Adapting AI Without Upsetting Your Team with Andrés Tapia

What happens to your team when AI shows up? Jonathan Green sits down with Andrés Tapia — leadership strategist, author, and longtime advisor to Fortune 500s — to unpack how leaders can bring AI into a company without triggering fear, sabotage, or burnout. They dig into why AI displaces tasks, not people, and the uniquely human strengths that get more valuable as the machines get smarter.

Key Takeaways:

• AI displaces tasks, not people — don't tie your identity to what you do
• The three human edges AI can't replicate: empathy, critical thinking, and wisdom
• Treat AI as a new team member with strengths and limits — not a replacement
• The real skill shift: from knowing the answers to knowing which questions to ask
• Why people still crave live, in-person experiences — and what that means for work

Notable Quotes:
"It's going to displace certain things, but not us — the human beings." — Andrés Tapia
"The value for humans isn't knowing the answers… it's knowing what questions to ask." — Andrés Tapia

Connect with Andrés:
LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrestapia1/
Podcast: Disrupt – https://www.youtube.com/@DisruptThePod
Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andr%C3%A9s-Tapia/author/B001KI4NP4

Connect with Jonathan Green

• The Bestseller: ChatGPT Profits
• Free Gift: The Master Prompt for ChatGPT
• Free Book on Amazon: Fire Your Boss
• Podcast Website: https://artificialintelligencepod.com/  
• Subscribe, Rate, and Review: https://artificialintelligencepod.com/itunes
• Video Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtificialIntelligencePodcast

