Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries at pace, but one of its most quietly significant impacts may be on something far more human: how leaders develop.
Philip Huthwaite, CEO at learning tech firm 5app, believes AI isn’t replacing the fundamentals of good leadership – it’s giving leaders a new kind of superpower. “You still need leaders to inspire,” he says.
“You still need somebody to hold that flag and encourage your team to move towards that North Star. But AI almost gives leaders more of a superpower to improve themselves.”
A New Lens on Leadership
For decades, assessing leadership quality has relied on gut feel, peer reviews, and end-of-year performance conversations. These tools have their place, but Huthwaite argues they’ve always fallen short of capturing how someone actually performs in the day-to-day. AI, he suggests, finally offers that missing lens – one that tracks real behaviour in real situations, rather than relying on periodic snapshots.
But does making leadership measurable actually make it better? Huthwaite thinks the evidence is building, though he’s careful not to overstate it. What AI offers, he says, is an additional perspective – not a replacement for human judgement. “It is that guide, that nudge, that suggestion of you might like to look at this. It’s not saying this is rule 101, you must do it.”
Who Is Ultimately Responsible?
The question of who is ultimately responsible when AI shapes someone’s development is one Huthwaite answers without hesitation: the human. “Whether you attend a training course or read something online, it is the human that is ultimately responsible for interpreting that and deciding, I agree with that, or I don’t.”
On the broader question of AI anxiety – particularly among younger workers – he takes a pragmatic view. Resistance to new technology is nothing new, and adoption will follow results. The companies seeing success, he argues, aren’t the ones chasing AI for its own sake. They’re the ones starting with a clear goal and working backwards.
As for the next five years? “The leaders and the workforce that adopt it to turbocharge their day-to-day,” he says, “are the ones that are going to come out on top.”
