Leadership skills are among the most critical capabilities in today’s workplace. They shape how organizations adapt to change, inspire teams, and deliver results.
In an era defined by rapid AI adoption, global financial market instability, and lingering post-pandemic fallouts, leaders cannot afford to follow old playbooks. Those that will thrive in the future will sharpen critical interpersonal skills while also balancing the influx of data and technology breakthroughs. This is where leadership intelligence comes in.
In this article, we’ll talk about what leadership intelligence means, why it matters, and how leaders can start building it today.
What Is Leadership Intelligence?
Leadership intelligence is the human advantage leaders need to thrive in this new era. It’s the ability to navigate uncertainty with resilience and curiosity, make timely and informed decisions in the absence of full information, and maintain strong empathy and trust to keep human connection at the center of leadership.
While new AI technology provides efficiency, it’s human skills (good judgment, empathy, decisiveness, and adaptability) that give companies their competitive edge and keeps their culture intact.
Why Leadership Intelligence Matters More Than Ever
Most companies are unprepared for this new era of constant change.
Today’s leaders are facing a perfect storm of new challenges: distributed workforces, AI adoption mandates, post-pandemic trauma, a polarizing political climate… the list goes on.
What’s needed is a new approach to leadership. One that’s grounded in human behavior, neuroscience, and the realities of modern work.
Companies with strong leadership intelligence are more likely to:
- Make faster, higher-quality decisions. Leaders bring their teams along without the luxury of certainty — just clarity.
- Protect psychological safety during change. Teams remain open and collaborative, surfacing concerns early and maintaining trust even in uncertain conditions.
- Convert AI usage into meaningful performance gains. The AI Index Report by Stanford University shows AI makes workers more productive and leads to higher quality work.
- Strengthen alignment and accountability. Clear priorities and ownership reduce confusion, improve follow-through, and keep delivery consistent.
- Improve engagement and retention. Employees feel valued, connected to the mission, and committed to staying, which sustains a healthy, high-performing culture.
The Five Core Skills Leaders Need in the AI Era
- High tolerance/resilience for change
- Strong appetite for risk to try new things - confidence building stuff
- AI literacy - learning from your team and being open to new ideas from your team.
- Being vulnerable with your team about your AI abilities and willingness to learn
- Treating AI initiatives as hypothesis-driven experiments, not traditional projects. Getting comfortable with "failing fast" and iterating based on data!
- Being able to manage through change with their team
- Inspiring resilience in the rest of their team (linked to manage through change above)
- Resolving conflict (also connected to change management above)
- Leading through ambivalence - how do you lead through that uncertainty with surety as some people will ‘opt out’
- Creating psychological safety on your team around figuring AI out together
1. Building Personal Resilience
Change is never easy, and the rise of AI has meant we are dealing with constant change at a rapid rate. Leaders who thrive in this environment are those who can steady themselves first, before helping others navigate the uncertainty.
The way to achieve that steadiness is by building up to it over time, so that when disruption arrives, the muscle is already there to respond with clarity and calm. How? By preemptively leaning into disruption with curiosity, vulnerability, a growth mindset, and the willingness to take smart risks. Here are some behaviors that can help:
- Develop an appetite for risk. Try new approaches, even when the old ones seem to serve your needs. See how it feels to build something from scratch.
- Slowly build your AI literacy. Keep your learning channels (podcasts, articles, dinner conversations) tuned to new ways to incorporate AI into your function and role, but remember not to go overboard: keep it slow and steady. Most importantly, learn from your team and stay open to their ideas.
- Stay humble. No one is expecting you to be an AI expert (unless that is your job). Being vulnerable with your team about your AI abilities will help relieve the pressure you’re putting on yourself.
- Release your expectations. Treat AI initiatives as hypothesis-driven science experiments, not traditional projects where the path is clearly drawn. Get comfortable with "failing fast" and iterating based on data.
Resilience is about staying grounded and curious in the face of change. Leaders who model that calm, flexible energy set the tone for the entire team.
2. Building and Navigating Team Resilience
A leader’s role in team resilience can be broken down into three Stages: Build, Guide, and Repair.
Stage 1: Build Team Resilience
The strongest form of resilience is preventative, and psychological safety is the bedrock. Leaders foster team psychological safety by acknowledging their own fallibility, including and crediting input from others, and modeling curiosity instead of judgment.
