Most senior developers don’t get formal training to become leads—they’re expected to step up when the time comes. But how do you practice leadership before you’re officially in charge? This post explores the challenge and how AI can help fill the gap.
After sharing these thoughts with Improvers, I wanted to share the core ideas with a broader audience. Whether you’re on the path to becoming a team lead, technical lead, or both, AI can become a powerful practice partner—if you learn to use it well.
The Leadership Gap No One Talks About
You’re a strong senior developer. You can implement features, fix bugs, and review code. But suddenly you’re expected to lead:
- Set standards
- Clarify expectations
- Help others level up
- Communicate with stakeholders
And often, you’re given no time, training, or space to practice those skills before being thrust into that role. That’s where AI can step in.
Simulating Technical Leadership
As a technical lead, your job includes activities such as:
- Setting clear technical expectations
- Defining coding standards and architectural decisions
- Guiding others through precise instructions
AI can simulate junior team members:
- Write clear expectations and standards in markdown.
- Ask AI to implement a small feature using those docs.
- Review its output, refactor, and give feedback.
- Ask AI to update the docs with what it learned from your edits.
This loop simulates onboarding a new developer, guiding their growth, and reinforcing shared standards, before you have to lead a real team.
Practicing Team Leadership
Team leads focus less on code and more on context:
- Translating stakeholder needs into user stories
- Clarifying the “why” behind features
- Helping the team stay aligned and focused
If you think “writing stories is not my job”, let me offer you some food for thought: user stories are for everybody.
You can use AI to simulate this, too:
- Start with transcripts or raw notes from a stakeholder meeting
- Ask AI to summarize and extract user stories
- Share your own story-writing guidelines (like “cinematic user stories” or Gherkin format)
- Ask AI to refine the stories and propose implementation steps
- Review its questions for stakeholders, adjust the plan, and iterate
In doing so, you’re practicing:
- Clear written communication
- Understanding business needs
- Prioritizing value over output
Don’t Fire and Forget—Coach Like a Leader
AI isn’t a magical replacement for your thinking. It’s a mirror for your clarity. When you:
- Write unclear instructions, AI gets confused (just like a new team member would).
- Skip review steps, AI goes off track (again, just like people).
- Provide thoughtful feedback and checkpoints, AI improves—and so do you.
You’re not just getting better results from AI. You’re developing the habits that make great leads: asking better questions, making decisions visible, and clarifying expectations.
Start Practicing Now
You don’t need a title to lead. You don’t need permission to start practicing. And you don’t need a team to begin coaching—AI can help you rehearse today.
Get intentional. Try it. Reflect. Iterate. And when your opportunity to lead comes, you’ll already be ahead.
🎥 If you’re interested, here’s a full talk covering this topic:
Leave a Reply