In this YouTube presentation Helena Liu explains how leaders can successfully navigate the unprecedented, fast‑moving wave of AI transformation. She frames AI as the latest disruptive technological shift—following the internet, e‑commerce, and social media—whose speed will outpace any prior change. Liu argues that a people‑first, change‑management mindset is essential. She outlines a step‑by‑step framework: (1) assess the AI literacy of the team; (2) identify and prioritize concrete AI use cases (e.g., custom chatbots, autonomous or voice agents, no‑code tools); (3) communicate a clear vision with demos and over‑communication; (4) provide targeted training on prompt engineering and AI basics, starting with simple tools like ChatGPT and scaling up; (5) execute incrementally, treating adoption as a marathon, not a sprint, while showing empathy for discomfort; and (6) grant autonomy once competency is reached, encouraging self‑organizing teams. Liu stresses that AI must be combined with human intelligence—AI alone cannot replace strategic thinking or emotional intelligence—and warns against relegating AI ownership solely to IT. She concludes with a call to stay holistically informed about AI across all departments and offers free resources (strategy call, course) for leaders ready to lead their organizations through this AI‑driven era.
Chapters
Hey everyone, if you're new here, my name is Helena and welcome to my YouTube channel. In today's video, I am going to be talking about how do you succeed and lead your team through in this age of AI. If you're already in a management or executive position, I'm also going to be talking about how do you manage your team, how do you get people on board to adopt AI technologies. And if you're new here, please make sure you like and subscribe to this channel and hit that notification bell. With that being said, let's dive right into it. So what we have seen is a massive, massive technological shift that has happened over the last year. Now, the last big technological shift we have seen is the rise of the internet during the dot-com bubble, and then we have seen the rise of e-commerce and social media, and few organizations are still grappling with those changes right now. And to add on top of that, we have AI that they have to now navigate through as well. So while we we will see a lot of jobs and a lot of businesses fade away during these technological changes, it also presents a lot of opportunity as well for those of you who are ready to embrace this technology. Now, no one knows what's going to happen in the future for sure, right? I think one of the reporters actually asked Sam Altman this, this question, what's your predictions for what's going to happen in AI in 1, 2, 5, 10 years from now? And he said, I don't know. And for those of you who don't know, Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT. And so he doesn't even know what's going to happen with AI for sure in the future. Well, the rest of us, you know, your guess is probably just as good as mine. But what he did say is that what we do know for certain is that changes are coming. Okay, changes are coming, and the pace of these changes will be even faster than anything we have ever experienced before. Okay. So changes are coming and these changes are happening faster than ever before. That's what we know for sure. So as a leader, if you know changes are happening, the best way that you can prepare is to be adaptable and to be a master of change management, and also communicating this new vision to your team and getting the rest of your team on board as well. So it's not just about you being comfortable with this technology and being willing to adopt it, but also leading your teams through this very turbulent time, this massive technological shift that would probably be one of the biggest that we will ever see in our lifetime. Okay, so that's what we'll be talking about today. How do you have a structure to respond to these changes? And that's what's going to separate the organizations that succeed over the next decade and those that don't. We know that, you know, AI is definitely a destabilizing event, right? It's going to change every aspect of how we do business. So instead of, you know, writing all these reports by hand, now we have ChatGPT to help us just generate a lot of the text that we need. And that's really changed the way that we write. We have all of these cheap AI tools that can generate images, it can generate videos, it can generate audio. And on top of that, we also have predictive AI now that can help us with forecasting and planning. And so it's really changed a lot of workflows. And we're starting to see more and more businesses use these cheap AI tools to increase their productivity, automate a lot of processes. So how do you then lead your team through such a turbulent time? Well, the thing is, AI by itself can't do very much. You have to combine the AI with the human intelligence to maximize its potential. Right now, you still need humans who are— who understand this technology to be able to extract the maximum amount of value from it. So if no one really understands what prompt engineering is, for example, they're probably not going to get the most out of using ChatGPT. I'm sure you've probably heard of this phrase a lot. And people say that it's not AI that's going to replace your job, it's people who know how to use AI that will replace your job, right? And that's, that's very, very true. To just go back to what I said earlier about changes happening earlier, on top of the whole AI revolution that we have been seeing, another revolution is happening behind the scenes as well. And that is no-code tools. So before, it generally takes a team of developers, you know, 6 to 12 developers, and it takes them 6 to 12 months to develop a piece of software. And now what we're seeing is that, you know, some individual in their basement can now develop software and launch it successfully in as little as a weekend using a lot of these no-code tools such as Bubble, right? So Because of this, we're seeing product life cycles happening faster. As a leader, taking a product-first approach is just not a good idea. Even taking a revenue-first approach is not a good idea because you make money by doing the right things. Even taking an AI-first approach is probably not a good idea. You're not going to get the most out of this technology, as I mentioned earlier, If you don't have people on board. So the best approach you can take is actually a people-first approach. Okay. So make sure that your team is happy and list these issues and form a plan to manage change and navigate through this new technological wave. Right? So what we're going to talk about today is how do you navigate through this chaos that we have been seeing. And I'm going to kind of give you some guidelines and framework on how, how to deal with this. So, you know, recently we have talked to a client and they are a marketing agency and they really want to make sense of AI. They're a little scared and they don't know, you know, how to make sense of all of this. Actually, that's probably one of the first questions that I get when I talk to different business owners. It's what is this whole AI thing? What should I