Your engineers are not just worried about AI. They are worried about what it means for their future. Ignoring that fear will not make it disappear. Leaders need to talk about it openly and help teams adapt.
Most tech leads do not have a capacity problem. They have a yes problem. Every new priority has a cost, and teams that never say no eventually stop shipping meaningful work.
Most leadership burnout does not come from hard decisions. It comes from constant fragmentation. Meetings, Slack, escalations, and endless context switching slowly dismantle your ability to think deeply enough to lead well.
Most companies are running two operating systems at the same time: the official workflow leadership documents and the unofficial one that employees actually use to get work done. Shadow workflows are not usually rebellious. They are what teams build when the process becomes too heavy to function.
Most communication problems in organizations are not caused by people talking too little. They are caused by leaders saying nothing clearly while using three times as many words.