How AI Can Help You Become a Self-Aware Leader

In 2015, scientists at the University of Cambridge created an AI that could predict your personality and values ​​better than your colleagues, friends, and even relatives. This simple AI algorithm demonstrated an important truth: AI knows us better than we know ourselves.

In the age of AI, an organization’s primary competitive advantage will lie not in its technology, but in the ability of its people to work effectively together. As AI becomes more mainstream and adept at mechanizing our intellectual capital, a leader’s ability to create cultures that prioritize curiosity, teamwork, and resilience will become critical. At the heart of developing these capabilities is strategic self-awareness. To change and evolve, we must first understand ourselves and the impact our behaviors have on those around us. This is easier said than done.

Scientific studies demonstrate a clear relationship between strategic self-awareness and improved leadership performance. Unfortunately, only 10% of leaders accurately recognize where they need to improve. Here’s why:

1. We don’t speak truth to power:Power dynamics create a barrier to honest feedback. Subordinates often fear negative consequences for giving criticism, leading to sugary responses or silence, preventing leaders from truly understanding their impact.
2. Protected by ego and prejudice:Our cognitive biases and inflated egos often protect us from criticism. We seek out information that confirms our beliefs and reject feedback that challenges our self-perception, stifling our growth and self-awareness.
3. Organizations are a feedback desert:Organizations often lack structured feedback systems that encourage open communication. Traditional performance reviews are infrequent and superficial, and fail to provide continuous, real-time feedback. Without a culture of psychological safety and transparency, leaders miss out on critical information needed for true self-awareness and personal growth.

If leaders want to create the cultures needed to maintain a competitive advantage in the age of AI, we need to be more proactive in how we give and receive feedback. Fortunately, this same technology can make the process easier, more effective, and less painful. Drawing on the science of behavior change, AI is proving to be a useful tool for increasing a leader’s level of strategic awareness and, most importantly, turning that new awareness into lasting change.

Here are three ways you can use AI to become a more self-aware leader:

Establish a data-driven baseline of your strengths And risks

We’re often told to play to our strengths, but science shows that this advice is more misguided than sound. The more we rely on our strengths, the more likely we are to overreach. For example, if you’re a disciplined, organized leader, you’re likely to become rigid and inflexible. Similarly, if you’re a driven, competitive leader, you’re likely to become domineering and authoritarian. Rather than playing to our strengths, we should identify how the behaviors that help us end up becoming areas of risk and ineffectiveness. Scientific talent assessments are the first step in identifying these gaps. As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Psychometric leadership assessments have been available for decades and are a proven tool for establishing an empirical, data-driven baseline to identify areas for development. Yet most scientific tools are expensive and not scalable. Fortunately, artificial intelligence is creating assessments that accurately assess a leader’s motivations and core characteristics in a fraction of the time and cost (you can try one for yourself here ). The result? AI is enabling organizations to help leaders and their entire workforce get the data they need to develop the most relevant soft skills and competencies.

Use AI to organize your learning path

Traditional development plans often fall short due to their one-size-fits-all approach and lack of customization. They are typically static and do not adapt to the unique needs and evolving goals of each leader. With generative AI tools, each leader can now create personal development playbooks that evolve in real time and are tailored to the challenges they and their team may face. This adaptive approach ensures that leaders receive the right resources and support exactly when they need it, driving continuous growth and improvement.

Much like training to run a marathon, developing new behaviors that mitigate our risks requires persistence and focus. While the former depends on our willpower, the latter can be aided by AI. Studies have shown that personalized feedback and targeted strategies are most effective at changing behavior and fostering new habits. The idea of ​​an AI coach may seem strange, but if you haven’t tried one yet, start by experimenting with generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude. Try setting specific, measurable goals and have it generate a 90-day plan. Is it better than the feedback you received during your last performance review? Probably!

Create a culture of continuous feedback

Leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Successful leaders are defined not only by their individual characteristics, but also by the qualities of their people. The goal of a leader is to learn how to adapt their style to meet the needs of their team and find ways to leverage their cognitive diversity. Fortunately, advances in AI can help here, too. By democratizing access to assessment and coaching tools, AI can help leaders create a robust feedback culture within their teams that is proven to be effective.

AI-powered tools and data-driven assessments aren’t enough to create great cultures. Organizations are defined by their people, not their technology. Leaders must work to create a climate of psychological safety where people feel they can share their ideas or mistakes without being ridiculed or punished. This means leaders need to be mindful of behaviors like using curiosity to overcome defensiveness, treating mistakes as learning opportunities, and creating spaces for people to try new approaches. Self-awareness is key to modeling these behaviors and showing your team how to do it.

In the age of artificial intelligence, the ultimate competitive advantage for organizations lies in their ability to adapt and innovate continuously. Self-awareness is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Leaders must cultivate environments where feedback is a constant dialogue, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and mutual understanding. Only then can we harness the full potential of AI to augment human ingenuity and drive organizational success.