Today marks Day 1 of the 2026 NeuroLeadership Summit: Shape What’s Next, a two-day global event dedicated to exploring how AI is fundamentally shifting the ways we work, and the brain science we can use to work more effectively.
The big takeaway from Day 1: Human intelligence is only becoming more critical. Every leadership and culture strategy must keep the human in mind, focusing on how technology can support and enhance our cognition, rather than replace it.
Below we’ve captured three big insights from Day 1 that expound on this theme, in order to help organizations remain as human as possible even in the face of massive disruption.
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Thriving Through Accelerating Change Is a Core Capability
In the opening keynote session, “Leading in the Age of AI,” discussions centered around the quickening pace of change, spurred by the proliferation of AI.
“Change has never been this fast, and it may never be this slow again,” Dr. David Rock, NLI CEO and Co-Founder, said at the outset of the session. In other words, while leaders may still be adapting to today’s rate of change, tomorrow’s is sure to be even faster.
What implications does this hold for leaders and organizations? It means focusing on adaptability and growth mindset as key cognitive skills. It also means helping leaders build strong relationships with their employees, ones that are resilient to external change pressures. That means leading with compassion and empathy, rather than simply demanding compliance.
“The best test of leadership is how often someone leaves an interaction with a leader feeling better or worse about themselves,” said Dave Ulrich, Ph.D. Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.
When people feel better about themselves, they are more likely to stay in a reward state—rather than a threat state—which means they are best positioned to thrive through ongoing uncertainty.
The Biggest AI Threat Is Loss of Judgment
In the Day 1 closing keynote session, “From AI FOMO to Hangover to What’s Next,” Dr. David Rock presented the “perfect storm” of AI overuse: the rewards of overuse, corporate encouragement, and the default effect that keeps AI offering solutions. This is harmful to the quality of work, but there’s a bigger consequence: It erodes our ability to think at all.
Emerging research is showing that AI’s greatest threat to human intelligence is that it makes us complicit in surrendering our own cognition. We are now putting so much faith in AI’s capabilities that we often avoid critical thinking altogether. “This is the mechanism why people are losing skills,” Dr. Rock said.
The antidote to the ills caused by AI overuse is keeping a human-in-the-lead approach. That is, recognizing the precious importance of human cognition in AI-supported workflows, and then refusing to surrender that skill within the collaboration. Moving in this direction reflects a strategy of human-first AI fluency: using AI to assist with important work and make the user smarter, not offloading tasks to avoid deep thinking.
The Importance of Clarity, Flexibility, and Vigilance
In the same afternoon keynote session, Dr. Emma Sarro, Ph.D. presented the three key habits underpinning successful AI use: clarity, flexibility, and vigilance. Humans need to use metacognition to be clear on why they’re using AI, how AI will be used as a thinking expander not a thinking replacement, and how we’ll stay critical of AI’s results through sharp judgment.
How well a company can accelerate AI fluency depends on its adoption of these three habits at scale—and the truth is, says Julie Loosbrock, CHRO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, these are habits we need to reclaim, not build new from scratch. Before AI, “we did think deeply, we did problem solve, we did challenge ideas,” Julie said. “AI can sharpen you, but you need to start out doing the things you already know how to do.”
Executives have accidentally encouraged widespread shallow thinking and offloading. That’s the bad news. The good news is, with a return to flexing the cognitive skills we all used before AI, leaders can help team members surpass their prior potential to perform at unprecedented levels.
Want to have breakthrough insights like these? Register now for Day 2 of the 2026 NeuroLeadership Summit: Shape What’s Next.
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