EP 202 From Resistance to Results | Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
Have you woke up at 3:00am sure this whole train jumps the rails?
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky talks with Dr. Joey on this week's Work Positive Podcast to help. His diagnosis reorganizes your whole challenge. AI adoption stalls on psychology, because the technology turns out to be the easy part. Fear, identity threat, and shame stall your rollout, and each one takes a different answer.
Fair warning: We say AI a lot in this one.
Key Insights
- Standard change management assumes difficulty blocks adoption. AI is easy, since you talk with it and let it teach you. Your challenge is emotional.
- Three profiles drive resistance. AI alarmists fear job loss. Pragmatic resistors feel a threat to their professional and creative identity. Cautious adopters carry shame.
- Identity threat explains why AI hits differently than a CRM or an ERP. A database storing a contact leaves everyone calm. A tool writing the policy, the analysis, or the images someone took pride in producing cuts deep.
- Shadow AI usage runs wide. People use the tools privately and keep it to themselves, so individual productivity climbs while team productivity stays flat, and the gains disappear at every handoff.
- Alarmists settle as leadership commits that AI adoption keeps everyone employed, and as they hear that skilled AI use makes their position more secure. Companies adopting AI well grow roughly ten percent faster than industry peers including headcount.
- Pragmatic resistors move as you invert the rollout. Survey which tasks they find most annoying and train them there first. Leave the work they take pride in alone. They expand the tool themselves once they find it useful.
- Cautious adopters follow the people leader who models it out loud, including admitting to drafting performance evaluations with AI. Baseline training for everyone and a channel for sharing prompts finish the job.
- Measure two things separately. Efficiency does today's work in less time, like the five-day data reconciliation finished in under thirty minutes. Effectiveness does new work entirely, like the prospect research agent that lifted deal flow roughly 45%.
- Organizations that grow slowly by design still have a route. An insurance FAIR plan poured its recovered hours into faster, more accurate claims service.
- The future of your role looks like managing AI agents that handle the less important work while you hold direction and editing.
Do One Thing
Flip the narrative.
Find the person on your team who believes they train their own replacement. Then invite them back in with:
- "AI adoption keeps everyone here employed."
- "Learning these tools well makes your position more secure."
- "Managing AI agents is the skill the future rewards."
These sentences move a team member out of their brain’s fear center and into the part of the brain that makes decisions. They hear it from you long before they believe it from anyone else.
About Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, called the "Office Whisperer" by The New York Times, helps tech-forward leaders stop overpaying for AI while boosting engagement and innovation. He serves as CEO of the future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. Dr. Gleb wrote seven bestselling books, including the forthcoming The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results from Georgetown University Press. His thought leadership has appeared in more than 650 articles and 550 interviews in Harvard Business Review, CBS News, NPR, Time, Fortune, Business Insider, USA Today, and other outlets. His expertise draws on more than 25 years of consulting, coaching, speaking, and training, along with 15 years in academia at Ohio State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Connect with Dr. Gleb
Book resource page: https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/aibook
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-gleb-tsipursky/
The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4gpy7Ps
Message Dr. Gleb on LinkedIn, mention you heard him on the Work Positive Podcast, and he replies. His resource page carries a free introduction and sample chapter, so you can read before you buy. Enter your purchase receipt number there and you also receive a manual on the seven mistakes leaders make adopting AI, plus an assessment showing where you stand in your own adoption process.
Your Next Step
Curious where your culture stands? The free Work Positive Culture Assessment takes a few minutes at workpositive.today.
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