AI Readiness (2 of 3): The TEAMS Playbook for AI Success

Speaker A: Teams are confused about AI, teams are scared about AI. Everyone needs to perform with AI, and there's one single thing that drives all of that. You're going to learn about that next.

Speaker B: Welcome to Leadership Mindset 2.0, Practical Neuroscience and psychology. To transform you from a tactical doer into a strategic leader, here is your host, former social entrepreneur of the year and coach to some of the world's top executives. R. Uh, Michael Anderson.

Speaker A: Welcome to the third episode in this AI for Leaders and Organizations podcast arc. The first one was an intro. The second episode we went over what the organization needs to do. This third episode is what teams need to do and you as the manager of the team. Then the fourth episode, coming soon, is going to talk about what you individually need to do for your mindset. How you need to shift to make yourself successful, your career successful, everything else successful. But back to what the team needs to do. Here is the gap that nobody's measuring. 76% of executives describe themselves as enthusiastic about AI, but only 31% of individual contributors say the same thing. That's a 45 point gap. And a lot of executives have no idea it exists. They think everybody's on board and this is causing real problems because it's not just an engagement problem. It's a blind spot. And the thing is, leaders are rolling out all these AI investment decisions based on a picture of their organization that doesn't exist. 43% of workers feel deceived when senior leaders use AI generated communications to talk about AI. This means workers are getting AI generated communications about AI is going to make their life better. It is taking out all of the trust and taking out all of the humanness in this communication. And people are resenting that. And so that is, that's a question to you as a leader. Are you AI generating your communications to your team? Don't do that. Write like a human, be a human. And it's causing real issues. But the question is, why does this gap exist? It's not because people are resistant to change. They are, but they're always resistant to all change. Right? The research is very clear on this. It all comes down to one thing, and it's probably not what you think, because Even though only 15% of employees think that their organization has a clearly community AI strategy, it doesn't matter really about the AI strategy. It doesn't matter what the CEO is doing. It doesn't matter how much the company is spending on tools. The single most important driver of an individual's AI adoption rate is what their, uh, direct manager is doing. We've seen this for decades, if not centuries, about how an individual's satisfaction in their role is directly tied to their direct manager. And I don't know if you've heard about these, but for the last 15, 20 years we found out that the number one people leave a role is because of their relationship with their direct manager or the reason they love a role is because of the relationship with the direct manager. Now is just the same thing with AI. They are looking to their direct manager to form their own opinions on AI, especially in the world workplace. In fact, employees who direct Manager actively supports AI are 8.7 times more likely to say AI has meaningly transformed their work has nothing to do with the large organization, just their direct manager. And positive frontline sentiment towards AI moves from 15% to 55% when the direct manager is visibly and actively engaged. It's a 40 point shift driven by one, uh, person, probably your behavior. And look, they're not looking for you to be a technical expert. They're looking for you to be engaged, to be trying stuff, to be screwing stuff up. They don't even need you to be the expert, they just need to know that you've bought in. Now McKinsey finds the companies where leaders model new behaviors are five times more likely to succeed with AI overall. I know I got to list these statistics for you, but they all come down to the same thing. But the question is, what does visibly engaged with AI actually mean? Here are three diagnostic questions for you to ask yourself. Can you name three AI tools you personally use most weeks? Have you shared something with your team that didn't work with AI in the last 60 days? Have you asked your team what they're using and uh, what they actually need? These are three key questions every manager needs to ask themselves right now. Because if the answer to any of these is no signal you're sending your team is not the signal you think you're sending for a manager. What does actively translating AI and actively working with your team around AI specifically look like? First of all, don't present AI to your team, design with them. Have this be collaborative. Run a session, for example, where you ask what's the most repetitive low value parts of your week? Then explore it together. What AI could do with those. We got to get out of our head. We got to start being so proud when it comes to AI because there's a good chance people on your team are going to pick up AI faster than you. Let them. Let them be the expert. Give them time to Experiment and fail. One of the clearest findings in the research organizations that give their team explicit permission to miss a deadline while learning AI saw measurably higher adoption and more projects reach production. Third one here, share your own failures publicly and specifically. Don't