AI Has the Facts, But You Supply the Values
Best-selling author Dan Goleman explains why the technology can help us optimize but it cannot tell us what is worth optimizing for.
Daniel Goleman is author of the international best-seller Emotional Intelligence and Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day. He is a regular contributor to Korn Ferry.
Ongoing research of how people are using AI revealed something surprising: many are turning to it not just for productivity, but for reflection, coaching, decision-making, and emotional support.
This raises an important question for leaders: As AI becomes increasingly capable of helping us think, what remains uniquely ours?
One answer may be intentionality.
For decades, leadership development has focused on helping people acquire knowledge, skills, and competencies. The assumption has often been that better information leads to better decisions and, ultimately, better performance.
But an abundance of research suggests that information alone rarely produces meaningful change.
Richard Boyatzis's Intentional Change Theory offers an entirely different perspective. His research found that sustainable change begins not with identifying weaknesses or solving problems, but with connecting to a compelling vision of who we want to become. He calls this the Ideal Self—a deeply personal image of our aspirations, values, and desired future. Lasting growth, in other words, begins with intention.
Viewed through this lens, the AI findings become especially interesting.
Some of the most common uses of AI have involved people turning to the technology to help them think through difficult conversations, navigate life decisions, organize competing priorities, clarify goals, and make sense of their emotions.
This suggests that many people are grappling with a challenge that information alone cannot solve. Rather than seeking more facts, they are seeking help making sense of complexity, uncertainty, and competing priorities.
That distinction sits at the heart of emotional intelligence.
While emotional intelligence is often associated with self-awareness, empathy, and relationship management, those competencies ultimately serve a larger purpose: helping us act in alignment with our values and aspirations. Self-awareness helps us understand what we are experiencing. Empathy helps us understand the experiences of others. Self-management helps us respond thoughtfully rather than react automatically. Together, they create the conditions for intentional action.
The growing use of AI for coaching, reflection, and emotional support may reveal something deeper than enthusiasm for a new technology. Instead, it may reflect a growing desire for perspective and clarity in a world that offers no shortage of information.
AI can support our development in some powerful ways, helping us surface possibilities, challenge assumptions, identify patterns, and reflect on decisions. But what it cannot do is determine what future we want to pursue in the first place. It cannot tell us what kind of leader we hope to become, what values should guide our choices, or what ultimately makes our work meaningful.
These are not purely analytical questions. They are questions of judgment, values, and purpose.
Perhaps that is the real lesson hidden within these findings. As AI becomes increasingly capable of helping us think, the leadership challenge may become less about generating better answers and more about cultivating intentionality— developing greater clarity about who we want to become, what we are trying to achieve, and why it matters.
In other words, while AI can help us optimize, it cannot tell us what is worth optimizing for.
Co-written by Elizabeth Solomon
Click here to learn more about Daniel Goleman's Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence.
