Leading and learning with cyber teams

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a peripheral technology that leaders can delegate to IT specialists. It is becoming a core part of how work is organised and how individuals work. This is illustrated in the emergence of Chief AI Officer roles and the integration of CTO and CHRO roles in some larger organisations, as AI tools move from automating narrow tasks to acting as genuine collaborators. In this emerging world, leaders are being asked to guide cyber teams, where people and digital agents work together on shared goals.

‘Symbiarchic leadership’ reflects this new reality. A symbiotic relationship between human and AI agents in the fulfilment of the organisation’s mission. While AI can summarise vast datasets, generate content and handle analysis, humans still have a role to play in the relational aspects of work. When it comes to leadership, this means less about humans having the answers and more about framing the right questions, holding ethical responsibility and using discernment to select the appropriate response in complex, sensitive or cultural situated scenarios.

In the traditional role, leaders were responsible for identifying organisational resourcing needs, specifying the role and recruiting for it, then inducting, developing, monitoring, evaluating, motivating, rewarding and ultimately exiting and replacing the human resource, while co-coordinating different team members and teams.

In the new world order, emerging AI agents will be performing an increasing number of operational roles. This will require leaders to be more technology aware, as well as emotionally adept at supporting humans to integrate these new team members (AI agents) into work flows.

Leaders must help their teams understand when to rely on AI, when to override it, and how to integrate its outputs into wider processes. This calls for high levels of emotional intelligence and an explicit focus on mindset, not just process redesign.

Coaching as a leadership style is particularly well suited to this new world. Coaching leadership involves using inquiry, feedback, and reflection to help colleagues think more deeply, build their own capability and take responsibility for decisions. Rather than telling people what to do, the coaching leader aims to create a climate of psychological safety where experimentation is encouraged and concerns can be voiced.

In the context of AI, this means inviting team members to take risks in testing out new tools, make sense of errors (hallucinations) and talking openly about concerns. Leaders who coach can help staff see AI as an aid to their professional practice rather than a threat to it, they can develop their team to enable them to reinvest themselves and their careers as technology continues to progress.

The emerging concept of symbiarchic leadership speaks directly to these challenges. It is a new paradigm for leading cyber teams in which humans and AI systems operate in a mutually reinforcing partnership rather than a simple user-tool relationship.

The model has several implications for managers. Firstly, leaders must develop discernment about task allocation. Routine, data heavy analysis can be handed to AI, while work that involves complex stakeholder relationships, nuanced ethics or novel problems remains centred on humans. In practice this means retaining human oversight and using judgement.

Secondly, leaders must actively build engagement with AI across the team. Having a few early adopters while others cling to old ways of working creates fragmentation. Leaders need to sponsor experimentation, provide training and use coaching conversations to support people as they develop new habits around AI use.

Thirdly, symbiarchic leadership extends the monitoring role of the leader to include AI systems themselves. Middle managers in AI rich environments need to review outputs, check for bias and ensure that automated decisions are aligned with policy and values. This oversight cannot be outsourced to the technology.

The most effective leaders in this new world will be those who can act as coaches to support and develop their human team members, holding the technological capability of leveraging the power of AI, and using discernment to synthesis AI content while applying human wisdom in decision making.