​At a recent team meeting, our amazing Temporary Placements lead Katharine Ottaway mentioned that “AI Slop” had been announced as Macquarie Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-25/ai-slop-named-macquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year-2025/106047682

Words, images, music and video are being produced at unprecedented speed. Much of it is impressive. Much of it is also strangely hollow.

Later in the same meeting, our Marketing and Communications lead, Liarne Gollan, reflected on the success of our recent CEO recruitment campaign for the Barkly Regional Council – a very remote regional council, based in Tennant Creek, NT. This campaign attracted nearly 100 applications, an unusually high response for such a location.

At the centre of this campaign was a short video from Mayor Sid Vashist. There were no script and no polish – just a leader speaking openly about his region, his council and his community. The video outperformed almost everything else we’ve produced for our clients. Thousands of people watched it. Many engaged with it, and it resonated in a way that felt different.

Sid’s passion for his region, his council and his community, as well has his openness and authenticity, flows from the video. Sid’s video outperformed many others that we produce for our council clients. Here’s a link, if you haven’t seen it – and thousands of people did – I encourage you to check it out.

So why did this happen?

I don’t really know, but I suspect that in general, we’re seeing a lot of AI generated content and it’s permeating all facets of our lives in the form of things we read, music we hear and images and videos we see through our devices. An awful lot of it is the “Slop” that has become so ubiquitous, it’s been nominated as the word of the year. Human beings are remarkably sensitive to subtle cues: tone, intent, conviction, vulnerability. These signals are central to trust, persuasion and leadership.

I wonder if we’re finding some limits of what AI can and should be doing for us.

Clients who have worked with me often will have heard me opine that humans are infinitely complex and variable and are highly alert to subtlety in human engagement. I think that perhaps the AI generated information doesn’t “cut it” when exposed to the depth of human experience, especially where persuasion, influence and engagement are being considered.

This is why Sid’s video was so great, and so well received. It wasn’t optimised. It wasn’t manufactured. It was simply authentic. He’s so passionate, unscripted, and human, that he connects with us in a way that’s real and authentic, especially in a world where we are becoming alert to and suspicious of machine-generated content.

When I step back and reflect on our purpose at Leading Roles, this resonates deeply. I think it comes back to this idea of authenticity that we value so highly: the relationships between people, in the moment and over time. The subtleties of communication. The moments of meaning. Listening for and speaking the language of leadership. The reading of intent. The care for others that’s inherent in our values and how we work, and I’m sure there are a thousand other things.

Perhaps our rapid embrace of AI as a technological enabler will ultimately create a premium for authenticity. For leaders willing to show themselves. For organisations willing to communicate honestly. And for leadership that remains, at its core, human.