Why Human Leadership Matters More as AI Gets Smarter with Ernesto Gomez

AI is getting smarter by the month, but a lot of workplaces still feel stuck and oddly exhausted. We keep hearing about productivity breakthroughs, yet many organizations cannot show enterprise-wide gains even when employees say they work faster with AI. That gap is where leadership, culture, and performance systems get exposed.

I sit down with Ernesto Gomez, founder of Aspen Mindset and author of Regrowth and The Soul Edge, to unpack why the real bottleneck is human. Ernesto argues that technology is a platform, not a lasting competitive advantage, and that optimizing individual tasks can still suboptimize the whole organization. We dig into the shift from extractive performance (control, pressure, and proprietary know-how) to regenerative performance that builds human capacity, trust, creativity, and judgment over time.

We also get practical about what “soul” can mean at work without drifting into mysticism. Ernesto shares his idea of a “soul signature,” the essential qualities that make you you, and why leaders in the AI era have to connect with the person beyond the role. From there, we talk team leadership as the true unit of performance, how to build human-centered skills that algorithms cannot replace, and why humility and self-awareness are now strategic leadership capabilities. We close with a hard question: if you rebuilt leadership from zero today, what would you keep and what would you drop?

If this sparks a rethink of AI leadership, organizational culture, employee engagement, and the future of work, subscribe to Excellence Foresight, share this conversation with a colleague, and leave a review.

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A Provocative Leadership Question

Nancy Nouaimeh 0:13

Welcome to the Excellence Foresight, the podcast where we explore the ideas, choices, and human capabilities shaping the future of organizational excellence. I'm Nancy Nouaimeh, a leadership and culture consultant. Today we're asking a timely and provocative question. What kind of leader do we need to become when intelligence is abundant, but wisdom and judgment remain deeply human? My special guest is Ernesto Gomez. Ernesto spent over three decades in business as an entrepreneur, a global HR executive at companies including Grupo Alpha and Sigma Alimentos, and now as an advisor to leaders navigating change. He's the founder of Aspen Mindset and the author of Regrowth, an Amazon Hot New release. His new book, The Soul Edge, examines the move from extractive to regenerative performance and invites us to reconsider what makes leadership distinctly human and the age of AI. Ernesto, welcome to the Excellence Foresight.

Ernesto Gomez 1:12

Hello, Nancy. I'm very glad to be here with you and your audience. It's a privilege and I'm very excited to participate. I hope I can bring some of my experience leading large companies and now facing the challenges of AI.

Nancy Nouaimeh 1:28

Ernesto,

Why AI Gains Do Not Scale

Nancy Nouaimeh 1:28

there's no doubt in that. So thank you for being with us here today. And one of the paradoxes I keep seeing in AI is that the technology appears to work far better than many organizations do sometimes. And research suggests that despite massive investments in AI, many organizations still struggle. They struggle to demonstrate measurable enterprise-wide productivity gains, while employees often report individual productivity improvements. So we see a disconnect between the organizations and the individual. And the question seems less about whether AI works and more about whether leadership, culture, and management are ready for it. And this is one of the latest study by God of the State of the Workplace report in 2026. So let's start by framing our discussion. Ernesto, do you see this as a technology challenge first or a leadership challenge? The challenges that organizations are facing now?

Ernesto Gomez 2:19

In my perspective, it's always leadership, because technology by itself hasn't provided any major competitive advantage for a specific company throughout the years. If you look at it, technology seems to be the springboard, but in reality, it's just a platform. One of the paradoxes that we see is that yes, at the individual level there is uh better productivity with AI, but at the organizational level doesn't seem to show the same. Sometimes optimizing the parts leads to suboptimizing the whole. And this is precisely the conundrum we have these days. Yes, we are productive, more productive than before, but how is that the organization does not really capture the value that it's supposed to? That's a question. And I think that the bottleneck is human in many ways. In my first book, Regrowth, I kind of laid out the ground saying, well, an organization has a talent density, has a culture, and a shared mindset. And you know, those three things work together to advance the organization. Keep in mind that the organization is a vessel, and that vessel has to go somewhere. In my second book, in The Solid, I explore specifically the leadership model that now needs to take place. And uh I I am sure I'm positive that things are changing so rapidly that the question is not how we can improve the combination uh between the tool and the human, because the tool is advancing fast, fast, fast, and we cannot really understand where it's going. So we need to focus on the human uh to make sure that that vessel is ready to catch the the tool. In

