AI Innovation Is A Matter Of Trust

The challenge of integrating artificial intelligence into organizations isn’t just about technology—it’s about people. AI presents an unprecedented opportunity to augment human potential, drive efficiency and reshape entire industries. But for all its promise, AI also triggers deep uncertainty. Employees worry about job security, managers struggle to maintain control, and leaders face a fundamental question: How do you guide your organization through AI adoption in a way that fosters innovation rather than fear?

The answer, according to Stephen M.R. Covey, is trust.

Covey, is, of course, the bestselling author of The Speed of Trust and Trust & Inspire—one of the most useful business books of the Covid era. In it, he argues the traditional “command-and-control” model of leadership is fundamentally unsuited for the speed of modern business. In its place, he champions a leadership philosophy rooted in trust, inspiration and empowerment—a framework he calls Trust & Inspire. Re-reading the book recently, I was struck by how well-suited his approach seems for the AI era, so I reached out to Covey to get his take. He’d been noodling the same idea for a while. What’s essential, he says, is to ensure AI becomes a tool for human potential rather than a source of anxiety and resistance.

“AI is not a replacement for people; it’s an enabler to unleash people,” Covey explains. “But if we approach it with fear—fear of losing control, fear of being replaced—we will limit its potential—and our own. The key is to lead with trust, modeling the way forward and showing people how AI can expand what they are capable of, rather than diminish them.”

Covey’s insights come at a critical moment. As organizations race to implement AI, they face a delicate balancing act: leveraging the power of automation and machine learning while maintaining a culture of trust, collaboration and human ingenuity. Too often, companies roll out AI initiatives without addressing the emotional and cultural impact on their workforce, leading to disengagement, resistance and missed opportunities.

With a deep background in leadership development—as former CEO of the Covey Leadership Center and working with Fortune 500 companies—Covey has spent decades helping executives create high-trust, high-performance cultures. In the conversation that follows, he lays out a blueprint for CEOs looking to build trust while embracing AI.

You’ve said that “trust-and-inspire leadership is the more relevant and effective kind of leadership needed, especially in an AI world.” Why?

Because it’s how we’re going to do this together—a blended intelligence, artificial intelligence plus human intelligence. It’s a with approach. Ultimately, people are unleashed through inspiration, human connection, purpose, meaning and contribution. I’m arguing that AI can actually be a partner, an enabler, in unleashing people. Put it this way: AI with inspired people will be far more productive and outperforming than AI replacing people.

If we approach AI with fear as opposed to trust—fear that I’m going to lose control of the technology so I must shy away from it versus trust around the possibilities of maximizing all that can go right, fear that I’ll get replaced versus trust that I could be unleashed—we will have very different outcomes. As a leader, my primary approach to AI should be less about trying to replace people and more about trying to augment people. AI is an enabling tool to do just that. I can have people become empowered, enabled and amplified by taking the things AI can do and blending that with gifts and endowments that are uniquely human—creative imagination, independent will, personal connection, empathy, caring, authenticity, courage, human intuition, conscience and self-awareness, along with meaning and purpose. We can choose to lean into this with trust about the possibilities and the opportunities versus fearing it. The greatest success will be had by reframing AI not as a path to human replacement but rather as a path to greater human potential.

This is something that can galvanize us versus paralyze us. So how do we get the workforce to see that? How can we model adoption of AI in a way that brings people with us rather than resisting this?

Trust seems to have everything to do with this.

Absolutely. Trust is at the heart of this because it is a bit of a leap. But if AI can enable me to do more of what I can distinctively do, then I can better reach my potential and possibilities. Right now, we’re tapping into only a portion of what people are capable of. What if AI could help us increase that? Gandhi said, “The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world’s problems.” AI could help free up time, free up resources, free up creativity and ingenuity and capacity to be applied to things of greatest purpose and highest contribution.

I come back to the idea of the Trust & Inspire approach: “manage things, lead people.” Management and leadership are two different skills. In a world that is already over-managed and under-led, it’s easy to see how AI could drive that imbalance further. The reality is we need both—an “and” approach—a blended intelligence, with human ingenuity and connection in the lead. It’s the context that matters. While AI can automate work, it can’t build culture. AI can generate ideas but can’t inspire people. AI can process vast amounts of information but can’t create deep human connection. And AI can produce efficiency but can’t create meaning and purpose. While success in managing AI will be vital going forward, the premium will be on the ability to lead, trust and inspire people.

What steps can CEOs take to start building or fortifying the kind of trust we’ll need to lead into this new era?

Begin by modeling it yourself. Begin with trust as a starting point versus starting with fear. Part of that includes taking AI adaptation head on, rather than skirting it. We need to address the emotional and cultural restraining forces that might be getting in the way of adoption and show empathy and understanding for those forces. If we start with empathy, such that people can first feel heard and understood regarding the restraining forces—that we’re influenced by their experience—then they become much more open to being influenced by the driving forces of AI, like productivity and performance gains.

