To Succeed with AI, Adopt a Beginner’s Mindset

This article was originally published in Harvard Business Review.

Every day, fears about artificial intelligence (AI) run through the news cycle: Jobs will be eliminated, intellectual property misused, personal data compromised, or biases propagated.

Underneath these AI-related anxieties are more universal fears, ones that often accompany periods of technology advancement, for example, the fear of not grasping what’s new, of being outrun or left behind by those “smarter” than us, or being seen as stupid or old school by those whom we lead. Perhaps you remember feeling this way when cloud computing or cryptocurrency first hit the scene?

Technologies come and go, but during times of substantial progress and change, like the current AI revolution, we as leaders need to be sensitive to the fears that arise and the very human instinct to protect our ego – which is closely connected to our sense of our own expertise. Letting go of this veneer of “expert” and adopting the mantle of “beginner” may seem at odds with our idea of strong leadership. However, according to research by Potential Project, it will not only strengthen your leadership but also bolster the well-being and commitment of your teams by 25% or more.

What Does It Mean to Be a Beginner?

Both science and the wisdom traditions provide helpful frameworks for understanding what it means to be a beginner. In the Zen Buddhist tradition, the concept of shoshin means the practice of approaching everything in life with a beginner’s mindset. In other words, you don’t let pre-existing beliefs or past experiences color how you approach a new situation. Instead of assumptions or pre-conceptions, you bring curiosity. You replace a desire to have the answers with a desire to learn and an openness to new ways of thinking and doing.

Scientifically, this mindset is close to the concept of cognitive flexibility, which generally refers to our ability to adapt flexibly to our constantly changing environment. Cognitive flexibility kicks into action when we switch between tasks or toggle between different concepts or strategies. It is what helps us to navigate new situations or to shift gears and make different choices when something isn’t working. As professors from Cambridge University describe it, cognitive flexibility “is essentially about learning to learn and being flexible about the way you learn.”

In our current moment, with the constant prospect of AI upending how we work, the leaders who succeed are those who can let go of their fears, who can lean into the new environment with curiosity and flexibility. Unfortunately, many of us lost the ability to do this years ago.

What Gets in the Way?

Most of us spend our careers trying to become expert at something; expertise allows us to secure promotions, better work, or more pay. But, in a perfect case of a “double-edged sword,” this expertise erodes our cognitive flexibility and diverts us into the unpleasantly named zone of cognitive entrenchment. Basically, the smarter and more experienced we are, the more locked-in we tend to become in our ways of thinking and doing things — so locked-in that we go looking for facts and data that support our perspective and ignore anything that may run contrary to that. (Neuroscientists call this confirmation bias.)

Even if our expertise doesn’t get in the way of embracing new things, our general cognitive laziness might. Our brains are masters of energy conservation. Whenever we can, we go into autopilot mode to dedicate as little conscious thought as possible. This allows us to walk through the world in a smart and efficient way, but it can also prevent us from adopting new ways of seeing a situation or solving a problem in a different way.

A final, major barrier towards the adoption of a beginner’s mindset is misperception. We, particularly leaders, are poor judges of how we actually behave and incorrectly assume we do have a beginner’s mind. Potential Project asked 85 leaders to evaluate themselves on the dimensions of expertise and openness, and we asked 250 employees to rate their leaders on the same two dimensions. On the expertise dimension, leaders rated themselves 3% higher than employees rated their leaders. On the openness dimension, leaders rated themselves 14% higher than employees rated their leaders.

The message? We all have work to do to be open, curious leaders who don’t let fears or ego get in the way of successfully dealing with massive changes. Our employees are watching. And more than that, our mindset is impacting their well-being and productivity.

What’s at Stake?

According to Gallup, employee stress is at a record high globally, and a big driver right now is AI. Almost one quarter of all workers say they are worried that their job will become obsolete because of technology, up from 15% in 2021. There are many things that leaders can do to help, including upskilling and reskilling strategies.

But a crucial factor in employee adoption and readiness for AI will be the leader’s own receptivity to the massive changes ahead — not as an expert who has it all figured out but as a learner with intellectual humility and curiosity.

To investigate how this matters, we asked employees to rate their leaders on the aforementioned dimensions of expertise and openness. Then we correlated their perceptions of their leader with outcomes such as intention to quit, burnout and job satisfaction.

Employees who perceive their leaders as relying on expertise and also remaining open have significantly better outcomes than those who perceive their leaders as being low on both expertise and openness.

And it is the openness variable that seems to be the key to better outcomes, more so than the expertise variable. Employees who perceive their leaders as being high on expertise but low on openness have the highest intention to quit of all and the same level of burnout as employees rating their leaders as low on both.

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Assessing your Beginner Mind

Appreciating how much a beginner’s mindset can help you and your team to succeed with AI, where do you stand on this critical attribute?  Here are some relevant questions to consider about your leadership style:

• I consider multiple options before making a decision.
• Even in familiar situations, I attempt to remain open to new learning and fresh perspectives.
• I am good at putting myself in others’ shoes.
• I believe that there’s always something new to learn, even in areas where I consider myself an expert.
• I feel comfortable admitting when I don’t have enough information about a topic and am willing to learn from others.
• I have at times changed opinions that were important to me, when someone showed me I was wrong.

If you find that you have opportunities to improve, start small. Perhaps you can recall some of the joy that comes with learning something new for the first time, and how good that feels. Alternatively, perhaps you can try doing something creative. Researchers have studied how those at the very top of their fields, for example Nobel Prize winners, are exponentially more likely to engage in a creative pursuit like singing, dance, poetry, literature and the visual arts.

It’s time to ready yourself and your team when it comes to engaging with the opportunities and challenges of AI. Start by checking-in with your mindset. As Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, has notably said: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”

Author’s Note: We are conducting a survey to understand people’s preferences regarding leadership styles, check how they feel about AI-enabled leadership, and gather valuable insights into work dynamics and team interactions. If you’re interested in participating, we invite you to go here.