Transcript

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There we go. Now it's working. Adapting AI without upsetting your team with today's amazing special guest, Andres Tapia. Now, Andres, I'm so excited to have you here because we're at this time of great transition and there's these kind of two opposing forces. One is from the top down, which is we could replace everyone with AI, we can cut our costs, and we hear these very big promises from AI companies of these massive results and how you can... fire this team and fire that team and replace this department. And then from the employees, there's this new feeling of, well, I don't want to be replaced. And so you have these two opposing forces. And I see this sometimes when a company tries to launch like a pilot program. Everyone has a motivation to sabotage it if they think the pilot program will lead to success equals they get fired. So how can we kind of start to remember the importance of our workforce? and see AI as a tool, not as a replacement or not as an enemy. What's the right way to kind of approach this mindset and this new change in our world? Yes, I think the key thing is, know, every technology uh inflection point for centuries has always created disruption that upsets the way things have been. So we've not I will not deny that this is upsetting the way things have been. So no question. ah But rather than saying that it is going to displace us is that we need to say it's going to displace certain things, but not us. the human beings. And sometimes we get so affiliated identity between what we do instead of with who we are. And so the technology will always replace things that we do because that it's technology almost every time about efficiencies and getting things better in a capitalist environment or for ease or comfort. You know, we want things to be mechanized because hard labor is hard labor. Right. So So what AI presents is both a threat, a real one, to how things have been, and that's undeniable, and therefore has implications for what we do. But we have the opportunity to see it as an opportunity to do things we've always imagined we would like to do but never had the chance to do. So we were so caught with the task, the menial task or the repetitive task or the task that took forever to do. when we can do it faster or how somebody else do it so that we can free ourselves up to do new things. Yeah, when I think about technology changes in the past, even when we, with the invention of the cotton gin, which means it took less people to do farming work. And there was the same fear back then. Every time there's technology, and that was like three, 400 years ago, every time there's a new technology, there is a shift. There's no longer a job where someone drives a carriage. That job doesn't exist anymore because we don't ride in carriages. And I think before we figured out, we always think this is the end. This business is over. Nothing's ever going to be the same again. And a lot of it comes from the advertising and marketing language, right? The automobile market it is. It's like a horse, but it never goes to the bathroom and it doesn't need to eat. So there's this language that can scare people. And I think that's kind of what's happening now. But this is the first time we've seen a technology that kind of goes after such a wide number of industries and think that's what makes it the language scarier is that it's going well we're going to replace everyone who works in an office which is just about everyone these days and we are forgetting like you said the value of our humanity the value of our employees and I've seen it happen to companies where they try to shift too fast are we over index or over believe what AI is capable of and then it's hard to get people to come to find new workers to come into the office everyone wants to work from home now everyone wants to work remotely and there's this value of community, a value of human, and even on all the projects I work on, I still have other people look at them because AIs miss things all the time. And maybe someday we'll get to that point. But I kind of think that if AI could really do what everyone promised it is, we kind of live in a post-scarcity world. If AIs could do the farming and AIs could paint every building and AIs could do all the office work, then we could all just live. in a world where we could be artists and painters and philosophers because all of the work we need to survive to generate food and housing and comfort would be taken care of by AIs. live in like kind of this futuristic Star Trek type of world. Yeah, but let's not forget that we still have to earn a living, right? So we can be artists, we can be freed up, but how do we pay our bills? So that's a legitimate issue, right? And that's where I would argue that we have to think, what is our competitive advantage vis-a-vis the AIs? Because if they can do what we have been able to do, and then the fear of displacement is understandable, but then as in any... economic system that we're in, we're always looking that the growth opportunity, know, as economically and the growth opportunity in terms of productivity and the growth opportunity in terms of us as professionals and thinking and feeling people is in the differentiator. What is it now? Given all that AI can do, what is it that they cannot do that we as humans have unique? And that's, that's key question. I think we can talk about. Yeah, that's exactly what I want to get into because we sometimes forget that AIs can't do everything and there are still a lot of things that we want a human there for anyways There's a lot of jobs that computers are able to do for 20 years, but we'd still rather have a person doing it I would still rather talk to a person when I call customer support So at least I know they feel the way I feel that there's some level of empathy and like iPods have had DJ mode for 20 years, yet we still pay someone in every nightclub in every city in the world to play the music because we don't want it to be automix. We want a person up there. And that's one of the easiest jobs that an AI could replace. And it's like, no, I want a person. We still value that. And I think that, yeah, I really want to dive into this. What makes us different? What makes us special? And there is something about human communication. I kind of think we're going to see a shift towards more in-person meetings. and more face to face because we see a higher value in that human human connection. But there are other things that differentiate us from AIs