Hey Reader,

Last week we talked about the manager as the multiplier. This week the same idea shows up in a place most leaders aren't looking: the quiet way people use AI. Half of workers in one big survey hid it. Others are asking AI the questions they used to ask each other. And Google is now turning your customer reviews into ad copy.

Different stories, one lesson. You can buy the tools. You can't buy the trust. Culture is built, not bought. Let's look at the receipts and turn each one into a move you can make this week.

01 · Culture

Your team may be hiding their AI. Leaders hide it most.

Workday surveyed 5,944 employees worldwide in August. Half said they deliberately hid their AI use at least once in the past month. [1]

Here's the twist. It wasn't mostly the junior folks. Between 58% and 61% of managers and leaders said they hid it, compared with 35% of individual contributors. [1]

Charter's new AI Pulse study, released October 21, found the same pattern from a different angle. 36% of AI users have hidden their AI use from a manager, colleague or client. The top reason was to avoid being labeled incompetent. Managers were 1.6 times as likely as workers to hide it. And hiding AI use was the top factor tied to higher odds of burnout. [2]

Quick professor's note: these are two different surveys asking two different questions. Workday asked about the past month. Charter asked whether people had hidden it at all. Workday also sells AI and HR software. So don't fixate on 50% versus 36%. Look at the direction. Both say a big share of people are using AI in secret, and leaders are doing it more.

Why does this matter to a team? Because people hide what they think they'll be judged for. That's not a technology problem. It's a trust problem. And Workday found 37% of employees said their manager hadn't talked with them at all in the past three months about how AI is changing their role. Only 14% get regular conversations. [1]

Your homework: go first. In your next team meeting, show one thing you used AI for this week, one thing it got wrong, and how you checked it. Then ask: "What's one way you're using it that the rest of us should know about?" No grading. The leader sets the norm by going first.

02 · Teams

When AI becomes the first stop, teammates become the last

BetterUp Labs and the Stanford Social Media Lab surveyed 1,000 workers. 20% said they go to AI instead of their colleagues for information or a task. 49% said teammates come to them less often, because those teammates go to AI first. [3]

Now look at what that costs. Employees who go to teammates instead of AI were 7.3 times more likely to report strong team coordination, and 9.5 times more likely to report strong team trust. [3] 83% said AI takes the place of a teammate when they need quick information. 37% said it replaces a conversation or check-in. [3] The researchers wrote up the study for Harvard Business Review this month. [4]

A note on method. This is an association, not proof that AI causes weaker teams. Maybe teams that already trust each other talk more. And BetterUp sells coaching, including AI coaching.

Here's what I tell my students. Trust gets built in small reps. "Hey, do you know how to...?" "Can you look at this before I send it?" Every time AI answers a question a teammate used to answer, you lose one of those reps. AI is a great answer machine. It's a poor teammate.

Your homework: set one "ask a human first" rule for the week. Before you prompt AI about a customer, a process or a person, ask: who on my team knows this? Ask them first. Then use AI to polish the answer, not replace the conversation.

03 · Marketing

Google is turning your reviews into ad copy

Google just published a help document called "About Review summaries." It confirms that Google's AI gathers online reviews from across the web and turns them into short summaries shown inside Search ads. [5]

The details, per Search Engine Land: Search campaigns only, all ad positions on Google.com, in the U.S., U.K., Australia and India, in English. Most business categories qualify, with sensitive ones like pharmaceuticals left out. The summaries highlight positive customer experiences. [5]

Quick professor's note: the write-up doesn't say whether advertisers can turn this off or pick which reviews get used. If you run Google Ads, check before you assume.

Here's the culture lesson hiding in a marketing story. You can buy the ad slot. You can't buy what customers say about you. Your reviews are written by customers, but they're earned by your team. Every front-desk hello, every follow-up call, every fixed mistake is now potential ad copy.

Your move: read your last 20 reviews out loud with your team. Circle every team member a customer mentions by name, and thank them in front of everyone. Then find the one complaint that shows up twice and fix it this month.

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Want a head start on using AI out in the open? My Copy Paste Profit prompts are 10 fill-in-the-blank AI prompts for writing posts, planning content and shaping offers faster. Free.

Want this conversation with your team? I speak to chambers, associations and corporate teams about building team culture that lasts, including how to bring AI in without breaking trust. Check dates and topics at davegrovesspeaks.com.

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Hit reply and tell me: have you ever kept your AI use quiet at work? What made you hide it? I read every reply, I won't share names, and the best answers may end up in a future issue.

See you next Thursday,

Dave​
The Digital Strategy Professor

Sources

1. Amanda Wowk, Workday, "AI Adoption Is Moving Faster Than Employee Trust," Sept. 22, 2026 (survey of 5,944 employees worldwide, Aug. 2026). workday.com​
2. Charter, Charter AI Pulse (Brian Elliott and Christina Janzer), Oct. 21, 2026 (5,000+ surveys and 90 interviews of AI users). charterworks.com​
3. Kristina Rapuano and Alex Liebscher, BetterUp, "The cost of AI displacement," Sept. 14, 2026 (BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab study of 1,000 workers). betterup.com​
4. Kate Niederhoffer, Kristina Rapuano, Alex Liebscher, Alexi Robichaux and Jeffrey T. Hancock, Harvard Business Review, Oct. 15, 2026. hbr.org​
5. Anu Adegbola, Search Engine Land, Oct. 26, 2026, on Google's "About Review summaries" help document. searchengineland.com​
6. Lisa Kalner Williams, Agorapulse, Oct. 20, 2026 (updated Oct. 21, 2026). agorapulse.com​

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