are our human skills becoming increasingly critical

what’s prompting my thinking

There is certainly no shortage of conversation about what AI can do.  What interests me more is what it can’t do, yet and might never.  Over the past year, I’ve found an increasing number of organisations having conversations about digital transformation, where to invest in AI capability and how technology may reshape the way work gets done. While the emerging technologies are fascinating, I wonder if it can become too much of a distraction. My attention is increasingly being drawn to what does all this mean for the role of the manager and leader.

For years, many leaders have been rewarded for their expertise, experience and ability to provide answers. If I’m honest, that probably shaped much of what I used to focus on during my own leadership career.  Yet we now have access to a growing number of tools that can generate ideas, analyse information and offer recommendations in a matter of seconds.  The more I reflect on this, the more I find myself asking a different question: If technology can increasingly provide answers, what becomes more important for leaders to provide?  

why it matters

While technology can improve efficiency, accelerate analysis and support decision-making.  It cannot create trust.  It cannot build psychological safety.  It cannot navigate the emotions that often accompany uncertainty, change or challenging decisions.  It cannot exercise judgement when competing priorities, values and perspectives collide.

These have always been, and remain, important leadership capabilities.  What feels different now is that they are becoming more visible than ever before.  As technology takes on more routine tasks and information becoming increasingly accessible, it is going to be the quality of the conversations leaders create, the trust they build and the judgement they exercise that will become the true performance differentiators. 

Perhaps this is why I’m increasing talking to organisations about developing their human capability.

a closing thought

For all the discussion about artificial intelligence, I find myself increasingly convinced the future of leadership won’t be about competing with technology. Perhaps it needs to be about becoming more intentional about the qualities that technology can never replicate and creating the conditions where people feel able to think, learn and perform at their best together.