AI Should Accelerate Thinking, Not Replace It
Artificial intelligence is transforming the way leaders work.
Reports are written in minutes, data is analysed almost instantly, and complex information can be summarised with remarkable speed.
The question leaders should be asking is not whether AI is making us more productive. It is whether it is making us better thinkers.
For many leaders, particularly those lacking confidence in their own judgement, AI is quietly becoming a substitute for decision making rather than a tool to strengthen it. The danger is not that AI makes poor decisions. The danger is that people stop exercising the leadership muscles required to make good ones.
Researchers are beginning to see this pattern emerge. A 2025 Microsoft Research study involving 319 knowledge workers and 936 real workplace examples found that people with greater confidence in AI invested less effort in critical thinking.
Conversely, leaders with higher confidence in their own capability continued to apply stronger critical thinking while using AI. Rather than replacing thinking, they used AI to challenge and refine it.
This highlights an important distinction.
Confident leaders use AI as an adviser.
Insecure leaders often use AI as an authority.
There is a significant difference between asking AI, “What have I missed?” and asking, “What should I do?”
The first demonstrates leadership.
The second demonstrates dependence.
Researchers describe this growing behaviour as cognitive offloading, where people shift mental effort onto technology instead of engaging in analysis themselves.
Studies involving hundreds of participants have found that frequent AI use can reduce cognitive effort and weaken independent critical thinking when users become overly reliant on the technology.
This creates a hidden leadership risk.
Leadership has never been about having all the answers. It has always been about applying judgement in uncertain situations. Judgement develops through experience, reflection, mistakes, and learning. If every difficult decision is delegated to AI, those capabilities gradually weaken.
Think of it like physical fitness.
If someone stopped walking because they owned a mobility scooter, their muscles would eventually deteriorate.
The same principle applies to decision making.
If leaders consistently allow AI to do their thinking, their decision making capability begins to decline.
The strongest organisations are taking a very different approach.
High performing leaders are using AI to increase the speed of thinking, not eliminate thinking altogether. They use it to identify risks, test assumptions, generate alternative viewpoints, summarise large volumes of information, and accelerate research. The final judgement, however, remains firmly in human hands.
This balanced approach is becoming a competitive advantage. AI allows leaders to spend less time collecting information and more time interpreting it, discussing implications, and making better quality decisions.
Rather than replacing leadership capability, it amplifies it when used correctly.
At RDL, we believe the future belongs to leaders who combine human judgement with artificial intelligence, not leaders who surrender one to the other.
RDL’s Top 3 Tips for Using AI in Decision Making
Ask AI to challenge your thinking, not replace it. Use prompts that identify risks, blind spots and alternative options before making the final decision yourself.
Make the decision before checking the answer. Form your own recommendation first, then compare it against AI. This strengthens judgement rather than replacing it.
Treat AI as one adviser around the executive table. Balance its recommendations with experience, organisational context, stakeholder insight and commercial judgement.
Technology will continue to become faster, smarter and more capable.
Leadership, however, will always be defined by one uniquely human capability - The ability to make sound decisions when certainty does not exist.
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