Hello Reader !

AI and team performance: the honest conversations with leaders about what is really happening in their teams. They don’t have an AI problem; they have a team problem.

They tried the quick fix. A 1-day training on Copilot, Gemini or ChatGPT. Done. Move on. So they move from a problem of "my people don't use AI" to "my people who don't use AI in the right way," and I see negative impact.

Once you start using GenAI without guidance, it becomes more dysfunctional.

Today you'll learn:

• Symptoms, so you see it coming
• A new language to talk about what you sense
• 5 practical tips to course correct

Before we begin, how can I help you?

• Before we begin, how can I assist you?
  • Coach you to build your team GenAI system: skills, mindset and AI/human organization here​​
  • Coach you and your team to design and pressure test your new strategy or product here​
  • Audit and improve your innovation, customer centricity, and ability to adapt to a complex and ever-evolving environment here​

Get comfortable for your 5 minutes of sparks to hack.

✨ Spark

Most teams have gone to a quick fix. 1-day training. "Now everyone knows how to prompt!".

Then, once some of the team members or the leaders use more GenAI in the wrong way we start to see what AI really does to your team:

✏ Workslop and more

AI is a truth serum. It doesn't break what's working. It exposes what was already broken. Your processes. Your data mess. Your trust gaps. Your collaboration theater. (The last newsletter was about that)

AI creates workslop.

Content that looks polished, sounds smart but lacks substance. AI-generated output that fails to move a project forward and dumps extra cognitive and emotional labor on colleagues who must fix or redo it. The result is not only harm to productivity but damaged trust in coworkers.

✏ The real diagnosis: Lencioni's 5 Dysfunctions

Patrick Lencioni wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team in 2002. His pyramid explains why teams fail. It works from bottom to top. Trust is the foundation. Without trust → no healthy conflict → no real commitment → no accountability → no focus on results. Each dysfunction feeds the next one up.

I use this model with every team I coach as a checklist to help emerge if / how GenAI is making each dysfunction worse.

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✏ Absence of trust

The fear of being vulnerable prevents team members from building trust.

Everyone's emails sound the same. Polished. Professional. Perfect. People start to passively read AI notes from their slides presentation, instead of bringing energy and engagement (they look like robots, we start to see that as well in interviews, did you ? )

But your team whispers: "Did she actually write this or is it ChatGPT?". It destroys authenticity. When everything looks perfect, nothing feels real.

Workslop also has a big impact here because once you get workslop from a colleague, the trust is broken.

✏ Fear of conflict

The desire to preserve artificial harmony stifles productive conflict.

At the team level, it means

• no feedback if a colleague starts to send every email written by Copilot that has no personal note, is really flat, too long, and boring. No discussion on a quick fix (borderline laziness),
• no comments to a colleague who copy-pastes every question in Gemini and sends you back the answers without editing or reading it 😅.

More globally, during coffee or lunch break. you see no discussion about AI risks, and its impact on jobs, environment, democracy, and what happens when AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

It means team members stay silent. Everyone, including you, pretends everything is fine. It's not fine. They're just not telling you.

✏ Lack of commitment

The lack of clarity prevents team members from making decisions they stick to.

Too many moments are delegated to AI. "Let's use AI for meeting notes!"

Great idea. Except... the meeting had no agenda. No decisions to make. No accountability. Just 60 minutes of updates that could have been an email. AI notes ≠ buy-in. AI notes ≠ engagement. AI notes ≠ clarity.

✏ Avoidance of accountability

The need to avoid discomfort prevents holding each other accountable.

"Let's use AI to write our goals." For some companies, it was even mandatory. This moment should be designed to align and engage teams. But the process is boring, long, and box-checking, let's give that to AI. Nobody asks the hard questions.

The same goes for when someone shares an AI’s output without verifying it. And if there’s an error, a “hallucination,” or a lack of accuracy, the response is “it’s the AI’s fault” (like my teenage kids when they won’t own up to their mistakes; it’s always one of their brothers’ fault or mine 😡)

✏ Inattention to results

The pursuit of individual goals erodes focus on collective success, or the mindset of speed, quick fix versus depth and quality.

You can use AI to "Summarize this 60-slide deck so I can listen in my car." When before it was 20 slides. Maybe the real question is: why 60 slides?. Again, here workslop: more content. more slides. not a better impact.

Individual productivity might go up, but the collective results are flat or down.

✨ Hack

This is not easy and I don't have all the answers. We will all have to learn how to adapt and keep our human touch with trial and error. This is one of the main parts of our coaching program to help managers build the right mindset, process, and structure. Here's what Rachel from MSD says:

"Aurelie, also provides clear guidance on how, as managers, we can effectively engage and bring our teams along. Rachel Martin, Subnational Market Access Director MSD see here ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️"

If you were caught in any of the traps above - welcome to the club. Here's how to start:

✏ 1- Keep it human

• Dictate your emails rather than asking AI to write for you. More personal. More human. You save time AND keep the competency. Bonus: you can walk, get fresh air while doing it. (You have voice-to-text in every email app on your phone.)
• Walk the talk on perfectionism. Tell your team: "80/20 is enough. We don't need perfect polished emails. We need real ones."
• Create AI-free zones. Topics or tasks where you will NOT use AI. One leader I coach writes every end-of-year review of her direct reports herself. No AI. And explain your team why.

✏ 2- Deal with the anxiety and frustration gaps

Host an AI open forum. A space to share fears, risks, frustrations, AND excitement:

• inside the company: talk about workslop, how we use AI our main use cases, what's working, what's annoying
• outside the company: impact on society, jobs, environment, what keeps us up at night

Both conversations lead to the same outcome: agree as a team on what to do. One team I coach built an "AI with moderation" guide. For sustainability reasons. They defined where AI adds value, what to avoid, how to protect their human skills..

✏ 3- Spend energy on your process and data

Before you add AI to a broken process, fix the process.

• Rethink how you communicate. (Emails only = bad for everyone 😅)
• Where do you store data? Same folder? Same naming? Can people find things?

Start to fix your meetings if you see low engagement and accountability.

✏ 4- Align on governance as a team

You got the mandatory training. Good.

Now host a real conversation: "What does this mean for us (which data are confidential in our roles)? For how we work together?" The policy is company-wide. The meaning is team-specific.

✏ 5. Personalize your LLM

• Custom instructions for your voice. Not generic corporate speak. Keep your typos. Your quirks. Your emoji
• Prevent ChatBait. When your LLM offers "I could also do X, Y, Z, and 47 other things!" say no. "Give me only ONE next step that adds value." That's it.
• Prompt to limit the volume of the outputs: maximum words, number of benchmarks: you will have less to validate afterward, and your colleagues as well.

That's it for today.

If any of this resonated - or made you uncomfortable - I'd love to hear about it.

See you in two weeks. Keep the spark alive

Reader, hit reply to let me know if you liked this edition or if you tried these tips. I respond to every person who writes to me!