Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Here’s a situation that I want you to think about. Imagine a leader, smart, experienced, genuinely cares about their team. They can feel that something is off. Their people are quieter than usual in meetings. There’s kind of a below-the-surface tension in the room that nobody’s naming out loud. And this leader knows deep down that a lot of it has to do with the AI initiative. That’s right, the AI initiative. The, the new tools that are coming into the organization.
Bernie Borges [00:00:31]:
Organization, the changes to the workflow, the uncertainty about what the future looks like for people’s roles. So here’s what this leader does. They wait. They tell themselves, we’ll have that conversation once we have more clarity, once we know more, once leadership has finalized the plan. And in the meantime, The silence grows. The vibe tension grows. And worst of all, trust is quietly eroding. Not because anything bad has happened, but because nothing was said.
Bernie Borges [00:01:13]:
Now, I want to ask you this direct question. If that leader sounds at all familiar, if you’ve been waiting for more clarity before having the conversation, What is that silence actually costing you? Because here’s what I’ve come to believe. The fear conversation that your team needs you to have is not the one that you have when you have all the answers. It’s the one that you have today. I’m Bernie Borges, CEO of Fulfilled at Work Academy. And if you’re new to my channel, welcome. Today, I’m going deep on one of the most important and most avoided leadership conversations that’s happening right now. Let me start with something that I observe pretty consistently when I talk to leaders about AI and their teams.
Bernie Borges [00:02:14]:
Most of them, know that the fear is there. They sense it. Some of them can even name it specifically. And yet the conversation keeps getting postponed. Why? Well, in my experience, it usually comes down to one of three traps, and I call them the silence traps. So let’s look at each one. Silence trap number 1. I don’t want to validate the fear.
Bernie Borges [00:02:47]:
This is the leader who believes that if they bring up AI anxiety directly, they’ll make it worse. Like naming it gives it more power. So they keep things positive. They talk about the opportunity and the efficiency. And meanwhile, their team is reading between the lines of everything that’s not being said. And the irony is that avoidance doesn’t eliminate the fear. It actually amplifies it. Silence trap number 2: I don’t have all the answers.
Bernie Borges [00:03:21]:
Now, this one I understand because it’s honest. Leaders genuinely don’t always know what AI means for specific roles, for headcount, for the future of certain jobs. And they don’t want to say something that might turn out to be wrong. But here’s the thing. Your team isn’t asking you to have a crystal ball. They want to know that you see them, that you’re aware of the uncertainty that they’re feeling, and that you’re in it with them. You don’t need the answers to have the conversation. Silence trap number 3, they’ll come around.
Bernie Borges [00:04:00]:
This is the leader who assumes that with a little time, people will naturally adapt and the anxiety will fade. And you know, sometimes that’s true. But oftentimes what actually happens is that the employees who are most uncertain quietly disengage or quietly start looking for somewhere else to work because someone else is actually talking to them about what the future looks like. Those three traps— don’t validate the fear, don’t have the answers, and assume that they’ll adjust— are exactly how trust erodes. And usually it’s not a dramatic erosion. It’s just a slow erosion. And that’s often the most dangerous kind. So what does it look like to actually have the fear conversation? Well, I want to give you something practical here.
Bernie Borges [00:05:00]:
That’s kind of the way I like to do things. It’s a simple 3-step structure that works whether you’re in a team meeting or in a one-on-one. And since I like to give every practice a name, and maybe you’ve noticed that, I call it the Acknowledge, Anchor, an ACT framework. So let’s unpack each one, beginning with acknowledge. This means naming the fear directly and normalizing it, not in a way that catastrophizes it, but in a way that’s honest. Something like, hey, I know that a lot of you are watching what’s happening with AI and wondering what it means for your role or for your career. Or maybe even for your seat on this team. And I want you to know that that’s not an unreasonable thing to wonder about.
