Even in a moment that can feel so out of control, there is one thing that has always been yours: you get to decide how you show up.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a human being right now. Not just a professional navigating change or an executive sharpening her point of view on AI, but a person trying to make sense of a moment where so many things feel unsettled at once.
These are tumultuous times. We are at war. There’s economic distress that touches every part of life, from the cost of gas to whether your job will exist in two years. And then of course there’s AI, which for all of its promise, is also adding to a broad sense of anxiety that is characterizing this moment.
All of these pressures, whether they’re global or personal, are layering on top of each other, not happening in isolation. But they do ultimately point to the same thing: the challenge of being human right now.
And for so many people, that means having done all the “right things” like doing their schoolwork, choosing their trade, and checking all the boxes that were supposed to lead to a stable professional path, yet still not being able to find a job. Or maybe they do have a job, but face real uncertainty as to whether it will exist in five years.
When the ground beneath all of us keeps shifting, it’s hard not to ask the question: What are we working towards?
That question can be paralyzing. And it’s creating more of a divide between those who have a safety net and those who don’t, and between those actively shaping the workforce and those who feel locked out of it. I think about the juggler who knows how to handle two or three balls, and then someone throws them another one, and another, and another, until they want to say “enough!”
But at this moment, the balls keep coming.
In my life as a parent, I was always the fix-it person. With three kids living busy lives, I thought I could fix most of the issues that came up. When they were young and acting out, I worked to ground them in values like how to be fair and kind. Some of my “fixing” worked, and some of it didn’t. They still might take somebody’s toy, but on my end, I felt like I was doing something.
I wish I had realized then what I realize now, which is that sometimes the answer isn’t fixing it. Making mistakes is how kids learn. And as they get older, supporting their decision-making matters more than solving challenges for them. That’s a hard shift to make as a parent, because the instinct to fix is also the instinct that has told me I’m being useful.
I carried that same instinct into my career. Running Human Capital Management at Goldman Sachs, there was always something to solve, whether it was a talent decision that needed a framework, a crisis that needed a response, a conversation that needed to be had. And the fix-it instinct served me well, to a point. But in reflecting now, I can see that there’s a version of fixing that becomes a way of avoiding the harder thing, which is sitting with the reality that not everything can be resolved on your timeline. Some situations don’t need a solution. Rather, they need presence, they need you to show up and acknowledge the complexity without rushing past it.
This is a microcosm of where we all are now. We’re looking for tools to fix or eliminate the uncertainty we’re immersed in, but what we actually may need is something different: the flexibility, the versatility, and the grounding to deal with today and anticipate what’s next. Those principles are the same whether the challenge is a new technology, a shifting economy, or a world that feels like it’s moving faster than any of us expected.
We all agree that AI has the potential to fundamentally change job profiles and the way work gets done. But that word “potential” is an important piece of the sentence. Because even among the smartest people I know, there isn’t a singular shared definition of what AI actually means for their work. Ask five people to describe it and you'll get five different answers. And while we believe the implications are profound, the cost is enormous in terms of time, resources, and the energy required to rethink how organizations actually function. And that reality is still catching up to many organizations.
It’s not just the practical demands. AI is asking something existential of us too: What will be left for humans if these tools keep getting smarter and more capable? I think human beings are pretty complicated. We operate within so many overlapping contexts like our families, our workplaces, our communities, the broader world. Those contexts are constantly shifting and interacting with each other, continually shaping who we are and how we make decisions. Our lived reality is too layered, too personal, too dynamic for AI to fully capture.
Whereas AI can project the here and now using historical patterns, that is very different from what humans do at our best, which is project forward on ideas, on imagination, on possibilities that no data set can anticipate.
I understand the resistance to AI, because at times I feel it myself. Do I really, at this stage of my life, feel up to learning how to employ AI agents in my day-to-day? Part of me still wants to call a reservations person rather than conversing with a chatbot. And I see that resistance in the people around me, like recent college graduates opting out of jobs that are centered on AI.
I see it in organizations too. People later in their career and people earlier in their career have paths of training that are just so different from one another. One was based on AI prompting, the other was based on overnight sprints making spreadsheets. There’s a real cultural tension in that, and neither side fully trusts the other’s way of getting there.
But here’s what I believe: the resistance is understandable, but you have to move through it. Not recklessly, but with your own judgment and discretion, which are the human skills that matter more now than ever.
Now is the time to get smarter and to understand what AI can and can’t do, to experiment with it in your own work, to build enough fluency that you can make real decisions about where it helps and where it doesn’t. Because the tools will keep changing. If it’s not AI, it will be something else. What won’t change is that you need to know how to show up and operate with impact in whatever ecosystem you're part of. And if you're interested, check out our recent post that explains how group coaching can help you achieve this.
Even in a moment that can feel so out of control, there is one thing that has always been yours: you get to decide how you show up, where you direct your energy, what you commit to, and the kind of impact you want to have. You are the boss of you.
For me, being the boss of me requires intentionality. Not just taking it as it comes, but choosing where my energy goes and for what purpose. It’s the difference between reading the news each morning and letting headlines set the tone for my day versus taking it in and deciding what I’m actually going to do about it.
Whether it’s learning to be a grandma, playing golf, being a colleague or a friend or a board member, I get to decide what impact looks like in all the different medleys I exist in. And that’s when I’m able to shift from feeling out of control to having agency. Not certainty, but agency. It’s not that everything “works.” Sometimes I whiff, sometimes I fail. But I’ll know why, and I’ll feel motivated and empowered by doing something. My plan is never to have all the answers. Rather, it’s to actively decide where I’m showing up and what I’m showing up for, even when the outcome is uncertain.
The hardest thing is when you’re feeling stuck and the weight of everything pins you in place and you don’t know what to do next. I’ve been there, and I think most people have.
What I’ve learned is that getting unstuck in these moments isn’t less about finding the big answer as it is about creating the grounding to do something every day to move yourself forward. You put yourself in situations where you walk away thinking, “I hadn’t thought about that!” Or, “People are talking about this application of AI in my space and I don’t really get it so I’m going to follow up and ask, can I just take thirty minutes of your time?”
But at the end of the day, no one is going to unstick you. I think about this a lot when I reflect on my own career. Coming up, there were always people who used their seats and their voices for my benefit and for the benefit of the generations behind me. That mattered, and I carry it with me. But as those people have passed on or moved on, I’ve realized that waiting for someone to open the door or point the way is its own kind of stuck. The person to look at is yourself. What are you going to do with whatever you’ve got? It doesn’t matter whether you’re a CEO or a team leader or someone just trying to figure out what’s next.
Do not give up on defining your destiny, despite the fact that so many things seem out of your control. You’re the boss of you. So let’s go.
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