Thriving in the age of AI – how firms can develop future-fit leaders

In short:

• Age-old leadership approaches will be inadequate as law firms seek to adapt to the challenges and opportunities associated with AI.
• Traditional leadership development is limiting as it focuses on behavioural change, which often fails to ‘stick’ as it overlooks the impact of mindsets.
• Leaders of legal organisations will need to develop future-focused capabilities that enable them to think, relate and act in more effective ways to succeed in an increasingly complex and challenging environment.

Legal organisations must fine-tune the development of their leaders so that they can better deal with growing complexity and disruption – and grasp opportunities – in the age of AI, writes Daljit Singh.

There is a growing consensus that the age of AI will disrupt the legal industry, resulting in significant changes to its business and operating models, including the emergence of a new hybrid workforce of people working collaboratively with digital AI agents.

My review of the research into the impact of AI on the future of work and leadership has highlighted that leaders will need to be adept at several critical capabilities, including:

• developing a strategic vision and plan for AI
• demonstrating human-centric leadership
• fostering collaboration and innovation across boundaries
• engaging in continual learning (and unlearning).

This raises the question of the extent to which our traditional ways of developing leaders will enable them to acquire these leadership capabilities.

Why traditional ways of developing leaders are limiting

The traditional way of developing leaders focuses on growing their existing base of knowledge and skills. This approach aims to add to the existing tool-kit of a leader and is called ‘horizontal development’. It focuses on behaviours typically listed in organisational competency frameworks.

While this form of development has a role to play, it will be insufficient for successful leadership development in the age of AI. Its primary weakness is that it ignores the underlying mindsets (or belief systems) of leaders that drive their behaviours, and does not develop their mindsets for leading in more complex environments.

The mindsets of leaders are often unconscious and, when left unexamined and unchallenged, will ensure that the behavioural changes sought by leadership programs seldom ‘stick’.

Some of us may recall leadership programs focused on popular topics such as ‘leading change’ and ‘fostering collaboration’, which have ultimately led to little behavioural change despite the relevance of the topics, capable facilitators and positive engagement by participants.

An example of this approach, on the topic of ‘leaders fostering collaboration’, for a law firm is outlined below:

• presentation by the firm leader on the business case for greater collaboration, including its impact on innovation and performance
• panel discussion of examples of successful collaboration in the firm, followed by a Q&A
• small group discussion of how to foster more collaboration, with report-backs
• participants requested to think of one or two ideas that they can take away from the session, with some being asked to share their action points  
• positive feedback on the session, with a good feeling all around.

We can see that this program focuses on developing knowledge regarding collaborative behaviours. However, it is unlikely that this program will help to move the needle for this firm, as some significant barriers to change remain as outlined below.

A new way of developing leaders for the age of AI

We need a better way of developing leaders to enable them to expand their capacity to think, relate and act effectively in an increasingly complex, disruptive and challenging environment.

This can be found in a field of adult development called ‘vertical development’, which focuses not only on the behaviours of leaders but also their mindsets driving those behaviours. It involves examining the beliefs of leaders, and the assumptions, fears and attachments that leaders may hold regarding any aspect of leadership.

The cornerstone of this approach is to help leaders develop much greater self-awareness and self-regulation regarding their mindsets and behaviours. This will often involve group facilitation and follow-up coaching that provides leaders with the required level of challenge and support. It also requires fostering a learning environment of strong psychological safety, and having facilitators and coaches who have the capability, and courage, to constructively challenge and support leaders.

An example of vertical development in action is provided below, also on the topic of ‘leaders fostering collaboration’:

• Being clear about the goal of greater collaboration. For example:
  • Collaboration is one of our core values and key to our strategy. It will leverage our collective knowledge and imagination to deliver greater innovation and superior performance
• Identifying key leadership behaviours that prevent collaboration. For example:
  • Leaders tend to strongly advocate their views, and are often quick to dismiss contrary views. This shuts down the generation of diverse ideas
• Exploring the mindset/beliefs (often a mix of assumptions, fears and attachments) that are driving the above behaviours of leaders. For example:
  • Assuming that leadership is about expressing strong views on issues. Fearful of not being viewed as a leader if they do not have ‘the answers’.  Attached to ‘being right’ in discussions
• Reframing the mindset of leaders to discourage behaviours preventing collaboration, and support new behaviours that promote it. For example:
  • Leadership is not about expressing strong views and being seen to have ‘the answers’. Effective leaders are curious, canvass divergent views and help to connect different ideas to arrive at the best ideas and decisions
• Creating practices to embed new behaviours and prevent old behaviours recurring. For example, committing to the following new behaviours, and seeking feedback if these are being demonstrated, and confirming the absence of prior behaviours.

