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A leader recently told me about her dilemma: Her top performer of four years was asking about advancement opportunities, but with frozen budgets and no open positions, she felt powerless to help. Sound familiar? This scenario plays out everywhere. High performers hit their stride, ask “What’s next?” and managers default to the same answer: promotion. When that’s not possible, both sides feel stuck. But here’s what most leaders miss: When employees ask about advancement, they’re often asking for something deeperto be seen, valued, and recognized for their contributions. For decades, organizations have made promotion the primary symbol of professional success. It’s become our go-to way of saying “your work matters.” But this creates problems when budgets freeze: managers feel powerless, and employees feel invisible. The solution isn’t finding more money for promotions. It’s separating recognition from title changes. The S Curve of Growth Framework Instead of thinking about career development as a ladder (up or nothing), I encourage leaders to think about it as a learning curvespecifically, what I call the S Curve of Growth. Every skill, project, or responsibility follows this predictable S-shaped pattern: Launch Point: You’re at the base of the S, where learning feels slow but you’re building crucial foundations. Sweet Spot: The steep middle of the S, where you gain confidence and competence. Progress feels exponential. Mastery: The top plateau of the S, where you’ve reached high performance but growth levels off. The S Curve of Growth gives you and your employees a shared language for career conversations. Instead of “I need a promotion,” the conversation becomes “I’m reaching mastery on my project management S Curvewhat new curve should I start climbing?” Making This Work in Practice The most effective leaders using this approach: Make development ongoing, not annual. Replace yearly reviews with regular check-ins. Ask employees where they see themselves on different learning curves and what support they need to progress. Let employees drive their growth. Using the S Curve framework, stop dictating development paths. Ask: “Which of your S Curves do you want to accelerate? What new curve interests you?” Then create opportunities around their answers. Recognize progress publicly. Acknowledge when someone moves from struggling with a new system to training others on it. Call out when they take on a challenging project. Make their growth visible. The Bottom Line Growth doesn’t require promotions. A software developer can master new programming languages, mentor junior colleagues, or lead cross-functional projectsall without a title change. A marketing manager can expand into data analytics, build vendor relationships, or develop content strategy expertise. When you help employees map their growth across multiple S Curves, you solve two problems: they feel recognized and engaged, and you build a more versatile, capable team. Everyone wins, even when the org chart stays frozen. The question isn’t whether you can afford to promote everyone. It’s whether you can afford to not help them grow.
Category:
E-Commerce
When Lisa opened the resignation email from one of her top performers, she froze. As a regional sales VP at a fast-growing tech company, she prided herself on building a loyal, high-performing team. Shed recently adopted AI to streamline workflows and free up time for more strategic work. But in the exit interview, the employee shared something she hadnt expected: he felt unseen, disconnected, and undervalued. Some of her managers went even furtherusing AI-generated scripts for everything from difficult feedback to performance check-ins, and even praise. The messages felt impersonal, disconnected, and inauthentic. Employees took note. Even if productivity increased, effectiveness took a dive. One top performer began to disengage and soon gave notice. For busy leaders, automating conversations with team members can bring a sense of relief. Plug in a prompt. Let the machine guide the 1:1. However, when we offload the emotional labor of leadership, we risk eroding trust and connection, the very foundations that make teams thrive. AI can be a game changer for managers, but only when its used to amplify the human side of leadership. Too often, tools designed to save time end up weakening connection and culture. The opportunity isnt just to use AI. Its to use it well. Leading Effectively with AI With the proper guardrails, AI can expand a managers capacity, freeing them up to lead with more empathy, presence, and purpose. Think of AI as your backstage partner, not your stand-in. This risk is especially real for Gen Z professionals, many of whom launched their careers remotely and hadnt, for a time, seen relational leadership modeled in person. Todays managers play a critical role in helping them build the emotional fluency and resilience theyll need to lead. If we let AI handle the hard parts for them, like navigating conflict, building trust, or making tough calls, we miss the chance to develop the very capabilities theyll need when AI inevitably falls short or fails in a crisis. Through our work advising dozens of companies facing these dynamics, Kathryn, as an executive coach and keynote speaker, and Jenny, as an executive adviser and learning & development expert, have identified four strategies to help managers embrace AI in ways to make them more strategic, effective, and human-centered. 