Just 6% of talent and senior leaders believe their organizations’ top executives are fully prepared to lead AI-driven transformation, according to Korn Ferry’s Talent Trends 2027 report.
Middle managers are expected to fill the gap. Two-thirds of respondents (66%) expect managers to spend more time helping their teams through change than overseeing their day-to-day work.
The global organizational consulting firm published the findings on Oct. 22, based on a survey of more than 1,300 talent and senior leaders, from CHROs to CEOs and board members, in more than 75 countries.
The concerns go beyond leadership readiness. More than three-quarters of respondents (77%) say capability gaps will pose a bigger challenge than talent shortages, and 78% believe too few people are prepared for how work will be done in the future.
As companies bring AI into the workplace, middle managers are increasingly caught between executives’ ambitions and the realities of implementation. Fortune reported in October that the added responsibilities are straining managers and teams that already have little capacity to spare, and many of those managers now oversee larger teams after years of cuts to management layers.
“Managers will become the shock absorbers of the organization,” Cathi Rittelmann, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry, said in the report. “Their job will be to help teams keep moving, even when they can’t tell them exactly where things are heading.”
Managers are explaining decisions they didn’t make
Susan De La Vega, senior vice president of global tech market and client experience at Korn Ferry, told Fortune that AI transformation requires redesigning the workforce, not simply rolling out new technology. The skills many roles require are changing, she said, which makes adaptability increasingly important.
Asked whether companies expect managers to handle AI-driven uncertainty without adequate guidance from senior leadership, De La Vega replied, “Oftentimes, yes.”
“Managers end up defending and communicating for AI mandates that they had no say in and little context,” she said.
When leadership later changes course, employees are left redoing work. De La Vega warned that poor communication can erode trust, feed disengagement and drive away valuable employees.
Clear AI plans track with higher engagement
Korn Ferry isn’t the only firm highlighting the communication gap. As of May, just 25% of U.S. employees said their organizations had communicated a clear plan for integrating AI, even as 47% said their employers had begun integrating AI tools, Gallup found.
That lack of clarity may carry a cost. A July Gallup analysis of employees at organizations that have adopted AI found that 43% of those whose employers had communicated a clear integration plan were engaged at work, compared with 28% of those whose employers had not or who were unaware of one.
Managers made an even bigger difference. Employees who said their manager actively supports their team’s use of AI were engaged at 48%, versus 30% among those who did not.
What getting it right looks like
For De La Vega, the responsibility starts at the top.
“Leaders go first. They learn the tools themselves, so they can speak credibly about what AI changes and what it doesn’t,” she said.
She also stressed job-specific training: A finance analyst has different needs from a data scientist. Companies should give employees time to learn and room to experiment, even when their first attempts don’t work out.
Managers also need to understand the decisions they’re expected to explain. De La Vega said they should be briefed on the reasoning behind leadership decisions before those decisions reach their teams, so they have enough context to answer employees’ questions.
Instead of waiting for a flawless master plan, leaders need to share what they know, acknowledge what remains uncertain and lay out the broader roadmap.
Companies may need middle managers to guide employees through the AI transition. But as De La Vega put it, “the ‘shock absorbers’ need a system behind them to operate.”
Written by Bilin Lin for Fortune as “‘Shock absorbers’: Korn Ferry says managers are carrying AI change that executives aren’t ready to lead” and republished legally through syndication agreement with Reuters Connect.
