Published on: December 3, 2025 at 3:26 pm
A typical senior executive is tasked with setting strategy, developing personnel, resolving disagreements, managing budgets, and setting the tone at the top to protect organizational culture and ethics. Meanwhile, the headcount of many organizations’ support staff has shrunk, scrutiny on leaders has increased, and the administrative load continues to increase. Many leaders are already stretched thin, and those trends are expected to continue in 2026.
That said, 2026 won’t be remembered as the year AI took over leadership. It will be remembered as the year leaders finally started using AI more effectively to get some breathing room. Generative AI isn’t a replacement for leaders and managers; rather, it’s a backup that can make their job easier, according to Academy of Management Scholar Herman Aguinis of The George Washington University.
Some leaders are experimenting with AI and getting comfortable with it; others are hoping it’s a fad (it isn’t) that will eventually fade away (it won’t), he said.
“And here’s the truth: AI doesn’t replace expertise—it exposes who has it,” Aguinis said. “AI’s value rises or falls based on the person using it.”
“When a leader gives clear direction—‘Summarize these data for the board,’ ‘Draft scenarios for this specific decision within this specific context,’ ‘Outline risks on this particular project given these particular constraints’—the output is usually sharp and helpful. When the guidance is vague, the result is just noise,” he said.
“The technology matters, but judgment matters more.”
In practice, the leaders who benefit most won’t be those who hand everything over to automation. They’ll be the ones who are strategic about what to offload, according to Aguinis, who said that there’s a lot worth handing off: the first draft of a communication, the competitive snapshot you need for Monday’s meeting, the outline of a scenario plan, or a clean slide deck that doesn’t take three hours to format.
“These tasks eat up time—time leaders rarely have,” Aguinis said.
Aguinis expects leaders and managers to prioritize AI learning, development, and education, both for themselves and rank-and-file staff, in 2026, or make AI expertise more of a recruitment priority.
“If they don’t, their jobs will be at risk,” he said.
Leaders must balance the risk of moving too fast with moving too slowly, all while avoiding pitfalls.
“This is ongoing,” Aguinis said. “Learning and application must go hand and hand.
“Trial and error, experimentation, and continuous learning will be key.”
Investment in training, guardrails, and basic verification processes will matter as much as the tools themselves, Aguinis said. Cross-checking sources, confirming compliance, and validating numbers will all become part of leaders’ daily responsibilities, the same way reviewing financial documents and legal language already is.
As routine tasks are handled by technology, leaders will get more time to do what only humans can do: mentor, inspire, set strategic direction, guide culture, and make decisions that balance logic and values, according to Aguinis.
The future isn’t about replacing leaders with robots, he said. Rather, it’s about giving humans
time to lead.
“There is no choice,” Aguinis said. “Leaders who do not embrace this vision of AI will be replaced by those who do.
“This also applies to everyone—including you and me—in most service-oriented jobs.”
