Winning in times of complexity and AI with NFL alum Eric Boles

Eric Boles has seen teamwork at its most demanding. First on the NFL field with the Green Bay Packers and New York Jets, and now in the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies. As a leadership coach, keynote speaker, and author of Moving to Great: Unleashing Your Best in Life and Work, he’s guided executives at IBM, PwC, and Georgia Pacific through times of rapid change.

In his Face Value session with Celonis, Boles shared his hard-won lessons on leading through uncertainty, building resilient teams, and finding clarity when complexity threatens to overwhelm. His message: the fundamentals of leadership haven’t changed, but the stakes – and the speed of business – have.

Seeing the oak tree in the acorn

Boles began with a powerful metaphor about leadership vision. For him, it’s about seeing potential where others only see performance.

“If I were holding an acorn in my hand right now and I showed it to you and I asked, ‘What are you looking at?’ many of you would say, ‘I’m looking at an acorn.’ But some of you would look at that same thing and then say something like, ‘No, what I see is an oak tree. I’m looking at an acorn, but I understand on the inside of that acorn is the possibility of a mighty oak tree.’”

Leaders, he argued, must recognize and nurture the hidden capacity within their teams – especially under pressure.

Winning with fundamentals

While NFL fans celebrate highlight plays, Boles reminded the audience that championships are built on basics.

“TNT are the things that ‘take no talent’. Talent raises the ceiling, but the things that take no talent – which are discipline, processes, that blocking and tackling, being in the right spot – they raise the floor.”

For Boles, those fundamentals create the foundation that allows talent to reach its true potential.

Clarity through huddles

The biggest obstacles to performance today, according to Boles, aren’t a lack of skill or effort. They’re distractions and fear. To counter them, he emphasized the importance of “huddling up.”

“No matter how talented a football team is, if we don’t huddle or if the quarterback says just get open, that’s not a very good play. It’s not effective.”

He added that alignment requires five points: “What it is we’re wanting to do, why we’re wanting to do it, how we’re doing it – with flexibility – the benefits of doing it, and the cost of inaction.”

Leaders who skip this step, he warned, end up with teams working hard but not always on the right things.

Facing fear, embracing AI

Fear, Boles explained, can spread quickly. But so can its opposite: “Fear is contagious, but so is courage.”

He stressed that leaders need to talk about fear openly, especially when it comes to uncertainty around AI.

“I view AI not as just a tool, but as a thought partner. It helps us think. It helps us do all the things in such significant ways, and it helps facilitate the kind of speed where we can get to all the stuff that used to get in the way.”

By taking routine work off the table, he said, AI frees people to focus on “the high-leverage problem solving that only comes from dialogue.”

Influence over titles

Boles made it clear that leadership today isn’t about job titles. It’s about real impact.

“As the future goes on and we’re seeing it, titles are carrying less and less influence. What people want to be influenced by is real impact. Are you adding value or not?”

Titles alone don’t inspire commitment or loyalty. Showing people they matter, listening to their input, and giving them a stake in the outcome does.

When leaders invite people into the process, they earn influence that can’t be mandated from above.

This kind of influence, Boles argued, is what allows teams to move quickly in uncertain times. A title can tell people where you sit on the org chart – but influence is what convinces them to follow you into change.

A new kind of teamwork

Boles was candid about the reality of teamwork in the modern enterprise. “Teamwork is very inconvenient if you don’t have a good reason for it.” It takes effort, patience, and compromise. Without a clear vision, people won’t commit to the hard work it requires.

When that vision is in place, though, teamwork becomes a powerful differentiator. Even in an era shaped by AI, Boles stressed that human fundamentals still matter most.

He reminded the audience that success is built long before the spotlight: “Champions are celebrated in the light, but they’re made in the dark. It’s what you do when no one’s looking that matters the most.”