Leadership Skills: Using AI as a Developmental Partner

  This article explores how leaders can use AI not as a shortcut or replacement—but as a developmental partner to strengthen thinking, judgment, and leadership effectiveness. Read on to learn how leaders can:

• Use AI to reflect on values and leadership behaviors
• Clarify development goals using feedback and reflection
• Reduce friction without outsourcing judgment
• Reclaim time for the work only leaders can do

Heading into 2026, many leaders and employees are likely saying to themselves, “I really should start using AI more in my work.” This push to better integrate it into workflows more intentionally is likely due to increasing employer expectations around AI, along with a fear of falling behind. The challenge is there’s a big difference between “using AI” and “using AI well.” The overwhelming volume of information in the form of books, tools, opinions, and best practices makes it hard to know where to start. Instead of setting a standard that you become an AI expect overnight, maybe start with a different prompt: How might AI make your work easier, your thinking clearer, and your leadership more effective?

AI as a Leadership Tool

As a tool, AI is great at augmenting your existing skillsets, perspectives, and expertise, but that takes intentionality. If you’re curious, AI encourages curiosity. If you’re creative, it expands your options. But the inverse is also true. If you’re biased and leave those biases unexamined, AI reinforces them. If you’re convinced you’re right, AI helps you double down. If you tend to avoid conflict, AI can help you feel validated in your avoidance. If you want AI to really make a difference in your leadership work this year, think of it as your developmental partner. Treat AI as your mirror: something to reflect your thinking back to you, help you see patterns and assumptions, and explore angles you may not naturally consider. We need to design this relationship consciously so that what it magnifies in us is aligned with the kind of leaders we want to become.

Start with Values, Not Tools

Before you get tactical about where AI fits, it helps to start with your values. Ask yourself:

• What matters in how I show up to my work?
• What do I want to be known for in how I think, communicate, and decide?
• Where does care matter more than efficiency?

You’ll make more grounded decisions about where AI belongs when those answers are front of mind. For example, some leaders realize they don’t want AI drafting feedback to their team because they believe relational trust comes from being truly present to those opportunities. If critical thinking is important to you, you may choose to value rigor over speed in using AI to help you navigate a complex decision or drafting a strategic proposal. Some teams collectively decide not to rely on AI for anything involving sensitive information or safety, even if the platform claims privacy. If you value being inclusive, use AI to test how your communication might land with different audiences. Using values as a lens sets you up for using these tools in ways that help you develop or maintain integrity with the things that matter to you most.

Using AI to Clarify Leadership Development Goals

Performance reviews and other forms of feedback are a great starting point for identifying the highest-leverage places to focus your development. AI can be a great partner in deciphering patterns in those reports—and it’s only one piece of the puzzle. It’s also important to combine those insights with your own reflection about where you personally care to grow. AI can be a great partner for reflection, if you prompt it well. Whether you feed it your existing feedback or not, you can ask it to interview you with a focus on refining your understanding of what you would be motivated to work on. I asked Copilot to give me some reflection prompts for this purpose. This is what it offered: What moments at work this year felt most energizing or satisfying? (Think about projects, interactions, or outcomes that gave you a sense of purpose.) What impact do you want to have—on clients, colleagues, or the organization? (Is it about solving complex problems, mentoring others, driving innovation?) What do you enjoy learning or mastering? (New technical skills, leadership capabilities, industry trends?) What kind of challenges excite you? (Ambiguous problems, strategic thinking, building relationships?) Imagine it’s December 2026:

• What would make you proud of your growth?
• What would others notice about you that’s different?

After reflecting for yourself, you could ask AI to help you find intersections between what you care most about focusing on and the feedback or expectations you’ve come to understand are most important to the organization or your team. Getting to an essential set of intentions that resonate with you can be a powerful way to launch your growth.

Reducing Leadership Friction and Procrastination with AI Support

Everyone procrastinates on something, not because they’re incapable, but because the task feels ambiguous, cognitively heavy, or simply tedious or boring. If you reflect on what tasks in particular you tend to dread or put off, you can consider where AI may be able to help you 1) get into the task or 2) do some of that work for you. Ask it to ideate ways it could be your partner in these things. This is a great place to keep your values front and center. It’s not about AI doing your job for you, it’s about leveraging it to accelerate the trip to getting things done, or helping break down those daunting tasks into something more accessible. Maybe the work feels ambiguous and you don’t know where to start, maybe it’s cognitively heavy and you’re not sure you have the mental bandwidth, or maybe it’s just tedious and you’d rather do anything else. This is a place where AI can make a real difference in your experience of work if you use it intentionally. Start by noticing the tasks you consistently put off. Then ask AI simple things like:

• “Help me break this into steps so I know where to begin.”
• “Give me a rough outline so I’m not starting from a blank page.”
• “Show me three ways I could approach this project.”
• “Help me make sense of what information I already have and what I’m still missing.”

These aren’t prompts to outsource your job, they’re prompts to lower the barriers to getting started so you can get to getting things done faster. Here are a few examples I’ve heard some use it for:

• Strategic writing that feels too big to start: AI drafts a loose structure, you then have something to react to, fill in gaps, and refine.
• Preparing for a tough conversation: AI helps you reflect on what’s most important to communicate and the perspectives you should consider so you enter the conversation more grounded.
• Creative work under time pressure: AI generates starter ideas so you’re not starting with a blank page.

In each case, the work is still yours. AI just helps you reduce the friction.

Using Your Time Wisely

The real benefit of AI isn’t “saving time.” It’s redirecting time toward the work that needs your judgement, attention, and energy. AI can take on pieces of work that are structural, administrative, or information-heavy so you can focus on the parts that move the needle. Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor, has said you should think of AI as a really great intern. It doesn’t mean you don’t check or review that work, it simply means you’re freed to focus on higher leverage things. Think about the work only you can do.

• What’s the value your role promises?
• What do you bring a unique perspective or expertise to?
• Where do people most need your decision authority, your guidance, or your feedback?

This reflection is helpful beyond anything to do with AI. It also helps clarify where you have opportunities to delegate in general. Challenge your thinking about what you really have to do, so you can operate at the highest and best use of your talent.

Looking Forward

AI will continue to evolve, but the core question for leaders stays the same: What kind of thinking and presence does my role require of me? If you treat AI as a partner in meeting that standard, it can expand your own brilliance, capability, and impact.

Developing Leaders Who Think Well—With or Without AI

AI can support leadership growth, but it can’t replace judgment, presence, or values-based decision-making. At Conversant, leadership development is grounded in reflection, feedback, and real-world application. We help leaders build the clarity and capability required for long-term impact. Explore Conversant’s leadership development and coaching programs.

About the Author

Emma Rose Connolly
Consultant

With over a decade of experience in leadership development, organizational change, and strategy alignment, Emma Rose has partnered with leaders across industries, geographies, and disciplines to bring a human-focused approach to culture, employee experience, and performance. Grounded in psychology, behavior change, and systems thinking, her facilitation and coaching style is all about designing experiences that unlock real, lasting change. She’s most energized when navigating complexity with clients—where trust needs to be built, purpose clarified, or collaboration reimagined—and finds nothing more rewarding than watching a group move from uncertainty to shared possibility. Emma Rose believes in a future standard for leadership that’s grounded in being self-aware, adaptive, and bold enough to prioritize connection in the face of urgency and competing demands. When she’s not working, you’ll find her outside with her dog, cooking something nourishing, or getting lost in a good book.