Coming Up
The difference between AI assisting your leadership and AI standing in for you
The one question to ask yourself before you hand a task over to AI
A confession about my Zoom meeting notes – and what it taught me about being present
A simple action item to make this real this week
Welcome to the 5-Day HUMAN Leadership Audit.
If you saw our kickoff post, you know the heart of this series: slowing down in the middle of AI-augmented work and asking a question that matters more than ever.
What work should remain uniquely human?
This audit is an invitation to practice discernment. To notice where AI can support your thinking, writing, planning, and decision-making – and where your presence, judgment, empathy, and lived experience still need to lead.
No matter how you personally feel about AI, it’s hard to deny its extraordinary capability. And this week, we’re going to stand beside that capability and ask a deeper question.
Not only, “What can AI do for me?”
But, “What should I still be doing for myself?”
Before we dive into Day 1, here’s an overview of all that we’ll cover together this week:
Day 1 – H: Hold the Human Line (you are here)
Day 2 – U: Unoptimize What Matters
Day 3 – M: Make Meaning Before Making More
Day 4 – A: Audit Atrophy
Day 5 – N: Name the Non-Negotiables
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The First Question Isn’t “What Can I Automate?”
With AI this capable, it’s tempting to make automation the starting point.
What can I hand off? What can I speed up? What can I get off my plate?
Those are useful questions. But they are not the first questions of human leadership.
The better question is: Where do I still need to be personally present?
Because AI can now produce many of the visible signs of leadership. It can draft the thoughtful message, summarize the data, sharpen the strategy, and make a decision appear well-reasoned. Sometimes, that support is exactly what you need.
But leadership is not just the production of good outputs. It is the willingness to stay responsible for the moments that require judgment, care, context, and accountability.
That is the line this challenge begins with: assistance versus abdication.
Assistance is when AI helps you show up better. It helps you organize your thoughts before a hard conversation, pressure-test a decision, or turn a rough idea into language you can stand behind. You are still leading. The tool is helping you do it with more clarity.
Abdication is more subtle. It is generating a polished message without really deciding what you want to say. It is accepting a recommendation because it sounds convincing, rather than because you have tested it against your own judgment. It is polishing a message until it becomes easier to receive, but less honest than it needs to be.
This distinction is worth thinking about.
If you use AI, ask yourself: Am I using AI to become more present here, or to be absent more comfortably?
Here’s a small example of this that I noticed in my own life, with Zoom’s AI meeting notes feature.
When I had meeting notes turned on, I started to half-check out. I’d tell myself, “It’s fine, I can read the notes later.”
But having that safety net was exactly the problem – it made me feel okay about not being fully in the conversation in the present moment.
When I turned meeting notes off, I listened better and brought a better version of myself to the call. I was no longer using AI notes as permission to be less present.
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Your Action Item
I can’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t automate. That depends on your role, your workplace, your company’s AI policies, your own values, and even your personality.
For example, an INFJ personality type might gravitate toward using AI to reflect on ideas, while keeping thoughtful message-writing fully human. An ESTP might use AI to automate fast-moving communication tasks, while keeping troubleshooting and final decision-making in their own hands.
But I can (and I will) ask you to make this decision for yourself.
Name one thing this month that you will not hand over completely to AI because it matters too much to your leadership.
It might be the feedback you owe someone but have been putting off. The apology that needs to sound like you, not like a polished template. The promotion, hiring, or performance decision where you need to sit with the tradeoffs yourself. The note of encouragement to someone who will know whether you actually meant it.
Write it down in one sentence:
I will personally handle ______, even though AI could help, because ______.
I’d love to know what came up for you. What’s one thing you’re choosing to keep fully human this month?
Next Up: Tomorrow, in Day 2 – U: Unoptimize What Matters, we make the case for protecting a little friction on purpose. Because sometimes, moving slowly is actually part of the value.
Oh, one more thing: In my doctoral department, we are asking ourselves, "as a matter of integrity, what WOULDN'T you ask another human being to do for you?" In education: We would use technological tools to ensure our content messaging is on-brand/color-coded and unified. We would NOT use AI (or another human) to grade our student's papers or dissertations. This has been a very helpful, insightful question!
LOVE this series and it's so very timely right now. We just hosted an AI Symposium with AI thought-leaders across the US. I learned so much!
So I keep myself accountable, here's my response to today's H in HUMAN prompt: I will personally handle articulating the vision for student support across my organization (including what success and failure look like), even though AI could help, because every learner is uniquely created in God's image; individually supported to thrive.
I will continue to allow AI to assist me with alignment of the vision to current branding, logos, taglines. Example: I provide the communication content; AI helps with engaging professional development slides. My ideas => AI's help in tying a unifying bow around them!