Look around your team right now, and you’ll probably see two groups. It’s the first real test of what AI means for communications leaders.

One is racing ahead. They’re drafting with AI, summarizing transcripts, building first-pass media lists, and quietly wondering why the rest of the department hasn’t caught up. The other group is frozen. They’ve watched the tools get good fast, they’re not sure what’s allowed, and underneath the hesitation is a question they won’t say out loud: is this thing coming for my job?

And there you are, in the middle, expected to lead both, and to lead them through the change while you’re still working out what it means for you.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe, and what I recently unpacked on Jason Mudd’s On Top of PR podcast: the hardest part of AI for communications leaders was never going to be the technology. It’s the people. Your job isn’t to become the most fluent prompt engineer in the building. It’s to lead a team through a period of real uncertainty, when some of them are exhilarated, some are anxious, and most are somewhere in between.

And the tools are already here.

Muck Rack’s 2026 State of AI in PR found that 76 percent of PR professionals now use generative AI, and that number has essentially plateaued. Adoption isn’t the story anymore. What surrounds it is. Only about half of PR pros work somewhere with an actual AI-use policy, and fewer than half say their company offers any AI training. Read that again: most of our profession is using these tools every day, and roughly half are doing it with no guardrails and no instruction.

That gap isn’t a technology problem. It’s a leadership vacuum. And it’s yours to fill.

The shift AI actually asks of you

For most of our careers, leadership carried an unspoken expectation: the leader has the answers. You’d been there longer, seen more, and part of your value was in knowing.

AI quietly dismantles that. Nobody has the answers here, because the ground is still moving. So the leader’s role shifts from having answers to asking better questions, and to creating the conditions where your people can find answers safely. That’s not a demotion. It’s the more demanding version of the job, and it’s the same shift from executing the work to becoming the trusted advisor who shapes it.

Go first. You can’t ask your team to experiment with something you won’t touch. If you want a culture that’s curious rather than fearful, model the curiosity. Walk the walk. That doesn’t mean pretending to be an expert; it means being visibly willing to learn in front of them.

Set the guardrails. Half our industry is operating without them, and that’s not freedom, it’s exposure. People actually experiment more boldly when they know the lines: what client data never goes into a tool, what always gets human review, what’s fair game. Guardrails aren’t the opposite of innovation. They’re what make it safe enough to happen.

Build their confidence, not just their access. Handing someone a login isn’t enablement. The training gap in our profession is real, and it’s where a lot of the anxiety lives. The leaders who close it, through lunch-and-learns, shared prompt libraries, a standing “here’s what I tried this week,” turn fear into fluency.

Treat AI’s output as a first draft, never the final word. What the tool hands back is a starting point. Check it, question what it recommends, and find what it gets wrong before it goes anywhere near a client or the public. Then hold your team to the same standard. The value you add isn’t speed; it’s the judgment you bring to everything the tool produces.

Protect human judgment. AI can generate copy, surface patterns, and speed up the grunt work. It cannot decide what matters, read the room, or own the relationship. The most valuable thing your people bring hasn’t changed, and part of your job is reminding them of that, loudly, while everything else feels uncertain.

If you’re not already deep in AI, you’re behind. But it’s also never too late. Both are true, and holding them at once, for yourself and for your team, is the leadership work of this moment.

The tools will keep changing. This won’t.

Every few months there’ll be a new model, a new capability, a new thing to feel behind on. Chasing each one is a losing game. What doesn’t change is the human need underneath: people want to feel capable, to know where the lines are, to trust that their leader sees them and not just the technology.

Lead that, and the tools take care of themselves.

A leadership boost

If you’re leading a team through this and want a thinking partner, that’s the work I do. My executive coaching helps PR and communications leaders lead with clarity when the ground keeps shifting. If that’s where you are, grab a complimentary session and let’s talk.