Intelligence has always fascinated me. What is it? How can we measure it? What exactly does it bring to the definition of a person? Like any other topic of this nature, we all have our own definitions that we hear bandied about all over the place. Then it became part of machines, and we needed to start thinking about what exactly human intelligence was.
I will never forget touring Australia with my sisters, and standing in front of Ayres Rock / Uluru completely in awe of the indigenous wisdom and culture of the place. It felt very different from anything else I had experienced as we learnt about the traditions and knowledge of the Aboriginal people, and the seeming simplicity of how they ‘knew’ things. Indigenous cultures worldwide have preserved what the scriptural, Western worldview often intellectualised or dismissed, and there are two specific things here that are important for the type of intelligence we need in today’s workplaces: interconnection and somatic resonance. As opposed to conceptualisation, interconnection means knowledge that is acquired through relational immersion rather than reading about something – one does not simply know about nature, one knows with nature. With somatic resonance, learning occurs through sensory observation, deep listening (dadirri in the Aboriginal tradition), and bodily rituals (dance, song, trance) that synchronise the collective nervous system of a community. This in turn allows the autonomous regulation of both the individual and collective nervous systems.
This is the starting point for where we need to be in the AI era. Leaders are being asked to move faster and faster on AI and teams are exhausted, yet nothing has actually changed. As artificial intelligence outpaces humans in terms of processing text, code, and logical data, these embodied intelligences define the very core of our human uniqueness and will be the lever for us to concentrate on the ‘people’ side of the AI equation, which, let’s be honest, is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to adoption and deployment.
Every organisation and team I walk into currently is running two transformations in parallel: the tools, licences, and workflow automation on the one hand, and the invisible one that isn’t written down anywhere on the other, that is how people think, act and interact – the cultural transfomation. We pour money and attention into the former and assume that the latter will simply follow suit, but we know from decades of experience that this is not the case. And the figures bear this out: planned AI budget growth of 15–18% became actual growth of 3-4%. 24% of internal teams running AI initiatives are already burning out (according to the EY AI Pulse Survey). Discussions with teams and leaders reveal that there is curiosity and excitement but also more isolation and less human connection and conversation.
Before the next tool or workflow is decided, we must look at whether the right questions are being asked. What business outcomes does it serve? Which workflow is the best use case and why? Who will be affected and how? What do we do with the time we save? These issues need to be defined and aligned in advance.
Regenerative vs. extractive growth
Most organisational models and cultures run on extractive models currently, and AI deployment is no exception. It focuses solely on the numbers – productivity, financial gains, time saved, number of people trained, etc. – which are important, but not the end game. What would organisational models look like if we were trying to ensure that the system has more capacity to produce more next year than this, while ensuring that the people in it can flourish? It sounds utopian but it needn’t be, and we can add little blocks intentionally to start this process. We know that organisations, even those built on trust, drift under financial pressure and that staying mission-driven is structural not aspirational, as Eric Ries tells us in his book, Incorruptible.
We come back to the basics of creating an inclusive and collaborative environment based on empathy, trust and psychological safety as the foundation for co-responsibility and an aligned, collective vision. I liken this to a ‘Jenga tower’ – pull one of those blocks out without care and attention, or rush past the tower at full speed and it will collapse into its individual bricks. This means having to start again or at least rebuild some of it.
The intelligence we can’t buy
I like to think of somatic intelligence as the body’s compass, a sophisticated information-processing centre in its own right. If we take the extended nervous system, the body registers millions of environmental and relational cues long before the conscious mind formulates them. The enteric nervous system (the “gut brain”) and the heart possess their own networks of neurons and serve us with a very different type of knowledge and information.
Intuition can be seen as the somatic brain’s ability to instantly synthesise countless subtle cues, such as micro-expressions, atmospheric shifts, social tension, and emotional changes, into a ‘felt’ certainty, which helps our brains move back into a calmer and ‘safer’ state.Humans can uniquely co-regulate their nervous systems through eye contact, vocal tone, and physical presence, which builds a deep, felt trust and collective intelligence that cannot be simulated or coded. Yet we invest in the intelligence we can buy, neglecting the one we can nurture and grow organically. So what does this mean for the future of work?
We need to concentrate on the intelligence we can’t buy – relational and emotional intelligence – and on building the necessary infrastructure for these skills to be part of the way we think, act and interact in the workplace. The differentiator lies in the aforementioned capacities to master and regulate our emotions. Human connection has to be designed as the default, and work spaces need to be safe enough for us to practice and hone these skills. Psychological safety is not the absence of threat and challenge, but rather the presence of connection.
– Map your system to visualise the gaps – where does information flow, where do relationships flow, who is making the decisions, where is it blocked and why?
– Ask a variety of people for input, not just those who are the most vocal.