say AI is a journey for all of us. Reveal something real. Uh, here's what I tried, here's what went wrong, here's what I learned. That specific behavior is what creates the psychological safety for your team to do the same. But here's something underneath all of this that uh, most managers don't address. And it's the reason that even well intentioned leaders don't move the needle. And it's the conversation that feels way too uncomfortable to have. And as we all know as leaders, our job is to have that uncomfortable conversation conversation sooner rather than later. And if you don't have this conversation, you're going to be digging yourself out of a hole for a long time. This is about knowing who is secure in their role. And honestly, there may be some roles that are in danger. Because look, the way this works is when you don't address an elephant in the room, everybody makes up stories about it and the stories they make up are not going to be good stories. So ambiguity is more damaging than bad news. Teams can handle knowing that their role is changing. What they can't handle is uncertainty. Not knowing, not knowing if this is the week they're going to get canned because of AI, uh, reading between the lines of every time you do an all hands meeting, interpreting every AI announcement as a potential threat. So the practical split is simple but requires honesty. For roles that are genuinely secure, say so tell people specifically and authentically right now you're uh, safe. There's no plans to get rid of your job. You can come in every day knowing that you're secure and then people can relax. And look, if there are roles that are at risk, don't pretend otherwise. Yeah, I know it's difficult and it is that message that, look, I gotta be honest with you. We are looking at putting in some automation systems. Some of them are AI and we are looking at evaluating your role. And I know that's not what you want us here, but I want to be honest with you and I want to be honest with everybody here and we're going to work with you and we'll keep a line of communication open and we just want to be really open with you. That's what that looks like. And you know, because this authenticity, as hard as it is, that's going to earn respect. And that's going to create more of that psychological safety that you know. And when, when AI recovers some time, reinvest it back into the team. Don't look for every time you invest, you save a little time to just get rid of person, get rid of person, get rid of person. That's going to create a horrible culture. And if AI saves a couple hours a week, and that is a time to, for you as a leader to get people reoriented to what the true value of things are. And so this is really going to bring up your ability as a coach, as a mentor and as a business person. Another thing that we'll look at as far as teams go is a lot of companies aren't hiring a lot of, uh, entry level people right now. And this is going to cause a real problem in a couple years when they are now the middle managers. So you as an organization, as a team, have to also realize what is your strategy for bringing in young talent. So you need to maybe have an apprenticeship model where junior people learn by doing and senior people develop by teaching. You need to make sure that they are. There's talented people still coming to your organization, bringing that youthfulness, bringing that, that, those new ideas and bringing that legacy, bringing that succession plan in. Here's what all of this comes down to. Your team's relationship with AI is a mirror of your relationship with AI. Do you remember Leadership Mindset 2.0? What the foundational rule of leadership is that, uh, your leadership is a reflection of your relationship with yourself. This is the same thing, Dear Leader. You need to model what you want from the people in your organization. They're not looking to hear what you say. They're looking to see what you do and how you do it. We're going to talk more, uh, next time about what you specifically personally need to do in the next episode. So that is coming very soon. Here's your challenge. Think about your team right now. When did you last talk to them about AI? Not an announcement, not a forwarded article. Where did, when did you actually have a interactive conversation about AI Asking them what they're doing with it, asking them how AI can help them, telling them where you're doing things with it, screwing up, et cetera, and having that really honest conversation with them go out there. Leaders have the conversations you need to have, whether it's about AI, whether it's about their role, whether it's about what you're doing with that. This is a time we need you to step up and we need you to step up without having total clarity around things. That's what's difficult about leadership is we need to take action. We need to have conversations even when there is uncertainty. That is what everybody needs from you right now.

Speaker C: That's it for today's episode, but I have one more question for you. Do you have an upcoming event that could benefit from a Leadership Mindset 2.0 Keynote or Facilitation? One of my favorite things to do is speak and work with groups at events and leadership meetings. If you want to learn more about my speaking, go to rmichaelanderson.com speaking where you can see me on stage and inquire about bringing me in for your event. Then we can both meet in person and your team can get empowered with the latest mindset tools and strategies.