What exactly are we asking leaders to do differently because of AI?

I really feel for leaders at the moment. They’re surrounded by ambiguous statements about what they need to do differently, they’re the villain in lots of people’s work stories, and they’re often the ones trying to translate executive statements that haven’t been clearly defined.

I read two Gallup stats recently that really made me want to jump to the defense of this group. Almost every CHRO they surveyed said AI was important to their organization’s strategy, but 50% weren’t confident in their manager’s ability to guide employees on using it. At the same time, only 25% of US employees say their organization has communicated a clear plan for integrating AI into how the business actually works.

As always, I’m focused on the gap between the two. It seems to be where most of my work ends up, and apparently I have a type.

So we’re concerned that leaders aren’t equipped to drive AI adoption, but how clearly have we actually told them what we want them to do?

If you asked an exec team what they actually expect leaders to do differently on Monday, how specific could they be?

Imagine the answer (which I have heard a few too many times) is “We need our leaders to drive AI adoption.” Fine, but what does that mean for Sarah, who runs a 60-person function and already has a full job?

Does she need to find three workflows to redesign this quarter? Does she need to understand agents well enough to decide where they could replace existing processes? Is she expected to redesign roles if work disappears? Does she have the authority to stop existing work? How much experimentation can she allow before it affects delivery? Is she supposed to coach people through fears about their jobs? What happens when someone on her team understands the tech better than she does? What has been removed from her objectives while she works all this out?

Or, my favorite question, what are we asking leaders to let go of?

We talk a lot about what leaders need to learn because of AI, but I think there’s another side to this that we’re not talking about enough. What might leaders need to unlearn, stop doing, or stop being known for.

Imagine being someone who’s spent 10, 15 or 20+ years becoming an expert and now finding that they’re no longer the expert, or someone who built the existing process or workflow, fought to get everyone on board to use it, and is now responsible for dismantling it, or someone who’s always been the go-to person because they know what to do but now have people much more junior than them who understand the technology better than they do.

A lot of our identity and value at work is tied into what we know and what we’re good at, so that’s a pretty significant change.

I also think we need to be careful about putting all of this under the banner of resistance to AI. Of course there will be people who don’t want to change, but if you’ve spent decades building an identity around being good at something, there is probably more going on than whether you’ve had enough training.

Yes, we’re asking people to learn something new, but in some cases, we’re also asking them to let go of part of how they’ve understood their value at work for years. They’re not the same problem.

What I find interesting is that while all of this is going on, I’m seeing very well-known CEOs talking publicly about how they don’t do 1:1s with their leaders, or don’t believe that’s where their time should be spent.

I wholeheartedly disagree and think leaders actually need more individual support right now, not less.

If we’re asking someone to rethink the function they run, make decisions about which work should disappear, potentially change roles on their team and work out what all of this means for their own role at the same time, where are they supposed to work through that?

Leaders need to have somewhere they can talk about the things they’re finding difficult, including the things they probably don’t want to say to HR or the team they’re supposed to be leading through it.

I think we sometimes forget the humanity at the more senior levels of an organization. Someone doesn’t stop needing support because they’ve reached VP or C-suite. If anything, there are fewer people they can be completely open with, especially when some of what they’re trying to work out is what these changes mean for them personally.

This is where I keep coming back to Sarah.

Maybe she doesn’t understand the technology well enough yet, or maybe she understands it perfectly well but doesn’t have the authority to change the workflows or roles that need changing. Maybe she knows exactly what she wants to do but is struggling with what that means for her team. Or maybe this is very personal for Sarah and she’s working out what her own value is now when the expertise she’s spent 20 years building is changing.

From the outside, all of these could look like “AI adoption problems”.

So maybe, before we decide a leader isn’t capable of driving AI adoption hard enough, we need to understand what’s actually making it difficult for them?