Fortunately, a team leader that is consciously working on their personal resilience, as described above, weaves a significant portion of their team’s psychological safety net naturally, through that work.
Stage 2: Guide Through Disruption
A team’s resilience gets put to the test when change arrives, but the way the leader guides that team through has a direct impact on how the team fares.
Two simple principles work especially well here:
- The first is Teresa Amabile’s Progress Principle, which shows that small wins spark joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Leaders can make progress visible by celebrating milestones, no matter how small, and calling out forward momentum regularly.
- The second is the Spheres of Control principle. Encourage the team to focus on what they can directly influence, and not spend excess energy on areas outside their control.
Together, these practices create a culture where progress feels tangible and setbacks feel manageable.
The other flavor of disruption that often arises amid change is conflict. Human-centered leaders recognize the inevitability and, often, benefits of conflict on their team, and approach it with curiosity, humility, and support (more on curiosity in #3, below):
- Curiosity: Dig into why the conflict has arisen in the first place, keeping in mind that there is likely to be context that you’re not aware of.
- Humility: Ask yourself whether you had a hand in creating the conflict. Were your expectations clear enough? Did you ensure complete alignment and delineation of priorities and responsibilities?
- Support: Assist both parties in thinking through how to resolve it on their own before stepping in to mediate. If mediation is needed, approach from as impartial a position as possible, asking questions and giving each party a chance to present their perspective.
Stage 3: Repair and Rebuild Resilience
The final stage seeks to repair any rifts that the change in Stage 2 may have wrought. Leaders need to be keenly aware of new conflicts or additional stress that might have arisen, and help their team through it.
Where conflict is concerned, leaders should help clarify the issues and coach the parties involved to a curiosity-based mindset.
Managing stress in practical ways is essential. Simple techniques, such as introducing a few rounds of box breathing at the start of team meetings, can reset energy levels and calm the nervous system.
3. Being Curious and Ask Quality Questions
Curiosity is one of the most powerful tools leaders have, and it becomes even more crucial in ever-shifting contexts to build a strong foundation of psychological safety. When leaders model genuine curiosity, they signal to their teams that ideas are welcome, perspectives matter, and learning is part of the culture. The simplest way to do this is by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions.
Try phrases like:
- Interesting, tell me more about that.
- Can you share some more about how that idea could work?
- If we went a little deeper, how would that look?
Even if the suggestion you’re hearing is not the strongest idea, following up with just one more question makes people feel heard. Over time, that practice builds confidence and increases the likelihood that they’ll contribute again.
The way questions are framed also matters. Open-ended questions create space for richer answers. For example:
- Instead of asking, “Is it hard managing this project?” try, “How do you find managing this project?”
- Instead of, “Could there be another way to move forward?” try, “What other ways are there to move forward?”
The open versions invite detail and reflection while the closed versions cut off the conversation.
Leaders should also be mindful of leading questions. These are questions where the second word in the sentence is you, as in, “Are you going to…” or “Do you think you could…” In reality, this is just giving instructions in question form, which undermines the coaching approach. Instead, focus on neutral phrasing that encourages the other person to explore their own thinking.
Another common trap is the why question. Why often puts people on the defensive, even when it’s asked kindly. Consider replacing it with alternatives that explore the reasoning without blame. For example:
- Instead of, “Why did you do this?” try, “What circumstances led to this decision?” or “Take me through your thinking process.”
- Instead of, “Why don’t you like working with Joel?” try, “What is it like working with Joel?”
- Instead of, “Why did this happen?” try, “How do you think this happened?”
There is one caveat. In group settings, why can be more useful because it feels less personal. Asking, “Why should we focus on this as a team?” or “Why do we think our users said this?” is less likely to trigger defensiveness and can stimulate productive dialogue.
4. Making Decisions at High Velocity
In a fast-moving workplace, leaders don’t always have the luxury of time. Yet when decisions are more complex, slowing down too much can create bottlenecks. High-velocity decision-making is about finding the balance: gathering enough input to make a sound choice without stalling progress.
Three factors shape almost every complex decision: data, stakeholders, and process.
Start with data. The right amount of data depends on the reversibility of the decision and how defensible it needs to be. Too little, and you’re guessing; too much, and you’ve wasted time and capital. Aim for “enough to move,” not “enough to be certain.” Remember that data isn’t only quantitative. Qualitative insights, like input from people who have faced similar challenges, can be just as valuable.
