It is not magic, but it can feel like it.

We were wrapping up the first day of a two-day offsite, and one of the leaders was almost giddy about what had happened in the room. This team had been living with disruption, misalignment and some hard-to-name tension for more than five years. They had tried to address it before. They knew there were things they weren’t talking about. And somehow, on this day, they finally did.

It was one of those days I love in my work. People were honest. They said things that had been sitting under the surface for a long time. They listened to each other differently. There was disagreement, grief, and emotion, but nobody ran away from it. By the end of the day, something had shifted. Hope was palpable.

After the day as we socialized, one of the attendees (a C-Suite leader) looked at me as if I had performed some sort of miracle. He said, "I was pretty skeptical about this whole process. But what happened blew me away." I think there may even have been a magical-unicorn reference.

Listen, after 30+ years in this business, I will take the compliment. :)

But I also pushed back.

Because I hadn’t performed a miracle. And I definitely hadn’t “fixed” this team.

What I had done was design the day carefully, in partnership with their internal team. I knew where we needed to go and thought hard about how we might get there. I asked questions that I hoped would get underneath the conversations they’d been having ineffectively for years. I paid attention to what was happening in the room and changed course when I needed to. Sometimes I pushed. Sometimes I waited. Sometimes I followed the thing that wasn’t on our agenda at all.

That’s my craft. I’ve spent a very long time learning it.

But the people in that room did the actual work.

They were willing to show up and tell the truth. They heard things that weren’t particularly comfortable to hear. They let themselves be affected by what someone else said. They stayed in it when it would have been much easier to retreat to the familiar stories they’d been telling themselves about each other.

I’ve been thinking about that day ever since, partly because of all the conversations we’re having right now about AI and what it can and can’t do.

I use AI. I find it incredibly useful.

But it couldn’t have done what happened in that room.Because what changed wasn’t the agenda.

What changed was what happened between the people.

And I wonder if we’re paying enough attention to that distinction.

So much of technology is designed to remove friction. Faster answers, smoother processes, fewer awkward exchanges. Most of the time, I’m all for it. Please remove every bit of friction you can from my expense reports and airline reservations.

But friction between people is different.

Sometimes the awkward conversation is the work. Often, repair is required. Sometimes having to explain yourself to another person matters most. Hearing something you don’t agree with, getting defensive and finding your way back, realizing the story you’ve been telling yourself about someone might be wrong—these aren’t inefficiencies we need to engineer out of the workplace.

They’re part of how we learn to be with one another.

This is connective labor: the often invisible work humans do to create and maintain the relationships that allow the other (real) work to happen.

I don’t have this idea completely figured out yet. But I have a hunch we’re going to need a lot more connective labor as AI becomes more capable, not less.

That team didn’t need a magical unicorn. They are brilliant senior leaders in a very difficult sector (healthcare) trying to come together to do the hardest things.

They needed a good design, a container held on their behalf, some questions worth answering, and the courage to show up for one another.

That last part is still ours.

Moe