How to introduce AI to your team: the three-task method.

When I was nineteen, an older banker named Jorgen sat me down behind a terminal with green letters on a black screen and taught me to consolidate the books of thirteen international subsidiaries. I was in no way qualified. That was the point. He believed I'd figure it out with his guidance, and because he believed it, I did.

I've carried that lesson through six companies of my own. Whenever someone new joined, I gave them three tasks. One they could do in their sleep, from their last job, so they'd feel solid ground. One stretch task, new but clearly within reach. And one task that was important and completely unfamiliar, where they had no idea how to even start, because that's the task that shows people what they're capable of, fastest.

Over the last year of working with leadership teams on AI, I've watched most companies do the exact opposite. They hand everyone a licence, run a webinar, and wait. The confident people explore. Everyone else concludes, quietly, that this is one more system they'll be blamed for using wrong. Usage flattens, and the story becomes "our people resist change."

Your people don't resist change. They resist being set up to fail in public. So introduce AI the way you'd onboard a person you believe in.

Task one: something they can do in their sleep

Have each person use AI on a task they already do well. Summarize a document they'd normally skim, draft a reply they could write blind. The output quality matters less than the calibration: because they know what good looks like, they learn instantly where the tool is strong and where it's confidently wrong. That calibration is the foundation for everything else, and you can't lecture it into people.

Task two: the stretch

Now a task at the edge of their role. The analyst drafts the client-facing summary that usually goes to their manager. The manager drafts the board update they usually delegate. It's new, but within reach, and AI closes just enough of the gap. This is where people feel the tool expanding their range rather than replacing their work, and where the fear starts converting into appetite.

Task three: important and unfamiliar

The one that matters. Give each person something real that the team actually needs and that they have no idea how to approach. Build an assistant that answers onboarding questions from your documents. Prototype the report the department has wanted for a year. Map a process nobody has written down. Then back them while they flail a bit, because the flailing is the growth.

Jorgen didn't hover over my shoulder. He checked in, corrected course, and let me own it. Do the same: set a check-in, expect a rough first version, and treat mistakes as tuition you've already decided to pay.

What the leader must say out loud

One sentence carries this whole method: "I expect you to use AI on this, and I won't hold the misses against you." Permission, stated explicitly, in front of the team. In my coaching work I keep meeting capable people who use AI in secret because nobody ever said that sentence. Say it, then prove it the first time someone's experiment goes sideways.

Start with one person this week. Three tasks, one check-in, twenty minutes of your attention. It's the cheapest leadership development you'll buy this year, and the trust you extend comes back as capability. It did for a nineteen-year-old at a bank terminal in Copenhagen.