Stanford’s Matt Abrahams and Zapier CEO Wade Foster discuss practical ways leaders can use AI to synthesize information, structure messages, and rehearse—but caution against outsourcing empathy, accountability, and understanding.
Use AI to summarize data, find themes, and structure ideas, but keep human judgment for interpretation and final decisions.
Treat AI as a challenger to your assumptions—use it to surface alternatives and test ideas rather than only confirm preconceptions.
Establish clear rules and etiquette for when AI can draft communication and when humans must own the message and its accountability.
Go Back 15 seconds Play Go Foward 15 seconds Share A conversation with Stanford's Matt Abrahams and Zapier CEO Wade Foster about using AI to communicate more effectively without losing your voice—or your humanity. Apple Podcasts Spotify RSS All episodes All episodes Details Transcript September 24, 2026 AI is rapidly changing how top leaders communicate with employees, customers, boards, and each other. In episode 2 of a special four-part series on how AI is changing leadership, we explore how executives can use AI to improve communication without outsourcing the thinking, judgment, and empathy that make it effective.
At the same time, it poses the risk of jeopardizing authenticity, hindering empathy. That becomes problematic because the speed at which you can generate AI output is just really, really high. My co-founder, Brian, has this line, "You can delegate the work, but you can't delegate the accountability." And so if I'm not reviewing the output, if I'm not paying attention to the quality of the work, that reflects back on me.
Weighing Efficiency with Efficacy Play Listen | Podcast loading... They also explain why leaders should be wary of letting AI write everything for them, how overreliance on AI can create a "comprehension gap," and why preserving a distinctive human voice may become even more important as communication becomes ubiquitous. Foster is the cofounder and CEO of Zapier, a software automation company.
Imagine a workplace where you spend less time attached to a keyboard, worrying about how to word an email , write a report, craft a LinkedIn post, polish a presentation deck, or sound professional enough in an office-wide memo. Instead, you stop hunching over a keyboard and start talking your way through a written corr
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