There's a particular kind of discomfort circulating in senior leadership right now that doesn't get named very often.

It's not confusion about AI exactly, though that's part of it. It's the vulnerability of being expected to lead clearly through something you're still working out yourself, in real time, in front of people who may understand aspects of the technology better than you do.

The conversation about AI is loud, and most senior leaders are in it, at least visibly. They're attending briefings, sitting through demonstrations, forwarding articles, asking their teams what they're doing with it and, increasingly, experimenting themselves.

I've spoken with executives who have started generating code, building simple applications or creating AI workflows, despite having no particular technical background. Sometimes that's driven by genuine curiosity and a desire to understand the technology first-hand.

Sometimes I find myself wondering whether something else is going on, whether there's an unspoken belief that leaders need to prove they "get it" before they're allowed to lead through it.