As We Invest in AI at Work, Are We Underinvesting in Each Other?
Written by Dr. Galia BarHava, Founder of Oro Group
Dr. Galia BarHava is an applied developmental psychologist, organisational culture and mentoring expert, and founder of Oro Group. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in person-centred healthcare, she explores how relationships shape leadership, careers and organisational performance.
As organisations race to develop their employees' AI capabilities, I’ve observed that many of them are overlooking an equally important priority: investing in the relationships between the people using these technologies. AI promises extraordinary gains in individual productivity, but organisational success has never depended on individual capability alone. Drawing on my background in developmental psychology, strategic consulting and more than a decade of designing mentoring programmes, I believe the organisations that thrive in the age of AI will be those that invest just as deliberately in human relationships as they do in technology.
The human side of organisational success
I have dedicated a significant portion of my professional life to understanding and fostering high-quality mentoring. Interestingly, it was never part of my grand career plan. I arrived here almost by accident.
When I was working for the Boston Consulting Group, perhaps as a result of my psychology training, I was always curious about the way humans operated in organisations. Initially implicitly, and later much more explicitly, I became fascinated by the extent to which leaders, when thinking about strategy and commercial success, often passed over the importance of building relationships in the workplace.
We spend enormous amounts of time thinking about strategy, organisational structures, systems, processes and performance. Yet the relationships between the people expected to make all those things work are frequently treated as incidental, a sort of ‘necessary evil’ that will sort itself out if we just leave people to get on with their appropriately defined jobs.
When I eventually established Oro Group, a significant part of my work became dedicated to creating effective mentoring relationships within organisations. I remember being challenged, particularly by men working in the technology sector, about why my approach was so centred on people. Why wasn't I focusing more on technological solutions that could be scaled more easily?
This was long before the explosion of AI into the commercial world. My response then was much the same as it is today. Human beings develop through relationships and over time.
We are social beings who learn about ourselves and the world around us through interacting with others. We observe, listen, question, try things, receive feedback (which we might take on board or not), and gradually and quite reluctantly change the way we think and behave. Change is hard. Most people don’t like change.
Of all organisational interventions I have encountered and delivered, the fostering of high-quality workplace relationships is the most powerful in enabling us to discover strengths we didn't know we had, recognise blind spots that were previously invisible to us, and develop the confidence to do things we might never have attempted on our own. In short, it is the most impactful means of achieving actual and sustainable behaviour change.
Some of our most significant moments of professional growth come not from being given more information, but from a conversation that helps us see something differently. That brings me to something that has been troubling me about the current enthusiasm for artificial intelligence.
As AI makes us more productive individually, are we getting worse collectively?
Let me be clear. I am an avid user of AI. I use it regularly to challenge and enhance my thinking, explore ideas and make aspects of my work considerably more efficient. I am genuinely excited by its possibilities and believe organisations have every reason to invest in helping their people understand and use these technologies effectively. But I am increasingly concerned about what we might be overlooking in the process.
Almost every organisation I encounter is thinking about AI adoption, capability building and the productivity gains these technologies might deliver. There is considerable urgency to ensure employees have the skills to use AI effectively, alongside understandable excitement about the potential efficiencies. What I hear far less about is an equally deliberate investment in strengthening the relationships between those employees.
Organisational performance depends on much more than the capability of the individuals within it. It depends on their ability to share knowledge, build trust, collaborate across boundaries, challenge one another constructively and navigate differences in opinion. Much of that capability is relational and comes down to having better conversations. It might seem obvious, but high-quality conversations are actually quite rare in most workplaces.
We may be becoming extraordinarily effective at helping individuals work faster. But without paying enough attention to what makes groups work better together, we risk significant unintended consequences.
What two decades of mentoring have taught me about human development
For two decades, I have designed and facilitated structured mentoring programmes that have supported more than a thousand professionals, predominantly women, across a range of industries, organisations and countries. My experience has taught me that meaningful professional relationships don't necessarily develop simply because we put people together in the same room, or even on the same team, they require careful consideration and the intent to create the conditions in which those relationships can flourish.
It takes deliberate intent over an extended period to encourage employees to move beyond discussing what they do at work and to take a ‘helicopter view’ to reflect on how they think, what they believe, the challenges they face, and the possibilities they may not have considered. Establishing trust and psychological safety requires effort, but it is necessary for employees to feel able to ask difficult questions, acknowledge uncertainty, seek feedback, take risks, experiment, and challenge how things have always been done. These are all things we need to operate successfully and sustainably in this new world infused with AI.
Why real development takes time
In recent years, I have also been following up with participants from earlier mentoring cohorts, including women who began as mentees and subsequently became mentors themselves. I am particularly interested in understanding what stays with people long after the formal mentoring programme has finished. What have they actually changed? How has their approach to leadership evolved? What role have the relationships played in that process?
