The emotional animal meets the thinking machine

Time of India

18 hours ago

Advt
Advt
The World Economic Forum lists emotional intelligence, resilience, and leadership as top future skills.
McKinsey's Asia study shows that emotionally attuned leaders lead more adaptable and innovative teams.
In India, 77% of CXOs are investing in AI adoption. But fewer than 30% of employees feel their managers understand their emotional world.
A team lead who notices that a high performer has stopped turning on their camera in meetings, and chooses to walk over and ask, 'Are you okay?' instead of marking it as disengagement.
A department head who reads an AI-generated pulse survey showing 'team fatigue,' but instead of launching a new initiative, cancels two low-priority projects and tells the team, 'You don't have to prove anything this month.'
A principal who receives a list of flagged 'at-risk students' from an academic algorithm, but asks the hostel warden, not the dashboard, 'Who do you see sitting alone in the dining hall?'
A hiring manager who sees the chatbot score a candidate low on 'energy,' but still invites them for a conversation, because she knows introverts often lose in loud systems.
A founder who reads a predictive attrition model showing a 70% chance of losing a key team member, and instead of offering a bonus, says, 'Tell me what would make you want to stay.'
By ,
ETHRWorld Contributor
Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals. Subscribe to Newsletter to get latest insights & analysis in your inbox.
All about ETHRWorld industry right on your smartphone! Download the ETHRWorld App and get the Realtime updates and Save your favourite articles.
For most of history, leadership was physical. The tallest warrior, the loudest voice, the one who could lift the heaviest stone or shout over the monsoon, this was the leader.Then it became intellectual. The person who could decode policy, speak English without pausing, or reference Harvard or IIM in a boardroom was called 'strategic.' It was almost as if strategy became a function of pedigree, polish and PowerPoint.Now, something unusual is happening. Artificial Intelligence can write code, predict resignations, summarize employee mood, and even recommend managerial action based on sentiment patterns. It does not need rest, reassurance, or recognition. It learns at the speed of light, not semester.This forces us to ask:The answer may be disarming in its simplicity:Not just mood. Not sentiment. But the full, messy, glorious range of emotional intelligence viz empathy, ambiguity, compassion, fear, trust, and intuition. All those things that machines can detect but not feel. Analyse, but not hold.I recently sat through a demo of a meeting tool that analysed sentiments of participants in a video call. The tool offered a neat estimate of engagement levels. Recently, while analysing results of our organisational pulse survey, we deployed sentiment analysis on open ended responses and mood check quiz. The results showed engagement disparities across employee cohorts.When we asked AI tools to analyse the results, the solutions were logical on paper. In one case, the recommendation was to launch a motivational video series and introduce a rewards campaign. The solutions didn't land. They were misaligned with the emotional makeup and professional identities of the team. These were not employees disengaged by workload. They were responding to the quiet absence of a leader whose presence had offered psychological safety and balance. Someone who buffered them from hierarchy, who translated pressure into possibility.This wasn't a problem of performance. It was a shift in emotional climate, something only a human could have sensed, and responded to with care.For thousands of years, humans have survived not because we are the fastest or strongest species, but because we are the most emotionally responsive.We can sense fear in a glance, navigate power in silence, and hold the fragile trust of a group with a single word. These are ancient skills, not modern inventions.Indian philosophical traditions have long recognized this. The Upanishads tell us,or 'as is the feeling, so is the outcome'. Our inner states shape our outer realities.Leadership in the age of AI must remember this.If you try to lead people only with logic, while outsourcing all emotion to machines, you will not build a team. You will build a transaction.Imagine a corporate Mahabharata, unfolding in India's glass towers.Arjuna is your young team leader, conflicted, overwhelmed, facing targets he did not set and a team he did not choose.Krishna is not an AI bot offering performance nudges. Krishna is the human mentor who listens, reframes, and helps Arjuna choose action with clarity.Even in the epics, guidance was emotional before it was strategic.So, why do we now expect employees to find courage in dashboards and culture in algorithms?The machines are doing their part. But guidance is still a human act.Data across the world echoes what experience already tells us:This is the new asymmetry. We are accelerating the machine but forgetting the soul.In an earlier age, we rewarded those who could calculate faster than others. Today, a machine can do that in milliseconds.Now, we must reward those who can pause. Reflect. Connect.Here is what that looks like:These are not grand gestures. They are quiet acts of presence. And they will define the quality of leadership in an increasingly artificial world.We have reached a moment where intelligence is no longer uniquely human. ButA machine can process speech, but not awkward silence. It can identify sadness but not respond with tenderness. It can optimize workflows but not rebuild broken trust.In India, we are not strangers to emotional wisdom. The future of leadership in India will belong to those who are technologically fluent, and also emotionally literate. Those who can use the machine, but not become it.Because as AI grows in power, our humanity must grow in proportion.Not as nostalgia.But as a competitive necessity.