Servant leadership and AI: Agility and empowerment for the CLO – Chief Learning Officer

The advent of artificial intelligence is an extraordinary, fascinating and challenging time for the learning and development industry. In order for a business to be sustainable, empowered employees must continually grow their technical hard and soft skills.

As AI dismantles the hierarchical structure and places accessibility, opportunities, scrutiny and decisions throughout the organization, the role of L&D must expand its toolkit to promote and advance leadership skills at all organizational levels as a foundation for integrating soft and hard skills and enabling employee empowerment. Traditional hierarchical structures will no longer meet organizational needs and will provide a gap through which artificial intelligence may embody negatives such as unethical, biased and discriminatory results.

Throughout all this, chief learning officers play an especially critical L&D role in developing the new organizational environment and culture to thrive in the new era of digital transformative AI. However, AI ethicality and humanism will depend on solid leadership attributes at every level throughout the organization.

The modern workplaces emphasis on soft skills will drive the empowerment of individuals within the organization. Recognizing the critical role of soft skills brings us to the theory of servant leadership as the foundation for individual empowerment to develop and flourish. Lets look at the new focus and changes L&D can bring through servant leadership, teamwork, soft and hard skills and individual empowerment while embracing AI for its highest positive advantage and value. But first, a brief examination of the era of AI.

The Era of AI

The presence of AI has created a whole new world for the organization and for L&D within the organization. According to Cohen and Feigenbaum (2014), the theory of AI has been in development for many years, with its roots in 1956. McGettigen (2016) defines AI as machines with more than human-like intellectual capacities and a combination of computing technologies converging to enable rational decision-making in complex situations and contexts. Engineers have now created a device that can simulate human intelligence through the emergence of big data, cloud computing, artificial neural networks and machine learning. By integrating these technologies, these machines can perceive, recognize, learn, react and solve problems as AI. Personally, I believe intelligent technologies, as described here, will revolutionize future workplaces, are emerging as the next disruptive innovation, and are recognized by many as the fourth industrial revolution as described by Zhai, et al., (2021).

AI can only work through processes from a vast amount of existing data. To operationalize AI, the first step is using big data, the second is applying analytics, and the third is prediction. Machine learning and deep learning are the prerequisites for developing AI applications, indicating the need for active leadership and scrutiny of data at all levels throughout the organization. Many of the risks presented by AI are understood to be the creation of social problems generated by biased data and algorithms that can sometimes cause harm. From this knowledge view, L&D must play a leadership role in operationalizing data scrutiny with servant leadership, teamwork, soft and hard skills and individual empowerment throughout the organization to minimize, if not eliminate, the inherent risks of AI. L&D may find the tools for this level of expansive and in-depth scrutiny in Servant Leadership, the formation of teams and the promotion and activation of individual empowerment.

Servant leadership For agility and empowerment

Servant leadership was first introduced by Robert Greenleaf (2002), first published in the 1970s. Keep in mind that the title of servant leadership is used here merely to distinguish a type of leadership with characteristics in opposition to the hierarchical, authoritarian style of leadership used in many of todays organizations. The identified essential characteristics of Servant Leadership, as introduced by Greenleaf, are love, humility, altruism, vision, trust, empowerment (of others), service, acceptance, compassion, concern for others, courage, dependability, self-discipline, empathy, honesty, integrity, justice, prudence, self-sacrifice, trustworthiness and wisdom.

The title of CEO is not a prerequisite for becoming or performing as a servant leader. A manager can be a servant leader to direct reports, team members can act as servant leaders to their peers, and flourish within small task forces, committees, departments or divisions. With an emphasis on vision, they can empowers teams, divisions, and the entire organization around clear goals.

Servant leaders can create an organizations culture as a winning strategy, creating a climate of inclusion, utilizing the critical principles of listening, action-oriented integrity, connecting, being open, serving and empowering others. As noted, servant leadership operates on the foundation of soft skills, tantamount to creating an environment and culture of equanimity, engagement and empowerment throughout the organization. It is clear that in this new AI era, employees at all levels must become knowledgeable and supported in understanding personal leadership attributes and capability through the L&D introduction of servant leadership skills, modeling and training for a comprehensive approach to ensuring safeguards against any possible harmful risks which may be inherent in AI. In addition to the emphasis on servant leadership, in the era of AI, increased emphasis must also be placed on cultivating collaborative teamwork, actualizing employee participation with soft and hard skills, and employee empowerment with a focus.

