What Makes a Manager Great in the Future Of Work with Jennifer Dulski

What happens when AI takes over the tasks—but connection, trust, and leadership are still what hold teams together? What if the biggest differentiator in the future of work isn’t technical skills or automation—but the people leading other people?

In this episode of The Future of Less Work, host Nirit Cohen sits down with Jennifer Dulski, CEO of Rising Team and longtime tech leader at Google, Meta, and Change.org, to explore what leadership looks like when the work itself is changing.

From the rise of soft skills to the risk of outsourcing our own thinking to AI, Jennifer unpacks the new manager playbook—one built on coaching, connection, and the kinds of human capabilities machines can’t replicate.

Together, they explore how to build trust in distributed teams, why small moments of belonging drive big performance gains, and what it really means to equip managers to lead in an AI-first world.

If you’ve ever wondered how to prepare your leaders for the future, why emotional intelligence is the new competitive edge, or how to build culture in a world where no one shares an office—this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

https://youtu.be/s7Qqb30vKy8

Guest Information:
Jennifer Dulski – Formerly of Meta and Google, professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business and CEO of Rising
Team. Jennifer has 25+ years of executive experience leading large, globally distributed teams at top companies including Facebook, Google, Yahoo! and Change.org. She is founder and CEO of Rising Team, a team performance platform that helps companies increase employee engagement and retention,
build trust and connection, and improve manager and team effectiveness. The platform combines software that equips managers to lead deeply connective team workshops with a personalized AI leadership coach.
Jennifer is also a faculty member at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she teaches one of the most popular courses, “Managing Growing Enterprises,” about people leadership. She also writes about leadership and the future of work for Fast Company and LinkedIn Influencers. Her first book, Purposeful, is about how each of us can be movement starters, and is a Wall Street Journal Bestseller.

Chapters:
00:00 — Why Leadership Must Change in the Age of AI
01:44 — What’s Driving the Shift in How We Lead
03:40 — Why Managers Are Underprepared
05:29 — From Executive Coaching to AI-Powered Managers
07:10 — What Actually Makes Teams High Performing
09:28 — What Humans Still Do Better Than AI
11:17 — Are We Automating the Heart Out of Work?
13:16 — How Rising Team Builds Human-Centered Managers
15:36 — Will AI Replace Human Connection in Management?
17:39 — The Line Between What AI Can and Can’t Do
18:46 — One Question That Predicts Great Managers
20:28 — Why Time With Your Team Still Matters Most
21:59 — Rethinking How We Teach Managers to Lead
23:08 — Building Trust at Scale With Software
24:38 — What Happens When AI Agents Join the Team?
26:00 — How to Manage AI Agents vs. Humans
28:06 — The Most Important Leadership Skill of the Future
30:05 — What Will We Regret Not Doing at Work?
32:16 — The Future of Less Work That Matters