In my previous post, Leveling Up with AI: Practicing Leadership Before You Have the Title, I shared how developers can use AI to practice leadership before they ever get the title. But that was just scratching the surface.
In this follow-up, I want to go deeper. Let’s talk about what it really looks like to lead from the IDE—how to rehearse both technical and team leadership, using AI not just as a tool, but as a collaborator.
From Giving Orders to Practicing Influence
One of the biggest shifts for any senior developer stepping into a leadership role is moving from doing the work to guiding the work. That doesn’t mean you stop coding. It means you start thinking in terms of setting direction, clarifying expectations, and building shared understanding.
AI tools give you the perfect environment to rehearse that shift. Why? Because the way you prompt an AI mirrors the way you coach a teammate:
- Are your instructions clear and context-aware?
- Do you know what good looks like—and can you explain it?
- Can you review work constructively and communicate what needs to change?
If not, AI will show you. Fast.
Simulated Mentorship
Here’s a practice I’ve been using: I treat AI like a new team member. I give it a task, but before it gets started, I:
- Share the why behind the work.
- Point to our documented expectations.
- Ask it to summarize the plan before diving in.
Then I let it do the work, and I review it like I would a junior dev’s pull request:
- Does the code follow our style and naming conventions?
- Are the tests meaningful?
- Are the behaviors clear?
Instead of just fixing things, I use the opportunity to explain, document, and evolve our standards. The AI updates its own docs. Next time, it improves.
That feedback loop is leadership. And it’s one you can practice every day.
Practicing the Team Lead Role
But it’s not just about code quality. Team leads help their teams connect the dots between business goals and technical solutions. That’s where AI shines again.
I’ve started using AI to:
- Turn stakeholder conversations into user stories.
- Generate Given-When-Then examples based on acceptance criteria.
- Draft implementation plans from stories.
- Ask clarifying questions I didn’t think to ask.
These aren’t just productivity hacks. They’re reps. Each one builds my ability to:
- Translate vague requests into executable plans.
- Spot ambiguity and get ahead of confusion.
- Communicate clearly across technical and non-technical audiences.
That’s real leadership work.
What You Practice, You Get Better At
You don’t need to wait for a promotion to start acting like a lead. And you don’t need to wait for the perfect team to practice coaching. With AI, you have an always-available assistant who will mirror your communication—for better or worse.
Use that.
Try leading through conversation and documentation, coaching through prompts, and learning through review. You’ll build the muscle of leadership—starting right now, from your IDE.
And when your next opportunity comes? You’ll be ready.
🎥 Want to see this in action? I gave a live demo of everything I describe here during my talk last week at the Houston .NET User Group.
If you want the slides and extra resources, let me know.
Stay tuned for more.
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