By: Jennifer Giordano, with a little help from my AI co-writer (and zero shame about it)
I couldn’t help but wonder…
In a world where every high school student is handed a graphing calculator the moment they walk into pre-calc or AP Statistics — and nobody calls that cheating — why are grown professionals whispering about their AI usage like it’s a confession?
Let me set the scene.
I’m in a leadership workshop. Smart people. Seasoned people. The kind of people who’ve navigated mergers, managed culture shifts, and survived countless rounds of “let’s take this offline.” I ask, casually, “How many of you are using AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude in your daily work?”
Half the hands go up. Reluctantly. Like I’d just asked who forgot to refill the coffee pot.
Then I ask: “How many of you feel a little weird admitting it?”
Same hands. This time, faster.
And there it was — the quiet, collective shame of people working smarter and feeling guilty about it.
The Calculator Nobody Apologizes For
Here’s a question I love to ask: Would your boss ever pull you aside and say, “I need you to stop using Excel for that financial model. Do the math by hand.”?
Of course not. That would be absurd. Bordering on unhinged.
We don’t ask accountants to abandon spreadsheets. We don’t ask architects to draft without software. We don’t ask anyone to do any cognitive task without the best tools available — except, apparently, when it comes to writing.
Because using AI to help you draft that stakeholder email, sharpen that proposal, or structure that difficult conversation isn’t cheating. It’s called working smarter. And last time I checked, that’s what we hired you to do.
The Covey Conversation We Need to Have
Stephen Covey gave us a gift with his Time Management Matrix. Most of us know it. Most of us also spend the majority of our days stuck in Quadrant I — urgent and important, the fires — when the real leadership gold lives in Quadrant II: important but not urgent. That’s where strategy lives. Innovation. Team development. Vision. The work that moves the needle but never screams loudest for our attention.
And what’s quietly devouring our Quadrant II time? Writing. Emails. Updates. Summaries. Communications that need to sound just right but are consuming hours that could be spent thinking bigger.
According to McKinsey, employees spend an average of 28% of their workweek managing email alone — over 11 hours. For a leader, that’s 11 hours that could be spent coaching a team member, designing a strategy, or simply thinking.
AI gives you those hours back. When a 45-minute email draft becomes a 5-minute AI-assisted edit, you haven’t cut corners. You’ve made a deliberate choice to redirect your human energy toward the work only you can do.
The Mindset Shift: From Shame to Strategy
So where does the guilt come from?
We’ve long romanticized “doing it yourself” as a measure of worth. The blank page as a crucible. The struggle as proof of effort. But that mythology was never really about quality — it was about the appearance of labor.
Here’s the reframe I offer every leader I work with: the goal was never to write well. The goal was to communicate well. To connect, influence, align, inspire. If AI helps you do that more efficiently, it isn’t your ghostwriter. It’s your thinking partner.
A 2023 study from Harvard Business School found that workers using AI assistance completed tasks 25% faster with measurably higher quality output. They didn’t produce less — they produced more, and redirected the time they recovered toward higher-order thinking. That is not cheating. That is the entire point of a tool.
The New Definition of Cheating
If we’re going to talk about cheating at work, let’s talk about the real kind. Spending three hours on a communication that could have taken thirty minutes, just to prove you agonized over it. Letting Quadrant II rot because Quadrant I got all your best hours. Hiding the tools that make you better because you’re worried what someone might think.
That’s the waste. That’s the thing we should be whispering about.
The best leaders I see right now aren’t hiding their AI usage — they’re modeling it. They open meetings saying, “I drafted this with AI and then made it mine. Now I want your human brain on what it means and what we do next.” They’re giving their teams permission not just to use the tools, but to be proud of using them well.
AI isn’t shortcutting your brilliance. It’s finally creating enough runway for it.
So the next time someone asks if using AI is cheating, look them in the eye and say: “No. Refusing to use the best tools available while your best work goes undone — that’s the real cheat.”
Because the goal was never to suffer through the process.
The goal was always to do something meaningful with the result.
And if you’ve got an extra 11 hours a week to do that?
Darling, use them.
-Jenn