as well, aren't there? Yeah, I would say one of them is empathy. uh The other one is uh critical thinking. And we'll come back to these. And the other one is wisdom. uh so, you know, when we look at what the AIs can do, they can do a lot of tasks and they can emulate empathy. But we human beings are sophisticated enough to understand. even with human beings when a human being is faking empathy, right? Versus true felt empathy. So, and why is empathy important? Because empathy is, um and all the things that go around it, kindness, gratitude, humility, right? These are very deeply human traits that allow people to feel psychologically safe, help them feel wanted, help them be seen. And in that, The data tells us that when people feel seen and understood and empathized with, they actually not only feel better, but they perform better. So there's a real value in terms of the workforce, in terms of team optimization to have leaders, for example, and teammates that exercise their HI in ways that AI cannot that really optimizes our performance. Right? So that, that I would say that the empathy and all of the bundle of traits to go with that are vital. And that is part of our competitive advantage. I think our other is critical thinking. Yes, we know all the stories of the incredible things that AI can produce in seconds. And it just gives us a rubric for X, Y, and Z or code for X, and Z and things like that. But right, you know, there is a lot of bad content being created because people are just taking it at face value and not putting an H I filter on it, which is critical thinking. We're just taking whatever comes through. And if you think about analog, I come from a journalistic background, and I'm a writer, nonfiction as well as fiction. And the value of the creative process is having readers that can come at it in a very human way and interact with what you've written in ways that they will always surface something that you would not have surfaced before. And critical thinking is being able to ask the five whys, right? you state a statement, why is that true? They give an answer, well, why is that true? You give an answer, well, why is that true? And then, well, now they've answered that, I see that these things are not consistent or there are implications to your answers that open up new ways of thinking. And AI starts to just go down a very narrow best practices way that sort of leverages what already exists. Now, the beauty of AI and HI is in their activity. And AI only exists because of HI. And the AI sort of then has all the power of a collective HI. But where is the new innovative thing happening is when HI comes up with better prompts, better thinking, more critical thinking, more empathy to then create the prompts that generate new content, new ways of thinking that then allow us to have higher level results and ways of thinking that that's where I think. And I believe innovation is going to happen next. I think that's really powerful because we kind of mingle the ideas of wisdom and knowledge sometimes, whereas AIs have a great deal of knowledge, but they don't always apply it in really good ways. They'll make dumb mistakes because they're really smart in one area and really dumb in another, and they don't have that critical thinking, like you said, because they just have Averages they take the what's what has everyone done? What's the average? Okay, that's the best choice and Average is how it's like them. It's always giving a B, right? It's like everything you do you get a B minus and there's no winners and no losers but that's so boring to be in the middle of the road and I've noticed a lot lately. We try to program empathy into a eyes and I really don't like it I don't like when someone pretends to care how I feel like that I'd rather you be robotic than pretend to care about me So I think you're really onto something important there. We don't like it when people are robotic with us and pretend, right? It's so insincere. So then we get insincere humans, but also insincere AIs. And also there's a loose end here. I mentioned the third one was wisdom. And we do confuse knowledge and wisdom. And I would separate wisdom from critical thinking. I gave the example of what critical thinking is. But wisdom is the ability to determine the best way forward when we face paradox. And if you think about life, Life is full of paradox, right? It's like, just think about intimate relationships as one example where the paradox of unity and oneness and still not losing yourself as an individual, right? That is a paradox that is in everything or a nation that is diverse. You want the unity of the nation and yet you want to preserve the differentiation of the diversity around. And then... Paradox just shows up every time. It shows up in dilemmas and in paradoxes where two things can be true at the same time. And if you think about AI, it is in the end a program. And the program at its very core, at the code, is 0 and 1, 0 and 1, 0 and 1, 0 and 1. So it tries to determine one answer over the other. But wisdom is the ability to say these two things that seem seemingly contradictory can be true at the same time. And if they can be true at the same time, What is the best course of action through it? And that's where human wisdom, based on experience and values and spirituality, or just higher level thinking and self-actualization leads us to answers that are beyond just what is consciously logical and connects to some deeper universal truths. Depending, know, be philosophy or it could be religiously based or it could just be alternative thinking, right? And so this is the three things that I believe as humans empathy, critical thinking, and wisdom that oh we have. How do we exploit that as we determine the new ways in which we can add value to the organizations we work Yeah, one of the laws or limitations of AI is that it doesn't learn from its own experience. Like most wisdom comes from, I made a mistake and I learned from it, or I did it the right way and I learned from it. But every time you start a new conversation with AI, you're back to where it was when it was first programmed. So it doesn't have that, it doesn't have experiences because it doesn't remember its experiences. And I think that we sometimes forget that because the hype and the commercials and the advertising for AI is so strong. And we always talk about how powerful it is, but we never talk about the limitations. And I think this is why so many workers are worried about being replaced with AI. And the answer, like you said, is to