Leading with AI is how a manager leads their team's use of AI. It covers five skills: growing their own AI skills, enabling the team to use AI, guiding people through the change, rethinking how the team works, and keeping quality and ownership. To assess it, put managers in real leadership scenarios where AI is changing the work, and score each skill on its own. Bryq's Leading with AI assessment does this for candidates and current managers alike.
Why AI adoption depends on everyday managers
AI change management usually starts with tools, licenses and training. Adoption itself happens team by team. A manager decides whether the team tries AI on real work, which tasks change, and what still needs a person to check it. Two teams with the same tools can end up in very different places.
That’s where many AI adoption challenges come from. A team waits for permission nobody gives. People worry about what AI means for their roles, and nobody talks it through. Work produced with AI goes out unchecked, or gets checked so heavily that no time is saved. Each of these is a leadership problem before it’s a technology problem.
So any plan for AI at work needs a measure of how well managers lead their teams through it. That’s what Leading with AI is for. It’s built for everyday managers, from team leads to executives, and also suits the enablement, HR and learning teams who support them.
The five skills of Leading with AI
The Leading with AI assessment measures five skills, and scores each one on its own.
Skill | What it covers |
|---|---|
Growing and applying own AI skills | The manager makes time to learn AI on real work, briefs it and gives it feedback as they would a team member, and checks its output before acting on it. |
Enabling the team to use AI | They make AI use welcome through their own example, give clear permission and room to experiment, build their team’s skills, and spread what works. |
Guiding people through the change | They explain why the team is adopting AI, respond honestly to concerns about roles, and tell different concerns apart, checking whether each holds before persuading or changing course. |
Rethinking how the team works | They build AI into staffing and project plans, shift work to AI where it performs well, put freed time to good use, and reshape roles with the people in them. |
Keeping quality and ownership | They judge AI’s gains on finished work, step back where it isn’t paying off, make sure a person owns every decision, and use only data and content they may share with AI. |
A manager can be strong on one and weak on another. Someone who uses AI well every day may still leave the team to figure it out alone. That’s why the report shows a score for each skill, as well as an overall score.
How to assess AI leadership when hiring
AI leadership is hard to see in an interview. Most candidates can describe an AI rollout they were part of. Fewer can show how they’d handle the moment a team pushes back, or when AI-assisted work goes out with an error.
So test it in real leadership scenarios. Run Leading with AI for managers driving AI adoption at any level, from team leads to executives. Run it at screening for a large pool, or on the shortlist alongside Profile Fit and the people-management skills the role needs. Then use the scores to focus the interviews where each candidate needs a closer look. The decision stays with the hiring team.
Leading with AI is built on a job analysis and peer-reviewed research, confirmed by subject-matter experts and validated by I/O psychologists. It’s included in every Bryq plan.
Measuring AI readiness during a rollout
When a company rolls out an AI assistant such as Microsoft Copilot, readiness has two parts. One is whether people can work with AI. The other is whether their managers can lead the change.
Bryq measures both. The AI Fluency Assessment shows how each person works with AI, across five skills. Leading with AI shows how ready each manager is to move their team. Read together, they show where the rollout will move quickly and where a team needs support first. This matters most in a mid-market company, where there’s rarely a large change team and managers carry most of the rollout themselves.
Using Leading with AI in workforce planning
AI capability is now part of workforce planning. Leading with AI gives a talent team a view of which managers are ready to lead AI adoption today, skill by skill. That shows where to invest in development, which teams to start a rollout with, and who could step into leadership of AI-heavy teams. Bryq’s free talent review AI skill helps you prepare the review itself.
AI in leadership development
The same assessment works for current managers as well as candidates. As a development tool, it gives each manager a baseline on the five skills, and shows a learning team where to focus. Running it again later shows how each skill has moved. To turn each manager’s results into a plan, use Bryq’s free individual development plan AI skill. It’s one of 12 free AI skills for HR work that work in Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot.
Frequently asked questions
What is AI change management? It’s how an organization moves people from trying AI to using it well in their daily work. Tools and training are part of it. Most of it happens team by team, led by managers.
What skills do managers need to lead AI adoption? Five: growing and applying their own AI skills, enabling the team to use AI, guiding people through the change, rethinking how the team works, and keeping quality and ownership.
How do I assess AI leadership in managers? Put them in real leadership scenarios where AI is changing the work, and score each skill on its own. Bryq’s Leading with AI assessment does this for candidates and current managers.
Who is Leading with AI for? Managers and leaders at any level, from team leads to executives. It also suits change and enablement teams who support AI adoption.
How is it different from the AI Fluency Assessment? The AI Fluency Assessment measures how a person works with AI. Leading with AI measures how a manager leads a team through AI adoption. They report separate scores, and many teams use both.
Can we use it during an AI rollout? Yes. Run the AI Fluency Assessment across the workforce and Leading with AI for managers. Together they show where the rollout will move quickly and where teams need support first.
How long does it take? It takes 15 minutes on average to complete the assessment.
Is it included in our plan? Yes. Leading with AI is included in every Bryq plan.
How was it built? See Leading with AI methodology. For the wider picture on AI fluency, see the AI Fluency Hub.
Author
Bryq is composed of a diverse team of HR experts, including I-O psychologists, data scientists, and seasoned HR professionals, all united by a shared passion for soft skills.
