What AI Can’t Do: The Final Piece of Leadership

This session explores leadership in a time when algorithms are taking over more and more cognitive work, and what that means for the skills leaders need to strengthen themselves. Clients book this session when they want to help leaders avoid becoming mere conduits for dashboards and KPIs amid increasing digitalisation, and instead show leadership by intervening at the right moment and asking the right questions — long before the numbers confirm there is a problem. Clients gain practical insights into what human, embodied intelligence adds alongside artificial intelligence: a computer may only flag a problem once it is already visible in the data, while a leader who is genuinely connected to their team can often sense tension or declining trust weeks earlier. The result is leaders who recognise sooner when course correction is needed, make better decisions under pressure, and sustain teams that are not only efficient, but resilient over the long term. Eric makes the topic current and thought-provoking without ever becoming technophobic: this is not an argument against AI, but a case for preserving what AI cannot do.

Speaker

Eric Elbers

Rate indication: Price on request
Available for booking as: Speaker
Languages: Dutch

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Eric studied Law and Business Administration and progressed through various roles to become a business unit manager at Capgemini. The further he advanced within organisations, the more he realised that numbers and change-management models only tell part of the story. In 2001, he founded his own company to support organisations from a different perspective.

Eric learned the practice of haptonomy from haptonomist Ted Troost. Since then, he has combined his business background with a strong focus on what is happening beneath the surface. Over the past twenty years, he has worked with more than one hundred organisations, including Achmea, KPMG, Microsoft, BMW and Avanade.

Goud in handen

Eric brought his experience and insights together in his book Goud in Handen – Haptonomy for People Who Have Nothing Wrong with Them. In it, he explores how connection, touch and body awareness contribute to trust, stronger relationships and sustainable performance.

For Eric, resilience is not simply about being strong enough to handle more. It is about noticing signals earlier and knowing how to respond to them. This same question is at the heart of his current PhD research into resilience.

Eric Elbers as a speaker

On stage, Eric deliberately takes a different approach from the familiar narrative around mental toughness and perseverance. His message is clear: sustainable performance does not start with pushing even harder, but with building a stronger connection with yourself and the people around you. Especially in the age of AI, human skills such as awareness, connection and intuition are becoming increasingly important.

Eric is sharp, energetic and practical. Using humour and relatable examples, he makes resilience tangible and directly applicable in the workplace. Organisations do not get another plea for heroics and pushing through at all costs, but a practical alternative: learning to recognise what is happening before it shows up in the numbers or on a dashboard. That kind of human intelligence is not yet artificially available.

Themes

Sessions

This session focuses on resilience, the subject of Eric’s own PhD research, and the five-step model he developed around it: from physical awareness, through alignment and psychological safety, to appropriate action and connection. Clients book this session when conventional approaches to resilience and “pushing through” are starting to reach their limits: after a reorganisation, in cases of persistent absenteeism, or when a team appears to be performing well on paper but is clearly running out of energy.

Rather than an inspirational talk, clients gain a concrete, research-based model that helps them understand resilience as an ongoing process — including the early signals that appear before the numbers do. The result is a team or organisation that identifies problems sooner, adjusts course earlier, and structurally reduces absenteeism and employee turnover. Eric delivers this with humour, sharp observations and relatable examples, grounding his message in research without ever making it feel academic or heavy.

This session offers an alternative to the familiar heroic narratives of “grit your teeth and keep going” that dominate many stages. Clients book Eric when they deliberately want to offer a different perspective alongside the stories of commandos or elite athletes: not another plea to fight harder, but an honest account of what most workplaces — which are not battlefields — actually need.

Clients gain a sharp and relatable contrast between “pushing yourself to the limit” as a performance strategy and as a risk, along with practical tools to recognise when perseverance turns into overload, both in themselves and in their people. The result is an audience that leaves with a different, less heroic and far more practical understanding of what sustainable performance really requires — exactly the conversation organisations need when “working harder” is no longer the answer. On stage, Eric is energetic and provocative, using sharp humour to keep the topic accessible without losing its substance.