Leading with humanity in the age of AI / Articles / Forward Institute

We recently brought together senior leaders from business, government and civil society for an intimate evening salon to explore one central question:

How can we lead with humanity in an age of AI?

Before the conversation began, our partners at The Beautiful Truth immersed the room in two contrasting stories from the future, each set five years from now and each shaped by the choices leaders make today. The experience rooted the evening in values, in imagination and human judgement.

Much of today’s AI conversation is about efficiency and automation. These matter, but only in service of something larger. Our focus was on the human questions: trust, psychological safety, values, connection, culture, meaning, and how to bring people with you through uncertainty and transformation.

Our fireside chat speakers were:

Bryce Goodman, AI strategist and ethicist, advising institutions including the Pentagon, NATO and DeepMind
Rob Chapman, CEO and co founder of Neya, using technology to strengthen real world human connection
Zaka Farhat, Global SVP Talent, Learning & Capability at GSK, leading the AI Transformation Office

Across the salon we asked:

What conditions make it safe for people to experiment and learn with new tools?
Which leadership behaviours unlock curiosity rather than fear?
How do we ensure imagination and impact, not only optimisation, sit at the heart of transformation?
How might AI deepen human connection rather than diminish it?

The efficiency trap: chasing efficiency pulls us towards the average

AI is brilliant at finding the statistical centre - the average response, the median pattern. When leaders focus too much on optimisation, they unknowingly steer their organisations towards sameness. What gets lost is the real competitive edge: the diversity of perspectives, intuition and experience that only people bring.

As Bryce stated: “AI algorithms have been trained on lots of data and their job is to find the statistical average… What you have as an organisation are the diverse perspectives of the people that have worked there — that is your only competitive advantage”. The leadership task is to protect and elevate distinctiveness, not streamline it away.

The hidden use problem: when people don’t feel safe enough to experiment

Most AI pilots don’t fail because the technology is weak - they fail because psychological safety is. People are afraid to use the tools: some fear it signals they’re replaceable; others worry it looks like cheating. As a result, AI use goes underground: fragmented, unshared, unscaled. Adoption grows not through mandates, but through trust.

"If people think, ‘I’m just training something that’s going to make me obsolete,’ and they don’t see the way it’s going to amplify their potential, we’re not going to see adoption.” – Bryce.

Design choices are values choices: embedding intent into AI systems

If leaders don’t intentionally shape how AI behaves inside their organisations, the system will simply default to the internet’s values - a messy, incoherent blend of everything.

Embedding organisational values into prompts, constraints and governance is not a “nice to have”; it’s how leaders ensure the technology reflects their intent. AI is now part of the leadership toolkit. Every design decision, from data sources to guardrails, is also a values decision.

Beyond automation: the human capabilities that become more valuable

AI automates tasks, not meaning. Once the automated layers are stripped away, what remains, and becomes more important, are the human capabilities that anchor organisations: sense-making, inclusion, resilience, trust- building, and navigating ambiguity. As Zaka’s team showed, these are the capabilities that remain stubbornly, strategically human.

“We identified which tasks should remain human - and those were the interesting ones: resilience, being inclusive, creating psychological safety. So we made them core skills across the company.” – Zaka.

Don’t sell the tech, sell the outcome: why AI narratives must start with humans

Rob’s startup, Neya, recently tested two sets of social media ads: one framed explicitly around AI, and another around something far more human - the feeling of disconnection and the desire to belong. The difference was stark. When the messaging led with “AI,” almost no one engaged. When the message spoke to connection, the response surged.

People don’t want AI; they want the outcomes it can unlock. For leaders, this is a narrative and strategic discipline: talk less about tools, adoption rates, or technical features — and more about the problems AI helps solve. In the end, the most powerful AI story is never the technology itself but the impact it enables.

Clarity without certainty: leaders need both optimism and realism

AI has created a world where no leader has all the answers and pretending otherwise erodes trust. The strongest leaders set a clear direction for where the organisation is heading, articulate the values that must anchor AI adoption, and then create space for experimentation rather than pretending to control every step. And critically, they hold accountability at the top, rather than delegating it down as the system becomes more complex.

Rob also reminded us that this vulnerability needs to be paired with optimism. People need to see that the future is not something to fear, but something they can help shape.

CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION

Here are some of the ways the Forward Institute can help you to lead responsibly in the age of AI:

Leading responsibly in an age of AI Programme

A small curated group of Chief People Officers and senior leaders with responsibility for AI transformation.

Together we’ll explore the cultural, behavioural and leadership dimensions of AI, with space to share challenges, test ideas and learn from peers.

This 9-month leadership journey blends in-person and virtual sessions, bringing together expert speakers in AI, leadership and culture to help you build clarity for your organisations’ vision for AI, strengthen the cultural conditions to make it a success and make informed, quality leadership decisions.