Bernie Borges [00:05:51]:
And I don’t want us to pretend that it’s not in the room. That’s it. You don’t need a fancy rehearsed or written out speech. You just need to say, I see the thing that everyone’s been quietly thinking about, and I’m not going to look away from it. Let me tell you a quick story. I was talking with a VP of operations recently who had been rolling out a new AI platform across her department. She told me that for weeks she’d been leading these upbeat implementation meetings all about the benefits and the time savings and the workflows and the competitive advantage that it was gonna give them. And then one day, one of her most trusted senior managers came to her privately after a meeting and said, I think people are scared and no one’s saying it.
Bernie Borges [00:06:46]:
Then and there, she realized that she had been so focused on the what of the rollout that she completely skipped the human part. So in her next team meeting, she opened with something kind of vulnerable. She said, look, I want to try something a little bit different today. I want to actually talk about how you all are feeling about all of this, not just the details. Yes, she used that F word, and I mean feeling. She wanted to know how they were feeling about it. She said that the energy in the room shifted almost immediately. People exhaled and some of them actually laughed, maybe a little nervously, because the leader had finally said out loud what everyone had been thinking.
Bernie Borges [00:07:36]:
And that moment cost her nothing except the willingness to acknowledge what was real. And a real conversation occurred. Step 2, anchor. After you acknowledge the fear, your job is to reconnect people to what’s not changing, their human value. Your commitment to them as individuals, the mission of the work, This is important because when people feel destabilized by change, they need a fixed point, a foundation, something solid to hold on to. That might sound something like, hey, you know what’s not changing is how much your judgment matters on this team. Your relationships with clients, your relationships internally with other stakeholders, your ability to navigate complexity in ways that no tool can replicate. AI might be changing how we work, but it’s not changing who you are or why you’re here.
Bernie Borges [00:08:40]:
Step 3: Act. Give people one concrete next step. Not a full-blown roadmap, not a reorg plan. Just one clear, specific thing that moves the conversation forward. That might be scheduling a one-on-one with each team member to talk through how their role is evolving, even if that’s not totally known yet. Especially if that’s not totally known yet. It might be bringing in a learning resource. It might be committing to a monthly check-in specifically about AI and what’s changing.
Bernie Borges [00:09:16]:
Just one action, something tangible that tells people this isn’t a one-time speech. We’re actually going to work through this together. So there you have it. 3 simple steps: Acknowledge, Anchor, and Act. That’s the framework. It’s simple. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s simple because it requires something that doesn’t show up on any implementation checklist. It requires your leadership presence.
Bernie Borges [00:09:49]:
Now, here’s what I want you to leave with. In the previous episode, which was episode 278, I made the case that AI doesn’t replace the need for fulfillment-centric leadership. It actually increases the need for it. And one of the 4 things that I said leaders have to do right now is reduce fear. Not ignore it, not rush past it, but actually go there. And the reason this matters, the reason that it’s not just a nice to have, is that fear when it goes unaddressed is a performance problem. In fact, it’s a trust problem. It’s an engagement problem.
Bernie Borges [00:10:29]:
It’s there below the surface at every meeting, every deliverable, every team dynamic until someone calls it out for what it is. And a leader who can address the fear, who can acknowledge the uncertainty that their team is feeling and still move people forward, that’s not a soft skill. That’s strategic leadership. That’s the kind of human-centered leadership that determines whether AI adoption actually delivers what your organization is hoping for. So here’s the bottom line. The organizations that thrive in this AI era won’t just be the ones who implemented the best tools or the best way. They’ll be the ones where people trusted their leaders enough to adapt and grow with the change. So here’s my challenge to you.
Bernie Borges [00:11:28]:
This week, just this week, have one fear conversation, just one. It doesn’t have to be a big event. It can be a 5-minute moment in a one-on-one where you say something like, “Hey, I just want to check in with you. How are you actually feeling about everything that’s changing right now?” Just one conversation. See what happens. If this resonated with you, I would love for you to share it with a leader who’s navigating this right now. And if you want to continue the conversation, My link for a complimentary 20-minute leadership strategy session is in the show notes. I’m Bernie Borges, CEO of Fulfill at Work Academy.
Bernie Borges [00:12:09]:
I’ll see you in the next episode. And hey, if you haven’t subscribed yet, tap or click that button now so that you don’t miss what’s coming next.
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