The Human Bottleneck In Performance

Ernesto Gomez 4:40

my view, uh the problem that we have right now is that we have to redefine what performance is. We we come from an understanding of how to produce performance, and AI is changing now our perspective of how to produce performance.

Nancy Nouaimeh 5:00

Yeah, absolutely. When we talk about human, it's it's about performance. And uh I like that the fact you've mentioned the system, and and in every episode we have, we almost talk about system thinking, which is very important. So humans are part of that, and we can't really neglect that element. And I have with me here Ernesto your book, The Soul Edge. So thank you very much for sending it to me. So, what experience or insight first led you to write The Soul Edge?

Ernesto Gomez 5:25

You know, I noticed that performance is changing, and I kind of tried to understand what are the levers to produce performance these days, considering that we have AI. If you ask a leader before, why there is a book, by the way, by Rob Goffey that is called Uh Why Should Anybody Be Led by You? I I love that book. It began as a HVR article in the 2000s and then became a book. And that that question always intrigued me, why should anybody be led by me? And now I extend the question: why should anybody be led by me in the AI era? Right? And traditionally we said, uh I I everybody should be led by me because I produce results. And results were a factor of my experience, my knowledge, and my stamina, you know, as a leader. Now it seems that experience and knowledge uh can be borrowed and can be uh subsidized by AI. So stamina alone is not gonna tell is gonna make it. In my view, that leads to well, people are will want to be led by me because I bring the best out of them, because I help them you know become where they are meant to be, because I I'm a steward, not uh the hero in the equation, because I really conduct the team. So that shift uh it's I think it's taking place right now, and it's guiding the conversation into performance is more a regenerative undertaking than an extractive undertaking. And and that's what I explain in the book.

Nancy Nouaimeh 7:19

That seems very interesting, and and this reminds me, I think, what you mentioned a little bit now about AI. I we we were in an event today for IMI uh here in Ireland, and they were talking about AI. And there's this um, I mean, there's some mindset that says we should not use AI, we should not, education should remain far from AI. We have to use AI, but we have to have different kinds of leadership, right? So the central shift is not away from AI as an intelligence, but towards what intelligence alone cannot provide, and how leaders should be um dealing with that uh with the humans in this era. So, what do you mean by the term soul edge in your book and why does it matter really now?

Ernesto Gomez 7:59

Thank

What The Soul Edge Really Means

Ernesto Gomez 7:59

you for that question, Nancy, because when I chose the title the soul edge, I knew I was gonna get into a territory that is tricky because talking about souls in organizations and in business is unusual. You don't talk about souls, right? True, you talk about valuations, you talk about market share, you talk about ROI. That's exactly what the conversation leads to. But if you think about it, what happens when intelligence is abundant and your competitors have the same intelligence that you have, or very similar. Right now, whatever we are having, somebody else is having in terms of you know the algorithms, the tools and algorithms, yeah. So so okay. Uh I I state that in the past the way we produce performance was you know, I have control systems that that help me organize and manage the company, which are are good and are fine. Control systems like I don't know, lean management or agile or benchmarks or whatever you used to manage your company. Then you had a competitive advantage. You had some specific know-how that belongs to your company, and you put that on top of this other systems, and then you apply pressure to that. You know, you you you really uh raise the bar, you the performance evaluations are very tough, so you put a lot of pressure, and the organization used to give produce fantastic results with that equation. Now imagine that out of those three elements you remove know-how or at least commoditize it. So you are left with a lot of control and a lot of pressure, and that uh depletes the organization in the long run and also doesn't give you the edge. So, what is the edge? So I came up with well, if the edge is not in the system, it it must be that the edge is in the humans that are running the organization. And what's the only thing that AI cannot be? Uh some people say that AI can be conscious, I'm not sure about that, but I've heard that that it can practice metacognition and it can observe itself. I mean, I'm not agreeing agreeing with that, but for the sake of the conversation, let's say that AI can be conscious. What AI can never have is a soul. I'm positive about that. So that's the first principle. And I decided, well, if that's the first principle, let's build on the human soul. What does that mean? And I present in the book a framework you know that goes through four stages to develop skills, mindset, what I call the soul signature, and then how to open yourself to creativity, insight, curiosity. I call it the higher field. Uh it's kind of epiphanies on demand, uh, and and all of that based on awareness. So if we're the companies that will win will not be those who can out-automate the competitors, because that's a tricky territory, but you can win by out-humaning your competitors, and that's what I presented in my book, The Solid, how to outhuman your organization so that everybody's connected uh uh to through the same uh model.

