Agency is the Leadership Skill Required to Thrive in the Agentic AI Era

Agentic AI isn’t just augmenting teams—it’s challenging the very nature of leadership. As enterprises deploy autonomous systems like Splunk’s AI Assistant for Observability, leaders must cultivate a new kind of agency: the ability to orchestrate human-AI collaboration, set ethical guardrails, and focus human effort where it drives the most impact. Here’s a framework to help.

Last month, I sat with a Fortune 500 SRE team who had just rolled out Splunk’s AI Assistant for Observability Cloud. The CTO pulled me aside and shared a story that hit like a lightning bolt: during a service interruption, one of their senior engineers simply asked the AI Assistant to analyze a trace ID. In seconds, the system diagnosed the issue, recommended remediations, and drafted a full incident report.

All the engineer had to do? Review and approve.

This wasn’t a proof-of-concept—it was real, in-production tech changing the way teams operate. And the moment I saw the spark in their eyes, I realized: we’ve crossed the threshold. Agentic AI isn’t just here to help us do more—it’s redefining what it means to lead.

Agentic AI isn’t coming. It’s already here.

We’re officially past the hype cycle. Agentic AI—systems that can reason, plan, and act independently—isn’t a “someday” concept. It’s operating in live production environments across industries. These systems aren’t just performing tasks—they’re navigating dynamic environments to accomplish goals. According to Boston Consulting Group, AI agents are on track for a 45% CAGR through 2027, with a quarter of enterprises expected to deploy them by the end of 2025.

As Harvard’s Karim Lakhani said, “AI won’t replace humans—but humans with AI will replace humans without AI.”

But here’s the question that keeps me up at night: Are we developing the agency required to thrive in this new paradigm?

Rethinking leadership agency

Traditionally, agency meant the ability to act independently. In an AI-driven world, it means something broader: can you create an environment where humans and autonomous systems both operate at their best?

This isn’t about micromanagement. It’s about what I call orchestrated autonomy—setting the goals, defining the rules of engagement, and letting both people and AI execute freely within them.

Leaders with agency don’t just react—they embrace ambiguity and dive head-first into complex, unstructured problems. They see opportunity where others see risk. That mindset isn’t optional anymore—it’s essential when your “team” now includes non-human agents.

Where AI ends and human value begins

To lead effectively with AI, you’ve got to ask the uncomfortable question: What do I bring to the table that AI can’t?

In conversations with security and infrastructure leaders already implementing Agentic AI systems, I hear a recurring theme: tasks they once owned—from parsing threat intel to drafting remediation plans—are now being handled more efficiently by AI.

That doesn’t make them obsolete. It forces a shift. Our value as leaders now comes from:

1. Setting ethical guardrails for AI behavior and alignment with company values
   
2. Creating psychological safety in teams navigating rapid transformation
   
3. Exercising judgment in ambiguous, high-stakes scenarios
   
4. Fostering trust and human connection across the org
   
5. Asking the right questions—perhaps the most underrated skill in the AI era
   
   

This is about scaling your impact, not surrendering your role.

Building agency: From mindset to muscle

Agency doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built through deliberate practice across a few key areas:

1. Self-Awareness at Scale

Only 10% of leaders accurately assess their development needs. That’s a problem. I now use AI to analyze my communication style, decisions, and even how I show up in meetings. It’s uncomfortable—but eye-opening.

Leadership mirrors are now powered by GenerativeAI. The question is: are you brave enough to look?

2. Systems Thinking

With AI now woven into every layer of the enterprise, leaders have got to stop thinking in silos. When one of our financial services customers deployed AI for observability, they expected faster root cause analysis. What they didn’t expect? Improvements in DevOps collaboration, customer experience, and compliance reporting.

They unlocked more value because they looked at the system—not just the task.

3. Delegation = Strategic Amplification

This isn’t just about managing headcount. It’s about designing AI-human partnerships that learn, adapt, and deliver results—without waiting for permission. Not all tasks are created equal and the sooner we can hand off the lower value tasks to AI and automation systems, the sooner we can pour our personal and our teams’ human intelligences into solving the most complex problems that present the highest value return in their solving.  Delegation of the mundanity unlocks innovation and having the agency to do so is the new measure of management effectiveness.

A framework for building AI-aware leadership

If you’re looking for a blueprint, here’s what I recommend:

1. Audit Your Workload: Which tasks truly require human skill? Which could be offloaded to AI? Be ruthless.
   
2. Define Autonomy Boundaries: Where can your AI systems make calls on their own? Where must humans stay in the loop?
   
3. Create Feedback Loops: Regularly review AI-human decisions to improve outcomes.
   
4. Develop Complementary Skills: Focus your energy on strategic empathy, ethics, storytelling—capabilities no algorithm can replace.
   
5. Start Small, Scale Fast: Pilot agentic AI in a contained environment. Build trust, then scale.
   
   

The paradox: As AI grows stronger, humanity matters more

Here’s the kicker: the more capable our technology becomes, the more crucial human leadership becomes. The leaders who thrive won’t be the ones who fear AI—they’ll be the ones who harness it as a force multiplier.

Agentic AI will absolutely transform the way we work. The real question is: will it transform you?

Because the agency required to lead in this new era isn’t granted. It’s earned—through bold thinking, intentional practice, and a belief that the future belongs to those willing to build it. Do you have the agency to build it with AI?

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