The Next Level Asks Something Different

The world of work is changing quickly. AI is part of that story, but not the whole story.

Companies are redesigning work. Roles are becoming less fixed. Teams are expected to do more with fewer resources. Customers expect faster, better and more personalised outcomes. Geopolitics and new business models add more uncertainty.

The World Economic Forum reports that employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030. LinkedIn estimates that 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change by 2030, with AI as an important catalyst. [1][2]

The ILO adds an important note of caution. It finds that one in four workers globally is in an occupation with some exposure to generative AI, but says most jobs are more likely to be transformed than simply removed. [3]

That distinction matters. The issue is not only whether a job survives. The issue is how the value inside that job changes.

The issue is not only that jobs disappear. The composition of value inside jobs changes.

It would be too simple to say that schools and universities ‘produce executors’. Education is diverse, and many good institutions do much more than that.

But many of us have spent years in systems that rewarded correctness, execution, individual performance and external validation more often than they rewarded shaping, orchestration, framing and self-authorship.

The OECD’s Learning Compass makes the desired shift quite clear. It places student agency near the centre of future-ready education. It describes agency as being able to set goals, reflect, act and help shape one’s future rather than simply be shaped by it. [4][5]

India’s National Education Policy 2020 makes a similar move. It calls for less rote learning and more critical thinking, problem solving and experiential learning. [6]

These policy directions do not prove that every learner today is passive. They do suggest that agency, judgment and self-direction need to be built deliberately.

As more routine execution can be assisted or automated, the human contribution can move upward.

Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index describes this as a move toward greater human agency. In its survey of 20,000 AI-using knowledge workers across ten markets, 66% said AI gave them more time for high-value work. Fifty-eight per cent said they were producing work they could not have produced a year earlier. [7]

The important point is not that everyone must become a senior leader. It is that more people may be able to direct, judge, design, combine and own work that once required much larger teams or much more support.

That changes what it means to be valuable.

The popular boiled-frog story is not good science. But the idea behind it is useful: gradual change can be harder to notice than sudden change.

If your job vanished tomorrow, you would know something had changed.

But what if the job stays? What if you are still busy, still praised and still needed, while the basis of your future value moves somewhere else?

You may still be the person everyone calls when something breaks. You may still be admired for knowing the answer. You may still get good reviews for reliability.

And yet the next level may now ask for something different: direction, judgment, influence, orchestration, framing or the courage to act before somebody gives you a perfect brief.

What if you are still succeeding at something that is becoming less central to your future value?

The defensive cost

There is a real risk side to this shift. Tasks are automated. Workflows change. Some roles shrink. Others are redesigned.

The World Economic Forum expects decline in several clerical and administrative roles, while also showing growth in new roles and rising demand for analytical thinking, resilience, leadership and social influence. [1][8]

But exposure to AI is not the same as job loss. The ILO’s conclusion is more measured: transformation is more likely than wholesale replacement for most exposed jobs. [3]

The opportunity cost

The less visible cost is developmental delay.

• Years spent waiting for authority you could already begin to exercise.
• Years spent proving expertise when the next role values judgment.
• Years spent solving problems yourself when leverage requires orchestration.
• Years spent seeking approval when leadership requires authorship.
• Years spent answering questions when the larger value lies in framing them.

A person can remain fully employed and still spend years operating below their leadership capacity.

The real cost may not be losing your job. It may be taking ten years to become the leader you could have begun becoming in three.

This is why the changing world should not be framed only as a threat. Technology can also widen what one person is able to create, influence and orchestrate.

Suppose someone attends an excellent leadership programme.

They learn about delegation, strategy, influence and executive presence. They leave with useful frameworks and several strong insights.

Then Monday arrives.

Their boss still treats them the same way. Their team still escalates every difficult problem. The stakeholder they avoid is still there. They still associate expertise with safety. They still dislike disappointing people.

This does not mean the programme failed. It means that knowledge is only one part of development.

Research on training transfer has made this point for years. Supervisor support, peer support, opportunity to perform and the wider work environment all affect whether learning is used on the job. [9][10]

Knowledge can change what we know. Development also has to change what we notice, what we believe and how we respond.

Two people can face the same situation and respond in very different ways.

That is because we do not respond only to what happens. We also respond to what we think it means.

After enough repetition, a response can stop looking like a choice. It starts to feel like personality.

‘That is just who I am.’

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is simply a response that has been practised for a very long time.

If the barrier sits partly inside patterns, assumptions and identity, adding more content may not be enough.

A person needs a way to see their own operating system while it is running.

That is where coaching can help.

• What am I assuming here?
• What am I repeatedly doing?
• What have I treated as fact that is really a hypothesis?
• What am I protecting?
• What response has become automatic?
• Is it still serving me?
• What becomes possible if I respond differently?

The evidence on workplace coaching is positive, though the field is varied. A 2024 meta-analysis of 24 studies found medium to strong effects across cognitive, emotional and behavioural outcomes, while also noting wide differences across studies. [11]

Coaching is not the whole journey. It is the part that helps the person notice, question and interrupt the patterns that a course may leave untouched.

Insight matters most when it changes what someone does next.

That is why the work has to leave the coaching conversation and enter the real environment.

The loop becomes simple:

See → choose → experiment → observe → reflect → recalibrate → repeat.

This may be the most important difference between a programme and a live development journey.

A programme often asks the person to learn away from the job and then transfer the learning back.

A live journey can let the person change while the work is happening.

The boss gets clearer information. The team experiences different ownership. Stakeholders see a stronger point of view. Decision rights shift. New conversations happen. Relationships begin to change.

The environment is no longer waiting at the end of the programme. It is part of the development process itself.

You do not return from the journey changed. You change while living the journey.

The goal is not to manufacture a generic ‘ideal leader’.

The question is more personal:

Who is this person becoming, given who they already are and what their situation now asks of them?

For one person, the next version may need more voice. For another, less rescuing. For another, stronger political awareness. For another, more patience. For another, the courage to stop hiding behind expertise.

The next version should feel like an expansion of the person, not a costume they have been asked to wear.

Only now do the individual shifts become useful, because the words have some context.

These are not stages that everyone must pass through in the same order. They are lenses for asking where the next developmental edge may lie.

If the challenge involves both the person and the environment, the development process needs to work with both.

The structure is designed. The development is emergent.

The person is not one participant among many consuming the same content. The person and their context become the curriculum.

Before looking for an answer, it may be useful to sit with five questions.

• What was I trained to value?
• What is my environment beginning to require?
• Where is the gap?
• What is that gap costing me?
• What might become possible if I closed it?

You do not need to answer them perfectly. The point is to make something visible that may have been operating quietly in the background.

This is not only about protecting yourself from a changing world. It is about not missing what the changing world now makes possible for you.

Some claims in this paper are well supported by current research. Others are developmental hypotheses that I am continuing to test through practice.

For example, current research strongly supports rapid change in work and skills, the importance of workplace conditions for learning transfer, and positive effects from coaching in many settings. It does not prove that education systems universally create executors, that every exposed role will disappear, or that one developmental model fits everyone.

I think that distinction matters. The aim is not to make the argument sound stronger than the evidence. It is to use the evidence carefully enough that we can ask better questions.