Nancy Nouaimeh 11:47

Can

Finding Your Soul Signature At Work

Nancy Nouaimeh 11:47

you talk to us a little bit more um about this principle, the soul in the organization? What does it mean in practice?

Ernesto Gomez 11:55

Typically, conventional wisdom tells us, you know, if the organization has a soul, it has grit, it has uh uh ambition, there is a speed the corpse. You can tell when somebody or a team has a soul because we we talk about that. But I really go beyond that concept, and I say, well, without getting into spiritual or or mystical territory, I say that what characterizes an individual it's your essential qualities, whatever resonates with you in your day-to-day uh performance in the organization. You may be a person who leans towards being uh to service, to being curious, to help others, to produce ideas. So I I believe that when you self-explore what really makes you tick, you start finding those easy things that uh uh or tasks that gives you meaning. And I call that your soul signature. And that's how you kind of the bundle that defines what you like to do and how you do it becomes your soul signature. I'm not talking about, I mean, you can talk about purpose, you can talk about your mission. Uh I in my view, purpose. I I haven't found many people that you know can say what their purpose in life is, uh uh professionally and personally. It's very hard. If you do, fine. I mean, I congratulate you, that's fantastic. But I've been coached to many, many people that in their 50s they're still trying to find their purpose because it changes, it really changes with life. But I think that exploring what you're makes you tick and doing more of that, it's the the road to find what your signature is.

Nancy Nouaimeh 13:56

And so so Ernesto here you're talking about the individuals, right? And because organizations are made of individuals, so we will have different individuals within an organization with different maybe um um paths, and each one of them has his own signature, his own soul signature. But how can we bring them together to benefit the organization? Because they will have different, they would be different maybe at different maturities, I would say, in their exploration journey, or maybe they wouldn't have discovered what is their own signature yet. So, how would you bring them all together to serve the organization?

Building Teams For Human-Centered Skills

Ernesto Gomez 14:31

That that's a great question. What I what I state in my book is that the basic unit of analysis in any organization is a team, right? I mean, the team. The team is composed or made out of people or persons, individuals, but the team is the very basic unit of analysis. So you have to make sure that the team works well, and for that, you you need the leader, right? So the leader has to understand that every individual is going through a journey, whatever that journey is, you know, to become better, to aspire to what they can be, to put in practice their skills. So, what I say in the book is, well, what if the leader establishes like a blueprint in saying, well, we all need to have a certain level of skills, whatever they may end up being. We need skills. We don't know exactly which skills yet, because human-centered skills are not what the algorithm does, but non-human-centered skill is what the algorithm shines, you know, routines, processes, etc. So we need to find that. On top of that, what I say is that we we have to strengthen our mentality, our mindset. And that's very fluid. Right now, we have to be always looking into your beliefs, what you think stops you, and what you think it doesn't stop you. So, skills, then you add your what kind of mentality. In the book, I provide even a framework to do that, to kind of uh open, you know, look under the hood and find out what you what what the software of your brain is, so that you kind of update your your belief system. Then on top of that, you start playing with you know what is that makes you tick, and let's do more of that. Uh positions and and and jobs have certain latitude. Uh, the definition of your work is gives you certain bandwidth. And you you have to be close to your team uh members and say, well, if you really resonate with this, let's try what you are good at and what you like to do. And always, of course, looking into what the organization wants to achieve. And then in the end, we have also to let go and let people be creative. On algorithmic uh creativity, I think it's very important. And I think the quite essential, the fundamental skill of all of this, it's awareness. If you are able to see yourself and see the context and see how the team works, uh you're gonna be able to lead.