think, well, okay, if AI is coming, what can I do that it can't? What is my differentiator? How can I stand out? And what are some ways that leadership can start to train their teams either through mindset or through actual skills to Prepare them for a world where there's AI that can do many of things that they used to do every day. Yeah, I think we go back to this classic uh excellent leadership that in the end, leaders have two roles. They have to help organizations and their teams get done what they've committed to the world to do. A product or service, whatever. They got to help get them operationalize it. And the second thing that leaders have to do is anticipate the future. You know, what is around the corner because the world does not sit still and how does it prepare its people, its teams, organizations to see what's around the corner? And so, um, when it, and so let's talk about both things on the operationalizing, you know, instead of seeing AI as a replacement of H I is we have to welcome AI as a new team member, a new team member that has certain exploitative abilities, you know, really differentiated because the speed is differentiation. But it also has limitations. In the same way that each one of us as human beings have competitive advantage and virtues and values and strengths and things that we don't have. And classic diversity inclusion is we need each other because we all collectively don't have all the skills and all the knowledge and all the experiences. And the same is true for AI. It doesn't have all the skills, training, experiences. And so I think leaders today need to see their teams as not AI versus H I or AI replaces H I betas. How do I leverage the power and differentiation or what AI is bringing and what the H I's bring in order to create uh an elevated team that is leveraging diversity, both human diversity and artificial intelligence diversity to generate the solutions that we've never seen before to get done. What we have committed to do faster and better and more safe. That's one. And then with number two, you know, especially with the change happening at the rate that it's going, I think leaders today need to prepare their teams, their humans to say, look, yes, AI is going to do a lot of tests you used to do, but what are the things that we as humans need to be able to do now that we're freed up from the mundane and the repetitive and the things that took up a lot of time and to challenge the teams to think in a higher level way? Because as we know, you know, we use a fraction of our human brain capacity and AI is giving us the opportunity to free up certain parts that were overloaded with tasks and algorithms and coding and research and really free up those other parts of brain to do things. So it's not just a freedom to go and paint, which we were kind of saying, yeah, let's do that. But think about it. It's a freedom to be more creative. It's a freedom to be more imaginative. It's a freedom to activate the parts of our brain that are stimulated by music and art. and percussion so that we can say what, how do we elevate our thinking not only as individuals, as a collective. And I think also our differentiated lives and the ability to appreciate beauty and art and be moved by the power of music and poetry and fiction so that we can imagine through metaphors new realities that have not been within our reality possibilities before. Speaking of art and creativity, we're starting to see books written by AI. There's a song by an AI that was number one last week and we're starting to see where people are engaging with creativity created by artificial intelligence as well. But even though there's an AI song, there was a person who came up with the idea, who tweaked it, who told AI what song to make. There was still a human involvement in it and kind of put together the plan and launched it and got it out into the world. Where do you see the line between human ingenuity and human creativity? And do you think people would go to a concert to see AI play music live? Do you think people would... want to buy a painting made by AI or will those barriers kind of create a human only environment? Yeah, you you, you made reference to it. Like you prefer to talk to a real customer service person than AI. So, and I think that is sort of a small example of something very large. I mean, I can listen, you know, to, uh, Mark Anthony on my CD or on my streaming service and I'll enjoy it, but nothing replaces Mark Anthony coming to Chicago and I get my tickets, you know, or to bad bunny or to Shakira, right? I mean, nothing replaces the live. How many of us of your listeners are going to say, oh, I prefer recording music to live music. You know, it's like everybody says there's something about being in live music and what makes it live music. It's humans playing. somebody going to go to how many people are really going to go with the same level of energy, enthusiasm, passion to a concert just done by AI now? Will the humans may have supplement to their music that is AI produced? OK, and I think that's the line, right? Where AI is a tool to creativity, fine. But an AI solo live concert, which is kind of an oxymoron, I think we're going to ultimately say we want the human beings. And by the way, more and more, we're seeing a trend that people are uh after being isolated in their places and isolated in Zoom for so long and behind screens, human beings, us, we're craving the human interactive experiences. We're seeing more people on the street, more people going back to the offices, even though many are staying, more wanting the hybrid situation, so get the both of both worlds, wanting, know, concerts are exploding, going back to music. Why? Because not only do we want to see the live concert, we want to be in community with other human beings. I think when I think about the benefit of AI, I think for me the big benefit is the pendulum swing of, the AI can do all the stuff I have to do behind the computer. I could spend more time talking to people. Because AI helps me to edit these episodes and does everything faster, I can spend more time talking to... my guests, more time doing pre interviews, more time talking to people and more time with my family. Like, I really see that as the benefit. I don't think like all the stuff where like AI will be your best friend. That's not interesting to me. That has zero interest for me. What interests me is I could spend my time doing what I want to be doing. Yesterday, I went for a walk with three of my kids and taught my son how to roller skate on the