Anita Zielina's five signs of a strong AI leader

The news industry is profoundly disrupted by generative AI: copyright concerns, dubious sources, hallucinations. The list goes on. But this is not a tech problem - it's a leadership challenge.

"If you can’t have honest conversations, it’s going to be very, very hard to lead together and work together through this stressful period," says Anita Zielina, CEO of Better Leaders Lab, a strategic advisory firm working with media organisations, speaking at Newsrewired yesterday (26 November 2025).

Most media executives would admit to feeling overwhelmed and strategically torn in the current AI climate, she says. So it ends up getting delegated to product managers or the chief technology officers.

But media executives need to foster experimentation across every area of the media business. We've heard this many times but what does that mean in reality?

The makings of a great leader in the age of AI

Drawing on her work with executives and boards, Zielina outlined five behaviours that set effective AI leaders apart:

1. Reduce noise: Avoid overwhelming your team with every new trend or competitor move. Focus on clear, consistent communication.
2. Create clarity: Don’t assume a single town hall or strategy slide is enough. Reiterate priorities and explain why you’re pursuing (or not pursuing) certain AI initiatives.
3. Rebuild workflows: Don’t just "sprinkle AI" over existing processes. Rethink structures and routines from the ground up.
4. Foster psychological safety: Make it safe to discuss failures, setbacks, and experiments. Protect innovation from being crushed by legacy thinking.
5. Adopt a portfolio mindset: Balance short-term wins, mid-term experiments, and long-term bets. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Challenge your habits: Which of these behaviours are you already practising? Where do you need to improve to lead your team through AI disruption?

Zielina didn’t shy away from hard realities: "AI will not fix a messy strategy." If you digitise a broken process, you’ll just end up with a broken digital process.

Continual experimentation is crucial though, as we have only seen the top of the iceberg in terms of what AI can do for news organisations.

Fear and lack of guidance slow teams down, and legacy culture can easily smother innovation.

Expert advice: protect experiments, make decisions even with incomplete data, and start building trust before a crisis hits.

This article was drafted by an AI assistant before it was edited by a human