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Published Date:

May 15, 2025

5 Habits of Effective AI Leaders You Should Adopt Now

The best AI leaders aren’t tech-savvy; they think and act differently when it comes to working with AI. These are five ways that help "manager nerds" stay ahead in the AI era.

Daan van Rossum

Founder & CEO, FlexOS

Five Ways “Manager Nerds” Go Beyond the Surface of AI

Whether we call them “SuperWorkers” or “Manager Nerds,” it’s clear that leaders who run a human plus AI team are the future.

“I think it's actually going to be the era of the manager nerds now, where I think being able to manage fleets of AI agents and orchestrate them is going to make people incredibly powerful,” said Anthropic (Claude) cofounder Jack Clark this week.

And look, while almost every hiring manager is looking to hire these AI SuperWorkers, no one has fully figured it out yet.

So, if you’re one of those who feel like you’re just scratching the surface of AI, then look no further than last week’s graduating class of the Lead with AI Executive Bootcamp for killer insights.

Here are five ways these AI-supercharged leaders say they think and act differently when it comes to working with AI:

1. Default to AI.

We know from research that the more AI use cases you have, the more you get out of the technology. This is why we need to give AI a ‘permanent seat at the table,' as AI professor Ethan Mollick calls it, and let AI co-do everything with us.

Not always to replace us, but at least to collaborate with us and augment our capabilities.

One graduate experienced this first-hand. He asked a friend for help with interview prep and got a fantastic answer… then realized that his friend had just copied the question into ChatGPT.

That moment reframed how he should always use AI as a team member, even if he didn’t think it could help on a certain task.

2. Quality Prompting is Key.

While AI is extremely capable, beyond what most of us can picture now, it still needs direction. As Dror Poleg says, “AI can do anything, but we have to direct it.” This is where prompting comes in.

As I wrote last week, prompt engineering isn’t a job anymore; it’s a core skill everyone needs to possess.

Quality prompts are like delegating your work to a supersmart human. Context matters – a lot. See my CODO SuperPrompting framework and our ChatGPT prompt generator.

For many in our latest cohort, the lessons on prompt engineering were a game-changer. (Their words, not mine.) The better you get at prompting, the more you get out of AI. It’s as simple as that.

3. Trust, But Verify

It’s amazing what AI can do.

However, as one participant highlighted to the group, we need to maintain healthy skepticism about AI-generated outputs and human oversight even when AI is impressive.

Whether Perplexity or ChatGPT Deep Research, use AI to accelerate your work, but verify outputs. There’s a reason why we added an entire lesson on beating ‘hallucinations’: AI isn’t perfect and can make up entire quotes and references.

Checking sources, comparing AI outputs (like ChatGPT vs. Claude), and forcing it to use your information are all ways to prevent AI hallucinations.

4. Thinking More, Not Less.

Research found that younger users scored lower in critical thinking because of cognitive offloading when they delegate all thinking to AI.

AI overuse could reduce cognitive abilities, including memory retention and problem-solving. Another paper called this “Falling Asleep at the Wheel.”

But many of our graduates felt the opposite. One exercise we do in particular, doing an AI voice call with an advisor like Adam Grant, made them experience the power of AI as a way to think more and better, not less.

Rather than only using AI as an army of always-on interns, these leaders also use their AI team members as senior advisors to work through ideas and shift perspectives.

5. Learn Together

There’s a reason I created this executive boot camp as a ‘social learning experience.’ No matter how behind we feel, we can always learn more from each other than just by ourselves.

Multiple participants highlighted how the community aspect was key to mastering AI in such a short time frame. One person mentioned, for example, that seeing how others refined prompts and shared feedback was critical to pushing AI beyond generic outputs.

Asking the ‘stupid question’ has become part of our community's culture. What we may think everyone else already knows is probably exactly what everyone is wondering.

Becoming an AI Leader

Even after working intensely with AI for over 2 years and training hundreds of leaders, I still feel like I’m only scratching the surface.

That's normal and expected.

AI is not something you can study and ‘understand.’ As the technology is changing rapidly every single day, the best we can do is know the fundamentals and experiment, experiment, experiment.

As Marcus Bowen concluded during last week’s graduation session: “We’re still early—and that’s the opportunity. We’re just getting started.”

Wherever you are in your AI journey, these five principles should help you to get increasingly more out of it.

Just Scratching the Surface with AI?

Many experiment with AI, but few go beyond the surface. Basic prompts, one or two tools, and a lack of focus.

We’re about to change that.

On June 6, we're launching our latest Cohort of Lead with AI, the Executive Bootcamp that transformed hundreds of leaders at companies like Apple, Microsoft, and McKinsey.

You could get so much more out of AI if someone showed you the way, and that's exactly what we'll do.

No matter what level of AI you are now, by the end of June, you'll be an AI expert.

And, uniquely in Cohort 9 of Lead with AI: ✅ Our unique AI Certification to prove your expertise anywhere, instantly ✅ AI-powered workflows tailored to your role and industry ✅ A private peer community that turns questions into breakthroughs

If you want to stay ahead, you don’t want to miss this.

Launching in just 4 days, so:

If you made it this far, reply and tell me what you'd love AI to take over in your daily workflow.

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See you next week,