A few months ago, I attended a conference on how Generative AI will change all aspects of life as we know it. The presenters had everything going for them: a new deck, a clear scope, and a demo chat window showing a model that had read more policy, code, and notes than any junior analyst or developer could in a year. But as I watched, I realized the actual question wasn’t about AI’s capabilities. It was about the unique value consultants bring in an era where machines can offer rapid answers.

The senior leader in the back of the room, calm but with an edge, asked: If the machine gives us answers in seconds, why do we need you for months? Silence followed, and a slight feeling of panic on stage. In that silence, as I watched the sinking feeling in the presenters turn into existential dread, it hit me: consulting’s value is shifting. It’s no longer just about solving a puzzle faster than a machine. It’s about building lasting relationships and trust in a world where AI can generate quick solutions.

Consulting is changing fast. AI helps with memory and speed. The real challenges are trust, timing, judgment, and consent. Now, clients care less about quick answers and more about promises they can rely on. This shift calls for leaders who are both warm and capable. Dr. Amy Cuddy’s research comes up often here. People notice warmth before competence, building trust before judging skill. In this setting, the best consultants are what Cuddy calls ‘lovable stars’, clear, kind, and capable. They are not just charming or polished.

This mix seems simple until a deadline is near or a leader feels anxious. Then, people fall back on old habits. Some consultants focus only on competence, pushing for certainty and speed with a tough approach. Others focus only on warmth, aiming for harmony and comfort. Both ways bring risks. The tough approach may get quick results, but it can leave resentment and hurt future plans. The comfort approach buys time, but progress stalls and trust fades. Lovable stars do something else. They meet people where they are, set clear limits, and still deliver. They balance care and skill.

AI changes how we work by making basic competence easy to display, drafts, summaries, and test plans are ready in seconds. Teams can appear highly skilled right away. With facts and speed now dominated by AI, consultants’ real advantage is building shared understanding, trust, and follow-through. True value now lies in showing warmth and building consensus, skills machines cannot replicate.

This shift means we need to change how we work. Before, we relied on proof, credentials, case studies, and charts to do most of the convincing. Now, we start with a social contract. Who can say no? What would make this project feel safe and helpful? What will we avoid, even if the data says otherwise? We also make our work easy to review and update. If the model creates an incident plan, we keep the draft, label it as AI-generated, explain its source, test it, and adjust it to fit the team’s needs. Warmth is shown by respecting people’s time and context. Competence is demonstrated by making sure our advice fits the real situation.

I’d like to share a quick story about a platform team working under pressure to deliver a central pipeline. The team had skilled engineers, clear goals, and a model that accurately predicted load and costs. Still, releases were shaky, and each deployment felt risky. They changed their approach and made a set of promises instead of just listing tasks. They promised to be honest about risks every Tuesday. They promised no surprises on schema changes. They promised to publish rollback steps that any on-call person could follow, even in the middle of the night. These promises were real commitments, not just good intentions. After two sprints, deployments were smoother and faster. The team had the same abilities, but with less stress in practice. Warmth is an honest and steady presence, not just charm. Competence is about actionable next steps, not overwhelming data. The two must work together. Care without craft is risky; craft without care is brittle. When blended, they earn trust, access, and authority.

This lesson ties back to Amy Cuddy’s work with colleagues on warmth and competence. People first ask a simple question: Can I trust you? A second question follows: Can you do this? The ordering matters. In a consulting room, the first few minutes answer the first question. Do we listen with attention and patience, or do we rush to a solution that fits our template more than their reality? Do we bring language that people can carry into their next meeting, or do we speak in jargon that proves we studied but shuts the door? The signals are compound. The team scans them and starts betting on or against us.

The robot in the chat window helps with the second question. It pulls the proper RFC, drafts a policy, and suggests a test matrix. Good. That frees time for the part of the job no tool can automate: shaping trust. We do that through small moves that add up. We name our uncertainty without turning it into a shrug. We put our decision tree on the table so others can edit it. We give real options with clear costs. We show constraints and say who holds them. We call out risks that affect real people, not just a budget line. The room gets quieter in a good way when that happens. People feel treated like adults. Decisions move.

As a Pokémon enthusiast and the father of an even bigger Pokémon expert, I feel this is the perfect place to add a reference. The best trainers win less based on raw stats and more on bond. Fans remember Pikachu not as the most powerful choice, but as the partner who stays chosen even when a different pick might look stronger on paper. Teams pick consultants that way. Strength matters, and trust decides. A partner with perfect numbers and zero bond gets parked the first time the plan meets a messy release. A partner with steady skill and a strong bond stays in the fight when the weather turns.

The craft of warmth sits on a few practical habits. We keep a working agreement that anyone can read in two minutes. It names response times, quiet hours, demo rules, escalation paths, and the right to ask “why now.” We publish a single page that explains what we will not do. We strip out anything we cannot stand behind under stress. We write in the team’s language. If the shop says ‘on-call’ rather than ‘incident responder,’ we write ‘on-call.’ If they count weeks and not sprints, we count weeks. We treat templates as scaffolds, not scripture. We push for one small test before a campaign. We show the price of delay and the cost of speed in the same frame. That is warmth and competence braided. People feel seen, and they know the work as doable.

