What AI Is Really Asking of Leaders Right Now

Last week I had two very different and interesting conversations with CEOs about AI.

One is thinking about workforce strategy as his service business shifts to a technology business, and how that transition will require fewer people but with stronger relationship skills. The other is focused on operational efficiency, and genuinely believes his team will be able to achieve more, work less, and spend more time with their families doing things they love, and as a result be more engaged when they are at work.

Two different outlooks on a seemingly similar challenge.

Then another CEO shared something that stopped me in my tracks. Decisions that would normally take six to twelve months to execute were being turned around in four weeks. He said the pace was scaring people.

Same technology. Same opportunity. Wildly different responses.

And that is exactly why AI is one of the most important leadership conversations right now, and why getting it right matters far more than most organisations currently appreciate.

The question underneath the question

Leaders are asking: What will my workforce look like? What skills do people need? How do we stay productive and connected while everything is changing at speed?

These are the right questions. But underneath all of them sits a more fundamental one: What does intentional leadership actually look like in an AI-enabled world?

Because the risk right now is not AI itself. It is what happens when leaders adopt AI reactively, without the clarity, structure, or human intentionality to make it work for their people and their culture.

When I spoke recently with Dawid Naude, founder and CEO of Pathfinder, an AI accelerator and official Open AI service partner across Australia and New Zealand, he said the biggest opportunity AI creates for leaders is not productivity. It is the ability to use AI as a strategic thought partner to make better decisions. Everything that happens in an organisation, he said, is downstream from the decisions a leadership team makes.

That reframe matters. AI is not just a tool for efficiency. In the hands of a thoughtful leader, it is a thinking partner. In the hands of a leader who hasn't stopped to consider how they are using it, it can accelerate the wrong things just as fast as the right ones.

The intensification problem no one is talking about

Here is what the research is starting to reveal, and it is confronting.

A recent study published in Harvard Business Review found that AI tools did not reduce work for employees. They consistently intensified it. Workers moved faster, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended their working hours, often without being asked to. What looked like a productivity surge on the surface was quietly creating workload creep, cognitive fatigue, and the early conditions for burnout (Ranganathan and Ye, 2026).

This is the bind many leaders are walking into without realising it.

When AI makes it feel possible to do more, people do more. When doing more becomes normalised, expectations shift. When expectations shift without leadership guidance, the pace becomes unsustainable. And when pace is unsustainable, your best people eventually stop performing at their best, or they leave.

In Thriving Teams: When Teams Unite, Align & Achieve, I write about the pressure many employees are already operating under. According to Qualtrics' 2025 Trends Report, 38 per cent of employees are feeling pressure from their employers to increase productivity. Add AI acceleration to that existing pressure, and without deliberate intervention, you are not building a high-performing team. You are building a burnt-out one.

The collaboration risk leaders are missing

There is a quieter risk that I find far more concerning, because it goes to the heart of what makes teams thrive.

When people have access to AI at their fingertips, they stop asking each other for help. They stop saying, "I don't know, can you help me think through this?" They stop drawing on a colleague's expertise, or admitting they are stuck. They stop having the conversations that build trust, deepen relationships, and create the shared understanding that cross-functional collaboration depends on.

The biggest risk for thriving teams with AI is that they stop collaborating and stop asking questions. It takes vulnerability to say, "Hey, I don't know, can you help me out?" And when you have all the answers at your fingertips, that vulnerability disappears. And with it, so does a whole layer of human connection that holds teams together.

This is particularly relevant now, when cross-functional collaboration is more critical than ever. AI accelerates the pace of execution. But when pace accelerates without alignment, teams drift. Silos deepen. People optimise for their own lane and lose sight of the collective.

In the research HBR published alongside the intensification study, a separate finding confirmed what I see regularly with leadership teams: when AI tools are integrated without intentional norms and structures, interpersonal trust, coordination, and shared decision-making can quietly decline (Seth and Edmondson, 2026, as cited in HBR).

What intentional AI leadership actually looks like

There is no single answer to what your workforce will look like in three years. Anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. But there are things leaders can do right now to be intentional, and those choices will determine whether AI works for your culture or against it.

The first is to be clear on expectations. Not about AI tool use specifically, but about how work expands and what quality looks like. One of the most powerful findings from recent KPMG research in partnership with the University of Texas was that high-performing AI users were not those who used it most, they were those who used it most deliberately, with clear objectives, structured thinking, and critical evaluation of outputs (Hallman, Kowaleski, Puvvada and Schmidt, 2026). Leaders who set clear expectations about what good AI-enabled work looks like will get better outcomes than those who simply mandate adoption.

The second is to protect human connection deliberately. As AI makes solo work easier, your role as a leader is to create intentional moments for dialogue, collaboration, and shared reflection. Check-ins are not just nice to have, they are structural. They are where team learning happens, where cross-functional relationships are built, and where people feel seen enough to keep showing up at their best.

The third is to model the behaviour you want to see. If you are using AI as a strategy partner, say so. If you are learning how to use it more effectively, be honest about that too. Leaders who are transparent about their own relationship with AI create the psychological safety their teams need to experiment, ask questions, and contribute without fear.

The leadership advantage

The two CEOs I spoke with last week are both right. AI will change the shape of some workforces. And it will free up capacity for people to do more meaningful work. Both outcomes are possible. The determining factor is not the technology. It is the leadership.

The organisations that will thrive through this shift are not necessarily the ones that move fastest. They are the ones where leaders are clear, where people are connected, where accountability is understood, and where the pace of change is matched by the quality of human relationships holding everything together.

That is not a technology challenge. It is a leadership one.

And it is one worth taking seriously right now.

If your organisation is navigating the pace, pressure and possibility that AI is creating, it may be time to pause and ask a different question. Not just how to move faster or do more, but how to lead with enough clarity, connection and intention for your people to thrive through change.

Claire Gray is a leadership and team coach, keynote speaker, and the author of Thriving Teams: When Teams Unite, Align and Achieve. Claire works with CEOs, leaders and organisations to build thriving teams that are aligned, accountable and able to perform at their best through complexity and change. To explore how Claire can support your team, get in touch.