How to build trust when team members feel threatened by AI

Learn a 5-step approach for supporting your team and bringing them on the journey.

Before You Start

Goal: Leave with a plan to support team members who feel threatened by AI, including how you'll open the conversation and what support you'll offer. If you don’t manage people, try using these approaches with your peers or your own manager.

Read: Why Gen AI Feels So Threatening to Workers (Harvard Business Review) — Optional, as the Key Takeaways below cover the main ideas.

Some people on your team may be worried about what AI means for their skills, their control over their work, and their place on the team. Learn a five-step approach for noticing these concerns, talking about them, and offering support that helps people move forward.

Meeting Agenda · Approx. 60 mins

  • Member Updates · 10 mins
  • Icebreaker · 10 mins
  • Key Takeaways · 5 mins
  • Activities · 20 mins
  • One Action · 10 mins
  • Wrap-Up · 5 mins

👋 Member Updates · 10 mins

Go around your Circle and share personal updates. Keep them brief and focused on significant changes or important decisions since the last time you met. It's OK not to have one every month. If you have a One Action update from last time, share that too.

🧊 Icebreaker · 10 mins

Invite everyone in the group to share. Keep answers to one or two minutes per person.

Think of a time a change at work left you feeling unsettled. What did a manager or colleague do that helped?

🔑 Key Takeaways · 5 mins

Take turns reading these aloud around your Circle.

  • Many employees feel threatened by AI. As AI takes on more thinking, creative, and people-facing work, employees worry about their sense of being capable, their control over how they work, and their place on the team. Source
  • People pull back when these needs go unmet. Common reactions include disengaging, avoiding AI tools, and quietly resisting AI efforts. Source
  • The same change can feel like a loss or like a chance to grow. Some workers feel their role has lost value when AI takes over tasks they were proud of. Others redefine their role and come to see themselves as growing. Source
  • Five steps help leaders respond. Harvard Business Review authors recommend the AWARE steps: Acknowledge how AI may affect people's needs, Watch for unhelpful coping behaviors, Align support with their needs, Redesign work around what people and AI each do best, and Empower people through transparency and a say in how AI is used. Source

🏋️ Activity 1 · 10 mins

Acknowledge and Watch

  1. Identify two team members whose work has changed most because of AI.
  2. For each person, write down what you've seen. Note any signs of pulling back, such as disengaging from work or avoiding AI tools, and also write down any ways that they're adapting to AI and using it well.
  3. For each person, write down how AI might be affecting their sense of competence (feeling capable), autonomy (having control over how they work), or belonging (feeling connected to the team). If your team has required AI procedures, consider whether they limit how people can tailor their work to their own needs.
  4. Draft conversation-starters to learn more about their experiences of adopting AI. Include a way to acknowledge that AI has changed their work and an open question inviting them to share how they feel.

Discuss as a group:

Note: Some questions below invite you to talk about specific team members. To preserve their anonymity, please describe them without using names.

  1. What are some signs you've seen of team members feeling undermined or threatened by AI? How have you addressed those signs?
  2. Have you seen team members adapt well and quickly to AI? What has that looked like? Can you think of ways to foster this rapid-adoption experience for others?
  3. How could you make it safer for team members to tell you how they're really experiencing and using AI?

🏋️ Activity 2 · 10 mins

Align, Redesign, and Empower

  1. Align. For each of the two team members, write down the supports that might help them most: for example, more training, a peer to experiment with, new incentives to use AI, or more say in how their role or the team's goals are changing.
  2. Redesign. Choose one workflow on your team that involves AI. Write down which parts AI handles and which parts people handle, and reconsider whether that's the right division of labor. A good starting point is to give AI repetitive, data-heavy tasks and assign people the tasks that need empathy, creativity, critical thinking, and ethical judgment.
  3. Empower. Write down one or two ways you plan to give your team a say, such as inviting them to help decide which tasks are done by AI vs people, or sharing your plans for AI openly, and asking for their ideas.

Discuss as a group:

  1. What support do you think will best help each team member, and how will you offer it?
  2. How will you invite your team's input on AI adoption, and when will you do it?

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

Commit to one concrete action — big or small — you'll take before next meeting. Go around the Circle and share (1 minute or less per member). Vocalizing it helps hold each other accountable.

Have a one-on-one conversation with a team member about their experiences with AI. Listen, ask what supports would help, and ask for their input on what AI is used for. Come to the next meeting ready to share what you learned.

📅 Wrap-Up · 5 mins

Before you break, plan your next meeting and close on an energetic note. Go around your Circle one by one and finish the sentence:

Now I am feeling… (choose one word).

  • Set the day, time, and location
  • Choose the next topic or resource
  • Confirm who's leading the discussion
  • Decide how you'll stay in touch in between