beach. Like that to me is so much the value of AI. It's kind of like The best way of AI is when I'm not around it. When it's doing something, I'm doing what it wants. How much it frees up, right? I feel the same way. I'm a content producer and I'm a strategist and that takes a lot of time. And now I can accelerate my research. We used to take hours and weeks and I can work with AI to generate. And what does that mean? I can write more articles. I can write more books. I can come up with new solutions, right? And I can have more free time. And all that kind of work, that's a pretty good deal, right? But I don't want to lose sight of your very first question. And that is, what do we say to people that feel fear that their roles today will be replaced? So you and I can talk about having more time with our family, more time to write and create and do new things, but people still have to feed themselves and they have to feed their families. And I think we have to say, look, AI is here to stay. It is a tool. It is a team member. but it's not a replacement. And we all have an obligation. Like every company has to figure out what is our differentiator so we remain relevant. Yeah, I think with every new technology, you can either hope it doesn't affect you, you can run away from it or you can run towards it. And the opportunity now is to kind of like you said, a leader needs to look towards the future and I think employees, whatever your position is, you should look towards your career and say, okay, if AI is coming, how can I make myself irreplaceable? How can I make myself valuable? How can I make myself kind of prepare myself for that next phase? And we've seen people do this, whether they're going back to school and getting educations in the past or like upskilling themselves in different ways. And you can become the first person at the office or in your environment who's really agile. I always say if robots are taking over the jobs and I'll become the robot repairman. I'll figure out something that's the next job because as much as some jobs are disappearing, like data entry will disappear, other jobs will start to exist. We have this transition all the time and it's just that, okay, if my job is one of the ones that's at risk, what can I do in the future? And we're seeing some really interesting things happening where customer support is actually, and certain industries are actually moving back to America for other countries because it's now cheaper to have one person managing five customer support AIs than five people in another country. We've never seen a shift in careers that way. So you can start to think, okay, I'll be an AI manager. I'll find ways to be adaptable. And I think that's the most important thing is to kind of say, yes, I'm scared or yeah, I'm afraid, but what can I do to be faster? Because you don't have to be faster than the AI. You just have to be faster than everyone else who has the same kind of skillset as you. Just like when you're running away from a bear, you just have to be faster than your friend. Yeah, and by the way, I also want to bring up something else in addition to what you just said. You know, in Western society, well-educated people and also people that are very skilled manually, you know, we take pride in what we know. And we take pride in knowing the answers. And what AI is forcing and challenging us to do is that whatever uh pride we took in knowing the answers or knowing how to code beautifully or write, you know, know, research beautifully as AI sort of takes that. We got to reverse that equation and maybe the value now for human beings is not to know the answers because Google knows that AI knows that, you know, all that. But the value for humans becomes not knowing that it's not about knowing the answers, it's knowing what questions to ask. And as a journalist and as an innovator and as someone who does process facilitation with executive teams around the world and as a consultant, the superpower has always been knowing how to ask the right questions, not be the smartest person in the room with the answers, but the one that answers the questions that unlocks people's unconscious and subconscious and unknowable things and things that they never asked before. And that is where the self discovery is, that's what the team discovery is, that's where the innovation happens. So I think this AI revolution, I think uh is going to elevate the skill and a very human skill of knowing what, learning how to ask the best possible questions and using AI language, the best possible prompts. I think that's really, powerful. And we are going to see that it's all changes. remember when I grew up, you used to not know something and you'd have to I used to look in things like the Peter, you'd have to find someone who knows the answer. And then with Google, you could suddenly look up who was in that movie. Right. And like the period of not knowing has kind of disappeared, of wanting what the answer is has shortened and shortened. Now, we never don't know the answer to something for more than a few seconds. Whereas I remember for months, believing things that weren't true. Or I used to think it was gorillas that could spin their heads 360 degrees, but it's owls. I believe that for like five years. Now you can search that answer in a few seconds and it's so amazing. I love that you're pointing out the value of asking questions and I think this has been just an amazing episode. I really appreciate you being here today, Andres. For people who love what you're doing and want to kind of learn more and see some of the amazing stuff you've been writing about on LinkedIn that certainly caught my attention, what are the best places to see what you're doing and to see more of the amazing writing and stories that you're sharing? Yeah, I do have a newsletter on LinkedIn. So you can look me up on LinkedIn and you know, we'll make the link available. And the newsletter is called Generative. So it's a monthly publication. I have a podcast that with a co-host that shows up three out of four weeks and it's called disrupt the podcast and it's on video and audio. So it's on YouTube and all the audio platforms that are your favorites. uh And I also, on Amazon, you can find my books. I have six books out there and I'm working on my seventh and my eighth and my ninth. That's amazing. I'll make sure to link to everything in the show notes and below the video. Thank you so much again for being here today for an amazing episode of the artificial intelligence podcast. was a pleasure, Jonathan. Thank you.