There is a leap of faith at play, so we need to give “psychological air” to it. Let’s give air to the emotion. Let’s give air to the fear that people could get replaced. There’s also the understandable fear that AI could get out of control. Those fears are rooted in experience and, frankly, how people are seeing other organizations navigate this. We’ve got to demonstrate that we’re aware and that we care. Once our people feel understood, we, as leaders, can credibly paint a picture as to why AI might be an enabler of growth and development, for the organization and for them, and inspire and enlist their help.

Your work is about inspiring as opposed to just managing a workforce. Many of us don’t picture ourselves as Vince Lombardi, but you say we can all inspire. What does that mean here?

Yes, inspiring others is a learnable skill. Everyone can inspire. We’ve too often confused inspiration with charisma. Someone might say, “Hey, I’m not charismatic. I can’t inspire.” The reality is, they’re very different things. I know some people who are charismatic but not inspiring and others no one would describe as charismatic who are extraordinarily inspiring.

So, how do you inspire? You inspire first by modeling who you are as a human being, your character, your competence, your credibility. Second, you inspire by extending trust to people. To be trusted is the most inspiring form of human motivation. It brings out the best in all of us. People want to be trusted. When they are, they tend to stay. When they’re not, they’ll go find a place where they are. When they are trusted and inspired, they’ll not only be engaged, they’ll thrive. They’ll respond by rising to the occasion; they’ll perform better. Yes, there might be a few that abuse it, but the vast majority of people will be inspired by being trusted. And third, you inspire by connecting with people through a sense of caring, and by connecting to purpose, meaning and contribution. The bottom line is that everyone can inspire. Inspiring others is a learnable skill—and it is an intentional stewardship we have as leaders today.

This is a unique moment in human history, and we can approach it with fear or trust. I’m not naive as to what could go wrong. It is a leap. It’s not hard to paint a frightening view of AI. But what if we could influence this inflection point? What if we could imbue this moment with purpose? What if part of that purpose were to make AI a tool for lifting humanity and elevating society, as well as for unleashing people and human potential?

Because everything we’ve done to date has not come close to unleashing what people are capable of. Here’s a reframing: View where we are with AI as a galvanizing moment, a “put a man on the moon” moment, as something exciting to be embraced versus filled with fear and trepidation. What if we do this with each other, not to each other, with the intent to unleash human potential and lift all society?

Your book describes the first fear that needs to be mastered as the leaders’ fear themselves about letting go. How do we get better at getting over our command-and-control inclinations?

You always have to start with your paradigm, your mental map or model, first, of how you view people, and second, of how you view leadership. Do you genuinely view people as whole people with greatness inside of them to be unleashed, or do you feel you have to hover over people and contain them because things might go wrong, or they might not do it your way? Do you view leadership as a position that grants you rights or as influence that gives you responsibilities or stewardships?

If you’re looking to “contain,” you’re in trouble. Command-and-control managers are the ones most threatened by AI because they’re going to become obsolete. If we manage people the same way we manage and automate things, schedules and processes, AI can do all of that better. What AI can’t do is build trust, inspire people, create human connection and connect people to purpose, meaning and contribution. Doing this effectively requires using what I call “stewardship agreements” to help empower and work with people successfully.

What are stewardship agreements? How do they work in this context?

Anytime we extend trust, we need to do it with clear expectations around the trust being given, along with a process for accountability—effectively building an agreement around the trust being extended. So it’s not just a blind trust of, “Hey, whatever you do is great.” Rather, it’s a smart trust where the focus is on outcomes, not methods, giving people a lot of autonomy, within useful guidelines and some agreed-upon frameworks. With AI itself, we need to have guidelines and frameworks to control and contain it. I have no problem with controlling and containing things, including technology and especially AI. Again, you manage things, but you lead people; you control and contain things, but you try to release and unleash people. In both cases, you do so always within guidelines that can serve as appropriate guardrails as well as ethical mores.

What goes into a good stewardship agreement?

First, clear expectations around the results we’re trying to achieve, the guidelines we work within and the resources we have to work with. And second, setting up a mutually agreed-upon process of accountability to those expectations—what, when and how—so someone can really be empowered and can report back on how they’re doing around the trust being given to them. This way, people feel truly empowered that they’re trusted as manifested in the agreement. It’s not going completely “hands-off” and calling that “trust,” and merely hoping for the best—instead, it’s clarifying expectations and accountability together in an agreement.

If you build the agreement well, there’s no hovering or micromanaging, as that’s been accounted for already. The person reports how they’re doing against the desired results you agreed upon together, on the timeline you agreed to together. You can adjust for more frequent or less frequent reporting, depending on the job, the risk involved and the credibility of the person or people involved. So, it’s not a one-size-fits-all. The whole idea is you want the person to whom trust is being extended to feel empowered, while simultaneously the leader who extends the trust feels they haven’t lost control. The bottom line is this: agreements govern.

