The idea
You have a meeting coming up about AI adoption in a team or department. Maybe it's with a director who's skeptical, or a team lead who's enthusiastic but unsure where to start, or an HR manager worried about what AI means for roles. You've prepared before, you know the context. But have you thought through the objections?
This is where AI can be genuinely useful as a thinking partner. You give it the context of your meeting, and ask it to help you anticipate what might come up. It won't replace your expertise, but it can help you think more broadly and prepare more thoroughly, especially for perspectives you might not have considered.
A prompt you can use
Open any AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whatever you have access to) and try something like this:
I'm a change professional meeting with [describe the person's role] about rolling out AI tools in [describe the department or context]. The current situation is [briefly describe where things stand]. Help me think through: what are the three most likely concerns or objections this person will raise? For each one, suggest how I could frame my response in a way that acknowledges their perspective while moving the conversation forward.
Replace the brackets with your actual situation. The more specific you are, the more useful the output will be. If you know the person tends to worry about budget, or about team morale, or about compliance, mention that. Give the AI enough context to give you something you can actually work with.
What to do with the output
Don't take the AI's suggestions as final answers. Read through them and notice what resonates and what doesn't. Some of it will feel obvious, some of it will surprise you. The value is in the prompting: the act of structuring your thinking before the meeting.
Share the output with a colleague if you can. Ask them: "Does this match what you'd expect from this person?" That conversation, the one between you and a real person reflecting on AI-generated input, is where the real preparation happens. AI gives you a starting point. Your judgment and your colleague's experience refine it.
Why this matters
Stanford's AI Index identifies organizational readiness and resistance to changing workflows as the top barriers to AI ROI. Every stakeholder conversation you have is a small intervention in that readiness. The better prepared you are, the more you can meet people where they are, the more likely the conversation moves things forward instead of reinforcing resistance.
And there's a second benefit: you're practicing with AI yourself. You're building your own intuition for what it's good at and where its limits are. That experience is what makes you credible when you help others do the same thing.
Try this week: Before your next meeting about AI adoption, spend 5 minutes with this prompt. Don't aim for perfection. Aim for preparation that feels a little more thorough than usual. That's how you start building the habit.