AI is exposing leaders, but not in the way you might think. 3 steps to being a better leader next week
AI is exposing leaders. But not in the way people often mean.
Not because they don't understand the technology — plenty do, and that gap is closing fast. This isn't another article on AI literacy.
AI is exposing leaders because it's stripping away some of the conditions that used to let weak leadership hide: long planning cycles, slow reporting, and consequences that sometimes arrived years after the decision. When the gap between decision and consequence shrinks to weeks, people stop judging leaders on outcomes alone. They start watching how decisions are made — and how quickly leaders adapt when new information appears.
“Today’s leaders must excel not by having all the answers, but by creating the conditions for better answers to emerge.”
A senior executive I worked with learned this the hard way. He was leading a complex transformation and prided himself on conviction — he'd made the call, communicated the roadmap, held his nerve through the doubters. Then a piece of upward feedback landed: "He stopped listening about three months ago."
He was furious. When we unpacked it, his team hadn't experienced conviction. They'd experienced a closed door. So they'd stopped bringing him the things that didn't fit the plan. In a fast-moving landscape, that's some of the most valuable information there is — and it had stopped reaching him.
In a more stable world, you could lead largely from your own view. Expertise, a track record and a confident narrative would carry you for years. At the pace many organisations now need to move, your own view has a shelf life. The question is no longer just whether your judgement is good. It's whether you know how it's landing, and when you need to change course.
People don't need leaders to eliminate uncertainty. They need leaders to make it manageable: this is what we're committing to, this is what we're still learning, this is what would change my mind. That kind of honesty is a stronger form of leadership than false confidence — but only if you are genuinely seeking and receiving feedback. Otherwise it is just a script.
That is what perspective is. The discipline of deliberately seeking views you cannot generate on your own, then doing the harder part: deciding what to absorb and what to respectfully leave. Not all feedback needs acting on. Some of it is other people's anxiety. Some of it comes from a position that lacks the context you hold. A leader who absorbs everything churns; a leader who absorbs nothing calcifies. The skill is in the sorting — but you cannot sort what you never ask for.
Engagement surveys, performance processes, 360 feedback, steering committees and post-implementation reviews all fill part of the picture. But most of that picture is retrospective. Genuine developmental feedback — the kind a leader can act on this week — is still painfully rare.
Try this before Friday.
Pick one initiative you are responsible for and identify three people in roles critical to its success. Not necessarily the most senior people — the important thing is that they can see something you cannot, and that their engagement will make a real difference.
Book a coffee with each of them individually. Be upfront about why. Tell them you are trying to understand how you can raise your performance and that their input will be key.
Then ask two questions.
First: "What am I doing that's getting in the way of this initiative working?"
Then stay quiet long enough for them to answer it.
It works because it puts you in the frame. "What do you think of the plan?" invites opinions on the work. "How am I doing?" produces generalities. This question produces insights on your behaviours: inconsistency between the steering group and the team, priorities that were never clearly defined, follow-ups that never happened.
Then ask: "If you were sitting where I am, what would you do this week?"
That gives them a way to be specific without forcing them into a head-on critique.
Then do the harder part: decide what to act on and what to leave, and tell them why. That is what keeps the door open for hearing more feedback next time.
For the cost of 90 minutes and a few coffees, you will almost certainly learn something you were not being told before.
A lot of my work is helping senior leaders find where their feedback gaps are and how to close them.
If you want to explore whether that kind of conversation would be useful for you or your organisation, this is exactly the kind of work I do.