The augmented leader: what do we want to amplify?

“ What gets measured gets managed.”

— Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher and professor

We are all augmented humans already.

My glasses enhance my vision. My smartphone extends my memory. Google expands my access to knowledge. My watch gives me access to information about my body that I was once unable to know.

Human beings have always invented tools to extend their capabilities.

Flint extended the power of our hands, the wheel our mobility, the telescope our vision. Machines increased our physical strength. Writing externalised our memory. The internet vastly expanded our access to knowledge.

With artificial intelligence, we are entering a new phase: we are beginning to augment our capacity to think directly.

Synthesising, challenging hypotheses, making connections, simulating scenarios, adopting multiple perspectives, testing a line of reasoning…

Having augmented our bodies, our senses, our memory and our access to knowledge, we are now augmenting some of our cognitive abilities.

For leaders, the question that interests me goes far beyond: “Do you use generative AI?”

It becomes:

How do we choose to augment ourselves? And, more importantly, what do we choose to augment?

The leader has always been augmented

No leader leads alone.

Leaders surround themselves with executive teams, colleagues, board members, experts, consultants and coaches. They draw on research, benchmarks, dashboards and data.

The further you rise in an organisation, the more your effectiveness depends on your ability to draw on intelligence beyond your own.

AI is now adding a new form of intelligence to this ecosystem: always available, able to process vast amounts of information quickly and, above all, able to shift perspective whenever we ask it to.

Before making an important decision, I can ask it:

“Challenge my reasoning.”

“What am I not seeing?”

“Analyse the situation from the perspective of my CFO, my HR Director and my main competitor.”

“Now make the strongest possible case for the exact opposite of my position.”

The value lies less in any individual answer than in the way it broadens the scope of my thinking.

I see three levels today.

The AI-assisted leader uses AI to work faster: to synthesise, write and prepare.

The augmented leader uses it to broaden their perception, challenge their thinking and enrich their decisions.

The transformed leader goes further. Through sustained interaction with this new form of cognitive otherness, they gradually change the way they think, learn and lead.

It is this shift from assistance to augmentation that I find most interesting today.

1. See more

The paradox of power is well known: the higher you rise in an organisation, the greater the risk of becoming detached from parts of reality.

Information reaches you filtered. Some people hesitate to say what you may not want to hear. Your diary takes you further away from what is happening on the ground. And your own convictions influence what you choose to notice.

AI can help us step outside our usual frame.

When faced with a situation I believe I understand, I can ask it to look for inconsistencies, weak signals or alternative hypotheses:

“What other story could explain exactly the same facts?”

That question will not necessarily give me a better answer. More importantly, it prevents me from becoming trapped too quickly in my own.

Perhaps being augmented begins simply with seeing more of reality.

2. Think more broadly

We all think through the lens of our history, our culture, our profession, our successes and our failures.

A finance professional, an engineer, a marketer and an HR leader will not approach the same problem from the same angle.

That individual perspective is a strength. It becomes a limitation when we confuse our representation of the world with the world itself.

With AI, I can deliberately introduce a form of cognitive diversity.

I can ask the same model to examine my problem as an activist investor, a sociologist, an entrepreneur, a 25-year-old employee, a dissatisfied customer or my most aggressive competitor.

Above all, I can ask it to construct the strongest possible argument against my own conviction.

This is where AI becomes genuinely interesting: when it stops being a tool that agrees with me and becomes a sparring partner that helps me think differently.

3. Make better decisions in a complex world

The problem facing leaders today is rarely a lack of information.

It is the abundance of information, interdependencies and speed.

A strategic decision can now be affected simultaneously by technological innovation, a regulatory decision, geopolitical tensions, a competitor’s actions or changing consumer expectations.

There is a growing gap between the complexity of the world we need to understand and our individual cognitive bandwidth.

AI can help narrow that gap.

It allows us to explore multiple scenarios, consider second-order consequences, test the robustness of a hypothesis or run a “red team” exercise before making a decision.

Sometimes one question is enough:

“What would have to be true for my decision to be completely wrong?”

AI expands the space for reflection. Then comes the moment when that space has to narrow again.

Because someone still has to choose, take the risk and accept the consequences.

That is where leadership begins.

4. Understand others better

Many of the difficulties I observe in leadership teams stem from our inability to see a situation from someone else’s perspective.

We often focus on explaining our own reasoning more clearly when we should begin by trying to understand the other person’s.

Before a difficult conversation, AI can become a kind of interpersonal simulator:

“If you were this person, what might concern you about my proposal?”

“What do I seem to be underestimating?”

“What questions should I ask before trying to persuade them?”

Used in this way, technology can paradoxically help develop a profoundly human skill: cognitive empathy.

Understand before seeking to persuade.

5. Learn faster from our own experience

This is probably the form of augmentation that fascinates me most as a coach and supervisor.

Every week, a leader accumulates an extraordinary range of experiences: an executive committee meeting that goes off the rails, a brilliant negotiation, an intuition that proves right, a conflict avoided, an employee who resists, a decision with unexpected consequences.

But experience alone does not produce learning.

We need to revisit it, question it, identify patterns and imagine alternative behaviours.

After a difficult executive committee meeting, a few questions may be enough:

“What was really going on?”

“At what point did I lose the room?”

“What pattern of behaviour keeps recurring for me?”

“What could I try differently at the next executive committee meeting?”

Here, AI becomes what I call an augmented mirror: a space for reflection that is available between coaching sessions and can help us turn experience into awareness more quickly, and awareness into experimentation.

Choosing what to augment

This, ultimately, is where the real issue lies.

Using AI to write emails faster or summarise meetings delivers genuine productivity gains. But that is only the first level.

The far more interesting question is which dimensions of our leadership we choose to develop:

See more.

Think more broadly.

Make decisions with greater discernment.

Understand others better.

Learn faster.

AI then becomes less another tool and more a new environment for leadership development.

There is, however, another reality: augmentation works both ways.

A curious leader can enhance their ability to question their own certainties. A narcissistic leader can enhance their ability to justify them.

A leader can develop greater discernment. They can also gradually outsource their thinking.

So the question becomes twofold:

What do we want to augment? And what should we continue to practise ourselves?

What if augmentation brought us back to what matters most?

This is perhaps the paradox that interests me most.

As AI becomes increasingly capable of analysing, synthesising, producing and reasoning, certain dimensions of leadership will become even more valuable.

Building trust.

Sensing what is happening within a team.

Creating meaning.

Showing courage.

Owning a difficult decision.

Inspiring others.

Listening to your intuition.

Nurturing relationships.

We first augmented our physical strength, then our memory and our access to knowledge. Today, we are beginning to augment our capacity to think.

But being more augmented does not necessarily make us better leaders.

Everything will depend on what we choose to augment.

Our speed or our discernment?

Our ability to produce or our ability to think?

Our power to persuade or our ability to understand others?

Our certainties or our curiosity?

Perhaps this is the real skill of the augmented leader: knowing what to delegate to the machine, what to develop with it, and what to continue exercising fully ourselves.

Ultimately, AI asks every leader a question:

What kind of leader do I want AI to help me become?

#Leadership #AI #Transformation #Coaching #AugmentedLeadership