Lee Gonzales, Director of AI Transformation at BetterUp and creator of AI Flight School, reveals why successful AI adoption requires mindset transformation before skills training—and how organizations are failing by ignoring the psychological threat AI poses to professional identity. Drawing on research using BetterUp's Whole Person Model psychometrics, he explains how agency and optimism are the two critical traits that separate AI pilots from passengers, and why most companies struggle with AI implementation because they skip the crucial step of creating psychological safety. Gonzales shares his journey from engineering leader to AI educator, offering practical strategies for individuals and organizations to embrace what he calls the "infinite agency machine" and prepare for a future where AI capabilities double every few months.
Director of AI Transformation | BetterUp
Lee Gonzales leads AI adoption and workforce transformation initiatives, helping organizations navigate the transition to AI-integrated work environments. He focuses on combining technical AI implementation with change management strategies that address the psychological and emotional dimensions of technological disruption.
Creator & Lead Instructor | AI Flight School
Lee developed and delivers a six-week intensive program that transforms participants from AI skeptics into confident AI practitioners through mindset transformation and hands-on application. The program is grounded in research using BetterUp's Whole Person Model 3 psychometric framework, which identified agency and optimism as the two critical mindsets for AI success.
AI Mindset Transformation Researcher | BetterUp Labs
Lee conducts applied research on the psychological factors that enable successful AI adoption in professional settings. His work focuses on creating psychologically safe environments where employees can process identity threats posed by AI and develop intrinsic motivation for learning new AI-powered workflows.
Infinite Agency Machine | AI gives people the power to create unlimited possibilities across their professional and personal lives when they truly understand its capabilities.
Mindset Before Skills | You must transform people's emotions and create psychological safety before teaching technical AI skills or adoption will remain superficial and short-lived.
Identity Under Threat | AI constitutes a fundamental threat to professional identity since most people define themselves by their occupation and AI will eventually surpass humans at most tasks.
Agency Plus Optimism | Research using psychometric assessment reveals these two mindsets reliably predict who will thrive versus struggle in the age of AI transformation.
Passenger to Pilot | A six-week program can reliably move people from fearful AI skeptics to confident practitioners who embrace the technology as an extension of themselves.
The Morphing Hammer | AI is like a carpenter's hammer that changes shape mid-swing requiring constant cognitive agility and a learner's mindset to master effectively.
Collective Conscious Mind | Generative AI functions as humanity's accumulated knowledge and you are the magnifying glass that can concentrate and direct that power anywhere.
Good Prompting is Communication | Effective prompt engineering follows the principles of clear communication by naming personas, stating context, and specifying desired outcomes with precision.
Ten Thousand AI Pilots | Creating a movement of people who understand AI deeply and use it wisely is essential to building the bright future versus the dystopic alternative.
The Braid of AI and Human Coaching | The future combines always-on AI coaching for immediate support with human coaches who provide accountability and hold space for transformation.
00:00 - 04:15 | What is Generative AI Really
04:15 - 08:30 | The Two Mindsets That Predict AI Success
08:30 - 12:45 | Why AI Threatens Your Professional Identity
12:45 - 16:20 | Psychological Safety Before Skills Training
16:20 - 20:35 | Practical Exercises to Unlock AI Agency
20:35 - 24:50 | Meta Prompting and Custom Instructions
24:50 - 28:40 | Cognitive Agility and the Morphing Hammer
28:40 - 32:25 | The Art of Prompt Engineering
32:25 - 36:10 | Creating Ten Thousand AI Pilots
36:10 - 40:19 | AI Consciousness and the Collective Conscious Mind
"I think of it as an infinite agency machine."
"The AI that we're seeing constitutes a very real threat to people's identity, who they are at, like, the root."
"That mindset shift you have to do first. If you don't give people that, you do not get durable change, or you don't get change that's in any way deep."
"There are two key mindsets that people who are successful AI pilots demonstrate, which indicates that they're gonna thrive or have a much greater likelihood of thriving in the age of AI. And that is a very high level of agency and a very high level of optimism towards this technology."
"AI, if we use this by kind of analogy, it's like when you're swinging the hammer, it's changing in your hand."
"I call generative AI the collective conscious mind. And it's like everything that humans have thought, everything that we've learned, and then and then some because it's all networked in there, and it's like you're the magnifying glass."
"Good prompting is good communication."
"If you lose the thread initially and you have to keep doing a lot of corrections, if you're, like, in correction three or four, basically, you're just gonna have a bad time."
"I so firmly believe that we need more people who understand the technology, who are awake and aware in the world, who are going to be good citizens with regard to this technology."
"The next ten years are gonna be a hell of a roller coaster. I'm looking forward to it, but I definitely I'm definitely thoughtful about, yeah, there's so much that's gonna happen."
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