How AI is changing the leadership skills needed to succeed
By Mike James Ross and Greig Schneider
For the past decade, leaders have been focused on building resilience—the ability to bounce back. They and their teams needed to be able to endure disruption, recover, and move on.
But the pace of change, in particular the impact of AI, means that there is no longer a “return to before.” The pressure does not ease, goals are constantly shifting, and the fundamental idea of resilience needs to be reframed.
Indeed, the traditional business ideas of transformation and change management will also have to give way to new ways of dealing with the new non-normal. Why? Because the ideas of transformation and change management pre-suppose a fixed destination that, once reached, means that we can move on and focus on something else. That is no longer the case: The “to” in the classic “from-to” exercise is now in constant motion.
So, what will replace these ideas in the business lexicon? In a recent Egon Zehnder survey of more than 1,200 global CEOs, 92% agreed that “As CEO, leading through unpredictable times, I need to cultivate a level of adaptability in myself and my teams that goes beyond anything I’ve previously imagined.”
Adaptability is the new resilience. Confronting this unprecedented pace of change means leaders need a new approach to how they lead organizations, who they hire, and who they must become.
To be fair, the definition of resilience in leadership also generally includes the ability to push through adversity and learn from challenging situations. According to Dr. Etienne van der Walt, neurologist and CEO and founder of Neurozone, resilience is “the ability to cope effectively with stress, challenges, and setbacks.” To paraphrase him, resilience involves two key components: bouncing back (returning to the baseline relaxed state) and bouncing forward (adapting and learning from the experience so that you can better handle similar future challenges).
This helps, but there remains a subtext that the challenge will pass, and in today’s ever-changing world holding on to the idea of transience can be problematic. Imagine change as a wave crashing on the shore: If you are strong enough, as these ideas imply, you will be able to take the hit and keep standing after the wave has passed.
The challenge is that now there is not just one wave, but a never-ending succession, and resisting all of them is impossible. What’s needed is to reframe the problem from overcoming these waves to learning how to surf them. That is what adaptability is all about.
How to Become a More Adaptable Leader
The rise of AI is redefining leadership, demanding a shift in how organizations structure teams and foster innovation. As expertise alone becomes less powerful—AI can outpace any human in information and problem-solving—leaders must focus on what machines cannot replicate: the ability to connect ideas and people, challenge assumptions, and drive creative breakthroughs.
This echoes the research of Harvard Business School Professor Linda Hill, who emphasizes in her book Collective Genius and in the HBR article “What Makes a Great Leader?” that successful leaders build teams that experiment and learn together, leveraging diverse expertise. Hill’s upcoming work, Genius at Scale, further explores how leaders can expand their reach, catalyzing innovation both inside and outside their organizations.
To thrive in this AI-centered landscape, leaders must:
• Continuously structure (and restructure) agile teams: Change is constant, and teams cannot remain static. Leaders must break down silos and create agile, cross-functional teams that can be quickly reconfigured as priorities shift. This flexibility ensures organizations stay responsive.
• Harness the power of diverse perspectives: Innovation flourishes when teams bring together a broad range of experiences and expertise. By cultivating multi-functional groups, leaders enable diverse viewpoints that spark more creative, effective solutions to complex challenges.
• Nurture productive conflict: Leaders should make space for constructive challenge and divergent thinking within teams. Encouraging what Professor Hill calls “creative abrasion” allows ideas to be tested and refined, moving beyond consensus toward true innovation. It’s not about finding a single “right” answer but fostering an ongoing creative journey.
• Bring the outside in: As Genius at Scale explores, the next evolution in leadership is reaching beyond organizational boundaries. Leaders must actively seek out external sources of insight and genius, building partnerships and ecosystems that fuel continual growth and adaptability.
How to Hire for Adaptability
The era of fixed roles and job requirements is evolving, and the traditional approach to hiring needs to change as well. Rather than posting role descriptions listing a set of day-to-day tasks and responsibilities, organizations should highlight the challenges that the role will tackle. Adaptable people (or as we like to call them “Swiss Army knives”) don’t want to be told what to do, but get excited about having the flexibility and opportunity to make things happen.
To find these types of leaders, seek out those who have adapted in the past but for various reasons may have been overlooked. They may have had unconventional educational or professional experiences. They may have changed roles often—perhaps because they got bored, or because their constant questioning of the status quo got on the nerves of more traditionally minded supervisors. Their “issues” may now be assets. On the flip side, be cautious of folks who have been in one organization or role for too long. The adaptability muscle can atrophy over time: If someone shows limited change on their CV, it’s important to understand why.
Finally, interviewing for adaptability should focus less on candidates’ experiences in similar roles, and more on what new skills they have learned or what subjects on which they have recently shifted their perspectives. Adaptable people are constant learners and are the types of people who can and do change their minds.
By adjusting hiring practices, organizations will be able to attract the types of people the ever-changing nature of work requires.
How to Build Adaptability
In addition to smarter hiring, leaders also must think about how to build their own adaptability. Here are three simple and effective ways to get started:
Seek (minor) discomfort. Exercise your adaptability muscle by stepping outside of your regular routine. Take a different route to work, for example, or brush your teeth with your opposite hand. With your teams, mix up where, when, and how you work and meet together. Make people sit on different sides of your team room table. Meet in a different room or even outside.
By making small but frequent shifts in how you do things, you are teaching yourself and your teams that change is not to be feared, and that newness is good.
Reframe situations. Focus on the opportunities that these new waves of change are bringing, and don’t be apologetic about change in your organization. When there are bumps in the road, ask yourself: What is this teaching me, and how can I benefit from it?
In the CEO survey mentioned earlier, respondents suggested the best way to successfully master today’s complexity was “Cultivating a culture of curiosity and open-mindedness.” Reframing is a key ingredient to this.
Practice adapting. Make plans that include doing new things—and embrace changes. Take a day where you wander a new part of your hometown, trying not to plan out what you’ll do or where you will go. Give your teams shorter time-frame challenges and push them to adapt the next steps in projects more dynamically.
By forcing small changes into your processes, you are building that adaptability muscle for when it is needed for the big shifts that your organization will inevitably face.
Embracing Adaptability for Future Success
Although they have served their purposes well and will always be useful, resilience, transformation, and change management are no longer the most important qualities needed for success. Adaptability, informed by an underlying agility, curiosity, and creativity is what is needed in our new ever-changing world. This is an exciting and thrilling time. As leaders we have to find, develop, and build the adaptability skillsets in our organizations to not only survive, but thrive.
Mike James Ross, based in Montreal, helps to lead Egon Zehnder’s HR and Leadership Advisory practices in Canada and is the former CHRO of La Maison Simons.
Greig Schneider, based in Boston, is a partner and former leader of Egon Zehnder’s Global Leadership Advisory Practice.