{"id":5495,"date":"2025-05-28T17:20:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T17:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=5495"},"modified":"2025-07-09T15:48:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:48:02","slug":"leading-through-the-ai-anxiety-curve-human-centered-leadership-still-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/leading-through-the-ai-anxiety-curve-human-centered-leadership-still-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Human-Centered Leaders Steer Through the AI Anxiety Curve"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jason Collins<\/a><\/p>\n

Established generative AI platforms such as OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, Google\u2019s Gemini (formerly Bard), Anthropic\u2019s Claude, and Jasper (formerly Jarvis) have been competing for users and market share, and the level of competition in the space will continue to grow with the rise of non-U.S. AI startups, including Chinese company DeepSeek. The impact of this new technology in the workplace is far-reaching, and leaders need to guide their organizations\u2019 employees through their psychological resistance with an approach that embraces innovation while acknowledging the potential positive and negatives effects on humans and our emotions.<\/p>\n

Academy of Management Scholar Wendy Smith<\/a> of the University of Delaware noted that history has shown us that when a new generation of technology is introduced, such as generative AI, we resist it psychologically. Smith explained that AI is a great example of this.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI introduces all kinds of uncertainty and possibilities, some exciting, others anxiety-inducing,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a wide range of possibilities, which includes automation of manual tasks, role changes, and job losses, and that type of uncertainty leads us to psychologically fill in the gaps with all kinds of things that we\u2019re afraid of,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

It introduces the question, \u201cWhat happens with the people who had been doing the work but whose skills are no longer relevant or up to date?\u201d<\/p>\n

This AI anxiety curve is not a new concept. Smith cited the introduction of once-disruptive technologies that we now take for granted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen that story play out in every industry,\u201d Smith said. \u201cFor example, we\u2019ve seen how the introduction of the personal computer overtook the mainframe, and the introduction of cloud computing overtook the personal computer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen it in the past, and when it comes to technology in general is, as a result of this anxiety, there\u2019s this curve of people adopting the anxiety,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Smith noted that this spread of emotional reactions results in a wave of people, especially in the workplace, feeling this anxiety and thus holding out for the new technology to become more established before gauging its implications, or dismissing its potential to create positive outcomes. Leaders cannot afford to ignore this anxiety. If they are to continually innovate, they need to take into account employees\u2019 emotional responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cEffective innovation requires attention to, not rejection of, employees\u2019 emotional experiences,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best leaders navigate this learning and adoption curve across the organization with empathy for their workers and clarity on the objectives for deploying the technology with a human-centered approach to leadership that also embraces innovation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jason Collins Established generative AI platforms such as OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, Google\u2019s Gemini (formerly Bard), Anthropic\u2019s Claude, and Jasper (formerly Jarvis) have been competing for users and market share, and the level of competition in the space will continue to grow with the rise of non-U.S. AI startups, including Chinese company DeepSeek. The impact of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[343,20,19,342],"tags":[],"sp_smart_badges":[],"ppma_author":[806],"class_list":["post-5495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-careers","category-leadership","category-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHuman-Centered Leaders Steer Through the AI Anxiety Curve - Academy of Management Today<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/leading-through-the-ai-anxiety-curve-human-centered-leadership-still-matters\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Daniel Butcher\" 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Butcher","author_link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/author\/dbutcher\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/category\/ai\/\" rel=\"category tag\">AI<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/category\/careers\/\" rel=\"category tag\">CAREERS<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/category\/leadership\/\" rel=\"category tag\">LEADERSHIP<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/category\/technology\/\" rel=\"category tag\">TECHNOLOGY<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"By Jason Collins Established generative AI platforms such as OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, Google\u2019s Gemini (formerly Bard), Anthropic\u2019s Claude, and Jasper (formerly Jarvis) have been competing for users and market share, and the level of competition in the space will continue to grow with the rise of non-U.S. AI startups, including Chinese company DeepSeek. The impact of…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5495"},{"taxonomy":"sp_smart_badges","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sp_smart_badges?post=5495"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}