Recently I joined the "What Can't Be Replaced by AI" event at EY's Amsterdam office. Hosted by Maarten Lintsen, with sharp insights from Anna van den Breemer-Kleene, Isabel Moll-Kranenburg, and Rina Joosten-Rabou.
I went because I'm fascinated. Sometimes a bit scared too, honestly. The pace at which this field is moving is dizzying. And as a leadership coach, I can't ignore the question of what this means for managers, for work, and for meaning.
Here's what I took away.
1. The meta-view
A theme that came up in the panel, and in a side conversation with Marielle Willemse: leaders need the capacity to zoom out. Stay away from AI tunnel vision. Look at your strategic goals, and find creative ways to make AI work for you.
Take recruitment. If efficiency is the only aim, you automate CV screening. But CVs predict roughly 3 percent of actual job success. Faster, not smarter.
The better question: how does AI help you find people who can transform and innovate your organization? Use AI to assess skills and potential. Not to count how many times someone wrote "stakeholder management" in their CV.
2. Leadership and adaptation
Only leaders who adapt fast enough will remain relevant. That requires AI literacy. Not learning to code, but understanding how to deploy the technology strategically.
And it's your job as a leader to make experimenting safe. If your team is afraid to try things, adoption stalls across your organization. Where there's fear, nothing happens.
3. From knowing to interpreting
Knowledge is rapidly losing its value at the individual level. AI gives us access to collective intelligence. Value moves from knowing to interpreting. And to asking the right questions.
Meanwhile, productivity growth in Europe is stalling. How do you use AI and agents to turn that around? Not a rhetorical question. A concrete challenge for every manager.
4. Culture and data-driven choices
Culture is how we create meaning together at work. It often feels intangible. AI can make it concrete. What is your culture today? Which behaviors fit where you want to go? How do you monitor progress?
Less guessing, more knowing.
5. Empathy and perception
The common idea is that AI can't show empathy. Yet a study showed that patients rated AI doctors as more empathetic than human ones.
Fair point: an AI has unlimited time, a doctor is under pressure. But it does make you think about your own human interactions. How often does someone at work get your full attention? Really? Or do you sneak a glance at your phone in between.
6. The value of human connection
Within a few years most of us will have a personal AI agent. It plans your meetings, analyzes data, executes tasks. My prediction: in writing, voice, and video they'll be nearly indistinguishable from humans.
So what's left that's uniquely human? In my view, primarily physical encounter. A real conversation. A coffee together. Looking someone in the eye and sensing what's going on under the surface.
That sounds simple. But it's exactly what many managers already skip. Too busy, too many meetings, firing off a quick message instead of walking over. Once everyone has an AI that fires off messages more efficiently than you, all that remains as your real added value is your personal contact.
7. Meaning beyond productivity
When AI and robots do tasks faster and cheaper than humans, we'll need new sources of meaning. Sources that don't depend on productivity alone.
This isn't new. Philosophers have wrestled for centuries with the question of what gives our lives meaning. The difference: AI forces us to take that question seriously, finally. No longer a philosophical luxury for the weekend. A core question for your career and your team.
Keep developing the qualities that make us human. Creativity. Curiosity. Empathy. Connection. Courage.
8. 2030 and beyond
The impact of AI in the coming decade will be faster and bigger than most of us realize. I'm probably underestimating it too.
The question isn't whether AI replaces us. The question is whether we keep evolving fast enough to stay meaningfully human alongside it.
9. Fewer people, more responsibility
My take: companies will hire fewer people in the years ahead. One person who can direct AI agents well achieves more than an entire team without AI. That holds for marketing, for development, for analysis, for finance.
What does this mean for managers? Also fewer. Smaller teams, flatter organizations. But more responsibility per person. And probably better paid, because the impact of that one person becomes much larger.
There's a flip side. Anyone who doesn't keep up with this development falls outside the circle. The middle ground that can still hide behind a team today won't have a place tomorrow.
For those who want to remain, this means: keep investing in yourself. In your communication. In your ability to bring people along through change. In your technological literacy. And in the human qualities AI can't reach: judgment, connection, courage.
Anyone thinking "I'll just wait and see" is losing the race before it's started.
What this means for you as a leader
Here's the core for me. AI raises the bar on what you need to bring as a leader. AI takes over the tactical work. What remains is exactly what good coaching and development build.
Real listening. Seeing beneath the surface of a conversation. Having difficult conversations without backing away. A vision that moves people. A team where people feel safe to experiment, including with AI.
These are no longer soft skills. This is your craft.
Want your managers to be ready for the years ahead? AI adoption is woven into the leadership programs I design and deliver. And it comes up in the 1-on-1 leadership coaching I offer to ambitious early-career managers. Schedule a free introduction call via the contact form. I'd love to tell you more.