How AI Is Changing the Expectations of Leaders

How is leadership evolving in the age of AI—and what are the expectations driving the transformation? 

This question sat at the heart of both sessions of our recent webinar, Recalibrating Leadership in the Age of AI-Human Collaboration. Demands are rising while certainty is shrinking, and artificial intelligence is accelerating everything in between. 

As one panelist put it plainly, “There is no such thing as business as usual anymore.” — Simone Robinson, Director, First Ascent Group 

Today, leadership is no longer about navigating periodic change. It is about operating inside continuous transformation while keeping people grounded, productive and psychologically safe. 

From Stability to Perpetual Motion 

In the past, leadership expectations were often anchored in predictability. Executives set direction, optimized efficiency and managed within relatively stable systems. It was a time when five-year plans actually lasted five years. AI has disrupted that foundation. 

Leaders today are navigating: 

• Rapid technological adoption with uneven understanding 
• Hybrid and remote work as a norm 
• Five generations with differing expectations 
• Constant market, social and economic volatility 

As Raymond Thomas, Co-founder at Enible, described: leadership now exists in “fast and furious” conditions, where the pace itself becomes destabilizing. 

The result? Leaders are expected to respond more quickly, readily adapt their style and remain steady, all at once. This growing demand is often described as leadership agility, and it’s not as abstract as it may sound. It comes into focus through clear shifts reflected in our panelists’ insights, each revealing how leadership is being reshaped today. 

Three Leadership Transitions Defining the AI Era 

1. The Move from Command-and-Control to Sense-Making

The transition away from command-and-control isn’t just about structure. It’s a fundamental change in what leaders actually do. Leadership is no longer about having the best answers. It’s about sense-making: interpreting complexity, holding ambiguity and guiding meaning across human and machine contributions. 

As Simone Robinson explained it, “AI increases capability, but human judgment provides the context, ethics and accountability.” While technology can amplify the speed and scale with which organizations operate, executives and managers must clarify how those capacities fit into organizational values and where human insights remain essential. 

Leaders are increasingly responsible for what Simone called the “human-AI collaboration orchestra,” creating a harmonious system that empowers both people and machine intelligence to combine to create meaningful results. 

2. Experimentation as an Expectation 

Cody Pfeiffer, Talent Development, Olsson, reframed modern leadership as the ability to “have clarity of purpose, but flexibility in their tactics.” 

Rather than executing fixed plans, leaders will be called to test and iterate, adjust based on feedback and normalize not having all the answers—a set of behaviors increasingly recognized as an industry standard. 

Cody shared an example from Olsson. During their transition to managing dispersed teams, people leaders explored new ways to optimize group dynamics. “The best leaders found ways to build trusting relationships with their team members. They experimented with different things with their team meetings.” Examples included holding retreats in person, testing different cadences and formats for meetings and introducing relational components for team-building.  

By creating an environment where experimentation is modeled from the top down, executives and managers show employees that trying, failing and learning together is not just allowed—it’s expected.  

3. Speed Is Not Necessarily an Advantage 

A surprising insight from both sessions was that while AI accelerates work, effective leadership may require slowing down. K Krish, Director, MARG Business Transformation, introduced this theme in explaining that the leaders who are struggling most are commonly those “substituting speed for strategy.” 

From a neuroscience and consciousness perspective, Annie L. Browning, co-owner Emergenetics International, added to this sentiment, highlighting that overwhelm narrows perception. When leaders feel pressured to react constantly, their tolerance for uncertainty drops, and so does decision quality. 

Instead, leaders must cultivate what she called future time perception: the ability to imagine and sense potential futures even when the path forward is unclear. 

“When leaders can perceive a future,” Annie noted, “anxiety decreases—and wise decision-making becomes possible.” 

Pace setting is not always the top priority; instead, leaders must embrace: 

• Discernment 
• Perspective 
• Emotional regulation 
• Intentional pauses 

As K Krish described, leaders can aim to become “the eye of the storm”—steady enough that others can orient themselves around the person they are following. 

Leading During the “Becoming” Phase 

While AI is impacting leadership, in many ways, it seems to also be reinforcing some of its most foundational elements: presence, judgment, purpose and emotional steadiness. 

The leaders who will thrive are not those who try to outpace others. Instead, it will be those who: 

• Slow down to think clearly 
• Hold uncertainty without transmitting fear 
• Balance experimentation with ethics 
• Keep humans (not tools) at the center 

Technology may be transforming the workplace, yet leadership itself remains deeply human. 

Discover how Emergenetics helps organizations prepare for the AI era. Contact our team using the form below! 

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