Hi Reader,

Last week I attended an AI workshop in Columbus, Ohio. About 60 attendees from different industries gathered to gain new AI skills.

The workshop facilitators taught us how to use AI to identify three useful things when using AI for productivity gains:

👉🏼 Use cases
👉🏼 Workflows
👉🏼 Innovation

As you might imagine, it was a bit of a firehose day. I identified a robust list of each of these. By 5 pm, mental exhaustion set in for everyone.

There was time for discussion during the workshop in Q&A format, as well as during breaks. Not surprisingly, the topic of human adoption of AI was discussed. In fact, it was a popular topic. The common sentiment among the attendees is that employees "back at the office" were either uncertain, skeptical, or fearful that AI would replace them.

To say that these sentiments have an impact on employee morale and, yes, fulfillment, is an understatement.

This week's guest is Tim Lidman. When we connected, we discovered how strongly we are aligned on this topic.

On episode 296, Tim shares his backstory that began in a London pub, journeyed through a position at one of the largest global consulting firms where he was promoted to Partner in under two years.

Then, he walked away from this prestigious position to follow his passion for helping people use AI collaboratively with meaning and purpose.

In this week's episode 296 the main point is this.

"Tim Lidman made Partner at a global consulting firm in under two years, then walked away. Along the way, he fought to protect the team he brought with him through an acquisition, translating their work, teaching them to network, making sure they weren't lost in a culture that wasn't built for them. That experience shaped how he thinks about AI today. Tim shares why the Partner milestone didn't feel like arrival, and how caring for his people led him to found Clyde, an AI native platform built to keep humans at the center of AI transformation."

"I record and produce my podcast in Riverside. It’s an AI-powered platform for studio-quality recording (even on Zoom-style calls), plus ridiculously easy editing, transcription, and instant social clips. If you run webinars, record trainings, or want cleaner audio/video for meetings, take a look at my Riverside affiliate link."

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The Coach's Corner

Weekly insights and actionable tips from my lens as an executive coach—helping you lead, grow, and thrive.

This Leadership Exercise Can Make or Break Your AI Rollout

Imagine you're the VP of Customer Operations at a mid-sized insurance services company. Let's call her Dana Whitfield. In two weeks, her team of forty claims processors goes live with a new AI triage tool. The business case is airtight. Leadership approved the budget. The vendor demo went smoothly. Dana has done everything a good rollout requires.

Except one thing. She hasn't asked her team how they actually feel about it.

She decides to find out before the launch, not after. Instead of an all-hands announcement meeting, she sits down for fifteen-minute one-on-ones across her team. She's using five questions I call the AI Trust Audit, and what she hears in those conversations tells her more than any dashboard can.

The exercise looks simple. It isn't.

The first two questions go fine. When you ask what's most draining about their week, people open up fast. Data entry, repetitive documentation, the parts of the job nobody loves. When you ask what part of their work makes them feel most human, a claims processor talks about the moment he calls a policyholder after a house fire and just listens before he explains anything. That's not a task he wants automated. Now you know what to protect.

Then you ask about the rumors. And you learn something you didn't know. Someone on the team heard, secondhand, that this rollout is phase one of headcount reduction. Nobody said that to you. Nobody would. But it's already shaping how three of your best people are showing up to work.

By the fifth question, the one where you ask people to rate, one to ten, how much they believe this technology is being brought in to help them versus replace them, you get a six. Not a crisis. Not a green light either. Just data, and now it's yours to act on.

Prosci's own change research backs this up. Of the five stages employees move through during any change, the desire to actually embrace it is the one leaders most often assume will take care of itself once they've communicated the plan and modeled some enthusiasm. That assumption is what turns a six into a stalled rollout. Prosci: Why Your AI Rollout Stalled

This is where the real leadership work begins.

Here's what a lot of leaders miss. Running this audit isn't the hard part. Knowing what to do with a six is. Deciding whether to address the rumor directly in tomorrow's team meeting or wait until you have more clarity is a judgment call with real consequences either way. Sequencing matters too. Ask these questions too early and you don't have enough context to respond well. Ask too late and the rumors have already transitioned into belief.

And the audit only works if you close the loop. If Dana gathers this information and goes quiet for two weeks while she "figures out messaging," she confirms the very distrust she was trying to measure. The employees who took a risk by telling her the truth will notice she didn't act on it. That silence costs more than never asking at all.

This is the part of AI transformation that doesn't show up in a project plan. It requires reading a room, calibrating a response, and following through in a way that actually rebuilds confidence instead of just checking a box. That's not a communications task. It's a leadership discipline, and it takes more than good intentions to get right.

Why this matters more than the technology

I built the AI Trust Audit as part of my Human Dividend framework because I kept seeing the same pattern. Organizations spend months perfecting the technical rollout and almost no time preparing for the human one. Then they're surprised when adoption stalls, in ways that never show up as a formal complaint. Just slower engagement, more hesitation, less discretionary effort.

The leaders who get this right don't treat trust as a soft metric to check in on later. They treat it as a leading indicator, something to measure and act on before the rollout, not after the damage is visible. That distinction is where fulfillment-centric leadership does its work: connecting a business initiative to the human experience of the people expected to carry it out.

If you're preparing for an AI rollout of your own, the questions above are a starting point. Where it gets harder is in the follow-through: reading what a six actually means for your team, deciding how to respond to a rumor without overpromising, and building the kind of structured plan that turns a one-time audit into lasting trust.

That's exactly what the Human Dividend Assessment is built to help you think through. It's a 16 question diagnostic designed to give you a clear picture of where your people are on the journey to AI adoption and what areas need your leadership attention. It includes two consultations to facilitate delivery of a tailored report with specific action steps.

Continue reading this article.

Explore the Human Dividend Assessment

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He Walked Away From Partner to Lead Human-Centered AI

On episode 296, Tim Lidman argues that most leaders are getting AI adoption backwards, measuring usage instead of building trust, handing people tools instead of judgment. In this episode, Tim traces his career path from a rock star dream in London to founding Clyde, an AI native collaboration platform built to keep human decision-making at the center of the machine. It's a conversation about what happens when you ask yourself if you want to be on the train you're riding, and what fulfillment can look like if you choose another train.

Who This Is For

Leaders navigating AI adoption on their team, executives who've hit a milestone that didn't deliver the fulfillment they expected, founders and product leaders building human-centered tools, and anyone questioning whether the career path they're on was ever actually chosen.

Key Takeaways

Career paths are often accidental. Tim's move from failed rock star to tech sales to startup leader to partner happened one unplanned step at a time, until he stopped and asked if he actually wanted to be on that path.
Reaching the milestone doesn't guarantee fulfillment. Tim made partner and felt the celebration, then quickly realized the day to day of the role didn't match who he was.
Bolting AI onto an old tool doesn't work. Tim compares it to strapping a soap dispenser onto a bar of soap, the mechanism means nothing without authentic purpose built around it.
Strong AI leadership takes three things. A workflow specific tool, a leadership toolkit for guiding people through the change, and the humility to admit you don't have every answer yet.
Trust gets built by being helpful first. Tim used that principle to help a dozen acquired teammates find their footing inside a much larger, more political organization, and it's the same principle behind how Clyde is designed.

The Human Dividend

On episode 296 we discussed the importance of meaning for people who are mandated to use AI in their work. It means something specific for me as the author of the Human Led AI Transformation white paper. Tim and I discussed the leadership imperative to harness the potential of AI for business and for its people.

Visit this page to learn more about my Human Dividend Assessment.