AI, Leadership & Staying Human Through Change with Gregg Brown & Sarah McVanel

In an insightful discussion on the intersection of artificial intelligence, change management and workplace culture, change leadership expert Gregg Brown and recognition authority Sarah McVanel reframe the AI conversation.

AI, Leadership & Staying Human Through Change | Gregg Brown & Sarah McVanel

AI as an Enhancer, Not an Eraser
The prevailing fear of widespread displacement is largely misplaced. According to Gregg’s research and client observations, AI is not eliminating jobs; it is actively enhancing them.

Frontline professionals, from administrative staff to project coordinators, are leveraging these tools to produce higher-quality work, making them more valuable to their organizations. This is similar to the “secretarial role” 40 years ago. As technology absorbed basic typing and manual filing, these roles evolved into complex project management and strategic event coordination.

Today, AI provides similar cognitive offloading: by delegating routine tasks, workers free up mental bandwidth to focus on higher-level strategic thinking.


AI’s Capabilty Boundaries & The Human Element
AI is a tool that predicts human behaviour based on pattern recognition. It does not possess individual wisdom, stories, domain expertise, or the capacity for true out-of-the-box innovation.

Gregg illustrates this boundary with a clear parallel:
If you ask AI to improve a candle, it will give you a candle that burns brighter, costs less and has a better design. But would  AI make the conceptual leap from a candle to a light bulb?

Tools can optimize our processes, but they cannot replace individual expertise, context and human intuition. As Sarah emphasizes, leaders must acknowledge and value people as the light bulbs that they are.


Casual vs. Deliberate AI Utilization
Consider the study of 450 students writing reports to demonstrate the difference between surface-level and strategic adoption.

Using AI merely as a search engine is casual use. Deliberate use, by contrast, treats it as a collaborative thought partner: synthesizing information, surfacing options, asking harder questions and probing the gaps in one’s own thinking.

In the study, students who used AI with deliberate prompts produced the highest-rated reports. Organizations can can accelerate this shift by providing teams with structured prompts. Learn more, as outlined in Gregg’s “Leadership in the Age of AI” toolkit. Ask us for more info!

 

Casual use

Deliberate use

Using it as a search engine

Using it as a thought partner to synthesize data and challenge assumptions.

 

Asking it to “do all the work for me”

Using it to help you think differently, synthesize data. Asking complex questions (e.g., “What are the gaps in my thinking?”, “Help me understand this better”).

 

Asking it to “come up with the idea, the outline, write it”

Using AI to formulate and structure human-generated ideas, freeing up time to refine the actual content.

Using deliberate thought prompts like “What are the gaps in my thinking?” and “What am I missing?”

 


Leadership Imperatives in the AI Era
Leaders face a new challenge of ensuring their teams feel competent and valued while navigating this technological learning curve. Gregg and Sarah outline some key practices:

  • Recognize effort over outcomes: When leaders acknowledge effort and research, rather than just the final result, they actually build capability for people to perform better. Acknowledging specific effort shows employees they are valued for their commitment, helping them navigate from feeling uncertain to becoming comfortable with the technology.

  • Anchor on self-determination theory: Leaders should focus on the three core motivators: connectedness, competency and autonomy. Ensure employees don’t feel like “outsiders” simply because they are slower to adopt new tech. Slowing down to ask what they need demonstrates care and reinforces that they matter to the organization

  • Measure backwards to manage change: Use perspective to your advantage. Look at the knowledge and skills developed in the last six years: the mindset where a team’s current high performance becomes the baseline and anything less feels like a failure. Ultimately, looking backwards helps us step into the future quickly.

 

 

ABOUT GREGG BROWN & SARAH MCVANEL

Gregg Brown is a globally recognized change and future of work expert and best-selling author empowering organizations to thrive in the future of work. He has spoken on hundreds of stages and engaged thousands of individuals in some of the world’s leading organizations:  Fortune 500 companies, such as Johnson & Johnson, TD Bank, and Suncor through to governments, associations, and humanitarian organizations worldwide, including the UN, Habitat for Humanity and the CDC. His ideas are in Forbes, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and Entrepreneur, and numerous HR publications.

Gregg is currently pursuing a PhD where he researches how AI is reshaping leadership in organizations. What sets Gregg apart is his ability to connect with audiences on a deep level combining his expertise with a unique blend of academic rigour, practical business insights, and high energy in his presentations. Learn more about Gregg.

Sarah McVanel is passionate about guiding people to re-discover their own greatness, and recognize the greatness in others. With multiple certifications and designations in Human Resources, Organizational Development, and Coaching, Sarah has the knowledge and skills to help individuals leverage the exponential power of recognition to retain top talent, fuel healthy teams and sustain healthy bottom lines. Learn more about Sarah.

 

 

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