Nancy Nouaimeh 17:17

Yeah, and I think self-awareness is very important, and it's growing in importance in business environments. And I like the fact that you mentioned like creativity and curiosity. I think these are the two things, if in anything related to the future, future of the workplace, future of the human skills will will relate to that in a way. But um, like we're talking about things changing very quickly, and we're talking about curiosity and and the soul. Uh, the development of individuals will always be different, right? So from one from another, how can we make sure that this self-awareness is going to be developed as quickly as needed uh to match and keep differentiating in humans? Because it requires also certain um, like when you say creativity, there are certain tools and certain things or methodologies to follow, but still uh a lot of work needs to happen for people to become more or an individual to become more creative. So, do you have any advice around that? How can people speed up that process to to become more um relevant, I think, in the future and differentiate themselves a little bit?

Ernesto Gomez 18:21

Uh I think that your audience and maybe yourself are gonna connect with what I'm about to say. I've heard many, many times that uh the best ideas come when you're in the shower, right? But you you're taking a shower and all of a sudden, boom, you know, there is a wonderful thing that occurs to you. Uh, you're maybe taking a walk, not really uh being grit by your cognitive focus, and all of a sudden something comes out, kind of eureka moments. And I wonder why that happens. Uh, I'm not gonna get into the unconscious, subconscious, or whatever. It's just that when we stop and kind of take perspective, and when we are not really uh secured by our the cognitive grip that we have, we let ourselves you know receive whatever it is that we have there. So very simple practices about you know taking walks, looking at nature, uh uh reflecting uh on on things without being so focused on the task, so immersed into the task. You have to take two steps back and look at the uh the picture. And now, of course, they are there are methods, and I even in the book I propose one, you know, step by step. But uh do whatever it feels uh better for you. Many of us don't think we are creatives, many of us think that we are not uh uh have that kind of insights, but it's not true. We all have. Uh it's just a matter of letting yourself go a little bit. And and typically when you're too full of yourself and you think that you're a know-it-all, it's when creativity it's uh is blocked. You have to be humble first and that's and let things flow.

Nancy Nouaimeh 20:17

Absolutely. If we use AI in a smart way to help us on the tasks, the administrative tasks, non-added value activities, I think that we're having, we'll have more time and we'll be more maybe we'll be more productive in certain areas, but also we'll have more time on our hands to focus on things like creativity and have some time for meditation and these things, which sometimes in our busy schedules, we don't necessarily give it enough um enough space. So I think there's a lot that we can, as an individual, we can try to do and organize our lives around and to change things. And uh I want to go back a little bit, Ernesto, to your to your statement about um leadership and and the age of AI. Why does anyone still choose to be led by another human being who when we feel that AI is becoming more and more intelligent? Why do you think that? Why do you think people will still need other human beings or should accept a human being as a leader and what that value? I think you alluded a little bit to it, uh, but can you ex can you elaborate a little bit more?

