Over the past week, I’ve been reading article after article about the incredibly fast growth of AI—and, more specifically, the concern that it’s advancing faster than even some of the people who created it expected or may be prepared to handle.
That got my attention.
I use AI myself. I also hear from people all the time about how much they now rely on AI, whether it’s helping them write an email, research an idea, create content, analyze information or simply get through their day-to-day work faster.
I’m not against any of that. I use it for some of those very same things.
But all of this has left me thinking about a different question:
As leaders, what responsibility do we have to ourselves and to the people we lead to step back and recalibrate how we’re using AI—and how much we’re relying on it?
Because somewhere between being amazed by what AI can do and figuring out how much time it can save us, I think we’ve skipped an important conversation.
What should AI make easier for us? Where should it make us better? And where do we need to be careful that convenience doesn’t start replacing our own judgment, creativity, communication and ability to think through difficult problems?
Those aren’t just technology questions anymore.
They’re leadership questions.
And I think now is a good time for leaders to recalibrate—not because we need to fear AI, but because we need to be intentional about the role we allow it to play in our own work and in the work of the people we lead.
Start with how you’re using it
Before we create another AI policy for employees or send out another list of approved tools, I think leaders need to look at their own habits.
Are you using AI to help you think—or asking it to think for you?
There’s a difference.
One thing I’ve noticed is how often people turn to AI because they want something they’ve written to sound “perfect.” An email needs to sound perfect. A LinkedIn post needs to sound perfect. A presentation needs to sound perfect. So instead of struggling through the words ourselves, we hand the entire thing over to AI.
A couple of months ago, I sent a simple request in an email to a director at a university. My question really only needed a one- or two-sentence answer. When I received the reply, it was only about three sentences long, but the language immediately struck me as something that may have been written by AI.
And my first thought wasn’t, Why did he use AI?
It was, Why would he need AI for this?
The question was so simple that, in my experience, it probably took more time to explain to AI what the response needed to say than it would have taken to simply type the answer himself.
That interaction stuck with me because it made me wonder whether we’re starting to use AI not because we actually need its help, but because we’ve become uncomfortable trusting our own words.
Maybe we think our email needs to sound more professional. Maybe we’re worried we’ll say something the wrong way. Maybe we believe AI can make our words sound smarter or more polished.
But perfection was never the point.
Our thoughts are the point.
Our voice is the point.
Being understood is the point.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using AI to catch a grammatical error, help tighten something you’ve already written or show you where your message isn’t as clear as you thought it was. I do that too. But I think we need to pay attention to the line between improving what we’ve written and substituting AI’s thoughts and words for our own.
If every time we need to communicate something we ask AI to do the thinking and writing for us, what are we teaching ourselves? Are we becoming better communicators—or just becoming better at prompting something else to communicate for us?
That matters for leaders.
Your people don’t need every email from you to be perfectly worded. They need to understand what you mean. They need to recognize your voice. And sometimes they need to hear something that sounds like it came from an actual human being who knows them, not something that’s been polished until there’s no person left in it.
Using AI to challenge an idea, organize your thoughts, uncover something you may have missed or help you get past a blank page can absolutely make you better at what you do. But if we immediately turn to it every time we need an idea, make a decision or communicate something difficult, we risk giving up some of the very skills we’re supposed to be developing as leaders.
And if we’re doing that ourselves, we can’t be surprised when our employees do it too.
Have the conversation with your people
This is where I think leadership becomes especially important.
Telling employees they can or can’t use AI isn’t enough. Leaders need to help people understand how to use it well.
Where can AI make their work better? What tasks no longer require as much of their time? Where can it help them explore an idea, work through a problem or see something differently? And just as importantly, where do we still expect their judgment, expertise, creativity and voice?
Those conversations shouldn’t happen once in a policy document and disappear. AI is changing too quickly for that. We need to keep talking about it, learning together and adjusting as we go.
Don’t automate away the skills you need
There’s another part of this that I don’t think we’re talking about enough.
If AI makes something easier, that doesn’t automatically mean we should stop doing it ourselves.
There are things we learn by struggling through them. We learn how to communicate by having difficult conversations. We develop judgment by making decisions when the answer isn’t obvious. We become better thinkers by wrestling with ideas before someone—or something—hands us an answer.
As leaders, we need to think beyond, Can AI do this?
We also need to ask, If AI keeps doing this for our employees, what skills are they no longer developing for themselves?
Think about the emerging leader who never has to struggle through writing an important message because AI always does it. The manager who never learns how to organize and communicate their own thoughts because AI gives them the talking points. Or the employee who gets an answer immediately without having to think through the problem first.
Those things may save time today. But leaders also have to think about who we’re developing for tomorrow.
Because our responsibility isn’t simply to get more work done. It’s also to develop people who can think, communicate, make decisions and eventually lead without needing someone—or something—to hand them every answer.
This is a leadership moment
I don’t know exactly where AI will take us. I don’t think anyone does.
But I do know that moving faster isn’t the same thing as leading better.
This may be one of those moments when good leadership requires us to slow down just enough to make sure we’re being intentional about where we’re going.
Use AI. Learn it. Experiment with it. Let it make you and your team better.
But don’t hand over your judgment, your curiosity, your creativity or your responsibility to lead.
Technology is going to keep moving.
Our job as leaders is to make sure we’re not simply following wherever it takes us.
Sandy Adams 