Think You’re a Good Leader? Try Leading an AI Team

Researchers found that an AI-based assessment closely tracked leaders’ impact on human teams.

Judging a leader with a successful team is like judging the conductor of a great orchestra: the outcome reflects both the person directing the group and the abilities of everyone around them. Measuring leadership therefore requires a way to separate the individual’s influence from the circumstances and people surrounding them. Artificial intelligence may offer a new way to approach that problem. The paper “Measuring Human Leadership Skills with AI Agents,” co-written by 2026 HBS AI Institute Associate David Deming, investigates whether performance with AI agents can provide a practical measure of a person’s ability to lead human teams in a comparable experimental task.

Why This Matters

For business leaders and executives, a promising implication of this research is that AI could become a practice environment for leadership itself. Managers can rehearse questioning, delegation, information gathering, and decision-making with AI teams, further enhanced by employing a range of personas. Instead of treating leadership development as an occasional workshop, leaders and organizations can build short, repeatable simulations around familiar challenges. The resulting practice could help leaders see whether they ask for the right information, create room for different perspectives, and turn a fragmented discussion into a clear course of action. AI simulations like these may be particularly useful for practicing the mechanics of coordination, but leaders should also ensure that their development addresses the trust, morale, and emotional judgment that shape real human teams.

Link to the HBS AI Institute Insight Article

Link to the Research Paper