What Skills Still Count When AI Does the Work
19 Sept 2026
I am going back to school. For one evening, and I would love company. 🤗
I am going back to school. For one evening, and I would love company. 🤗
In November I go back to the building where I gave my first TEDx talk, What AI Can’t Hear, almost a year ago. https://youtu.be/WcPAnXXllR4
It is also where I did my EMBA in Digital Leadership. So this one is personal.
On 12 November, HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich hosts HWZ Empowers. This year it is about the skills that still count when AI does more and more of the work.
Martin Meyer from Adecco opens with what companies are looking for right now.
Then three breakout sessions, and you pick two:
→ Julia Herz on working together with AI
→ Jane Piper on shaping your career
→ and me, on leading when AI is part of the team
Mine is a working session. You take your own leadership work apart. It's for everyone doing knowledge work, so come!
📅 Thursday, 12 November 2026, from 17:15
📍 HWZ, Lagerstrasse 5, Zürich
🎫 Free, and limited to 130 seats
The evening ends with an apéro. The more of you I get to meet there, the better. Bring a colleague.
Register here: https://fh-hwz.ch/de/news/events/hwz-empowers-future-skills-for-the-ai-era
Will I see you there?
What a working session on AI and leadership actually covers
Martin Meyer from Adecco opens the evening with what companies are actually looking for right now, which sets up the three breakout rooms that follow.
HWZ is also where I finished my own EMBA in Digital Leadership, so walking back into that building for this one feels different from a normal speaking booking.
My session is a working one, not a talk. Everyone brings a piece of their own leadership work, something they are genuinely stuck on, and we take it apart together for the room. The format only works if people bring something real, not a hypothetical.
I built the session around a question I ask in almost every coaching room now: which parts of your job can AI already do as well as you, and which parts have never belonged to a tool. Most people answer the first half quickly, then spend the rest of the session on the second.
This is the same question behind my TEDx talk, What AI Can’t Hear, about the listening behaviours AI still cannot replicate in a room.
If this resonates and you want the pack before the event, or if Zurich is not where you are, I have a free What AI Can’t Hear pack with seven of those listening behaviours and ten questions for a team conversation about AI. Leave your email here and I will send it over: https://www.thechangerepublic.com/free-resources