You translate in both directions. Nobody translates for you.
Ideas arrive from above, sometimes in a rush after weeks of quiet. Your team needs to know why, and how much of their week it will take. You are usually the one pushing for AI, and also the one who knows exactly what it costs to check.
- You agreed to something upstairs, and your team heard about it second-hand.
- You're asked to get everyone using AI, and asked why the checking takes so long.
- You built the AI workflows yourself, so nobody else knows how they fit together.
- Everyone above you has opinions about marketing. All of them are urgent.
What leaders need from you.
Numbers before feelings. If the team is stretched, show it in hours: time saved by AI, time added in checking and fixing, and what that checking caught. A director can act on "eleven hours a week, and it stopped three pricing errors". It is much harder to act on "we're really busy".
Bring a choice, not a complaint. "We can do the new idea by March if the brochure moves to May" gets a decision. "We haven't got capacity" gets a frown.
What your team needs from you.
The reason. When an idea arrives from above, the team mostly wants to know why it matters and what it replaces. They will cope with most things if they understand them.
Credit, out loud. The checking, fixing and approving rarely shows in results. If you don't name it in the meeting, nobody will.
Useful this month.
The Gap Check
Send it up to a director and down to a team member. You'll see both gaps, and you sit in the middle of them.
4 minutesWho Knows?
If you built the AI set-up, this is your own bus test. Then take the questions upstairs.
Agent prompt and cardCast your NEIL
NEIL is what we call the AI. A personality and a job card for each AI agent you've built, so it no longer lives only in your head.
Both Seats
Behind the Output, for leaders, and It Isn't Just You, for the team. Read one, then the other. In the middle seat you'll need the language of both.
"I'm caught between what the directors want and what the team can do."