I Gave My Team Agents. Then I Had to Relearn How to Lead. The part of AI transformation nobody talks about.

ESPC26
Conference Sessions

Inspire Stage

I Gave My Team Agents. Then I Had to Relearn How to Lead. The part of AI transformation nobody talks about.

Level 200

SPEAKERS

Shanna Bosmans

Microsoft

ABOUT THE SESSION

We keep treating AI transformation as a technology problem. Microsoft’s own 2026 Work Trend Index says otherwise: organisational factors — culture, manager support, talent practices — account for more than twice the real impact of AI than individual mindset and behaviour. The single strongest predictor of whether people get value from AI is not their skill. It is the environment their leader builds around them.

This is a personal session, not a product one. Shanna Bosmans leads the AI Workforce team at Microsoft Netherlands, and she is running the same experiment she asks her customers to run: how do you take a team of specialists into the agentic era without hollowing out the very human capability that makes them good? She will share what she has changed in her own leadership — what worked, what quietly failed, and what she had to unlearn after a decade of leading teams through change.

Along the way she will name the Transformation Paradox that traps most organisations: people are ready to reinvent how they work, while the metrics, incentives and norms around them still reward the old way. Only 13% of AI users say they are rewarded for reinventing work when the results do not immediately follow. That is a leadership failure, not a technology gap, and it is fixable.

You will leave with the specific leadership practices that the research links to real AI value, a candid view of what it costs to lead this way, and a way of thinking about human skill — judgement, taste, intent, accountability — as the thing you are actively building rather than the thing you hope survives.

Assumed Knowledge:

You should lead people, or influence how people work — as a manager, a team lead, an HR or change professional, or a consultant guiding client organisations. You should have seen Microsoft 365 Copilot or a comparable AI assistant in use, and understand in general terms what an agent does on someone’s behalf. You do NOT need any technical background, any experience building agents, or any familiarity with Copilot administration; there is no code and no configuration in this session.

Practical Takeaways:

Discover which four manager behaviours the 2026 Work Trend Index links to measurably higher AI value, critical thinking and trust in agentic AI — and how to start practising them next week. Learn how to diagnose the Transformation Paradox on your own team, by looking at what your metrics and recognition actually reward rather than what your strategy says. Understand why the human skills that matter most are shifting from producing answers to setting intent, applying judgement and owning outcomes.

Session Scope:

We will NOT cover Copilot licensing, provisioning or administration, tenant configuration, agent building in Copilot Studio, prompt engineering technique, or a feature-by-feature product walkthrough. This is not a demo session; where Copilot and Cowork appear, they appear in service of the human story rather than as the subject of it.