Twenty five years in this business, and I got a no this week that landed differently than any of the others.
In this line of work, no rarely means never. It usually means not yet, and I’ve had people circle back eight months later ready to sign. What threw me was what came two hours after a good, warm call: a message so polished it took a second pass before I noticed there was nothing true inside it.
I talk through the whole story on this week’s episode of the Magnetic Communication Podcast, “I Found All 7 AI Writing Tells In One Rejection Email”, including the exact wording of the email, read out loud, and the moment it clicked that a person hadn’t written a word of it. Here, I want to slow down and walk through exactly what gave it away, because once you see these seven signs, you can’t unsee them.
What Happened On The Call
He was fired up. Told me my workshops sounded fresh, motivating, exactly what his team needed right now. We agreed on next steps, a quote, a follow-up meeting the next day to walk through options.
Two hours later, an email showed up with all the right words and none of the right feeling behind them. Kind on the surface. Empty underneath.
I use AI in my own work constantly, which is exactly why I clocked it so fast. Once you know the shape of AI-generated writing, it stands out the way a stock photo stands out in a family album. Everyone’s smiling a little too evenly and nobody’s really looking at the camera.
Seven Signs The Words Aren’t Really Theirs
No rough edges anywhere. Real hesitation shows up in real writing, an awkward turn of phrase, a sentence that doesn’t quite land. A message with zero friction in it wasn’t drafted. It was generated.
Praise that fits anyone. “What you brought was excellent” is not a compliment, it’s a placeholder where a compliment should be. Specific praise names the specific thing.
Cushioning where a decision should be. “This really came down to a close, difficult decision” is six words trying to avoid one honest sentence. Say the thing.
Not a single named feeling. Guilty, relieved, rattled, anything. A message with no feeling in it was approved, not written.
It performs well and reads worse. Say it out loud. If it sounds like a caption written for LinkedIn instead of words meant for the one person reading them, you’ve found your answer.
A rhythm too even to be real. People trail off. We circle back to something we already said. AI keeps a steady, unbroken beat, and that evenness is the giveaway.
Wrapped too neatly. The most human rejection I’ve ever received opened with “I don’t really know how to say this.” That stumble is what a real person sounds like. A tidy bow around bad news usually isn’t one.
The Move That Undoes All Seven At Once
The fix isn’t a checklist. It’s one habit, built on the same idea behind the EQ Switch I teach inside every workshop.
Before you send anything with weight to it, stop and name what you’re feeling. Nervous. Guilty. Relieved. Whatever’s true. Then let a piece of that feeling show up in the message itself.
I call this Name What You Feel. AI can generate you a compliment in under five seconds. It cannot locate an emotion, because it doesn’t have one to locate. The second your own feeling lands on the page, no AI could have produced that message, because it’s yours.
Where I Land On All Of This
I’m not against AI. I lean on it as much as anyone reading this probably does. I’ve asked it to help me word an email I could’ve written myself in the time it took to open the app, which tells you something about human nature that has nothing to do with technology.
The same week this email showed up, I also caught two headlines back to back: one warning that AI might come with some kind of shelf life for humanity, the other suggesting we could have a cure for cancer within a decade and be living to a hundred. Confused, scared, excited, optimistic, and dreading it, all at once, with no single word for that combination. I teach people to regulate their emotions for a living, and my own brain still tried to have all five feelings simultaneously at 7am over green tea. So I did what I teach. Located the feeling, named it, and let that keep me in the present instead of spiraling five years ahead.
That’s the piece almost nobody’s training for right now. Every dollar going toward AI adoption is going toward tool fluency, and almost none of it toward the human judgment required to use these tools without losing the person on the other end of the message.
Where Wavelength Comes In
Beyond keynotes and workshops for teams at Google, RBC, A&W, York Regional Police, and UFCW union members, I also work as a relationship manager and facilitator with Wavelength, my sister company. Their trainers specialize in communication skills, particularly writing and presenting, and right now one of the most requested sessions is a webinar called Humanizing and Leveling Up AI Writing, built for teams who use AI daily and need what goes out the door to still sound like them.
If you’re frustrated with having to rewrite reports or sit through presentations that aren’t concise and effective, Wavelength’s Essential Business Writing and Executive Ready Writing courses are incredibly effective and engaging, built to sharpen how people write and present day to day.
If any part of that email sounded familiar, a message your own team sent recently that read a little too smooth, let’s talk about bringing one of these to your people. And if you want the exact email, word for word, plus the full story behind this post, listen to the episode here.
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