What Only Humans Can Do
As AI systems continue to improve, leaders are beginning to make a subtle but important mistake. The issue is not that the technology is unreliable or unsophisticated, but that it’s becoming capable enough to be mistaken for judgment, which introduces a risk that’s easy to overlook.
I have been spending significant time building and testing custom GPTs, including tools for business strategy questions, job application evaluation, and conversational language learning. From a technical standpoint, the results are impressive. Grammar is strong, vocabulary is accurate, and responses are delivered quickly and with confidence. At first glance, it feels like meaningful progress.
The gap becomes apparent once the interaction moves beyond surface-level exchange. Long before I began building custom tools, I noticed a consistent pattern when simply interacting with AI conversationally. The responses were almost always affirming, often reinforcing ideas without examining them. Weak assumptions were rarely challenged, and alternative perspectives were seldom introduced. While that kind of validation can feel encouraging in the moment, it quickly raises a more important question: why was nothing pushing back?
What became clear was that the limitation was not intelligence or capability. It was discernment.
Accuracy Is Not Judgment
AI systems are improving rapidly in their ability to follow instructions, maintain context, and generate coherent, fluent output. At their core, however, they remain predictive systems that respond based on statistical likelihood rather than perception or intent.
Leadership does not operate in that way.
Effective leadership requires an ability to notice hesitation, interpret silence, and adjust in real time when something does not quite align. It involves understanding when confidence is productive and when it’s masking uncertainty or risk. These are not abstract qualities or soft skills. They’re practical, situational judgments that shape trust, engagement, and long-term performance.
“Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.”
Good Leaders Ask Great Questions, John C. Maxwell
That kind of communication depends on awareness and intention, not just correctness.
When Leadership Becomes Transactional
Most organizations have already experienced what happens when leadership prioritizes outcomes while overlooking people. In many cases, AI could replicate that style reasonably well. Tasks are assigned, metrics are tracked, and performance is measured. What tends to be missing is context, care, and a genuine understanding of how work is actually experienced by the people doing it.
I’ve worked under leaders who approached organizations this way. They did not take time to understand the culture, the technology, or the dynamics of the team. Solutions were imported from previous roles with little adaptation, and results were expected quickly. While results were often delivered, ownership and engagement rarely followed. Over time, teams became transactional, creativity diminished, and people disengaged emotionally even as productivity appeared acceptable on the surface.
This is where the real risk with AI shows up. The problem is not misuse, but substitution. When leaders begin relying on automated language or insight as a replacement for presence, leadership starts to feel distant and impersonal, regardless of intent. People sense when attention has been replaced by efficiency, and trust erodes accordingly.
The Human Layer of Leadership
Even the most advanced systems today remain linear. They do not experience context, process emotional cues, or integrate relational history and unspoken dynamics. They cannot form attachment, responsibility, or care.
Human leaders, by contrast, can integrate logic with intuition, efficiency with appropriateness, and results with responsibility for how those results are achieved. That human layer is not an enhancement to leadership - it’s the work itself.
A Practice Worth Reclaiming
For leaders wondering where to focus as technology accelerates, the answer is straightforward, even if it is not always comfortable.
Spend time with your team in ways that do not require performance or output. Sit with them rather than observing from a distance. If work is remote, create space for informal conversation without an agenda, and resist the urge to steer it. Listen carefully to how people interact, who speaks freely, who holds back, and how energy shifts over time.
In those moments, leadership is not about direction or control, it’s about perception. Systems can optimize processes, but leadership still depends on a human being who is present enough to notice what no model ever will.