do? How do I make sense of it? Right? So the first thing that you need to do as a leader is to gauge the AI competency of your team. Like, where are they at? Have they even heard of ChatGPT before? And if they have heard of it, do they know what prompts are? Are they good at writing prompts? And if they know that, it's like, are they aware of all the other AI tools? Or do they think ChatGPT equals AI, which a lot of people do? But that's not the case. ChatGPT is one tool tool that you can use inside of AI, right? If they're familiar with all the other tools, like do they understand automations and do they understand AI chatbots and how to build them and stuff like that, right? So you kind of want to have a general gauge of where the current AI literacy is, right? And then the second step is to figure out, well, what are the use cases of AI in my business? Okay, so how can AI help me in my project, like managing my projects? How can it help me with developing my products? And how can it help me in terms of running this business better, right? So really figuring out like where, where the AI adoption needs to happen. So what we have seen, some common ways and some common requests that we have been getting at our AI consulting firm, and if you're interested in having a free strategy call, the link is below. So what we have seen is that there's a massive adoption of AI chatbots. So AI chatbot would learn all of the processes and all of the knowledge within your company. Think of it as a custom ChatGPT, but just based on all of the knowledge within your organization. We have seen companies use it for employee onboarding, customer support, and then we have also seen AI chatbots for setting up appointments as well. So those are some use cases for the AI chatbot. Another AI adoption that we have seen that have helped a businesses is creating autonomous AI agents. And what these can do is, let's say you are a marketing firm, and you have thousands of good web pages that you created over the years. Now AI can learn from all of the past data that you have and start generating text based on the style, tone, and structure that you have written in the past. Now we're seeing the rise of AI agents. And then now we're also seeing the rise of voice agents as well. So it's not no longer limited to chat. But we have seen a lot of requests from organizations who want voice as well. So those are some examples of ways that you can incorporate AI in your organization. But what you really need to do is do your research or talk to an AI consultant to figure out all of the use cases of how it can be incorporated into your business and really stay on top of this. And then Give them a priority. So once you have that list of how you can incorporate AI, then give it a priority. Discuss this new vision of how AI can be incorporated into your projects and business with the rest of your team. That's the next step. So you want to make sure everyone else understands the vision that you have. I find that an issue that I have experienced as well is that when something's in my head and I'm like, I understand it, and I just assume everyone else understands it as well, but that's definitely not the case. So sometimes Sometimes you even need to like overcommunicate to make sure that your points are getting through. And it could be really useful to show some demos of how these AI work, like for example, an AI chatbot or a voicebot, so that your— the rest of your team also see how this technology works as well. Once they understand the vision, the next step is training and communicating with them so that the rest of your team also increases their AI literacy, and they have the new skill set to be able to become more efficient and to generate more outputs. Once your team have that training, the next step is executing and implementing the plan that you have set out based on your priorities. It really does help to start slow. So if your team is starting out from ground zero and don't have any background in AI, then probably the first thing you want to do with them is introduce them to ChatGPT. GPT and what prompt engineering is and give them some sample easy prompts that they can use in their role to become more efficient. And then you kind of build up from that. So once they're comfortable with that, it's like taking the next step, then taking the next step, taking the next step. And just remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint. Changes don't happen overnight. Changes are very uncomfortable for most people. So A big part of leading your team through this technological transformation is having a lot of empathy and being able to relate to people. And this is something that can't be outsourced to AI. AI doesn't have EQ. AI can't pick up on these nonverbal cues. So AI can't manage your team for you. You can almost think of AI as an assistant, right, that can help you do some of the basic or mundane or repetitive tasks, but it can't Do the strategic thinking for you. So if one of your team members don't do things right the first time, is having that empathy and helping them through this huge change and realizing and communicating to them that this technology here is to make us more efficient as a team and to get us to that next level. It's not here to replace what you're doing. So giving them this new skill set so that they can become more efficient, so they can combine AI with what they're already doing. So combining the AI with that human. Intelligence to maximize their output. And then the last step, once your team is comfortable with now adopting AI, the last step is autonomy. So letting your team figure out what's the best way to do things. Let them use their own creativity and let them put their own spin on things. In agile project management, there's a term for this called self-organizing teams. So essentially letting the team figure out what's the best way to get a task done. And you as a leader is to encourage them, is to give them the support that they need, but you're not dictating, you're not micromanaging, and you're not telling them what the step-by-step process is. So once your team reaches a certain level of AI competency, you also have to like step back a bit and let them lead and let them figure out even better ways of doing things. The last point I'll leave you here with today is that as a leader, you can't think of AI as something that you can just outsource to the IT department or the tech department. No, this technology is so pervasive, it impacts every department in any business. So as a leader, you need to have a holistic view of how AI can impact your business. And so you really have to be in charge of this, and you really have to know what's going on in this industry. And we have a free course as well that you can take down below to get started if you want to This is really something you need to have your pulse on. You really need to know what's going on, because if you don't even know what's going on, how are you going to lead other people through this change, right? This concludes my talk on how you can become a successful leader through this age of AI. Thank you for joining me, and if you haven't done so already, please make sure you like and subscribe, and I'll see you soon. Thank you, Helena.
