AI is providing companies with a range of new or improved skills that can elevate entire companies — or, if not managed carefully, bring them down.
Business professionals who want to grow as leaders must develop a deeper understanding of AI, its possibilities, its limitations — and its trip wires.
“Business is a fundamentally human endeavor,” and “research has demonstrated repeatedly that when people think about business decisions with a business lens as opposed to a human lens, the decisions often are unethical or harmful,” Elizabeth Luckman, a clinical associate professor of Business Administration at Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says.
Far more than smart prompts
Studying business analytics at Gies “reframed AI for me,” says Gies graduate Lauren Irving, who received her MBA and a graduate certificate in Business Analytics “Instead of using it for answers, I started using it as a thought partner, asking why something worked. For business leaders, that mindset matters. AI isn’t about shortcuts; it’s about better thinking, stronger questions and faster learning loops.”
When a company wants to roll out a tool in another country, asking AI for an assist with business norms and cultural nuances isn’t going to be enough, Robert Brunner, the associate dean for innovation and chief disruption officer at Gies College of Business, says. “ChatGPT may not be usable in all countries. Is that an ethics issue? Is that a regulatory issue? Is that a management issue? In some sense, it’s probably all of them. You have to consider that.”
Vital AI skills: Gaining an edge with ethics
Irving notes that ethics, bias, governance, and adoption “aren’t technical concerns; they’re leadership skills. Analytics grounds those decisions in evidence. You can’t lead AI responsibly without understanding how these areas interact or knowing when to slow down and keep humans in the loop.”
Humanity should be a key tool in your ethics skill set. “We’re the ones that have to tell the AI what to do. We’re the ones that have to verify the AI did what it was supposed to,” Brunner says. “And we’re the ones that are going to have to verify that AI did it in a way that is appropriate and ethical and aligns with the values of our organization.”
Vital AI skills: Battling bias
Human bias and AI bias are at play in business. “Take a large language model like ChatGPT, for example. It is designed to ‘yes, and’ everything because it wants to keep you engaged. Unless you specifically ask it to question your thinking, it’s not going to. It’s going to agree and dig deeper,” Luckman says.
Most LLMs have been trained in the US, so they have a US bias. Asking ChatGPT a question while earning an online iMBA in a Gies global classroom may yield a very American bias, and global classmates will be able to point that out. Understanding the importance of those human checks in a business, too, is vital for a leader.
Vital AI skills: Measuring risk, ensuring good governance
The best business leaders also know how to weigh AI risks and ensure appropriate, thoughtful AI guardrails. It’s easy — but not wise — to assume AI is the best option all the time. AI may be able to read MRI results, for example, but it doesn’t necessarily know how to prioritize them, what to do next or how to talk to patients — nor is it a trained doctor that some regulations require for that patient interaction, Brunner notes.
Business leaders who work with AI need to be grounded in regulations and legal precedent and know how to minimize liabilities and risks in their particular niche, whether in health care, human resources, or accounting.
Guardrails and transparency are other factors. Employers who have contracts with — or who are — government agencies or universities, for example, should know that employees’ AI conversations are subject to FOIA regulations. Does your organization have access to employees’ generative AI chat logs? Do your employees know that? Maybe someone used the company’s ChatGPT account during a break to ask about a mental health issue they’re having. Do they realize their employer can see that?
“Transparency and culture are important,” Brunner says. “Give examples so employees are educated and know how these tools work.”
Vital AI skills: Attention to adoption
Over the next several years, we’ll all be figuring out how AI can work best for our companies or organizations. Rushing to replace people with AI is not the answer, Brunner says. Letting employees figure out the best ways to use AI takes time and the freedom to try, fail and iterate. “Leaders need to foster a culture of sharing both successes and failures so that others see it’s OK for them to try and fail. That’s the only way we’re going to get from where we are now to the future where we are working effectively with AI and everything we do.”
Develop AI management skills
A master’s degree in business isn’t the only way to learn about AI.
“There is nothing wrong with one-off tutorials, but a well-designed degree is going to take learners on an experience of learning in context, not just transferring knowledge or building a single skill,” Luckman notes.
Irving, who is a quality and training manager at Zinnia, shares a real-life example of that: “The value of my MBA wasn’t the credential; it was how it reshaped how I think and collaborate. Early in the program, a VP told me he could tell I was in an MBA program because I was asking better questions and digging deeper. Online courses are useful, but they don’t replace working through ambiguity with diverse teams. That experience changes how you show up at work.”
AI-related leadership courses at Gies College of Business
BDI 577: Disruption and Emerging Technologies
ACCY 593 (AI): AI in Business: Fundamentals, Foundations, and Future Possibilities
MBA 572: Innovate – Healthcare Innovation Process
Navigating Emerging Media and AI
Emerging Technology, Disruption, and AI
Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence
The right coursework
When seeking a master’s program, the goal is to find one that equips leaders to oversee AI responsibly. At Gies College of Business, for example, the AI cornerstones of analytics and strategy are woven into many classes so learners can understand AI leadership in action, not just as a concept.
“A lot of value comes from the discussions we have in class,” Brunner says. Learners from different industries, backgrounds, countries and cultures bring insights that even the professors don’t always have. Rising business leaders often think they have the best judgment or that their job can never be replaced by AI, but they quickly learn in class that “the variety of human perspectives and cultures makes it so difficult to be supremely confident in your predictions.”
For Irving, it wasn’t a particular course but the program as a whole that aided her decision. “The iMBA gave me the perspective to recognize what was coming and why AI would matter. As I finished the program, I committed to staying hands-on with AI tools and thinking critically about when to use them and when not to. That balance now shapes how I train others to use AI responsibly,” she says. “Gies helped me build a learning habit I still rely on. I didn’t leave the program with answers; I left with better questions. That mindset has shaped my career and my life, especially as technology keeps changing.”
Read more about how the Gies iMBA blends flexibility, community, and real-world outcomes at https://giesonline.illinois.edu/explore-programs/online-mba.
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