Leadership development needs data, tech – and us
Victor Reis | Sweden
But binary thinking remains a real risk. It’s all about the nuance...
Leadership assessment and development specialists are living in interesting times: the burgeoning range of tools and instruments is both promising and disorienting, writes Victor Reis, Partner at Amrop Sweden and member of Amrop's Global Leadership Advisory Practice.
Especially given the dizzying rise of AI, it’s tempting to seek clarity in the black and white: humans versus data and technology. Few deny that we should combine both. But what should that look like? What do we want, and (really) need?
I’m a licensed psychologist. For years, I’ve been helping organizations to assess and develop leaders, creating and implementing competency frameworks. I freely admit: we practitioners tend to overestimate our intuitive skills and judgment. Paradoxically, as our age and knowledge grow, so does our misplaced optimism. Studies comparing human decision‑making with mechanized or data‑driven equivalents consistently show that good tech outperforms humans most of the time.
Good tech – most of the time. That’s the nuance. And as the polarization intensifies (“tech is bad or good, humans should do everything or nothing”), we need to check our assumptions. Research shows that tech does many things better – and its upward trend is set to continue.
Where tech has the real edge
Take behavioral specificity: algorithms are becoming less prone to subjective vagueness and bias than we humans and our heuristics.
Tech and data can highlight such blind spots: a 360o feedback tool exposes gaps between how we perceive ourselves and how other people do. We need the humility to admit that we don’t know what we don’t know.
Tech and data-based instruments offer consistency, scalability, and comparability. For organizational insights - helping a firm leverage all of its leadership potential - we need to compare populations, pinpoint differences, and demonstrate movement. That’s where data‑driven assessment and development continue to have a distinct edge. Larger samples increase statistical significance and the validity of quantitative conclusions.
The human factor
To achieve sustainable effectiveness, we need to understand the contextual factors that influence a leader. Culture, team dynamics and workplace politics. Formal and informal influences. Industry realities. On paper, a role may look simple, but these subtle mechanisms still need human observation and interpretation.
When it comes to executive assessment and development, human interpersonal skills and aspects of emotional intelligence (such as compassion), enable us to calibrate our communication. Trained psychologists or consultants remain an important ingredient.
As a conversation unfolds, new context emerges - things we didn’t know at the outset. Human ‘adaptive creativity’ enables us to flex to fresh information in real time, discerning what may be missing, questioning further.
Tech-empowered 360o assessment or personality tests are vital measurement tools. But helping individuals to change still needs human interaction, reflection, building meaning together.
The best of both worlds
A leadership conversation benefits from upfront objective analysis and the ability to derive organizational insights from multiple datasets. Consider 360o tools and psychometric tests. Used in isolation, they only have a modest impact on leadership development. Combined with expert coaching, that impact soars. We take numbers on a page and create emotional value.
Accelerated by AI tools, technology is starting to do things we’re used to doing – often better. Resistance is natural. We don’t like being surpassed, nor do we fully trust the machines. To extract the maximum value out of AI agents, we need to scrutinize and review their output. Language models can sound like experts, but they’re simply generating probabilities that can easily be mistaken for correct analysis. Like eager trainees: they always give an answer, even when it lacks substance or foundation. We need to be mindful, to act as a critical parent. AI output often resembles ultra‑processed food: sweet, a little salty and fatty - because it knows that’s what we like.
But given time, engineering and human adaptability, AI will very likely match us in many areas. Next gen leaders will increasingly expect practitioners to use the advantages of technology - whether tracking biodata, understanding stress levels, or analyzing communication patterns.
However technology develops, human wisdom and discernment must be preserved at all costs. But a judicious use of AI will be crucial if we are to remain relevant in our field.
Contact
