The New Leadership Edge: Wisdom

Today, access to generative AI is democratized. We have next-generation tools not only at the organizational level but also at the individual employee level. Almost every employee can access free and near-free AI platforms to transform nearly any aspect of their role. Data entry, content generation, and basic decision-making can be automated. Emails are drafted, reports are generated, and messages are translated speedily. Accelerated research, data analysis, and synthesis enable higher-level comprehension and decision-making. 

In this world, leaders are asked to not only figure out how AI impacts their business; they are also forced to reconsider how to lead as well. 

Though it remains in its early days, there is a new set of leadership competencies in this AI-informed world - an emerging rubric against which leaders will succeed or fail. And yet, one competency already stands out as disproportionately valuable in addressing the current moment: wisdom.

Generative AI adds value by quickly synthesizing the corpus of human knowledge. It culls existing data sets to provide answers. In contrast to this collective knowledge, wisdom emerges from our inner selves. Wisdom can be defined as that deeper body of knowledge, accessed internally, which arises from our individual and collective experiences, both conscious and unconscious. It is a synthesis of our compounded insights from our human experiences. It’s the sensibility of what’s really at stake in a situation or the quiet hunch of the right decision to make. 

Since wisdom does not reside within the accessible data set of human knowledge online, it cannot be analyzed by artificial intelligence. Sitting on the edge of the known, wisdom is increasingly the only unique, differentiated input that we can bring into the boardroom.  

We focus on bringing wisdom to the boardroom, in particular, because decision-making is at the core of the role of a leader. As Jeff Bezos shared in an interview, “As a senior executive, you get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions…If I make three good decisions a day, that’s enough. And they should be as high quality as I can make them.” When we conceive of leadership as the discipline of making a small handful of well-informed decisions, the differential value of that wisdom becomes clear. 

A great example of this occurred in a recent strategy offsite for a pharmaceutical team. The leadership team spent two days debating new drugs, new indications, new markets, and new partnerships. We debated the core and adjacent strategy moves, considering ‘where to play’ and ‘how to win.’ After moving through the traditional discussions, we settled into a wisdom process designed to access wisdom and share it in non-traditional dialogue. The wisdom that emerged bottom-lined what was really at stake:  we could make whatever decisions we wanted here, but the real challenge was in managing the board and their various dynamics. We were finally having the real conversation. We were finally able to make decisions that incorporated the bigger truths of the situation - instead of just dealing with the present problem in a linear, logical way. This is often what happens when we access and incorporate wisdom.  We realize “what’s really going on,” “what’s really at stake,” or “what the conversation is actually about.” 

This was a new experience for the executives involved - and not how we’re inclined to operate in organizational environments.  This is because accessing, articulating, and incorporating wisdom is not yet explicitly valued in leaders.

So, how do leaders cultivate wisdom? Wise leaders practice sitting in silence, learning to listen instead of assert. They work to differentiate their ego energy from their self energy, developing their capacity to go beyond their limited experience. This helps them to judge the inner messages they hear, differentiating their own thoughts and emotions from deeper tracks of wisdom. And wise leaders have the courage to share their insights, making sense of this non-linear information within structured organizational constructs.

If this sounds strange within a professional setting, that’s appropriate and expected. Never before has knowledge been so completely commoditized – and wisdom so clearly needed within organizations. These are new skills to master and new disciplines to explore. Going forward, leaders who want to build a competitive advantage must develop a new relationship with their wisdom. They will need to learn to understand, interpret, trust, and apply it judiciously. Doing so allows them to make better decisions with knowledge and wisdom together than with either alone.

Adapted and expanded from the author’s white paper “Leadership in the Age of AI”, originally published March 2024