Talent And Retention Archives

You Have Made Your Best People Resent You. Quote From Thomas Anglero, Strategic Ai Advisor. — Thomas Anglero on AI, morale and your best people.

Inside many companies right now, people are finishing a full day of measured work in a fraction of the time using AI, then sitting at their desks pretending to be busy. That gap, between what someone can do and what they are allowed to be, is what tears a company apart during AI adoption.

What the tearing looks like day to day

More than half of executives say adopting AI is tearing their company apart. What that looks like on the ground is not indifference. It is conflict, and quiet unhappiness.

A man once told me over lunch that he finishes all of his work in the first 15 minutes of the morning using AI, and the rest of the day is his. He listens to audiobooks. He is measured on goals set for the old way of working, and he has met them before nine o’clock. So he travels an hour each way to sit in an office and do 15 minutes of real work. He is not allowed to leave. He is not really allowed to socialise. He fakes looking busy. That is not a productivity story. It is a person’s day, and you are wasting it.

Why AI turns a company against itself

The masks are gone. The mask of company loyalty, the idea that you stay somewhere for a whole career. The mask of the leader as genius. AI shows people they have options, and once seen it cannot be unseen.

COVID taught everyone that time with family matters. Now you pull a person back for 15 minutes of measured output and strip the meaning from the rest of the day. Quality of life drops. Respect for leadership drops. And everyone is quietly living the same reality: the old way does not work anymore. This is the cultural rift I described in Your Calendar is Full. Your Culture is Splitting.

Leadership did not see it coming and has no plan, so it hands the problem to HR. But HR runs payroll, discipline and surveys. Building an AI culture, one that leverages the tools, keeps people engaged and rebuilds the team, is a new capability the company does not have, and it cannot be delegated to HR. It has to be led. That is because, as I argued in AI is Not a Technology Project. It is a Culture Project, the culture is the actual work.

The part that should frighten leaders: the talent cascade

People are unhappy but stay quiet, because they have watched how fast unemployment moves and they do not want to lose the job. So they sit for seven hours and forty-five minutes of an eight-hour day to protect it. You have made your best people resent you.

Your most AI-fluent people will leave the moment a better opportunity appears. Watch the largest technology companies pulling each other’s top AI talent right now. That behaviour trickles down. When it reaches you, the people who understood AI are gone, and you are left with a workforce that never wanted to use it, led by leaders who never learned it. It is the same quiet loss I described in What Happens When Your Best People Start Using AI, and it is why the way you lead the ordinary majority matters more than the stars, which is the whole point of The Speech a Leader Owes the Ninety-Nine Per Cent.

Your people are being measured on 2025 goals in mid-2026. They already see the future while your KPIs still describe last year.

The clock here is not the one on the wall your employee is watching. It is the one your best people are quietly checking against other offers.

If you are leading your organisation through this, I work with a limited number of senior leaders each quarter. Get in touch at Anglero.com.

Thomas Anglero is a Strategic AI Advisor, keynote speaker and author of Intro to Artificial Intelligence. He has delivered over 450 keynotes across 30 countries for organisations including IBM, the WHO, the World Government Summit and the European Commission. He founded the IBM Watson AI Lab for Cancer at the Oslo Cancer Cluster and closed over $500 million in enterprise transformation deals as CTO and Chief Innovation Officer at Cognizant.

Frequently asked questions

Why does AI make employees unhappy if it makes their work easier?

Because most companies still measure people on old targets and force the same hours. When someone can finish a day’s measured work in minutes but must sit in the office pretending to be busy, the tool improves the work while the culture strips the meaning out of it.

Can HR own a company’s AI culture change?

No. HR runs payroll, discipline and surveys. Building an AI culture that keeps people engaged and rebuilds the team is a new capability that has to be led by the CEO and the leadership group, not delegated to HR.

What is the talent cascade in AI adoption?

Your most AI-fluent people leave first for better opportunities, the way top AI talent is currently moving between the largest technology companies. When that reaches an ordinary company, the people who understood AI are gone and the ones who never wanted it remain.

What should leaders do about the 15-minute workday?

