The People We Need Most May Not Want the Job
Why trust, empathy, and AI fluency are now essential to modern leadership!
This week I’m co-authoring with Ekta Lall Mittal, someone who spends her time helping HR leaders rethink how the function operates in a world shaped by technology, data, and AI. Ekta has a technology mindset but focuses on the transformation with a balance of Trust, Technology and Empathy.
We landed on this topic because neither of us could stop thinking about it.
The manager has become the shock absorber!
Take a moment to read that again!
According to LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence survey, only about 30% of individual contributors say they want to move into management roles.
Look around you.
Think about the last big change e.g. a reorg, a systems rollout, a layoff.
Who absorbed the shock? Who translated it for their teams while being expected to just keep things moving?
More often than not, it was the manager.
At the same time, the workplace itself is becoming more complex.
The role changed. Most organizations haven’t caught up.
AI is entering everyday workflows.
Teams are navigating constant technological change.
And leaders are increasingly expected to guide teams working alongside intelligent tools and automation.
AI. Org changes. Layoffs. A multigenerational workforce. Hybrid, virtual, in-person.
And sitting right in the middle of all of it is the manager.
Not the CHRO.
Not the HRBP.
The Manager.
The one supposed to hold their team together, adapt to every new initiative, communicate every change with clarity and calm and somehow still show up as a human being while doing it.
We’ve all either said it or had it said about us: “If someone is a manager, they will have to figure it out.
When anything new launches, default responsibility lands on managers to make sure their teams adapt.
Who helps them? Checklists? HRBP calls? Handbooks? Emails?
We’re asking more of managers than ever. And fewer people want the job. That’s not a pipeline problem. That’s a signal.
We are not overthinking this. The numbers tell the same story.
Gartner reports that 64% of CHROs say their managers cannot lead change effectively, and only 32% have achieved healthy change adoption. The cost of getting this wrong is not abstract. It shows up in execution, culture, and business performance.
What Leadership requires now.
Here is what more organizations need to say out loud: if a leader does not understand how technology is shaping their team’s work, they are not fully leading it. They are reacting to it. And teams can tell.
Trust, empathy, and psychological safety are still the foundation. But they’re not enough on their own anymore. If a manager can’t engage with the tools their team uses every day, they become a bottleneck. Someone to route around, not lean on.
That’s not a technology problem. That’s a leadership gap.
What does the new manager actually need?
Still deeply human. The ability to build trust, create safety, communicate clearly when everything feels uncertain. AI cannot do that.
Enough AI fluency to lead it is more important than the skills to build it. Just enough to understand how it shapes decisions, where it helps, where it misleads, and how to ask better questions of it.
Systems thinking. Work doesn’t move in a straight line anymore. A manager who sees how it all connects where the friction is, how a change in one place ripples somewhere else, that person is invaluable right now.
Human + AI fluency + systems thinking. That’s not a framework. That’s just what leading looks like now.
What L&D can actually do:
We keep asking if AI will replace managers. Wrong question.
The real one is are we making leadership a role the right people actually want?
Take away the admin. AI can handle the reporting, summaries, and documentation. That frees managers to coach, decide, connect.
L&D’s job is to help leaders use that space well.
Use AI to remove low-value administrative work. Reporting, summaries, documentation, and routine follow-up can be automated. That gives managers more time for coaching, judgment, and connection.
Build leadership pathways that value technical and operational depth. Too often, strong experts are expected to leave their expertise behind to become “people leaders.” Instead, organizations should create pathways where domain knowledge strengthens leadership credibility.
Make AI literacy part of leadership basics. Managers do not need to build the technology. But they do need enough fluency to understand how it affects decisions, workflows, fairness, and team expectations.
Measure leadership outcomes that actually matter. Not just program completion or training attendance. Look at trust, retention, change adoption, manager effectiveness, and how well teams navigate disruption.
The conversation that started this and why it stayed with us :)
An intro chat!
Ekta and I connected over LinkedIn and our backgrounds were intriguing enough to have a chat. One of the topics we talked about was the importance of authenticity.
Ekta mentors emerging women leaders through the Ascentpoint Leadership Program. Five years in. This year felt different. The conversations weren’t about strategy or execution. They were about authenticity. About what it means to bring yourself to work when the ground keeps moving.
We got stuck in a conversation about what authenticity even means in a role that keeps telling you to just figure it out.
I thought I was overthinking it.
I wasn’t.
That’s why Ekta and I wrote this. Because the AI + EQ balance isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the job. Trust and empathy don’t scale on their own; someone has to carry them into the room.
That someone is the manager. It’s time we treated developing them like it actually matters.
Stay curious. Continuous Learner. Powered by Technology. Grounded by Empathy.
Ekta and Priya
This brings necessary clarity to a role that has been quietly overextended: the manager as both translator and stabilizer in systems that are constantly shifting. What you name as a signal, not a pipeline problem, is especially important; when fewer people want the role, it often reflects how the role is designed rather than who is available to fill it. The integration of human capacity, AI fluency, and systems thinking reframes leadership as a composite discipline, not a set of inherited expectations. It also exposes a structural gap: organizations are asking managers to absorb complexity without equipping them to interpret or redistribute it effectively. The emphasis on removing administrative burden while strengthening judgment and connection is a needed correction to how leadership work is currently weighted. Thank you for offering a grounded and timely perspective on what leadership must become for both people and systems to hold.