The Human Need to Grow: Why Leadership Development Matters More Than Ever

At Physis People, the name says it all. Physis stands for growth, and I deeply believe that people have an innate need to keep growing, to stretch themselves, to master new skills, to become a little better today than they were yesterday.

Supporting that growth is the core of my work. I combine research with my HR leadership experience and background in psychology to design programs that meet leaders where they are. Blended learning approaches have proven especially powerful because they respect the diversity of people’s needs and the many ways we choose to learn.

Learning in a Time of Acceleration

Today, the demand for learning is greater than ever, yet the time available for learning is shrinking. Leaders are under pressure to adapt quickly, while new technologies change the rules of the game almost daily.

The latest Harvard Business Impact study on leadership development Fast, Fluid and Future-Focused: Building the Collective Intelligence of Humans and Machines captures this paradox well. Over half of respondents named integrating AI, GenAI, and machine learning into business as their number one priority, and nearly eight out of ten reported that they have already made significant progress in embedding AI into daily workflows. And yet, many other studies show that despite the investments, measurable returns are still very limited. One of them, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 (as reported by Fortune), reveals that 95% of generative AI pilots are failing and the real challenge is not the quality of AI models, but the “learning gap” for both tools and organizations.

The missing piece? Human capability. As the HBI report stresses: to succeed in deploying AI at scale, organizations must have people who are willing, able, and ready to excel in these future roles. Many jobs will require new skills for working with AI. But equally important are the capabilities where humans will always have the edge: emotional intelligence, dealing with complexity, creativity, physical presence, and let’s not forget the governance of AI itself.

The irony is that while these skills are critical, employees report having little time or support to build them on top of delivering on their day-to-day goals.

This is where leadership steps into its most critical role. Leaders must create the conditions for learning and provide the human support their people need in such a complex environment. Balancing new technologies, automation, and evolving ways of working, while still delivering on daily demands, will be the reality for years to come. Leaders need to find ways for themselves and their teams to remain resilient and well.

Leadership Capabilities Rising in Importance

In fact, HBI’s 2025 data shows exactly which leadership skills are becoming more important compared to last year:

• Emotional and social intelligence (47%)

• Managing polarization in the workplace (42%)

• Synthesizing and interpreting complex information (40%)

• Leading change and transformation (40%)

• AI-related skills and knowledge (39%)

• Fostering innovation and creativity (38%)

This is perfectly aligned with the report’s title, bringing together the best of AI and human intelligence, as well as with SHRM’s own AI + HI initiative, which underlines that human insight (HI) is the essential complement to artificial intelligence (AI).

Three Strategies for Learning and Development

HBI also points to three strategies that organizations can adopt to better address these learning needs:

1. Amplify with AI – Use AI tools as coaches and companions in the flow of work, to scale learning and reinforce organizational culture while supporting creativity.

2. Lean into full-immersion learning – Focus on experiential and real-world methods that accelerate skill building and strengthen motivation, connection, and confidence.

3. Champion the complementary elements – Invest in the human strengths that machines cannot replace: empathy, complexity thinking, and the leadership qualities that hold teams together in uncertain times.

The Leadership Guild: Leadership Development Designed with These Insights in Mind

No matter how complex and perhaps even overwhelming the present and future may appear for leaders, we as humans carry a natural drive to grow and adapt in alignment with our environment (physis). It is this inner impulse that we awaken through my leadership development program.

The Leadership Guild program I designed is built on these exact insights. It blends evidence-based methods with coaching, training, digital learning, and 360 integrated into peer learning. It acknowledges that while AI will transform how we work, the uniquely human skills of leaders - emotional intelligence, adaptability, creativity and others are the true differentiator for the future.