One woman I interviewed had been involved in the programme over four years, first as a mentee and subsequently as a mentor. She described how her earliest mentors helped her navigate a difficult organisational period, regain confidence and discover that leadership could look very different from the models she had previously encountered.
As she became a mentor herself, she continued to learn through her relationships with other leaders, including one whose approach to building relationships and challenging people was very different from her own. Reflecting on that experience, she told me, “That taught me to come from a place of curiosity rather than judgement.”
People don’t change simply because they have attended a workshop, completed a course or acquired new information. They change when they can engage deeply with other humans who can both challenge and validate their experiences, because knowing what good leadership looks like is not the same as becoming a better leader. While AI can undoubtedly help us access information, prepare for difficult conversations and reflect on our experiences, we still have to navigate the complexities of real human relationships to develop our leadership capability.
Relationships are an organisational capability, not an optional extra
The strategic importance of workplace relationships is hardly a new discovery. Gallup's extensive research into workplace friendships has consistently demonstrated a strong connection between relationships and organisational outcomes. Employees who report having a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged, and Gallup's research associates stronger workplace friendships with better quality of work, safety and business performance.
Similarly, Amy Edmondson's research into psychological safety and team learning has helped demonstrate why people's willingness to speak up, admit mistakes, challenge assumptions and take interpersonal risks matters for collective learning and performance. Yet despite what we know, relationship building is still frequently positioned as a secondary organisational activity, something we encourage when there is enough time, rather than being recognised as part of the infrastructure that enables performance.
In my experience, relationships influence much more than employees' sense of belonging. They affect how readily people share crucial information and collaborate across silos. The quality of the relationship determines whether feedback is welcomed or avoided, and whether people feel able to challenge decisions they believe are wrong. In short, relationship quality shapes an organisation's culture.
Building that relational capability requires intentionality. It requires leaders who understand that developing people is part of their role, organisational practices that support connection across hierarchies and functions, and opportunities for relationships to deepen over time.
Mentoring is one way of doing this, but certainly not the only way. What matters is recognising that creating the conditions for people to build high-quality relationships is itself a strategic investment.
An unintended consequence of AI that deserves more attention
I wonder whether one of the unintended consequences of making employees increasingly technologically self-sufficient might be that we inadvertently reduce some of the everyday interactions through which relationships and informal learning develop. If I can get a confident answer from AI in seconds, am I less likely to turn to a colleague who might need to ponder my question for a while? If I can solve a problem independently, will I still seek out a different perspective? If organisations become increasingly focused on individual productivity, will they recognise the value of the time people spend getting to know one another, exchanging ideas or simply having a conversation that isn't immediately related to a task?
I am not suggesting that we should preserve unnecessary interactions simply for the sake of human contact (I hate the endless meetings culture). Nor do I think technology and human connection are mutually exclusive. Used thoughtfully, AI may actually free us from routine tasks and create more opportunities for the conversations and relationships that matter. But that outcome won't necessarily happen by itself.
We need to be deliberate about what we do with the time and capacity technology creates, and equally deliberate about the workplace cultures we are building alongside it. There is a difference between an organisation in which everyone has become more efficient at completing their individual tasks and one in which people have become more capable of thinking, learning, working and growing together.
The question leaders should be asking alongside their AI strategy
I believe the organisations that will thrive in the future will be those that find the right balance between developing their people's technological capabilities and creating environments in which authentic, trusting and psychologically safe relationships can flourish. This means recognising that relationship building is not a distraction from productive work. It is frequently what makes sustained performance, effective collaboration and organisational learning possible.
It also means being prepared to invest time, resources and leadership attention in the conditions that support meaningful professional relationships, with the same seriousness that organisations currently bring to their investment in technology. As leaders consider how to build a workforce capable of using AI, I would encourage them to ask an equally important question: are we also building a workforce that is genuinely capable of learning, growing and succeeding together?
Because ultimately, the future of work will not be shaped by technology alone. It will also be shaped by the quality of the relationships between the people using it. Those relationships are far too important to leave to chance.
If you're exploring how to strengthen leadership capability, mentoring and organisational culture alongside technological change, you can explore my work and approach here.
Read more from Dr. Galia BarHava
Dr. Galia BarHava, Founder of Oro Group
Dr. Galia BarHava is an applied developmental psychologist and expert in organisational culture and mentoring, with more than 30 years’ experience working with leaders and organisations. Her experience of a rare, life-threatening autoimmune illness inspired her PhD research into person-centred healthcare and deepened her understanding of the role relationships play in human development. As founder of Oro Group, she draws on positive psychology, positive organisational scholarship and both entrepreneurial and corporate experience to question conventional approaches to leadership and organisational change. Her work makes visible the often-overlooked human dynamics that shape careers, culture and commercial success.
