How AI Will Help Us Discover High Potential Leaders

AI can predict if you have what it takes to lead.

Read that again.

It can do this before you’ve ever been given responsibility of any kind. It can now measure, with heroic accuracy, if you will be an effective leader…in the future.

That doesn’t surprise me one bit.

From Hogwarts to The Hunger Games, society has always been low-key obsessed with a single question: who rises? And that’s kind of our thing at Crossover too, which is why we build recruiting systems that reveal the top 1% of talent.

Whether it’s the sorting hat, a dystopian arena, or the kid’s battle school in Ender’s Game (remember that Harrison Ford gem?) – folks have never stopped imagining systems that lock in and identify untapped potential.

My personal fav was Ender’s Game, a book-turned-movie where ‘Ender’ a random kid from nowheresville passes a series of advanced AI simulations and becomes the only human with the leadership potential to outwit an invading alien species.

He saves the world!

Testing exists in the business world too. In the early 2000s Jack Welch created a popular performance management concept (the Vitality Curve) about stack ranking workers and siphoning out the weakest among them.

Employees are ranked on a curve, and the top 20% identified as top performers, while the bottom 10% are essentially ousted or retrained. 

Some 30% of Fortune 500 companies use stack ranking (us included) and though it’s declined in popularity, AI is about to make it incredibly relevant again.  

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If you get a hot minute add ‘Jack: Straight from the Gut’ to your reading list this year.

This answers that same question – when measured and ranked – who rises?

Of course, now we’ve created something better…AI.

And it’s advanced far enough as of now to push us into a new era of skills-based leadership. AI will decide who gets seen and who gets skipped.

In this article, you’ll find out why AI testing is the new gateway to leadership, how we use it at Crossover to spot hidden talent, and how to train the soft skills AI is scanning for - so that when the test comes, you’re ready.

Let’s turn your soft skills into hard career currency.

The Test That Was Always Coming

Measuring human performance has always been a choppy, subjective and divisive business.

But AI skill testing has fixed that.

It’s time to stop pretending we don’t want to be measured. The reality is – we just want to be measured fairly and accurately.

AI is the most powerful tool we’ve ever had to sort, signal and spot actual real-world leadership potential.

I read a study recently that BLEW my mind.

It was from the National Bureau of Economic Research. AI agents were tested against human groups to assess leadership potential. In other words, could AI agents be as effective in measuring for leadership soft skills as people?

There was a staggering 0.81 correlation between AI predictions and real-world human performance. Let that sink in! AI accurately predicted who had stronger soft skills!

AI could tell if a person would be a GREAT leader…or not.

This is a massive shift. It means leadership can finally be fairly measured, not by how loud you are in meetings, or by your distinguished Ivy-League education or by your illustrious recent job title – but by how you think, decide and respond under pressure.

In real time. In the NOW.

During a time when Millennials are the driving force trying to solve the growing AI and leadership skills gap – it’s a significant shift from what we’ve known.

• IBM predicted an AI skills gap of 50% last year
• 80% of companies report a leadership development gap

Résumés are dying. Bias is being replaced. AI skill-testing isn’t coming - it’s here to solve these ongoing problems already.

AI knows if you can lead.

Why AI Testing is the Inevitable Future

Here’s an urgent public service announcement - you might not like it.

AI skill testing isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it’s quickly and seamlessly being incorporated EVERYWHERE. Especially in tech (where you work).

• IBM says AI job simulations cut hiring costs by 67%
• Reports say 78% of recruiters believe AI reduces time-to-hire
• And 35-45% of companies have already adopted AI hiring practices

No shade if you’re part of the group of people rage posting about AI interviews and how they’ll never do them. 

But also – what are you doing?

I get it, the resume reflex is hard to squash.

We ran a LinkedIn poll asking if AI will finally kill off the tired “years of experience” requirement. Only 20% called it outdated. 25% said results should matter more, while 40% still believe time equals expertise. Just 16% backed skills as the top priority.

