What Leaders Keep for Themselves as AI Takes Over
16 set 2026
What do you keep for yourself when AI can do more and more of the work?
What do you keep for yourself when AI can do more and more of the work?
That is the question I am taking to keynote talks in four very different rooms this October.
→ A business school training in Lausanne
→ A corporate event in Geneva
→ A corporate event in Zürich
→ A university event in Zürich
→ A travel summit in Barcelona, where an advertising tech company invited its top 40 clients
Different audiences. The same question.
And it is a real one. In a recent ManpowerGroup study, only 3% of companies said their leaders are ready to lead a team that uses AI deeply.
I do not speak about everything. I speak about AI and leadership, and about the part of the job that stays with you, however good the tools get.
Reading the room.
Thinking for yourself.
Making the call and standing behind it.
If that is a conversation your leadership team or your event needs from a keynote speaker, send me a message.
October is already busy. And so exciting. And that is only October. November is a whole other story. 😅
What would you keep?
The three things AI cannot do for a leader
Reading the room, thinking for yourself, making the call and standing behind it: I did not pick those three at random. They are the same three things I watch disappear first when a leader hands too much of their thinking over to a tool, and the same three I watch return once they build their own AI perspective instead of borrowing someone else’s.
The ManpowerGroup number, 3% of companies confident their leaders are ready, matches what I see across the four very different rooms I am speaking in this October: a business school, two corporate events, a university, and a travel summit. Different industries, same gap. Leaders are told to adopt AI. Almost nobody tells them what of their own judgment they get to keep.
In the coaching work I do alongside the keynotes, this shows up as a very specific kind of relief. Leaders who have been quietly worried that AI will make their experience redundant, once they separate the parts of the job AI can do from the parts of the job that are actually theirs, settle in a way that surprises them. The job gets smaller in scope and clearer in what it demands of them.
→ Reading the room stays yours. A model reads sentiment. It does not sit in the tension of a room that just heard bad news.
→ Thinking for yourself stays yours. AI can generate the options. Deciding which one you are willing to defend is still a human act.
→ Standing behind the call stays yours. Nobody delegates accountability to a tool, however much they delegate the drafting.
If this resonates and you want a practical guide, I have a free What AI Can’t Hear pack that distils seven listening behaviours from my TEDx talk plus ten practical questions to use with your own team, so the conversation about AI does not skip the part only you can hold. Leave your email here and I will send it over: https://www.thechangerepublic.com/free-resources