Research into AI Leadership Readiness
According to research by Boston Consulting Group, more and more organisations are including AI Agents in org charts. The agents are given names and role titles, and are expected to work along side their human colleagues.
This creates new management challenges for leaders.
Our own research has shown that more than 20% of Managers are already leading hybrid human-AI teams. Around 50% of Managers are starting to experiment with the development of AI Agents in their teams.
Most Managers have expressed a lack of readiness when it comes to managing teams that combine Human and AI capabilities.
- For instance, how do you deal with a client where a critical error has been made due to the work of an AI Agent?
- Where can the deployment of an AI Agent have the most positive impact for team performance? And, how is responsibility for performance assured?
- And, most importantly, how are trusted relationships built and maintained within AI-Human teams?
Research has also shown that when AI is anthropomorphised - that is, when it is given a name, a humanlike identity and a place in the organisational chart - it creates greater challenges for both work delivery and team engagement. For example, research reported in the Harvard Business Review found an increase in the blurring of accountability for work delivery when a team worked with an anthropomorphised AI agent. That is, the human members of the team were both less likely to assume accountability, and more likely to attribute accountability to the AI agent. This matters a lot because AI agents are not able to be accountable for work delivery. There is a need for human critical thinking and judgement to be exercised in order to assure work accuracy and outputs.
The same research found a significant decline in quality control when human team members worked with anthropomorphised AI agents. In fact, human team members found 18% fewer errors in the work generated.
This has significant implications for the leadership and management skills and capabilities required to manage hybrid human-AI teams. Managers need to be able to:
- Understand AI and how it works.
- Understand what types of work are best deployed by AI, and how this work can be effectively assured through human oversight.
- Engage human team members with AI, to ensure team performance and trust are maintained.
- Understand the challenges, limitations and risks of AI - and how to mitigate these.
- Create an environment where safe AI experimentation is encouraged, and agents are tested prior to deployment.
At Exponential Leadership, this is what we do. We work with you to develop your management skills, and the capabilities of your team, to work effectively with AI. You can book a Free 30 Minute session with us to explore how we can support you with your AI deployment, and build the workplace of the future.
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