Because you can do hard things.
A storm rolls in with almost no warning, and you have to cancel a performance or close your office mid-day — or both. A key system fails just before the holidays, right before you had to pull data for your year-end fundraising letters. Or your high-demand performer announces they have laryngitis and can't perform, and you're staring down three near-sold-out back-to-back shows.
Bruce Mayhew
You've led through some version of all three of these scenarios. Maybe more than once. You and your team can do hard things, but now artificial intelligence (AI) has become a whole new kind of event to manage.
The Turn
Somewhere in the last year, AI started being treated as if it were a completely different category of leadership problem. I don’t believe it is a new category. It is the same kind of uncertainty you have been leading through for years. Yes, the source, potential and long-term impact are new, but the leadership discipline is familiar: stay grounded, involve the right people, make thoughtful decisions and keep the organization focused on what matters most.
AI is not a technology rollout; it is a leadership test.
The fear around AI adoption is real. People worry about all of the unknowns, like how it will be used and how it will change their work. And I hope they are also worried about whether it will weaken judgment, quality, connection or customer experience. Leaders cannot dismiss these fears. They need to acknowledge them, create a responsible path forward, and keep people focused on how AI can help people take advantage of their unique skills — all the things AI cannot do that will strengthen their position, like critical thinking, values-based judgement and other key decisions.
Managing a Sudden Pivot
When there is major change or a crisis, it’s important that nobody panics. Not out loud, anyway. And when your team knows, from experience, that they can count on you and each other, nobody should panic. That’s when you know they have confidence that problems are not a ‘one person can fix it’ issue — because you are a team.
Strong teams do not respond well by accident. They respond well because trust, communication, shared responsibility and decision-making have already been practiced.
Ask most leaders who run a highly integrated team why a difficult event went well, and they won't point to themselves. They'll point to the team. They’ll point to the people who responded to the problem early and the ones who backed up a teammate without being asked. That's not an accident, and it's not a personality trait. It's a discipline and a leadership team who have intentionally built, regularly practiced and constantly reinforced a trusting, collaborative culture. And they have discussed in advance what to do and how to do it if things go badly.
And now the team has a new change disruptor to tame and integrate. AI.
AI should be introduced into your culture in a similar way. Not as a top-down rollout or a policy handed to the team, but as part of how the team works together, protects the customer experience, supports the organization’s values, and prepares for moments when speed and judgment both matter. My suggestion for AI integration is that everyone needs to be part of the conversation about why, what, how and when AI gets used in your organization, how it can be used to support your shared goals and how it can be included.
As the leader, be sure you are positioning the discussions effectively. Instead of asking, “How do we use AI?” ask, “How can AI help us strengthen our judgment, our brand, and the experience customers already trust us to deliver?” AI can support the work, but the final decision — what gets said, published, prioritized, or personalized — still belongs to the people responsible for the relationship: your team. That’s where they make a huge difference and will continue to do so moving forward.
Imagine a Scenario
Let’s examine how AI might be able to help using one of the three scenarios mentioned above. The one when a performer has to cancel.
Three near-sold-out shows. Tickets paid for, plans made, a reputation riding on the run. And the performer everyone was counting on — the one who was supposed to help cement your reputation as a relevant, current, valuable destination is suddenly not going on. No warning, no fix.
Here's where it's worth being clear about what AI can do because it's more than people often admit. It can absorb real operational load: drafting the notice to ticket holders before the phones start ringing, pulling together talking points for the ticket office team fielding the same five questions over and over, perhaps researching and shortlisting a replacement act fast enough to matter. In the first frantic hours, that time savings can be the difference between the night unraveling and your team having something solid to work from.
But this is exactly the moment where a leader can get it wrong in a way that looks efficient and isn't. It would be easy — reasonable, even — to let AI draft one message and send it to everyone. I encourage you to be clear-eyed about when that's the right call and when it isn't. Yes, sometimes the crisis calls for an automated notice sent fast and cleanly. But sometimes — especially with your patrons who are major donors — it requires more than an automated notice. It calls for everyone on your team, from all departments, to pull together, get on the phone and make sharing the bad news personal. Because in a moment like this, what these patrons need most isn't a fast answer. It's to feel like an important person, not a number on a seating chart or a donation record.
What AI gets you here isn't a solved problem. It's time. Time that would otherwise go entirely into drafting statements and researching replacements by hand — and what you do with that time is the real decision and where your team can bond, shine, and feel proud.
A Starting Point, Before the Crisis Hits
As I mentioned earlier, I know you’ve already navigated market shifts, customer expectations, economic pressure, talent changes and crises. Here's a practical starting point for using AI as a partner in your organization — in good times, and when things go sideways.
- Reframe AI as a leadership question, not an IT question. Ask how AI can help the organization work better, strengthen service, protect judgment and support the brand customers already trust.
- Lead the same way you always have. You don't need to be an AI expert. You need to stay strategic, calm and curious, and communicate with clarity. Strategic means every decision stays anchored to your vision, mission and values. Calm keeps the team grounded. Curiosity gives people permission to not be experts either, and to keep learning. Clarity keeps people accountable.
- Keep customer experience as the second anchor. Evaluate AI by whether it improves service, responsiveness, quality, personalization and consistency. Don't let AI quietly become an internal efficiency project that weakens the personal touch of your team and customer relationships.
- Start with small, real experiments. Use AI on low-risk, real processes before a crisis forces the issue. Afterward, talk openly about what worked, what did not and where human judgment made the difference.
- Set clear guardrails. Decide as a team where AI can help, where human review is required and what decisions should always remain human-led. Pay attention to privacy, accuracy, bias, transparency and accountability.
- Protect trust inside the team and with customers. Communicate openly so people feel informed and involved, not just managed. Use AI to create more time for meaningful human connection, not less.
Conclusion
Some of the greatest successes I’ve seen happen when organizations decide that AI should help them do more with the people they have, not do the same work with fewer people.
AI may become part of how the team works, but it should not become a substitute for the team’s judgment. Do not let it push you away from the customer when the issue is relational. Do not let it push you away from your team when the issue is cultural. AI can make things efficient, but efficient and right are not always the same call, and knowing the difference is still yours to make.
Bruce Mayhew is a professional development trainer, executive coach, keynote speaker, and author. He is a regular contributor to Access and a frequent INTIX speaker, most recently at INTIX 2026 in Las Vegas. Mayhew specializes in soft skills like leadership and new leadership development, motivation skills, generational differences, difficult conversations training, change management, time management, and email etiquette. Learn more at www.brucemayhewconsulting.com
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