Overcoming AI Resistance: Change Management Frameworks for Hesitant Teams

This session applies proven change-management frameworks specifically to AI resistance, addressing the distinct blend of skepticism, fear, and entrenched habit that makes AI adoption harder in practice than a typical software rollout. It covers how to identify the most common root causes behind hesitancy on a given team, since the right intervention depends heavily on which of those causes is actually driving the resistance.

Attendees will examine strategic scripts and case approaches suited to manager-led conversations with resistant employees, along with methods for turning early skeptics into genuine internal advocates rather than reluctant, silent participants. The session closes with practical ways to measure whether resistance is actually decreasing over time, not just assumed to be.

Why you should Attend:
If your best training still leaves a significant portion of the team quietly avoiding the new AI tools, the underlying problem was never the training itself, and until that is addressed directly, your adoption numbers will keep stalling at roughly the same point. Managers often misread this resistance as a skills gap and respond with more training, which tends to frustrate the very people it is meant to help. Recognizing the difference between a skills problem and a change-management problem is the first step toward actually resolving it. This session gives you frameworks built specifically for that recognition and the conversations that follow it.

Areas Covered in the Session:

• Why AI resistance is different from typical software-adoption resistance
• The most common root causes of AI hesitancy on teams
• Change-management frameworks adapted specifically for AI rollouts
• Scripts and approaches for manager-led conversations with resistant employees
• Turning early skeptics into internal advocates
• Measuring whether resistance is actually decreasing over time

• All