Relational Intelligence Will Be What Saves You From Artificial Intelligence

Relational Intelligence Will Be What Saves Us From Artificial Intelligence

(Semi-serious-but-real) account of a tour of Italy among managers, algorithms and “lost humanity”

In the last few months I have done what no artificial intelligence can do (yet): cross Italy from north to south, stop to drink (bad) coffee at service stations and above all… talk. Really talk. Eye to eye. With people and with my heart in my hand.

I entered dozens of companies - some large, hyper-structured, with more processes than desks; others family-run, overlooking courtyards where you can still smell the smell of iron or bread. Everywhere, however, I found the same question, which was never expressed in the same way, with the same words but which in the looks of the students, in the dark circles under the eyes of the CEOs, in the sighs of the HR managers, in the half smiles of the production managers was nevertheless the same:

“But... and what about AI!? What forecasts do you have, you who work for companies? How do we deal with human resources? And now, what use are we?”

A CEO in the industrial aristocracy of the northwest told me, showing me a proposal to implement a new automation dashboard as if it were a winning scratch-off ticket:
“If I reduce staff and increase efficiency… that’s the future, I improve that too… right!?”
Then he stopped. And added, in a thin voice: “But if I do everything with machines… who buys? Who listens to me? Who’s left?”

In the fast-paced northeast, an HR Manager was leafing through CVs as if she were reading Egyptian papyrus, and asked me:
“But does it make sense to still read CVs? Soon the AI will skim them, evaluate them, (probably already write them for the candidates). And me? Do I stay here to refill the coffee machine pods?”

In the southeast of the trade and eastern horizon, a sales manager of an SME told me – with the face of someone who knows he has two years before the apocalypse – “Barbara, if we don’t ride the wave of AI, it will overwhelm us. Worse than the pirate ships of Chinese products.”

Here you are, the wave. That's the right word. Today in the company everyone feels the wave: it's loud, fast, powerful, sparkling. It promises efficiency, cost reduction, simplification.

And so, from the visionary owner to the breathless department head, through the employees who are wondering about their future, everyone – everyone – they asked me the same question, with a thousand variations on the theme:

“How can we still compete, as individuals, as professionals, as human beings, in a world where intelligence is automatic, instantaneous and never sleeps?”

And my answer – which sometimes gets me looks like “oh well, thanks Barbara” – is as simple as it is stinging: You can't.

You can't compete on AI's turf. You can't win by being faster, more precise, more efficient. Because there the AI is playing at home, it has the stopwatch in its hand, and you're still trying to figure out how to work the hot-spot when there's no Wi-Fi in the meeting room.

But you can win on another field. Yours. The one where you are irreproducible. Where you are human. Where you are real.

Your terrain is called Relational Intelligence.
It's what's left when everything else can be replicated.
This is what companies can no longer afford to ignore.
This is what will save you, even when AI is everywhere.

THE ILLUSION OF “ALL DIGITAL”

In this historical moment, many Italian entrepreneurs are behaving like children in a digital candy store. There are those who buy a CRM as if it were a magic potion, those who install chatbots as if they were oracles, and those who think that saying “artificial intelligence” three times in front of the mirror is enough to become Elon Musk.

But beneath the excitement about new tools lies something deeper and more like fear.
The fear of being left behind.
The fear that competitors will surpass them.
Fear of employees getting lost (and in fact, some have already gotten lost… in the maze of dashboards).

What I see is a digitalization often compulsive: digital processes introduced without vision, tools purchased only because "everyone has them", automations that simplify the numbers but they complicate people.

From many points of view it seems more like an escape than a project.

Yes, okay, automation makes you do it faster. But – for example – It doesn't tell you if you're going in the right direction.
It gives you the data, sure. But it doesn’t translate the tired tone of an employee who answers “all good” while looking at you as if he wants to open the window and jump into the parking lot.

AI can tell you who clicks on what and when in your online training program, but not who is slowly fading away, day after day, because they feel like they are not evolving, that their career seems like a dead-end track.

