How to reassure people about AI: A checklist for CHROs
CHROs can help businesses move past mistrust of AI and support workforce adoption. Ask yourself these six questions to make sure you’re easing the way and not piling on top-down pressure. ...
by Michael Watkins Published February 5, 2026 in Brain Circuits • 3 min read

Equipping future talent with core cognitive and creative skills means continuing to focus on traditional teaching methods, which should represent 75% of what goes on in the classroom. The 75/25 principle also applies to executive development. Traditional techniques include:
AI integration should be used strategically to support future-relevant skills development through:
Future leaders need to excel at the intersection of human insight and AI, combining technological fluency with irreplaceable human capabilities such as empathy, creative vision, and authentic influence. Companies that fail to adapt their leadership development programs risk cultivating executives who compete with AI, rather than leveraging it.
Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change
Michael D Watkins is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at IMD, and author of The First 90 Days, Master Your Next Move, Predictable Surprises, and 12 other books on leadership and negotiation. His book, The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking, explores how executives can learn to think strategically and lead their organizations into the future. A Thinkers 50-ranked management influencer and recognized expert in his field, his work features in HBR Guides and HBR’s 10 Must Reads on leadership, teams, strategic initiatives, and new managers. Over the past 20 years, he has used his First 90 Days® methodology to help leaders make successful transitions, both in his teaching at IMD, INSEAD, and Harvard Business School, where he gained his PhD in decision sciences, as well as through his private consultancy practice Genesis Advisers. At IMD, he directs the First 90 Days open program for leaders taking on challenging new roles and co-directs the Transition to Business Leadership (TBL) executive program for future enterprise leaders, as well as the Program for Executive Development.
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