Every few months a new AI tool arrives that can do something we once thought only people could do. It drafts the report, summarises the meeting, and finds the pattern in the data before we’ve finished our coffee. It appears to be genuinely useful. And it quietly raises a question many leaders haven’t yet asked out loud:
if the machine can do that, what is left for me?
Zenger Folkman’s Leadership Skills 2026 Report offers an answer we recognise from our own work.
Drawing on research with hundreds of thousands of leaders and their direct reports, it argues that AI can analyse, but it cannot build trust, inspire commitment or make a good call when the way forward is unclear. Those are still required by humans. And at this point, they seem to have become the whole of the work.
The human work of leadership gets harder, not easier
There is a comfortable story that says automation frees leaders up for the people side.
The truth is that the people side was always the hard part. When routine tasks fall away, what remains is ambiguity, competing priorities and people who are anxious about what the change means for them – that asks more of a leader, not less.
We see this across local government, finance, healthcare, early learning and corporate settings. The leaders who thrive are rarely the ones with the best dashboards. They are the ones people trust enough to tell the truth to.
Empathy is the start, not the finish
One of the report’s themes struck a chord: empathy alone isn’t enough. After dwelling on this theme, it appears to show that caring about people is the price of entry. What turns care into confidence is combining it with clarity, candour and follow-through.
A leader who understands how you feel but never tells you where you stand is kind, but not helpful. Warmth without direction can leave people feeling lost. Doing both takes courage. It reminds me of Kim Scott’s fantastic book Radical Candour. Ultimately, it is easier to listen than to say the hard thing that needs to be said, and the leaders we admire can manage both in the same conversation.
Confidence is something leaders create
The report also looks at how leaders build employee confidence and the discretionary effort that follows. This matches what we hear and see in culture work. People give their best when they believe their effort matters and that someone has their back.
That belief isn’t built in a town hall. Neither is it built within the walls of an office. It is built in hundreds of small moments… when the question asked with real curiosity, and credit is given publicly, and the mistake is treated as a learning rather than a cross to bear.
Control, influence and safety
Finally, the report returns to a long thread in leadership research: control, influence and psychological safety.
Command and control are efficient right up until when they are not. In our modern, complex, fast-moving environments, no single leader has all the answers. Influence, collaboration and a team that feels safe to speak up, will outperform almost every time.
Psychological safety is not about being comfortable. It is about being able to raise the level of risk, openly challenge the plan or admit to an error without fear. That is what makes good decisions possible.
What this asks of us
None of this is new, and that is kind of the point. As technology accelerates, the fundamentals of good leadership become more valuable, not less.
Trust.
Clarity.
Courage.
Curiosity.
A willingness to be accountable for how we make others feel as well as what we deliver.
The good news is that these capabilities can absolutely be developed. Not overnight, and not in a single, mind-blowing workshop, but through honest feedback, deliberate practice and support over time. Big change, little by little.
If you’re thinking about what your leaders will need facing these challenges, the report is worth a read. And if you’d like to talk about building those capabilities in your organisation, we’d love to hear from you.
