Women and AI: A Leadership Moment We Can’t Miss

Is AI becoming mainstream in your company? Is it shaping how you do your work? As AI rapidly morphs how work gets done, it opens the door for women to redefine their roles in organizations. In the past, many talented women mistakenly focused on execution rather than influence. This behavior often limited their career mobility while keeping them stuck on “sticky floors.”

Now with AI transforming the workplace, women have another chance to leverage their leadership—if they grab this bull by the horns. But so far, research shows that many women are falling behind their male colleagues, and the result is an emerging gender gap in AI participation and usage. Women represent only about 29% of the global AI workforce, according to the World Economic Forum, while men currently account for the majority of AI-skilled roles.

Similarly, studies show that women are adopting generative AI tools at a lower rate than men. A Deloitte survey found that in the U.S., 33% of women report using or experimenting with generative AI compared to 44% of men. This positions women behind the eight ball, as AI fluency is quickly becoming a foundational leadership capability—not just for technologists, but for professionals across every field. Economists estimate that over the next decade, nearly half of today’s jobs will require new AI-related skills.

These trends strongly suggest that women who develop a strategic understanding of AI cannot only elevate their contributions but also expand their visibility and position themselves as forward-thinking leaders. Yet the real opportunity lies not in simply learning to leverage AI—it’s in using AI to move from supporting the work to shaping the work. I invite you to reflect on these two questions:

• How could AI help you amplify your unique strengths—not replace them?
• Where in your day could AI give you back time to focus on higher-value work?

Here are five best practices to help women lean into AI.

1. Integrate AI into Your Value Proposition

Successful leaders offer their teams and companies strong decision-making and strategic thinking skills. So, think about how to integrate AI into your leadership value proposition by enhancing your expertise, decision-making ability, and strategic impact. Leaders who combine human insight with AI capability are becoming increasingly valuable across organizations. There’s still time to emerge near the forefront of this trend. Emphasize to your manager and peers on the leadership team how you’re specifically leveraging AI to make you a more effective and impactful leader, and be sure your AI strategies are accounted for in your performance reviews.

2. Reclaim Time for Strategic Contributions

Utilize AI to reduce time spent on repetitive tasks and intentionally reinvest that time in strategic areas and contributions. By automating workflows, streamlining daily deliverables, and tapping into AI’s superior research capabilities, women can free up bandwidth for strategic contributions and high-impact tasks that move their careers forward. Consider using AI to prepare for high-stakes conversations or meetings and to synthesize complex information into strategic insights.

3. Leverage AI to Strengthen Decision-Making

Decision-making is one of the most critical skills for leaders. Women who understand how AI can inform and improve their decision-making skills and outcomes are well-positioned for stronger leadership impact. Some ways to start using AI for better decision-making include:

• Asking AI to identify risks, trade-offs, or alternative strategies for decisions
• Using AI to model scenarios or summarize stakeholder viewpoints
• Stress-testing assumptions before major initiatives

4. Improve Your High-Stakes Communications

Another strategic usage of AI that women leaders can harness is to help with translating complex ideas into clear, concise, executive-level messaging. When used intentionally, AI becomes an invaluable thinking partner to brainstorm with and bounce ideas off of. When it comes to improving your high-stakes communications, you can use AI for everything from refining presentations and memos to make them more strategic and concise; converting technical or operational work into business impact language; and practicing executive communication by asking AI to simulate stakeholder questions.

5. Use AI to Increase Visibility of Your Work

Many women underestimate the importance of visibility and narrative around their leadership impact. You can use AI to help you draft thought leadership posts, articles, or internal insights that can articulate and elevate your strategic leadership contributions. Other ways to increase the visibility of your strategic successes include calling on AI for assistance in summarizing project outcomes into clear business impact statements, and preparing concise updates that highlight results and strategic contributions.

6. Combine Human Strengths with AI Capability

Keep in mind that while AI can enhance your leadership impact when used strategically, human leadership capabilities remain the differentiator that makes the best leaders stand out. The smartest approach is for women leaders to amplify their natural strengths by pairing AI with their own human leadership strengths and skills, including emotional intelligence, relationship building, strategic judgment, and ethical decision-making.

For women leaders who want to maximize their impact, leaning into AI must be about more than simply learning a new technology. When approached strategically, AI can become a force multiplier that helps ensure your voice, perspective, and leadership are represented in the systems shaping tomorrow’s world.

AI doesn’t create better leaders—better leaders create value from AI. Coaching and learning experiences are what close that gap, helping leaders build the judgment, confidence, and adaptability required to effectively integrate AI into how they think, decide, and lead.

You can learn more about our Executive Coaching and Cohort-Based Learning Offerings to experiment, apply, and refine how you use AI—turning awareness into practical capability and ensuring adoption translates into real performance impact.

Rebecca Shambaugh is President of SHAMBAUGH Leadership, Founder of Women in Leadership and Learning, and author of the best-selling books It’s Not a Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor, and Make Room for Her: Why Companies Need an Integrated Leadership Model to Achieve Extraordinary Results.