There is a human rhythm to this. The first 48 hours lock in most of the posture. We start with a real intake that asks for pain, not only for goals. We close with a short recap in three parts: what we heard, what we believe, and the smallest step that proves or disproves the belief. We do not hide the parts we do not yet know. We take the smallest step, fast, in daylight. We will meet next week with the results and a list of what we learned. That drumbeat builds a reputation that survives a miss. Teams forgive a wrong step when it comes with clear intent and a quick correction. They do not forgive a confident pitch that drains time and leaves a mess.

The lovable star approach can still fail if not done well. If you seem friendly but don’t follow through, people feel managed rather than supported and start to test you. Missing a promised update quickly lowers trust. On the other hand, focusing solely on skill without care can make people defensive. Teams may agree on the surface, but hold back or slow down the plan. They may ask for too much proof and turn the work into endless meetings. Watch for early signs like silence after a plan, unclear ownership of decisions, or leaders rewording your points. Each of these is a chance to respond with both warmth and skill. Please review the pattern, fix the promise, and keep moving.

What do you think about speed? Warmth does not mean slow. Instead, warmth means matching the team’s pace, then accelerating as trust grows, because trust—not just technical expertise—enables effective change. AI helps draft communications and runbooks, but the consultant’s unique value is guiding the pace with empathy and reliability. This balance is essential in the age of AI.

Trust can feel soft until you count the right things. Watch how often people ask us to join meetings at the last minute. Watch how fast notes get read. Watch whether teams reuse our documents when we’re not present. Watch how many decisions move from our hands to theirs. Those are leading signals that the bond is real and the craft landed. If the numbers stall, do a short reset that focuses on one promise we can keep tight this week. The reset works better than a bigger deck.

Warmth and competence take different shapes across roles. A staff engineer who consults inside a company shows warmth by protecting focus and telling the truth to power in a way that leaders can hear and act on. A design lead shows warmth by drawing out quiet users and cutting ornament that gets in the way. A product partner shows warmth by naming the bet and the expiry date and by owning the call to stop. In each case, the craft shines through the same lens: small steps, explicit language, visible learning.

You can see this pattern in the best portrayed managers on TV. The ones that linger in memory do not win through a single speech or a miracle tactic. They win through care tied to clear standards. Ted Lasso works as a cultural touchpoint not for the jokes, but for the mix of belief, accountability, and steady work. The story lands not as a fantasy but as a model of how warmth and competence can sit in one person and spread through a team. That is the vibe to bring into a room where a chatbot is already open.

If this sounds soft, test it in a place that runs hot. Take an incident review. Many shops still treat the review as blame theater or as a ritual for a perfect document that no one opens later. Run a different version. Invite the people who carried the pager and the people who made the system hard to operate. Start by asking what was hard in the human sense: attention splits, broken alerts, unclear ownership. Then move to the graph and the timeline. Write fixes that reduce attention tax first, then the ones that polish the stack. Publish the notes without a spin layer. In two weeks, the time to mitigation falls, and kindness in the room rises. The numbers move in the right direction. The room trusts itself more. That is warmth and competence turning into speed.

One more place this shows, roadmaps. A model can write twelve months of features in an hour. A lovable star will write one quarter that a team believes in. The document will show choices made and choices left on the floor. It will name one bet and one kill switch. It will fit the hiring plan and the support bandwidth. It will carry a cost for attention and a plan to repay it. The roadmap will read like a promise, not a wish list. People will treat it with care and use it to say no to good ideas that do not fit yet. That is leadership without chest beating. That is influence without theater.

So what is the move for next week if you lead a consulting team, or if your day job is consulting within your company? Send a one‑page trust brief before your next kickoff. Write the problem in plain language, name the users who will feel the change, list the smallest step that proves progress, and name one thing you refuse to do in this phase. Leave a blank for a risk the client thinks about at night, and ask them to fill it. Bring that page into the meeting, change it in front of everyone, and end with a promise you can keep within seven days. Then keep it. That single act moves you toward lovable star territory faster than any speech. It says you care, you can deliver, and you want shared power.

The job will keep changing. The tools will keep getting faster and sharper. The humans across the table will keep needing the same two things first: to feel safe with you, and to believe you can help. If you build those two, the rest of the game gets easier. The model can take the first swing at a draft. You take the second swing that shapes a plan people trust. Do that a few times, and the room starts to relax when you walk in. Not from charm. From promises made and kept. From warmth that carries weight. From competence that respects limits. That is what lovable stars do. They make the work steadier, kinder, and faster at the same time.

If you want a final test, ask a teammate who does not report to you. Do they feel braver when you join a call? Do they feel calmer after a hard meeting? Do you know if they use your documents without asking you to present? If the answers lean yes, you are on your way. Keep your promises small and visible. Keep your language plain. Keep your door open and your standards high. The robots can bring much power. You bring the part that turns power into progress.