Maybe we’re asking the wrong question about all these AI technologies.
The question I hear everywhere is: What will AI replace?
- Which jobs?
- Which skills?
- Which tasks?
- Which industries?
Those are important questions. But after spending this month thinking and writing about what it means to leverage what is irreducibly human about us in the age of AI, I’m increasingly interested in another question:
What becomes more valuable precisely because it is irreducibly human?
That question opens a very different conversation. Here’s where I’ve landed:
Human potential is larger than productivity.
For decades, we’ve talked about human potential largely in terms of output.
- What can you achieve?
- How quickly can you advance?
- How much can you produce?
- What can you build?
- How much responsibility can you handle?
AI is going to challenge some of those assumptions because machines will increasingly outperform us at tasks, we once considered evidence of exceptional human capability.
Perhaps this moment gives us an opportunity to remember that human potential was never simply about how much we could produce. I invite you to pause and consider the moments in your life and career that have changed you most indelibly.
When I think about the most meaningful moments, I’ve witnessed in more than twenty years of coaching, very few involved someone finding the perfect tactical answer.
They were human moments:
- A leader finally having the conversation they’d been avoiding and feeling relief about the result.
- Someone recognizing that the career they’d spent years building no longer represented who they had become.
- A mid-career leader seeing their own potential differently.
- A leader realizing that their need to have the answer was preventing their team from growing.
- Someone deciding that the next chapter of their career needed to support their life rather than consume it.
Those human moments involve courage, trust, self-awareness, relationships, meaning, and growth.
Technology doesn’t diminish the value of those things. I think it increases it.
As we all evolve forward together in this era of AI, I believe that how we cultivate and leverage our relationships may become an even greater career advantage.
That means that relationship development is one area where I believe we’re going to need to pay particular attention.
AI makes the transactional side of relationships more effortless. Tasks like:
- Sending an email.
- Generating a follow-up.
- Draft the networking message.
- Research the person.
- Optimize the outreach.
But relationships aren’t transactions. The people who advocate for you when you’re not in the room are not doing it because you sent the perfectly optimized LinkedIn message.
They do it because they know you.
They trust you.
You’ve helped them.
You’ve shown up.
You’ve built something together.
As you advance your career in an increasingly technological world, don’t neglect the deeply human network around you.
Here’s my advice for what you need to do in an irreducibly human way:
- Build relationships before you need them.
- Be curious about people without needing something from them.
- Help others advance.
- Have conversations without an agenda.
That’s not networking. That’s being human.
It’s not the only human capacity we tend to overlook at work. There’s an entire intelligence most of us were never taught to trust.
Your body. Your heart. Your intuition. Your creativity.
This is the part of you capable of making an unexpected connection between seemingly unrelated ideas.
The part that feels another person’s grief.
The part that recognizes beauty.
The part that laughs.
The part that loves.
The part that knows something matters before you can articulate why.
For thousands of years, wisdom traditions have explored the enormous interior landscape of being human.
We’re entering an era of extraordinary technological intelligence. Perhaps it’s also time to become more curious about our own.
Staying human doesn’t mean resisting AI. I want to be very clear about this.
I am not interested in a humans-versus-machines conversation.
Technology offers extraordinary possibilities.
I want leaders to use them. Experiment. Learn. Become more effective.
Let AI take work off your plate that doesn’t require your uniquely human capabilities. But use some of that reclaimed capacity to become more human, not simply more productive.
- Have the conversation.
- Take the walk.
- Mentor someone.
- Think deeply.
- Listen.
- Create.
- Build relationships.
- Notice what your body is telling you.
- Decide what enough looks like.
- Ask what you want your career to make possible for your life.
The Irreducible Human Advantage:
This month has invited you to explore a single important question: what’s actually irreducible about us? Not our output. Not our optimization. Our potential, our relationships, our interior wisdom.
The leaders who thrive in the age of AI won’t necessarily be those who resist technology.
Nor will they be the ones who surrender themselves to it.
I believe they’ll be the ones who can hold both. Technologically fluent. Deeply human.
Able to harness extraordinary external intelligence while remaining grounded in their own internal wisdom.
That’s the leadership territory I want to continue exploring with you over the coming months.
And perhaps that’s the opportunity in front of all of us:
As our machines become more intelligent, how much more intentional can we become about being human?