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This is Doug, and thanks for listening to the Career Narratives Podcast.
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If you don't already know about it, I've been on Substack for a little while now.
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You can find me at craftyournarrative.careers.
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Please come visit and consider subscribing.
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In the meantime, I wanna talk a little more about AI and the impact it's having on how aspiring leaders are going to get, or not going to get, the experience they need to be considered for roles at the VP and C-Suite level.
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So stay tuned.
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Moving up in your career can feel like a game of musical chairs.
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Promotions, departures, and reorgs, they open chairs up and then the music starts playing.
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When it stops, if you're talented, somewhat politically aware, and a little bit lucky, you'll probably find a good chair to land in.
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That chair will ideally help you get the experience and more advanced responsibility you'll need to join the ranks of senior leadership.
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And if you can't find a good place to land where you are now, you might just choose to move on to another company.
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Or, in the worst-case scenario, or sometimes, honestly, the best-case scenario, you might be forced to do it.
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Either way, there have generally been enough chairs open to get the experience you need.
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Of course, as you move up, fewer and fewer chairs are available, and the game of gathering experience and responsibility becomes increasingly competitive.
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This isn't surprising.
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The pyramid shape of most organizational charts makes facing increasing competition on your way up unavoidable.
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But despite the competition, you are still generally able to get the experience you need, especially in your early and mid-career.
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The fiercest competition doesn't really kick in until you've reached the VP level or it's equivalent in your company or industry.
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But that's changing.
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Over the past year, we've all read or heard the stories about senior leaders at companies considering how the adoption of AI might allow them to eliminate positions and, more importantly, cut costs.
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And if senior leadership teams follow through on it, which they probably will, because, well, they all want their bonuses, there will be fewer places to land when the music stops in the career game of musical chairs.
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And it's not the more senior levels of the game that are going to get more competitive.
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After all, those C-level leaders aren't likely to cut their own jobs.
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And they're still going to need direct reports at the VP level to manage the business on a day-to-day basis, especially in larger companies.
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So the chairs that are going to be lost to AI, at least in my opinion, are likely going to be further down in the organization.
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The disappearance of entry-level, task-based jobs is easy to imagine, and it's already happening.
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Reductions At the manager and director level can't be far behind.
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In just a few years, that currently pyramid-shaped org chart may very well look more like a skyscraper.
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And, you know, pyramids are easier to climb.
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Skyscrapers less so.
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According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs report for 2025, 40% of employers anticipate reducing their workforce where AI can automate tasks, and that number is likely to grow as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated and capable.
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Applying AI to replace entry-level roles is a depressing no brainer.
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And as AI's capabilities continue to advance and senior leaders grow more comfortable integrating it into their businesses, positions at the manager and director level, those critical stepping stones to senior leadership may very well become increasingly vulnerable.
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Mid-level engineers are already on the chopping block.
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So if you're an ambitious MBA or a rising professional targeting the ranks of senior leadership, how will you stay competitive?
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How will you get the experience you need to be a credible candidate at the VP and C-Suite levels?
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I can't say I have all the answers.
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I don't think anyone does.
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Things are just evolving too quickly.
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But beyond learning to work with AI, here are three ways I can think of to stay in the game and be more competitive when you're competing against AI, at least for the time being.
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The first is you need to build relationships based on trust.
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AI Might excel at analysis and the speed at which it does it, but one thing it definitely hasn't done yet is earn our trust.
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It goes without saying that AI still has a tendency to hallucinate.
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In other words, it makes things up.
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And if it's not managed carefully, it's also a terrible, terrible sycophant.
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At some point, I should tell you about my frustrating experience trying to get ChatGPT to be less of a brown-noser.
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I asked it not to do that and to be more of a straight shooter.
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Once I changed its instructions, instead of telling me my ideas were all"fantastic," it proceeded every answer with,"Now, I'm not going to sugarcoat this, so let's cut to the chase." It wasn't ideal.
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Trust in relationships still matter, a lot.
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Obviously I don't have it yet with chat GPT, but senior leaders and hiring managers are going to promote and hire individuals they know, like and trust.
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And if they don't know someone themselves from experience, they're going to rely heavily on candidates who are referred to them by people they do know and trust.
