How AI is widening the “believability gap” for leaders – and how to fix it

Today, words are easier than ever to produce and harder to believe. As leaders race to deploy AI, they’re gaining efficiency but losing trust.

I call this the “believability gap”: the widening distance between how professional a leader sounds and how much people believe them.

With shifting geopolitical alliances, rapid economic uncertainty and AI that generates a convincing message in seconds, we look to our leaders for guidance. We want to believe them, and yet, something holds us back.

A dental assistant told me this story: “One of my patients, a billionaire, said to me, ‘When the dentist tells me I need something done and then leaves the room, I turn to you and ask why. Do you know why I ask you? You are believable. Do you know how rare that is? It’s the way you speak, your passion and concern for my health, the confidence in your voice.’”

We are increasingly questioning everything we hear. Consider this scenario: you receive an email from your senior leader that seems obviously written with AI. Do you believe them?

New research suggests that you don’t. A study published in the International Journal of Business Communication examined perceptions of low, medium, and high AI use in workplace writing. When supervisors heavily used AI for routine communication tasks, respondents began to question the sender’s confidence, sincerity and ability.

That study also showed biased perceptions of our own AI use: subordinates judged supervisors more harshly for using AI than they judged themselves. In other words: I can use it, but you can’t.

What builds believability? I recently convened an invitation-only roundtable of senior executives from major global organizations. I've spent 12 years teaching at Harvard Kennedy School, working with graduate students up to heads of state, and I believe this is a question everyone needs to answer.

At the roundtable, leaders made the same point: you need congruence. When what you say matches how you say it, people believe you. The gap between words and delivery, between message and action, is where you lose credibility.

They described what happens after a leader loses believability. Disbelief leaves a bad taste that lingers, and it causes compounding problems for an organization. Your employees disengage or quit. As one person put it: “You lose time, because now you have to go back and convince people you’re telling the truth.”

The group acknowledged what the research shows: we evaluate believability through our own filters. Our biases, assumptions and gut reactions all shape whether we trust someone, regardless of their truthfulness.

Understanding this doesn’t make it easier, but it’s essential context for leaders to understand, especially new leaders facing a mistrustful audience. So far in my literature review, I’ve seen how believability comes from three overlapping components: how you act, how you communicate and how you land.

Before you say a word, your reputation precedes you. Do you have clear knowledge and expertise? Do your actions match your words? You establish believability before you enter the room, and sometimes the most important action is the one you take in the moment.

Consider what one leader I know did during a town hall with thousands of employees. He knew what was on everyone’s mind: the impact of AI on jobs. It wasn’t on the agenda, but ten minutes in, he stopped the programme and said: let’s talk about this. He didn’t want to address it, but he did. That decision did more for his credibility than anything else. In an age of AI-generated messaging and over-prepared talking points, the most believable thing a leader can do is simply acknowledge what people are thinking.

Do you use words you actually believe? Do you deliver them with conviction, rather than reading dryly from a script? Within seconds, we are evaluating whether or not to believe you.

I heard a senior executive speak at an AI conference at MIT. Her remarks were polished and sounded technically accurate, but they were completely unconvincing. Her language was generic, and I could tell she was using prepared talking points. I thought: she didn’t write this. At lunch, someone else said he hadn’t believed her either, but his reason was completely different. “She kept flipping her hair,” he said. Once people stop believing you, they’ll find their own reasons to justify it. This introduces the third component of believability.

This is the most subjective of the three components, and the hardest to control. The moment you begin speaking, your audience is already forming an impression shaped by their biases, assumptions and prior experiences with you or your organization. Research shows this threat assessment happens in milliseconds.

I once heard a politician speak at the Harvard Kennedy School. My honest reaction was: I don’t like you. And yet, I believed what he was saying. This matters because leaders often spend all their energy on the message and almost none on understanding the audience receiving it. Who is in the room? What history do they carry with your organization? How you land is less about the mechanics of speaking and more about understanding how the audience perceives you.

AI is putting pressure on all three components in ways we’re only beginning to understand. When leaders use AI to write their messages, and deliver them from a script without conviction or accountability, they lose trust and credibility. In researching my book on AI and authentic leadership, I've seen this in action. As a result, I believe you can use AI in a way that brings out your authenticity instead of outsourcing your leadership.

The believability gap is widening and it will undermine not only leaders but their entire organization. If leaders want to effectively guide their organizations through this critical phase of human development, they should do everything in their power to not only earn trust and credibility, but also to embody it every time they communicate.