H.U.M.A.N. dimensions / U

Use Intelligence Wisely

Responsible use of information and technology, transparent judgment and human accountability. Using AI is not required.

Using AI is not required to lead well in this dimension.

Why it matters

Data, tools and first impressions all help, and each can quietly do more of the deciding than it should. Wise leaders stay curious, explain their reasoning and keep a human accountable for the decision.

Ideas from research and leadership writing

• Leaders benefit from thinking like scientists: treating views as hypotheses, seeking disconfirming evidence and being willing to rethink.

  Idea summarized from Adam Grant, Think Again

• Fast, intuitive judgments can be useful but are vulnerable to predictable biases. Deliberate checking of evidence and assumptions can help; taking longer alone does not guarantee accuracy.

  Idea summarized from Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

• A meta-analysis of 106 experimental studies found that, on average, human-AI combinations performed worse than the better of humans or AI alone, with gains mainly in creating content and losses in decisions. It supports checking a tool's output rather than assuming it improves every judgment.

  Idea summarized from Vaccaro and colleagues, meta-analysis

• Research on human trust in AI reviews how people judge capability, transparency and reliability, and notes limits from varied measures and short-term experiments.

  Idea summarized from Glikson and Woolley

Habits to try this week

Choose one habit suited to your responsibilities and authority. If you do not manage people, practice with peers, seek agreement or rehearse a fictional situation. Do not take on someone else's decision authority.

• Before an important decision, check the information's sources, missing data and limitations, then look for evidence that could challenge your view.
• Before a performance or feedback conversation, write down what you saw and, separately, what you assumed.
• Ask someone who disagrees with you to explain their view until you can restate it fairly.
• Name what evidence would change a current decision, then check for it.
• When you use a metric or tool output, including AI if you use it, say what it measures, what it misses and who made the final call.
• Ask one person how they prefer to receive information and try it.

Reflection questions

• Where might a tool, a metric or your first impression be doing more of the deciding than it should?
• Who could explain how you reached your last major decision?

A common pitfall

Treating confidence as accuracy. Feeling sure is not the same as having checked.

How this connects to the other dimensions

U checks the assumptions behind H's expectations, M's assignments, A's development opportunities and N's change decisions. Use affected people's experience alongside relevant evidence, protect confidentiality, and explain who is accountable for the final decision.

References

• Grant, A. (2021). Think Again. Viking.
• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Vaccaro, M., Almaatouq, A., & Malone, T. (2024). When combinations of humans and AI are useful: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Nature Human Behaviour.
• Glikson, E., & Woolley, A. W. (2020). Human trust in artificial intelligence: Review of empirical research. Academy of Management Annals.

The sources reviewed for this dimension are listed on the research and methodology page, filtered to U.

These summaries paraphrase research and practitioner books, which provide different kinds of evidence. The habits are developmental applications, not findings that these exact actions improve outcomes. The authors have not reviewed or endorsed this framework, and the cited work does not establish its effectiveness. See research and methodology.

H.U.M.A.N. Advantage framework developed by Dr. Patrick D. Fagan, PhD, MBA.