Soft skills make the difference between a good leader and a great leader: and they can’t be replaced by AI

A leadership expert says over-reliance on AI in business is risking removing emotional intelligence from key decision making and team building.

Leadership coach and author Drew Povey, founder of Drew Povey Consultancy,

warned the technology runs the risk of making some areas of leadership redundant.

Drew, who specialises in supporting coaches and managers in sport, said: “AI is a useful tool, but it’s just that – a tool. My concern is that we need to strike the right balance between our use of technology and building and developing our own skills.

“I worry that people will become reliant on AI and could lose that innate human element that we bring to leadership and team building.

“Leaders have understanding and insights built over many years which cannot be replaced by data or machines. If AI cannot find the answers to a question, it can make things up.

“The ‘soft skills’ which good leaders at all levels have make the difference between a good leader and a great leader can’t be replaced by software.”

Drew says his experience of working in elite sports has shown him that humans cannot just be replaced by technology, no matter how smart.

He said: “AI has a role to play in any team, particularly with more basic tasks of information gathering or data analysis, but it cannot replace the power of a human connection.

“An emotionally intelligent leader goes beyond the numbers and knows their team. AI can’t

pick up that real emotional response, and it can’t read people like humans do.

“It’s ‘machine learning’ for a reason – it uses whatever data you pump into it but there are just some cues and traits which cannot be quantified and that’s what cannot be replaced.”

Explaining the role tech and AI can play in sport he continued: “We’ve used technology and data in sport for a long time; elite sports is incredibly data driven. We’ve got all the information that says the players should train at this point because they are due to pull a hamstring or develop another injury or over train.

“And whilst it’s useful to have that information, it should be used as a guide.

“I’ve seen many top-level coaches when the sports scientists are running over, saying ‘we need to stop training now.’

“But the coach looks at the players and can see that the players can continue for another ten minutes, and he’s pushed the players through.

“The data could also get it wrong and put players at risk by pushing them too much whereas a coach will see if his players look physically fatigued and need to stop training early.

“That comes from the human understanding of people and years of working in both a team and in a leadership role and I have yet to see a coach who has got that wrong in my 25 years’ experience of working in sport.

“Because we’ve used data in sports for so many years I think it provides a lesson for other areas on how we can use AI: as a way of gathering data, of making predictions or analysing patterns but only as a tool to help inform our own human-driven intelligence.

“To rely on AI wholly would be a mistake: nothing can replace that human intelligence.”