Stop measuring people on last year’s goals, give the freed time back as capacity for higher work, and lead a genuine culture change rather than forcing presence. The output is no longer the point. What people build with the time is.

Thomas Anglero Speaking About The Whole Workforce During Ai Transformation — The few who rise are the celebrities. The 99 per cent are the cornerstone.

Leading the rest of the workforce through AI matters more than managing the handful of stars, because the 99 per cent who will never be the chosen few are the cornerstone of the company. They are the people who drive in the screws, fix what breaks, stay up all night, and deliver. While a leader is being broken open and rebuilt, and while a small number of hidden leaders rise, the question that decides whether the whole thing holds is what the leader owes everyone else. The answer starts with three words: I see you.

The celebrities are not the cornerstone

In any AI transformation, a small number of people rise and become the visible drivers of change. They get the attention. But visibility is not the same as foundation. The 99 per cent are the heart and soul of the company, and if a leader treats them as a backdrop to the stars, the culture quietly turns against the change. These are often the same people whose quiet competence the organisation already fails to notice until they leave.

The speech a leader has to give

So the leader has to stand up and say it directly. We are going to go through a process. I see you. I respect what you deliver every day. You do not have to become an AI expert, and you do not have to be the most talented person with these tools. But you do have to keep delivering, and you cannot become a hindrance to the change, because the culture of this company is going to change. That honesty is the same currency that makes a board willing to follow a leader through AI: respect first, then the ask.

The leader is the bridge

Here is the real tension. The 99 per cent are comfortable; they know they can deliver what they already know. The small group of risers will create new tasks that make everyone else deeply uncomfortable, because it is work they have never done. The leader has to stand in that gap as the bridge between the future and the past, between the known and the unknown. Not just keeping people happy, but making them progressive and action-oriented, and holding as much of the team together as possible through the discomfort. That is the work. Not choosing the stars over the soldiers, but carrying both across at once.

If you want help leading a whole organisation through that change, not just its top five per cent, that is the work I do with leadership teams.

Frequently asked questions

Why does leading the 99 per cent matter more than managing the star performers? Because the 99 per cent are the cornerstone of the company, the people who fix what breaks, stay up all night and deliver. The visible few who rise during an AI transformation get the attention, but visibility is not foundation. If a leader treats the majority as a backdrop, the culture quietly turns against the change.

What are the three words a leader owes the workforce? I see you. The leader has to stand up and say it directly: I respect what you deliver every day. You do not have to become an AI expert or the most talented person with the tools, but you do have to keep delivering and not become a hindrance, because the culture of the company is going to change.

Do employees have to become AI experts to survive the transformation? No. They do not have to be the most talented person with the tools. What is asked of them is to keep delivering what they are good at and not to obstruct the change. The expectation is continued contribution, not reinvention as a specialist.

What is the leader’s actual job during this change? To be the bridge. The comfortable majority and the uncomfortable risers have to be carried across at once, between the known and the unknown. The work is not choosing the stars over the soldiers, but holding as much of the team together as possible through the discomfort while keeping everyone action-oriented.

Why is respect the starting point rather than the ask? Because respect first, then the ask, is the same currency that makes a board or a workforce willing to follow a leader through AI. People accept the hard requirement to keep delivering and to change the culture only once they have been genuinely seen and respected for what they already do.

Thomas Anglero Speaking To Leaders About Finding The Hidden Leaders Inside An Organisation — The leaders you need are already inside the building, waiting for a structure safe enough to step into.

Finding future leaders for AI starts with a hard truth: more than ninety per cent of your company’s future leaders are not your current leaders, and you do not find them by recruiting. You find them by building a structure safe enough that they identify themselves.

The question current leaders have to answer

The current leaders are not automatically discarded, but they face a hard question: are you willing to pay the personal price to change, to take apart your own belief systems, to list honestly the decisions you got wrong, and to become someone different? If yes, you remain useful and can be a future leader too. If no, you are not useful any more, and that is a choice you made, not a sentence handed to you.

You do not hunt for the new leaders. They find you.

