SIY Global

56% of CEOs report seeing zero ROI on AI to date, according to a recent study from PwC.

One of the core reasons may lie in their culture. According to a study from MIT, 84% of leaders see a strong connection between achieving measurable results from AI and having psychological safety among the team.

Yet that same MIT study showed only about 39% of leaders rate their organization’s psychological safety as “high.”

If your organization is missing out on AI gains, consider starting with psychological safety.

Since 2022, manager engagement has dropped by 9 points, with the steepest drop happening in the last year, according to Gallup.

It’s a clear warning about just how difficult leadership has become. The last few years have brought a truly unprecedented rate and scale of change unlike anything the world has seen before.

Today’s managers are grappling with a new reality where they have little experience. And they’re being asked not only to maintain personal resilience, but to take on the emotional load of others as they lead.

It’s a challenge organizations need to confront urgently. Because when managers are depleted, the performance of their team usually follows.

How is your organization helping managers handle the pressures of leadership right now?

Leadership growth begins by noticing how our internal thoughts and emotions show up in our external behaviors.

Often, leadership training tries to skip straight to behavior: “Do this, not that.”

If only it were that simple.

The behaviors leaders struggle with most are often rooted in what is happening beneath the surface.

They are dealing with an immense amount of pressure, juggling a wide range of priorities, trying to keep up with everything that’s happening on their team, with their stakeholders, at the organizational level, in their industry, etc.

Without tools to help leaders become aware of those internal patterns, behavior change simply doesn’t happen.

Awareness creates choice. And choice is what makes real growth possible.

Many organizations are struggling to find ways to motivate employees through periods of intense change with high stakes.

But one of the most powerful levers is not complicated, but requires consistency: Trust.

PwC found that workers who trust their direct managers the most are 72% more motivated than those with the lowest trust.

At the same time, DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast shows that only 29% of employees trust their manager.

That has major implications for any company asking people to stretch, adapt, and adopt new ways of working, including AI.

Trust does not appear by accident. Managers build it through emotional intelligence: listening well, showing care, staying steady under pressure, and following through consistently.

One of the myths about EQ is that it’s about being nice and getting along with others.

But that’s a misinterpretation of EQ.

EQ is actually the key to helping us manage difficult situations and emotions at work, both our own and those of the people around us.

Instead of reacting on impulse or avoiding what feels uncomfortable, leaders can stay with the tension, let the emotion move through, and respond with greater intention.

That’s why EQ is so critical for leaders who are dealing with a lot of change in their organizations. When priorities shift, pressure rises, and uncertainty becomes the norm, EQ gives leaders and teams the stability to make sound decisions, have hard conversations, and keep moving forward.
In that sense, EQ is a performance skill. It creates the internal stability people need to do what the moment requires, especially when the moment is demanding.

It’s striking that leaders spend so much of their time influencing others, yet so few have been trained to do it well.

According to AMA, 69% of leaders spend more than half their time influencing others without direct authority.

More than half.

That means the majority of their time is spent building relationships, ensuring they understand what others needs and how to align their goals together.

In short: It’s emotional intelligence.

To influence effectively, leaders have to manage their own reactions, stay grounded under pressure, and communicate with intention. They also have to understand what matters to other people, read emotions accurately, and respond in ways that build trust rather than resistance.

For L&D, that creates a clear opportunity.

We need to help leaders develop deep skills in how to listen deeply to understand others’ motivations and emotions, manage their own emotional responses, adjust perceptions, and thoughtfully shift emotions with intention to align on future goals.

How leaders direct their attention shapes the trajectory of their career and the careers of their teams.

It shows up in small moments, like noticing who has gone quiet in a meeting or recognizing an untapped strength in a direct report.

It also shows up in how they spend their time every day. Is their calendar focused on the work that most needs their judgment and leadership? Or is their attention being pulled away by constant fire drills, low-value meetings, and reactive decisions?

By the end of a quarter or a year, the pattern becomes visible. What received their attention, and what did not, shows up in the metrics, the promotions, the culture, and the team’s performance.

Over time, attention becomes impact. And too many leaders realize too late that their focus was out of sync with what they - and the organization - aimed to achieve.

That’s where L&D can make a real difference.

We have an opportunity to help leaders strengthen attention, align focus with what matters most, and lead with greater intention to achieve results.

AI promises to free us from the mundane stuff so we can focus on the big, strategic decisions that truly require a human.

But how many of these big decisions can our brain handle all at once?

A recent article in Harvard Business Review explores the idea of "AI brain fry," where people are rapidly switching between AI tools, overloading their cognitive capacity.

What initially seems like a productivity hack quickly gives way to decision fatigue.

And when you're fatigued, a bad prompt or a rushed approval can send AI off in completely the wrong direction.

One of the simplest ways to manage this issue is by taking true mental breaks during the day.

At SIY Global, we do this through mindfulness micropractices, which can help you clear your mental whiteboard and re-align your intentions.

How are you addressing AI brain fry?

If you've ever struggled to make the case for investing in psychological safety, here's a number worth bookmarking.

According to PwC's 2025 Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey, employees who feel the most psychologically safe are 72% more motivated than those who feel the least safe.

72%.

One of the big reasons they feel much more motivated is because they feel comfortable trying new approaches, and knowing that failures will be treated as learning opportunities.

But the study also found that just over half of workers feel safe to try new approaches.

It begs the question: How can we possibly drive change - constantly asking people to try something new - without creating the environment where they feel safe to try something new?

What advice would you give your kids about the skills they should develop for the future?

The Wall Street Journal recently posed this question to AI executives. The strong themes that came back were largely around skills to build relationships, think deeply, and adopt a flexible mindset about how you can work to solve problems for others.

Yet these are also the skills that are eroding the fastest, as many people work more independently and outsource much of their critical thinking to AI.

How are you advising the younger generation to prepare?