The demand for teamwork

Another one of the significant and dynamic shifts in an organizational structure during the pandemic has been the shift to a super team organization as a basic structure. There have been many shifts in organizational structures through the years, but they have remained in a somewhat basic hierarchical architecture. The super teams design is the first example of a focused, non-hierarchical shift from the age-old hierarchical structure. The formation of teams and teamwork within departments in organizations has been recognized since the 1980s as one of the avenues to obtain employee commitment, involvement and participation in innovation and production for sustainable organizational responsibility.

The era of the pandemic and post-pandemic workplace modifications provided an impetus for exploring and considering new types of work communication, organizational structure, and workflow, with the advent of AI increasing this emphasis. Some companies have moved the team concept to a new and higher level of company structure based on super teams. This genre of organization moves away from the traditional hierarchy of divisions, departments or managers. The change embraces a new structure of teams dedicated to organizational functions and projects with a rotating team leader who reports directly to the organizations CEO. Each team and team member assumes equal direction, responsibility, and accountability for the team results of the function or project. An overview of the super team organizational structure follows with the definition, benefits and characteristics.

Rajesh Padmanabhan (2021), CEO of Talavvy Labs, states, A super team is defined by a mix of functional experts and generalists, strategists, executors, supporters and finishers as: a basket of cross-functional capabilities, with a common purpose and goal. We is more important than I in such self-directed work teams, and technology is a common denominator.

To elaborate further, Padmanabhan states that the conversation has now reached the point where AI in particular, and technology in general, is no longer just an enabling solution but is a transformative potential for what is needed as a makeover of the very architecture of work itself.

The benefits of a team-based organization include creating and implementing solutions that stem from in-depth collaboration among highly skilled, dedicated individuals. Unlike the traditional format that relies on one director, team members focus on the organizational goals and their specific function or project related to that goal. A clearly defined focus leads to open communication and innovation, resulting in better solutions and better business strategies. The distinguishing factors of high-performance work teams are their ability to function at a high level for extended periods, most efficiently and effectively possible. Teams of this type come in many shapes and sizes, and no team model suits every business.

The L&D challenge is to promote digital agility and adaptability as a rule. Be proactive in the leadership for formation of teams, banishing hierarchies and following work rules only. Major characteristics of team-based organizations include trust, empowerment, goal setting, autonomy, team accountability and shared leadership. Examples of foundational characteristics of a high-performance super team are: diversity, clear goals and expectations, effective communication, trust, ownership of functions and projects, empowerment of team members and vision. Teams demonstrate the results from integration of soft and hard skills.

The integration of soft and hard skills

Just as the advent of AI has impacted the role of leadership by opening the window of equanimity throughout the organization, AI has also eliminated the great divide between the application of soft and hard skills within the workplace.

AI has opened the window to review how soft and hard skills are interdependent, integrated and needed for positive, successful growth. The new landscape of growth and opportunity brings us to a new era of integrating soft and hard skills, creating overriding durable skills leadership, communication, listening, creativity, collaboration, self-empowerment and adaptability all identified in our recognition of servant leadership characteristics. Soft and hard skills are needed equally and interchangeably in our AI environment.

Conclusion

In a world perceived by many as disrupted by AI, there is an opportunity for expansion of the role of the CLO beyond the traditional scope of L&D to becoming a servant leader model and advocate for recognition and development of leadership capability and empowerment throughout the organization in every role and at every level throughout the organization.

The challenge for the CLO and L&D is to weave servant leadership and AI into a cohesive cultural fabric throughout the organization. CLOs and L&D can not achieve digital agility and adaptability throughout the organization without an explicit acceptance and transparency demonstrated in employee value through fostering servant leadership, innovation, collaborative teamwork and integration of soft and hard skills to prepare the workforce to effectively navigate and participate in the new reality of digital transformation, and any future iterations, utilizing servant leadership skills and empowerment for all.

References

1. Bhattacharjee, M. (2021). How do Superteams function? Retrieved from https://www.hrkatha.com

2. Cohen, P. R., & Feigenbaum, E. A. (2014). The handbook of artificial intelligence. London: Butterworth-Heinemann.

3. Greenleaf, R. K. (2002). Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power & greatness, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist.

4. McGettigen, T. (2016). Artificial Intelligence: Is Watson the real thing? (2016). Available in SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2826047 or https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2826047

5. Padmanabhan, R. (2021) Super teams. Retrieved from https://www.excoleadership.com/teams/rajesh-padmanabhan/6. Zhai, X., Chu, X., Chai, C. S., Jong, M. S. Y., Istenic, A., Spector, M., Liu, J-B., Yuan, J., & Li, Y. (2021). A review of artificial intelligence (AI) in Education from 2010 to 2020. Hindawi Complexity, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/8812542

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Servant leadership and AI: Agility and empowerment for the CLO - Chief Learning Officer