Teams / Getting your team to use AI
If you run the company, you go first. Then you bring the whole team through together, so everyone learns the same tools and the same language.
Tom Lambotte has coached 225 founders and 299 team members through this. Here is how to get your team using AI.
Usually because you're trying to pour AI into something that's not ready to absorb it.
One founder told me recently: "I'm using AI almost hourly now… But my team? They're circling it. It's like they're afraid to touch it."
Whenever I bring on a new team member, I share this analogy. Picture the sponge by your garage sink, that dry, crusty, rock-hard one you forgot about. You grab it to clean a spill, and all it does is push water around. That's what your team looks like when you throw AI at them too soon.
Most AI training out there is overwhelming, abstract, and filled with prompt-engineer jargon that makes them feel behind before they even begin. So they freeze, or they quietly opt out.
The holdouts have their reasons too. For three years they've read headlines every day about thousands of jobs being replaced, and they don't trust it. If you don't address those beliefs, I don't care how amazing the tool is, they're not going to use it.
Yes. If you run the company, you go first.
For a lot of CEOs, their entire AI strategy was launched by one sentence they heard at a conference: "AI is not going to replace your job, but the AI-powered employee will." So leaders grabbed the bullhorn and told the whole company: everyone, go use AI.
The teams obeyed. Employees scrambled and found the easiest, quickest trick they could to get on board, and they figured it out alone. The CEO, meanwhile, let his IT people look into it.
If the CEO does not go through and experience what AI is capable of, and how to use it themselves in a massively powerful way, how can they expect it to show up downstream?
That's why we don't let anyone send their team through our team program until the founder or a senior leader has gone through first.
If you lead a law firm and want to check where you stand before your team starts, read AI fluency for law firm leaders.
When Teresa joined the Sprint, she was already using AI strategically, and she had a plan:
"I made a commitment. I wanted to make sure my team was fully embracing AI, without just handing them another tool."
Instead of handing her team tools, she showed them how she used AI, once a week, on real projects. Within 30 days, her team's output was up 40%.
"They're not just doing more. They're doing better. They have more clarity. Things don't get stuck anymore."
Her team started automating project plans, stopped waiting to be told what to do, and spotted opportunities to integrate AI into offers she hadn't even seen yet. Their leader modeled it, and they followed.
Usually you get one power user, and everyone else in the office never turns it on. The AI champion strategy fails for one reason. It hands adoption to the person who needed help the least.
Think about who becomes the champion. It's the forward-thinking one, the person who already has the upgraded version and is testing everything. They were going to use AI no matter what. On any team I see a small group of power users, about a third who dabble, and the rest holding out. The champion comes from the first group, and the adoption problem lives in the other two.
Then the champion gets good. Everyone comes to them, because they're the AI magician, and they spend their days answering questions. You started with one power user. You end with one power user who is also the help desk.
One person going deep creates a bottleneck, and a team going deep creates leverage. Keep your champion. Just don't give them the rollout. Bring the whole team through together, and deal with the beliefs before the features.
Most AI training is making things worse. It creates a bigger divide inside companies: the tech-savvy folks sprint ahead, and the non-tech-savvy fall further behind.
I watched a wealth management firm spend $15K on "advanced AI training" for 12 people. Six months later, only the three people who were already AI power users were still using it.
One leader had just come off our Sprint when her company enrolled her in something else. She rolled her eyes as she said it:
"They just enrolled me in another corporate AI course... Pre-recorded videos. Generic examples. No connection to my actual work. Dull and boring. I already know it's going to be a waste of time."
When I built the Sprint, I didn't care about teaching the "latest 17 AI tools." I cared about shared mindsets. When a CEO and their team walk out speaking the same language, everything changes. Everyone uses the same frameworks, like the Three Experts, and whether you're brand new or already advanced, you've got leverage you can use everywhere. The gap closes, and the team moves together.
Less than most leaders think. Information overload kills action.
I've seen smart folks go to AI workshops, watch endless tutorials, and end up paralyzed. My friend sat through 74 AI sessions in three days. He came back with zero results to show.
What works instead is focus and implementation: take one high-impact AI strategy at a time and use it immediately. It only takes 90 minutes once a week, and consistency beats cramming.
If someone on your team builds a Custom GPT and you deactivate their account without reassigning ownership first, it's locked. You can still use the GPT, but you will no longer be able to edit it.
If you're cleaning up users or switching roles, check ownership before you deactivate accounts, and transfer ownership of any GPTs they have built. Thanks to Christine Rivett, our Director of Operations and Client Success, for the research on this one.
Start with the model Teresa used:
When you're ready to bring the whole team through together, the Sprint for Teams gives everyone the same frameworks and the same language in four live sessions.
The 4-Week AI Leverage Sprint for Teams. Four live sessions. $500 per seat.
See the Teams Sprint