When you involve others in building the agreement together, you become more of a coach than a manager because you’ve created it together. The greater the involvement, the greater the commitment. If there’s no involvement, there’s no commitment.

The focus is on outcomes. Too often, we think if we want to control the outcome, we just control the people who control the outcome. So, a command-and-control leader just dictates the agreement to the person, who has little or no involvement. That doesn’t work with people anymore and really probably never has. By contrast, a trust-and-inspire leader builds the agreement together with the person. You actually have far more control over outcomes with this approach because both expectations and accountability are built around a more complete reality.

So a stewardship agreement provides some psychological safety for the manager or the leader and for the person being led. They know what’s expected.

Absolutely. But the agreement has to be built right. If it’s too broad, if it’s entirely, “Hey, only focus on outcomes,” in the spirit of “anything goes,” they could go down all kinds of failure paths or could endanger the firm or even sabotage their own career. Establishing helpful boundaries, helpful guidelines—even guardrails—is very important. As well as identifying resources to work with, including human and technological resources that could include AI.

Creative innovation comes from a willingness to take calculated risks that might result in failure. But taking calculated risks only works if you have agreed upon guidelines or parameters to work within—or else the failure could be catastrophic. That’s why part of clarifying expectations is not only around results and outcomes, but also around guidelines and defining boundaries. We also define the norms we’ll operate by, including living our values and behaving within ethical standards. In other words, we’ll model what we stand for, what we believe, who we are as a company. Otherwise, if completely unchecked, that’s where it could get dangerous, just like unchecked AI could be dangerous. We are building the agreement together for everyone’s benefit.

And you can take more risk when the guardrails are there.

Absolutely. In a sense, it creates a greater sense of psychological safety. Within these constraints, within these boundaries, as an employee, that gives me a lot of leeway. I’m feeling empowered, I’m feeling a sense of safety. I’m going to take that calculated risk because I know I’ve got some guardrails, and I know the risk I’m taking is not outside them. When you add in the foundation of a high-trust culture to such an agreement, I feel especially empowered to be innovative and creative within that world. But again, it’s not quite a one-size-fits-all. At the end of the day, the extension of trust through the stewardship agreement is perhaps defined best in two words: good judgment. The stewardship agreement helps us to define what that looks like in this specific situation.

In the book, you talk about cultivating an abundance mentality. That strikes me as important in an age of AI. How do we get people feeling that?

The starting point is to focus on yourself, on your own credibility, first. Because the more credible you are, the stronger your character, the stronger your competence, that gives you a sense of security. It’s not perfect security because right now all of us are feeling a little threatened in this AI world. We don’t quite know where this is going—there is a leap, and, to some degree, we all have to recreate ourselves, reinvent ourselves or at least reframe ourselves for this world going forward. So we’re constantly trying to learn and improve, but more sense of self-trust of who we are gives us more strength, more permission, more power, as well as more openness and willingness to choose to be more abundant.

Now, the less credible and secure I am, the more I hang onto the idea that there’s a pie, and the pie is only so big, and people can only get so much—a zero-sum game. If someone’s getting more, then I’m getting less. This leads to a scarcity mentality. But the more secure I feel in myself, the more trust I have in myself, this self-trust flowing from my character and competence, from who I am, then the more open and capable I am to actually becoming more abundant.

There is scarcity in certain things, and it’s important to acknowledge that. For example, economics are run on scarcity. While scarcity is good economic theory, scarcity is lousy leadership theory. There’s an abundance of the most important things that leaders are trying to create: more growth, more respect, more commitment, more passion, more creativity, more innovation, more opportunity, more possibility, more engagement, more inspiration, more energy, more joy, more trust. There’s no limit to these, and ultimately these are the things that expand the more finite, limited resources. There might be a limit to what’s in the budget right now, but what if we could grow that budget, expand that pie and make it bigger? Grow revenues and profits? And so having an abundance mindset—choosing abundance over scarcity—is a huge advantage for any leader today. And I strongly maintain that abundance is a choice, not a condition.

I acknowledge that there is scarcity out there, but an abundance mindset is a better way to view the world because of how that mentality helps you see and open up all kinds of possibilities a scarcity mindset doesn’t see. So, as a leader, “go first” and model abundance as a better way to lead. There is enough of what truly matters for everyone. Finding models and examples of abundance in your field, in your company, in your industry can be very helpful—examples of a pie growing, expanding and multiplying. And then finding and creating models showing how AI can help us win more in a marketplace and actually better serve customers, better serve humanity, better meet the needs of our own people, better meet our purpose and better accomplish our mission. Those are models we especially need today.

Any final thoughts on leadership AI?

The most significant breakthroughs are really “break-withs”—that is, a break with the traditional way of thinking—and AI is poised to be such a break-with, just as trust-and-inspire leadership is a break with the traditional command-and-control paradigm of management. The AI possibilities, when coupled first and foremost with trust-and-inspire leadership, are not only staggering, they can also be inspiring—particularly if our intent is to unleash human potential and lift all society.