Meet The Leader

Workslop – low-quality work produced through poor human-AI collaboration – is wasting time, slowing teams down and limiting the productivity gains leaders expect from AI. But the problem isn't always the technology – it's often a signal to leaders that teams need more support. Workslop often reflects unclear standards, weak direction and poor feedback. In this episode, BetterUp CEO Alexi Robichaux explains why AI can amplify both good and bad leadership standards, and why leaders need to define what excellent work looks like before AI scales a team's output. He also shares how AI coaching can help managers find ways to hone hard-to-improve soft skills, practicing difficult conversations, tricky performance reviews and tough feedback, all in a safe space before those moments happen with real teams.

Key takeaways in this episode:


AI amplifies clarity or confusion. Set clear standards before AI scales your team's work.

Workslop is a leadership warning sign. Poor AI output can reveal unclear direction and weak feedback. It can be a sign teams need more guidance or support. 

Managers need practice. AI coaching can help leaders sharpen direction and rehearse how they give feedback or tackle difficult conversations.

Rethink how you invest in people. AI investment is overwhelming planning conversations. But are you putting that diligence into how you develop your talent?



About this guest:
Website: https://www.betterup.com/

Research: The Hidden Cost of AI-Generated Busy Work: https://www.betterup.com/workslop

Article: Workslop: Why AI performance depends on how we think, talk and lead: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/why-ai-performance-depends-on-how-we-think-talk-and-lead/

About this episode: 
Read here - Transcript: https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/alexi-robichaux-ai-workslop-leadership-coaching

Watch here - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTAbIqqAf4Y

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The Attention Crisis: How leaders can fix focus and happiness in an AI Era - psychologist Jonathan Haidt 
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Are you building game-changing AI solutions? Or just automating low-stakes work that makes the "irrelevant efficient"?

Nigel Vaz, Publicis Sapient's CEO and a digital transformation expert, talked to Meet The Leader to explain why many AI strategies fall short and what's needed to lead teams through technological change. In this episode, Vaz shares the questions that can refine your strategic discussions on AI and help close the gap between AI expectations and results. He also shares why the hardest part of AI transformation isn't the tech but getting the people part right -- and what helps teams transition.

Key Takeaways:
The questions teams you're not asking nearly enough. Vaz explains how to refine your thinking to ensure your solutions aren't locked into yesterday's way of working
The hidden gap that can derail your AI transformation: What separates promising AI experiments from work that actually changes how a business performs? He breaks down the blindspots that hold real innovation back. 
Get the people part right. Incentives, expectations and old measures of success can slow AI adoption more than the technology itself. Vaz shares what leaders often underestimate when asking teams to work in a fundamentally new way.
How to learn and unlearn. Your value as a leader will depend on your capacity to learn. He shares how to deploy existing experience for new solutions.
Vaz shares key examples of how to put this thinking to work, including including a legacy modernization project that cut a 10-year timeline to under three and Publicis Sapient's own transition from a people-led services model to a people-and-product enterprise AI company. Learn more about this - including the innovative CEO GPT tool Publicis Sapient built that helps teams scale internal knowledge and context.

About this guest: 
https://www.nigelvaz.com/about
https://www.publicissapient.com/
About this episode:
Transcript: https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/ai-transformation-leadership-future-of-work/

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How to upskill for an AI Age: Workera CEO Kian Katanforoosh
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Adam Grant: Future leaders won't succeed without this key trait Watch here:
Read here - Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/fbym95jy
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The Attention Crisis: How leaders can fix focus and happiness in an AI Era -psychologist Jonathan Haidt
Read here - transcript:: https://tinyurl.com/yc45ccc3
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How can we strengthen leadership pipelines? One overlooked answer: Invest in women's sports. Data shows that investment in women's sports creates a powerful yet under-appreciated talent pipeline, building future leaders, closing the gender gap and driving high-performing teams. Deloitte US Chair Lara Abrash shares insights from the firm's research on women's sports – both the billion-dollar economic opportunity it represents and the unsung way sports strengthens the leadership talent pipeline. 
Abrash, active in a range of sports since her youth, will also break down the leadership skills, mindsets, and team dynamics sports uniquely cultivates. She'll share the personal experiences that shaped how she leads and the way she approaches talent and capability. Her personal lessons learned can help anyone understand what's needed to develop future leaders, improve team performance and build talent pipelines that last. 

