Leadership over AI

Lori Stockel, Senior Director, Enterprise Learning & Development, Breakthru Beverage Group

The Human Technology: Leadership

Everyone says the best skill to master right now is AI. But is it? In a world that shifts daily, the OG skill we still depend on is leadership.

Technology won’t save us.

Leaders will be those who can listen, lead, strategize, communicate, challenge and care. AI can accelerate work. Leadership gives it direction, meaning and humanity.

I’ve been reflecting on the leaders who shaped me and the experiences that forced me to shape myself. My growth came from what I lived and who walked with me through it. As a learning leader now, I carry those lessons forward. The red thread through them all is simple: leadership is the one capability that separates managers from leaders. Managers move tasks. Leaders develop people.

And the best leaders ensure that someone’s potential is recognized long after the relationship ends.

Here are the moments that helped shape my leadership:

Pressure Makes Diamonds

I had a boss who pushed me harder than anyone. “Pressure makes diamonds,” he’d say. And for me, it worked. He later shared something vulnerable: it didn’t work for everyone, and sometimes it did more damage than good.

That honesty shifted me. I began paying close attention to what each person needed—their motivations, fears, working styles and what helped them thrive. Performance isn’t manufactured. It’s cultivated. Pressure without care makes cracks. And leaders have to know the difference.

Skill learned: Adaptive coaching— stretching people in ways that fit them.

Hope for the future: We design pressure thoughtfully, so people shine without shattering.

Your Shirt Is Ugly

A new president introduced a new cultural norm. Instead of diving into business, he spent his first months holding conversations with his leaders—just to share stories.

It created a level of understanding and trust I had never seen. That relationship investment gave us a foundation for what we called the “ugly shirt rule”: If I told you your shirt was ugly, it meant you weren’t, and we had enough trust to challenge each other openly.

It made candor normal, disagreement healthy and collaboration sharper. You can’t innovate if you’re afraid of honesty. Candor as care.

That’s the rule.

Skill learned: High trust candor— speaking truth without wounding and receiving it without retreating.

Hope for the future: Cultures where honesty is a gift, not a threat.

Better Leaders Build Better Teams

A leader reminded us: ‘If your team isn’t growing, you’re not leading.’ My job wasn’t to perform solo—it was to create conditions for others to thrive. High performing teams aren’t accidental. They’re built through clarity, care and accountability.

Skill learned: Shifting from personal performance to collective excellence.

Hope for the future: Teams where everyone gets better because the leader sets the tonew.

Game On—When It’s Bigger Than Ourselves

I’ve lived through economic dips, restructures and expansions. The moments that stay with me were when leaders said, with calm clarity, “Here’s where we are. It’s tough. But here’s where we’re going. We need you.”

“AI can accelerate work. Leadership gives it direction, meaning and humanity.”

Those leaders didn’t pretend everything was fine. They didn’t sugarcoat. They didn’t stay quiet. They brought people in. They made change a shared mission.

True leadership is most visible when things are hard. And people notice.

Skill learned: Communicating through uncertainty, naming reality while igniting belief.

Hope for the future: We normalize open strategy, so everyone knows where we are and how to help.

Looking back, I realize these leaders weren’t just shaping my skill set—they were shaping my belief system.

Pain Is Where the Growth Comes From

No one seeks failure. But leadership hands you lonely, disorienting moments. Mentors taught me to pause: sit with the discomfort, ask better questions, and extract the lesson. If you rush past pain, you repeat it. If you examine it, you grow beyond it. There’s no growth without accountability—the willingness to look honestly at yourself is where leadership blossoms.

Skill learned: Reflective practice—turning adversity into accelerated learning.

Hope for the future: We treat struggle as growth, not a setback, which builds resilient and battle-tested leaders.

Control Your Controllables

I’m a passionate extrovert. My emotions can run faster than my logic, and earlier in my career, that sometimes showed up before I realized it. A leader noticed this in me—not critically, but with care. They challenged me to build more space between what I felt and what I did next.

That challenge pushed me to develop a simple but powerful habit: catching my first reaction before it leaves my mouth. That pause—just a breath—creates room to ask better questions, de escalate tension and choose a response that actually serves the moment. A breath can change the room.

Controlling my controllables didn’t shrink my passion; it sharpened it. It gave me capacity I didn’t know I had—space for focus, creativity and clearer judgment.

Skill learned: Self-regulation—creating space between emotion and action to lead with intention.

Hope for the future: Leaders who model that steadiness and help others build it so our teams feel clarity instead of the chaos around us.

Growth Mindset

There were moments in my career when I doubted whether I could take on something new. But leaders around me did, and they pushed me to try before I felt fully ready. Their belief taught me to reframe my fear into something more useful: What if I could learn this?

That shift paid off. Curiosity became the bridge between who I was and who I could become. And once I let myself imagine the possibility, the path opened. Belief fuels effort. Curiosity finds the path.

Skills learned: Turning fear into curiosity and using belief (theirs and mine) as fuel for growth.

Hope for the future: That we cultivate a growth mindset within ourselves, our teams and our organizations so more people can imagine what’s possible.

Vulnerability Is Human

I’ve seen a CEO cry over a failed strategy and its human cost. That moment wasn’t weakness; it was leadership. He owned the miss, named the impact and recommitted to better. That authenticity created followership. People will forgive mistakes; they rarely forgive arrogance. Accountability builds trust. Always.

Skill learned: Vulnerability, accountability and repair.

Hope for the future: We see vulnerability as a leadership superpower, not a weakness.

Where This Leaves Me Now

As a learning practitioner now, I see leadership not as a skill to check off, but as a lifelong craft—a responsibility and a privilege. I’m grateful to the leaders who shaped me and equally accountable for the leaders I will help shape next.

AI will undoubtedly change the way we work. But leadership will always shape who we become. Technology can accelerate performance; leadership elevates people. And everything we build—cultures, teams, innovations—ultimately reflects the leaders guiding it.

My hope is simple: that we return to the heart of leadership. Developing people is an act of generosity. It’s how we make work—and the world—better than we found it. Careers won’t be remembered by dashboards or deliverables but by the people who grew because we were their leader.

So, ask yourself: What leadership lessons shaped your legacy, and what legacy are you shaping now?

AI