Leading Teams in the AI Era

The ongoing AI revolution has touched nearly every business sector, leaving many feeling overwhelmed as they integrate these services into their everyday work lives. And it’s not just rank-and-file employees who struggle with the issue—corporate team leaders also grapple with the challenge of a sometimes transformed workplace.

To meet this issue head-on, Wall Street Journal bestselling author and global teamwork expert Erica Dhawan stopped by Shorts With Liz Clark (February 19) to engage in a fast-paced conversation with the HFA CEO and president on what it really takes to lead in the age of AI.

Named a Top 50 Management Thinker by Thinkers50 and the author of “Digital Body Language” and “Get Big Things Done,” Dhawan works with organizations around the world on navigating the sometimes overwhelming challenge of digital transformation in corporate teams. Her appearance on the podcast served as a preview of her keynote at The HFA Show on March 16 in San Diego.

The Most Common Mistake Leaders Make With AI

Despite AI dominating the conversation around workplace transformation, Dhawan reframed the moment. “I don’t think this is the age of AI. I think AI is just a tool. I think it’s the age of speed,” she says.

The real challenge for leaders, she argues, is learning how to slow down strategically — creating what she calls “thinking speed bumps,” where teams step back from screens to reflect, align, and read between the lines.

When asked what trips up even the smartest leaders in a fast-moving digital world, Dhawan didn’t hesitate: failing to explicitly and visibly value their teams. She shared the story of coaching an employee who had received feedback that her empathy was weak despite being widely known for being empathetic.

After shadowing the employee at meetings, Dhawan discovered that while she excelled at building rapport in person, her digital communication was a different story entirely: terse messages, last-minute cancellations of video calls, and all-caps texts sent mid-flight without realizing how they landed.

“In the age of speed, valuing visibly wasn’t just the handshake, the head nod, the in-person meeting anymore,” Dhawan says. “It was a set of daily rituals — valuing her team’s time, inboxes, and schedules.”

Don’t Outsource Your Empathy

With AI now embedded in daily communication, Dhawan warned that leaders risk eroding the very trust they’re trying to build. She defined “digital body language” as the signals and cues we send through all forms of digital communication—the tone beneath what is actually said.

Her advice: Use AI to augment, not replace, authenticity. She introduced what she calls the “Think Sandwich”: a three-step framework for keeping communication human.

1. Step one: Write a messy first draft in your own voice, without AI.

2. Step two: Use AI to organize, structure, and sharpen.

3. Step three: Add your tone back in with humor, warmth, and personality.

“Don’t outsource your empathy,” Dhawan says. “It shows. People can tell.”

What Is Connectional Intelligence?

Dhawan’s book “Get Big Things Done” introduced the concept of “connectional intelligence”: using relationships, networks, and cross-functional collaboration to drive results.

She illustrated the idea with a story about toothpaste-maker Colgate, whose team of chemists struggled for months to solve a mechanical flow problem with a new fluoride formula. When one team member suggested posting the question to an online community of scientists, a physicist solved it within two days.

The team realized they had never even consulted the physicists down the hall because they had labeled the issue a chemistry problem. The lesson, Dhawan says, is that connectional intelligence isn’t about making or using more connections, it’s about the quality of those connections and the diversity of thought they bring.

Small Shifts, Big Impact

Dhawan offers three simple behavioral shifts that she says can meaningfully improve how teams perform under pressure.

1. Don’t be brief; be clear. For example, a calendar invite with no subject line sent to a junior colleague can feel like a pink slip if there’s no context. Adding, “quick chat—good thing,” can change everything.

2. Don’t be hasty; be thoughtful. Know when to pick up the phone. Trim a 30-person meeting to the six people who actually need to be there. Stop defaulting to "reply all."

3. Don’t forget to show gratitude. Learn what gratitude actually looks like for each team member.

Her final message for leaders preparing for what’s ahead: “Don’t forget to be human. Add back the human, leave your fingerprints, and be authentic.”