1. Demonstrating curiosity and inviting and being supportive of diverse views.
2. Actively listening to others, summarising personal understanding of those views, and checking with others if that understanding is correct.
3. Being open to revising their assumptions and personal views.
4. Encouraging the building of connections between different ideas.

Vertical development promotes an ‘inside-out’ approach to leadership development in contrast to the ‘outside-in’ approach of horizontal development. It fosters the self-transformation of leaders through a process of deeper learning and unlearning, to enable them to better lead the transformation of their organisations in the age of AI.

Legal organisations should select priority areas to focus vertical development across the leadership group that would enable the group to deliver on their organisational strategy, supplemented by specific areas for the development of individual leaders.

Organisations should also take the following actions to ensure sustained change:

• set clear expectations regarding the new leadership mindsets and behaviours
• require firm leaders to role-model the new mindsets and behaviours
• provide ongoing coaching, feedback and development support
• reinforce the change via performance management and reward processes.

Accelerating leadership development

Legal organisations can also accelerate the process of vertical development by having their leaders engage in the three categories of activities noted below. These will help their leaders gain an expanded capacity to deal with the greater complexity and challenge in the age of AI.

• Heat experiences:
  Create ‘heat’ experiences, or experiences that will significantly challenge, as well as disrupt, a leader’s usual way of operating to encourage them to adopt new ways of thinking, relating and acting. Examples include:
  • having leaders lead cross-functional teams on topics in which they are not the expert; for example, on firm-wide innovation
  • encouraging leaders to work on projects with much higher levels of ambiguity and challenge than they are accustomed to
  • having leaders share what they have learnt from their most significant development challenges to encourage others to have heat experiences.
• Colliding perspectives:
  Expose leaders to diverse and contrary viewpoints that will significantly challenge their perspectives. These will enable leaders to surface, question and evaluate their taken-for-granted assumptions. Examples include:
  • having more diverse voices in firm forums to promote a deeper understanding of conflicting perspectives; for example, on using AI
  • encouraging leaders to be curious in their questioning, and listening, to listen beyond content, including for emotions and underlying values
  • having leaders invite dissenting views in meetings, especially when there is little debate and a rush to consensus.
• Reflection:
  Engage leaders in deeper reflection on their experiences. This will enable leaders to gain and leverage more learning and deeper insights from their experiences. Examples include:
  • using coaches to help leaders integrate their learning from experiences, including heat experiences, and to also challenge their perspectives
  • encouraging leaders to self-reflect following ‘moments that matter’ regarding their behaviours, what drove those, and the impact on others
  • having leaders invite feedback from a diverse group of people, to develop greater insights into their behaviours, strengths and blind spots.

These activities are intertwined and reinforce each other in practice. Let’s take the example of leading a cross-functional team in an area in which the leader has no expertise. This heat experience for the leader will also present them with colliding perspectives, and require them to engage in reflection for more impactful learning.

These development activities will help create much more ‘adaptive’ leaders with an expanded capacity to think, relate and act in increasingly complex and challenging environments.

Conclusion

Leaders of legal organisations will need to develop future-focused capabilities that will require them to think, relate and act in more effective ways to succeed in an increasingly complex and challenging environment. This elevated form of leadership will be vital for legal organisations to transform, and thrive, in the age of AI.

This will require leadership development focusing on both mindset and behavioural change. Traditional leadership development is limiting as it only focuses on behavioural change, which often fails to ‘stick’ as it overlooks the impact of mindsets.

Legal organisations can also accelerate the vertical development process by having their leaders engage with heat experiences, colliding perspectives and deeper forms of reflection on experience.

Daljit Singh is the principal of Transforming Talent. He is a talent management and leadership development expert and has held senior roles with KPMG and Baker McKenzie. Daljit is also a Teaching Fellow with the Australian College of Law, where he teaches two post-graduate subjects – Workforce of the Future, and Leadership. You can contact him at daljit.singh@transformingtalent.com.au

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