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And based on my experience as an executive recruiter, they're not going to want someone who is going to tell them that every idea they've ever had is incredibly insightful, like ChatGPT did with me or butter them up with an endless string of platitudes before sharing information or expressing an opinion.
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Okay, there are a few senior leaders I've worked with who probably wanted that, and there are a few in circulation now who thrive on it, but those are the exceptions.
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Focus on becoming the person that other people can count on to be smart, informed, straightforward, and just generally good to be around.
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You can't go out for drinks after work with Claude or ChatGPT.
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Well, you could but it would be awkward.
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The ability to forge strong human connections based on trust will be among your best competitive advantages in an increasingly automated and inhuman world.
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The second way to compete against AI is to craft a unique positioning for yourself.
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AI is a fantastic generalist.
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It can gather and process vast amounts of information, delivering reasonably competent work in most areas.
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But what AI lacks is the depth and nuance of understanding that comes from actual lived experience.
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Consider how your lived experience, the unique combination of the work you've done, the places you've been, the people you've met, and whatever else you can think of, consider how those set you apart from other people and from an increasingly competent and growing army of AI competitors.
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I've thought about this a lot for my own executive and career coaching business.
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In my last post on Substack, I shared an article about the threat, or maybe opportunity, of AI coaches.
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After considering what it had to say, I think I've identified what could set me apart from a pretty competent AI coach.
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And that's where I've actually been and the perspective that the lived experience I've had provides.
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I have an MBA from Wharton, a physical school I attended in Philadelphia with professors and fellow students.
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I worked my way up as a marketer and hiring manager in actual Fortune 100 companies with living employees and varied corporate cultures, and I was an executive recruiter at a real-life executive search firm with clients and candidate pools that challenged me every step of the way.
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While AI can easily scrape everything I've ever written or said in public forums about my work and the perspective it's provided, AI, whether it's Claude or ChatGPT or something else, it hasn't actually lived that combination of experiences.
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I've actually been a student, a job candidate, a hiring manager, an executive recruiter, and now a personal coach to thousands of people.
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Not many people can say that, and AI, it definitely can't.
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Based on my unique combination of experiences, I'm better able to understand at a deep and instinctual level what the people making hiring decisions value.
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I also understand the challenges candidates face when they're trying to communicate their personal narratives and their value to those hiring managers.
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I'm the connector between those two groups of people, and that's how I might stand apart from, or maybe serve as a complement to, an AI coach.
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So what's your unique combination of experiences?
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How can you combine them in a way that creates a compelling personal narrative and offers a distinct point of value?
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When you come up with the answer, that's how you're gonna stand apart from AI.
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The third way to compete against AI is just to be more visible.
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Even if you have a compelling personal narrative and a value proposition based on your unique combination of lived experiences, it won't matter if no one knows about it.
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In an age of influencers and thought leaders, visibility and discoverability matter more than ever.
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Many ambitious professionals, including the people I work with as an executive and career coach, shy away from active self-promotion, mistakenly believing that their work will speak for itself.
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I often criticize myself for making the same mistake, even though I know better.
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But when AI can deliver increasingly competent work and serviceable insights, you need to give people a reason to look beyond it.
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You need to ensure that the people choosing between AI and a real human being know about you or can even find you.
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Communicate your unique positioning through a well-crafted LinkedIn profile.
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Produce at least some content on LinkedIn or on other platforms that decision makers in your industry pay attention to, and do it with enough consistency that they'll be aware of you and your expertise.
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And even more importantly, do it consistently enough that they'll remember you when they need a resource or are called upon by a colleague to make a referral.
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As increasingly capable options in AI pull the chairs away at the entry, manager and director levels, essentially reshaping org charts and steepening the angle of ascent to the top, your ability to stay competitive for positions of increasing responsibility will be dependent on your ability to connect with people at a very human level.
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Cultivate work relationships based on a level of trust that AI just hasn't earned yet.
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Craft a narrative and positioning for yourself that emphasize your unique combination of lived experiences that AI just can't claim to have had.
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And remain visible across platforms where the decision makers in your industry are choosing to spend their time.
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The climb to the C-Suite might soon be like a steep ascent up a skyscraper instead of a more moderate climb up a pyramid.
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But if you focus on what's still uniquely human, you'll achieve a more secure footing and have a better chance of making it to the top.