And so, as I often say, I happen to enter companies that apparently work perfectly… but they are clinically dead because they have squandered the élan vital.

Departments where there is never any argument, but no laughter either.
Teams that don't write nonsense in chat, but don't even ask each other how they are.
Managers who talk about “performance monitoring” with the same expression used to feed a hamster: empty, repetitive, automatic.

Everything “works”. But no one is involved.
Everyone talks. But no one listens.

The problem is that digital is not the enemy. It is the pretext.
The real danger is when we forget that Tools are there to enhance relationships, not replace them.

A management system helps you organize. But it doesn't create a sense of belonging.
An AI system can suggest a perfect candidate (and spot the AI cover letter writer). But it won’t tell you if they’ll be willing to stick around for you through tough times.

For this reason, every time someone asks me: “Barbara, what tool do you recommend to improve the internal climate?”
I answer:
“You know coffee!? ☕ But taken together. Without slides. And with the cell phone turned off.”

The intelligence that is missing (that AI doesn't have – yet, eh!)

During one of the last meetings, in a PMI in the province of Brescia (where people are really tough, eh!), an HR manager took me aside – with that “I have to tell you something quickly but in reality I'm exploding inside” look – and said to me:

“Barbara, I have two new guys, young, brilliant. They have a CV that seems to have been written by an algorithm in overdose: technical skills in abundance, very fast, multitasking, even friendly. But… they can’t handle feedback. As soon as you tell them that something can be improved, they go haywire. They close up, they stiffen, they look at you as if you had just told them that we are deporting them to the branch in Siberia… which we don’t have.”

And then he doubled down: “I don’t need more skills. We already have too many. I need more people. People with attributes, with verve. Who don’t dematerialize as soon as they have to look a colleague in the eye.”

Bingo. That's the point.

So, while they're all chasing after yet another Python application, yet another Scrum certification, yet another cool skill on LinkedIn, they're forgetting the only truly distinctive skill in the age of machines: relational intelligence.

That strange, powerful thing that makes you read what isn’t written in emails.
Which lets you know if a meeting is charged or depressed.
Which makes you respond to an “everything’s fine” with an “I don’t think so at all”.

Relational Intelligence it is the ability to understand oneself and others with depth, curiosity, humility.
It's what allows you to defuse a conflict before it becomes a cold war.
It is what transforms corporate communication from a “protocol” to a “dialogue”.

And – not least – it is the only one that cannot be replicated by software.
AI can generate words, but cannot generate trust.
It can analyze feelings, but he doesn't know how to create relationships.
It can detect behaviors, but cannot restore motivation, meaning, humanity.

Today, when everything else can be delegated to a machine – accounting, recruiting, planning, even a slice of operational leadership – it is this intelligence that marks the boundary between a living company and a zombie company.

A living company breathes, makes mistakes, laughs, adapts.
A zombie company works… but without a conscience.
Like a vending machine: cold, silent, perfect – but with the constant risk of giving you the wrong thing back. And doing so with the metallic sound of a coin dropping.

FIELD EXPERIENCE: “HIGHLY HUMAN” MANAGERS

During my corporate tour of Italy, I often observed a clear distinction between two managerial races (yes, races – the term is strong but it gets the idea across).

On the one hand there are those who they hide behind the procedures.
Those who, as soon as an employee shows an emotion – fear, frustration, tiredness, even enthusiasm – take refuge in the company regulations as if in an anti-atomic bunker.
If they could, they would replace all their colleagues with a well-oiled machine, without lunch breaks, without vacations, without “personal problems”. And now that AI is knocking on the door, some of them look at it like Moses looked at the Red Sea: as the ultimate solution.

On the other hand, there are the “highly human” leader.
Those who don't get involved in "managing personnel".
They listen to it. They interpret it. They understand it, (even in the silences).
And when they do connect, they do it for real. Even when it's scary. Even when it means getting your hands dirty in the gray areas of real emotions.

