to stay honest without being harmful, to care about outcomes and results without losing sight of the human in front of you.

Emotional integrity means your insides and your outsides match. That what you feel, what you say, and what you do are in alignment. AI has no insides. It cannot model that for you. It cannot practice it with you. And it cannot help you build the kind of culture in which other people feel safe enough to do it, too.

Having leaders who are skilled in these areas is more necessary than ever right now (partly because of AI).

Agree? This September, we're launching a 7-month Peer Learning Cohort built entirely around compassionate accountability and emotional integrity for people managers, team leaders, and executives. This is the longer, deeper version of this work, with coaching, implementation support, and a community of leaders doing it alongside you. Learn more and register here.

#3 - Community

Can AI keep you company at 11 pm when you're spiraling about a hard conversation you have to have tomorrow? Can it make you feel really good about yourself after a bad day? Can it tell you you're absolutely in the right when your boss gives you feedback that you don't agree with? Yes, of course. It's really good at that.

But your AI tool is not in relationship with you; it's responding to you, which is a really different thing. AI cannot celebrate your wins or sit with your losses in a way that fills you up and makes you believe it in your nervous system (even if it might feel that way). And it cannot offer the sense of relief you feel when you are in a room (virtual or physical) with other people who get what you're going through.

Leadership, management, and entrepreneurship can be lonely and isolating. And the antidote to that loneliness is not more content, more frameworks, or more late-night prompting sessions.

I truly, deeply believe the antidote is community. Real, sustained, human community where you are seen not just as a leader or changemaker, but as a person, and where the relationships you build outlast any single workshop or cohort.

Agree? This is what our annual Reloveution Retreat and the Millennial Manager Collective were built for. Maybe one or both are calling your name?!

To be clear...I am not (that) afraid of AI and am a willing participant in the AI economy. However, right now, I am leaning hard into the things that Artificial Intelligence cannot replace that I just happen to be really really really good at. Feedback, compassionate accountability, emotional integrity, and community are part of it.

You're invited to come learn and be with us in the Feedback Lab, the Compassionate Accountability Cohort, the Millennial Manager Collective, or the Reloveution Retreat! You're welcome!!

With love,
Marissa