The instinct is to go hunting. That instinct is wrong, because they find you. Create a role that is genuinely protected, untouchable by corporate politics and the usual agendas, and make it safe to step into, and the right people raise their hand and say, that is me. In a company of ten thousand you might have one or two. They are there, and they are waiting. The expression fits exactly: the sleeper has awoken. Once they have your backing, they work without stopping, because they have waited their whole career for permission and protection. These are often the same people already quietly outperforming with AI while the organisation fails to notice.

Keep your old judgment out of the room

You will be shocked by who they turn out to be. Your only job is to keep your old picture of them out of the room. The person you had filed under a particular ceiling is often the one who steps up, and if the old judgment walks in with you, you will miss them. The same applies to people outside the company. How do you signal the door is open? You announce what you are doing, and you make the announcement sound a little crazy. You will attract some time-wasters, but the right ones, internal and external, you will know within seconds.

Vulnerability is the whole thread

This requires doing something you have not done before: being open, and being willing to be vulnerable. That is the thread running through everything in AI. The more willing you are to admit you got things wrong, that your assumptions were wrong, that you are not quite the person you told everyone you were, the more you get out of AI, because you start asking it honest questions. The leader in denial asks AI only the questions that protect their image, and gets back hollow answers. It is the same reason boards are the furthest behind on AI: the gap is not technical, it is the willingness to be exposed.

So be vulnerable, build the safe structure, and keep your old judgments at the door. The leaders you need are already inside the building, waiting to be let in. Helping leaders build that structure is what I do with executive teams.

Frequently asked questions

Where do a company’s future AI leaders actually come from? More than ninety per cent of them are not your current leaders, and you do not find them by recruiting. You find them by building a structure safe enough that they identify themselves. The leaders you need are already inside the building, waiting for permission and protection to step forward.

Are today’s leaders simply discarded? No. They face a hard question: are you willing to pay the personal price to change, to take apart your own belief systems, to list the decisions you got wrong honestly, and to become someone different? If yes, they remain useful and can be future leaders too. If no, they are no longer useful, and that is a choice they made, not a sentence handed to them.

Should a leader go hunting for these hidden people? No, the instinct to hunt is wrong, because they find you. Create a role that is genuinely protected, untouchable by corporate politics, and make it safe to step into, and the right people raise their hand. In a company of ten thousand there may be only one or two, but they are there and waiting.

What most often stops a leader from seeing them? Their own old judgment. The person filed under a particular ceiling is often the one who steps up, and if the old picture walks into the room, the leader misses them. The single job is to keep that outdated judgment out of the room and let people surprise you.

Why is vulnerability the thread running through all of this? Because being open about getting things wrong is what lets a leader ask AI, and their people, honest questions. A leader in denial asks only the questions that protect their image and gets hollow answers back. The same willingness to be exposed is what separates leaders and boards who benefit from AI from those who fall behind.

Your best employees are already using AI to outperform the rest of your team, and they are not telling anyone. The gap between how your organisation actually works and how leadership believes it works is growing invisibly. When these people leave, and they will, the gap becomes permanent. The question is not about AI adoption. It is about the culture you are running and whether it gives your best people a reason to stay.

The two or three people quietly doing twice the work

You probably have two or three people on your team who are quietly accomplishing twice as much as everyone else. They are not working harder. They are not working longer. They are using AI, and they are not telling anyone.

The immediate reaction is to see this as a win. Productivity is up. Problems are being solved faster than you expected. But the real danger is not their output. It is the gap they are building between how your organisation actually works and how you believe it works. That gap is invisible until they leave. And they will leave, because they know exactly what they are worth.

The same story from the other direction

Now flip it around. Say you are the one using AI. You sit in the leadership team, and you are the person who can do anything at a moment’s notice. The client in France needs the entire document in French by morning. You do not speak French, but you deliver it. The client in Switzerland wants it in Swiss German, which is not just German. You deliver that too. You build a reputation as the person who never says no.

But you are not telling anyone how you do it. You are enjoying the praise, the recognition, the quiet pride of being the one who always delivers. And at some point, you stop sharing and start planning. You know your value. You know the market. You start looking.

This is the same story from two directions, and the root cause is the same in both. Something about the culture is not working. If your best people are hiding what they do, or if the rest of your team is not following, the question is not about AI. The question is about you.

