Leading with Discernment, Not Reaction

Last Tuesday, we gathered a room of founders, investors, and operators, co-hosted with fellow co-creators Radici Studios, The Key PR, and our team at CoCreate Work. We were there to have a conversation about building human centered work in the age of AI. We gathered this group to have a conversation about what it actually takes to lead and shape this rapidly changing world, versus simply responding to it.

An attendee later said, “That was the most hopeful AI conversation I’ve heard.”

And that is the room and conversation we wanted to create. As Adrienne Maree Brown says, “What we pay attention to grows”.

In that room, and in a panel conversation, I was joined by a group of leaders who have been paying close attention. Ruchika Malhotra, Martha Shaughnessy, and Allison Vendt saw how AI was changing the world of work and how it is impacting their industries. They remain committed to showing what they’ve learned, and how they center their leadership in a growing world of automation.

Most AI conversations right now are organized around two questions: how fast is it moving, and what are we about to lose? Both are real. But they aren’t the only questions worth asking. The one that kept coming up in that room — the one each panelists circled back to — was different: what do we design from here?

That shift from threat to intention, action, and design was our goal for the discussion in that room. And it’s the frame I want to bring to you this week.

One of the ideas that kept rising to the surface was one I’ve been speaking with our clients a lot about right now: discernment. The ability to know when to trust the outputs coming your way and when your own judgement needs to lead.

For example, recognizing when you’re in a genuinely new situation that doesn’t have a pattern to match. Knowing the difference between signals and noise. Or understanding the power of human intuition and applying the just answer, not an algorithmic one.

AI is talented at pattern recognition. It can synthesize faster than any human and produce outputs at a scale that would have been unthinkable ten years ago. But pattern recognition optimizes for what has worked before. It can’t tell you when you’re standing in a moment that requires something new. That’s the moment that requires humanity.

The founders I’ve seen navigate the AI world well aren’t the ones who’ve used the most tools or simply rejected them. They’re the ones who’ve gotten sharper about their judgment. They’ve treated discernment (and taste!) as something worth building and leveraging at this moment.

Last week, the goal went beyond a single conversation about AI, it was to be in conversation where humans get clear about their power and their own capacity to lead the conversation rather than chase it. That is what I mean when I talk about co-creation.

The individuals and organizations that get this moment right won’t be the ones that moved the fastest, or even the ones who decided to adapt or reject AI. It will be the ones where leaders did the inner work of building discernment, deepening connection, and choosing to design what’s next over simply reacting to it. In this moment when power is concentrated, it is not easy, but you are the forward-thinking leader you are for a reason.

Your Weekly Practice

1. Build discernment as a coaching objective, not a soft skill

Discernment isn’t a personality trait — it’s a performance capacity. That means it can be built intentionally. Think back over the last month. Were there moments where you chose to trust your own read over what the data said? Where you made a call the tool wouldn’t have made?

Most of us move past those moments quickly. We make the call and move on, but those moments are evidence. They’re the material for understanding your own judgment. The practice: start naming them. Out loud or in writing — what was the situation, what did you notice, what did you decide, and what happened? This log becomes the evidence base for your own discernment.

2. Slow down the front end

In my work with clients, one of the patterns I see most often is this: the pressure to move fast gets mistaken for competence. We automate, streamline, and decide quickly because it feels like we are doing what needs to be done. But the leaders who consistently come out ahead tend to slow down at the beginning and find that it creates more advantage than speed would have.

The practice: identify one place this week where you’re moving fast because it feels like the right thing to do. Then ask: what would I learn if I slowed this down? You might find that speed is the right call. Or, you might find that you’ve been optimizing momentum at the expense of clarity.

3. Notice when you stop saying ‘I think’

When I was on the panel, I shared a few warning signs. One of which was when people on your team stop trusting their own read of things and don’t even notice it’s happening.

The individual version looks like you reach for the tool’s output before you’ve formed your own perspective. You allow the AI to frame the problem before you’ve sat with it yourself. This automatic decision isn’t a tool problem, it’s a slow erosion of confidence in your own judgment.

The practice: on your next important decision, write your own thoughts first, before you leverage the AI. But take a step back and ask: what do I actually think is happening here, and what do I think we should do? Then check the data and notice what’s different. The existing gap is where your discernment lives.