AI is eliminating the very experiences that develop the leaders we need

My twenty-something children are home for Thanksgiving—at least three of the four—and our conversations have me more worried than ever about the future of leadership. Their stories of friends who have given up in the name of “AI efficiency,” along with others struggling to make it in toxic workplaces or even handle basic supervisory tasks, reveal a troubling trend. In an effort to automate junior roles for short-term gains, companies are depriving the next generation of the very skills that enable leadership – the so-called “soft skills” that are actually the hardest to learn and most important in a digital world.

We are entering a workplace where AI writes our emails, schedules our meetings, manages customer requests, and generates content at astonishing speeds. Change is accelerating rapidly: A 2024 ResumeBuilder survey found that 37% of companies were replacing entry-level professionals…