I met one of these in the shadow of Vesuvius – where else? – in an SME that works in the agri-food sector (in a regime of hyper-competition obviously).
The owner – one of those women who when she speaks make more of an impact than an entire convention – explains to me with almost disarming naturalness:

“Barbara, here it is so demanding to manage customers and the downward price war that once a month we have an emotional recovery meeting. Everyone says in their own way what worked, what didn't, and above all how they felt while they were in the trenches trying not to lose customers and not send the company into the red. Stop. An hour. Everyone talks. No one is forced, but no one backs out.”

At the beginning, he told me, the most skeptical looked at and commented on the initiative as one would look at and comment on a social experiment (and in fact it resembles one). Then, the dynamics have changed.

People who had never spoken to each other and who (professional deformation) saw everyone – colleagues first and foremost – as competitors, began to do so.
People who seemed “silent and disillusioned” become chatty and imaginative again.
People who were thinking about changing industries… who start laughing about it and addressing objections with wit and inventiveness.

And the result? “People no longer ask to talk to me just to complain or list their problems. They produce more. And – listen up – they are alive.”

That monthly practice, simple, concrete, repeatable… It is Relational Intelligence.
It's not a benefit. It's not a HR trick. It's a strategic leadership choice and… a person thought it up and created it, not the AI.

You will understand that if I ever suggested replacing those moments with an algorithm that “analyzes the company climate”…
…probably she would send me to Siberia! And rightly so.

NO, IT'S NOT SOFT SKILL. IT'S HARD. IT'S BUSINESS.

Enough. Stop calling them “soft skills”, as if they were behavioral sweets, emotional gadgets to be distributed in the company when there is time. That definition has done more damage than motivational training by the kilo.

Relational Intelligence is not “soft”.
It is not a plus, it is not a pink ribbon on “real” skills.
It’s a strategic skill. It’s pure business. It’s tough stuff.

It is used to manage crises.
It helps retain talent (yes, even those with too many degrees and zero patience).
It helps prevent a team from turning into a passive-aggressive chat room with thirty-minute meetings filled with silence and eye rolls as people wait to see what the other person will say just for the sake of proving them wrong.

Those who don't develop it will not only have some communication problems...
It will find itself in a context that is first disconnected and then inefficient.
A company where everything flows, but nothing connects. Where numbers grow until people evaporate.

And I say this from first-hand experience:
companies that today suffer from “low productivity”, “high turnover”, “decrease in motivation”…
they don't have (just) an organizational problem. They have a relational void.

A void that no software, no KPI and no tool can fill. Not even AI.

Only those who know how to read people, guide them through difficulties, create authentic connections –
manages to build a company capable of resisting time, change and even the most brilliant artificial intelligence.

So no, it's not soft.
It's hard. It's fundamental. It's the core business.

If you want vibrant people, healthy teams, lasting leadership…
Relational Intelligence is not an option. It is the lever.

WHAT NOW?

By dint of going around companies, listening to teams, smelling the air that blows in the corridors (often thicker than the organizational chart itself), one thing has become clear:
we need a change of pace. We need a leap in maturity. We need to train the most forgotten muscle in business: the relationship.

For this, thanks to my role here in Open Source Management, I am organizing a new course entirely dedicated to this topic:

🎯 “Relational Intelligence: the true human resource in the machine age”

It will be a journey concrete, because I don't have time to waste on motivational fluff.
Structured, because relationship problems are solved with method, not with random hugs.
With real examples, taken from real Italian companies, not from American books with stock photos of smiles.
And with techniques that can be applied immediately, even if your team is more reluctant to talk than to have a stand-up meeting.

Why the relationship is not a mysterious gift that some have and some don't.
It is not a “female gift”.
It is not a talent of the “born empaths”.
It's a skill. And like any skill, it can be trained.

So yes: if Artificial Intelligence is the future –
then Relational Intelligence is your lifeline.

And I'll be there. Together with OSM.
We will be there, with your sleeves rolled up, a bitter coffee, and a few good questions to make you start seeing the people around you again.

Because knowing where to go is not enough.
You need someone to take you there speaking your language. Humanly.

Relational Intelligence: What It Is and Why It Is Essential for Leaders and Managers