5 Ways AI Is Transforming Leadership: Trends Every Leader Needs to Know
5 Ways AI Is Transforming Leadership: Trends Every Leader Needs to Know
Leadership is changing faster than ever before. With AI becoming part of everyday workflows, leaders face two choices: adapt and thrive or stay the same and fall behind.
AI isn’t just another tech trend anymore, its everywhere. From Google search to customer service assistants on every website, its fundamentally reshaping how decisions are made, how teams collaborate, and how networks grow.
So, if you’re serious about staying relevant in leadership, you need to first understand what AI means for your career, your team, and your professional network.
Spoiler: It’s not about replacing leaders, but about enhancing leadership.
Why AI Is Transforming Leadership in 2025
AI is no longer limited to tech departments; it’s influencing business networking, career growth, and strategic decision-making across industries.
According to a recent McKinsey report, automation has the potential to raise global productivity growth by 0.8% to 1.4% annually. About 60% of all occupations have at least 30% of their activities that could be automated. This shift allows leaders to improve performance, reduce errors, and free up time for strategic initiatives like innovation and people management.
Think of AI tools like Notion AI or Microsoft Copilot, they’re helping leaders quickly summarise meetings, generate reports, and make faster, data-backed decisions.
🎥 Watch here: Will AI Take Our Jobs? Princess Lamia Saudi Arabia discusses AI, Sustainability and Business to learn more about AI’s impact on jobs and leadership globally.
1. AI Helps Leaders Build Smarter Networks
Networking has always been a cornerstone of leadership success. Strong networks open doors to new opportunities, mentorship, partnerships, and even funding. However, building and maintaining these connections can be overwhelming, especially for leaders managing busy schedules across multiple markets. This is where AI comes in and takes it to the next level for professional networking.
AI takes expanding your networking to the next level by making it more data-driven, personalised, and efficient. Instead of spending hours manually searching for contacts or remembering follow-ups, AI tools can do the heavy lifting for you:
AI platforms like Linkedin Sales Navigator Premium suggest meaningful, strategic connections based on your industry, interests, and mutual networks.
Smart CRMs (like HubSpot AI or Salesforce Einstein) keep track of every interaction, ensuring no valuable contact slips through the cracks.
AI analytics tools can even show who you should be engaging with to expand influence, whether that’s a potential client, partner, or thought leader in your space or which content posts are working, like TIKTOK studio.
For our recent business trip to Mexico, we used a mixture of sales tools, AI-led platforms and GenAI templates to research and outreach brands, hotels and leaders we could work with. The result? 4 hotels across 3 Mexican cities and a handful of interviews which made the experience more culturally relevant and rich, whilst expanding our professional networks and cross collaborating.
How can AI help leaders to build smarter networks? Use AI tools to identify high-value contacts and personalise outreach. This makes professional networking more strategic and less overwhelming.
🎥 Watch here: 48 hours in Mexico City : What to eat, see and do in Mexico City CDMX & Hilton Umbral Mexico to catch my recent trip to Mexico.
2. AI Enhances Decision-Making & Leadership Confidence
Great leaders make great decisions, but AI can make them smarter. By analysing massive datasets in seconds, AI provides insights that would take humans weeks to uncover. This means leaders can act proactively rather than reactively, gaining a competitive advantage in their industries.
For example:
AI-powered dashboards can predict market trends, highlight risks in supply chains, or detect early signs of employee disengagement, allowing leaders to take corrective action before issues escalate.
Predictive analytics tools used by companies like Amazon and Netflix guide product development and customer experience strategies, showing how data-backed decisions lead to business growth.
Just recently, Apple announced it is developing an AI-powered search engine to rival Google, showing that even industry giants are betting on AI to drive smarter, faster decision-making at scale.
We recently interviewed Sutherland for the Back to the future podcast discussing all things AI, datasets and smart decisions. You can watch all episodes here.
How can AI enhance leadership? Don’t just rely on gut feeling, combine your intuition with AI insights to make more confident decisions.
3. AI Supports Inclusive Leadership
As someone who champions diversity, equity, and inclusion, I see AI as a tool that can remove bias, but only when trained and used correctly. Leaders can leverage AI to:
Spot pay gaps by analysing salary data to identify disparities that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Improve hiring processes by using AI tools to anonymise CVs or detect bias in job descriptions.
