Your Team Now Includes a Non-Human
What 40+ interviews taught me about leading a workforce that isn’t all human anymore.
One of the healthcare leaders I interviewed for the book said something that seemed obvious but hadn’t hit me until that moment.
The workforce used to be all people.
The workforce of tomorrow is going to be a combination of people and AI.
It sounds like a forecast.
But it’s likely already your present.
Additionally, there’s an argument I’ve come to agree with (as have many others), which is that the “A” in AI shouldn’t stand for artificial.
It should stand for augmented.
That’s closer to what the technology actually does.
It holds more than we can hold.
It moves faster than we move.
It’s built to add to a human life, not to stand in for one.
Nearly everyone I’ve interviewed says a version of the same sentence:
“It’s a tool.
Meant to be a tool.
Not a replacement, even when it takes over tasks that used to be yours.”
I believe that.
Augmented is what it’s designed to do. Replacement is what some organizations seem to do (sometimes through 1000’s of layoffs in one go!).
Both are happening, but only one of them is reflected on the org chart.
So the word I keep reaching for isn’t tool. It’s partner.
I know what partnership actually costs, not only because I’m a coach (which is professionally defined as a partnership) but also because I almost got it wrong big time at home first.
Back in 2017, I asked my beloved and very patient husband for permission to stop earning through side gigs and go all in on my startup.
I’d been carrying that ask for months before I said a word out loud.
By the time I brought up the difficult conversation, it had turned into resentment I hadn’t admitted to anyone, including myself (and I label resentment as relationship cancer!)
The conversation only worked because I sat down and got clear on two things first: what I actually needed, and what I was willing to put on the table.
I walked in with a plan instead of a grievance.
If I had walked in with resentment? Not only would he likely have said “no way” but it could have pushed him over the edge and led to a slew of marriage problems.
I swear I could see that happening like looking into a crystal ball.
Instead, he said yes in about three minutes.
The three minutes weren’t the work.
The two weeks before them were.
Partnership worked once I knew what I needed.
There’s one difference worth saying plainly. Zev was able to say “yes”. A model can’t say anything.
The entire relationship sits on your side of the table, which means nobody is going to prompt you to create it.
And that’s the step getting skipped right now - establishing a relationship, a partnership with your AI.
Work is moving to a system before anyone has decided what the humans still need to keep. (Shocking, right? And yet I hear it all the time!)
Which brings me to the part I want your argument against.
If AI is absorbing roles, I think it should be treated something like an employee.
Not identical. Obviously not identical.
But onboarded.
Given a scope.
Evaluated on defined terms.
Reviewed when it underperforms.
With a named human accountable for how it develops.
A partner in the work.
An employee in the accountability structure.
Two different roles, and most systems haven’t addressed either one.
Right now, most health systems have a vendor contract where a different kind of job description should be. I see that as a gap.
And your teams are already living in it.
AI scribes are sitting in on visits. Models are triaging imaging, flagging sepsis, working denials, rebuilding schedules.
Your clinicians are relating to these as colleagues, good ones and bad ones, whether or not your org chart labels them as such.
There’s one limit to the partner idea that has to be said out loud (or a CMO will dismiss all of this in four seconds):
Accountability doesn’t get split.
Think about the GPS in your car.
It knows the roads better than you do.
It reroutes faster than you can think.
And if it misreads a street sign or speed limit, you’re still the one who drove the car. The state trooper isn’t gonna pull over the GPS.
Same here.
When the AI scribe drops a detail, the physician still owns the chart.
When the triage model puts the wrong patient at the back of the queue, nobody disciplines the algorithm.
You can share the work. You can’t share the liability.
The org chart question is the easy one. The reason nobody’s answering it is the harder question.
The definition of who you lead just shifted, big time.
And if who you lead changed, so did how you see yourself as a leader.
Changing how you see yourself as a leader
is an identity shift,
and it doesn’t announce itself as one.
It arrives as irritation.
As second-guessing a call you’d have made without blinking two years ago.
As a question you haven’t said out loud: is the thing I was known for still the thing that makes me valuable?
Actually ask yourself this. It can take seconds. Seconds that could get you back on track.
Think of someone on your team who has made you feel threatened.
Not a poor performer. A good one.
The one who’s faster than you in some specific area, who answers the question before you’ve finished forming it, who makes you aware of an edge you’ve lost.
You know who it is. (You don’t have to tell me.)
Now make that person a tool.
Same capability.
No career ladder.
No ego.
No relationship
Available at 3 a.m. and gets better every month.
Some people feel more threatened by that. Some feel relieved that it isn’t a person.
Either answer tells you something about what you thought your authority was resting on.
Some of what leading looks like does change. Maybe you’re allocating instead of motivating. Auditing instead of trusting.
Plenty doesn’t change. You still set the standard.
You still define what good looks like. You still own the outcome.
And you still have to be steady enough that the humans around you can tell the difference between a leader who’s integrating something and a leader who’s threatened by it.
(They can always tell.)
The way through is unglamorous, and it’s the same as with a person who unsettles you.
You don’t win against them. You find the common ground in how you work together.
That starts inside.
Where you’re coming from.
What you need.
What you’re protecting.
You can’t partner with anything, human or otherwise,
while you’re still defending yourself against it.
That’s what my two weeks were for.
This recalibration isn’t good or bad, and I’m suspicious of anyone selling it as either. It’s simply a recalibration.
The agency in it doesn’t come from having a position on AI. It comes from knowing what stays yours when the definition of your team keeps shifting.
What part of your value are you assuming is safe?
Navigating the era with you, Eva
P.S. If this one is top of mind for you right now, let’s talk about what it looks like in your seat specifically. 30 minutes, no strings, no agenda, no pitch. Just your situation. Book here.