423: How AI Can Help Us Show Meaningful Appreciation (And Be More Human at Work)

0:00Mamie Kanfer Stewart: A few weeks ago, one of my team members handled me a launch plan. I hadn't asked for it, and honestly, I was planning to just wing the whole marketing side of this new program I'm launching. I've done it before, so I figured I generally knew what needed to get done. But instead, there it was. Social, email, podcast promo ads, all mapped out with actual due dates next to each one. And my first reaction was, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Thank you so much. And then after the meeting, I thought, is that all I've got to say? Welcome to The Modern Manager. I'm Amy Camper-Stewart, and every week I share tips and strategies to help you close the gap between knowing what good management looks like and actually doing it.

0:44While you're here, follow the show so you never miss an episode. Now, here's the thing that you should know about me. I have spent years studying what good management looks like, including giving appreciation. I know the research. I know the frameworks. I even coach other managers on how to do this well. And still in that moment with a genuinely great piece of work sitting right in front of me, my brain produced exactly one sentence. And it was a sentence that any manager could say about any piece of work. This is amazing. Thank you so much. And even though I said it with the utmost enthusiasm, it didn't include anything true or specific about what she'd actually done.

1:23Mamie Kanfer Stewart: So today I want to talk about something a little different than what I usually cover on the show. I want to talk about AI. Not AI as a productivity hack, not as a way to write your emails faster. I want to talk about AI as a tool for closing the gap between the manager you know how to be and the manager you actually are. Because knowing what good looks like and producing it in real time are two completely different things. And there's a real cost. My team member who built that launch plan, she doesn't walk away thinking, oh, Mimi really saw what I did. She walks away thinking, made me liked it, which is different and a much smaller thing.

2:00And you do that enough times on work that's just good enough, and your best people quietly recalibrate. They stop reaching beyond what was asked because reaching beyond just gets the same good job as everything else gets. You

2:14Mamie Kanfer Stewart: lose the exact behavior that you most wanted to encourage, and you lose it slowly enough that you never trace it back to the moment that it started. So here's what I actually did right after our meeting when I knew that I needed to do better. I went to Claude and I gave it the real situation, not help me write a thank you note. I just shared what actually happened. I told it, my team member built out a full launch plan across social, email, and the podcast with due dates, and I hadn't asked her to do it. I was honestly planning to wing that part myself. And I asked Claude to help me name specifically what she'd done and why it mattered, not just tell her that I liked it.

2:49Mamie Kanfer Stewart: And here's what it came back with. And I'm going to read it to you actual line by line because the specificity is the whole point. It said, I want to call out the launch plan you put together. I was honestly just going to wing the marketing side of this. And instead we have a real plan across social email and the podcast with actual due dates. You did that without me asking. That's exactly the kind of thing that makes a launch not fall apart. Now, one important note, I did not go off and then say this to her verbatim. I don't hand my team AI outputs and call it appreciation. That would be insincere.

3:22Mamie Kanfer Stewart: What I did do is take it and put it back into my own words, my own voice. And I told her that the next day when we met again, what the AI gave me wasn't the final product. It was the specificity that I couldn't locate in my own mind in real time. It named the contrast, what I was going to do versus what she did. And it named the consequence, why that specific behavior matters for a launch. And those are two things that good appreciation needs. And they're exactly the things that went missing when I was moving so fast. So think about the difference between these two moments. This is amazing. Thank you so much.

3:55Mamie Kanfer Stewart: Takes about two seconds to say and about two seconds to forget. The second version names a real contrast between what almost happened and what actually happened and connects her specific initiative to a specific reason that it matters. Now she's not walking away with a warm, vague feeling. She's walking away knowing exactly which behavior to repeat, and knowing that I actually registered what she did instead of just responding to the general shape of great work that happened. That's the gap that AI helped me close. Not the gap of knowing what appreciation should sound like, but about producing it unscripted in those 15 seconds where I actually have to have the conversation.

4:33Mamie Kanfer Stewart: Now, I want to be careful here because this is exactly the kind of idea that just gets flattened to just have AI write your feedback for you, and that is not at all what I'm describing. And it's not something I would stand behind. If you hand your team AI-generated language, they will feel that. People are shockingly good at detecting a message that came from AI. So what you're going to do is not outsource your appreciation. You're actually just using AI as a thinking partner. You're turning to it the same way that you might grab a colleague and say, can you help me find the words for this? Except a colleague isn't sitting there with you at 9 p.m.

5:07Mamie Kanfer Stewart: when you're prepping for tomorrow's one-on-one, or you're sitting at your desk about to go into a meeting with this person. You know that you owe someone real recognition and you can feel yourself about to default to that great job. AI is there for you. It can ask you what actually happened and hand you back a first draft of specificity, which you then translate into something that sounds like you because it has to sound like you or it doesn't work. So here's your exercise for this week. Pick one moment from this week where you felt that pull to say, great job or thank you so much. And then open whatever AI tool you use.

5:42Mamie Kanfer Stewart: And instead of asking it to write you an appreciation note, tell it what actually happened. What did the person do? What would you have done instead? Or what wouldn't have happened without them? Share why that matters to the project, to the team, to you, and let it hand you back some language that names the contrast and the reason. Then rewrite it in your own voice or say it out loud if you need to practice it before you say it to them. You're not asking AI to feel the appreciation for you. You're asking it to help you find the specific words for something you already feel, but can't always locate on your own.

6:14Mamie Kanfer Stewart: If you want some help using AI like this, I built a Claude skill and wrote a prompt that you can use in any AI because I want to be able to give meaningful appreciation every time, even if I don't know what I should be appreciating. So head on over to themodernmanager.com slash free resources to download my appreciation finder prompt. While you're there, you'll find some of my other free resources for managers. Thanks again for joining me. Until next time.