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.
Secure your spot at Day 2 of the 2026 NeuroLeadership Summit: Shape What’s Next
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.
Following an insight-rich Day 1 of the 2026 NeuroLeadership Summit: Shape What’s Next, Day 2 extended the discussion of AI’s implications at work into what organizations can focus on going forward.
From the importance of moving beyond emotional intelligence to develop neurointelligence—that is, a thorough understanding of the brain—to using AI coaches like NILES to spark insights and improve performance, Day 2 of this year’s Summit has offered a wealth of brain-friendly next steps for leaders.
Below we’ve collected three big ideas from Day 2 to move you from a place of AI uncertainty to AI empowerment, so you and your teams can continue to shape what’s next.
The AI Transformation Is Actually a People Transformation
Earlier this year, Gartner estimated the global spend on AI would reach $2.5 trillion, a 44% increase from the year prior. Already, overall tech spend has surpassed $6 trillion. Clearly, the world seems engulfed in a technological revolution.
However, as panelists observed in Day 2’s opening keynote session, “The (Increasing) Role of Culture Today,” the influx of AI spending will only accelerate what an organization is already doing. Meaning, the transformation we think is technological in nature is actually happening across human workforces. That is where investments are best served.
“How do we make it safe? How do we apply judgment? Let’s take a step back and make sure the culture is ready for some of these pieces,” said Samantha Hammock, EVP and Chief Human Resources Officer at Cencora.
In practice, that means rolling out training initiatives that make learning stick—by harnessing people’s attention, having them generate insights around the lessons, having emotions during the learning, and spacing the lessons out (aka the AGES Model™.)
It also means establishing clear priorities and embedding the right habits, as JPMorganChase has done in the creation of its leadership principles, in partnership with NLI. Allison Horn, Head of Talent at JPMC, said the firm’s three principles—Earn Trust, Improve Relentlessly, and Do the Right Thing—orient the culture around what matters most. As the firm invests into AI, these human-first principles guide business and culture strategy, not the other way around.
Beware AI-Induced Blind Spots
Much has been written about AI’s sycophantic tendencies. Because the models are trained to be likable and flattering, and the companies making them want people to use them more frequently, AI agents tend to reward ideas that many humans wouldn’t support.
One study, in fact, found AI to be roughly 50% more sycophantic than humans in response to the same prompts, even when they involved unethical or illegal behavior.
What’s been less discussed so far is the cumulative effect AI has on our perception of our own biases. In the From the Lab session “The Neuroscience of AI in the Workplace,” Jay Van Bavel, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Neural Sciences at New York University, presented research showing that AI’s warmth and sycophancy leads us to become overconfident and enjoy the experience more. In turn, we lose sight of our potential biases and care less about them.
This is a big problem for teamwide AI use because it reduces the group’s collective intelligence. As Dr. Van Bavel pointed out, “groups get smarter when we draw from a lot of different perspectives.” If most people are getting their information from AI, the diversity of sources collapses. What we end up with is a kind of groupthink by proxy: AIs talking to other AIs through the intermediary of human users.
One quick fix: Change the default settings in your preferred AI platform to make it less warm, and instruct it to challenge your ideas with reasoned criticism and evidence—without all the needless sycophancy.
The Importance of Disciplined Hope
In the Summit’s closing keynote, “Shape What’s Next,” panelists explored the role of hope at a time when many leaders and employees are despairing about the future. Bob Johansen, Distinguished Fellow at Institute for the Future, said that while hope alone isn’t a strategy, “a discipline of hope can be a strategy.”
In practice, that means forming new behaviors that keep teams in a positive, toward state to bring the faraway future into clearer focus. Rachel Cardero, VP of Consulting and Product at NLI, echoed the sentiment by observing how the brain finds it difficult to create a vision for the future because it’s so effortful. At work, hope helps us form a vision for the kind of organization we want to create.
AI enters the picture as it pertains to becoming a helpful or harmful force in uplifting cultures. Effective use—staying metacognitive, building AI fluency, stretching one’s thinking—can lift teams’ abilities to get unstuck and experience greater agency around driving the desired results.
While hope may not be a strategy, with the right brain-friendly habits—and smart assistance from AI—teams can reap all the cultural and performance benefits of becoming hopeful.
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