What to say, what to avoid, and how to give your team the confidence to start
“Why isn’t everyone getting on board with AI?”
A leader asked me this when we first started working together. She was clear and decisive with her team about getting started with AI, but the response wasn’t what she’d expected.
Many leaders think AI adoption fails because people don’t understand the technology, but that’s rarely the case. The biggest problem is how the conversation was introduced in the first place.
When this leader shared her plans for AI, some of her team members seemed curious, a few looked hesitant, and a few didn’t respond at all. What she didn’t know at the time was what her team was actually thinking.
Some were excited, but others were worried about the risks AI might bring. Some were concerned about their jobs, while others wanted to see proof that AI could help them before they started investing their time in learning it.
I got to work with this leader mapping out a better plan. Instead of treating everyone the same, we identified the different concerns people were bringing to the conversation. I helped her shift from “everyone needs to use AI” to “let’s figure out how AI can support the way you already work.”
She began asking better questions, made it safe for her team to learn, and celebrated their wins all along the way. Her team began to get more and more involved and excited about AI, not all at once, but consistently over time.
This leader did not succeed because she forced AI adoption. She succeeded because she cared about her team and knew that she needed a different approach to get them on board. She actively created the conditions for her team to have that success, and they did.
Many leaders I speak to find it challenging to talk about AI with their teams because they are still trying to figure it out themselves. They want to be a credible guide, but they are still finding their own footing.
Thankfully, you don’t need to fully understand AI to begin talking to your team about it and begin seeing real progress.
How to talk to your team about AI (when you’re still learning about AI yourself)
There are words and phrases that leaders say that unintentionally create fear, distrust and overwhelm in their teams when it comes to AI. These leaders have the best intentions, but their words may be landing very differently than they intend.
Here are some common words and phrases I see causing unnecessary stress, and what to say instead.
Don’t say: “AI won’t change your job”
Why this lands badly: The problem with this phrase is that it’s not really true, and most people know it. AI is transforming how work gets done. When a leader says something the team does not believe, it feels like pandering and creates distance rather than reassurance. It also shuts down the open and honest communication that teams need most right now.
Instead, try: “This changes how work gets done, not why the work you do matters.”
This is honest and specific. It acknowledges that change is happening while affirming that the work people do still has real value.
Don’t say: “Everyone needs to adapt”
Why this lands badly: This sounds like a warning with no roadmap attached. It puts pressure on individuals without telling them what adapting actually looks like, or what support they will have. Teams hear this and feel like it’s on them to figure it all out on their own.
Instead, try: “We will be explicit about what shifts and what stays human.”
This tells people that leadership is going to do the work of figuring this out with them, not just hand them a mandate and hope for the best.
Don’t say: “This will make us more efficient” (without saying for whom)
Why this lands badly: Teams hear efficiency and immediately wonder: efficient for the organization, or efficient enough to replace me? Without context, this phrase raises the exact fear leaders are trying to calm.
Instead, try: “Efficiency only counts if it improves judgment and outcomes.”
This reframes efficiency as something that serves the quality of the work and the people doing it, not just the bottom line.
Give your team a shared vocabulary
One of the reasons AI conversations stall is that people are not sure what the words mean. Terms like hallucination, shadow AI, and generative AI get used constantly, and many team members nod along without wanting to admit they are lost. So do many leaders.
You do not need your team to become AI experts. But taking a few minutes to explain the most common terms (and understand them yourself) before your team starts using AI removes a surprising amount of friction.
A few to start with:
Generative AI is AI that creates things: emails, summaries, reports, images. Tools like ChatGPT and Copilot fall into this category.
Hallucination is when AI makes something up, confidently. AI predicts patterns rather than knowing truth, which is why human review still matters.
Shadow AI is when employees use AI tools without leadership visibility. It is already happening in most organizations and creating unseen risk.
Prompts are the instructions or questions you give to an AI tool. The clearer and more specific your prompt, the better the response.
Tokens are how AI processes information. When you give it a prompt, it breaks your input down into smaller pieces called tokens. There are limits to how much AI can process at once, which is why long or unfocused prompts tend to produce weaker results.
Context window is how much AI can remember during a single conversation. If AI starts giving weaker or less relevant answers partway through a conversation, it may simply be losing track of what was said earlier.
Build the foundation your team needs
Knowing what to say is a strong start. But the conversations you have with your team about AI are just the beginning.
The AI Readiness Accelerator is a 6-week program where I work directly with leadership teams to move from uncertainty to a clear, responsible plan.
Together, we build the alignment, the guardrails, and the shared understanding that makes AI adoption actually stick, including which tools make sense for your organization and how they align with your business goals.
If your team is ready to move from “we should do something about AI” to “here is how we are doing it,” this is where that starts.
