As John Maxwell’s quote goes, “A Leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way”. The word leadership is many things to many people. It varies sometimes based on what value system an organization is created on. However, for any leading and successful organization, its leaders exhibit certain traits and play a major role in shaping the organizational culture and future. A culture essential part of the organization’s fabric of success, vision, and priorities. Leaders today wear various hats and play multiple roles, but when it comes to people management there are some consistent themes around their roles and responsibilities.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming various industries, and leadership and people management are no exception. As AI capabilities continue to advance and augment our work, its potential to revolutionize how organizations operate, interact with their employees, and make strategic decisions is becoming increasingly apparent. Today we see many use cases of AI and its ability to simplify mundane tasks, its ability to process data draw insights, and how it has been effective in understanding human language and parsing it into technical and vice versa depending on the need. Similarly, AI’s influence in enhancing decision-making making with backed up by data is helping us be more efficient. With this article let's explore how AI is reshaping leadership focusing on areas such as talent acquisition, strategy, employee development, decision-making, and ethical considerations.
Decision-Making and Strategy
Today, AI can assist leaders in making more informed and data-driven decisions. By analyzing vast amounts of data, identifying trends, patterns, and opportunities that may take a really long time to be done manually. This makes creating actionable insights, prioritization, and strategic decision-making a lot easier. AI can also help leaders learn about market trends or customer feedback faster enabling them to respond better to changing market conditions.
With that said, AI is not perfect and it has its shortfalls. AI can have biases based on what data its models are trained on. These unconscious biases can creep into the decision-making if the leaders do not take the time to understand the data and the outcomes of AI. This can be mitigated to some extent by ensuring the models are trained regularly and there is a review happening on AI tools and their outcomes.
Furthermore, AI can automate routine tasks, freeing up leaders to focus on their employee development or other strategic initiatives. This can lead to higher productivity and innovation in the organization. A simple example of how AI can enhance an organizational leader's day is from my personal experience, how it helps me focus on important actions vading through the noise. The collaboration tool we use internally for team and cross-functional communication is filled with 1000s of unread messages in a day. It is very difficult for me to go over all of them and to know what should I focus on and which ones I can ignore. The AI bot now can summarize all those for me and also create a specific list of action items from those threads, where my inputs or actions are required. I can also automate it further to create those action items into my task on my to or Trello board and just review them there. All of this helps me save so much time, the time I can use for other important priorities on my plate.
Mentoring and Employee Development
As part of my leadership role, I do regular check-ins, 1:1’s, and coaching sessions with my teams, my peers, and my superiors. Today with the help of AI, I can automate note-taking, note down actions for each individual, work on individual career progression or closing skill gaps and so much more.
AI can play a crucial role in employee development and training. AI-powered platforms can personalize learning experiences, recommend learning paths, and create tailored training programs. Additionally, AI can help me identify an emerging skill gap in my organization as the needs of my organization are changing. This can help leaders identify and nurture future talent and improve succession planning. This gives leaders an edge to ensure their teams stay productive and competitive for the skills required for their team’s individual and organization’s success.
Talent Acquisition and Onboarding
AI has been proven to be very effective in streamlining recruiting efforts by automating the sourcing of candidates, resume screening, and initial assessment. The Automated tools can sift through vast databases of resumes and applications shortlisting candidates. The AI recruiters & chatbots can then engage with potential candidates by providing initial information and answering their questions. Just earlier this week someone pitched me an AI interviewer that can do candidate screening based on candidates' resumes and job skills required to see if it is a right fit by doing a video call with the candidate. I was amazed to see how natural and real & human the AI-generated recruiter looked and the way it conducted the screening interview. All of this can be a big time-saving in a process that is extremely time-consuming and cumbersome today, to say the least.
Once a Candidate is onboarded, AI can also help streamline the onboarding process, creating a tailored onboarding plan, AI can automate administrative tasks such as filing tickets to get access, paperwork, benefits review, enrollments, and allowing new hires to focus on learning about his team and new role.
While all of these advancements sound great the leaders will need to ensure transparency and accountability in this process to avoid over-reliance on algorithms and ensure fair and equitable process for all.
Ethical Considerations
While AI offers significant benefits, it is important to address the ethical implications of its use in leadership and people management. Privacy concerns, bias, and job displacement are among the key ethical challenges that must be carefully considered.
Organizations must ensure that AI systems are used ethically and responsibly. This includes implementing measures to protect employee privacy, mitigating bias in AI algorithms, and addressing potential job losses. Additionally, organizations must develop clear guidelines and policies for the use of AI in leadership and people management.
What do the Leaders need to change for an AI-driven workplace?
Today we are looking at the beginning of a new technology era with AI. It is not just a tool for optimizing your operations but a transformative force in leadership and people management. With AI advancing, the roles of leaders will change too. Below are a few things that today’s leaders need to start adopting.
Continuous learning and change: As leaders, we are always learning but now the change will be more rapid than we ever witnessed in history. This adaptability will be required not only in themselves but also in fostering these qualities in their teams as AI continuously reshapes how we work.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ): AI will take over a lot of repetitive tasks and data-driven decision-making, as leaders we will need to focus more on the emotional quotient. AI can do jobs with predictable outcomes but it is not great to deal with ambiguity and areas that require subject matter expertise or strong reasoning skills. So it will be really important for leaders to continue motivating mentoring and connecting with their employees on a human level.
Envision a future where AI acts as a strategic advisor to leaders but with us (human leaders) retaining the final say on complex, moral, and ethical decisions. The human element of building relationships, inspiring, and providing emotional support will remain irreplaceable. So I will highly encourage you to treat AI as a really valuable tool that can augment your operations, and enhance efficiency but do it with a strong focus on human values and the development of subject matter expertise in your teams. The digital will keep enhancing how we function or do our jobs but the human touch that embodies empathy, creativity, and ethical decision-making will always be equally important for a high-growth organizational leader.
Siddharth Parakh has over 16 years of experience building SaaS & Enterprise Software Solutions for Large eCommerce, Financial, and health tech companies. He was privileged to transition from a software developer to an Engineering Leader role. He finds this journey immensely fulfilling, as it has allowed him to gain a comprehensive understanding of technical, managerial, and business aspects of Computer Science, SaaS technologies, and enterprise product development. As a senior engineering Manager, Siddharth Leads Product development at Medable Inc. is a US-based organization focused on building groundbreaking solutions for decentralized clinical trials and clinical research. He is based in Seattle WA and loves traveling and exploring different kinds of cuisines with his family when not working.
