Symbiarchic leadership: leading integrated human and AI cyber teams

Purpose This conceptual paper aims to introduce symbiarchic leadership as a way of leading integrated human–artificial intelligence (AI) “cyber teams”, where AI agents contribute directly to knowledge work, and increasingly, decision preparation in HR and across organisations. Design/methodology/approach The paper offers a conceptual synthesis of practice-relevant research on human–AI collaboration, hybrid teams and digital-era leadership, alongside emerging practitioner examples of AI embedded in workflows and translates this into an HR-oriented leadership framework. Findings Symbiarchic leadership comprises four linked practices: (i) Allocating work by comparative advantage. (ii) Treating AI outputs as hypotheses that require human sensemaking. (iii) Managing the human–AI relationship by building adoption, psychological safety and calibrated trust. (iv) Embedding governance so accountability, bias testing, privacy, auditability, escalation thresholds and human oversight are explicit rather than assumed. Practical implications HR can operationalise symbiarchic leadership by updating competency models, selection and assessment, leadership development and coaching, job design, performance and reward criteria and AI governance routines, enabling organisations to realise AI-enabled productivity without degrading ethics, trust or human judgement. Originality/value This paper advances current “augmentation” discussions by specifying the leader’s distinctive role when “lead agency” shifts between humans and AI and by articulating the HR system changes needed to sustain performance, legitimacy and well-being.