Ai Emails Could Destroy Trust, Matching Exercise to Your Personality and Involuntary Team Building Could be Ineffective

Cognicent | 28 October, 2025 | Newsletter

Welcome to the October edition of our Insight Articles!

In this edition we dive into the unintended consequences of Ai emails at work, we explore how we can use what we know about our personality to customise our exercise regime for greater enjoyment, and we discuss how team building may actually prove ineffective if not truly a voluntary exercise. 

In todays day and age, over 75% of professionals use AI as part of their daily work. From editing messages to writing support and researching, AI has become commonplace. While it may make life easier, researchers out of the University of Florida studied 1,100 professionals to understand whether its use has any unintended consequences on communication between leaders and team members. Their findings might provide some valuable reflection for leaders wishing to rely on AI in their communications:

The researchers found that:

When low levels of AI were used by a leader, 17% of employees viewed their leader as insincere, however this stat skyrocketed to between 48%-60% when high levels of AI was used.

Professionalism also took a hit, with 5% of employees viewing their leaders messages as unprofessional with low AI use, but this increased dramatically to between 27-31% with heavy reliance.

This poses an important question to leaders about the context of the message they are sending. While informational or routine communications may benefit from AI support, those that are relationship-oriented appear to be better received with less technological intervention.

Consider:

Do you rely on the use of AI to craft your communications?

How about personal communications to your teams?

Article Reference:

Peter W. Cardon, Anthony W. Coman. Professionalism and Trustworthiness in AI-Assisted Workplace Writing: The Benefits and Drawbacks of Writing With AI. International Journal of Business Communication, 2025; DOI: 10.1177/23294884251350599

We all know that exercise is a critical part of remaining fit and healthy as well as supporting us to have the energy to perform in our personal and professional lives. However, less than 25% of people around the world actually hit recommended levels of physical exercise, and often motivation and enjoyment is part of the barrier. Different people are motivated by different things, and so a recent study decided to look at personality traits and whether you could use this to tailor your own exercise activities as a means for finding something you enjoy and are likely to stick with.

Researchers found:

People who score high on the trait of Extraversion (assertive individuals who thrive on social interactions) enjoyed high intensity exercise in group settings.

People who scored high for Neuroticism (tendency to experience greater levels of anxiety or moodiness) were found to prefer more private workouts. High intensity was fine, but mixing in short breaks aided their experience.

Those scoring high on conscientiousness (tendency to be organised and goal oriented) and Openness (those with creative minds that embrace new ideas) both engaged in exercise irrespective of their enjoyment of it.

No relationship was observed for those demonstrating high levels of Agreeableness (tendency for cooperative and considerate behaviour), however past literature has found this trait links to positive general experiences in sport.

Unsurprisingly, stress levels for all personality traits decreased when exercise routines were adopted, however the greatest drop came from those with the dominant trait of Neuroticism.

Consider:

Finding an exercise activity that you not only enjoy but can commit to can support us to have greater levels of energy to handle the things that life throws at us, both personally and professionally.

Have you considered your personality style when selecting an exercise routine?

Article Reference:

Flaminia Ronca, Benjamin Tari, Cian Xu, Paul W. Burgess. Personality traits can predict which exercise intensities we enjoy most, and the magnitude of stress reduction experienced following a training program. Frontiers in Psychology, 2025; 16 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1587472

If you’ve spent long enough in a workplace, you’ve likely had the experience of either formal or informal events designed to bring your team closer together. Whether it’s after work drinks or a formal team building day, it’s an experience that many share. Researchers out of the University of Sydney decided to understand whether these events were truly effective, after receiving feedback from past studies suggesting that many people despise these initiatives. Their findings were interesting:

The Investigation Found:

Some degree of openness and vulnerability is necessary for deep and effective connections with colleagues.

However, team building exercises that focused on sharing of, and intervening into personal attitudes and relationships between team members may be too intrusive.

When team building is mandatory, it can result in feelings of leaders being too nosy and controlling which has the opposite effect.

Recommendations were for team building to be targeted to specific relationships by identifying critical links in collaboration, and then developing those.

Consider:

What is your approach to team building?

Do we ever try and force relationship building with deep sharing when we might not be ready for it?

Article Reference:

Petr Matous, Julien Pollack, Jane Helm. Collecting experimental network data from interventions on critical links in workplace networks. Social Networks, 2021; 66: 72 DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2021.02.004

We hope that you have a safe, well and productive rest of your week.

– The Cognicent Team