Bridging the AI Disconnect with Your Team

It’s a well-known fact that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world, but how is it affecting your organization? More specifically, how are your employees accepting the addition of AI tools and technologies into their workplace? Are they excited, happy, scared, apprehensive, worried, or perhaps some combination of these feelings and emotions?

As an executive, it’s your job to establish a vision, inspire and align people around that vision, then oversee its execution. A crucial element is the active and willing alignment of the people involved in the implementation. It’s possible this is being missed with the leadership vision to start using AI as much as possible to get more efficiency out of the organization. Do people know what the long-range plan for the use of AI is? If not, they may fear that this is the first step in ultimately replacing them. This creates a disconnect between leadership and staff.

When there’s a disconnect, people tend to feel uncomfortable, which in turn pushes them to hold back their support of an initiative. In this case, there may be employees who very well could benefit from the use of AI, but are actively resisting due to fear and lack of clarity.

So how can you, as an executive or manager, adopt AI with your team in ways that are productive and acceptable? Part of the answer involves two essential elements of strong leadership: trust and transparency.

Trust & Transparency: Two Critical Components

When people don’t trust their leader, it’s difficult to get those people to do what the leader wants them to do. In his book The Speed of Trust, author Steven M. R. Covey describes what he calls the “trust tax” and the “trust dividend.” In essence, when trust is high, speed goes up and costs go down. But when trust is low, costs go up and speed goes down.

Adding to the understanding of the trust tax and how important it is to avoid is information from Edelman, a multinational public relations and marketing consultancy well known for its annual Edelman Trust Barometer report that measures and evaluates public trust in government, businesses, media and NGOs. The 2025 Trust Barometer report reveals:

“ . . . a profound shift to acceptance of aggressive action, with political polarization and deepening fears giving rise to a widespread sense of grievance.”

Further survey findings indicate:

“ . . . 61% globally have a moderate or high sense of grievance, which is defined by a belief that government and business make their lives harder and serve narrow interests, and wealthy people benefit unfairly from the system.”

Clearly, trust is in a fragile state these days, and leaders are wise to do whatever they can to strengthen the sense of trust held by their employees. (You can download the complete 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer by clicking this link.)

The concepts of trust and transparency are especially apropos to AI, a technology with both ardent advocates and vocal detractors. If there is a lack of trust in how management chooses to deploy AI, and for what reasons, workers may shun its use or try to avoid it completely.

This potential for a rocky road to AI adoption speaks to the importance of managerial transparency regarding AI’s role in the organization now and its perceived role in the future. Decisions about AI’s role should be made in as inclusive a manner as possible or there is sure to be a disconnect between leadership and staff.

Bridging the Disconnect

With these principles in mind, here are some ideas for bridging the AI disconnect with your staff:

1. Clearly communicate your AI strategy after inclusive discussions. Explain the strategy and expected benefits using all available internal channels (company meetings, email, small groups, one-on-one meetings etc.). Foster open discussion, actively seek feedback on iterative improvements, and implement suggestions that make sense. This ensures team alignment and buy-in that will lay a groundwork of trust.

2. Provide thorough and regular training to employees on how to use these new and powerful tools. Address their concerns with understanding and information, as knowledge fosters empowerment, acceptance, and adoption.

3. Emphasize these established benefits of AI in the workplace:

Enhanced efficiency and productivity
Improved decision-making.
The opportunity to do higher level work.
Better work-life balance.
Enhanced customer experience.

4. Highlight existing successful AI implementations within your organization to increase awareness and demonstrate its value. Additionally, share examples of well-known companies that are successfully leveraging AI technologies, such as:

Walmart: The retail giant is using AI to optimize its supply chain, manage inventory, and personalize shopping experiences. They also use AI to predict demand and adapt to regional buying habits. As a result, profits are up and so is hiring.

Brother International: The office technology company integrated AI into its recruiting process, increasing applications by 140% and reducing time-to-fill by 25%.

JP Morgan: This leading financial services company is leveraging AI to detect fraud patterns in financial transactions, an aid to both on-staff investigators and customers.

Google: The search engine goliath uses AI assistants for internal operations, managing emails, scheduling meetings, and optimizing resource allocation. As a result, Google workers are more efficient by being freed from mundane and repetitive tasks.

Microsoft: Microsoft uses AI to monitor employee productivity and understand employee relationships, including time spent on tasks, email activity, and time spent working after hours. This has helped to shape a healthy work-leisure balance.

IBM: IBM uses AI to predict employee turnover, identify high-potential employees, and evaluate employee responses to HR initiatives. AI is helping employees advance their careers more quickly and more efficiently.

In Summary:

To successfully implement AI, ensure your employees are invited to weigh in before they’re expected to buy-in to plan execution. This involves establishing trust and transparency through consistent communication. Before initiating any AI projects, prioritize open dialogue and ensure genuine team alignment around the goals and processes.

Remember that many people are still intimidated by AI, fearing job displacement and feeling inadequate due to a lack of understanding of its use cases and benefits. Consequently, executives implementing an AI strategy may face resistance. To overcome this, it’s crucial to present AI positively, building the message on trust and transparency.

•••

Emotional intelligence and soft skills are learnable and essential for success in an AI-driven, high-tech environment. Our 1on1 and team coaching helps you and your team develop these crucial skills. Don’t let this be just a goal; take action. Schedule an exploratory call or contact us through our form.

To further assist you, we’ve created the Building a Cohesive Team self-assessment to help you identify opportunities to strengthen collaboration, trust, and alignment within your team.

Here are more resources related to teams:

Articles:

Case Study:

Videos: