AI is joining your team. How are you preparing to lead?

There’s plenty of writing about how: AI improves employee efficiency: individuals and businesses need to lean in to survive; and a new alphabet soup of hybrid skills (eg: π & M shaped talent) is emerging.

But far less attention on what’s next:

A world of blended team of human beings and AI agents.

Are you ready to lead them?

For example, here’s what an AI blended marketing team might be:

AI agents:

• Insight analyst: audience & competitor data

• Copywriter/designer: copy & visuals using brand-trained models

• Media analyst: media buys, A/B tests & real-time adaptation

• Project manager

Human roles:

• Strategic director: frames narrative

• Brand lead: ensures coherence, emotional resonance & work that connects

• Ethics & QA

Here, the humans are doing very little of the original work. Instead, they’re guiding, elevating, and taking responsibility.

Now imagine this team runs a campaign that triggers a public backlash.

The creative was unintentionally offensive & biased.

Strategist, brand lead and legal signed it off.

The campaign is pulled. The brand apologises. But the damage is done.

The team turns on itself.
Pointing fingers.
Who’s accountable?

And what happens when the AI and human disagree?

The strategist recommends a bold new positioning.
The AI says it will flop based on historical sentiment data.
Does the leader go with human instinct or machine logic?

Team dynamics will change too.
The pace of work becomes uneven. AI works 24/7.
Delegation becomes complex:  what to give to who?
Biases will creep in.

Assumptions about who adds more value.

And there are emotional dynamics too:

·       Human team members feel threatened by or resentful of AI agents?

·       Over-dependence on AI agents, bypassing deeper strategic thinking?

Even as someone who embraced AI early in my own agency, I never had to manage a team that wasn’t entirely human. But my clients are starting to.

And that means new leadership skills are needed — across both the technical and human spectrum:

·       AI audit literacy — spotting bias, hallucination or risk

·       Blended workflow design — structuring teams where humans and machines complement each other

·       Scenario planning — knowing what to do when things go wrong

·       Performance redesign — measuring human contribution when the machine does most of the volume

·       Emotional intelligence — keeping people motivated, engaged, and valued

·       Ethical judgment — drawing lines when the tech doesn’t

·       Curiosity — continuously learning what the machine can’t teach

·       Cultural leadership — creating a space where humans still want to belong

This is about knowing how to lead when the rules of the game are changing.

If AI is joining your team, how are you preparing to lead it?