How to build a confident, capable team for the AI era
Article by Isobel Shaw, AI Lead at Program Agency
In this guest article, Isobel Shaw, AI Lead at Program, explains how organisations can build confident, empowered teams ready to embrace AI and drive meaningful innovation.
Program is a partner for Growth Forge 2025, a business acceleration programme for ambitious tech companies. Learn more here.
The real competitive edge in AI adoption isn’t just the tech itself. It’s how confidently your team experiments, questions, and applies AI to their real work. And that confidence comes from structured, hands-on learning that sparks curiosity, and turns it into capability.
Let’s look at how you can lead your team through this change, with confidence and curiosity.
From overwhelmed to empowered
When I ran our first AI for Marketing Academy training course, people admitted they felt out of their depth with AI. They didn’t know which tools were genuinely the best ones for them, and were struggling to get what they wanted out of the ones they were using.
After the first couple of sessions, their mindset flipped. They understood they didn’t need advanced technical skills or complicated tools. They knew where to start, and they started having fun with it.
That cultural shift makes or breaks adoption within your team.
Building AI confidence is a cultural evolution that leaders can, and should, actively shape.
Here are four practical ways to start:
1. Bring your team into the decision making
Hold a team session where everyone is invited to share their honest thoughts on AI - what excites them, what worries them, how they’re already using it, and where they see opportunities or risks. Keep it open and judgement-free.
The goal is to bring your team into the decision-making process:
- How do we want to use AI as a company?
- What will we (and won’t we) use it for?
- What safeguards should we agree on?
This kind of open dialogue builds trust, and turns AI adoption into a shared journey.
2. Reduce fear by providing clarity
One of the most effective ways to reduce fear and confusion is to create an AI Policy - even a simple one - early on. This helps set boundaries and expectations for everyone.
A good starter policy might include:
- How your business will prevent bias and protect data
- Which tools the team can (and can’t) use
- How new tools are vetted and approved
- Who is responsible for checking AI outputs before they’re shared
- Who owns the policy and keeps it up to date (I recommend a quarterly review - things move fast in AI)
Build it based on the ideas raised in your earlier open session. When people feel involved, they’re far more likely to adopt AI confidently and responsibly.
3. Encourage experimentation without pressure
Curiosity thrives in safe spaces. Give teams time to explore AI tools in low-risk areas - brainstorming, drafting content, automating simple tasks.
I suggest running a quick weekly, or slightly longer monthly, AI show-and-tell, where someone shows something fun, creative, or useful they’ve done with AI recently.
It could be a clever prompt, a design, or an automation that saves five minutes a day. The goal is to keep the AI spark alive!
4. Invest in practical AI training
Expecting people to figure it out alone is a recipe for frustration. Practical, use-case-based training changes everything. When teams see how AI can streamline real work, behaviour changes fast.
At our AI for Marketing Academy, we focus on live examples and practical training that can be used instantly, tailored to your team.
