Empathy Without Agency Is What Kills AI Adoption
20 May 2026
59% of CEOs now say empathy at work is "nice to have." Not essential.
That number was 47% in 2024. It is moving in the wrong direction at the worst possible moment.
A Harvard Business Review piece by Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki puts numbers to what many leaders do not want to see:
→ 81% of CEOs say their company has a clear AI policy. Only 28% of employees agree.
→ 76% of executives believe their teams are enthusiastic about AI. The real figure is 31%.
→ Nearly a third of employees admit to actively sabotaging their company's AI rollout. Among Gen Z that number is 44%. Feeding sensitive data to unauthorised models. Tampering with outputs. Making the tools look worse than they are.
We have a problem here, and not a technology one.
I have been saying this for a year. Empathy without agency is what kills AI adoption. People do not need another all-hands announcement about the future of work. They need to be brought into shaping it.
Zaki's fix is simple.
→ Instead of announcements, talk to the people.
→ Instead of giving answers, ask questions.
→ Co-create the strategy with the people who will actually use the tools.
The leaders I work with who are getting this right are not running better training sessions. They are having better conversations. Asking. Listening. Building the strategy with their people instead of for them.
When did you last ask?
Want adoption that comes from your people, not at them? My Private AI Advisory is here.
Why announcements fail and conversations work
There is a comfortable story leaders tell themselves: we have a clear AI policy, the team is on board, the rollout is going well. The data keeps puncturing it. When 81 percent of CEOs see a clear policy and only 28 percent of employees agree, the rollout is not landing where it counts.
Sabotage is the loud symptom. The quieter one is disengagement. Both come from the same root: people are handed a future instead of being asked to help build it. Empathy on its own is not enough. People need agency, a real say in how the change touches their own work. Building high-trust teams in times of change is what turns resistance into adoption.
Zaki's fix is almost boringly simple. Talk to people instead of announcing at them. Ask instead of telling. Co-create the strategy with the people who will live with it. The leaders getting this right are not running better training. They are having better conversations.
If this resonates and you want something practical you can use, I have a free 5 Tips for Courageous Conversations one-page framework, inspired by the work at IMD, for the honest conversations that move people from resistance to ownership. Leave your email here and I will send it over: https://www.thechangerepublic.com/free-resources