Key Takeaways
- AI adoption succeeds when leaders replace fear with curiosity, clarity and ethical guardrails.
- Upskilling for AI is about human agency, not replacement, competitiveness or shortcuts.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report (2025) found that 77% of employers see the need to reskill and upskill their workforce through 2030 to collaborate effectively with AI. As I continue meeting with coaches and their clients — including CEOs of global brands, startups and entrepreneurs — this need rings true, as do two polarities in the AI arena: facing fear and finding agency.
Because AI is here to stay, businesses need to understand how people choose to engage with it (and why they don’t).
With that in mind, the following observations and insights can help entrepreneurs and teams move from fear to curiosity and evaluate their own risk tolerance for change.
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Facing fear in AI
Many fear AI, perhaps not knowing enough about it. As Stephen Covey said, “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” As an entrepreneur, it is necessary to understand your own and your team’s apprehension about AI, which often includes:
- Job Security: One of the most common fears is job loss. But it’s important to focus on how effectively your team uses AI to stay competitive. Otherwise, it’s an employee or competitor whose focus on AI may replace you, not AI. Like with anything else, don’t let lack of education and information stifle growth.
- Ethics: According to Deloitte AI Institute’s Agentic Enterprise 2028 study, confusion around AI is widespread: 54% of workers are concerned about the blurred lines between human and machine contributions. This statistic underscores the need for clear ethical guidance around AI, a recurring theme discussed at this year’s World Economic Forum. Ethics is one of the most important pillars that has established coaching as a respected and credible profession
- Confusion: With so many AI tools and platforms, it is difficult to cut through the clutter, know what to trust, or simply, where to start. The uncertainty is often due to a lack of clarity around how these tools work. When vetting an AI tool or provider, understand where data is stored, what’s collected and how it is used. Upon agreeing with a provider, also understand what you are signing up for and ensure alignment with your standards. Ethical engagement with AI is not about avoidance. It is about awareness and informed choice. With information comes clarity.
If you have employees who fear AI but are sparked by curiosity, a first small step is experimentation. Use AI where it supports their work, learning or development. For rising professionals, early engagement with AI isn’t about shortcuts — it’s about building fluency and agency, enabling them to bring more creativity and energy to their work.
Finding agency in AI: Moving from fear to curiosity
According to the International Coaching Federation’s Director of AI, Susan Caesar, “people want to feel empowered. They want to have agency in the way that they live and the way that they work. And all of these tools enable you to be liberated as a person and… affect impact.”
Within the coaching industry, research tells us that digital natives — mainly Gen Z and Alphas — would rather use their devices to support an AI-supported learning journey. The same can be said for your employees, or perhaps even you. Using devices can spark curiosity about transformational, human-centered growth. Rather than insisting on traditional approaches (in coaching’s case, human approaches), offer a small taste through AI-supported tools — helping people experience AI’s potential without intimidation. This approach meets people where they are and eases them into growth.
According to Ms. Caesar, “[AI] is more than a tech shift. It is inviting us to think about what it means to be human and what those values are…that really are necessary and crucial…things like presence, curiosity, the questions that we ask, being in the moment and our lived experience.”
At ICF, we continue to feed our curiosity about AI’s impact on the organization’s next 30 years, and beyond, by asking:
- How can AI help coaches run their businesses in a more effective way
- How can AI help clients sort through information and
- What are scalable coaching opportunities
As you ask yourself how AI will shape the way you and your team will work, learn and grow, consider AI as a tool to expand access, increase agency and introduce teams to new growth opportunities.
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At ICF, we are putting the following into practice for our members, and you can apply the same principles to help teams move past fear and stay a step ahead in their businesses.
- Create an online AI community where resources are centralized for easy access
- Develop a toolkit of information that will bridge education gaps
- Become a part of the solution: Work with AI vendors to experiment, to vet and to validate their solutions
In addition to ensuring resources are accessible and experimentation is encouraged, engage your team directly. Through employee surveys or one-on-one discussions, ask your employees about their needs and expectations for implementing AI.
Ultimately, their input fuels curiosity and shapes effective adoption. And that’s how AI becomes a tool for agency, not fear. It is not to replace us, it’s to support us. And leadership will always remain human-driven.
Businesses need to understand how people choose to engage with AI (and why they don’t). Entrepreneur – Latest