Ernesto Gomez 21:19

Yes, I think that uh it's it's gonna be hard to be inspired by an algorithm, right? It's gonna be hard to connect soul to soul with an algorithm. I really think that now leaders, we used to speak to the role mostly. We used to speak to you are an accountant, then you have to produce accountant products, then you are uh uh in logistics or operations or whatever. Uh paradoxically, what the AI is kind of uh pushing us to do is to go beyond the role and try to connect with the person. So, what makes you tick? If I understand what you are good at and how you can what you can bring to the equation that is good, then the leader uh becomes not the hero, becomes uh steward. I really think that that's the first mental model that. We have to change. We have been uh promoted and we have been escalating positions in organizations because we have experience, we know how to solve problems, and then we take people under our helm. And now the the role is gonna be reversed. The leader is not gonna be the person who needs to know everything because everything that has an experience component can be done by the algorithm. If you can extrapolate experience, you your your uh field of action is gonna be uh smaller. I think that leaders will have to explore more, we have to invent more. And to do that, uh they will have to inspire, they will have to let people be, they will have let people, you know, do whatever they think is best. And that crossing from being a hero to being a steward is difficult. And I think that organizations need to take uh um an active participation in that you know model. We have to redefine how how we handle teams and how we the incentives we give to leaders to do that.

Nancy Nouaimeh 23:31

Yeah, you

Humility And The Engagement Crisis

Nancy Nouaimeh 23:31

mentioned a nice word earlier, humble. For humans to be able to become more creative, they need also to be humble, need to be open to learning, right? We say unlearn to learn, and that's what will maybe boost this. But in terms of also uh leaders, what we've seen in in business schools is that for years the we taught leaders to be a little bit distant. They are unique, they are on the top, and now this is changing, definitely it's changing. But still, if you look at all the recent um failures in leadership, I would say it's because leaders were not humble, because they thought they have all the answers because they were not inclusive. And that's where the biggest shift needs to happen is across these big organizations where leaders are not necessarily having that humbleness. Do you have any advice for leaders when it comes to being humble?

Ernesto Gomez 24:18

Uh first, that's where self-awareness comes into play a lot. You have to really kind of observe yourself and say, you know, what's make what makes me uneasy about being humble? Because if if you go underneath the surface, you will find that there are certain beliefs about yourself. You are the provider. I mean, you are the highest paid person in the team because you used to, you know, have all the answers, and you used to be the one that everybody would go to, and and you you you walked into your the the white horse and you you grab your sword and say, let's let's go and do it. Yeah, yeah. But that that that's not you know what's gonna make you perform better anymore. And and this is all about performance. I wrote this book, not because it's morally right, although I think it's morally right. I started to find you know what is gonna really improve performance, and what should we do to improve performance? And I came to the conclusion that we have to understand our the human component better, and we have to leverage human capacity, and that starts with uh humbleness, because now you say, Well, I may not know everything, um you know you you were referring to the the the Gallup uh workplace uh study of 2026. I don't know that if you saw that uh disengagement is on the rise. Yes. We are we are at disengagement levels that are similar to the pandemic. And also the what is really troubling to me is that disengagement is on the rise because not only the base employee is disengaged, but now the middle managers and even senior managers are disengaged. So that really tells you a story that it's very troubling, and on top of that, disengagement, we are pushing the AI agenda with all the uncertainty that it has. And and it's I'm saying this is a game-changing opportunity, and we should explore AI. But in doing so, we we must not forget that the engagement in the organization is very important, and that that boils down to am I being valued as a human? And and and the leader has that responsibility.

Nancy Nouaimeh 26:49

Absolutely, and and I like what you said, and it's and if we look back a little bit, where you started with systems, and then uh when we look at organizations, whenever we have big changes, it's a cycle always. Like we look, something new comes in, uh, we need to uh some new trends, and organizations try to cope with that change. I think we work with pieces, we don't necessarily look at the entire organization, and it's important to consider the culture is compared. I think in your book I read alignment, right? It's it's important for organizations to consider all of these things together and make sure that they serve the individuals, they serve the company, the systems, and be able to focus the changes that are needed to maintain the performance. And I think the performance, the measurement of performance is mostly uh related to financial, I mean, and financial measures, but as we move forward, it's important to have other elements measured in these changes as performance for the organization. One of them is engaging middle managers. We talk more and more about middle managers because they've been neglected for long. So thank you for bringing this perspective.

