Is the growing focus on AI literacy making HR leaders less human?

On days like AI Appreciation Day, I find myself thinking less about what AI can do, although impressive, and more about what the impact is on how we connect, and what that means for the leaders responsible for managing that shift. Instead of calling your colleague to workshop an idea or to debrief after a hard meeting, moments like these are increasingly being outsourced to a prompt window, writes Ruhee Meghani.

AI Appreciation Day was held this week, and in that spirit, I’m not here to tell you AI is the enemy. I’ve taught emotional intelligence and critical thinking to diploma of business students, the leaders your organisations will be hiring in the next five years, and I see how generative AI can be seen as a game-changing tool. But “impressive” and “good for leadership” are two very different conversations, and leaders need to pay close attention to the second one.

Many HR leaders will be familiar with this scenario: someone comes up with a concept in two to three sentences, then drafts a two-page report using AI to “look busy”. Their manager runs it through AI to condense it back into two sentences. Did anyone read anything? Not really. We’ve built a fast machine for generating the appearance of thinking, and organisations are starting to grapple with high volume, mostly low-quality work.

Are today’s leaders losing their skill for critical thinking?

Not quite yet, and there’s still hope. Every answer worth coming to requires sitting in discomfort, especially for HR leaders who are responsible for creating workplaces where innovation, inclusion, and human judgement can coexist.

Take feedback conversations, for example, the ones leaders dread. AI can draft a “professional, empathetic” email about a colleague’s underperformance in seconds. It’ll even sound warm, because it’s been trained on how warmth reads. But in doing so, HR leaders would have skipped the part where they sat with how the situation made them feel, worked out what outcome they wanted, and had the far more constructive conversation with an employee over coffee instead. AI can replicate the language of empathy. It cannot replicate the discomfort that builds it in a leader. That discomfort is the very training ground that makes leaders better, as it is often what builds the discernment, resilience and empathy they need most. However, we often mistake that discomfort for an obstacle, something we need to eliminate

I often use the braces analogy in my keynotes: when I had braces as a teenager, I didn’t ask my orthodontist to move my teeth in one sitting, wrench them into place, done. Growth takes time, consistent pressure, a bit (or a lot) of discomfort, even suffering. That’s how humans are wired. Leadership works the same way. And I worry we’re raising a generation of leaders wired by AI-assisted instant gratification, who, when faced with sitting through an uncomfortable feedback conversation, will be more out of depth than someone having to navigate a new video conferencing software.

According to a Wiley Workplace Intelligence study, psychological safety is still the single strongest predictor of a high-performing team. Employees who feel safe speaking up are 31 per cent more likely to be on one than those who don’t. As time goes on, skills like emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and empathy are not going to be considered “soft” skills anymore. They’re going to distinguish exceptional leaders from conformists. However, there’s still good news: none of these is a fixed trait. They’re measurable, trainable skills. Across 65-plus organisations I have worked with, from global names like Nike through to mid-sized teams navigating restructures, I have watched leaders build these capabilities the same unglamorous way I built straight teeth: through consistent, sometimes uncomfortable, deliberate practice.

So, on AI Appreciation Day, my appreciation looked a little different. I want leaders to appreciate the silent, often painstaking skills that take years to develop, and cannot be outsourced to AI. Days like this can help us reflect that although the tools around us might get faster, we humans still have to show up – flaws and all.

I’ll leave you with one final question: If your leadership team saved 15 minutes today because of AI, where was that time reinvested?

Ruhee Meghani is the founder and chief executive of Allied Collective.

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