“Machines are tools. They are not our masters.”
~ John F. Kennedy
The following could happen to you sooner than you think…
You sit down at your desk at work and get this message: “You have been selected to get an AI coach!”
Would you be excited – or hesitant? And why were you “selected” for a coach?
As the questions start racing through your mind, you wonder if this is a compliment to your potential or a subtle nudge that your leadership could use some improvement.
Can an algorithm truly understand the complexities of leadership?
Can it guide you through the nuances of great decision-making, team dynamics, and the ever-present pressure to deliver results?
What if the AI gets it wrong?
What if relying on it makes you lose touch with your instincts?
What will your team think when they learn that you have an AI coach?
AI is already revolutionizing industries from healthcare to finance, promising smarter, faster, more accurate solutions. But leadership? That’s personal. Leadership is about relationships, emotions, and decisions – all domains that AI has yet to master.
Before going any further, I’d like you to consider these five questions as a kind of self-assessment:
- How confident do you feel about balancing AI feedback with your own intuition as a leader?
- Are you more focused on measurable outcomes or emotional connections with your team?
- How would your team react to knowing that the guidance of AI is integrated into your leadership decisions?
- How skilled are you with navigating resistance to AI adoption?
- Can AI’s insights generate meaningful goals for your team?
Pause.
I picked these five topics because – to me – they are central to the experience we will all eventually have to go through.
AI is not going away, so let’s prepare ourselves to catch that wave – versus getting overwhelmed by it instead.
Point 1: Balancing AI Feedback and Human Intuition
AI excels at providing data-driven insights. It can identify trends, forecast outcomes, and flag potential risks with remarkable precision. But it cannot replace your intuition – that gut-level understanding shaped by years of experience and real-time context.
And let’s be honest… over-relying on AI can create risks. Big ones. Leaders who defer too much to algorithms risk losing touch with the human element of great leadership: empathy, adaptability, and judgment. Worse, they may fall into the Ego-Fear Loop – a cycle where the fear of failure, rejection, and/or risk drives over-dependence on choices that that “guarantee” success, significance, and control. This kind of thinking not only limits performance in the long-run, it erodes one’s own sense of self.
Imagine a leader who relies solely on AI-generated metrics to evaluate team performance. The numbers look good, so they assume everything is fine. But the team’s morale is crumbling under unspoken frustrations. Without intuition and active engagement, the leader misses the warning signs until the proverbial foundation crumbles apart and a once “thriving” business joins the trash heap of other like-minded companies (Like Blackberry, WeWork, and even Boeing).
The lesson? AI should inform your leadership, not dictate it. Confidence comes from balancing the strengths of AI with your own human judgment.
Point 2: Measurable Outcomes vs. Emotional Leadership
AI prioritizes measurable outcomes. It’s programmed to optimize for efficiency, productivity, and results. And while these are critical to success, they’re only part of the equation.
Leadership also requires emotional intelligence: the ability to resolve conflict, motivate teams, and build trust. These relational dynamics don’t show up on a dashboard but are vital to sustaining high performance. You cannot have sustainable outcomes without engaged humans.
Consider a leader facing a team conflict. AI might suggest reallocating resources or adjusting deadlines to hit targets. But what about the root cause of the tension? Addressing the interpersonal issues – listening to concerns, mediating disagreements, and fostering alignment – is what ultimately strengthens the team (and may actually keep the problem from surfacing again).
Leaders driven solely by AI’s pursuit of success risk falling deeper into a downward spiral, sidelining emotional connection in favor of hitting metrics. To truly thrive, leaders must integrate the insights of AI with the soft skills that build morale, trust, and engagement.
Point 3: Team Perceptions of AI-Driven Leadership
For AI to work in leadership, your team has to trust it AND you. If employees feel their feedback is filtered or misinterpreted by AI (or worse… ignored) trust will erode. And once trust erodes, accountability goes out the door with it.
Transparency is key here. When introducing AI, leaders must ensure their teams understand how it works, what data is being collected, and how insights will be generated and ultimately used.
In the absence of information, people create their own. The more we share about what AI is – and isn’t – the better our teams will be equipped to accept it.
For example, if AI identifies workload imbalances, share this finding openly and involve the team in addressing it. It’s very likely that they will see something that the AI missed. But instead of rejecting the value of AI, the team will be enlisted in teaching it so that it’s full potential can be used by everyone. This approach not only reinforces trust but also demonstrates your commitment to using AI responsibly.
Leaders may be afraid to share insights that reflect poorly on them or their teams. But avoiding hard truths undermines credibility. Building trust requires embracing transparency, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Point 4: Navigating the S-Curve of Change
Introducing AI tools often follows the S-curve of change. Some employees will embrace it as early adopters, while others will resist or remain skeptical. Navigating this curve requires patience and strategy.
Here’s how to overcome resistance:
- Engage Early Adopters: Identify team members who are enthusiastic about AI and position them as ambassadors. Show them how to be successful with AI and then leverage their success stories to inspire others.
- Reassure Skeptics: Use transparency and communication to address concerns. Show how AI enhances—not replaces—their roles. Give them a chance to change their own minds, using the success stories of their peers as evidence for the value of that shift.
- Gradually Integrate for the Hesitant: Introduce AI in small, manageable steps. Familiarity builds trust over time. The fence-sitters on your team aren’t fighting you; they’re just slower to commit.
The goal here is to get your open resistance down to 20% (1 out of 5 people). If resistance is just 5% higher, it becomes 25% (1 out of 4 people). Every skeptic will hijack someone who is hesitant. That creates a 50/50 split of resistors versus ambassadors – and any momentum you hope to generate will be crushed.
Point 5: Aligning AI Patterns with Team Performance
This last point is where I get most excited. You see, the real value of AI in leadership lies in its ability to identify actionable patterns that improve team performance. But not all patterns are meaningful. Leaders must guide AI to focus on insights that align with their goals for building and maintaining a high-performance team. THIS is the ultimate goal for leaders.
When we teach the machine to identify actionable patterns that drive high-performance teaming, we can MASSIVELY accelerate our own transformation as high-performance team leaders.
Examples of actionable patterns include:
- Collaboration dynamics: Who works well together and where are the bottlenecks?
- Workload balance: Are any team members consistently overburdened?
- Innovation drivers: What conditions spark the most creativity?
These insights create and reinforce high-performance teaming, both for leaders and their players. In other words, we can use AI-generated insights and guidance to make just-in-time pivots that increase the clarity, empowerment, and engagement we so desperately need. When AI highlights what’s working and what’s not, it empowers everyone to improve.
Here’s Your Challenge
AI is a powerful tool, but it’s not a magic wand. As a leader, your role is to guide it, balance it with human intuition, and ensure it serves your team’s best interests. When (not if) it comes to become your coach, embrace the change as an opportunity.
Because the future of leadership isn’t about choosing between AI and humanity. It’s about combining them to create something stronger.
Holomua. Onward and upward.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/would-you-trust-ai-coach-leader-tim-ohai-mmwtc
An extra thought:
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence. It is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
~ Peter Drucker
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