AI is forcing leadership to improve, not just go faster

AI won’t take your job, someone who knows how to use it will

Forty-two percent of chief human resource officers say they’re prioritizing investments in AI. Five percent of their teams say they feel ready to use it. The strategy is ahead of the capability.

And it’s become clear that while AI might not take your job, someone who knows how to use it will. We’ve been through this before.

For centuries, humans have applied the way we work with existing media to the shiny new medium. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he positioned it as a broadcasting device. Radios were “newspapers you can hear,” and early internet was a collection of static online brochures. Today, AI for most is just “better Google.”

When new technology arrives, we don’t meet it with new behaviors. We import the old ones. The average ChatGPT prompt today is less than 10 words. (Google searches average around five). Nearly 90% of users aren’t structuring prompts thoughtfully at all — rather defaulting to quick, simple asks.

42% of CHROs said they’re prioritizing investments in AI for HR, but only 5% of their teams feel prepared to put it into practice.

– Workforce 2025 Survey, Korn Ferry

Even in its limited use, leaders are summarizing meetings faster, drafting emails in seconds and turning rough copy into something more polished.

On the surface, it’s working. But we’re still not having conversations with AI. We’re typing at it.

Ask AI a vague question, and you’ll get an enthusiastic — but generic — response. Give it a sharp contextual prompt, and it becomes a powerful extension of your judgment.

Shift your paradigm from tool to teammate

Stop thinking about AI as a tool, and start using it as your teammate — someone you can dialogue, ideate and even spar with.

Right now, most leaders are using it to move faster, without getting any better.

That’s a risk. In Indianapolis alone, more than 13% of jobs —more than 140,000 roles — are at risk of disruption from AI.

Simultaneously, Indiana’s own economic forecasts suggest AI could generate tens of billions of dollars in new value for the state, if organizations know how to use it well.

The gap between those two realities is leadership capability. The organizations pulling ahead aren’t the ones using AI the most. They’re the ones using it to sharpen their thinking.

The upside is huge: Research shows companies adopting AI effectively can save 20-plus hours of work per employee each month.

Three ways to use AI to your advantage as a leader

If you’re experimenting with AI (and you should be), here are three ways to make sure it’s actually making you better, not just faster.

1. Use AI to pressure-test decisions, not replace them.

Most leaders use AI at the end of the process. They ask AI to draft the message, summarize the idea or clean up the thinking. That’s not strategy; it’s formatting.

The more powerful move is to bring AI in earlier to challenge your assumptions before you finalize them.

Ask it:

• What am I missing?
• Where might this fail?
• What would someone who’s wired differently than I am say?

If AI always agrees with you, you’re using it wrong.

2. Don’t outsource the hard part: thinking.

There’s a sneaky trap in AI adoption: The better the tool gets, the easier it is to skip the hard thinking altogether. The hard part is where judgment gets built. You don’t accelerate capability when you remove it, you erode it. 

The leaders getting this right are intentional about preserving “thought.”

They might ask team members to:

• Draft a point of view before using AI.
• Compare their thinking to AI’s output.
• Refine prompts to improve the quality of a response.

The goal isn’t speed; it’s substance.

3. Set rules before the technology sets them for you.

In many organizations, AI adoption is happening organically. Employees are experimenting with their personal accounts. And sensitive information is being shared without much oversight.

This isn’t innovation; it’s exposure. Leaders don’t need to control every use case. But they do need to define the boundaries.

• What data is safe to share?
• Where should AI be off-limits?
• What standard does the output need to meet?

Ready to rise to the challenge?

AI isn’t just changing the way work gets done. It’s changing what effective leadership requires. And whether organizations realize it yet or not, AI is forcing a leadership upgrade.

This technology is not here to replace our humanity but to challenge us to elevate it. 

Some leaders will use it to move a little faster. Others will use it to think better.

Only one of those creates a lasting advantage. •

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AI and Leadership Development

• The Leadership Question Behind the AI Boom
• Strengthening Culture In the AI Storm from The People Who Help People podcast
• Sage Against the Machine
• ADVISA launches AI leadership training with program “Leading with AI”

AI is changing work, but leadership still requires humans

AI is changing how work gets done. It’s also changing what leadership requires. Leading with AI, a new training experience from ADVISA, helps leaders adapt how they think, decide, and lead in an AI-enabled workplace.

In this one-day workshop, you will:

• Apply AI to real leadership challenges and problem-solving
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Learn more about the Leading with AI program and upcoming sessions here.