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Most leaders today know that AI is important. But it is no longer enough to simply understand AI (and if we are being completely factual, only a minority of leaders truly understand AI at this point in time). As a leader, you must be able to use AI in your leadership role.
This applies just as much to senior executives. You cannot make the right decisions if you are unable to use AI. When you start using AI, it changes the way you see organizations and leadership.
So, here you will find a simple introduction to how AI works in practice, and how you as a leader can use AI in your leadership work. My hypothesis is that if you embrace it wholeheartedly, it will also change the way you see organizations and leadership, in such a way that you become better equipped to engage with the future.
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 this 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 understanding the processes, rituals, and workflows in your job where AI can help you perform better.
How AI Works for Leaders in Practice
To help you identify the needs, processes, and workflows in your own are, where you are the expert, a small amount of background knowledge about AI is necessary. You do not need to understand algorithms or coding. But you do need a basic understanding of two things about how AI agents work.
An AI agent consists of:
1) A brain with memory
This is what you get when you use services such as Mistral, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, OpenAI, or other similar platforms. You do not need to think much about this part, except that for security reasons you should always use the AI tools provided by your company when working with sensitive or confidential information.
2) The knowledge you provide it to work with
This can be divided into three groups:
- Prompt instructions. Here it is important that you provide clear and specific instructions.
- Contextual knowledge For example: strategy documents, personality assessments, your development plan, your company’s ways of working, performance review guidelines, or the names of experts whose perspectives you want the AI to emulate.
- Tools. You can also use tools such as N8N, Zapier, or built-in skills in Claude, enabling you to ask the AI to automatically perform tasks. This could include sending a calendar invitation or screening a LinkedIn profile.
AI for leaders 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 think and how you lead.
If you would like to work more systematically with AI in leadership, you can read more about how to get started in just three sessions here: The AI-confident Leader.
The next article in the series AI for Leaders: 3 Steps to Using AI in Practice in Your Leadership Work will be published soon.
