People management in the AI era: why purposeful enquiry is the new power skill for empathy, well-being and harnessing AI

Workplace wellbeing is at an all-time low. The latest Health & Wellbeing at Work Report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) shows that mental ill health is now the leading cause of long-term absence from work. Almost half of organisations (47%) have reported a rise in mental health-related absences, with 64% of respondents reporting some stress-related absence over the last year. Couple this with globally declining employee and manager engagement, and you can begin to understand why governments are concerned about falling productivity.

Alongside this backdrop of low well-being and engagement, the rise of AI is having a profound impact on how the workplace functions. Recent advances have enabled it to perform a vast range of skills, including data-driven tasks such as coding and debugging, as well as more managerial-style tasks like generating reports and KPIs. The next few years are likely to bring about even more significant shifts.

The impact of AI on the workforce shouldn’t be underestimated, both negatively and positively: a recent Finnish study found that its use has a significant effect on employees, particularly their well-being. On the one hand, one in five Gen Z workers is ‘very concerned’ that AI will take their job in the next two years, with 32% of US workers believing that AI will lead to fewer job opportunities. On the other hand, the potential for AI to be a force for good is also huge: the same Finnish study concluded that if AI is adopted to benefit employees in areas such as organisational tasks and processes, data security, and occupational health, it can actually enhance employee wellbeing.

So, how must we adapt our approach to people management if we want to harness the positive aspects of AI to enhance workplace wellbeing and, in turn, increase employee engagement and productivity levels? The key lies in developing our power skills.

Flipping what we know on its head 

Formerly regarded as ‘soft’ skills, our essential human skills — such as empathy, effective communication, active listening, and collaboration — are rapidly emerging as the new power skills, the differentiators which all contribute to employee wellbeing. For generations, these skills have been unfairly regarded as inferior or even ‘fluffy’ when compared with ‘hard’ skills that can be more easily quantified (think writing code or analysing data).

In today’s increasingly AI-dominated workplace, though, where hard skills and expertise are being replaced, it’s time to appreciate and embrace these power skills precisely because they’re the skills that only humans possess: tech simply cannot replicate them, and they need to be at the forefront of every successful people management strategy.

The human skills of line managers have a significant impact on the workplace, both at an organisational and personal level. Gallup’s annual State of the Global Workplace research has shown that a manager accounts for 70% of the variance in a team’s engagement, which is backed up by the finding that at least a third of the variance in productivity between countries and companies is due to poor management. The CIPD reports that the top challenge for employee wellbeing is a lack of line management skills, and a poor ‘management style’ is one of the leading causes of stress-related absence. A report from The Workforce Institute even found that managers have the same effect on people’s mental health as their partners, doctors or therapists.

Using enquiry-led management to bolster wellbeing 

AI’s ability to perform more data-driven managerial tasks presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to free up our line managers’ capacity to focus on significantly improving their people management and engagement skills.

One powerful way for managers to develop those skills is by adopting an enquiry-led style of management known as Operational Coaching®. Described as ‘the missing superpower’, managers develop the skill of asking purposeful questions intended to engage the thinking of team members, guide them toward finding their own solutions, foster critical thinking and unlock their potential.

And this isn’t just fanciful. Extensive research undertaken by the London School of Economics (LSE) has proven that managers who adopt this advanced approach learn to break poor habits that marginalise or micro-manage team members and instead develop a mindset of enabling their skills and talents rather than directing or fixing problems brought to them. LSE also demonstrated that practitioners of this new approach generated a 74-fold return on investment, contributing to an overall uplift in productivity.

By learning how to ask purposeful questions and actively listening to what their team members are saying, the approach supports staff on a journey of continuous performance improvement. Enabling and empowering employees to take action and providing appropriate appreciative and constructive feedback also establishes a more equitable relationship, which advances people’s skills, capabilities, and prospects.

Practitioners of this advanced approach to management encourage ownership and drive deeper engagement, transforming team dynamics from passive compliance to active problem-solving and collaboration. It also fosters an inclusive culture of trust and psychological safety, where employees feel empowered to try new things, offer unconventional ideas and take risks.

But that’s not all. It transpires that developing purposeful enquiry may be the ultimate power skill. By learning how to ask questions intended to stimulate other people’s thinking (as opposed to our habitual diagnostic enquiry approach of gathering information to solve problems), we’re also developing precisely the skills we need to harness the immeasurable thinking power of the AI tools we’re being offered.

The positive results of effective people management 

Implement effective people management, and the results speak for themselves. Once someone is empowered by their manager to know and use their strengths daily, they’re nearly six times more engaged. Businesses with highly engaged staff experience 78% less absenteeism and significantly lower turnover rates. When employees feel that managers care about their well-being, they’re 73% less likely to feel burned out and 53% less likely to be actively seeking a new job.

Levelling up power skills also benefits managers themselves. With the CIPD report showing that heavy workloads are the top cause of stress-related absence, anything that can reduce the burden on managers who are struggling to balance their people management responsibilities alongside their own tasks will have a positive effect on engagement and productivity.

A new way to lead organisations 

In an era of rapid change, AI’s ability to automate routine tasks has the power to transform people management skills, giving managers the time to develop their human-centric power skills and make a positive shift in how they think, interact and lead.

The results of developing our human power skills have the potential to be transformational for organisations, not only to attract and retain top talent within a culture of collaboration but also to adapt to and harness the power of AI, enabling them to survive and thrive in this challenging global marketplace.

Written by Dominic Ashley-Timms. Have you read?
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