1. Know What to Automateand What Needs You As generative AI becomes more embedded in day-to-day workflows, leaders must guide their managers in determining which tasks should be automated and which demand human judgment and emotional intelligence. AI is well-suited for structured, repeatable tasks: generating first drafts of reports, summarizing meeting notes, preparing talking points, or reviewing written communication for tone and clarity. These applications reduce cognitive load and free up time for more meaningful work. But AI falls short in moments that require discernment, empathy, or trust-building. It cannot read between the lines of disengagement, coach a direct report whos questioning their fit on the team, or navigate a high-stakes conversation that touches on identity, like feeling excluded, overlooked, or underestimated. Delegating these responsibilities to a tool, even one that appears well-crafted, risks eroding a teams psychological safety and your leadership credibility. Use AI to clear space, not to take your place. We helped Lisas team draft a simple guide to distinguish what to automate and what to lead directly. What to Automate vs. Where to Show Up Use AI forShow up as a leader when..Summarizing reports or meeting notesDelivering difficult feedback or navigating emotionally charged conversationsReviewing written communication or organizing check-in agendasCoaching someone through a new role, challenge, or career inflection pointPreparing performance review draftsCelebrating wins or recognizing great workAnalyzing team feedback or surfacing key themes from engagement dataDiscussing concerns openly and cocreating solutions with the team Pro tip: Ask yourself: Am I using AI to enhance my leadership, or to avoid the parts that feel uncomfortable? 2. Show Your Team What Good AI Use Looks Like If you want AI to be used well, your team has to see what well looks like. That starts at the top. Managers take their cues from what leaders say and what they do. When Lisa began introducing AI into her teams workflows, she focused on implementation, but hadnt yet modeled how to use it thoughtfully. Her managers saw the tools being used for speed and scale, but not as an enabler for coaching, collaboration, or deeper thinking. In a recent coaching session, Lisa reflected that she had unintentionally created a culture of quiet experimentationwithout guidance, feedback, or clarity about what effective AI use looked like. We encouraged her to share her learning process with her direct reports: where she was experimenting, where shed made mistakes, and where she saw potential. She began demoing use cases with her team, inviting feedback, and normalizing discomfort. That shift, from quiet adoption to visible shared learning, sparked more thoughtful, responsible AI use across her team. Here are three ways you can do the same with your team: Share your learning journey. Be open about where youre experimenting and what youre still figuring out. Frame AI as an enabler. Position it as a way to work smarter and lead with greater focus and presence. Create psychological safety. Encourage your team to try, fail, and learn without fear of judgment. Even with great modeling, boundaries matter. Without clear guardrails, AI can quietly start doing the parts of leadership that should never be outsourced. 3. Draw the Line Between Support and Substitution When expectations are vague, AI can slowly shift from a helpful assistant to a leadership shortcut. Weve seen managers start by using it to draft talking points, only to lean on it later for delivering feedback or handling conflict. The tone may be polished, but the message often lacks the personalization and presence. People notice, and over time, trust erodes. Leaders must help their teams set clear boundaries. AI can help structure a message, but it shouldnt deliver it for you, especially when the moment calls for empathy, vulnerability, or moral courage. Research from MIT Sloan reinforces this distinction: while AI excels at structured, transactional tasks, its significantly less effective in emotionally nuanced situations, such as coaching, conflict resolution, or performance feedback. This is especially important for middle managers, who play a critical role in developing Gen Z professionals. Many early-career employees are still building confidence through live, relational interactions and will take their cues from what is modeled. When managers default to AI prompts, they not only weaken their own impact, but also risk sending the message that presence is optional. A useful rule of thumb: If a conversation could shape how someone feels about their value, performance, or belonging; it needs to be human-led. As AI tools become more capable, drawing the line between support and substitution will become one of the defining responsibilities of modern leadership. 4. Help Managers Use Saved Time Strategically One of AIs biggest benefits is time. But without a clear plan, that reclaimed time is often consumed by low-value meetings, inbox clutter, or busywork. The risk isnt just wasted hours. Its wasted opportunity. Help managers use their freed-up capacity with intention. Encourage them to reinvest it in what matters most: mentoring team members, building culture, thinking strategically, or developing their own leadership skills. These are the high-leverage activities that often fall by the wayside, but make the biggest difference over time. Ask yourself: Where is your time most valuable, and how are you protecting it? What high-impact conversations are you putting off, and why? In what ways could you invest this time to grow your team, or yourself? Pro tip: Use time by design, not by default. When time is freed, leaders have a choice: fill it by default, or use it by design. A Better Way to Lead with AI Lisa began modeling her own learning, setting clearer boundaries, and making space for reflection. She stopped simply asking what her managers were automating, and started asking why. That shift helped her to rebuild trust, reconnect with her team, and lead with focus. Ultimately, the most significant impact of AI wasnt speed. It was presence. AI will continue to shape how we lead, communicate, and make decisions. But leadership has never been just about efficiency. Its about discernment, trust, and showing up fully for the moments that matter. The best leaders wont only ask, How can I use AI? Theyll ask, How is my use of AI impacting the people I lead? The future of leadership isnt a choice between human or machine. Its humanyou bringing yourself to the job, with AI as your copilot.
