It’s common to hear that employees are anxious about artificial intelligence. They’re worried about their roles, reluctant to use the tools. Quietly resistant, nodding through the training session, then returning to the old way of working the moment it ends.

But this framing misses the point. The issue isn’t the technology. It’s what leaders have, and haven’t, said about it.

In most organisations, AI arrived without a story. No clarity on what changes, no clarity on what doesn’t, and no clarity on how success will be judged from here.

One day there was no AI tool. The next, there was a tool, a login, and a vague expectation to “start using it”, with no explanation of what that meant for people’s roles, their targets or their future.

Into that silence, people write their own story. And it’s rarely an encouraging one:

• Why would I share how I use this if it might replace me?
• If using the tool well makes me look replaceable, the safest move is to quietly under-report how much I rely on it.
• Why would I get faster if speed simply means more work for the same pay?

If efficiency gains are absorbed into a bigger workload with no corresponding recognition, why would anyone volunteer to become more efficient? What does good performance even look like now?

If the annual review still measures the old things, hours logged and tasks completed manually, while quietly expecting AI fluency, people are being judged by a standard nobody actually wrote down.

These aren’t unreasonable questions. They’re the ones leadership hasn’t answered yet.

At the same time, leaders are navigating their own uncertainty: new tools. new risks, boards asking difficult questions about return on investment, competitors making bold claims that may or may not be true.

Both groups are unsettled. Just in different ways — and mostly in silence, because admitting uncertainty out loud feels risky from either side.

Consider the difference between two organisations rolling out the same technology. In one, a leader stands in front of the team and says:

“I don’t fully know where this ends either. Here’s what I do know. Your value was never just the task. It was the judgement behind it. Here’s how we’re going to figure this out together, and here’s how I’ll support you while we do.”

The anxiety doesn’t disappear, but it becomes something people can work with.

In the other organisation, leadership says nothing meaningful. The tool arrives via a memo, and the rumour mill fills every gap.

Anxiety hardens into quiet resistance, knowledge gets hoarded, and eventually the organisation loses exactly the people it can least afford to lose.

The challenge isn’t managing AI anxiety. It’s designing a leadership narrative that is clear enough for people to bring their real questions instead of their private fears.

That means naming the difficult truths — some roles will change, some tasks will disappear — instead of pretending everything stays the same.

It also means being explicit about what remains uniquely valuable: judgement, relationships, accountability, and the things AI genuinely cannot do.

Fear rarely announces itself directly. It appears first in small, difficult-to-trace behaviours:

• a slower response when someone is asked to share a prompt library;
• a reluctance to document how work actually gets done;
• a preference for keeping knowledge in one person’s head instead of a shared system.

None of these appear on an engagement survey. All of them are among the earliest and most honest signals leadership will receive.

By the time fear shows up in an exit interview — “I didn’t feel there was a place for me here anymore” — the organisation has already lost months of quiet disengagement because nobody was looking for it. And nobody created a safe way for people to talk about it earlier.

Because the future of work won’t be defined by how advanced AI becomes. It will be defined by whether leaders were honest about what AI means for people, early enough to matter, and specific enough to be believed.

Arinya Talerngsri is Senior Vice President, Local Partner and Managing Director at BTS Thailand, part of the BTS Group, a leading global strategy implementation firm. She is passionate about revolutionising education and creating opportunities for Thais and people worldwide. Executives and organisations looking to collaborate or learn more about leadership and talent development, succession planning and organisational transformation can contact her at arinya.talerngsri@bts.com or visit her LinkedIn profile.