The Job You're Hugging Won't Hug You Back and 7 Keys to Position Your Career in the Age of AI
Written by Dr. Clare Allen, Executive Leadership Coach
Dr. Clare Allen is a 7x award-winning CEO blending leadership and metaphysics through her Identity Anchoring Methodology, helping leaders move beyond quick fixes to become strategic architects of business and life, equipped for today’s world. On a mission to create 1 million profound identity shifts.
Most leaders I speak with this year are not planning their next move. They are holding their breath. They are capable. They are experienced. Many are at the peak of their careers. They are gripping their current role with both hands, hoping that if they keep their head down and deliver, the wave will pass over them.
It will not.
There is a name for this now. Job hugging. Staying in a role out of fear rather than loyalty. In February 2026, a ResumeBuilder survey of more than 2,000 workers found 57% now identify as job huggers, up from 45% just five months earlier. Of those, 70% worry AI will affect their job security within six months. More than half are working longer hours to protect a position they are not even sure they want.
Here in Australia, LinkedIn's research found the share of people planning to look for a new role in 2026 fell to 51%, down from 59% the year before. Four in five said they felt unprepared to even begin looking.
But this is the number that stopped me. ManpowerGroup's 2026 Global Talent Barometer found 89% of workers are confident they have the skills to succeed in their current role. Yet 43% fear automation could replace their job within two years.
Read that again. They are not doubting their skills. They are doubting their future.
The pressure is coming from below. Mercer's research with 825 C-suite leaders found 99% expect AI to reduce at least some headcount in the next two years. Dataiku's 2026 study of 900 CEOs found 87% say they would stake their own job on delivering AI results. The people at the top are not safe from this either. They are simply better at performing as if they are.
So let me say what nobody else in your world will say to you. This is not a skills problem. It is an identity problem.
You can do another AI course. You can learn the tools. You should. But if your sense of who you are is welded to your title, your org chart and your current set of tasks, then every advance in AI will feel like a threat to you. Not to your job. To you.
That is why so many brilliant leaders are frozen. Not because they cannot adapt. Because they have never separated who they are from what they do.
A story I have never forgotten
A senior executive came to me after a restructure. Twenty-plus years of loyal service. Strong results. Respected. Their role had been absorbed into a new operating model that leaned heavily on automation. They sat across from me and said, "They replaced me with a system."
I could have nodded. That is what most coaches would do. Validate the hurt, rebuild the CV, polish the LinkedIn profile.
Instead, I said, gently, "No. You failed to position yourself. The story you are telling about why is still costing you."
The room went very quiet. Because it was true. For years they had known the shift was coming. They had watched it in other divisions. They had done what most of us do: held on tighter, worked harder, and told themselves loyalty would be rewarded.
Loyalty to a role is not a strategy. It is a hope. Within twelve months they had repositioned completely, not around the tasks they used to do, but around who they were as a leader. The work they do now could not be absorbed by any system, because it was built on them.
That is what strategic positioning looks like. Here are the seven keys.
1. Stop asking, "Will AI take my job?" Start asking, "Who am I when the job changes?"
The first question keeps you in fear. The second puts you back in charge.
Your job is a container. It was never meant to hold your whole identity. When you anchor who you are to a role, you hand control of your worth to a restructure, a board decision or a software rollout.
Anchored leaders know the answer to the second question before anyone forces them to ask it. That is the difference between being repositioned and repositioning yourself.
2. Know the difference between your skills and your signature
The World Economic Forum estimates almost 40% of the skills workers rely on today will be transformed or outdated by 2030. Skills have a shelf life. They always did. AI has simply made the expiry date visible.
Your signature is different. It is the way you read a room. The judgement you bring when the data is incomplete. The steadiness people feel when you walk in during a crisis. The trust you have built across thirty conversations nobody recorded.
AI can out-think you. It cannot hold the room.
Strategic positioning starts with knowing exactly what your signature is, and being able to say it out loud in one sentence.
3. Name the story that is keeping you still
Every leader who is job hugging has a story that makes it feel reasonable.
"Now is not the right time." "I just need to get through this restructure." "I will think about it once things settle."
In my work, these stories almost always come from one of four hidden identities. The Protector who keeps you safe by keeping you small. The Pleaser who will not move because others are relying on you. The Performer who cannot risk being seen as anything less than certain. The Perfectionist who is waiting to be ready.
Job hugging is often just the Protector wearing a suit. You cannot change a story you cannot see. Name it, and you take away most of its power.
4. Count the emotional cost of standing still
This is the one most leaders refuse to look at.
There is research that explains exactly why. In 1991, organisational psychologists John Meyer and Natalie Allen (no relation) identified three forms of commitment that keep people in a job.
Affective commitment. You stay because you want to. You believe in the work and it feels like yours.
Normative commitment. You stay because you feel you ought to. Loyalty, obligation, not wanting to let people down.
Continuance commitment. You stay because leaving feels too costly. The salary, the super, the title, the years invested, and the quiet belief that there is nowhere better to go.
Only one of these is driven by joy. Continuance commitment is the one that drains it.
A major meta-analysis by Meyer and colleagues, drawing on more than two decades of studies, found affective commitment was linked to lower stress and less work-family conflict. Continuance commitment ran the other way: higher stress, more work-family conflict, and little or even a negative relationship with job performance. Later work by Meyer and Maltin linked it to poorer wellbeing overall. You stay, and you give less, and it costs you more.
Researchers also split continuance commitment into two parts: the sacrifice of what you would give up, and the belief that you have no real alternatives. Now look at what AI is doing to leaders' sense of their alternatives. Job hugging is continuance commitment at scale.
You are not staying because you love it. You are staying because you are afraid of what it would cost to leave. A life traded for pay and conditions is not a life. It is a lease on your time, and the rent is your joy.
Staying still feels safe. It is not free. Behavioural science has shown for decades that we feel the pain of a potential loss roughly twice as strongly as the pleasure of an equal gain. So our brains overvalue the job we have and undervalue the life we could build. That is not weakness. That is wiring.
But there is a second finding that matters more. Research on regret by psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvec found that in the short term we regret the things we did. Over a lifetime, we regret the things we did not do.
The cost of avoiding action does not show up on your pay slip. It shows up as the Sunday night dread. The flatness after a good week. The irritation with people who have done nothing wrong. The quiet grief of watching others move while you wait for permission that is never coming.
I know this cost. I paid it for years before an eleven-day hospital stay made me renegotiate. Your body will eventually send the invoice. Better to read it now.
5. Become the leader who translates AI, not the one who fears it
Here is the opportunity hiding inside the threat.
Stanton Chase's 2026 executive survey found 62% of leaders say their leadership teams lack vision beyond tactical AI implementation. 43% have not yet told their people how AI will affect their jobs.
Read that as a gap in the market. Organisations do not need more people who understand the tools. They need leaders who can stand in front of a frightened workforce and say, with steadiness and truth, here is what is changing, here is what is not, and here is how we will move through it together.
That is not a technical skill. It is a presence skill. It is the most valuable leadership capability of the next decade.
6. Get known before you need to be
I have said this for years: if you don't know yourself, no one will know you.
Most leaders start positioning the day after the restructure is announced. By then you are not positioning. You are scrambling.
Strategic positioning is quiet and consistent. It is the board member who already knows how you think. The sector peer who has read your perspective. The CEO who remembers how you led through the last crisis. Reputation is not built in the month you need it. It is built in the years you do not.
Ask yourself: if my role disappeared tomorrow, who would already know what I stand for?
If the answer is uncomfortable, that is your starting point.
7. Write a plan for your life, not just your next role
This is where it all comes together.
Most leaders have a strategic plan for their organisation that runs to forty pages. Ask them for a plan for their own life and you get a long pause.
You would never let your organisation drift through a disruption this size without a plan. Why are you letting your career?
A real plan answers three questions. Where am I anchored? Where am I hugging? And what will I do in the next 90 days to move from one to the other?
Not a five-year fantasy. A 90-day commitment, with dates, that your future self will thank you for.
What to do about it
You cannot fix this with another course. Courses build skills. The issue is not your skills. 89% of workers already say they have the skills to succeed in their current roles.
The work is identity. It is anchoring who you are deeply enough that a restructure, a new technology or a board decision can change your role without changing your worth.
In my practice that happens in five stages: Awareness, Anchor, Embody, Integrate, Expand & Rise. I call it Identity Anchoring™. It is grounded in neuroscience, NLP and thirty years of doing the job from the inside. We begin with data, not guesswork, using the EBW diagnostic, a validated read of how you actually show up under pressure.
The leaders who will thrive as AI advances are not the ones holding on the tightest. They are the ones who know exactly who they are, and position themselves on purpose.
The job you are hugging will not hug you back. But you can choose what you build next.
Ready to position yourself on purpose?
If you recognised yourself in this article, do not wait for the restructure to make the decision for you.
Book a confidential call with me. 30 minutes, no commitment. We will look at where you are anchored, where you are holding on, and what your next 90 days need to look like.
Book your confidential call here.
Read more from Dr. Clare Allen
Dr. Clare Allen, Executive Leadership Coach
Dr. Clare Allen is a 7x award-winning CEO and now a sought-after leadership coach who blends evidence-based leadership development with metaphysics through her Identity Anchoring Methodology. With more than 30 years of executive experience, she helps leaders move beyond quick fixes and create profound, lasting identity shifts, so they lead with clarity, confidence, and presence in today’s world. Clare is on a mission to create 1 million profound identity shifts for leaders through coaching, programs, and thought leadership.
References:
ResumeBuilder.com, 6 in 10 workers are clinging to their jobs as job hugging soars in 2026, February 2026. https://www.resumebuilder.com/6-in-10-workers-are-clinging-to-their-jobs-as-job-hugging-soars-in-2026/
ManpowerGroup, Global Talent Barometer 2026, January 2026. https://investor.manpowergroup.com/node/68676
LinkedIn / Censuswide survey of 2,001 Australians, reported by AAP, January 2026. https://aapnews.aap.com.au/news/forget-quiet-quitting-job-hugging-tipped-as-top-trend
Mercer C-suite survey and Global Talent Trends 2026, via International Business Times, June 2026. https://briansolis.com/2026/06/international-business-time-99-of-ceos-expect-ai-layoffs-by-2028-suze-orman-issues-blunt-warning-to-invisible-workers/
Dataiku, Global AI Confessions Report: CEO Edition 2026, May 2026. https://www.dataiku.com/company/news/global-ai-confessions-report-ceo-edition-2026
Stanton Chase, AI in the C-Suite: Insights from 214 Global Executives, May 2026. https://stantonchase.com/insights/blog/ai-in-the-c-suite-insights-from-214-global-executives
World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025.
Gilovich, T. & Medvec, V.H. (1995). The experience of regret: What, when, and why. Psychological Review, 102(2).
Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2).
Meyer, J.P. & Allen, N.J. (1991). A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1, 61–89.
Meyer, J.P., Stanley, D.J., Herscovitch, L. & Topolnytsky, L. (2002). Affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization: A meta-analysis of antecedents, correlates, and consequences. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 61, 20–52.
Meyer, J.P. & Maltin, E.R. (2010). Employee commitment and well-being: A critical review, theoretical framework, and research agenda. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77, 323–337.
