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AE Leadership Letter > Volume 12, Issue 2
AE Leadership Letter: Volume 12, Issue 2
Bringing you new ideas for impacting people performance including the latest on company culture, work-life balance, time management, developing next-generation leaders, and new management ideas being implemented in other industries
In This Issue
leadership lab
The ROAD WARRIOR
Industry Intersections
leadership lab | New management ideas at work
How Leaders Can Integrate AI and Human Strengths
No danger, Will Robinson
Although employees surveyed by global leadership development and research firm Potential Project are more confident in artificial intelligence than their human bosses in particular leadership categories, leaders are in no danger of robots replacing them. “Humans want to be led by other humans, even if that humanity comes with flaws and messiness,” Potential Project founder and CEO Rasmus Hougaard and senior partner Jacqueline Carter wrote in Harvard Business Review. Successful leaders, however, will leverage AI’s benefits to augment their most human of qualities.
Outer limits
AI has its greatest leadership limitations in areas requiring a human touch. Workers surveyed by Potential Project are confident in AI’s ability to develop strategies, plan work schedules, and analyze performance, but only a low percentage believe AI can understand human work behavior better than human leaders. And nearly 70% are concerned about AI’s use for hiring and promotion decisions.
Enter the matrix
Potential Project developed a 2×2 matrix for leaders to decide when to leverage AI and when to embrace their uniquely human qualities. It recommends leaders leverage AI for research and data analysis tasks and leverage being human for individual and team development activities. Repetitive and simple tasks rate low and strategizing and decision-making rank high in both categories.
Core functionality
According to the Potential Project researchers, leaders who excel in three core qualities of human leadership—awareness, compassion, and wisdom—are “far more ready to become AI-augmented leaders.” Potential Project found that when leaders are more aware, compassionate, and wise, employees are 65% more committed to their organizations, 49% more satisfied in their jobs, 37% less likely to quit, and 31% less likely to experience burnout. Awareness enables AI-augmented leaders to move from perception to perspective and provide context to AI-generated content. Compassionate leaders can use AI’s algorithmic power to analyze employee data and craft an authentic, heartfelt experience. AI-augmented leaders can use wisdom to ask insightful questions of AI systems and form sound judgments about the provided answers.
The ROAD WARRIOR | Travel tips for firm leader
Airport Lounges Take Flight
Ultimate perks
As competition for customers heats up, airlines and credit card companies are pouring millions into expanding and renovating their airport lounges. According to ResearchAndMarkets.com, the global lounge business, which generated $6.4 billion in 2022, is expected to skyrocket to revenue of $55.7 billion by the end of 2028. Airport lounge amenities have evolved far beyond free Wi-Fi and cookies to regionally inspired culinary dishes, spa services, and wine tastings. The new American Express Centurion Lounge at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, for instance, boasts a speakeasy-style bar and Equinox Body Lab, while the recently opened Delta One Lounge at Los Angeles International Airport sports a sushi bar, landscaped terrace, and private relaxation pods with zero gravity and full body massage chairs.
Now arriving
Among the airlines investing heavily in lounge expansions, Delta plans to open its fourth high-end Delta One Lounge at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and seven new or upgraded traditional Sky Clubs in 2025. American is opening a new Flagship Lounge at Philadelphia International Airport for premium-cabin passengers and higher-level elite-status members flying to Europe. After reopening its exclusive Polaris Lounge at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, United debuted another at Newark Liberty International Airport for long-haul international business or first-class passengers. JetBlue also plans to open its first lounges in Boston and New York’s JFK.
What’s in your wallet?
Credit-card companies are also building airport lounges to lure customers. American Express, which has more than 1,400 airport lounges in 140 countries, plans to open new Centurion Lounges at Salt Lake City International Airport in 2025, Newark in 2026, and Boston in 2027. Capital One, which has unveiled four lounges since 2021, has plans for another at JFK. Chase has eight Sapphire Lounges (seven domestic and one in Hong Kong) and plans for additions in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Access denied
The number of lounges is growing, but the ability to access them is shrinking. Faced with overcrowding, Delta restricted premium American Express card holders to 10 or 15 annual visits. Delta Sky Clubs instituted time limitations, American Express restricted free guests, and Capital One eliminated free access for two lower-tier cards.
Industry Intersections | Inspirational initiatives from outside the AE industry
How Nvidia’s CEO Uses Email to Monitor Ground Truth
Flat-out challenge
As a company grows so does the challenge for those high in the C-suite to stay in touch with the ground floor of the business. When Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang watched his startup quickly become the world’s most valuable chip maker, he worried about excessive layers in managing more than 30,000 employees in 70 offices worldwide. “If you want an organization that obeys command and control, then you make it a pyramid just like the old military,” Huang said in a 2023 interview, “but if you want to empower people then you want to make it as flat as possible so that information travels quickly.”
Status no
In his desire to maintain a flat organization, Huang eschews status reports. “Status reports are meta information by the time you get them. They’re barely informative,” he said. “Bias has been inserted and perspective has already been added, and you’re not looking at ground truth anymore.” Frustrated with messages getting watered down as they were filtered to the top, Huang implemented a unique management technique to remain connected to Nvidia’s ground truth.
Give me five
Every week or two, Nvidia employees at every level send brief “Top 5 Things” emails (known as “T5Ts”) to their teams and managers with bullet points outlining their observations, accomplishments, and even dining recommendations. Huang can access the T5Ts and reads upwards of 100 of them each day—even more on some Sunday nights over a glass of Highland Park single-malt scotch.
Window of opportunity
The emails give the Nvidia CEO a window into the organization, which he compares to an Internet of Things data collection network. “It’s really important that I understand what everybody is doing. And you do that by just getting a feel for everybody’s top five things,” Huang said. “It’s sporadic and stochastically sampling the system, and you’ll have a feeling for whether the company is going in the direction that you want it to go.” The Wall Street Journal reports that a greater investment in tools to boost workloads on Nvidia’s graphics-processing units is among the benefits it derived from the T5T program.
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october 21-23, 2025 | Houston, TX
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