What Concerned Me Last Week Wasn’t AI — It Was What Leaders Are Replacing

By Marcus Haycock

Something slower, harder, and more effective is being left behind.

A conversation that remained with me

I was at a business networking event last week.
One of those rooms where you end up speaking to a real mix of people — founders, managers, people carrying a lot of responsibility across very different industries.
The conversations were good. Open, actually.
At one point, I found myself in a small group discussing how people are handling leadership challenges at the moment.
Workload. People issues. Constant interruptions and distractions.
And then a member of the group interjected with:
“I tend to run situations through AI first now. Just to sense-check how to handle it. It’s become my best thinking partner”
A few others nodded in agreement, and another smiled and said, “What a fantastic idea.”
Not in a big, declarative way. We then moved on quickly, and the subject matter changed direction. It was a brief moment, but I recall standing there, partially listening to the next part of the conversation, thinking…
Something in that shift feels more significant than it sounds.
I wonder how many thousands, if not millions, of managers and leaders across the country are adopting this approach?

The part that makes sense

It’s easy to understand why this is happening.
AI is fast. Accessible. Often articulate.
It can help frame a response when you’re under pressure. Give you language when you’re not quite sure how to approach something.
And in the moment, that can feel like support.
I’ve used it myself, and it can be very helpful for certain projects and tasks.
But as the evening rolled on, I listened carefully to other conversations in the room, and I noticed a pattern in how people described their experiences.
Situations being handled. Messages being refined. Conversations going… reasonably well.
And yet, underneath it, a sense that comparable challenges kept reappearing.
Not dramatically.
Just… recurring.
You might recognise this.
Where things get resolved on the surface, but don’t quite shift in a more lasting way.

Where it starts to drift

I don’t think the issue is AI itself.
It’s what happens when it becomes the default.
Because over time, something subtle changes.
Development becomes more reactive. More situational. Less connected.
You respond to what’s in front of you… rather than building something underneath it.
And then there’s the part we don’t always see clearly.
AI works with what we give it.
If our perspective is slightly off — and we all have blind spots — that forms the input.
Which shapes the output.
I remember one conversation that evening where someone described a team issue in a very measured, logical way.
But there was a tone just underneath it — a trace of frustration, perhaps a little of fixed thinking — that wasn’t being acknowledged.
AI wouldn’t have picked that up.
Most people in the room didn’t either.
But it was there.
And that’s often where things either shift… or stay the same.

The core part that’s harder to substitute

Before the advent of AI, there was already no shortage of leadership material and approaches to learning.
Books. Journals. Online courses.
I’ve spent years working through them myself.
Often these approaches would spike my interest, give me ideas and inspiration but often I wasn’t able to truly shift and achieve long-term attitude and behavioural change congruent with world-class leadership.
And every now and then, you come across a development approach that’s been around for decades. I stumbled across it!
Quietly refined.
Not particularly shouting from the rooftops.
But the outcomes are different.
You see people change in ways that hold.
Not just in what they say… but in how they show up when it’s uncomfortable, or uncertain, or messy.
That’s always been the harder part.
And it rarely happens in isolation.
There’s something about human-to-human interaction that’s difficult to replicate.
The pauses. The challenge. The sense that someone is really listening — not just responding.
You can feel it.
There’s a physiological side to it as well.
As trust builds, connection follows. When progress is recognised, energy shifts.
It’s subtle, but it matters.
And perhaps more importantly…
it creates a different kind of accountability.
It’s easy to close a tab – who will notice?
Less easy to drift when you know someone will ask — not critically, just honestly — “What’s actually changed?”

A few things I’ve been noticing

I’ve been reflecting on this experience for a number of days now.
I wanted to crystallise my thoughts, group my observations, and share them with you. This is what I’ve concluded:
• Situations get handled at work, but leadership patterns often return
• A person’s AI input reflects current thinking — even when that thinking is incomplete
• There’s no real structure to how development builds over time; it’s very tactical and truncated, but not fully joined up.
• It’s easy to feel the illusion of progress without much behavioural change
• No one is really making you accountable and asking what’s different a week later
• The learning tends to stay cognitive — not experiential
• And it’s easier to totally disengage when things become uncomfortable for you and those stress hormones increase

None of these observations and characteristics is wholly dramatic in its own right.
But over time, they seem to compound, and that is where the danger and fundamental challenges lie.

What I’ve been sitting with since

If this feels familiar, it might not be about whether AI is useful.
It clearly is.
But I’ve been wondering what happens when it quietly replaces something slower… more human… and, in my experience, harder to replicate.
Because it’s never been easier to find the right words.
I’m just not sure that’s ever been the real work.
That moment at the networking event hasn’t quite left me.
Not because of what was said.
But because everyone agreed so easily.
If you’ve noticed this shift as well, I’d be genuinely interested in your perspective.
• Where are you finding AI genuinely helpful in leadership — and where does it fall short?
• Have you seen situations handled well… but not really change anything underneath?
• And what, in your experience, actually creates lasting shifts in how people lead?