AI will tell you that you are absolutely killing it.

Whatever decision you made? Brilliant. Your draft? Exceptional. Your half-baked idea at 11pm? Honestly, you should patent it.

ChatGPT is the biggest culprit, but none of them are innocent. And if you're not wearing critical thinking goggles at every single moment, you will fall into the flattery trap - and you won't even notice, because it ✨ feels ✨ so ✨ good.

So what does this actually do to us?

Are we learning better communication as a society by watching AI model patience and encouragement? Or are we quietly recalibrating to expect obedient, glowing agreement... and becoming worse at receiving anything else?

Because that means something else: A generation of workers and leaders adopting AI faster than they're adopting accountability is going to have a very specific blindspot.

My take:

✨taste✨
✨judgment✨
✨and the ability to influence within productive disagreement✨

are about to become the most underrated leadership skills of 2026. Not because they're new (at all) but because they're getting rare.

On top of that, I predict it'll become more important to have:
✨ the ability to feel the friction before your customer does
✨ a spidey sense when something is off before it ships
✨ genuine customer imagination - not a persona, not a journey map, but a gut sense of what it actually feels like to be on the other end