I have been doing a lot of reading lately. I’m reading, moving my eyes across a page and I’m listening, someone is reading a book to me. Most of what I’m reading, (apart from the odd and accidental bodice ripper), is about consciousness, leadership and AI.

I was gifted a book, The Hidden Spring, by Mark Solms a few years ago now. This book brings forth a vital reminder for us during our current time: consciousness begins in feeling, not thinking. In a world increasingly seduced by artificial intelligence—where logic, pattern recognition, and efficiency dominate—it’s a welcome invitation back into our bodies.

No surprises, that this has deep implications for leadership.

As AI gets faster, more predictive, and seemingly more “intelligent,” the risk is that we confuse computation for wisdom, and processing power for consciousness. But Solms shows us that what makes us conscious—and therefore what makes us human—is not our ability to think, but our capacity to feel.

1. The Source of Consciousness Is the Feeling Self

Leadership has long valorised the rational, decisive, unflinching leader. But Solms’ work suggests that the most accurate, conscious, and adaptive responses arise not from disembodied intellect, but from a deep connection to our felt sense of the world.

In practice, this means leaders who are attuned to their emotional states—to discomfort, unease, joy, relief—are actually more conscious, not less. These internal signals form the foundation of conscious decision-making, especially under conditions of complexity or moral ambiguity.

In contrast, AI will always lack this core: it can mimic patterns of emotion, but it does not feel.

2. The Free Energy Principle: Minimising Surprise

Solms draws on Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle to explain how the brain works to reduce prediction error—how it constantly revises its model of the world to feel more “right.” This is not just a computational process. It’s guided by affect. We can feel when something’s off.

This has important relevance for leadership. Leaders are constantly modelling future states—what might happen, how people will respond, where risk lies. But these models are often intuitively sensed before they are intellectually analysed.

In the face of AI’s seductive certainty, this principle reminds us that adaptive leadership depends on emotional honesty. When something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t—no matter what the data says.

3. The Conscious Id and Leadership Integrity

Solms flips Freud: the id is conscious. Our core drives, our yearning for connection, safety, vitality—these are not subconscious urges to be controlled, but primary expressions of consciousness itself.

This challenges leaders to stop hiding or suppressing emotion under the guise of professionalism. Instead, it’s an invitation to lead from a more integrated self—to bring our wholeness into the room. Not to act out our feelings, but to listen to them, and let them inform how we lead.

In an increasingly AI-driven world, this capacity for emotional discernment and self-reflection becomes a form of intelligence that machines cannot replicate. It is, in essence, what keeps leadership human.

Implications for the AI Era

AI is scaling faster than we can comprehend. It is already making decisions, writing policies, generating knowledge. And yet, as Solms shows, it lacks the fundamental core of consciousness: the capacity to suffer, to desire, to care.

Leadership today must orient around this difference. The human advantage is not speed. It’s depth. It’s presence. It’s our ability to sense into the unseen dynamics of a team, to pause at a moral crossroads, to notice the tension between what’s right and what’s easy.

A conscious leader is not one who knows more. It’s one who feels more.

🎤🫳🏻

Who is Melis Senova?

I am a coach and advisor to design leaders, C-level executives and leaders in government. My work in This Human is dedicated to the next generation of designers and leaders.

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