Simplify Leadership Then Regrow

Nancy Nouaimeh 27:50

Performance is important. Before we we're getting to the to the end of the episode, do you have any specific messages, things you haven't spoken about from your book that you would like to share with our audience?

Ernesto Gomez 28:02

Yes. Uh, in order to adopt this human uh regenerative uh perspective or regenerative performance perspective, uh, we have to let go of many of the things that we have been doing. So we we cannot do this on top of everything that we are doing. So the first thing, which is very unusual, is we have to go to the basic and say, well, what are the things that I've been doing all this time that do not bring value anymore? You have to make space. And in the book, I state, you know, there are three chapters about how to make that space. You have to simplify your leadership style, you have to simplify your doing and make it more, you have to do what it moves the needle more, and then of course you have to have a good strategy about doing that. Then you can install or you can really go into now. Let's go about this soul-based leadership model that I proposed. Uh and and because if you we are fixing the play, the plane while it's while it's flying. So if you don't do that, you're just gonna add more complexity, and I really think that it's important. Uh, I would encourage uh your audience. Of course, I would love them to read my book, The Soul Edge, which is available in in Amazon and all the digital platforms. Uh, and of course, I would love them to leave a review, please. That that helps me a lot.

Nancy Nouaimeh 29:28

I have to start doing that myself.

Ernesto Gomez 29:30

Yeah, yeah, but please don't yeah, please uh give me a review because that that's what really makes the the movement grow. And and also if you want to engage with me, by the way, I have a uh website which is called aspenmindset1.com. You can go into that, you can write me an email. It's ernesto at aspenmindset1.com. One is number one. And and uh I'll be more than glad to to engage and to exchange the ideas with your audience, and of course, my LinkedIn. I I mean LinkedIn as well as Ernesto Gomez Arzapalo. But but that but enough of me. What I would like people you know after this conversation to think is that I just ask you this question. What if we have the scheme wrong? What if what we are doing is not the appropriate thing to do going forward? If you were to wake up today forgetting everything you know about leadership and trying to build leadership from zero, what would you do? I mean, forget all the formulas and all the things that everybody has told you, which are very complex in in many ways. What would you do? I bet you would start by saying, Well, I need to talk to my team more. I need to understand more, you know, what drives me, what drives them. I need to align them, I need to go beyond the procedural ways of managing a team and start connecting more with them. That's that's a no-brainer. What I propose is a system to do that and and the steps that that follow. And yes, I talk about soul just because I don't think that we we can neglect that people are souls in a journey anymore. It's just that people have their own agenda and they want to be better, and everybody has problems. So, how can I connect with them better? And that's what I explored in the book.

Nancy Nouaimeh 31:35

Uh it's very, very nice, I think, um, angle to look at and perspective to have. And I think that people are the soul of the organization, Annessa. Thank you very much for sharing this with us. Just a quick story. I worked with the CEO, he his company grew up from 600 people to 3,000 people. When they were 600, he used to know everyone by name. He used to talk to all of them, he would used to know their stories. When they became 3,000, it was far, far for, I mean, very, very hard for him. So what he did, he tried still to find time where he can go and have groups of people and talk to them. It's important to connect with people, it's important to know the people in the organization and have time for that. And I think yes, that exactly this is what leaders miss these days. So, Ernesto, thank you so much for sharing your insights. The Soul Edge challenges us to look beyond what technology can do and ask us and have us ask what leaders is ultimately for, not simply extracting more output, but cultivating the human capacity, the wisdom of people, the judgment, the good judgment they have, and which is very needed for the future, for the future and when we live with AI. So, our listeners, thank you for joining us on the Excellence Foresight. If this conversation prompts you to reconsider what leadership means in the age of the abundant intelligence, I ask you to buy Ernesto's book. Please share the episode with someone who's helping shape the future of work and organizational excellence. Until next time, tune in to the Excellence Foresight podcast. Thank you very much.