As a leader, your role isn’t to handle every task yourself. The greater purpose of management is to guide and empower the team doing the work around you. Yet, even the best leaders can get buried with small, time-consuming tasks that can steal focus away from their day.
Enter: AI. We already know that AI can help you with basic things like brainstorming, researching, planning, etc., but how can it save you time every day? We’re breaking down a few tips and tricks for leaders and managers to save valuable time with AI tools.
For an even deeper dive, check out the book The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions by Geoff Woods.
CRMs and AI-driven tools like Asana, Monday, Agentforce, all do one thing really well: Triggering back-end actions to save you from hours of tedious busywork. Sending emails, assigning tasks, tracking projects, taking notes, and pulling reports can be easily automated with a click.
Workflow integration tools like Zapier connect all the different applications you already use, allowing them to work together in ways that would ordinarily require detailed programming. Each of these simple solutions saves you time and energy, preserving your focus for other, more meaningful tasks.
With the ability to automate tasks in the background, you can get more done. Train your favorite AI tool on your company’s processes and find gaps in productivity, creativity, or efficiency. Let the massive data analytics that most AI tools can run in milliseconds show you productivity steps you’re missing, identify skill gaps, poor performance, etc. Now you can take decisive action based solely on the facts, without spending hours or days wading through time reports and project statuses.
Use AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT to help you find new ways to communicate the same message or frame your vision and goals in a way that makes sense to your team. Input your team’s data and ask for recommended training programs. Create surveys with Teamspective to listen to your team and get valuable feedback.
AI tools may be able to help you hone empathy, emotional intelligence, compassion, and interpersonal skills, but they cannot execute them for you. As a leader, invest in yourself so you’re better equipped to invest in your team.
Target new and essential soft skills and add these leadership resources from the IDR archives to your reading list: