„I’m supposed to explain to my team what AI means for us. But I don’t understand it myself.“

Tuesday morning, 9 a.m., a coaching conversation by video.

Thomas is a divisional head in an industrial company, 47 years old, 22 years with the firm, the last eight of them in a leadership role. A doer. Someone who solves problems before others have finished spelling them out. His team trusts him because he always has an answer.

Today he has none.

He rubs his forehead, glances past the camera, and then says a sentence I have heard in different versions surprisingly often in recent months: „Ralf, the board wants us to integrate AI into our processes. Next week I’m supposed to stand in front of my team and explain what that means for us. But if I’m honest — I don’t understand it myself. Not really.“

Silence. I say nothing. Because I can feel there is more coming.

„The worst part is: I can’t tell anyone. If I stand up there and admit I don’t know where this is going — what kind of leader am I then?“

There it is. The moment that stays with me. Not because Thomas is an exception — but because he is the rule.

I am seeing the same thing in many companies right now. The strategy says „AI.“ The presentations say „AI.“ The external consultants say „AI.“ But the people who are meant to make it happen — the team leads, the department heads, the divisional heads — sit in between and feel like translators of a language they are only just learning themselves.

And the dangerous part is not the uncertainty. Uncertainty is normal when something changes fundamentally. The dangerous part is the silence. Leaders who act as if they had understood. Teams that do not ask because the boss does not ask. And an organisation that launches a transformation in which nobody dares to say: hold on — I need one more step.

What did I tell Thomas that Tuesday morning? Three things.

First: you do not have to understand everything in order to lead your team. You have to understand what your team needs right now — and that is not an AI strategy. It is someone who says honestly: I am learning this too. Let’s work it out together.

Second: your strength was never having all the answers. Your strength was always asking the right questions and getting your team moving. AI changes nothing about that.

Third: anyone who tells you today that they know exactly how AI will have changed your company in three years is selling you something. Nobody knows. The most honest position you can take is: we start, we try, we learn, we correct. That is not an admission of weakness. That is leadership in the fog. And that is exactly what your team needs you for.

A week later Thomas stood in front of his team. He did not pretend to have all the answers. He said: „I’m not through this myself yet. But I want us to tackle it together — and I’m starting with me.“ Afterwards he told me that in that meeting people really talked for the first time in months. Not about slides. About real questions.

Sometimes the bravest sentence a leader can say is not „I know where we need to go.“ It is: „I don’t know yet. But I am willing to find out — with you.“

My question to you: when did you last admit something to your team that you had not yet understood — and what happened afterwards?

Lead yourself, and everything else follows.
— Ralf