SEOUL, June 25 (AJP) - Kookmin University's Graduate School of Business gathered academics, executives, and coaches in Seoul on June 19 for its third annual Leadership and Coaching Conference, where the central argument was direct: as artificial intelligence takes over more analytical and operational work, the distinctly human dimensions of leadership matter more, not less.
The timing reflects a live tension running through South Korean corporate life. According to Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index, 78 percent of South Korean office workers who use AI on the job fear falling behind if they cannot adapt quickly, yet only 16 percent say their leaders provide adequate training. A separate survey by Korean recruitment platform WantedLab, published in April 2026, found that 92 percent of office workers already use AI in their daily tasks, while only 5 percent of companies have formally adopted the technology at an organizational level.
The conference, titled "Human-AI Co-Evolution," drew more than a dozen speakers across parallel tracks on leadership and coaching. Organizers framed the day not as a technology showcase but as an examination of what human leaders and coaches must do differently as AI handles more of what they once did alone.
The keynote was delivered by Lee Byeong-nam, a former president of LG Inwhawon, LG Group's corporate education institute. Lee argued that companies and markets are better understood as ecosystems of interconnected stakeholders than as machines to be optimized. A leader's core function, he said, is to create conditions in which people can develop their potential, grow on their own terms, and produce results rather than simply follow instructions.
The leadership track addressed questions of organizational design and the changing role of management. Participants argued that the traditional model of leaders as controllers and resource allocators no longer fits a world where AI agents handle much of the information processing. What emerged was a vision of the leader as an orchestrator, someone who designs the context in which people and AI systems work together, and who enables teams to apply existing skills while simultaneously exploring new possibilities. Speakers used the term "ambidextrous organization development" to describe this dual mandate.
The coaching track focused on behavior change and individual performance. Participants converged on the view that genuine change begins not with instruction but with self-awareness and personal accountability. As AI becomes faster at generating answers and solutions, speakers argued, the coach's job grows more distinct: building psychological safety, asking questions that challenge assumptions, and helping people think independently rather than defer to machine output.
In the closing session, Kim Na-jeong, a professor at Kookmin University's Graduate School of Business, drew the conference's threads together. She described the core task of leadership and coaching in the AI era as designing what she called a "Think, Feel, Act" environment, one that helps people develop new perspectives, builds the emotional energy required to take on challenges, and connects those insights to concrete actions and repeatable organizational routines.
"AI expands intelligence, but leaders must expand humanity," Kim said. "The more AI generates good answers and strategies, the more important it becomes to ask deeper questions grounded in human experience, philosophy, values, and context, and to design environments where meaningful actions can be repeated."
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