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November 2 & 3, 2026
MGM Grand
Las Vegas, Nevada

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708: Your AI Strategy Is Only as Good as Your Leaders’ Next Conversation

November 3, 2026 3:00 pm - 3:45 pm
AI can draft the plan, analyze the data and even recommend the decision. But it can’t build trust, create clarity when nothing is certain, or help someone through a hard change. As leaders take charge of teams made up of people, AI copilots, and increasingly autonomous agents, they can no longer oversee every task or decision. Their job is moving from directing work to orchestrating performance, and the main tool they have for that is conversation.

This session argues that many performance problems blamed on capability are really conversation problems, and that AI is making them more visible. Drawing on how leadership has changed from the industrial age to the AI era, it introduces five practical conversation choices (Lead, Clarify, Coach, Challenge and Review) and the human capabilities that matter more as AI gets better.

It then looks at why the classic workshop model (“attend, learn a framework, hope behavior changes”) falls short, and what replaces it: continuous, practice-based development where leaders use AI-powered simulation and coaching to rehearse real upcoming conversations, get instant feedback, and then have those conversations at work. In recent pilots of this approach, 80% of leaders reported more confidence and 60% used the skill in a real leadership situation during the pilot.

During this session, you will learn how to:

  • Redefine the leader’s role for a Human + AI team. Understand why leadership is shifting from directing work to orchestrating performance, and what that means for how you define and assess leadership readiness.
  • Build the human capabilities AI can’t replace. Learn a practical five-conversation framework (Lead, Clarify, Coach, Challenge, Review) for building clarity, judgement, trust and accountability, so leaders can pick the conversation each situation needs.
  • Move leadership development from event to everyday practice. Find out how AI-enabled rehearsal, real-time feedback and in-the-flow practice turn insight into behaviour change you can measure, and how to make the case for it in your own organisation.
Topic/Track: Building capability (performance, not content)Format: Sponsored Session