Invest in what AI can't replicate

Be the person people want to be around

In a world where everyone has the same tools, the person who is warm, genuinely curious and interested in others is the one who stands out.  

In a recent article for the graduating class of 2026, journalist Jasmine Sun makes the point that AI tools are undifferentiated and everyone has them, so your comparative advantage has to be about you. You need to be the good hang - the person people want around. 

That's not just an innate personality trait. It's a skill. And one of the fastest ways to build it is getting better at conversation.  

Harvard Business School Professor Alison Wood Brooks studies the psychology of conversation, and her research found the single most powerful move for building connection is dead simple: ask a follow-up question.  

Most people don't do it. They ask, hear the answer, then pivot straight back to themselves (hello ego doing its thing!). Other great tips from Brooks:  

• Go one question deeper. Before you jump in with your own take, ask one more thing about theirs. "What was that like?" "How'd you land on that?" Let their answer breathe before you make it about you. 
• Remember the small stuff. Bring up something they mentioned last time - a stressful project, a trip, a decision they were stuck on. It costs you nothing and signals you were listening, not just waiting for your turn. 
• Sit in silence for a beat. Most people rush to fill a pause. Don't. Let a few seconds of quiet sit after they finish talking - it often prompts them to keep going and say something more real than their first answer. 

Check out this podcast episode with Brooks for more insights from her research.

While AI can replicate plenty, it can't replace a great conversation where two people connect, challenge each other and walk away thinking differently. A good place to practice the art of conversation is within a mentoring relationship. The two-way exchange of questions and ideas hones your active listening and critical thinking skills while building real relationships along the way.  

Our Career Connect platform has facilitated over 120 conversations between aspiring investors and experienced professionals. If you haven’t signed up yet, give it a go. 

Know who you are beyond your job

What do you care about that has nothing to do with your job title or your next performance review? 

The most interesting people I've met are engaged in life beyond their work in ways that shape how they see the world - and by extension, how they think, connect, and make decisions. People with a strong sense of meaning outside work show higher levels of resilience and are better equipped to handle uncertainty. Purpose outside work isn't a distraction from your career, it feeds it. 

Stay curious, stay loose

If change at pace is the new operating rhythm, the ability to keep changing is the skill that underpins everything else. 

Psychologist Adam Grant describes it as non-attachment to your own ideas - holding your views with less certainty, detaching your opinions from your identity so you can revise them when the evidence demands it. As he puts it, your ideas are not your identity. They're just hypotheses. Sometimes accurate, but more often incomplete. And the moment you stop treating them that way, you stop learning. 

It's harder than it sounds. Most of us have more of ourselves wrapped up in what we believe than we realise - our expertise, our track record, our sense of who we are professionally. The people who navigate disruption well aren't the ones who never feel unsettled, they're the ones who don't need the previous version of themselves to be right. 

Invest in what AI can't build

Business is good at optimising for what can be measured, and AI is on top of that too. What that leaves - the stuff that resists metrics, that builds slowly and shows up in the quality of your judgment and the depth of your relationships - is exactly what's worth putting your energy into now. 

AI will keep getting better. The people who thrive alongside it won't be the ones who master the tools, but be the ones who invested in what the tools can't touch.