AI Augmented Leadership: Exploring the Exoskeleton

While executives obsess over efficiency, they’re missing AI’s real superpower: making us more human.

Tuesday afternoon. I faced a tough choice: my daughter’s basketball final or finalising a workshop for domestic violence services? Both mattered. Both pulled at different parts of who I am.

Here’s what I didn’t do: agonise for an hour, reschedule three times, or send apologetic emails. Instead, I used Microsoft Copilot to map the session structure in minutes. My team shaped it into a working model in an hour instead of the usual half day back and forth. I made it to the game.

This isn’t a productivity story. It’s a humanity story.

And it’s precisely what 99% of organisations are getting catastrophically wrong about AI leadership.

McKinsey’s latest research should scare every L&D executive: only 1% of companies describe their AI rollouts as “mature.” Meanwhile, 98.4% are investing in AI initiatives—up 20% from last year. Translation? Nearly everyone’s doing it, almost no one’s doing it right.

The problem? Leaders are treating AI like a turbocharged spreadsheet when they should be thinking exoskeleton.

An exoskeleton doesn’t replace your muscles—it amplifies them. It doesn’t make you less human—it makes your humanity more powerful. Yet most executives are using AI to become better robots instead of better humans.

The Three AI Horizons help me frame AI maturity for myself and my team.

Horizon 1: Addition (Where 90% Get Stuck)

This is AI as your thinking sidekick. Not making decisions for you, but ensuring you’re not alone in the ring. One client discovered their smallest investment—a weekend workshop—delivered the highest ROI in employee engagement. The insight wasn’t obvious. AI connected the dots. Humans acted on them.

The trap? Most leaders stop here, treating AI like Google on steroids. They get marginally better insights while their competitors are reinventing the game.

Horizon 2: Automation (The Uncomfortable Truth)

Here’s what nobody wants to admit: automation reveals how much “strategic work” was actually elaborate busy work. When one organisation automated routine client communications, managers reclaimed three hours weekly. They didn’t use it for more meetings, they mentored staff, brainstormed initiatives, reconnected with teams.

The cultural shift was immediate. Morale improved, innovation flourished, clients felt more connected, even when their first contact was a chatbot. Turns out, when you stop drowning in administrivia, you can actually lead.

Horizon 3: Augmentation (Where Unicorns Live)

This is where AI enables entirely new operating models. One company created an AI-powered development platform that analysed performance reviews, peer feedback, and goals to create tailored growth paths. But it didn’t stop there, it connected employees with mentors across departments, creating a self-sustaining learning ecosystem.

This wasn’t a new tool. It was a new way of being an organisation.

Here’s the leadership challenge nobody talks about: what do you do with the space AI creates?

The average knowledge worker could gain 3-5 hours weekly through smart AI integration. Most leaders will fill that space with more meetings, more metrics, more noise. The best leaders will protect it, for reflection, for connection, for the messy, beautiful work of being human.

And will they feel guilty about reclaiming that space? Likely.

Because we have optimised ourselves for the wrong things. For output, for speed, for volume.

The very things AI can do in spades, while we dig ourselves into a deeper hole.

As Starbucks’ Chief Learning Officer Brandon Carson puts it: “In the age of AI, leaders are becoming the conduits of what it means to be human at work. Their prime task will become to create human connections and experiences at every moment of people’s careers.”

The real risk is not that AI will replace leaders. It’s that leaders will use AI to accelerate rather than transform. That they’ll become more efficient without becoming more effective. That they’ll forget why they lead in the first place.

Stanford’s AI Index shows us the future: nearly 90% of notable AI models now come from industry, not academia. Training compute doubles every five months. This train isn’t slowing down.

But here’s the plot twist: while everyone’s racing to automate everything, the most successful AI implementations are making organisations more human, not less. MIT research shows that the companies seeing real AI value aren’t those replacing humans—they’re those amplifying human capabilities.

Want to know how the 1% think differently? They don’t ask one AI for advice—they create what I call an “AI Pit Crew.” Imagine posing the same strategic question to multiple AI systems, each configured for different perspectives:

One prioritising research evidence.

Another considering implementation challenges.

A third anticipating stakeholder reactions.

A fourth identifying unintended consequences.

This isn’t about letting machines make decisions. It’s about ensuring human judgment has the richest possible foundation. The wisest leaders have always sought multiple advisors—now some of those advisors happen to be computational.

For your next augmented leadership move, find one area where AI can enhance – not replace – your judgment. Start small. Ask your AI assistant to draft a report, summarise a meeting, analyse a trend. Then use the time you save to do something irreplaceable.

Have a real conversation. Mentor someone who reminds you why you got into this work. Go to your daughter’s basketball game.

The future belongs to leaders who understand that AI’s superpower isn’t making us more efficient—it’s making us more human.

The exoskeleton is ready. The question is: are you?