If it is true that in the ERA of AI – also known as the Brain Economy – we should focus on our unique human advantages rather than on what AI will reduce, eradicate, or replace, but instead on the opportunities to learn, grow, and remain viable, then let’s talk about it.

We consistently share that AI lacks the CONTEXT of leader experience and intuition, lacks the CONSCIENCE that comes from the development of character, values, and integrity, and certainly lacks the CONSEQUENCES that are uniquely the responsibility of leaders when AI hallucinates or provides a generic deliverable when it is not edited and informed by human guidance and voice.

This isn’t just intuition, it’s increasingly backed by research. A study by scholars at Harvard Business School and UC Berkeley, who worked with 640 entrepreneurs to test an AI business advisor, found that access to AI alone didn’t close performance gaps. The leaders with stronger judgment and experience knew which AI recommendations to trust and which to set aside; the AI assistance actually widened the gap between higher- and lower-performing entrepreneurs because it cannot supply the seasoned discernment that separates a generic suggestion from the right one (Koning & Ammerman, Harvard Business School Institute for Business in Global Society, 2025).

AI is uniquely positioned to summarize, draft from prompts, forecast, outline, assist problem solving, provide unlimited reporting, and critique the solution seeking of leaders. While AI uses are being explored and efficacy and ROI are being determined, what leaders need to know is that they themselves remain essential to achieving better quality outcomes.

So what will remain uniquely the role of human leadership is the Critical and Strategic Thinking that comes with the shift from:

• Initiating drafts: to prompting critical ideas based on knowledge and experience.
• Creating content: to outlining and editing content.
• Solving problems: to gathering data to evaluate and pursue strategies that solve problems.
• Offering solutions: to testing and critiquing data-based solutions.

All of these new skills create new competencies in Critical and Strategic Thinking over time as the role of leadership shifts into this new ERA of AI. Today we’ll focus on Critical Thinking, and next time, on Strategic Thinking.

Critical Thinking, then, is a leader’s capacity to demonstrate disciplined discernment that includes: the intuition to identify and discern problems, the capacity to prioritize the most important problems to solve, the skill to guide AI with context and desired outcomes, the discipline to check all sources and identify bias, the knowledge to review and verify the accuracy of data, and the tenacity to evaluate outcomes and synthesize them into current business context as well as to take responsibility for AI-generated outcomes.

That discipline to verify matters more than ever. Researchers at MIT found that AI models actually grow more confident in their language – using phrases like “definitely” and “without doubt” – precisely when they are hallucinating rather than stating facts (MIT, 2025). In other words, the moments when AI sounds most certain are often the moments leaders most need their own critical thinking engaged. This is precisely why discernment, not just delegation, is the leadership skill of the moment.

So what are the guardrails to support leaders as they maintain and grow Critical Thinking while using AI to be faster, more focused, accurate, concise, and thorough?

• Discuss the context and intuition it takes to discern problems and recognize critical thinking when it occurs.
• Facilitate and discuss how to discern the most important problems to solve, and use AI to critique any aspect that was missed.
• Dialogue about how to set external industry and internal capacity context so AI outcomes land closer to what is desired.
• Converse with AI to clarify, synthesize, critique, and organize AI outcomes to meet business needs.
• Share “the why” behind the deliverable, as well as “the what and how,” to grow leadership talent and build Critical Thinking skills over time.
• Ensure that leaders are presenting and discussing AI-informed results in a way that lets them defend a position and demonstrate critical thinking in the moment, when it matters.

The development of Critical Thinking in leaders is so dynamic that it can never be delegated to AI. It happens when real differences can be discussed and open dialogue forges new insights, together, among leaders, fueling creativity and innovation.

What we reward will be repeated, so celebrate the leaders who are growing their critical thinking skills and taking responsibility for outcomes by utilizing AI as a companion on the journey!

Stay tuned for our next conversation on Strategic Thinking in the AI era, and how to invite leaders to develop this uniquely human capability.

Sources

• Koning, R. & Ammerman, C. “AI Won’t Make the Call: Why Human Judgment Still Drives Innovation.” Harvard Business School, Institute for Business in Global Society, 2025.

MIT researchers, as reported January 2025: AI models were found to be more likely to use confident language (e.g., “definitely,” “without doubt”) when generating hallucinated content than when stating verified facts.