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AI meets Leadership
AI and the Future of Leadership

AI and the Future of Leadership

Published: July, 2025
Reading time: 3 minutes

The AI Revolution Impacts Us All – Including the C-Suite

AI is already a reality. According to McKinsey, 99% of C-level executives are familiar with generative AI and 94% of employees are actively using it (1). But what does this actually mean for the role of leaders? Will leadership become easier, more human, or even obsolete? The future of leadership likely lies somewhere between super-agency, hybrid teams, and a new culture of responsibility.

Super-Agency or Compression? The Two Sides of the AI Coin

Yes, AI can make many things easier: creating shift schedules, supporting strategy development, automating meeting moderation, summaries, and translations—these can all be accelerated or delegated to AI agents. You can even get tips for difficult conversations or practice dialogues with avatars. IBM expects an eightfold increase in AI-enabled workflows by 2025 (2). But with relief also comes compression. Simple tasks disappear, and leaders become high-performance agents: more tough decisions, more data, more responsibility—in less time. The parallel to remote work since COVID is obvious: what used to be four or five meetings a day is now eight to ten—across time zones, topics, and cultures. Demands are rising, especially for those at the top of organizations. Leadership becomes the ultimate discipline. There may even be fewer leaders needed in broad operations, but more high-performance leaders who can successfully handle this intensity of work and the compression of complexity, speed, and responsibility.

Humanoid Robots: Colleagues of Steel and Silicon

In just a few years, humanoid robots are expected to play a fixed role in production environments, logistics centers, and service sectors. Forecasts from Morgan Stanley and Bank of America project price developments from the current ~$200,000 down to around $50,000 or even under $20,000 (by about 2030) (3). The first robots, such as Tesla Optimus, could already be mass-produced within a few years. For leaders, this means managing hybrid teams in which humans and machines work side by side. This might be in production, but it could also mean a robot joins a team of knowledge workers. It could work both virtually and on-site in the office: organizing meetings, writing minutes, fetching coffee, following up with individuals when it senses tensions, or even giving coaching impulses. It remembers everything, is available 24/7, and works with 100% reliability. New competencies in human-machine interaction and sensitive leadership in team dynamics will become indispensable.

Will Human Leadership Become Obsolete?

The short answer: No. The longer answer: human leadership will be redefined. Whenever it comes to complex ethical, moral, and highly relevant decisions, humans remain essential (“human in the loop”). Trust in AI depends critically on how competent, ethical, transparent, and free of vested interests it is perceived to be. If AI acts as a reliable, independent partner, it will gain acceptance—but if applications disappoint by representing the interests of their creators too strongly, willingness to be “led” by AI will decline. Then, the desire for human relationships, authenticity, and integrity in leadership will grow stronger again. The leader of the future is less a manager and organizer, but more a mentor, coach, meaning-maker, and—above all—human.

Future Skills: What Leaders Need to Learn Now

In a world of rapid transformation, more than technical skills are needed. We will all learn to prompt well, just as we once learned to drive cars and use Google. But leaders also need reflection skills, decision-making competence under uncertainty, and a deep understanding of dynamic systems. This means: leaders must learn to handle large datasets and analyses, but also recognize when intuition and reflective experience should (and must) outweigh statistics. A growth mindset is required, openness to feedback—even from AI—and an awareness of one’s role within the bigger picture (“systems thinking”). Resilience will become a survival skill, along with ethical judgment and narrative strength. Studies from INSEAD show that 90% of leaders are optimistic generative AI will increase productivity (4)—but the demands on leadership always rise with it.

Conclusion: Rethinking Leadership

Leadership in the age of AI will not become easier—but it can become more impactful, more human, and more strategic. Those who see AI not as a threat but as an amplifier can create space for what truly matters: providing direction, developing people, and taking responsibility. The question is not whether AI will take over leadership. The question is: how do we, as leaders, shape the future so that humans and machines can perform at their best—together?

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Sources:
1: McKinsey & Company (2024) – Report: “Superagency in the workplace: Empowering people to unlock AI’s full potential”
2: IBM Newsroom AI Forecast (2024) – Projections on the spread of AI workflows and automation potential
3: Morgan Stanley Research (2025) – Humanoids: A $5 Trillion Market
3: Bank of America Institute (2025) – Transformation: Humanoid Robots 101
4: INSEAD Leadership Report (2024) – Early Adoption of Generative AI by Global Business Leaders: Insights from an INSEAD Alumni Survey – Jason P. Davis, Jian Bai Li

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