I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. as in the conversations I keep having behind the scenes, owners are nervous.
Everyone’s talking about AI. About remote working. About efficiency, automation, scale., and they’re right to. None of that is going away, and much of it is genuinely helpful.
But in the middle of all that noise, I keep coming back to one fairly simple question, especially when I think about the events industry:
Where are the leaders of tomorrow actually going to come from?
Events has always been a people business. No matter how sophisticated the tech becomes, the thing that makes or breaks a project is still how people behave when the pressure is on. You don’t learn that in theory. You learn it in the moment. On site. In rehearsals. In client meetings that don’t go to plan. At five in the morning when something’s gone wrong and everyone’s looking at you to fix it.
Those moments are where judgement gets built. Confidence too. You learn by watching how experienced people handle themselves, how they speak to teams, how they calm a room, how they make decisions when there isn’t a perfect answer. None of that is written down anywhere.
You absorb it by being there.
That’s why I’m slightly uneasy when we talk about tools as if they’re a substitute for leadership development. I’m not anti-AI. I use it, and most of my clients do too. It makes us quicker, removes admin, sharpens thinking. All good things.
But leadership has never been about speed alone. It’s about people. It’s about reading a room, understanding what’s not being said, knowing when to push and when to pause. AI can support that, but it can’t teach it. If too much early-career development happens behind screens, prompts and dashboards, there’s a risk there we don’t see straight away.
The same goes for remote and hybrid working. Flexibility matters. Trust matters. Autonomy matters. But a lot of leadership is learned almost by accident. By overhearing a difficult conversation. By seeing how a senior person handles conflict. By being pulled aside after a meeting and given context you didn’t even realise you were missing.
When those moments disappear, learning doesn’t stop, but it does slow down. It becomes less visible, less shared. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to be back in an office five days a week. It does mean we need to be more intentional about how people are exposed to leadership in action.
From a recruitment point of view, this is already starting to show up. Technical skills are easier to find than they used to be. Systems can be learned. Tools can be taught. What’s much harder to assess, and increasingly rare, are genuine people skills. Leaders who can handle ambiguity, bring teams with them, and show up properly when things wobble.
In five or ten years’ time, I don’t think the hardest roles to fill will be the technical ones. They’ll be the human ones. Those people don’t suddenly appear at senior level fully formed, they’re shaped over time, or they’re not.
That’s the bit we don’t always talk about. If junior and mid-level talent doesn’t get enough exposure to real leadership, we’ll still promote people. We always do. But they’ll be less prepared, and that’s not a criticism of them. It’s a systems issue.
So what do we do with that?
I don’t think this is about forcing people back into offices or rolling back progress. It’s about being deliberate. Leaders being visible. Talking through how decisions are made, not just what the decision is. Creating moments where people can see leadership under pressure, not just the polished version.
If you’re hiring, it means looking beyond CVs and job titles and asking how someone actually learned to lead. Who shaped them. Where they were stretched. What they’ve seen up close.
If you’re earlier in your career, it’s about seeking exposure, not just convenience. Putting yourself in rooms where you can observe, listen and learn. Because a huge amount of leadership development still happens just by being there.
AI will keep evolving. Remote work will keep evolving. That’s great.
But leadership, at its core, hasn’t changed. It’s still about judgement, presence, empathy and accountability.
If we want great leaders in events tomorrow, we need to give people the chance to learn how to lead today, properly, visibly and with support.
That’s not nostalgia.
It’s just being realistic.
