People want a project where they can contribute and learn
In a moment when machines are absorbing more of the technical labor of organizations, a gathering of corporate leaders in Spain has surfaced a quiet paradox: artificial intelligence is not diminishing the human element of work, but demanding more of it. The executives who built careers on control and hierarchy now find themselves least equipped for what comes next, while the qualities long dismissed as soft — trust, adaptability, genuine connection — are becoming the new foundations of organizational survival. It is a shift not merely in management technique, but in what companies believe a leader is for.
- The old command-and-control model of leadership is not slowly fading — experts say AI is actively accelerating its obsolescence, leaving rigid hierarchies with nowhere to hide.
- Executives who built authority through surveillance and compliance are now the most exposed, as the very structures that protected them become liabilities in a fluid technological landscape.
- Job candidates are rewriting the terms of the employment relationship, placing leadership quality, cultural honesty, and growth potential above salary in ways that are forcing companies to compete on entirely new ground.
- Firms like PwC and EY are already abandoning credential-based hiring in favor of assessing what people can actually do and who they genuinely are — a quiet revolution in how talent is recognized.
- Younger workers are holding companies to a new standard of coherence, demanding that stated values match lived reality, and organizations that cannot close that gap are losing the talent race before it begins.
The question of what leadership means in an age of artificial intelligence took center stage this week at Talento Futuro: en Tiempos de IA, a conference organized in Spain where three senior executives from Parangon Partners, PwC, and EY gathered to examine how the workplace is being remade.
The verdict from the panel was unambiguous: leadership models built on control and hierarchy are not adapting — they are dying. Elda Benítez-Inglott of PwC was direct in naming who faces the greatest risk: those who have spent careers inside rigid structures, accustomed to issuing orders and monitoring compliance. As AI absorbs more operational tasks, that approach loses its justification. What replaces it, the panel argued, is leadership oriented around trust, flexibility, and enabling others rather than commanding them.
Perhaps the most striking observation came from Antonio Núñez Martín, who described how profoundly the priorities of job candidates have shifted. Salary, long the dominant factor in career decisions, has given way to questions about leadership style, company culture, and genuine opportunities for growth. Workers, he suggested, are no longer simply exchanging time for compensation — they are searching for meaning and development.
Hiring practices are changing in parallel. Benítez-Inglott described a move away from credentials and certifications toward assessing actual capability and character — the qualities that machines cannot replicate: listening, adapting, building relationships, thinking across boundaries.
Younger generations are the engine behind much of this transformation, demanding transparency, authentic proximity to leadership, and consistency between a company's stated values and its real behavior. José Luis Risco of EY noted that organizations unable to meet these expectations will simply struggle to attract the people they need.
What the panel ultimately described is a workplace in which technology is not replacing the human dimension but intensifying the demand for it — where the leaders who endure will be those who understand that in a world of constant change, trust is the only reliable foundation.
The way companies lead is changing, and artificial intelligence is at the center of it. That was the central theme of a panel discussion held this week during Talento Futuro: en Tiempos de IA, a conference organized by THE OBJECTIVE alongside the Galician regional government and the recruitment firm Michael Page. The conversation brought together three senior executives—Antonio Núñez Martín from Parangon Partners, Elda Benítez-Inglott Bellini from PwC's Workforce Strategy and Human Capital division, and José Luis Risco, talent director at EY España—to discuss what leadership looks like when machines are reshaping the workplace.
The consensus was stark: the old models are dying. Benítez-Inglott was direct about it. Leadership built on control and constant surveillance, she said, will not survive what's coming. The executives most at risk are those who have spent their careers inside rigid hierarchies, accustomed to giving orders and checking compliance. AI will make that approach obsolete. Instead, the panel argued, companies need leaders who can build trust, who remain flexible when the ground shifts beneath them, and who understand that their job is no longer to command but to enable.
What surprised many in the room was how thoroughly the priorities of job candidates themselves have shifted. Núñez Martín described a radical change in what professionals now ask about when considering a new role. Salary, once the dominant concern, has receded. In its place, candidates want to know about the leadership style they'll encounter, the actual culture of the company, and whether there's real room to grow. "People want a project where they can contribute and learn," he said. It's a small phrase that captures something larger: workers are no longer trading time for money. They're looking for meaning and development.
The hiring practices themselves are being rewritten. Companies are moving away from the credential-obsessed approach that has dominated for decades—the degrees, the certifications, the boxes checked. Benítez-Inglott explained that PwC and similar firms are now hiring based on what a person can actually do and who they are, not what certificate hangs on their wall. The skills that matter now are the ones that machines cannot easily replicate: the ability to listen, to adapt, to build relationships, to think across disciplines.
Younger workers are driving much of this change, and they're demanding something their predecessors often accepted without question: transparency from their employers, genuine closeness to leadership, and coherence between what a company says it values and what it actually does. Risco noted that these generational expectations are reshaping recruitment entirely. Companies that can't meet them will find themselves unable to attract talent.
What emerges from the panel is a portrait of a workplace in transition. The machine is not replacing the human; instead, it's forcing the human to become more human. The leaders who will thrive are those who can let go of control, who see their role as building capability in others rather than extracting compliance, and who understand that in a world of constant technological change, the only stable thing is trust. For companies, that means rethinking not just how they hire, but who they promote and what they reward.
Citas Notables
AI will destroy leadership models based on control and constant supervision— Elda Benítez-Inglott Bellini, PwC
Companies are now hiring based on skills and personal qualities rather than certifications alone— Elda Benítez-Inglott Bellini, PwC
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
So when they say AI will destroy command-and-control leadership, what exactly do they mean? Is it that machines will do the commanding instead?
Not quite. It's that the conditions that made command-and-control work are disappearing. When your job is to oversee people doing repetitive tasks, you can manage through surveillance and hierarchy. But when the work itself is changing constantly—when your team needs to adapt to new tools, new problems, new possibilities—that model breaks down. You can't command your way through uncertainty.
And the salary thing—that's a real shift, or is it just what people say in interviews?
It's real, but it's also selective. People who are secure enough to think beyond their next paycheck are the ones asking about culture and growth. But the underlying point is true: for the talent companies actually want, money alone doesn't stick anymore. They're looking for something that feels like it matters.
Why are companies suddenly hiring on soft skills instead of credentials? Isn't that riskier?
The opposite, actually. A certification tells you someone passed a test at a moment in time. A soft skill—the ability to learn, to work with others, to think clearly under pressure—tells you how they'll handle what you can't predict. In a world where the technical landscape shifts every eighteen months, that's the safer bet.
What happens to the people who built their entire career on being the expert, the one with the credentials?
That's the hard part. Some will adapt. Some won't. The panel didn't say it explicitly, but it was there in the room: there's going to be real disruption for people whose value was tied to knowing things machines now know better.
So the future workplace is just... nicer? More trusting?
It's not about niceness. It's about necessity. You can't build an adaptive organization on fear and control. You need people who think for themselves, who speak up, who feel safe enough to experiment. That requires trust. It's not sentimental—it's structural.