Dear Dave,
A piece of wisdom I received from a mentor early in my management career: āmanagers are keepers of secrets.ā
There is genuinely confidential information that people managers become privy to, but what these words really gave me language for is the complex, dual life of people leaders. There is you in relation to the people in your reporting line, and you in relation to your fellow managers above. How you speak and act is necessarily different between those two, but the key is to show up authentically in both. Both over-disclosure and under-disclosure can be toxic and confusing at worst; finding the balance is where you build your judgment as a leader.
With the pace of AI, this balance is being tested daily. The hot takes are everywhere ā LinkedIn, Slack, dinner tables, coffee shops. We all need to be urgently developing AI skills, and yet many of our people are rightfully overwhelmed, skeptical, or morally conflicted. The challenge for people leaders is to hold space for those honest feelings, while also helping teams accept the change, adopt the tools, and ideally see the benefits of doing so.
The thing is: many of us hold conflicted feelings too.
Iām reminded of my time at Wealthsimple, when our team moved from a philosophically-driven focus on managed investing, to adding trading and crypto in response to consumer demand. That period was deeply instructive. I took a moment to get on board with the new direction. I learned the true meaning of ādisagree and commitā ā not as a personal mantra, but as a leadership responsibility. If I couldnāt find my way to genuine buy-in, I couldnāt help my team find theirs.
The same is true now. This starts with making sure you yourself understand the why, particularly with design and research teams, who are compelled above all by evidence. Why does our team specifically need to adopt AI, and how? The answer may be evolving, but this is an area where full transparency is necessary, even if the reality is that things will change.
Alongside this, we need to create intentional space for honest dialogue. When I spoke to our team about AI recently, I opened by acknowledging the burnout many feel just from the conversation itself. Being honest and vulnerable is often what makes people feel safe to share themselves. I tell my team I donāt know exactly whatās ahead. (Dave has thoughts, though.) I also tell them how Iām taking care of myself through it.
And leaders need to be optimistic: not toxically positive, but genuinely so. If we cannot present a vision of the world where AI makes our work better and our customersā lives better in turn, how can our teams see one? I see my responsibility, always, as creating the circumstances for excellent work to happen: clarity on expectations, space for honest conversations, and enough optimism to make it worth showing up with energy, even when things are hard.
This is also where your fellow leaders matter enormously. Many messages will fall flat. We make each other better by being mindful and intentional together, sharing whatās working, what isnāt, and how weāre finding our own way through.
From touching grass,
Danielle
The internal conflict of using tools that make work more efficient and, in some cases, more enjoyable, is tough. The environmental consequences of these tools are very real. Being able to talk to my managers and colleagues about this conflict openly makes such a huge difference.