One of the defining characteristics of leadership is the continuous pressure to deliver results for an organization. In addition, this expectation must be balanced with managing any associated risks. Determining the right set of actions to achieve positive outcomes while also protecting the business is both a science and an art.

Leveraging the value of emerging technologies is an example of this challenge. These solutions often arrive offering remarkable promise, but they also carry significant uncertainty. For many, the desire to move quickly to adopt these technologies and capture a first-mover advantage means accepting significant uncertainty and risk.

As an emerging technology, generative AI has proven to be unique in this regard. While its value has been demonstrated quickly in many business functions, the pressure on leaders to fully exploit its potential and find novel revenue-generating uses has created a high degree of anxiety in the C-suite.

The speed, uncertainty, and expectations surrounding AI are creating a new form of leadership pressure that traditional coping and change-management approaches may not be equipped to handle.

The Growing Pressure To Deliver AI Returns

Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier is a leadership psychologist and executive coach based in Vancouver, Canada. After a successful corporate career, she started her own practice and for over a decade she’s been helping senior leaders strengthen their decision-making, resilience, and effectiveness under sustained pressure.

After years of working one-on-one with leaders on traditional workplace issues such as dysfunctional business relationships and the complexities of managing teams and projects, she has begun to notice a new trend emerging in her client sessions.

Pelletier now estimates that about two-thirds of the challenges surfacing appear to be related to the business of artificial intelligence. This isn’t some sort of incidental side issue. On the surface it may look like, for example, typical work burnout, but the deeper she’s explored the issues the more it’s became obvious that some aspect of AI has emerging as a significant contributor to their anxiety.

Leaders deal with change and pressure all the time, but Pelletier observed that something was really different about the expectations imposed by the arrival of AI in the enterprise.

Why AI Is Different From Past Technology Shifts

Of the many disruptive technologies that have emerged over the past few decades, generative AI is in a class of its own. Consumers and business users alike have discovered the magnitude of what it can do and how it can change the way that things are done. Its scale and global adoption rate have been remarkable. According to Microsoft, generative AI is now used by roughly one in five working-age people worldwide .

For organizations, the compelling nature of AI as a catalyst for operational and revenue opportunities has ignited an unusual level of expectation on business leaders.

The C-suite and other layers of management are being pressured by the marketplace, the board, competitors, and peers to move faster in determining not only how to use AI in a novel way, but to implement it.

Leaders accustomed to more predictable approaches to managing organizational change suddenly find themselves in uncharted territory. A new dynamic is being created by the speed of deployment expectations, technological complexity, and uncertainty about whether an innovative AI solution will work or whether customers will even use it.

Pelletier describes the result as a form of chronic cognitive overload. Left unaddressed, she says, it can undermine a leader’s performance and contribute to both physical and psychological consequences.

Building Resilience For The AI Era

With no end in sight to the continuous and unpredictable nature of how AI will impact the enterprise, leaders must look to what they can control.

According to Pelletier, beginning to manage and reduce this anxiety requires developing robust resilience skills. It’s a topic she explores in depth in her book, The Resilience Plan . According to Pelletier, in simple terms, resilience isn’t about how much pressure a person can withstand, but how they can manage demands and resources in order to continue to perform well without sacrificing their well-being.

What’s happening today, says Pelletier, is that leaders believe they can approach current demands in the same manner as in the past. This makes them more vulnerable to issues such as burnout as they are convinced old ways will still work when, in reality, the goalposts have completely moved.

Pelletier’s thesis is that in this new organizational environment, a leader’s capacity for resilience must develop and evolve.

At the same time, leaders need to foster psychologically safe environments where everyone can raise concerns, challenge assumptions, and acknowledge uncertainty.

A good place to start for every leader is to recognize that AI is here, it is a major disruptor, and the pressures and expectations are real and will continue. This will be the new normal for the foreseeable future.

Pelletier offers some free worksheets , and also a tip for leaders wanting to begin building their personal strategy right away. She calls this approach the 60-second resilience habit: a brief daily practice built around a morning intention and an end-of-day check-in.

Each morning the leader should take a moment to consider the day ahead. They must decide what they will do to build resilience for themselves and those they work with closely. For example, will they be ready to say no in a meeting when everyone else says yes? Then at the end of the day, they can take another moment to ask whether they did the things they said they would do and, if not, why not?

Few could have anticipated the dramatic arrival of generative AI just a few years ago. But it’s here now, and leaders are being asked to navigate its opportunities and uncertainties at extraordinary speed. Success will require more than an AI strategy. Leaders will also need the personal resilience to sustain themselves through the transformation.