Why your people are not following your lead

Why are they not following your lead? Why has your communication not landed? You wanted everyone to use AI. You said it clearly. But saying it and creating the conditions for it are two different things. If your team does not feel safe admitting they do not understand the tools, they will not use them. If your leadership peers feel threatened by what you can do, they will not ask how you do it.

The answer to both situations is the same. You need a plan, not for AI, but for yourself. What kind of leader do you want to be in this environment? What kind of culture do you want to run? Because the people who have figured this out are not waiting for you to catch up. They are already thinking about where to go next.

The question is whether they take your organisation with them or leave it behind.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if my best people are secretly using AI? You probably have two or three people quietly accomplishing twice as much as everyone else, not by working harder or longer but by using AI and not telling anyone. The sign is output that outpaces the rest of the team without any obvious change in hours or effort.

Why is it a problem if my best people use AI and outperform? Because the danger is not their output but the invisible gap they build between how the organisation actually works and how leadership believes it works. That gap stays hidden until they leave, and they will leave, because they know exactly what they are worth. When they go, the gap becomes permanent.

Why are the rest of my people not following my lead on AI? Because saying you want everyone to use AI and creating the conditions for it are two different things. If your team does not feel safe admitting they do not understand the tools, they will not use them. If your leadership peers feel threatened by what you can do, they will not ask how you do it. The barrier is culture, not the technology.

Is this really an AI problem? No. Whether your best people are hiding what they do or the rest of the team is not following, the root cause is the same: something about the culture is not working. The question is not about AI adoption. It is about the kind of leader you want to be and the culture you want to run.

AI adoption changes how employees see their job security in three ways: it raises anxiety among staff whose tasks AI can perform, it shifts skill demands towards creativity and complex problem-solving, and it creates ethical concerns about AI making decisions on hiring and performance. I was interviewed by Webuters on exactly this question; here is my full answer.

I was interviewed by Webuters on the question, “Does Artificial Intelligence induces anxiety and shifts in skills and requirements?”

How does AI adoption affect how employees feel about their jobs?

The increasing adoption of AI in business environments has a significant impact on employee perceptions of job security and potential technology-related job displacement. There are a few areas which are the most affected:

1) Heightened anxiety and uncertainty: Many employees feel anxious about the potential for AI to replace their jobs, leading to increased stress and job insecurity. This is very relevant for older employees whose tasks can be performed by an AI with no possibility for error and who are not willing to reskill themselves.

2) Shifting skill requirements: Younger employees recognise the need to adapt and acquire new skills to remain relevant. They place an emphasis on developing AI-complementary skills. In the future, tasks that require human creativity, emotional intelligence, and complex problem-solving will be in the highest demand.

3) Ethical concerns: Many employees worry about the ethical implications of AI decision-making in areas like hiring, performance evaluation, and resource allocation, which can affect their sense of fairness and job security. There are also extreme concerns when AI is used in healthcare. Who is liable, and can we afford for it to make any mistakes?

There are many more aspects to this issue, and this discussion is heating up as people realise that the benefits they have reaped from using AI in their jobs, so their work is not as difficult, will also be the reason why they will struggle to keep their existing jobs.

Frequently asked questions

Does AI adoption really make employees anxious?

Yes. Many employees feel genuine anxiety about AI replacing their jobs, leading to increased stress and a sense of insecurity. It is felt most acutely by employees whose tasks an AI can perform reliably and who are reluctant to reskill.

Which skills become more valuable as AI takes over routine tasks?

The human ones. As AI absorbs routine and repeatable work, demand rises for creativity, emotional intelligence and complex problem-solving. Younger employees in particular recognise the need to acquire AI-complementary skills to stay relevant.

What ethical concerns do employees have about AI at work?

Chiefly fairness in decision-making. Employees worry about AI influencing hiring, performance evaluation and resource allocation, which touches their sense of fairness and job security. Concerns are sharpest in high-stakes settings like healthcare, where liability and the cost of error are serious questions.

Why is it a paradox that AI both helps and threatens the same employees?

Because the very thing that makes work easier is also what puts the job at risk. The efficiency employees gain from using AI is the same capability that lets an organisation question whether the role is still needed, which is why the discussion is intensifying.