Leading with Empathy
Your team is anxious about AI. That's data. How leaders turn fear into capability.
The fear is rational
If you lead a team right now, some of your people are scared. Some of them won't say it. Some of them are over-performing because they're scared.
The fear is rational. The discourse around "AI replacing engineers" is loud, often careless, and aimed straight at them. Even if you know the framing is wrong, they're still hearing it every day.
What leaders can actually do
- Say the quiet part out loud. Acknowledge the fear in a 1:1. Not to fix it. To name it.
- Be specific about what changes and what doesn't. "Your job is to ship great software" doesn't change. The toolkit does.
- Invest in learning time. Not "go figure it out on weekends." Actual hours, on the clock, with goals.
- Reward judgment, not output volume. If your metrics reward lines of code, you are about to learn an expensive lesson.
- Make space for skepticism. The engineer who says "I don't trust this for production" is doing their job. Don't punish them for it.
A small ritual
Run a monthly "what surprised us" session. Half an hour. Three slots:
- Something the AI did well.
- Something it did badly.
- Something we changed because of it.
The ritual normalizes both wins and losses. It turns AI from a scary outside force into a thing the team is learning together.