Ethical AI Leadership
Psychological safety, trust capital, and the rituals that keep a person on the hook after the dashboard has already moved on.
By Dr. Sarah Dyson.
Latest field note
What happens to identity and relatedness when a familiar AI agent is retired, swapped, or silently degraded, with concrete examples of grief and the identity gap
September 13, 2026·5 min·Attachment and tool loss
Read the field noteArchive
Status / SCARF under AI
When model output and ranking systems rearrange who looks competent in the room, SCARF domains move—status first. A field note on governing face, pace, and fairness without treating the threat response as attitude.
August 30, 2026·6 min read·New
EI under AI load
Acceleration tools for drafting, scoring, and customer contact compress the moments leaders used for self-check and empathy. The software is not the gap; under-built regulation under speed is.
August 29, 2026·6 min read·New
ADHD / neurodivergent scaffolding
When leaders use AI for scheduling, drafting, and task sequencing as executive-function support, the system can either surface strengths or quietly reintroduce evaluation bias and cognitive load. A field note on governing the scaffold without pathologizing the human.
August 28, 2026·7 min read·New
Named override
An agentic path that can proceed without asking is unclaimed authority until a person, role, and channel are named. Field note on making override concrete before the system runs.
August 27, 2026·6 min read·New
Near-miss and rollback
The most important catches in an agentic workflow never become incidents. They become folklore. That is how the same class of error ships six weeks later.
August 24, 2026·5 min read
Rituals after the model moves
Dashboards do not keep people on the hook. Cadence does. Four short rituals that restore a name to the decision after the system has already sounded sure.
August 21, 2026·5 min read
Decision Toolkit
The Toolkit is the pause you take before a system starts to sound like a colleague. It sits beside these field notes; it is not a summary of them.
Open the Toolkit01
Human moral agency
The person remains the one who can be asked why. Systems execute; leaders answer.
02
Psychological safety
Status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness are the first things a new system spends.
03
Fairness beyond data
Opportunity, voice, and social signaling matter as much as the confusion matrix.
04
Trust as capital
Trust is deposited, withdrawn, and called. Treat it like a balance sheet, not a vibe.
EI Leadership Insights
One practice you can use the week it arrives. No model news. No hype.