Determined To Change: How AI Is Redefining What It Means To Lead
A Chief Communications Officer said something recently that stopped me mid-conversation: "Chaos is not crisis. Lack of direction is," she said, leaning back with quiet confidence. "'Go faster; think later' is our new motto."
She wasn't boasting. She was relieved that her team had found its rhythm thanks to AI. The tools were working and the dashboard looked outstanding. And yet, when I looked around the room, I noticed that no one was asking questions.
The Efficiency Trap
Efficiency is critical, but having no time for authentic conversations can quietly hollow out your organization.
When you rely solely on AI to produce smart and fast answers, your team stops sitting with hard questions. The muscle of collective judgment weakens. You notice less questioning, exploration, opposing views and productive friction.
In these instances, people did not stop caring; caring just stops feeling necessary. Organizational psychologists refer to this as cognitive offloading. It's the tendency to delegate mental effort to external tools. It's efficient, and it can have negative long-term effects.
In April 2025, Microsoft published "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers."
Studying 319 knowledge workers, the research concluded that a higher confidence in GenAI was associated with less critical thinking and, in turn, there is now a greater need for stronger verification and oversight, especially in knowledge work.
This is not a technology problem; it's a human one. And it often starts at the top.
What Curiosity Costs
When I work with senior teams, I often ask a simple question: "When was the last time someone in this room said, 'I don't know; can we think about this together?'" The silence that follows tells me everything.
Adam Grant has written extensively on the power of "confident humility," the rare combination of believing in your abilities while remaining genuinely open to being wrong.
His research shows that leaders who build the most adaptive organizations are not the most efficient ones. They are the most curious ones. They model questioning as a strength, not a weakness. I don't see the risk as AI replacing leaders. Rather, it’s that AI may give leaders permission to stop leading with curiosity.
Curiosity has a cost that rarely shows up on a dashboard. Curiosity requires carving out time to think and tolerate the messy stuff. It requires humility and a willingness to pause and say, "The data looks good, but something feels off. What am I missing?"
The Alignment Illusion
My team and I recently interviewed senior leaders across 14 industries to understand their experiences with AI. They knew what their priorities were, but they were unsure about their team’s readiness for change. They agreed on direction, but they witnessed hesitance to move against the flow.
Decisions moved forward with impressive speed, but impact was an afterthought. This is what I call the alignment illusion—the appearance of shared movement, built without the foundation to support it.
Real alignment is intentional and it is earned in shared understanding. Alignment begins with authentic conversations. It comes from moments where someone says, "I see it differently," and you respond, "Tell me more." Those moments happen in dialogue, not in reports.
Thus, alignment cannot be delegated. It is nurtured in daily practice, in rooms with people that are interacting often.
How To Lead Differently
In my experience, the hidden resistance organizations face is rarely technical. It lives in lack of clarity. Most people don't resist change. They resist confusion.
When you are determined to change, you push the fear of disagreement aside. You flag risks that may disrupt progress. You resist compliance and you raise questions honestly. You choose to speak up even when AI claims to already have the answer. You overcome the laziness of dependency.
This is where your skills as a leader become irreplaceable. AI cannot flag the moment a high performer stops pushing back. Only you can notice and interrupt the drift before it becomes the norm.
I've found that the leaders who are best equipped to navigate this new era all share a counterintuitive instinct: They are slowing down their thinking before speeding up execution. Here's what that looks like in practice:
Recognize that clarity is non-negotiable.
When the team stops asking questions, capable leaders take it as a warning, not alignment. They plan moments for teams to surface doubts, test assumptions and co-create clarity before moving to action.
Nurture curiosity.
They invite questions before the dashboards. They embrace courage and uncertainty. They pay attention to the person who says "I'm not sure" over the one fast "Yes."
Treat silence as a data point, not alignment.
They hold explicit conversations about which decisions can be automated, which require discussion and which demand human intervention. They emphasize clarity over silence.
In closing, AI is not a threat to leadership. It is an invitation to lead with more intention. Leaders who thrive are not resisting AI, nor surrendering to it. They focus on what is human: build trust, navigate ambiguity, make judgment calls and bring people together around purpose and meaning. High tech demands high touch.
The CEO I mentioned earlier did not need a new AI agent; she needed to invite her team back to the conversation and ask the right questions to build alignment. In the age of AI, your greatest competitive advantage is a team that still knows how to think together.
So, what question has your team stopped asking and what might happen if you brought it back to the table? If that question resonates, you're already thinking about the right things. It’s time to make the change happen.
This article was published on Forbes.com.