Next, consider stakeholders. Stakeholders are anyone who will be affected by the outcome. This includes team members whose work is directly impacted, colleagues in other functions whose activities may shift, and leaders whose goals may be influenced. Mapping out stakeholders early prevents surprises later and helps you decide how to involve them in the process.
Finally, clarify the process. There are numerous ways to structure how decisions get made. Here are just a few:
- The Advice Process: one person owns the final call but formally seeks advice from experts or stakeholders.
- Consensus or unanimous decisions: every participant must agree, which is slower but ensures full alignment.
- Voting: useful when narrowing many options or when broad equality of impact exists.
There is no universally “right” process. The most effective one is the one that fits the decision’s scope, stakeholders, and available data.
One final habit separates average decisions from excellent ones: documentation. Write down the context, the input gathered, and the process used. Keep it accessible and updated so that everyone understands how the decision was reached and what comes next. In complex environments, a clear record not only avoids confusion but also strengthens accountability and speed of future decisions.
5. Leading with Human Connection
Human-Centered Leadership keeps empathy and trust at the core of daily work. This approach preserves the heart of the work (people) while performance improves. Human-centered leaders anchor decisions in human impact, then choose the tool or process that serves people and outcomes.
A simple way to keep connection front and center is to ask and empathize. In your next 1-on-1, ask your team member, “What feels heavy this week?” or “What support do you need for [blank]?” Listen attentively by maintaining eye contact or acknowledging with body language. Finally, close with one sentence that reflects back the need and, if relevant, the action you’ll take.
How to Build Leadership Intelligence Across Your Organization
Building leadership intelligence takes a consistent, organization-wide approach that helps leaders at every level apply human skills in the moments that matter most.
Here are three effective ways HR and People Leaders can embed the right practices for their organization’s leaders to follow:
1. Model leadership intelligence from the top
Culture shifts only when senior leaders show the way. How do your executives currently show up in their team meetings, staff meetings, and all-hands? What do they reward and what do they punish? Senior leaders must model adaptability, curiosity, and connection openly in order for these traits to trickle down to the rest of the organization.
If this is still a work in progress for your leadership team, that’s ok, but it’s a muscle that needs to be developed consciously. Leadership offsites and retreats can be a powerful reset button. Executive coaches can provide important touchpoints. AI coaches can help track behavior and course-correct in the moment.
When employees see leaders admitting what they don’t know, asking for input, and leading with empathy, it signals that these behaviors are valued. Of course HR can amplify the signal by sharing stories and discussing the impact, but leaders need to take the first step.
2. Create visible reinforcement systems.
Learning fades quickly without reinforcement. Build supporting structures into existing systems so leaders are encouraged to engage in these new behaviors. Some ideas to consider:
- Connect leadership intelligence to your values.
- Make it a part of the vernacular via leadership competencies or pillars.
- Integrate leadership reflection questions into weekly team updates, or prompt managers to run short resilience check-ins during staff meetings.
- Put questions in your engagement survey about leadership behaviors that are most indicative of leadership intelligence.
- Put those same behaviors into your performance evaluations and interview questions for leaders.
- Make leadership development training a compelling and integral part of your leaders' journeys.
These consistent cues turn abstract ideas into lasting habits.
3. Embed leadership skill building into the day to day
The most powerful leadership lessons aren’t delivered in the classroom; they happen in the flow of work. And the best way to ensure that 1) those lessons occur and 2) the relevant skills stick is by creating accountability with the leaders who are meant to have them. Ongoing check-ins with a leadership coach or — often even more powerful — in group coaching sessions with other leaders helps keep the approaches and frameworks learned in a workshop top of mind. This kind of experience sharing forces leaders to translate theory into practice, and allows them the space to step back and process how these small changes have such outsized impact on their teams.
When leadership intelligence is role-modeled from the top, reinforced with systems, and woven into regular reflection, it spreads quickly. The result is an organization that can adapt faster and harness both human and AI-driven advantages with confidence.
The Future Belongs to Human-Centered Leaders
AI may be reshaping how work gets done, but it cannot replace the distinctly human strengths that drive creativity, connection, and innovation.
Leadership intelligence is the advantage that ensures organizations not only keep pace with change but also create workplaces where people thrive. By developing adaptability, resilience, curiosity, sound decision-making, and human connection, leaders can guide their teams with confidence in an unpredictable world.
The organizations that invest in these skills today will be the ones best equipped to transform technological progress into lasting human progress.
