Presence in the Age of AI
AI can analyze conversations and reveal participation patterns. But leaders still need presence to interpret context, trust, power, and risk — and to turn shared contribution into better decisions.
The meeting ends. You presented the numbers. Clear, precise
But it’s not your idea that holds the room.
Five minutes later, your counterpart who runs the Asia-Pacific team reframes it — almost word for word. And he’s the one who gets the nods, the support, the next steps.
This isn’t the first time you’ve watched an idea change hands mid-meeting. You know this game, and you usually know how to play it — pick the right moment, lean on an ally, take back the floor without making a scene.
But this time, the usual sequence doesn’t run. You hesitate. The reflex that worked elsewhere doesn’t fire the same way here.
You’ve just stepped into a variant of the same game — one whose rules you don’t yet fully understand.
Office politics gets dismissed easily.
But knowing how to build influence, move a decision forward, form alliances — that’s a leadership skill, not a character flaw¹.
What changes in an intercultural setting is the calibration of that skill. Who speaks first, who’s allowed to carry a solution, how an idea has to travel before it’s approved: these reference points don’t disappear, they shift — and they often blend rather than switch cleanly from one system to another.
In some settings, an idea gains legitimacy by passing through a figure of authority. In others, fast, informal exchanges move a decision forward, at the cost of precise credit. Neither is the universal norm — not even the only one in a single meeting².
These shifting, sometimes contradictory reference points are what filtered what you just lived through in the opening scene.
As your environment diversifies — and you want the full benefit of that diversity — you’re exposed to new forms of interaction and new power plays. What you learned, often implicitly, can become a liability. Worse: the cognitive and emotional cost of new rules can interfere with the skills you already rely on.
Before reacting automatically to something that unsettles you — not necessarily a case of misattributed credit — read the bodily signal: tension, a faster pulse, the urge to jump back in or to let it go.
Turn that signal into a lever for strategic choice, rather than a reflex that costs you your objective and the relationship. What do I know about this situation, and what don’t I know yet? How is my objective affected? What influence can I actually have here?
What you perceive is yours. What you choose to do with it reveals your level of leadership.
In an intercultural or diverse setting, courage is first and foremost relational: not about calling out a behavior or imposing a method, but about ensuring the organization doesn’t, along the way, lose the ideas and blind spots that only a diversity of viewpoints can reveal.
Courage, here, plays out in two moves.
Daring to name it.
The register matters more than the exact words: state it factually, without accusing. But that register only holds if your Presence has done its work beforehand — an unprocessed tension doesn’t stay invisible; it’s audible. If you haven’t taken stock of what you’re feeling before you speak, the other person will sense it for you, and read an accusation into your words, even when none was intended.
“I’d like to take a moment to understand something that surprised me. I noticed this idea changed hands between when I raised it and when it was approved. This has happened before.” Then name the impact: “I feel frustrated because I need the ideas my organization and I bring to be recognized as contributing to the project.”
Daring to pause.
Mark a stop — long enough for the others in the room to understand you’re suspending the conversation to clarify how things work. Let the discomfort you may have created sit in the room: this is where your Presence serves you — staying open to reactions, without losing sight of what you chose to do.
Then invite co-construction: open the question of how you want to work together on this kind of issue going forward.
Let the group set its own rules, share its expectations, its reactions. The temptation is to see this as a waste of time. It’s the opposite: this kind of metacommunication binds a group together, smooths the exchanges that follow, and makes decisions stick.
Turning a moment of tension into an opportunity — isn’t that also a way of exercising leadership?
Leadership isn’t only a matter of authority or influence exercised over others.
It shows up in the capacity to take a situation that could cost energy, or block an objective, and use it to build sturdier relationships — built on everyone’s contribution — turning a “political game” that could exclude into something co-constructed and transparent.
Notes
AI can analyze conversations and reveal participation patterns. But leaders still need presence to interpret context, trust, power, and risk — and to turn shared contribution into better decisions.
Hearing a reservation isn’t enough if it changes nothing in the decision. “Connection” to take in the signal without filtering it through your own frame, “Clarity” to name what it actually changes: two directions of the Inclusive Leadership Compass for turning listening into a reliable mechanism, in intercultural settings.
Journaling empowers inclusive leaders by fostering self-reflection, emotional intelligence, and cultural agility. Through regular writing, leaders gain insights into biases, enhance decision-making, and create inclusive environments. It transforms their approach, leading to positive organizational change and a culture of respect and collaboration.