Are You Fungible?
Recently, I spoke with a young mentee about his career. My advice was direct: "The skills that landed you in your current job will not be enough to keep you employed. Being good at prompting or using AI to write code, analyze, create spreadsheets, and do research will make you more efficient, but not irreplaceable. If you want to be promoted, keep developing your analytical skills and work on your self-awareness, social skills, and judgment. In other words, be someone who is hard to replace."
He pushed back a little. He was already using AI better than most of his peers. Wasn't that enough?
It isn't at any level. And here's why.
The Efficiency Trap
In economics, fungible means interchangeable. One dollar bill is as good as another. When AI raises the baseline for what everyone can produce, a single skill becomes easier to replicate. A recent study in Science found that AI tools reduced average task completion time by 40% and improved output quality by 18% in professional writing tasks. When everyone is 40% faster, speed stops being a differentiator. Ordinary competence gets commoditized.
The executives who understand this are not asking how to use AI to work faster. They are asking a more important question: what combination of skills do I have that no one can easily replicate or replace?
Position Players Who Stopped Growing
I have witnessed this pattern more times than I can count. People who were great position players failed at the next level because they relied too heavily on what got them there and did not focus on the skills needed to succeed in a new role. The analyst who became a VP and kept doing analysis instead of leading. The consultant who made partner but had no idea how to build trust with a team. They were excellent at one thing, and that one thing eventually stopped being enough.
Research confirms what I have observed in practice. A landmark study, "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market," found strong employment and wage growth in jobs requiring both math and social skills, while purely technical roles have faced sustained wage pressure. The lesson is clear: practical expertise gains value when paired with judgment, communication, and the ability to work across competing interests. That combination is the moat.
What Good Looks Like
Satya Nadella is the clearest modern example of a leader who understood this. He arrived at the Microsoft CEO role in 2014 with strong technical credentials, having been a career engineer and product executive. But he also understood that credentials alone would not transform a company in crisis. Rather than relying on hierarchical control, Nadella focused on self-awareness and empathy, fostering psychological safety and helping engineers and executives alike feel safe sharing ideas, even experimental ones. He shifted Microsoft's culture from a competitive "know-it-all" environment to one built on learning and trust.
Nadella has since said that as AI handles more technical responsibilities, emotional intelligence is growing in importance, calling empathy not a soft skill but one of the hardest to develop. "IQ has a place, but it's not the only thing that is needed in the world." Microsoft's market cap tells the rest of the story. The combination of deep technical fluency and organizational empathy at scale is precisely what made his leadership position essentially impossible to benchmark against anyone else’s.
What Failure Looks Like
The cautionary tale is more recent. In March 2026, Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau stepped down after a crisis unrelated to running an airline. By operational measures, his tenure was successful. He drove innovation, technological advancement, and a customer-centric culture across a 39,000-person organization.
Then a fatal crash at LaGuardia Airport killed two pilots, one of them a French-speaking Quebecer, and Rousseau issued a condolence video almost entirely in English. Canada's commissioner of official languages received more than 1,800 complaints within two days. Quebec's entire legislature voted to call for his resignation. Canada's Prime Minister said the response showed a lack of compassion and judgment.
Rousseau had promised to learn French in 2021, but he never did. The skill gap he chose not to close ultimately ended his tenure. His operational excellence was real, but his leadership stack was incomplete. In the moment that tested whether he was truly irreplaceable, a missing capability defined him.
How to Build the Skills That Make You Rare
Start with an honest audit. Most executives are fluent in either analytical or interpersonal skills, rarely both at genuine depth. Ask yourself what you have been coasting on. If you have been the sharpest operator in the room, when was the last time you actively developed your ability to read a crisis, manage conflict, or build trust across a culturally complex organization?
Get uncomfortable on purpose. Growth happens at the edges of your competence, not in the comfort of your strengths. Take on a board seat, a client relationship, or a cross-functional initiative that pushes you into unfamiliar territory. The discomfort is the point.
Treat social skills the way you treat technical ones. Emotional intelligence is not innate. It is built through self-awareness, reflection, and consistent practice. Debrief after difficult conversations. Ask trusted peers how your tone landed. These are performance reps, not therapy.
Use AI to build new capabilities, not just to go faster in the ones you already have. AI can function as a tutor, coach, and practice partner in domains where you are still developing. The leaders who will benefit most are those who use it to close gaps, not just to optimize what they already do well.
The Bottom Line
The safest career in the AI era belongs to people who are difficult to describe with a single job title. Build the combination. Stay curious. And whatever you do, do not stop at one thing.
The skills that got you here will not be enough to keep you there.
Angelo Santinelli is an executive coach and advisor to CEOs, founders, and senior executives at PE- and VC-backed companies.
Sources
Julia Danyal, "How to Build an AI-Proof Career," AI For Leaders, 2025David Deming, "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2017AI Magazine, "Satya Nadella: Why EQ Matters More Than IQ in the Age of AI," December 2025ESCP Business School, "Emotional Intelligence in Leadership," 2024The Globe and Mail, "Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau to Step Down," March 2026Inc., "Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau Just Lost His Job for a Failure of Emotional Intelligence," April 2026