AI is designed to make you feel good—and that results in lost learning opportunities. In this faculty perspective, Karl Kuhnert, professor in the practice of organization and management, explores how artificial intelligence may be limiting the very growth leaders need most.
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way is the way.”
Marcus Aurelius, 170 A.D.
Artificial intelligence is fast, articulate, responsive, and non-defensive. It synthesizes ideas, strengthens arguments, and refines language at lightning speed. It does not rest. It does not withhold. It does not blink. It meets us exactly where we are.
And that is precisely why it deserves scrutiny.
Leadership development depends on friction—challenge, contradiction, and experiences that destabilize how we make sense of the world. When intelligence becomes frictionless, a harder question emerges: How do we grow to meet new challenges with understanding we don’t yet possess?
Growth Requires Disequilibrium
Research in adult development is remarkably consistent: transformation does not occur through affirmation alone. Developmental shifts are triggered by experiences that disrupt our current way of making meaning. We grow when the perspective that once worked no longer explains the demands before us.
In my leadership development teaching, I ask participants to reflect on landmark events in their lives. I ask them to identify several moments that shaped them and rank those experiences from +5 to -5, depending on whether the event was experienced as highly positive or deeply negative.
Having done this exercise with leaders in many different countries, I then ask a simple question: Of the positive or negative landmark events, which ones did you grow from the most? The response is almost unanimous and with resignation. The experiences that produced the greatest learning and growth are the negative ones.
This result is striking because the positive landmark events often reflect years of hard work, development of new competencies, commitment, and achievement. Yet it is the negative events of failure, disappointment, conflict, and especially loss that most often force leaders to reconsider how they understand themselves, their relationships, and the world around them. Leaders grow most from experiences they would never voluntarily choose.
Growth rarely originates with comfort. It begins when the way we once made sense of the world no longer works, and our priorities change.
This distinction clarifies the difference between lateral and vertical development. Lateral development expands knowledge by enabling the acquisition of new skills through traditional training and education. Vertical development transforms your perspective and how you see and interact with the world.
Artificial intelligence dramatically enhances lateral development. It accelerates learning, sharpens communication, and increases productivity. What it does not generate is vertical transformation, the shift in perspective that changes how leaders understand important subjects such as success, interpersonal relationships, ethics, conflict, and decision making. The best leaders, through vertical development, can close the gap between their current knowledge and what is required of them moving forward. Vertical growth begins where disequilibrium is met with curiosity and courage. (Wergin, 2020).
The Seduction of Frictionless Intelligence
Consider a leader drafting a difficult message to her executive team. She may engage AI to refine the tone, clarify the structure, and strengthen the logic. Her message improves.
But what if she never confronts her discomfort about disappointing others—is AI doing the “hard work” for her by findings the words she won’t find in herself?
She never examines her avoidance of conflict—should this email have been a face-to-face conversation?
She never questions her need to constantly prove she is right.
She blames others rather than taking responsibility for her own mistakes.
She takes sides in difficult meetings rather than taking a stand.
The technology can sharpen the communication with her team. It cannot challenge the structure of the self delivering it. Most AI interactions are affirming by default. Unless otherwise directed, the system refines our assumptions and strengthens the language consistent with our reasoning. It does not impose its own ideas into the exchange. It does not contradict unless asked.
However, without contradiction, we remain embedded in our current worldview. We become more sophisticated at defending the structure we already inhabit.
Artificial intelligence will meet the leader’s level of development and amplify it. At lower levels, it reinforces certainty;.
At higher levels, it masks potential breakthroughs.
The tool is constant. The leader is not.
The Illusion of Progress
When AI produces polished frameworks and compelling prose, it can feel like an advancement. But feeling satisfied is not the same as being transformed through lived experience.
Conflict research reminds us that conflict is not inherently destructive; it is simply a condition in which differences appear incompatible. It is precisely within incompatibility that new meaning emerges. When technology minimizes exposure to incompatible perspectives, it also minimizes opportunities for novel developmental insights.
The risk is subtle: leaders leave conversations fluent yet unchanged. We may become more eloquent in leadership language without becoming more effective at resolving conflict.
Designing for Developmental Friction
The solution is not to resist artificial intelligence. It is to engage it intentionally. If vertical development requires disequilibrium, leaders must design disequilibrium into their use of AI through their probes.
Instead of asking for polish, request challenge and contradiction.
Instead of seeking validation, solicit critique and ask to be pushed.
Instead of pursuing clarity, ask: What assumptions am I holding that I believe are truths?
Instead of strengthening your argument, ask the AI to dismantle it.
Friction will not be imposed by default. It must be invited. Without invitation, the pursuit of efficiency prevails over development and growth.
The Responsibility of the Leader
Artificial intelligence represents a profound expansion of human capability. It enhances access to knowledge and accelerates learning. It is, without question, a powerful tool. But it does not automatically create the tension required for vertical transformation. That responsibility requires leader engagement.
Leaders who wish to grow must preserve challenge within their learning environments. They must seek counterarguments, entertain incompatible perspectives, and resist resolving uncertainty prematurely. Growth doesn’t come from having the answers; It comes from being challenged by the questions. They must cultivate reflection in an era optimized for speed.
Artificial intelligence will shape the future of leader development.
The decisive variable will not be the sophistication of the tool, but the user’s maturity. Leaders who avoid friction will become more polished versions of who they already are. In a rapidly changing world, current competencies will not get us to how we need to lead tomorrow.
AI technology is seductive, with surprising intelligence and frictionless interactions—but its lack of context and its insistence on coherence will eradicate nuance and even cause it to completely sidestep crucial, relevant conversations. The immediate question is whether leaders will use AI to exercise their critical judgment, or will they allow it to mirror the limits of their own thinking?
References:
Wergin, J.F. (2020). Deep learning in a disoriented world. Cambridge University Press.
