The Red Pen Mattered
I was recently speaking with a Head of HR about their training priorities for the next year. As is true for many organizations, AI was at the top of the list.
As AI increasingly takes on parts of the work traditionally done by junior staff (research, analysis, compliance), work done by humans will shift. Organizations are preparing for that shift now, by developing AI technical skills. Anyone working in talent development knows that as AI takes on more of the technical and transactional work, people will also need stronger communication skills, better judgment, more curiosity, and the ability to understand what a client (internal or external) actually needs rather than simply completing the task they've been given. While technical skills are typically prioritized, training and development will need to focus much more on these other capabilities.
And, there’s another angle I don’t hear nearly enough about: AI isn't only changing the work. It's disrupting how we learned to do the work in the first place.
Think about how expertise has traditionally developed.
A policy analyst researches issues, sifts through evidence, writes briefing notes, has assumptions challenged and watches recommendations get accepted or rejected. Over time, they learn how to interpret and apply facts differently depending on the need, the audience, and how the information will be used. They realize that a technically “right” answer isn't necessarily the right recommendation once you factor in stakeholders, competing priorities, and unintended consequences.
A junior communications professional writes draft after draft. Someone tears them apart. They see what gets approved, what doesn't, what resonates and what lands completely wrong. Eventually, they develop an instinct for what might work before they ever start writing. The struggle has a function.
The work isn't just producing an output. The work is also producing the professional.
No organization is going to preserve tedious or inefficient work simply because previous generations learned from doing it. But if we remove some of the work, we need to be intentional about how we replace the learning that came with it. And that's where this becomes a leadership issue.
After coaching and training thousands of leaders over the past two decades, I can say almost all leaders don’t ask their direct reports nearly enough questions. They tell, advise, solve problems, and give answers. And most don’t even realize how often they’re doing it.
Until now, the work itself did some of the development for them. Junior people researched, analyzed, drafted, made mistakes, got things sent back covered in red ink, and tried again. As AI does more of that work, leaders can't rely on that apprenticeship happening in quite the same way.
Leaders are going to have to become much more intentional about developing how their people think.
That means resisting the urge to immediately give the answer and asking questions instead: What approach are you considering? What are you assuming? What would success look like? What other perspectives haven't we considered? What would make you change your recommendation?
The early-career mindset in many professions has traditionally centred around:
What is the right answer?
But advisory and strategic work often starts with:
What is the right question?
Because when answers become cheaper, questions become more valuable.
Organizations are investing heavily in preparing their people to work with AI. I think they also need to invest just as intentionally in preparing their leaders to develop people in a world where AI does more of the work that used to develop them.
The red pen had a purpose. If we're going to take it away, we'd better replace what it was teaching.
