How ChatGPT Can Make More Engaged Leaders

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash UNSPLASH.COM Millennials are known as the “burnout generation” for a reason. The cohort has unseated Gen X in holding the most leadership positions in the workforce, but they’re struggling to keep it together. Social media is filled with reels depicting relatively young executives trying to juggle a daunting list of demands—between protecting their direct reports from overwork and appeasing board members and investors, they barely have enough time to choke down a sad desk salad. These memes are funny, but they’re also depressingly accurate. Leaders—milennial and otherwise—don’t have enough time. Multitasking not only makes people more error-prone, it also leads to a sense of disengagement between higher-ups and their teams. No one wants to schedule an important discussion with their boss only to find that they’re only half-listening while updating a spreadsheet or responding to a Slack message at the same time. The good news is that there’s a better way. These days, LLMs like ChatGPT can step in as a quiet force multiplier, simplifying or even removing mundane, time-consuming tasks so they can better focus on what really matters. Here’s how. Why Engaged Leaders Matter Engaged leadership begets engaged employees, which are necessary for a company to flourish. According to a poll from Gallup, 70% of the variance in a team’s engagement is related to management. In other words, the tone a leader sets is often the single most important factor in whether a team feels energized or checked out. If a leader is constantly frazzled and distracted, their team mirrors that energy. If, on the other hand, they’re focused and present, it creates a foundation of stability that others can build on. As it stands, leaders haven’t had a great track record. Feeling valued is the single highest driver of engagement, but, as Forbes reported previously, only 28% of employees feel that leadership genuinely cares about their health and wellbeing. Disturbingly, more than 80% of employees say they don’t get enough recognition at work—unfortunate, since employees are 40% more engaged when leaders prioritize acknowledging their efforts. MORE FOR YOU Engaged leadership is about presence—and unlike many things, it can’t be delegated or outsourced. If you’re treating check-ins like a box ticking exercise, or meetings are held with one eye on your notifications, your employees will not only notice—they’ll check out, too. I point this out not to place blame, but to point out the depth of the problem. Many higher-ups are exhausted and overworked, and when that happens, things fall by the wayside. This is where tools like ChatGPT can shift the equation. By handling repetitive work, LLMs free leaders to give their full attention to the conversations and decisions that only they can make. How ChatGPT Frees Leaders To Be Present Before I launched Jotform, I had a preconceived idea of how a CEO spent their days: bold visions sketched on conference room white boards, spirited strategy debates, regular product breakthroughs. The reality? I was bogged down by busywork. At the time, freeing myself from tedious tasks meant either hiring people to take them off my plate, or simply not doing them. I automated what I could, but this being 2006, the options were limited. Now, I regularly find myself using LLMs to clear my plate. In the last few hours alone, I’ve asked ChatGPT to write me a summary of a dense industry report, draft a first pass of an internal memo and assemble a list of gluten-free eateries within delivery-range of our office. With the time I saved, I was able to block off an entire hour for a one-on-one with one of our senior product managers, who had asked me for a meeting to discuss her career. She’s been with us for a long time and does stellar work, so I was more than happy to set aside part of an afternoon to hear her thoughts on how she wanted to advance in the company, and give her my feedback on how she could get there. No getting distracted by notifications, no urge to quickly respond to an email. That’s the kind of conversation every leader knows they should have more often, but rarely find the time for. Far from being an afterthought, these are the types of interactions that build trust and earn loyalty. Final Thoughts Being a good leader has always been a balancing act. You will never not be pulled in a million different directions, dividing your time between vision and execution, strategy and people. “You’re managing more people than ever with far less support. Responsibilities keep multiplying, but the resources haven’t. And even though you’re supposed to be thinking strategically and focusing on the big picture, you’re often stuck in the daily firefight,” wrote Rebecca Knight for Harvard Business Review, a sentiment that many of us feel. AI isn’t a magic fix for these competing priorities, but it is a powerful sieve capable of filtering out tasks and unlocking hours of productivity. When you give someone your full attention, you’re not just managing, you’re leading, and your whole enterprise will be all the better for it. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions