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Guest: Jose Vergara, a coach at CEO Coaching International. Jose is a seasoned CEO, president, and operator with deep experience leading organizations across public companies, private equity-backed businesses, family-owned firms, founder-led companies, and partner-owned enterprises.
Quick Background: If AI were just a technical problem, the solutions would be simple. Upgrade your tech stack. Hire the best AI experts. Buy more bandwidth.
But the true challenge of AI is how it challenges leadership. CEOs who feel the need to “do something” often sacrifice identity and trust for speed. And in their haste, they fail to communicate a clear vision that reduces employees’ anxiety around AI and transforms the company’s culture.
On today’s show, Jose Vergara discusses how his 5-step AI roadmap for CEOs can help companies embrace AI, improve productivity, and Make BIG Happen.
Keys to Successful AI Integration from Jose Vergara
Avoid “The Wobbles”
Before CEOs can deploy their own AI roadmaps, they need to understand that the full scope of the transformation they’re starting.
“This is not a technology transformation,” says Jose Vergara. “This is a cultural transformation touching every single individual in the organization. The CEO needs to start with trust. CEOs need to observe three key pillars, the Pillars of Trust:”
- Self-Authenticity: People trust you when they believe they are interacting with the real you. If you hide your true self or parrot what you think others want to hear, trust erodes.
- Logic: People trust you when they have faith in your judgment and competence. Avoid narrow-minded reasoning and vague communication.
- Empathy: People trust you when they believe you genuinely care about them and their success. When you’re interacting with employees, give them your full attention. When they come to you with problems, offer solutions and follow through.
If you don’t establish this strong foundation of trust, each of these pillars is likely to experience an “authenticity wobble” that will destabilize your company. And the ground beneath your feet will remain shaky when it’s time for the next major transformation, upgrade, or pivot.
“All of the Pillars of Trust have to be firm,” Jose says. “The CEO’s role is to keep them aligned at all times and be very self-aware that in order to create trust, you need to meet all these three categories within people and culture. So before addressing any AI-specific tool you need to really talk about, am I really in a position to deliver the message? Are people really understanding? Do I have their trust to begin with? To put it simply, trust is the real infrastructure behind AI. You really need to make sure that people are engaged and not just willing to follow orders because that’s a very, very weak foundation to begin with.”
The CEO’s Roadmap for Leading AI Cultural Transformation
CEOs can build on Jose Vergara’s 5-part framework to meet the unique needs of their companies and their cultures as they integrate AI:
Step 1: Start with Intent, Not Tools
When it comes to making any major cultural change, “Why” has to come before “What.” One of the CEOs who Jose coaches paused all AI spending for 60 days just so they could clarify that “Why” and communicate a more consistent message on AI throughout the company.
“When they restarted, AI adoption doubled,” Jose says, “because people finally understood the ‘Why’ behind the decision and the strategy. Clarity beats capability every time. Anchor AI to business value and human benefit. What’s in it for the organization by doing this? That creates a big change in how people, one, perceive the intention, and two, they envision themselves in the future and what does that mean for them in progressing in their careers or achieving their goals in a most efficient way.”
Step 2: Position AI as an Augmenter, Not a Replacer
You can swim in the ocean without any equipment. But a pair of fins will get you across the waves a lot faster.
That’s how employees should view AI: not as their replacement, but as a tool that will help them get where they want to go more efficiently. And it’s up to the CEO to broadcast that message loud and clear.
”In this step, language matters,” Jose says. “Really be mindful how you communicate the message and make sure that everybody understands. This is not a one-time exercise. Usually you need to have a communication campaign around these key messages so everybody in the organization really understands and listens to the same key messages from leadership. The CEO models how AI should be perceived and how AI should expand human capability, not threaten human worth. That should be one of the central messages. Remember: what leaders say once, culture hears forever. Anything that the CEO says in a town hall, even in an informal exchange with team members, is amplified by the organization.”
Step 3: Create Psychological Safety Around Experimentation
Failure doesn’t kill innovation, fear does. If your employees are afraid to fail as they’re acclimating to AI, or if they’re worried they aren’t demonstrating BIG enough productivity gains, they’re going to keep resisting change. The CEO needs to normalize the path around learning curves and assure everyone that whether or not you try is more important than whether or not you fail.
