What I've Been Observing
The questions people are asking about AI can sound like technology questions. They're not.
Who will AI replace? That's a question about job security, identity, worth, and livelihood.
How will people learn to use it? That's a question about change management, motivation, and adult learning.
What's getting in the way of adoption? That's a question about culture, trust, and human behavior.
And underneath all of it — there's power and politics. If you're using AI to dramatically increase your efficiency, do you share that openly, or does visibility create fear of redundancy? If you're not yet on board because you prefer your existing workflow, do you say so, or does that feel like a risk? As a leader, do you understand your team's work well enough to have an informed view on where AI actually helps?
These are human issues. Communication. Vulnerability. Fear. Safety. Working through others, whether those others are people or agents.
Recent research from Harvard Business Review also suggests that while it may seem as if AI is a silver bullet that will make our jobs faster and easier, it isn't actually lightening people's workloads.
In fact, it's leading people to take on more, move faster, and further blur the lines between work and rest, often without even realizing it. From my view, this extends some of the massive burnout we saw rise during the pandemic. It's becoming worse, not better.
A big risk we should keep talking about? Quiet, invisible overextension and overwhelm, coupled with fear and concern. (More on this in "What We're Reading" below).
What This Means for Learning & Development in the Workplace
→ Live, facilitated learning experiences matter more, not less. As content becomes easier to generate, the value shifts to how it's delivered. In-person, off-desk, interactive experiences, where humans are actually in the room together, become the differentiator.
→ Attention remains a big constraint. We can create more content than ever before. But people don't want more screen time or more information. They want immediate relevance, connection, curation, and engagement. Volume isn't the answer.
→ Facilitation skills are a competitive advantage. The ability to read a room, guide a discussion, challenge thinking in real time, and create insight through dialogue is not going away. If anything, it's becoming more valuable.
→ Judgment and discernment remain human work. Knowing what to share, when, and with whom isn't something AI determines. That's a leadership skill. And it has to stay one.
→ Managing agents requires similar fundamentals to managing people. Clear expectations. Strong delegation. Feedback loops. We've always needed these to drive performance from people. Now we'll need them to get value from AI, too. Same skills. Different application.
→ The risk of over-reliance is real. When AI does too much of the thinking, our own critical thinking weakens. Staying sharp — questioning outputs, forming independent perspectives, not outsourcing judgment — has to be intentional.
This moment is a signal about what great L&D needs to look like next.
For those of you developing leaders, teams, and organizational culture: double down on human skills. Elevate facilitation. Strengthen judgment and discernment. And design for real-world application, not just content delivery.
I'm curious what you're seeing. As AI accelerates in your world, what's becoming more important, not less?
Hit reply. I'd love to hear.
Happy learning and leading,
Stefanie