The results show a workforce still split between tradition and skills-based, AI-enhanced transformation. While some are ready to prioritize outcomes and skills, most folks still cling to the comfort of time-based validation.

That gap is exactly why AI testing matters - it pushes hiring into the future, where ability speaks louder than experience.

AI testing isn’t going to suddenly vanish, like valuables at an outdoor festival.

Your resistance to them is understandable, because they’re often new and buggy – and it’s hard having to process an entirely new system of getting jobs.

But the only person you’re harming is yourself.

You will be tested. It may not be today, or tomorrow. But resumes are dying out, bias is being replaced with fair assessment and RIGHT NOW, AI skill testing is on par with human testing in many ways. Soon it will blaze past us, like a motorcycle in a marathon.

Based on that AI leadership study we spoke about here are the key changes:

1. AI can assess leadership soft skills with HIGH accuracy

The study found a direct correlation between AI-generated leadership scores and human peer evaluations – in simple terms AI is nearly as effective as people at identifying leadership ability through behavioral patterns.

2. AI outperformed humans in consistency and scalability

Unlike so many human raters, AI systems don’t fatigue, get biased, or need calibration. They apply the same evaluation criteria across thousands of participants, offering fairer and more scalable assessments.

3. AI testing focused on decision-making, emotional insight, and adaptability

The leadership assessments measured economic decision-making, emotional perceptiveness, and fluid intelligence - core soft skills that traditional résumés and interviews FAIL to capture but are super indicators of high-potential leadership.

This is how leadership will be decided.

How AI Measures What Resumes Can’t

Every company wants to find the best leaders.

At Crossover, we do this every day.

We don’t guess who has potential. We test for it > and AI helps us get it right.

Résumés are done. Over. Dead on arrival.

If you’re still leaning on your job history to prove your potential, you’re playing the wrong game! Seriously, AI has made it possible to spot leadership talent through skills-based testing -  not titles, or tenure, and definitely not fabricated LinkedIn profiles.

Sure, an algorithm can scan for hard skills in seconds. But we all know that what really determines success in a leadership role is soft skills - adaptability, insight, decision-making.

• 85% of job success is attributed to leadership soft skills!

At Crossover, we’ve replaced résumé roulette with something radically better: AI-powered skill testing that identifies real leadership potential.

• AI interviews that evaluate how you think, not how well you memorize industry jargon or throw down charisma when you’re drawing a blank.
• AI skill tests that assess your technical abilities through adaptive, high-precision testing that is constantly evolving.
• AI-powered job simulations that mimic real-world scenarios, revealing how you solve problems, lead under pressure, and make strategic calls.
• And yes – soon we will use AI to spot soft skills like decision-making, emotional intelligence, and adaptability.

It’s just a matter of time.

Soon everyone in tech will pursue a fair, fast, and scalable way to find the most qualified candidates - based on what they can actually do. It just makes sense.

If you’re a skill stacking leader ready for a challenge, our system doesn’t care where you’ve worked, where you studied or what you’ve done.

It only cares whether you can rise when it counts.

Right now.

How to Prepare for Leadership Testing with AI

Don’t panic.

You can’t fake your test results - but you can train for these tests.

A new kind of leader is rising > one who thrives on clarity, adapts ultra-fast, and leads with solid logic and keen emotional intelligence.

It's definitely not enough to only sound good in person and look good on paper anymore (yay!). This isn’t the early 2000’s! You need to put your money where your mouth is – or more accurately, your leadership skills into practice.

To deliver under intense pressure, connect with all sorts of people, and make smart calls even when the data’s a dog’s breakfast.

Here’s how to level up in the three core areas AI is testing - and what you can do to get sharper from today.

Economic Decision-Making

AKA: Can You Make the Call When It Counts?

Economic decision-making is a soft skill no leader of the future can be without. It’s the ability to weigh options (without decision fatigue), manage equitable trade-offs, and make strategic decisions - even when the stakes are Everest and the info is foggy.