“You need a culture that celebrates the attempt,” Jose advises. “ A culture where, when innovation is stimulated, it’s okay if things are not achieved. This is not about recognizing in the culture what works and what didn’t work. It’s about what did you attempt and what were you trying to solve, and celebrate those attempts and create a safe environment for people to say, ‘Hey, I tried this. I tried using these AI tools to gain all this benefit for my job or for the organization.’ So the culture of celebrating the attempt, and celebrating intent, rather than just results, is very important in this transformation.”
Step 4: Build Capability, Not Compliance
Do you like every single part of your job?
Neither do your employees.
But one of the BIG benefits of AI is its ability to help workers speed through the rote and the repetitive so that they can spend more of their time on the good stuff, like providing exceptional customer service and collaborating with peers.
So, instead of mandating broad AI training, ask teams to identify one friction point AI could remove from their daily work, and have employees master that skill. They’ll soon be looking for more ways to integrate AI into their daily workflows.
“ If you tell people, ‘I want you to get rid of the boring stuff so you have more time to focus on the parts of your job that you enjoy the most,’ I can guarantee you that engagement is going to skyrocket,” Jose Vergara says. “That’s when you start aligning interests with a common goal in mind. People engage when AI helps them win. Capabilities scale, but compliance plateaus. So you need to create capabilities. Don’t fall in the trap of creating compliance where you have all these multiple training sessions lined up and people don’t even understand why this is important to my job. Build capability and not compliance.”
Step 5: Reinforce Trust Through Consistency
One of the BIG keys to driving culture is repetition. Every email, every meeting, every response to a crisis, every raise or promotion, and every employee interaction should underline the values and vision that matter to your company. When the CEO is trying to affect a culture change, consistency is even more important, no matter how BIG you are or how many stakeholders you have.
“You don’t have to be a multi-billion dollar organization to have a communication campaign,” Jose says. “All it takes is to be consistent, to be smart and innovative about how to keep delivering the same message and actions that reflect the same messaging that you’re delivering as a leader. Really align incentives, language, and behavior. If you incentivize the behaviors you want to instill, and especially if you have new behaviors that you haven’t been able to achieve in the past, or new behaviors in new roles that you want to incentivize, well-thought-out and well-aligned compensation is a very powerful tool to use. Remember, inconsistency kills credibility. So this is where your rhythms, your sequential planning, repetitive tasks, and vision come in very handy and are critical in the achievement of goals.”
Be a Trust Architect
The most successful CEOs aren’t necessarily the most technical. They’re the inspiring leaders who create environments where people feel safe to learn, adapt, and grow.
Creating and managing that kind of empowering environment is the AI essential that too many CEOs are overlooking right now. Prepare yourself and your team to take advantage of this transformative technology, together.
”If you’re a CEO with all these multiple demands, you don’t need all the answers,” says Jose Vergara. “You need the presence. You need the clarity and the consistency to create this flywheel of growth and transformation. It’s okay to be vulnerable with your team. You may say, ‘I don’t have all the answers.’ Your job isn’t to be the AI expert. It’s to be the trust architect. How you show up matters more than what tool you choose. AI will shape the future, but leadership will decide who thrives.”
Top Takeaways
1. Build a foundation of trust or you’ll never have the buy-in you’ll need for a major cultural transformation.
2. Clarify intent. The better your people understand “Why” AI is being implemented, the less afraid they’re going to be of it.
3. Encourage learning and experimentation rather than ratcheting up performance pressure.
About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, the firm has coached more than 1,500+ CEOs and entrepreneurs across 100+ industries and 60 countries. Its coaches—former CEOs, presidents, and executives—have led businesses ranging from startups to over $10 billion, driving double-digit sales and profit growth, many culminating in eight, nine, or ten-figure exits.
Companies that have worked with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have achieved an average revenue CAGR of 25.9%, nearly 3X the U.S. average, and an average EBITDA CAGR of 39.2%, more than 4X the national benchmark.
Discover how coaching can transform your leadership journey at ceocoachinginternational.com.
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