Lisa Collinson

Every leadership conversation right now starts in the same place: what can AI do for us? It is the wrong question. After watching organisations pour budget into AI-enabled development, I have become convinced the question that actually matters is the one almost nobody is asking – what is AI quietly doing TO our leaders? And the answer should unsettle anyone who understands how these systems really work. Let me be clear from the outset: I am not a sceptic shouting at the tide.

Burnout is usually discussed as something that happens to other people. It is framed as an employee issue, a resilience gap, or a wellbeing challenge that HR is expected to spot, manage, or mitigate. It is something leaders are trained to prevent in their teams, and something individuals are encouraged to recover from through better boundaries, self-care, or time away. What we talk about far less is what happens when burnout happens inside HR itself. I know this terrain personally.

We talk endlessly about leadership in organisations. We talk far less about what it actually feels like to live under it. Some of the most honest conversations I hear about leadership don’t happen in workshops, performance reviews, or boardrooms. They happen quietly, away from the organisational script, when people stop performing competence and start telling the truth. What emerges is rarely a lack of capability, ambition, or resilience.