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Many leaders have not yet truly gotten started with AI. At the time of writing, it is estimated that only 10–15% of leaders are using AI. These challenges also apply to senior executives.
I work with leaders in international organizations and help them use AI in their leadership work. My focus is not on the technology itself, but on how AI changes the way leaders think, decide, and work. In my company, we believe that leadership expertise is the perfect starting point for understanding how you as a leader should work with AI. Because ultimately, it is not about the technology—it is about identifying the processes, work-streams, and needs in your job where AI can help you perform better.
It is time to get started if you want to remain relevant. But it requires that you set aside a few hours to get started and decide to use your new AI agent at least 1–2 times per week. In addition, you must put your knowledge into practice. As a leader, you must be able to use your domain expertise to assess:
• which tasks and work-streams AI can support
• where AI can create value in your work processes
• and how AI should be applied in practice.
At the same time, a new leadership responsibility is emerging. You should not just use AI, you must be able to lead the work with AI. This means that you must be able to:
• ask the right questions
• set direction for how AI is used
• evaluate the quality of the output.
This is where many leaders stand today. Not because AI is technically difficult. But because it requires leadership judgment
The 3 Steps: How to Use AI in Your Leadership Work
What matters most is whether you begin using AI in practice in your leadership work. When you use it in practice, it changes the way you think about organizations and leadership. You begin to see how you can change the way you do things so you can become much better. Here are three concrete steps you can take.
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1. Learn to formulate your prompts
Many people experience that AI gives superficial answers. This is often because the question is unclear, their prompt is not good enough, or they have not provided their AI agent with enough contextual knowledge. The clearer you are about:
• the situation
• your role
• the desired outcome.
…the better the response will be. An example is:
“I am going to have a conversation with [role/person] about [situation]. My goal is [goal]. Help me structure the conversation so that it becomes clear and respectful.”
A simple structure you can always use:
Role + Situation + Task
In the next article in this series, you can read more about how to create good prompts. In addition to having good prompts, AI will give better responses when you provide contextual knowledge.
2. Provide your AI agent with contextual knowledge
AI becomes valuable when you also use it as a sparring partner in your leadership work. One leader we worked with in a C20 company became so pleased with their AI coach that it became part of leadership meetings, and the rest of the leadership team did not want to be without it. They brought it into meetings, where it listened, took notes, and highlighted key points of attention. There are many things you can use an AI leadership assistant for. For example, you can use it to:
• prepare important conversations
• challenge your thinking
• uncover blind spots.
When it knows your context, you can ask it:
“Here is my current assessment: [description]. Challenge my thinking and point out possible blind spots.”
When AI understands your context, it becomes significantly more relevant. Therefore, the next question is: what knowledge could you share with your AI agent?
Like a human, it only becomes a good sparring partner once it has knowledge about what you need sparring on. Otherwise, the responses become general and sometimes a bit simplistic. That knowledge could be:
• strategy documents
• design guides
• personality assessments
• project plans
• full transcripts of meetings
• a book or report you have written.
Typically, we see that people provide too little information when they first start using AI, and when they become more experienced, they provide too much. It is important to find the right balance. If I want to use AI to give me sparring on a new LinkedIn post, for example, it may not need all the books I have written, but only the chapter that relates to what I want to communicate in my post. Practice makes perfect.
3. Identify where AI creates value in your work
Do not start with the tool. Start with your work. The question is not what AI can do.
The question is where it makes sense to use it in your way of working. You have a number of workstreams where you spend time:
• thinking
• structuring
• preparing
• analyzing.
This is often where AI can create value. To make it concrete, you can ask yourselves some simple questions:
• Where do we spend time thinking alone before making decisions?
Where do we lack sparring before moving forward?
• Where do we spend time preparing important conversations and meetings?
Where do we need to formulate messages clearly and precisely?
• Where do we work with complex problems that are difficult to get an overview of?
Where do we need to see multiple perspectives before making decisions?
• Where do we spend time reviewing and understanding large amounts of information?
Where do we need to quickly identify what matters most?
• Where do we repeat the same types of tasks again and again?
Where could we save time if we did not have to start from scratch each time?
If a task is recurring, requires thinking, and does not have one correct answer, it is often a good candidate for AI.
AI does not create value by itself. Value arises when you as leaders become clear about where it supports your work. This is not a technical exercise. It is a leadership task.
Try AI in Leadership Multiple Times
The first experience with AI is rarely the best. Leaders who gain value from AI try again. They adjust their questions, add context, and become clearer. This is where quality emerges. AI is not an answer key. It is a draft.
Over time, AI becomes real support in your leadership work. Because AI in leadership is not about technology. It is about learning to think together with AI. Once you begin working with AI in this way, it stops being just a tool. It becomes part of how you lead. That is when AI becomes truly relevant for leaders.
If you would like to work more structured with AI in leadership, you can read more about how to get ready in just three sessions with the course here:
The AI-Competent Leader.
You can also read the article in the series AI for Leaders: How AI works in Practice.