Category:
E-Commerce
More than a decade ago, Pramod Sharma set out to make learning more engaging. Through AI and computer vision, his startup Osmo transformed iPad apps into hands-on experiences, letting kids use puzzle pieces and other physical objects to solve spelling and math problems on screen. It was a lot of fununtil Osmo grew, and Sharmas role shifted from inventing to managing. Meetings, PowerPoint decks, endless email threads took over. At some point, you become a manager, and you spend a lot of time in communication, Sharma tells Fast Company. We realized a lot of our communication wasnt fun. When Sharma and a few colleagues left Osmo four years ago, they decided to tackle that problem. The result is Napkin, a web app that uses generative AI to turn text and numbers into flow charts, diagrams, and other visuals. You dont need to be a graphic designer, you dont need to be a visual thinker, Sharma says. Our vision is to democratize visuals for everyone. One year into its open beta, Napkin has surpassed five million registered users. Now, the company is preparing to monetize while staying true to the lessons learned from Osmochief among them: keep things light and approachable. Our users really love the fact that its playful, Sharma says. From Text to Visuals, with the Help of AI Napkins experience starts with a screen that resembles a page from a school notebook. Users paste or write text, highlight the key parts, hit a magic button, and the app generates several draft visuals to help communicate the core ideas and numbers. These visuals can be edited to highlight specific phrases or match a companys branding. When we started, we had this mindset that we wanted to push for a certain style, Sharma says. Now, we think of Napkin as a tool. Editing is a big part of that. Just as important is keeping the interface fun. Traditionally, business products dont tend to be fun, Sharma says. I used to think [thats] because the boring stuff sells. With Napkin, Sharma wanted to try something different, starting with a frictionless onboarding experience. Its a lesson drawn directly from Osmo. Kids, Sharma points out, wont tolerate complexity. If they dont intuitively get it, they dont want to play, he says. Like Osmo, Napkin encourages learning by doing. We have no tutorial, Sharma says. That thinking comes from games. This hands-on approach also supports global adoption. Sixty percent of Napkins users dont speak English, and the service supports dozens of languages. South Korea is a big market for us, Sharma says. Japan is a huge market for us. Until now, Napkin has been free to use during its open beta. Soon, the company will introduce two paid subscription tiers, alongside a free plan. It has also started previewing API access for developers and companies looking to integrate the tool. More Than Just a PowerPoint Replacement The rise of generative AI has been a major advantage for Napkin. Sharma calls large language models a huge accelerator. But with that comes higher expectations, especially for visuals. Users have a high bar for AI, Sharma says. You cant get away with 70 percent. People may settle for rough graphics when making them on their own, but expect professional-grade output from AI. An Apple keynote, or a TED talk: They want AI to get to that level, he says. Sharma doesnt see Napkin as just a better slide tool. Its not just to build a better slide deck, he says. He wants marketers, executives, and creators to tap into their visual creativitysomething he compares to learning a new language. Before I went to college, I did not speak English at all, says Sharma, who was born in India. My family didnt speak. I was in a small town. But once I went to college and started learning English, it opened my world in a very significant way. The same, he argues, can happen with visual communication. What you think about new ideas changes, he says.
Category:
E-Commerce
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