{"id":626,"date":"2026-06-03T18:17:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T18:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=626"},"modified":"2026-06-03T18:17:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T18:17:59","slug":"will-i-still-matter-the-optimism-doctor-says-people-can-tolerate-uncertainty-the-ai-angst-is-about-something-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=626","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Will I still matter?\u2019 The \u2018Optimism Doctor\u2019 says people can tolerate uncertainty\u2014the AI angst is about something else"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chopra\u2014a clinical health psychologist, behavioral scientist, and the woman who has trademarked the title \u201cThe Optimism Doctor\u00ae\u201d\u2014said she wanted to make a point before saying a single word about artificial intelligence: We are spending an enormous amount of time talking about the technology, and not nearly enough time talking about the humans running it.<\/p>\n

Read more Top short seller Andrew Lift convicted of securities fraud after getting caught saying \u2018taking candy from a baby\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery conversation about AI is ultimately a conversation about change,\u201d she told the room. \u201cAnd change is primarily not a technological experience. It\u2019s a psychological one.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The real resistance problem<\/h2>\n

One wonders what the COOs in the audience\u2014many of them deep in the middle of large-scale AI adoption\u2014made of this: a relief or a rebuke? Rolling out a major technology initiative and finding that teams resist it, misinterpret it, or quietly stall it is one of the most common frustrations in enterprise leadership right now, and a major discussion point throughout the conference. The standard response is to invest more in change management, clearer communications, better training.<\/p>\n

Chopra\u2019s case is that most of those responses are solving the wrong problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat leaders often interpret in this moment as maybe resistance,\u201d she said, \u201cis something completely different sometimes. It\u2019s a very normal human response to uncertainty. It\u2019s not a capability problem. It\u2019s a psychological one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mechanism, she explained, is neurological. When uncertainty increases, the brain\u2019s threat-detection system\u2014the amygdala\u2014activates. Thinking narrows, risk tolerance drops, creativity shrinks, and people grow more attached to familiar ways of doing things. None of that is stubbornness or sabotage, Chopra explained. It is, quite literally, the brain doing what it was designed to do: Protect the body from the unknown.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHuman beings don\u2019t actually struggle with the hard things,\u201d Chopra said. \u201cWe struggle with the unknown things.\u201d What bigger unknown is there right now, after all, than AI?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not about the technology<\/h2>\n

The deeper diagnosis\u2014and the one most likely to unsettle leaders who\u2019ve spent millions on AI change management\u2014is that the uncertainty driving resistance isn\u2019t primarily about job security or workflow disruption. It\u2019s about something more fundamental.<\/p>\n

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Chopra said when she meets with clients and discusses this, \u201ca lot of times what I\u2019m hearing is people are asking: \u2018Will I still matter? Will my contribution matter? Where do I create value?’\u201d<\/p>\n

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She paused. \u201cThose are not technological questions \u2026 those are deeply human ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more There are two Dan Sullivans running for Dan Sullivan\u2019s Senate seat \u2014\u00a0and Dan Sullivan is annoyed<\/a><\/p>\n

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Redefining optimism<\/h2>\n

Much of Chopra\u2019s work\u2014including her USA Today bestselling book\u00a0The Power of Real Optimism<\/em>, published earlier this year\u2014is built on dismantling the conventional understanding of what optimism actually means.<\/p>\n

Chopra said whenever she asks a large audience what word comes to mind when they think of optimism, it\u2019s almost always \u201cpositivity,\u201d and she argued that\u2019s a mistake. \u201cI am not the most optimistic person,\u201d she said, explaining her research shows optimism is a \u201cpsychological skill,\u201d not a mindset. It\u2019s something you earn, not something you wish for. The problem with positivity is that it requires a degree of certainty\u2014a belief things will work out. And certainty, she told the room bluntly, \u201cis a luxury that I think very few leaders have right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three things leaders can do now<\/h2>\n

Chopra left the audience with three concrete takeaways, framed not as motivational advice but as operational imperatives.<\/p>\n

The first:\u00a0. Not because leaders have all the answers\u2014they don\u2019t\u2014but because communicating what is known, what is unknown, and what matters most right now reduces the brain\u2019s instinct to fill the blanks with worst-case scenarios. \u201cPeople can tolerate uncertainty,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat they struggle with is confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The second:\u00a0. Instead of trying to eliminate uncertainty\u2014an impossible task\u2014the better leadership question is how to help people feel\u00a0capable<\/em>\u00a0of adjusting. Confidence, she argued, doesn\u2019t come from guarantees. It comes from evidence of having successfully adapted before. Her practical tool here is what she calls the \u201cthree futures exercise\u201d\u2014asking teams facing a challenge to map out a worst-case scenario, a most-likely scenario, and a best-possible outcome, then discuss what they would do in each. The goal isn\u2019t prediction. It\u2019s cognitive flexibility.<\/p>\n

The third:\u00a0. Purpose and contribution don\u2019t become less important during periods of disruption. They become more important. Leaders who treat the human meaning question as secondary to the operational one are, in Chopra\u2019s view, misreading the room.<\/p>\n

For this story,\u00a0<\/em>Fortune\u00a0journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.<\/em><\/p>\n

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“I am not the most optimistic person,” Dr. Deepika Chopra told Fortune. 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