Still Human: Real Talk in the Age of AI
Sep 22, 2026 · 38 min · 12 segments
Claire Koryczan is the founder of **Imagine Beyond** and has spent twenty-five years working with FTSE 100s, Fortune 500s and scale-ups. She trained as a coach after a decade in the creative…
Nadia KoskiHostSo, I mean, uncertainty is what is going to activate the threat response in our brains.
And so when the threat response, because the brain is always looking to be able to predict the future, it's a prediction machine.
It wants to conserve energy and keep us in that place of certainty and predictability.
And we are operating now under such uncertainty that, that we can be constantly in that threat mode response.
And what happens when we feel stressed, we feel anxious, we feel worried and concerned is that we're mobilized for fight, flight, freeze.
And so it makes it much harder to activate prefrontal cortex, our executive functioning.
which is where our problem solving, our critical thinking, our creativity lives.
But if we're constantly in that place of uncertainty and unknowing, our bodies are mobilized for that threat response.
So we can often be in survival rather than the thriving mode where we're able to harness all aspects of our brains.
And I had a leader that I was working with recently that said, how can I lead and give certainty when I'm constantly in a place of uncertainty and there's so much uncertainty? And so I think recognizing what's going on in our brains and rather than just kind of diving into all of those things when we're not able to harness the full capacity of our cognitive functioning, actually just taking a pause and you know, recalibrating even just something simple, like a few deep breaths helps to just calm the nervous system and go, you're safe.
So recognizing what all of this uncertainty is doing for us as leaders, especially having to make decisions under extreme uncertainty and give clarity and direction is is a really important part of showing up as the best version of yourself and taking people on the journey.
I feel like as women, too, I've been reading a lot about this and also working with some femtech startups, that as women, our cortisol levels are through the roof because we're in, like you said, constant fight and flight mode.
And then now, you know, this was a big discussion point that has been in the news over the past three months.
It's like, if you don't jump on the AI train as a woman, you're going to be left behind.
So, I mean, uncertainty is what is going to activate the threat response in our brains.
And so when the threat response, because the brain is always looking to be able to predict the future, it's a prediction machine.
It wants to conserve energy and keep us in that place of certainty and predictability.
And we are operating now under such uncertainty that, that we can be constantly in that threat mode response.
And what happens when we feel stressed, we feel anxious, we feel worried and concerned is that we're mobilized for fight, flight, freeze.
And so it makes it much harder to activate prefrontal cortex, our executive functioning.
which is where our problem solving, our critical thinking, our creativity lives.
But if we're constantly in that place of uncertainty and unknowing, our bodies are mobilized for that threat response.
So we can often be in survival rather than the thriving mode where we're able to harness all aspects of our brains.
And I had a leader that I was working with recently that said, how can I lead and give certainty when I'm constantly in a place of uncertainty and there's so much uncertainty? And so I think recognizing what's going on in our brains and rather than just kind of diving into all of those things when we're not able to harness the full capacity of our cognitive functioning, actually just taking a pause and you know, recalibrating even just something simple, like a few deep breaths helps to just calm the nervous system and go, you're safe.
So recognizing what all of this uncertainty is doing for us as leaders, especially having to make decisions under extreme uncertainty and give clarity and direction is is a really important part of showing up as the best version of yourself and taking people on the journey.
I feel like as women, too, I've been reading a lot about this and also working with some femtech startups, that as women, our cortisol levels are through the roof because we're in, like you said, constant fight and flight mode.
And then now, you know, this was a big discussion point that has been in the news over the past three months.
It's like, if you don't jump on the AI train as a woman, you're going to be left behind.
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