How to Beat AI at Work by Becoming More Human
Daniele Forni is an executive coach for non-standard and neurodivergent leaders, and the founder of The Human Spikes Labs. A former Director at HSBC with fifteen years in banking across Europe and Asia, he is a University of Cambridge alumnus and the author of books on leadership, neurodiversity, strategy, and meditation.
AI is reshaping white collar work faster than anyone predicted, and LinkedIn is full of capable professionals wondering whether their job is next. The good news, staying irreplaceable has nothing to do with learning to code. It has everything to do with leaning into the one thing AI cannot fake, being human.
Why is everyone suddenly so worried about AI?
We are all afraid of AI, and for good reason. LinkedIn is full of people “open to work,” and many of them have been affected, in one way or another, by the rise of AI.
This is not only happening at entry level. McKinsey is currently overhauling its pay structure because AI can now do much of what a junior consultant used to do. Claude Code lets a single engineer build functioning software at a fraction of the time it would have taken a year ago. The bar for what counts as “skilled work” is moving, fast.
So, are we doomed? Are all the white collar jobs going to disappear to a robot the way many blue collar ones did twenty years ago?
I don’t want to be called a fearmonger, though I always liked the sound of it. I once wanted to be a cheesemonger. But I do think a certain kind of knowledge has now been democratised to the point that the barriers to entry have collapsed entirely. Fear not, though. I have a solution. To beat AI, become more human.
What 100,000 years of human history tells us about leadership
Let’s take a step back. Actually, let’s take a few thousand steps back, to when our ancestors were hunters and gatherers roaming the earth as nomads.
Picture this. It is 100,000 BC. You wake up in a cave with your tribe. You are covered in a bear skin you hunted last month, keeping you warm. It rained overnight, and the smell of wet soil, together with smoke, permeates the air. The incandescent embers slightly illuminate the mammoth drawings on the wall. You pick up your spear, ready for a day of hunting, while the tribe shaman recites her morning prayers, blessing nature for an abundant life.
Of course, no AI was in sight. The latest technology was fire, literally. It was you, your tribe, and nature. That’s it.
All of life was just community. Who to trust was based on instinct. Who to follow was based on talent. Who to mate with was based on how they made you feel.
Social dynamics ran on how humans talked, how they held themselves, and how they projected presence to the other members of the tribe.
No calculations. No data. Pure instinct.
Why our brains are still running caveman software
Biology and anthropology tell us humans haven’t evolved much since that period. Not even in the corporate world.
We still promote the people who speak well and clearly. We still buy from those we feel we can trust. We still partner with those who make us feel good.
Only the world around us has changed. We swapped spears for laptops and tribes for LinkedIn networks, but at the core we are still the same bear skin wearing humans who beat nature by simply running for longer than any other animal.
If we return to our roots and relearn how to be properly human, we can hold our ground against AI.
Three human skills that AI cannot replicate
Contrary to popular belief, the qualities that protect you from AI are not innate. They are learnable. Three in particular matter, and they are what I work on most with the leaders I coach.
1. Articulate, considered communication
AI can generate text. It cannot pause, hold space, and look you in the eyes. It cannot choose its next sentence with the weight of a person who has thought carefully. It does not slow down, building suspense. It cannot speak with intention. Structure your thinking before you open your mouth. Every leader I’ve watched grow into real authority did this work first.
2. Genuine presence
Presence is the felt sense that you are fully here, and that what you are saying matters. It is built through eye contact, considered responses, and a willingness to take up space without performing. It cannot be faked, and it cannot be generated. A coaching session focused on presence will usually move the needle further than a year of online courses.
3. Trust earned through consistency
People trust the colleague whose behaviour matches their words, every time, across months and years. AI doesn’t have a track record with your team. You do. Treat that as the competitive moat it actually is, and stop trying to compete with the machine on speed.
Where to start this week
Building these skills is not a year long project, at least not at first. The opening moves are small and unglamorous, and they can begin tomorrow morning at the 8 am meeting.
Exercise 1: For communication, pick one meeting this week where you will deliberately pause for three full seconds before answering each question. Just three seconds. Most leaders rush to fill silence and undermine their own authority in the process. Try it and notice what happens to the room. Look around, maybe change your posture in your seat. Look outside the window in the silence. Cinematographically.
Exercise 2: For presence, in your next one to one, deliberately put your phone face down when you sit down with the other person. Make sure they notice. No multitasking, no glances, no exceptions. The signal this sends is far louder than anything you could say, and far more memorable than anything an AI assistant could schedule on your behalf.
Exercise 3: For trust, pick the smallest commitment you have made to someone on your team that you haven’t followed through on. Do it today. Then make a quiet rule for yourself, never again make a commitment you don’t intend to honour, however minor. Track record is the moat. Start building it this week.
None of this is revolutionary. The reason none of this is rare is not difficulty. It is discipline. And that, paradoxically, is one of the most human things of all. Remember, you beat evolution by running the longest.
Ready to lead like a human?
If you would like to develop the kind of presence, communication, and trust that no AI can imitate, I would be glad to talk. It is what I focus on in my coaching practice, and it is the work that, in my experience, makes the biggest difference to a leader’s long term standing.
Smell the rain. Pick up your spear. Then let’s talk.
Read more from Daniele Forni
Daniele Forni, Executive Coach and Tech Founder
Daniele Forni, known as "The Data Shaman," is not your average executive coach. He helps senior professionals leverage their unconventional traits into tangible ROI using rigorous science, AI tools, and strategic wit. As the founder of the SquirrelCoach platform, he champions the "Spiky Profile" concept, exceptional leaders are defined by their peaks. An alumnus of the University of Cambridge and a 6x author on leadership, neurodiversity, and meditation, Daniele previously spent 15 years driving technology and risk management as an Investment Banking Director across Europe and Asia.
