Workshop
Leading people through the AI transition: stress, silence and staffing
AI changed how engineers work faster than it changed how they're led. Learn to spot three responses to threat (building alone without asking for help, certainty without understanding, and freezing in place), coach each one, and make clear staffing and hiring decisions without losing the team's trust.
Outcomes
What you leave with
- A shared way for your leadership team to name these patterns without labeling people
- Coaching conversation scripts for each pattern
- A decision guide for when to coach, reshape a role or part ways
- A hiring profile and an interview exercise for your next role
Who should come
Engineering managers, directors and VPs, plus their HR partner. Leaders only, so staffing decisions can be discussed honestly.
What to bring
One real staffing decision you're stuck on, with names removed.
How the session works
- Patterns of behavior, not personality types. Nobody leaves with a label for a person on their team.
- Behaviors, not ages or seniority. Dismissing people who learned differently runs in both directions.
- Coaching before staffing. Every pattern is a normal response to real change and gets a coaching response first.
- Leadership practice informed by psychology research. It is not therapy or a clinical assessment.
Agenda
How the time is spent
Tailored to your team during the scoping call.
01 · 30 min
What changed, and what it feels like
The AI transition as an organizational change, and why stress and confusion are normal reactions to it.
02 · 45 min
Hide, fight, freeze
Three ways engineers respond to threat, how AI amplifies each one, and how to spot them early without labeling anyone.
03 · 45 min
Leading as a secure base
Coaching conversations for each pattern, practiced in pairs with scripts you keep.
04 · 30 min
Measuring contribution when agents write the code
At-bats, plus how much someone helps others: asking early, explaining the system, reviewing and unblocking.
05 · 30 min
Hiring for the next role
Define the role by the judgment it needs, not the tools it uses, and an interview exercise that shows whether a candidate reads the system before building.
06 · 40 min
Coach, reshape or exit
A decision guide for each pattern, worked on your own anonymized case.
07 · 15 min
Commitments
Every leader leaves with one conversation to have this week.
Included
Every workshop includes
A working artifact, not slides
Your team leaves with something running on your own code or plan.
AI agent support, during and after
An AI agent built on the workshop material supports attendees at the event and for two weeks afterward, while the new habits take hold.
Materials your team keeps
Exercises, templates and the operating rules, yours to adapt.
Plain-language agent and security practices
Written so your security team can review them before anything runs.
Bring "Leading people through the AI transition: stress, silence and staffing" to your team.
On-site anywhere in the world, or remote. I reply within two business days.