Buying AI tools does not mean your team will actually use them.

In this episode of Grounding AI, Donna Peterson talks with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts and author of The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results, about why AI adoption is often more of a people issue than a technology issue.

Why do some employees avoid AI? Why are others using it but hesitant to admit it? And what can leaders do to help their teams become more comfortable without forcing change too quickly?

Donna and Gleb discuss the psychology behind AI adoption, the role leadership plays in creating the right culture, and why starting with the right kind of task can make a real difference.

They also look at an important question for every business investing in AI: How do you know if AI is actually helping your company, rather than simply adding another tool?

If your company is introducing AI but struggling to get real participation from the team, this conversation will give you a different way to think about the problem.

In this episode:

• Why employees may resist AI even when the tools are easy to use
• What leaders may be overlooking when introducing AI
• How company culture influences adoption
• A practical way to help employees get started
• How to think about whether AI is producing real business value

Grounding AI | World Innovators

Practical conversations for B2B leaders who want to use AI thoughtfully, improve communication, and keep people at the center of the process.

*** Reach out to dpeterson@worldinnovators.com if you’d like help building a marketing strategy that builds relationships and/or AI training for individuals or full teams.

*** Visit www.worldinnovators.com for more resources on building stronger marketing and leadership strategies.

*** Subscribe to the Grounding AI podcast for weekly insights into marketing, leadership, and the future of AI.

With all the excitement around AI, are we forgetting some of the business lessons that helped us become successful leaders in the first place?

In this episode of the World Innovators Grounding AI Podcast, I talk about something I have been thinking about a lot lately. AI may not be what is creating confusion inside our companies. As leaders, we may be creating some of that confusion ourselves.

We have spent years learning how to lead, communicate, build trust, make decisions, and understand our people. Those lessons still matter when we introduce AI into our businesses.

I look back at lessons from four business books that have influenced how I work:

• Start With Why by Simon Sinek
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling

These books were not written about AI, but the leadership lessons apply.

Before asking your team to use AI, do they understand:

• Why you are bringing it into the company?
• Do they know what you are trying to accomplish?
• Are you using it yourself?
• And are you continuing to coach your team after the initial training?

One of the most important things I learned as a swim coach was that you cannot coach everyone the same way. The same applies to AI. Some employees are excited to try every new technology. Others need more time, examples, and guidance. Good leadership means understanding the people on your team and helping each person move in the right direction.

In this episode, I discuss:

• Why AI adoption starts with leadership, not technology
• How to explain the "why" behind AI to your team
• Why leaders need to define what they actually want AI to accomplish
• How different employees may need different levels of AI coaching and support
• Why leaders need to model the AI behavior they want from their teams
• How regular AI discussions can encourage learning and implementation
• Why human experience, judgment, and business knowledge still need to guide AI
• How inconsistent AI use can eventually affect your marketing, sales communication, and customer trust

A Simple Action to Take at your next team meeting, ask: Why are we using AI in our company?

Then ask: What do we actually want AI to help us accomplish?

Listen to your team's answers. You may find that people are not as aligned as you thought.

AI should not make your business more confusing. Used with clear leadership, good judgment, and the business knowledge your team already has, it should help people work and communicate more effectively.

If your team is trying to determine how AI fits into your business, I would be happy to talk through it with you.

*** Reach out to dpeterson@worldinnovators.com if you’d like help building a marketing strategy that builds relationships and/or AI training for individuals or full teams.

*** Visit www.worldinnovators.com for more resources on building stronger marketing and leadership strategies.

*** Subscribe to the Grounding AI podcast for weekly insights into marketing, leadership, and the future of AI.

Where should B2B leaders draw the line when using AI to create content?

In this episode of Grounding AI, Donna Peterson shares an ethical struggle she has been thinking about as AI makes it easier to generate entire podcasts, blogs, case studies, presentations, and other thought leadership.

Donna uses AI regularly. She trains companies on AI and believes it can be an extremely useful business tool. But there is an important distinction between using AI to organize and communicate your expertise and allowing AI to manufacture expertise that was never yours. For B2B companies with expensive products, complex services, and long sales cycles, that distinction matters. Buyers need to trust that the experience, opinions, case studies, and knowledge associated with your company are real.

Donna discusses how she uses AI for brainstorming, challenging her thinking, organizing ideas, and making her own knowledge easier to communicate without asking AI to do the thinking for her.

She also shares a simple question leaders can use when reviewing AI-assisted content:

Where did the thinking come from? Was it based on your company's actual experience? A real customer? Your research? A real project? Your team's expertise? Your own opinions?

AI should help your company communicate its expertise more effectively. It should not manufacture expertise your company does not have. If your team is using AI for B2B marketing, thought leadership, case studies, blogs, podcasts, or other business communications, this is an important conversation to have.

Grounding AI is presented by World Innovators, helping B2B companies reach the right audiences, communicate clearly, build trust, and use AI responsibly in their marketing and business strategy.

*** Reach out to dpeterson@worldinnovators.com if you’d like help building a marketing strategy that builds relationships and/or AI training for individuals or full teams.

*** Visit www.worldinnovators.com for more resources on building stronger marketing and leadership strategies.

*** Subscribe to the Grounding AI podcast for weekly insights into marketing, leadership, and the future of AI.