A conversation with long-time Crisp collaborator Jonathan Reams Summary (Abstract)
AI is accelerating our tools—and our context. In this Leading Complexity Podcast episode, Jonathan Reams argues that leaders must grow their inner capacity at least as fast as AI evolves, or risk being led by the very systems they deploy. We explore how adult development, complexity science, and practical leadership intersect in an AI-powered world—plus what you can expect from Jonathan’s 2025 session.
Why Jonathan—Why Now
Jonathan Reams is a leadership researcher, teacher, and consultant who integrates adult development, complexity science, leadership, and learning. He’s also a long-time collaborator with Crisp, known for pushing the edges of leadership development. This year, he leads the session: “How to Lead and Not Be Led by AI in Complexity.”
“Having experience in different areas… gives me richer lenses to see different facets and make a more well-rounded understanding of a given situation.”
Five Key Insights Leaders Can Apply
1) Leading in complexity starts with multiple lenses
Leaders operate across roles and contexts. The craft is coordinating many relevant considerations—not squeezing into one box.
“We often reduce ourselves to a given role… yet our lives are richer and more nuanced… different roles give richer lenses to understand a situation.”
Apply it: Deliberately switch vantage points (operator ↔ strategist, researcher ↔ practitioner) when sense-making with your team.
2) Embracing Unknowingness: the reflection-action cycle
Complexity means fewer certainties. Pair decisive action with frequent reflection.
“How do you maintain integrity with unknowingness?… Be okay with ambiguity… stop and reflect rather than just go with the first gut reaction.”
“We may get very efficient at doing the wrong thing if we don’t step back once in a while.”
Apply it: Shorten your feedback loops (minutes/hours, not weeks)—schedule micro “look-up” moments after key actions.
3) The “complexity gap” widens as you rise
Organizational demands outpace many leaders’ inner capacity at senior levels.
“As you move into upper-middle and senior levels, the complexity keeps growing, but the complexity of thinking does not grow in proportion… a gap appears.”
Apply it: Invest in developmental growth—sense-making, polarity management, emotion regulation—not just more skills.
4) AI: great servant, terrible master
Use AI to augment leadership, not replace it.
“The mind is a great servant, but a poor master. And AI is the same. It’s a great tool—but if we let it lead us…”
“LLMs can’t make promises… Leaders are expected to do this all the time.”
Apply it: Keep commitments and context-setting as distinctly human leadership work. Let AI serve the context you define.
5) Three capacities to lead with AI (and not be led by it)
Jonathan’s practical triad:
Understand how AI works (and its limits).
Domain expertise to judge outputs.
Metacognition—know when to question or trust AI.
“You need three things… understand how AI works… have domain expertise… and metacognition to judge when to question or trust it.”
Apply it: Add explicit “challenge prompts” to your AI workflows (e.g., “What could be wrong in this output?” “Which assumption is brittle?”).
Metaphors You’ll Remember
Open-water swimming: look up often or you’ll drift. Reflection costs a bit of speed but saves us from swimming towards the wrong place.
Leaders create the weather: your inner state becomes everyone else’s climate.
“What kind of weather are people navigating because of us? Clear weather where it’s clear sailing and you can see where you’re going—or stormy, defensive climates?”
Inside Jonathan’s 2025 Session
Title:How to Lead and Not Be Led by AI in Complexity
We will do a collective sense-making using participants’ pre-submitted experiences → interactive analysis (with AI used to probe, not decide) → practical translation to action.
You will learn to set the context and critically use AI as a tool, rather than AI shaping how you act in the world. We’ll invite people to describe their experiences and interact with the data… creating a collective repository of our intelligence.
“Be playfully, curious, and critical at the same time.”
