Lead Yourself to Better Leadership With AI
No matter how you rate yourself as a leader today, we all have room for improvement. And when we focus on bettering our leadership skills, the benefits really start to pile up.
Think about it. When you commit to being a better leader, it can quickly improve leader-team relationships, elevate team loyalty and foster a healthier culture. And don’t forget the potential to superboost client experience. Because, hey, when both you and your staff are showing up as your best selves, clients notice!
Amping up your leadership skills doesn’t always mean investing in CPE-driven events and webinars. It means digging in and really looking at your current leadership style — where you shine and where you have room for improvement. The more you know about yourself, the more potential to rock it!
The good news is that you have tools in front of you to help accelerate your leadership mojo. And, yep, you guessed it. I’m talking about AI!
Lead yourself before you lead others
No one is born a full-fledged natural leader. While it is a bit baked into your DNA, it’s also a learned skill. And that means you have to put in the work.
Think about a young professional starting their career as a staff accountant. How many newbies do you know who are ready to step into a true leadership role? Probably not many, right? That’s because leaders have to put in their time. Experience wins and fails, pressure test their leadership style and course correct along the way.
Being a leader is a serious role. And it first requires you to understand what type of leader you are and then improve over time by taking on new challenges, adapting to changing trends and situations and learning from your own mistakes.
It’s a marathon, folks, not a sprint.
Nobody came out of the gate a highly skilled, agile leader of people. You have to both earn that and learn that.
So, what type of leader are you today? It’s important to grasp this before you start down a path to improvement. And that’s where AI comes in. It can help you answer that question and guide you forward by analyzing your leadership patterns and offering advice on how to improve.
Don’t just “prompt and go”
When I talk to accounting professionals about artificial intelligence, I tend to get one of two reactions. Either they can’t seem to get past the prompt, or they believe it’s a one-and-done process, that is, the old “prompt and go.”
To leverage AI to its fullest potential, it calls for you to interact beyond the initial prompt. Ask it questions, ask for clarifications on guidance and provide it with data. If you want to experience the full power of AI, you have to engage with it enough to get the advice and output you really need.
The importance of data
A new client comes into your firm. Do you automatically start working with them without any discovery or onboarding? With no information on the services needed and no insight into whether or not they’re an ideal client? No, you wouldn’t. You need data to understand how to best serve that new client, starting with whether they’re an ideal fit in the first place.
The same is true for AI. It needs data to best serve you. It requires background information in order to provide you with insight on your leadership style, skills and areas of improvement.
And there’s no shortage of data you can feed it — client and team meeting transcripts, Town Hall call notes, emails and any other communications that make sense. This type of data supports AI in identifying your leadership patterns.
Pinpoint your patterns
What do I mean by “patterns”? It’s pretty straightforward. We all have patterns to our leadership style. Patterns define how you lead — what repeatable cycles are prominent, what energizes you while in motion, where burnout or misalignment occur.
Once your pattern is defined, it’s much easier to have a conversation with AI to help you pinpoint areas for enhancement or key strengths to hone in on. For example, I use AI to help me understand how I can correct a leadership issue.
Here’s a sample prompt: “During our team meetings, I feel frustrated when staff start to disengage. I tend to get direct about receiving active feedback when I’m getting none.”
AI might offer me the following synopsis:
🔍 Here’s what I’m seeing in your pattern so far…
You tend to enter with:
“Frustration when others disengage”—you’re likely scanning for presence and energy in the room. The lack of feedback becomes your signal that something’s off.
Your emotional driver seems to be:
A deep need for connection through contribution. When people withhold, it’s not neutral—it’s disruptive. It stirs something in you that wants motion, honesty, and real-time exchange.
Your instinctive rhythm becomes:
“I get direct.” That’s your move. When the room pulls away, you lean in harder—cutting through the fog with clarity, inviting (or demanding) response.
I’d then ask AI what all this means—the pros and cons of my leadership style. And AI might answer something like this:
🔥 Your fire (pro):
You bring clarity where others hesitate. Your directness isn’t just a communication style—it’s a pattern interrupter. When energy drops, you’re often the one to re-anchor the group. That’s a leadership superpower.
You don’t wait for alignment—you create it.
🩸 Your leak (con):
When your directness isn’t met—when feedback doesn’t flow back, or your clarity doesn’t land—you’re left holding the emotional charge of the room. Instead of co-creating momentum, it starts to feel like you're pulling everyone uphill alone.
You expend energy trying to revive a dynamic that may not be ready (or willing) to meet you where you are.
From there, I would continue the conversation and rely on AI to provide a distinct name for my leadership pattern and continue to dig deep for answers on how to resolve issues through sound leadership.
Showing up for yourself helps you show up for your team
The more you know about yourself — how you lead, your challenges and your patterns — the better you can show up for yourself and your team.
Dig into AI to help guide you down the path of transformative leadership. When you do, you’ll power a movement in your firm where everyone shows up in the best way possible.