Enable: Developing People, Coaching and the Early-Career Route

All courses / AI Leader / Module 2 / Chapter 11

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Explain the apprenticeship problem for leadership and what the available studies do and do not show about it.
• Design first rungs for a leadership route in which entry tasks have moved to an assistant.
• Distinguish developmental feedback from feedback that is a people decision, and apply the three tests to the latter.
• Draft a development plan and a competence record with purposes, readers and exclusions.

Key concepts

The apprenticeship problem

Every profession has a lower rung easy enough for a novice and valuable enough to teach the profession. For leadership these were tasks such as first drafts, minutes, summaries, budget figures and small projects, which assistants now do in part.

Attempt first

A person states a conclusion, a draft or a diagnosis before opening the assistant's proposal. The rule applies for a stated period, for example the first six months in a role. It is not a prohibition on use; it makes use the second step.

Designed first rungs

Four tasks the book proposes where consequences are small and the result is checkable: verify a summary against its source, write the decision record for someone else's decision, shadow a decider and state the options first, and deputise for a team leader under a written mandate.

AI literacy as development

Article 4 of the AI Act as replaced by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 requires measures to support AI literacy without guaranteeing a level for any individual. The chapter treats it as role-specific development practised on real work and evidenced by records of judgement, not a completion figure.

Competence record

The CMP record states what a named person can do, with what evidence, assessed by whom and when, for what purpose and who may read it. It is personal data, states what it is not used for, namely ranking, pay or discipline, and is introduced after consulting employee representatives.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. Drafting a paragraph of feedback is a task assistants do fluently. What is lost if the leader no longer forms the observations, and how would the person receiving the feedback notice?
2. Hansa learned that a completion or login figure is not competence. What would count in your organisation as a record of judgement exercised?
3. Nordvik restored coaching of new unit managers at three protected hours a month by a senior unit manager outside the line. Who in your organisation could coach outside the line, and what would protect their time?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. What narrow statement does the chapter say the working paper by Brynjolfsson, Chandar and Chen supports?

   1. AI caused a 19 per cent fall in the employment of young managers across Europe
   2. Experienced workers in AI-exposed occupations lost employment through separations
   3. Early-career employment fell equally in occupations where AI complements human tasks
   4. In one large US payroll dataset, hiring of the youngest workers in exposed occupations fell relative to peers
   Show the answer

   D. In one large US payroll dataset, hiring of the youngest workers in exposed occupations fell relative to peers
   The authors call the results early, descriptive indicators and not causal estimates. The data are American, the paper is not peer reviewed and it does not study leaders, so the chapter keeps the statement narrow.

2. Which of the following is one of the four first rungs the book designs for the leadership route?

   1. Chair a meeting of the executive committee under the supervision of the regional director
   2. Verify an assistant's summary against its source and find every unsupported claim
   3. Approve travel requests below a threshold for one quarter
   4. Configure the instructions of the team's drafting assistant
   Show the answer

   B. Verify an assistant's summary against its source and find every unsupported claim
   The four rungs are verifying a summary against its source, writing the record for someone else's decision, shadowing a decider and stating the options first, and deputising under a written mandate. Each is small in consequence and checkable.

3. What does the competence record CMP-HM-TL-014 state that it is not used for?

   1. Development planning and the leadership roster
   2. Reading by the record's subject and the mentor
   3. Ranking, pay setting and disciplinary process
   4. Assessment by a second leader outside the line
   Show the answer

   C. Ranking, pay setting and disciplinary process
   Under AIDR-1061 leader competence records at Hansa Mutual serve development only. Stating the excluded uses keeps the purposes narrow, as GDPR Article 5(1)(b) on purpose limitation requires of personal data.