Leading AI Agents: The Next Skill for Managers

This was a briefing sent to our client's last week.

I came across a fascinating piece in Fortune this week: Managers, get ready to learn a new skill: leading AI agents and bots.

For years, we’ve focused on building the skills to lead people: setting direction, creating accountability, and bringing the best out of our teams. Now, there’s a new layer to the challenge. Managers are being asked to lead not just humans, but digital workers: AI agents and bots that take on tasks once thought to be exclusively human.

The article raises an important point: leading AI is not about coding or technical tinkering. It’s about management. How do you assign tasks to AI agents? How do you measure performance? How do you integrate them into workflows so they enhance human capability, rather than create more complexity?

This shift could be as big as the arrival of personal computing in the workplace. Just as managers had to learn how to lead teams with Excel and email at their fingertips, the next decade will be defined by those who can lead with AI at theirs.

So here’s a question worth reflecting on:

• If AI agents become part of your team in the next 12 months, how ready are you to manage them?

• Do you have the mindset, processes, and trust in place to integrate them effectively?

This is not science fiction anymore. It’s arriving quickly. The CEOs and managers who lean into this shift will gain speed and productivity advantages. Those who resist will be left wondering how competitors are moving faster with fewer resources.

It’s worth a read. And even more worth a conversation with your team.

Grow well
Adam