– Define your MVE (minimum viable environment) – the smallest set of conditions your team needs to work well.
– Pilot and iterate on the decision loops, workflows, rituals and “what’s ok for us”.
Install adoption in the ‘human layer’, the team’s operating system, right from the get go. Don’t wait until the proof of concept is tried and tested. I spent 2.5 years working with one team on this, which is both a journey and a collective sport. We watched people slowly start to trust the process and asked them to get involved early on. The alternative is building a brilliant proof of concept, maybe spending a milllion euros, and then discovering that nobody trusts or is ready to deploy it.
The intelligence we can’t see
That is, unless we look for it, which is what systemic constellations approaches allow us to do. We cannot see the system we live and work in because we are too close to it. Constellation work lets us visualise what survey data implies, or what sometimes remains completely tacit. This helps us flex our intelligence muscle for the intelligence we can sense and feel. The stance matters as much as the map, and we must trust the embodied and implicit information. Stop asking who is resisting, and start asking what the system is protecting. The patterns that are running the existing system always hold insights into how to build a different system that is fit for purpose; what stories remain in the system memory; and why we are loyal to them. Humans give meaning through somatic and emotional intelligence because we experience pain, mortality, beauty, and joy in our body first. This can seem ‘woo woo’, but if I liken it to where I started my career in Lean and Six Sigma, it is the Andon early warning system of your team and this data helps to determine if we are performing to the best of our abilities:
– Communciation is transactional – pings and messages instead of real conversations; no real issues are raised, debated or discussed.
– There is no flow between the different parts of the system – budget remit, decision remit, project remit.
– Harmony is artificial – the meeting happens after the meeting; we keep the peace and there are no debates: we cannot all be in agreement all the time because we are human.
– Isolation – people interacting with AI more than their human colleagues or staying alone to avoid overwhelm or conflict.
– Shadow AI – people don’t feel comfortable saying that they’re using different tools, for whatever reason.
Creating a regulated and regenerative environment
Our basic human needs are what keep us the same in one sense. We can all contribute to fulfilling the basic needs of being seen, heard and valued in the team or group that we work in. You cannot mandate trust, you have to (like the Jenga tower) intentionally and carefully build it. You can, however, continuously regulate the conditions that make flourishing possible, even under pressure. In fact, particularly when under pressure, human brains revert to a more reactive state and need clarity, accountability, support and care:
1. Regulate yourself first. Clarity. Name your default under pressure — control, speed, certainty — out loud to your team. Ask two people to flag it when they see it. You can’t regulate a collective nervous system you’re continuously destabilising.
2. Build the muscle before you need it. Support. A check-in at the start of every team meeting: how is everyone arriving, what is the energy? Emojis, words, objects — the format doesn’t matter, the repetition does. This is the emotional gym. Nobody gets fit in one session, and you can’t start on the day of the crisis.
3. Give permission every single time. Support. “I can feel there’s tension in this. Does anyone want to say it?” They may say no. Ask anyway, every time. The asking is the most important part for creating accountability and support.
4. Set the sequence and hold it. Accountability. Purpose → problem → workflow → owner → tool. No tool conversation until the problem has a named owner and an agreed definition. Then: whose accountability is this, and who decides?
5. Build repair into the rhythm. Care. Rupture is normal, but unrepaired rupture is what corrodes relationships. Acknowledge what came before and have an agenda item dedicated to how we’re working, not what we’re delivering. A simple ritual of ten minutes at the start of any regular team meeting to name honestly what is working and not, including what it costs people. It is the cheapest intervention available, and it often moves things more than a dedicated workshop, where people have time to get into their own stories and try and build armour upfront.
6. Cadence, so this is real. Support. To be defined together but a few ideas: self-check daily; team check-in every meeting; repair conversation weekly; system map and gap review quarterly.
7. Fund the time. Accountability. If relationships take time to build and nurture, put it in the budget – number of hours saved could be spent here, no-laptop meetings could produce more creative results in less time… the possibilities are endless.
There’s an irony in all of this. We are having very loud conversations about the cost of tokens and productivity – how many we’re burning, who gets access, whether the output is as expected – but we are having a quiet conversation (and less of them) about the deeper, messier human side. Building trust and care could also be viewed as putting tokens into a machine, or money into a bank account: when it gets busy, either there’s something left in the jar or there isn’t. If you spend too much and don’t put enough back in you go bankrupt.
So why not step back from the busyness for an hour this week and look at your team honestly – where it flows, where it’s blocked, what it’s protecting. The organisations that thrive won’t be the ones with the best tools and the highest usage percentage; they’ll be the ones who can still reach each other and who have developed the emotional and relational infrastructure to nurture our innate intelligence as human beings.
Thank you for reading.
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