Dear Advy,
My organization is moving quickly to integrate generative AI tools as standard desktop resources, and leadership is eager for employees to adopt them widely. As a result, our legal team is receiving a constant stream of questions about different tools, data governance, and the risks associated with using generative AI on top of an already demanding workload.
As a manager, I want to ensure my team isn’t burning out under this additional layer of responsibility, while still helping the organization put appropriate policies and guardrails in place. What are some effective ways I can support my team while they are being asked to wear a variety of different new hats within their roles.
Sincerely,
Managing the Overload
Dear Managing the Overload.
On one level this stream of questions is much the same as you – and probably many lawyers – experience on a regular basis. "How is my use of blank restricted by law?" or "What are the risks of using blank ?" are not exactly novel questions for lawyers. This stream of questions is not inherently unique, so some of the strategies you have used already to manage the stress you and your team experience will continue to be viable even if the subject matter of the questions you receive may be new.
I’m guessing by your use of the words “organization” and “our legal team” that you are managing a legal department in a company or public body, not a private law firm. That guess drives a number of my comments below, so if I’m wrong and you are talking about a law firm environment, please forgive me for that assumption.
You mention that your team is facing a barrage of questions about “different tools”. Is your group being asked to procure these different tools? Are the questions only about how your company uses them? It may be worthwhile carefully examining the scope of what you and your team are being asked to do. Lack of clarity as to what is expected of you and what is often called “mission creep”, or the unconscious expansion of someone’s mandate, can be a significant factor leading to burnout among the people you supervise. It would be helpful to your team if you could get some clear direction as to what they are actually responsible for. To the extent they are being asked to do things outside of their training and expertise, it could be worthwhile bringing in outside expertise.
It may be that on top of a lack of clarity in terms of what your team members are expected to do, they may also not know when they are supposed to get the new AI-focused work done. Are the questions they have been peppered with urgent? It takes very little time to write an e-mail or send an internal message on something like Slack asking for answers about policies and guardrails, but how quickly do the people asking questions actually expect an answer? There is a good chance that your team is overestimating the urgency of many or all of these requests.
The best remedy for overestimating the urgency of requests is to ask how urgent they are. We tend to frame the idea of “boundaries” as something that an individual sets and then never adjusts to meet changing realities. However, being able to adapt personal boundaries and to reassert them when someone crosses them can be just as important as creating them in the first place. Maybe the question really is so important and so urgent that it justifies setting aside other work or staying late (or maybe not), but you don’t know how urgent something really is until you ask. Communicating clearly about urgency can be key to managing the distress these questions engender in your team members.
I also detect from your letter that the people you work with are having these (possibly ill-defined) responsibilities heaped on top of their regular responsibilities. If the company expects expertise in the questions being brought to your team, it would be wise to appoint someone – or a few someones – to be champions or specialists in implementing artificial intelligence tools in your workplace. The non-AI tasks assigned to those specialists should be reduced or eliminated so they can actually apply their focus to the matter they have been asked to work on. If these questions are important to the organization, then allowing people to develop the expertise to answer them properly is equally important.
Another source of stress for your team may be the nature of artificial intelligence itself. The lawyers and other professionals you work with face the very real possibility that this tool they are helping to implement may replace them one day. Even if the company has no intention of going down that road, it is understandable for workers to be wary about that possibility. The New York Times recently published a lengthy article about how working to put oneself out of work is demoralizing for workers and difficult for companies to manage.
There is no simple solution to that problem. Workers will not be comforted by the kind of pat reassurance that is easy for a manager to give. Be as frank and honest as you can be about what the company’s plans are when it comes to artificial intelligence and their job security and be as frank as you can be about what you don’t know. Keep them apprised of changes to those plans. They need to be able to trust you. This is a question of whether they can continue making a livelihood and their anxiety is understandable.
As a leader, your team will look to your example of how to manage these anxieties. What are you doing to take care of yourself in the face of this disconcerting change? Be open about what you yourself do to manage your own anxiety about the future. If you benefit from counseling or coaching, share that with your team and encourage them to do the same.
Remember that there is free confidential help in the form of professional counselling and – depending on where you live – peer support, coaching and many other resources available from your lawyer assistance program and you would do well to remind your team of what is available to them. The responsibilities your team is shouldering should not be so unbearable that they lead to burnout and a premature departure from the job.
Be well,
Advy
