The Leadership Revolution Nobody's Talking About

New research from Harvard Kennedy School shows that leadership quality decides team performance more than most people assume, and the effect holds whether a team is made up of people, AI agents, or both. Teams led by a strong leader solved 53% of complex problems correctly, against 10% for teams led by a weak one, a roughly five-fold gap between good and bad leadership.

What separates strong leaders from weak ones

The researchers found that leadership skill transfers directly across team types: a leader who performs well directing a team of AI agents tends to perform just as well directing people. The behaviours that mattered were consistent. The strongest leaders asked more questions, encouraged everyone to take a turn, and used "we" instead of "I". They facilitated: guiding discussion, and deferring to whichever teammate, human or AI, had the better answer.

Leadership and AI expert Martin Gutmann makes a similar point in his Forbes column: as AI takes on more technical and analytical work, leaders benefit from getting clear about what they personally do well and how to combine that with their team's strengths.

PepTalk Fact: Gutmann is a professor at the Lucerne School of Business and has spent over a decade studying how leaders make decisions under pressure 🧠

Why this matters for event organisers

Leadership teams already know AI is changing how they work. What helps most from a keynote or workshop is practical guidance: running better meetings, asking sharper questions, and knowing when to step back. That's the gap speakers like Gutmann, Caroline Webb, and David Burkus are booked to fill.

Caroline Webb, a former co-founder of McKinsey's leadership practice and author of How to Have a Good Day, draws on behavioural science to help leaders use their attention, energy, and judgement well under pressure, human strengths that gain value as AI takes on routine tasks.

David Burkus, whose keynotes have been booked by organisations including PepsiCo, Fidelity, and NASA, focuses on psychological safety, collaboration, and what makes remote and hybrid teams perform. His work gives leaders a practical answer to the same question Gutmann and Webb are raising: what behaviours build teams that perform well, whoever or whatever is on them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this really about AI replacing leaders?

No. The research is about what makes leadership effective, and it holds true whether the team includes AI agents or not. The leadership behaviours are the finding, not a verdict on AI's role.

What kind of session works best for this topic?

A keynote or workshop covering the same behavioural evidence, adapted to your team's real decisions, for example meeting structure, delegation, or how leaders and AI tools divide up work.

Who should book this kind of speaker?

Leadership and management teams, L&D functions running development programmes, and organisations rolling out AI tools who want their leaders equipped to manage the shift, not just the software.

Explore more leadership development speakers or read about why leaders who ignore empathy are losing their best people.

Interested in booking Martin Gutmann, Caroline Webb, or David Burkus for your next event? Get in touch with the PepTalk team and we'll scope the right format for your audience. You can also call us on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US). Remember, it's always a good time to get a PepTalk!