Some of your people are racing ahead with AI, while others haven’t moved at all. The gap is getting wider every week, and it’s creating friction in your organization that no one is addressing or talking about openly.
If you understand why this gap is widening, you can fix it. Not with more training or more AI tools, but by understanding how you and your team think about AI.
This is not a technology problem
I was working with a founder who kept calling herself “non-technical.” She said it so often it had become part of her identity and it shaped how she thought about and approached AI.
She hesitated to get started with AI. Not because she was unwilling to learn, but because she could not see how any of this was meant for her.
If I had treated her the same way I treated the eager experimenters on her team, nothing would have changed.
So I changed my approach.
I stopped talking about what AI could do. Instead, I showed her one small, practical thing that connected to work she was already doing every day.
Within a week, she was using it. Within a month, it had become part of her routine.
She did not become more technical, she became more confident.
The five ways your team is thinking about AI
Every team has the same patterns, and once you see them, you cannot unsee them.
- There are people who want to experiment with everything. They are excited, fast, and sometimes reckless. They do not need motivation. They need guardrails.
- There are people who are not excited but are willing to move. They can see the shift happening, and they want to respond responsibly. They do not need hype. They need a clear reason to act.
- There are people who will only move when they see proof. If you show them one useful result, they are in. If you talk about “potential”, they tune out.
- There are people who are thinking about risk, trust, and doing things the right way. They are not blocking progress. They are protecting the organisation, and they need a voice rather than a push.
- And there are people who do not want to change at all. It is not because they are stubborn. It is because AI feels like a threat to something they have spent years building. They need safety, not pressure.
Those are five different mindsets with five different needs, and they are all sitting in the same room waiting for one leader to move them forward.
What happens when leaders treat everyone the same
When leaders treat everyone the same, the eager feel held back, the cautious feel pushed, and the ones in the middle feel ignored.
A training session that leaves some people energized and excited for what’s possible leaves others more confused or resistant than they were before.
You have probably felt the tension in the room when someone asks a question that reveals they are much further behind than everyone assumed.
So what’s actually happening? It’s not a technology problem. It’s a mindset problem.
The one question that changes how your team moves forward
The organizations that get this right do one thing differently.
They stop asking “how do we get everyone to adopt AI?” and start asking “how does each person on our team actually think about AI?”
That single question changes the entire conversation. It changes how you communicate with your team, it changes how you support each person, and it changes how quickly, sustainably and successfully your organization moves forward.
When that shift happens, adoption stops being something you have to push. It becomes something people choose to move forward with together.
What to do this week
Start by looking at your team this week.
Do not look at what tools they are using. Look at how they are showing up with AI.
Ask yourself: who is eager, who is cautious, who has gone quiet, and who is actively resisting?
Then ask yourself whether you have been leading all of them the same way.
If the answer is yes, that is your starting point.
If this feels familiar
I work with leadership teams who are navigating this challenge. Not the technology side of AI adoption, but the human side.
If your team is stuck, misaligned, or moving at different speeds, that is not a failure. It is a signal that your approach needs to shift.
If you want help seeing where that shift needs to happen, I would welcome the chance to start with a conversation.
