The Leadership Challenge Of AI: How Leaders Can Address Fears Of AI (2025)

The impact of AI continues to be felt in the workplace. Much of the attention has been on either the 170 new jobs created or the 92 million jobs displaced by AI by in 2030, as predicted by the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025.

While understanding the impact of AI on the future of work is important, leaders also need to understand the human side of AI. This means listening to the concerns and fears of workers as AI expands across the organization.

It is these human challenges which change workflows, job expectations, the composition of work teams, and are causing fears and concerns among workers as AI expands in the workplace.

I recently spoke at the Ecosistema Formazione Italia in Rome, a conference bringing together 2,000 senior leaders in HR, Talent, and Training from European countries, to share their views on innovations in the workplace. It did not take long before the discussion focused on how workers and leaders were adapting to the expansion of generative AI at work.

Five themes emerged which focus on the importance of developing a human centered AI adoption strategy where leaders understand worker concerns and take action to create an optimal human and AI collaboration.

1. Understand The Fears And Anxieties Of Workers Surrounding AI Usage

Attendees at the Ecosistema Formazione Italia expressed concerns about the implications of using AI at work. One of the biggest concerns around using AI in your work is identifying how much of your job can be automated and how this might result in job loss.

This fear of being replaced by AI is behind the Slack survey of 5,000 knowledge workers. The survey found that 20% were using AI at work but not disclosing this to their team or manager. Around 55% used AI at least a couple of times a week, but 74% don’t actively share about their use or encourage others to use AI. The reason: fear of being displaced by AI once your manager sees how much of your job can be automated by AI.

While one could argue this fear may not be based on reality, it is a human reaction to exponential change in the workplace and must be addressed by leaders. To successfully manage how humans and AI work together, leaders need to understand the cultural change, and emotional intelligence of the workforce.

2. Identify The Concerns Workers Have of Not Using AI At Work

The second fear often discussed was the possible consequences of not using AI and how that may lead to either stalled careers or can impact one’s performance review. In the case of Shopify, using AI daily is now a baseline expectation at the company.

A published memo Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke sent to the Shopify workforce asks this question: “What would your function look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?” Lütke elaborates by saying that, before asking for more headcount or resources, teams must show why they cannot get what they want done using AI.

Finally, Lütke shared that AI usage will be factored into all performance reviews at the Shopify. By doing this, Shopify is moving from encouraging employees to “tinker with AI” to changing how they work in partnership with AI. Concerns about such performance reviews were also top of mind at the conference. If your organization has an expectation to use AI as part of your job, as is the case for Shopify employees, then leaders must invest in AI literacy training as well as make the AI guidelines for safe usage clear and easy to access for employees.

3. Understand The Implications If All Team Members Use AI

One of the most interesting questions posed during the EFI conference was: What are your strengths in a world where AI is universally available?

This question is especially relevant for those in the content creation/communications business. What if your strengths are writing clearly and concisely? If AI creates your first draft, what strengths do you develop to “stand out” on your team? Using generative AI to create a first draft is now so pervasive that it’s made its way into AI products, including as core feature in Copilot for Microsoft 365. In a world where AI is universally available and there is an expectation for daily AI usage, workers need to focus on developing skills in human creativity, emotional nuance, strategic thinking, and importantly, oversight of the AI output. At the same time, leaders can reinforce the importance of developing and using these human skills to add value to AI output. Finally, if leaders do add AI usage into the performance review process, then they must also include a discussion on how employees demonstrate usage of these important human skills of strategic thinking and AI oversight in their workflow.

4. Have Leaders Role Model AI Usage And Share Their Experience

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke not only talks about AI in weekly videos, town halls, and podcasts, but last year he used AI agents to create a talk and then presented his experience to the staff. This needs to happen more often, CEOs must lead the AI journey by example and then share the results. Since usage of AI is the most rapid shift to how work is done, this is a skill that all workers need to develop and that will only happen if it becomes integrated into the workflow.

It’s interesting to note that in the last 12 months, after the Shopify CEO manifesto saying AI proficiency is mandatory the Shopify stock has outperformed the market. According to Investors’ Business Dailey, Shopify is showing rising market leadership with a Relative Strength rating of 83. Will more CEO’s follow Shopify and weave AI usage into performance reviews, product development cycles and company wide expectations?

5. Build A Culture of Trust And Transparency In AI Adoption

Building transparency is key to widespread adoption of AI. While understanding how to use AI involves self-learning, leaders must create a culture of sharing back what you learned, and how this impacts your job, your team, and the organization.

Leaders can do this by including AI integration into monthly business reviews and product life cycles. Employees should be encouraged to share their best practice use cases on Slack and Teams. As trust is a key barrier to widespread adoption, leaders will need to empower their teams to learn when to trust AI and how to validate or challenge outputs to ensure final decisions align with the strategic goals of the organization. In addition, transparency in using AI needs to be celebrated for all employees, starting with the CEO and leadership team.

The speed at which today’s technology is changing means that leaders will have to consistently reevaluate and optimize what can best be accomplished by humans, by AI agents, and by humans and AI working together.

Finally, one more crucial question for leaders is: How will the partnership between HR and IT evolve as generative AI expands across enterprise? Moderna is taking this to a new level by integrating IT into the HR function and re-framing its top HR leader as Chief People and Digital Technology Officer. “AI is no longer just a tool—it’s a teammate,” Moderna CPDTO, Tracey Franklin, wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the change.

The news came as pharmaceutical news outlet Fierce Pharma reported the company laid off 50 people across HR and IT, consolidating their roles, in a move that underscores the above-mentioned fears. Executives may need to consider how to communicate with employees as job expectations and roles shift. What is your company doing so humans and AI collaborate in as seamless a way as possible?