I have a prediction.
Over the next decade, AI won't just change the way we work. It will fundamentally change what we
And in doing so, it will redefine the concept of emotional intelligence.
That may sound strange coming from someone whose career has been built around developing business leaders through digital, hands-on business simulations and role-plays to build emotional intelligence. After all, emotional intelligence has long been considered one of the defining characteristics of effective leadership. The ability to read the room, adapt your communication style, build trust, navigate conflict, and motivate different personalities has become the foundation of a multi-billion-dollar leadership development industry.
Those skills are still incredibly important. But I believe we're about to add another dimension to emotional intelligence, one that AI is quietly teaching us every day.
Every AI agent I have worked with has one characteristic that I rarely encounter consistently in organizations.
It has no ego.
It doesn't defend weak ideas simply because they are its ideas. It doesn't become offended when challenged. It doesn't protect its status or try to win an argument. It doesn't carry hidden agendas into a conversation. It doesn’t lie about the location they are working from.
It simply tries to produce a better answer.
The clearer my feedback, the better it performs. The more direct I am, the more useful it becomes. If I tell it that it drifted from my original intent, it doesn't become defensive. It adjusts, improves, and moves on. After hundreds of hours collaborating with AI, I've realized something unexpected.
That style of interaction is becoming my new standard for productive collaboration. Then I walk into one of our business acumen or leadership simulation workshops, where teams of experienced managers and executives collaborate to solve complex business problems.
The contrast is striking.
The highest-performing teams are almost never the teams with the highest average IQ.
They're the teams that improve the fastest.
They challenge one another's thinking without attacking one another personally. They give honest feedback without creating unnecessary friction. They change their minds when presented with better evidence. They care more about arriving at the best answer than proving they were right.
In other words, they spend very little energy protecting their egos.
That's exactly how AI works.
I don't believe AI is teaching us how to become more human.
Ironically, I think it may be teaching us how to become better collaborators.
As millions of professionals spend hours every day working alongside AI, they'll become increasingly comfortable with conversations that are direct, objective, and focused on improving the quality of their work rather than protecting individual pride.
Over time, I believe those experiences will begin to reshape our expectations of human behavior.
People will become less tolerant of unnecessary defensiveness. Less patient with office politics, and less accepting of conversations where feedback is filtered through ego instead of curiosity.
And they'll increasingly value colleagues who can disagree without becoming disagreeable, receive feedback without becoming defensive, and change course without feeling diminished.
Perhaps that's the next evolution of emotional intelligence. Not simply understanding emotions. But managing your own ego in service of a better outcome.
If that's true, leadership development will have to evolve as well. We'll still teach empathy, communication, trust, coaching, and influence.
But we'll also need to teach leaders something that has always been difficult:
How to separate criticism of the work from criticism of themselves.
Because those are two very different things.
Perhaps the biggest question in the age of AI isn't whether AI will ever think like humans.
Perhaps it's whether humans can learn to collaborate a little more like AI.
The next time someone challenges one of your ideas, pay attention to your first reaction.
Do you become curious? Do you ask questions? Do you improve the idea?
Or do you instinctively defend your position? AI has no ego. The future of leadership may belong to the humans who learn to manage theirs.