How do you lead scarce (and often high salary) AI talent effectively?
Short answer: effective leadership is effective no matter the people.
Longer answer: there are some cautions and actions for more effectively leading AI talent.
Some context:
Leading people is difficult to start with. There are principles that should be applied, but application can vary by situation.
Leading knowledge workers tends to be another level up … almost never rote day-to-day.
Leading creatives is more difficult again and an advanced form of leadership. Most high end AI talent will probably be similar to the “creatives” category.
Here are some ways to amplify leadership basics for AI talent:
⚠ Motivation. Motivation foundations of purpose, autonomy, and mastery apply to any leadership situation. Autonomy and mastery are usually high on creatives’ list of preferences. Unless those two factors are missing or weak, the main gap is “why” the AI work.
👉🏻 Action: Help them connect their creativity to business purpose. Constantly and consistently communicate the “why” of the work.
⚠ Alignment. When you need more than one person to get the job done, you must add an extra foundation – alignment. The key is achieving high alignment (focus on common goals) with high autonomy (freedom in achieving the goals). Balancing autonomy and alignment is more difficult with creatives. They may see *any* reduction in creative autonomy as micromanagement.
👉🏻 Action: help them understand 1) how the business functions and 2) why aligned work is necessary for business (and their) success.
⚠ Value. Anyone can get lost in doing work they love. Creatives can be especially prone to “creating for creation’s sake.” However, in a business the act of creation alone usually does not have value.
👉🏻 Action: help them understand and deliver business value (however defined for your business), not just interesting creation activity or AI research.
⚠ Invisible work. Work “progress” is often in the brain of the creative rather than visible. This makes it difficult to measure progress in achieving business goals. Balancing autonomy and alignment is also more difficult.
👉🏻 Action: one approach is for them to work in short periods of time and demonstrate results (value) at the end of each period. Autonomy comes from allowing freedom in reaching the period goal. Alignment comes from demonstrating progress, integration with others’ work, and contribution to end goals.
⚠ Brand. In any industry, part of a leader’s role is to design productive work environments. Also in any industry, work environments are part of brand statements. In creative industries, this needs to be even more explicit. For example, would you trust an office design firm if their own office interior did not look great? This also affects hiring and retention.
👉🏻 Action: pay attention to work environment and brand alignment.
Overall action:
👉🏻 👉🏻 Align expectations all the way through the “people lifecycle.” No one, especially a creative, likes surprises when it comes to their work.
Wherever in the people lifecycle you need assistance or advice we can help.
We also have research-based leadership development programs that actually work compared to traditional programs. Our programs can even pay for themselves.
Contact us to see possibilities …
Leave a Reply