when AI forces us to be more human – Bundlezy

when AI forces us to be more human

Let’s imagine a manager in front of his desk. He doesn’t check reports or respond to emails: he talks to his artificial intelligence assistant. The system suggests how to write a recognition message, how to improve the team climate, even what words to avoid to sound more empathetic. Everything seems efficient, clean, precise. But when you finish, you feel a small discomfort: the feeling of having delegated more than just a task. Perhaps he has delegated a part of his humanity.

This scene, increasingly common, reveals an essential question: what does it mean to lead when algorithms already think, write and predict better than us? The technology promises precision, but it also raises a deep doubt: will we be able to continue inspiring when the machine learns to simulate empathy? Can a leader continue to be a guide if his emotional compass depends on a digital co-pilot?

For years we were told that authentic leadership consisted of being yourself, showing yourself without masks. But, as he warns Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic in Harvard Business Review (2025), that maxim can turn against us. in his studio When Authentic Leadership Backfiresexplains that feeling authentic does not always equate to being perceived as competent. The most effective leaders are not those who exhibit their “I” without filters, but those who know how to modulate it, balancing honesty and purpose. The irony is clear: The more you master your spontaneity, the more authentic you appear.

That paradox portrays well the times we live in. Digital culture rewards exposure, immediacy and total transparency. But leadership is not about telling everything, but about knowing that count and so that. In a world of algorithms that record everything, the rarest virtue is discernment. Leading is not a question of visibility, but of lucid presence: choose the gesture, the word or the silence that elevates others, not the one that feeds one’s own vanity.

After this stage of naive authenticity, a new paradigm emerges: the increased leadershipwhere artificial intelligence does not replace the leader, but rather strips him. A recent article by Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter and Marissa Afton in Harvard Business Review (2025) describes how IBM has turned the adoption of AI into an opportunity to strengthen the more human skills of its managers. Instead of using algorithms only to gain efficiency, they aim to free up time: less bureaucracy, more meaningful conversations. “Every minute I save on processes,” said one of its leaders, “is a minute I can dedicate to my team.” That phrase sums up a silent transformation: Technology stops being an end and becomes a means to recover what is essential: the human encounter.

IBM has even designed programs where AI acts as a mirror of leadership. Managers practice difficult conversations, review biases, and learn to listen differently. It is not about delegating empathy to a machine, but rather letting the machine confront us with our lack of empathy. In the era of cognitive copilots, the most valuable intelligence remains emotional.

Perhaps that is why the organizations that last are not the ones that automate the most, but the ones that do the most. humanize. Productivity metrics may rise, but without trust and purpose teams become empty. Gallup (2024) proves it: global work engagement has fallen to its lowest level in a decade. The problem is not technology, but the meaning we give to it. And meaning can only be provided by a human being.

At a time when companies measure every variable, the question is no longer how much we do, but why we do it. Leadership of the future will be less about controlling and more about connecting; less about managing people and more about inspiring them. And, paradoxically, AI can help us on that path, as long as we remember that its purpose is not to replace us, but amplify our ability to understand.

The University of Deusto He has been remembering for years that this balance is possible. From his business school, Deusto Business Schoolwe promote a model that we call humanistic leadership: a style that starts from self-knowledge, is supported by collaboration with interest groups and places the dignity of people. Its general director, Almudena Eizaguirredefines it like this: “Humanistic leadership is that which, through self-knowledge and collaboration with interest groups, places the dignity of people at the center to generate economic and social value.” It is not about opposing the human to technology, but about creating a fruitful dialogue between the two. As she herself has said, “the real challenge is not in artificial intelligence, but in the dialogue with it and with other people.”

In 2024, during a conference organized by Deusto in Madrid, Martha Aguilarcorporate director of in-company development, summed it up with a simple and luminous metaphor: “Our society needs leaders who lead with head and heart.” This double perspective—that of analysis and that of empathy—has become a hallmark of the school. In his model, the effective leader is not the fastest or the most visible, but rather the one who maintains perspective without losing sensitivitythe strategy without forgetting the soul.

This vision fits with what emerges in organizations that integrate AI: the more data we have, the more essential listening, intuition and ethics become. Technology can anticipate behaviors, but only humanistic leadership can make sense of them. Algorithms optimize, but they do not understand. AI can multiply time, but only we decide how to use it.

The philosopher Daniel Innerarity has written that governing today is “managing complexity without destroying meaning.” Leading in the algorithmic era could be defined the same: balancing the efficiency of machines with the fragility—and greatness—of the human. Neuroscience confirms that emotion and reason are inseparable. Antonio Damasio He showed that without emotion there is no possible decision. That is the lesson for those who face every day dashboards and predictions: AI calculates, but does not feel; processes, but does not understand the beauty or pain behind a number. And that lack is our opportunity.

The leadership that comes will not be heroic or perfect. It will be more aware. He will not seek to appear brilliant, but be present. You don’t want to have all the answers, but ask the questions that matter. Artificial intelligence can give us speed, but only human intelligence can give us address. And direction, at its core, is a matter of purpose.

Perhaps the challenge of this decade is not to teach machines to think, but remind humans why we think. When automation frees us from tasks, we will have to decide how to use that freed time: whether to produce more or to understand better. And there the leadership of the future will be played.

Why AI does not threaten our humanity: it tests it. True progress does not consist in creating algorithms that imitate us, but in cultivate leaders who know how to look beyond themselves. Leaders who use AI not to appear smarter, but to act more wisely. Leaders who understand that innovation without awareness is just accelerated noiseand that empathy, far from being a luxury, is an advanced form of strategy.

When that manager from the beginning turns on his digital assistant again, he may understand that the tool does not make him less human, but more responsible. And that the meaning of leading, in the era of artificial intelligence, It will not be competing with machines, but remembering what it means to be human.

***Paco Bree He is a professor at Deusto Business School, Advantere School of Management and advisor to Innsomnia Business Accelerator.

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