The fear of AI infiltrating university lecture halls has generated more anxiety than excitement. As ChatGPT and other tools become increasingly accessible, universities report a sharp rise in students using AI to complete assignments – often without disclosure and without understanding the implications.
Lecturers and university academic centres now find themselves having to scramble to revise assessments, rewrite policies and rebuild trust in academic integrity.
There is fear of AI as it challenges how universities evaluate learning; what they consider original work, and proof of skills and competencies. While much of the conversation is focused on what AI is doing to education, we should be asking a more important question: What can AI do for education?
Leadership development experts have been asking this question over the past few years while carrying out experiments on how AI can be used for mentorship, coaching and as a simulation tool by school principals.
These experiments show that a technology that is feared can be leveraged to transform leadership at schools. However, this can only happen when AI is employed intentionally and when lecturers work with students to develop critical skills that support their learning, growth and development as leaders.
For instance, when most people hear “AI in leadership”, the first thing they imagine is automation of scheduling tools, email generators or data dashboards.
These days, however, the introduction of Autonomous AI (also called Agentic AI, like Microsoft Pilot) runs independently to design, execute, and optimise workflows with little human intervention. Such AI functions are useful since they free school leaders from an exceedingly high administrative workload, which helps them structure their time more strategically.
Other AI benefits
These are helpful developments, and so, preparing school principals at present requires the exploration of a different frontier – one that explores the use of AI to provoke self-reflection, model coaching conversations and deepen emotional awareness, while also offering ideas for innovation and change.
Through structured prompts, dialogue simulations and reflection tools, AI can take on the role of a trusted partner and non-judgmental sounding board.
It can walk a leader through a difficult decision, surface ethical blind spots, and offer tailored feedback on communication, tone and policy congruence as needed. As most school principals work in isolation or within a small network, they are often under pressure to make the correct decisions and to engage fairly and ethically with several different stakeholders, making this kind of immediate, on-demand coaching revolutionary.
The benefits of AI are many and various. Research shows that school leaders want support that is timely, intelligent and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is impossible for a human coach, but possible for an AI tool.
This does not mean replacing human mentors, but it does mean extending our reach, scaling the wisdom that exists and supplementing human relationships with intelligent tools that can help leaders stay grounded in their values, even during chaos or a crisis.
South African school principals do not have an easy job, as they are expected to be instructional leaders, crisis managers, community builders, policy interpreters, strategists, counsellors and support services.
The demands of this job make it difficult for them to make time to access human mentors, and most do not have safe spaces to reflect. For example, one principal described the journey as “hit and miss… where you learn as you lead”.
Another principal lamented that “your job consumes you because it’s not only about the classroom, but also about the community… the child who needs a champion”.
Therefore, school principals require support in real time and AI can make this possible. AI tools sharpen their thinking and strengthen their leadership identity. While it does not always offer perfect answers, it does often ask better questions.
Outdated assessments
So, here is the problem. Universities and leadership development programmes are still assessing leadership development and potential in outdated ways, with reliance on theoretical essays, written exams, case studies and checkbox competency frameworks. This says very little about how someone actually leads in the real world.
In the age of AI-generated texts, these outdated assessment types are not valuable any more. While one can ask AI to write an essay, AI cannot handle clashes with staff, make decisions based on empathy and accountability or adapt when things change instantaneously.
So, in university classrooms, lecturers must develop authentic assessments so that leaders are developed in action. These are dynamic, context-rich tasks that reveal a leader’s thought processes, ethical reasoning and decision-making under pressure.
School leaders should engage in the real work of leadership where they lead using AI-simulated dilemmas, live reflection journals and role-play scenarios. These mirror the reality and messiness of leadership. When leadership skills are assessed authentically, what matters is a leader’s capacity to navigate tension, hold uncertainty and act with integrity.
Leaders who are being developed today will, in turn, manage teams, schools and systems where AI is everywhere. So, the future of leadership is not only in leaders working with people, but in collaborating with algorithms, interfacing with data-driven systems and making decisions in environments where AI is an invisible, but powerful force.
AI literacy a core leadership skill
This means that AI literacy is not optional in university settings, it must be embedded as a core leadership skill. This is where principals learn not only how to use AI as a self-development tool, but also how to model its responsible use for their staff and students.
Future-ready leaders do not have to choose between human insight and machine intelligence, as they will know how to harness both.
In this sense, AI is used to expand leadership thinking and not replace it. This is where technology becomes a tool in service of humankind, and when used in this way, it becomes the catalyst for ethical, courageous and future-ready leaders.
It is therefore time for the design of leadership development programmes that invest in using AI as a coach, mentor and personal development trainer.
AI won’t replace leaders. But leaders who learn to work with AI will undoubtedly replace those who do not. AI is not a force coming to disrupt leadership development, it’s already here, and we should be working towards building future-ready leaders who leverage AI as a tool that supports leading education into a sustainable future. DM