Key Insights: 
Women's sports is growing rapidly - but remains an untapped sector and opportunity for economies and communities.
Sports teaches girls how to team - but a range of factors make them more likely to drop out of sports than boys.
Great leaders are great coaches. Abrash reminds us that "Managers manage outcomes while leaders lead people."
Practice makes progress: Sports can build leaders who learn quickly from mistakes and adapt faster -- skills key for a fast-paced AI era.
Sidestep the 'superwoman' myth: Sports shows we often accomplish more in groups. Women who admit they are less effective alone take the first step to building great teams and avoiding burnout.
About this episode:
Transcript - read here: https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/womens-sports-leadership-skills-gender-gap

Related report:
Deloitte Research - Game-Changers: Unlocking the Potential of Women's Sports: https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/Industries/tmt/perspectives/game-changers-unlocking-potential-women-sports.html
World Economic Forum - Sports for People and Planet:  https://www.weforum.org/publications/sports-for-people-and-planet/

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As tech and AI transform productivity and free us from rote work, will humanity finally crack happiness? Maybe not, warns Jonathan Haidt. This social psychologist, NYU professor and bestselling author of The Anxious Generation has spent years studying the links between happiness, technology, and societal change. Unless key steps are taken, he says, the technologies transforming work and communication could pull humans further from a sense of meaning, connection and purpose, taking happiness even further from our grasps. 
To progress on any big challenge ahead will depend on restoring focus, trust, and purpose. Haidt warns that AI and social media may be weakening all three—making intentional leadership more critical than ever. He shares research-backed insights that can help us better understand a fragmented, distracted world and the urgent challenge this brings to leaders running teams in a changing AI era.
Key Takeaways:
Where happiness really comes from - and what people often misunderstand

Understanding the attention crisis and what's contributing to it

How AI and digital habits fragment attention and decision-making and undermine trust

Simple practices and approaches to reclaim focus, connect with others and lead meaningful change more effectively

This interview was recorded in January 2026 at the Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.


About this episode:
Read here - Transcript: https://www.weforum.org/podcasts/meet-the-leader/episodes/jonathan-haidt-happiness-focus-habits-ai
Watch here - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bXp43TMMAI


About this guest:
https://jonathanhaidt.com/
Books and initiatives referenced in this episode:
The Anxious Generation https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/
The Righteous Mind https://righteousmind.com/
The Happiness Hypothesis https://www.happinesshypothesis.com/
The Constructive Dialogue Institute www. constructivedialogue.org


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As more professionals turn to AI for career guidance, is human mentorship extinct? Not by a long shot, according to our experts. Mentors will continue to be critical in shaping talent, but will make their mark not by sharing expertise but by leveraging truly human skills --  by meeting changing needs in time and by being a champion that unlocks potential, not just directs it.

Key insights:
- Mentorship is moving from expertise to emotional intelligence
- The best leaders will continue to prioritize people over output alone
In this moment of change, Learn how the top minds of our time have been changed by their own mentors and how an AI era will reshape how mentors guide teams and drive potential.

Some of the leaders featured in this episode:

-Workera's founder Kian Katanforoosh - on how mentorship is changing thanks to new technologies, and what it needs to be effective
-Limak Holding's Ebru Ozdemir - on bridging gaps through her initiative Global Engineer Girls and the traits great mentors share
-Habitat for Humanity's Jonathan Reckford - on what he learned from his grandmother and godmother on setting standards for himself
-Samantha Cristoforetti, European Space Agency - on what astronaut Butch Wilhelm taught her about the experience of the workday
-Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant - on how a diving coach helped him rethink risk and the simple question that he asks himself to this day
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