There is more to the work you do than you think.

The uncertainty around work and life in general is real. Entire systems are changing around the world and AI is playing a big part. The effects are visible: businesses are restructuring, jobs are changing and some are disappearing altogether.

Many people are watching those around them go through the anxiety of retrenchment or significant changes to their roles. Even when your own role feels relatively safe, it is difficult not to feel the tension in the air and wonder what all of this might mean for our future relevance.

So this week in the Lead Always Forum I asked the group: what are you really good at? And what if a machine could do it? There were other questions to follow and it became both interesting and somewhat rewarding. Allow me to share why.

This wasn’t about the new skills many are trying to quickly hone by spending as many hours as possible completing course after course. Kudos to those who do, but that’s not what we were talking about.

What interested me as a coach was slowing down the pace a little to look at what people already bring, much of which has become so familiar that it is no longer noticed or recognised as valuable.

Look beneath the task

We started with something very ordinary. Everyone identified one regular part of their work, something they do well, and then began looking underneath it.

We’re usually pretty good at describing what we do. Like running meetings, developing strategies, solving client issues, managing projects, writing proposals, recruiting people and organising teams. But they do not necessarily tell us very much about the person doing the work.

The same applies far beyond office work. A plumber may be diagnosing a problem while calming someone whose house is flooding. A receptionist may be reading people within seconds and setting the emotional tone for everyone who walks through the door. An electrician may be making judgements about risk when nobody else will ever see the work. A project manager may be holding people to commitments without having any formal authority over them.

So we asked different questions.

What does it actually take to do this work well?

Where is judgement being used?

Where would someone with less experience struggle to do the work?

As people wrote, a different layer began to emerge. Words like discernment, the ability to listen deeply, read a room, feel the energy, recognise patterns, build trust, interpret complexity and draw on years of experience without always consciously knowing that it is happening.

These capabilities had developed through years of work, trying, testing, failing and learning.

I then drew on tools from my Blueprint Lab and introduced a mirror prompt, using AI to further amplify the messaging and the impact. The prompt was deliberately designed to work only with the evidence people had already generated and to reflect back the human capabilities sitting underneath their notes.

The things we stop noticing

The results brought smiles, surprise, satisfaction and in some cases an immediate and resonant call to action.

When I asked whether what had been reflected back felt valid and true, the answer was a resounding yes. What surprised people was not necessarily the content itself, but how it had never been made explicit. Naming it settled it into the psyche.

Then came another question: was any of this on their CV, LinkedIn profile or website?

For most, the answer was no.

That is where the gold lay.

The conversation broadened.

It became about our inability to notice and truly know where our worth lies. The science helps explain this. When uncertainty arrives, especially around work, fear has a way of narrowing our perspective. A change in structure, a threat to a role or the arrival of new technology can very quickly become something more personal.

We question our relevance, our knowledge, our self-worth and our identity. That’s not always a bad thing, as it can build resilience and spark action. But it can also bring on a torrent of rumination, which habits such as scrolling and comparison can feed. Left unchecked, it can tip into catastrophising and a real sense of stuckness.

A role is not who you are or how you should be measured

The more clearly we can recognise and embrace the deeper capabilities that sit beneath our work, and in fact our everyday interactions, the less likely we are to hand our sense of worth, independence and contribution over to a job title, an organisation, a technology or a future we cannot control.

That does not mean the external world stops mattering. Of course it does. Livelihood matters. Security matters. The ability to earn an income matters enormously.

But there is a difference between responding thoughtfully to what is changing around us and allowing those changes to determine how valuable we believe ourselves to be.

What is more within reach is the ability to know ourselves more clearly and prepare from there.

Who are we beneath the role?

What do we know now that we did not know ten years ago?

Where do others rely on our judgement?

What have we become so practised at doing that we no longer realise it is a strength? And where might those strengths bring opportunity elsewhere?

So what do we do with what we know?

These questions matter because future relevance is not simply about protecting existing roles. It could also be about creating new ones.

The job may change. The task may become automated. The role may disappear or be redesigned. But the judgement, discernment, pattern recognition, trust, experience and human understanding developed over years do not simply vanish with the job description.

Recognising that is only the beginning.

The next question we’ll be answering in the Forum next week is: how do we use what we now know about ourselves to create value in the future?

Because while we cannot control everything that is happening around us, we can become much more conscious of what is happening within us, what we already bring and how we choose to use it. And perhaps that is one of the more practical ways we begin preparing not simply to cope with an AI-shaped future, but to find our place and continue contributing meaningfully within it.

If you’ve never been before, here’s your invitation to come and try it out. Mondays at 12.00 or 19.00 – you get to choose your time.

It’s not about being a better leader or even a leader at all. It’s about LEADING. Leading others, yourself and your life, working from the inside out.

You do not need to arrive with an answer, a problem to solve or something clever to contribute. Curiosity is enough.

Too book your spot, please email me paula@chialife.co.za. I’ll send you your link.