• Run simulations or AI strategy games where you have to make tough calls fast. This needs to apply to your job directly and your field broadly – be yourself. Asking ChatGPT to create sims for you is fun, and super useful.
• Analyze business case studies  - then rewrite the ending. This is often done in MBA programs, for good reason. Existing problems don’t only have one solution. The more problems you solve, the more creative you learn to become – and it helps you to let go of rigid ways of thinking.
• Practice minimum viable decisions with imperfect data in your day job. We always say here at Crossover, “80% done is better than 100% perfect” – and it keeps things moving forward. Fast decision making is often good decision making.

Emotional Perceptiveness

AKA: AI Reads the Room. Can You?

Emotional perceptiveness or EQ is an understated and key leadership soft skill. Knowing what others are thinking, feeling, or hiding - and leading with empathy, not ego is how good managers become great leaders.

TalentSmart says that 90% of top performers have high EQ, and these include traits like self-awareness, motivation, empathy, social skills and self-regulation.

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• Build asynchronous feedback loops - then actually USE them with your team. Identify one person who will be 100% honest with you at work.
• Track your emotional impact in meetings (and revise your approach) AI can help you track and analyze meetings using sentiment analysis. Pick your favorite meeting note taker to use (Otter.ai, ClickUp or Gemini) and run your transcripts through your LLM of choice for insights.
• Role-play conflict resolution with teammates (don’t skip the awkward ones) And emotional honesty is key, if something bothers you it’s an opportunity to crack open that can of worms and resolve bad feelings – probably on both sides.

Our friend David Burkus chatted to Andrew about team conflict here:

Fluid IQ

AKA: Your Brain, Under Pressure

Fluid intelligence is the raw horsepower of your thinking - how well you learn, adapt, and problem-solve when everything changes.

Now it’s true that fluid intelligence naturally declines as you age, but it’s also true that you can drastically slow that decline with practice.

• Solve logic puzzles or brain games under time pressure. I like to keep a Rubik’s Cube at my desk for a quick brain challenge, and try beat my record of 1 minute 47 seconds. You can also learn to do two hard things at once – like juggling on a treadmill. Challenging exercise will always improve fluid IQ.
• Tackle a problem in a field you know nothing about – forget cognitive bias for a second and focus on a weird/strange/bizarre problem. Einstein always said, “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it,” Understand the problem first, and build a habit of spending the most time there, first.
• Read books in your field, it naturally enhances your fluid IQ, ups your empathy and keeps your neural pathways nice and bend for speedy learning.

This is The Testing Point

Leadership has a new entrance exam - and you can’t fake this one!

Skills-based leadership + AI testing = the future of job placement.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argued that social change doesn’t happen gradually, it happens all at once. 

Ideas reach a critical mass, tip over, and spread like heated butter on a sheet of bread. What he didn’t say is that some of those tipping points come with a test.

This is one of them.

We’ve crossed the line where we don’t have to speculate who has leadership potential or not. We don’t have to defer to the loudest voice, the most imaginatively embellished résumé, or the most familiar demographic in the room.

The Testing Point is where leadership gets proven.

• Not through years of experience > but through decision-making under pressure.
• Not through a rubbish CV > but through AI simulations.
• Not through performance reviews > but through data, precision, and pattern recognition.

That incredible AI study with a 0.81 correlation between AI predictions and real human leadership performance means we now have a system that SEES what most managers miss.

So, you’re not waiting for your leadership potential to be noticed. To catch the right glance from the right exec. You’re training for the moment it gets field tested.

This is where soft skills become hard currency. 

Where talent without proof gets filtered out and where a quiet candidate from nowheresville might just beat the system - because the system finally works.

Just like Ender. The world didn’t know what he was capable of.

But the test did. 

It’s not science-fiction anymore.

Are you ready to be tested?

Apply now