AI fluency and business literacy give communicators a leadership edge.
Communicators have spent much of the AI era discussing what it can take off their plates. It’s a good first step, but we’re now at a place where AI can do more than improve efficiency.
Alex Sevigny, adjunct professor at McMaster University and advisor for Ragan’s Center for AI Strategy, said that those who learn to use AI well could become stronger leaders, particularly if they pair technical fluency with business knowledge.
PR Daily spoke with Sevigny about what this means for the future of communications careers and the skills practitioners should be building now.
PR Daily: You’ve said AI can enhance leadership qualities. What does that mean?
Alex Sevigny: AI is a tool that you can use to automate parts of your writing or visual design or other composition processes. That frees you up for strategic thinking and greater client interaction.
Once you become good at it and internalize it into your workflows, it saves you time in all the best ways, because you automate away the pieces you really don’t like or the pieces that are tedious.
Those are the things that hold you back from the creative thinking, strategic thinking and relationship building that are really why you’re employed and why your clients and management see value in you.
How should communicators think about the work AI produces?
A lot of people still use AI awkwardly. The AI will produce an unvarnished product, and then they don’t take the time or effort to craft their product out of the AI’s rough draft.
It’s on you to hone your craft using AI and to make that your own.
Often, if you think that AI is going to replace a component of your workflow, you’re probably wrong. It’s going to enhance it. You must learn this new tool because all the top people are going to be enhancing their workflows this way, and their finished product is going to be so much deeper and more polished.
We’re already seeing it. People who use AI really well are producing really good stuff. People who use AI poorly are producing slop.
What separates those two groups?
I suggest to communicators that they think of the AI’s output as their medium.
If you’re an artist and you’re painting, you have your oil-based medium, your watercolor medium, whatever it is. Then it’s up to you to use that medium to craft something.
The AI will produce something for you, but it’s really just a palette of options. Then you take that and produce the final signed copy.
The idea of fully automating communication only works in highly procedural environments. FAQs, Q&As or maybe informational backgrounders, you could set up a bot and it could work on its own.
But if you’re doing executive communications or internal communications and crafting messages that are going to build relationships and a positive, healthy employment culture across the organization, that’s an art.
Before, you had blank page syndrome. Now you have AI.
AI changes quickly. What should communicators do when they hit a problem they don’t know how to solve?
That’s where you have to be a strategic thinker and use your leadership qualities to find a solution.
That means using your creativity and ability to analyze the situation and then seek resources.
If you hit a block, try to characterize the block in a paragraph, a sentence or bullet points. Maybe you consult AI about the block or ask it to help you find a workaround. If that’s not taking you anywhere, look for learning resources.
You can’t be an order taker. You have to be an order maker. You have to make your own success in this. We’re all learning this together.
What advantage do communicators already have as organizations become more sophisticated with AI?
The leg up we have is that we know how to present information in a way that other people understand, and we have an understanding of context and issues that sometimes more technical colleagues don’t have.
An engineer or scientist can have incredible technical knowledge but won’t necessarily understand the importance of their work in the context of corporate culture, organizational culture, popular culture or the political environment.
We have that advantage.
How does that advantage translate into bigger leadership opportunities?
I see enormous potential for AI for communications professionals.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that communications professionals who really master this technology and also master business literacy, like management, administration, a little bit of finance and accounting, are going to be excellent candidates for senior leadership team roles in the future.
They’re going to have an understanding of the broader human context and relational context that a lot of other, more technical folks, whether they come from finance or other spots, may not have those sensibilities.
It’s an advantage. A huge advantage.
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