The good news about AI for leaders that nobody's writing about

If you read anything about AI and leadership this year, you'd think we're all about to be replaced, outsmarted or made redundant by a chatbot.

Here is a question I ended up asking myself. When did you last read something about AI that made you feel optimistic about leading?

When it comes to leadership, I think there are clear upsides of AI. Let me have a go at sharing a few. What I'm seeing in the leaders I work with gives much more reason to be optimistic than the daily headlines.

1. It hands you back the expert work. The challenge I see so often in clients of all sizes and sectors is that potentially brilliant leaders get stuck in the detail, doing the jobs their people are paid to do. AI is superb at the detail. Summarising the report, pulling the data together, drafting the first version. Every hour it saves is an hour you can spend actually leading. For the leader stuck at 'Head of', that should be a gift.

2. You can rehearse the conversation you're dreading. If you have ever lain awake running through a difficult conversation in your head, AI can really help. You can now practise it properly by asking AI to play the team member who'll push back, get defensive or shut down completely. You walk into the real thing having already had it once.

3. AI will tell you you're wrong. The higher you climb, the fewer people will tell you your idea has holes in it. Ask AI to pull your strategy apart, play the sceptical board member, find what you've missed. AI has no career to protect and no reason not to rock the boat.

4. It gives your quieter people a louder voice. Consider the specialist in your team with deep expertise who struggles to turn it into a crisp board paper. Or the brilliant introvert who processes internally before they speak, so gets talked over. AI can help them shape and land their thinking. How many of the best ideas in your business are sitting with people who find it challenging to find the right words?

5. AI makes being human worth more. When anyone can produce a polished report in thirty seconds, what adds the real value? I would suggest it is human skills like your judgement, how you make people feel. The ability to read a room, to hold a tough line with warmth or to notice when someone isn't okay. The leaders who thrive over the next decade will be the ones who sharpen and use their most human of skills.

So here's my challenge for this week. Pick one of these and try it before Friday, and reflect on how AI can benefit you as a leader in the months and years ahead.