If the last five years were deemed ‘unprecedented’, I can’t even imagine how we will describe the next five.
One prediction is that we’ll experience a century’s worth of progress by the next Summer Olympics. That’s the leap from horse and cart to driverless cars in just a few short years. For me, that pace of change is equal parts exciting… and a little unsettling.
While no one can predict exactly what’s ahead (not even the experts), one thing is clear –
it’s going to involve massive change. And not just technological but human change.
And that’s where the real challenge lies.
Because while most of us say we want change, the willingness to go through change is often another story.
Especially when the change is messy, uncomfortable, non-linear, and emotionally loaded – as it always is when humans are involved! Because we crave certainty, we cling to the familiar, and we quietly resist even when the alternative promises something better.
Right now, many people are feeling that resistance. They’re overwhelmed, anxious, and unsure about what these new technologies, like AI, will mean for their roles, their relevance, and their futures.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that we’re not seeing mass curiosity or motivation around these new tools. Because when people feel uncertain, they don’t embrace, instead, they tend to pull away.
Which raises a critical question: how do we create environments where individuals, teams, and entire workplaces can thrive even in the midst of unpredictable, disruptive change?
That’s the conversation I led at Sonder’s inaugural Summit in Sydney just a few weeks ago with leaders navigating these shifts – and it’s the conversation we all need to be having now.
Why Change is Hard
Change, even when positive, is inherently difficult. It doesn’t just disrupt workflows, it can shake our identities, routines, and sense of safety. We’re wired for familiarity. Our brains love certainty, even if that means clinging to outdated behaviours or beliefs that no longer serve us. Comfort might feel safe, but it rarely leads to innovation or growth. Not exactly a recipe for long-term success!
And when change hits – especially at the scale AI brings, it often triggers not just resistance, but fear. Not fear of the change itself, but of what we might lose because of it:
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Loss of control
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Loss of status or expertise
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Loss of clarity or relevance
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Loss of connection or belonging.
When people feel that sense of loss, it’s becomes almost impossible to be curious, creative, or collaborative. These fears are real, but too often they go unaddressed.
We see reports from Microsoft highlighting jobs most at risk from AI but rarely do we see leaders having the honest, human conversations that make sense of this uncertainty. Instead, teams are asked to embrace these emerging technologies while they’re in survival mode. Is it any wonder they resist? Or that stress compounds?
This is why the majority of change initiatives fail in workplaces. It’s not the tools or processes that are broken. It’s that the emotional side of change is ignored. Perhaps that’s why emotional intelligence is ranked as the #1 leadership skill to develop (Forbes, 2024), and why the World Economic Forum names empathy as a core skill for 2030.
But here lies the paradox: AI has the potential to improve wellbeing, reduce burnout, automate low-value tasks, and free up time for deeper, more meaningful work. But when rolled out without emotional or psychological consideration, it does the opposite: breeding confusion, threat, and resistance.
People don’t step into change when they feel threatened, they step into it when they feel safe.
The Hidden Ingredient in Change
If fear keeps people in survival mode, then psychological safety is what unlocks growth.
We often underestimate how much the emotional side of change matters. Organisations focus on performance and productivity, but underinvest in the foundations that actually enable it: trust, connection, meaning, and safety. And without those, change efforts stall.
As psychological safety expert, Amy Edmondson, reminds us:
“Psychological safety doesn’t fuel the car – it takes the brakes off. Without it, people never achieve what’s possible.”
And that’s exactly the challenge with AI adoption. It’s normal to resist what feels unknown. But when people understand the why, see the benefits, and feel safe enough to try, they start to experiment. As confidence builds, they integrate. Leaders who understand this progression, and create conditions that support it, dramatically increase the odds of success.
Because tech rollouts don’t fail because systems don’t work. They fail because people don’t feel safe enough to use them.
Google’s research famously showed that psychological safety is the most critical factor in high-performing teams. And more recently, they found that teams with higher psychological safety are 76% more likely to try new tools (Google, 2023). That’s the difference between surface-level compliance and genuine transformation.
When people have a healthy experience with uncertainty and feel psychologically safe, implementation works better. They not only try new behaviours, they stick with them.
How Psychological Safety is Built
Creating psychological safety in the AI era requires more than some comms or strategy slides, it requires deliberate action:
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Address fears openly – acknowledge the losses people worry about, and communicate your workplace’s AI purpose and vision with transparency.
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Provide training and space to experiment – upskilling matters, but so does permission. People need time and room to play, test, and fail.
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Normalise learning – build rituals that make experimentation safe e.g., ask teams in meetings, “How did AI help you this week?” and celebrate both wins and mistakes.
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Set shared goals – frame AI adoption as a collective challenge. For instance, redesign workflows together so success is owned, not imposed.
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Model from the top – leaders should be learners first (not experts), showing curiosity and vulnerability so others feel safe to do the same.
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Run feedback loops – measure more than efficiencies, but is being done with the capacity created, and check in on how people feel, what they’re learning, and where barriers remain.
When leaders do this, resistance transforms into curiosity. Fear turns into experimentation. And adoption sticks.
Because psychological safety is the multiplier: it enables curiosity, continuous learning, and resilience. And it ensures change isn’t something done to people, but something achieved with them.
For any change to stick, we need to have the mindset, skillset and the culture of safety that makes it possible.
AI is not just a tech transformation, it’s a human one. That’s why its success depends less on the tools we roll out, and more on the environments we create.
And none of that happens without psychological safety.
So, in the face of rapid change, how will you step forward?