Create fairer policies by basing decisions on objective, data-driven insights rather than subjective opinions.
This is what they can or should be doing. I won’t sit here and pretend that they are doing the work, especially with budgets slashed globally and job unemployment rising 4% compared to last year. Do remember, that AI isn’t perfect - there are poorly trained algorithms that can reinforce existing biases. So, here, we still require that human touch. Collaborate with DEI experts, question the data behind your AI tools, and use technology to enhance inclusion, not to replicate outdated patterns. When used responsibly, AI becomes a powerful ally for building diverse and equitable workplaces.
4. AI Frees Up Time for Human Leadership
One of the biggest misconceptions about AI is that it replaces leaders or removes the human element from leadership. In reality, AI works best as a support system, handling repetitive administrative tasks so leaders can focus on what only humans can do - inspire, mentor, and build meaningful relationships.
By freeing up time previously spent on spreadsheets, scheduling, or manual reporting, leaders can redirect their energy toward strategic thinking, creative problem-solving, and team growth, where the true value of leadership lies. Use AI tools (like Reclaim.ai, Otter.ai or Slack) to save time and reinvest that energy into mentoring your team.
👉 Want to see how I personally use tech to stay productive while travelling and leading my business? Check out my post: The 6 travel apps that keep my ADHD brain and career on track.
5. AI Is a Catalyst for Career Growth
To future-proof your career, it’s essential to learn how to work with AI, not against it. Leaders who embrace AI become more adaptable, efficient, and valuable to their organisations. Leveraging AI allows you to stay ahead of the curve, enhance your skills, and position yourself as someone who can confidently navigate rapid changes in the workplace.
This one’s an interesting one as it involves a lot of self learning. For example, you can swap reality shows for real time news and absorb the latest trends, pick one topic a month to learn and do my own research and then try to teach someone different to myself what I have learnt, asking them to repeat back what they think they may now know. Of course, there are tons of courses, books and podcasts! I will shout out my friend David Savage who runs a tech talks podcast, full of short AI info bites and RIVA Media friends like Zoe Kleinman who’s general updates on twitter highlight what’s coming up. Earlier this year, I started a regular sound bite for youtube which I aim to bring back before an AI avatar takes over.
🎥 Watch here: How to ACTUALLY Use AI to Future-Proof Your Career to learn practical ways to upskill and stay ahead in the AI era.
The Takeaway: Human + AI = The Future of Leadership
Leadership in 2025 AI era isn’t about knowing all the answers, but more about using tools that help you lead better, connect smarter, and think bigger. Instead of fearing AI, focus on authenticity, emotional intelligence, and relationships. AI won’t replace great leaders, but it will amplify them.
5 Ways AI Is Transforming Leadership: Final Thoughts
Use AI to enhance, not replace, the human side of leadership. The best leaders of tomorrow will be those who combine technology with empathy, strategy with authenticity, and data with creativity. The world of artificial intelligence has moved 2x faster than the internet before, so don’t feel overwhelmed if you don’t know it all - pick an area, a problem or topic and dive into that before teaching others. Your network is at a similar space, so exchange ideas to keep the conversation going and implement one change at a time with clear measures to see what works, what doesn’t and what the future holds.
Ignoring AI today is like ignoring email in the 90s, you’ll fall behind.
So, ask yourself: How are you using AI to lead, network, or grow your career?
Start small and stay consistent, that’s how significant changes will happen!
Experiment with AI tools.
Integrate them into your workflow.
Use them to strengthen your professional network and career strategy.
📩 This newsletter was written by Sonya Barlow, entrepreneur, author and presenter. Work with Sonya Barlow on business strategy, keynotes and campaigns. Email: hello@sonyabarlow.co.uk
Sonya Barlow is an award-winning entrepreneur, presenter and author with over 100K followers reaching 4 million unique impressions monthly. She hosts the YouTube show "The Sonya Barlow Show", authored the business book"Unprepared to Entrepreneur" and runs a business inclusion consultancy and networking app the "LMF Network". You can work with Sonya for campaigns, content and conversation. Connect via email - Hello@SonyaBarlow.Co.Uk.