Why do so many teams run every ceremony in the agile handbook and still not trust each other? Ana and Egle talk to Marion - a UX-designer-turned-agile-coach and trained mediator - about the difference between performative process and the slower, harder work of actually building trust: showing up consistently, asking for help without treating it as weakness, and staying grounded in your own judgment as AI reshapes how fast everyone can move. What's your process actually protecting - your team, or your own discomfort with trusting them?
Notes
In the episode, Marion mentions a stat about workers trusting AI more than their manager, and credits it to Gallup. We went back to check - it's not Gallup, it's Oracle's 2019 "AI at Work" study with Future Workplace: 64% of workers said they trusted a robot more than their manager*.
Small correction. Chasing it down turned up something more interesting than the original stat.That number hasn't really moved since. A 2025 survey put a similar question at 67%**. A 2026 industry report on heavy AI users put it at 74%***. Worth a caveat: several of these are run by companies that sell AI tools, so treat the exact percentages loosely. But the direction hasn't changed once in six years.But here’s something really interesting here. When you ask people the actual authority question - would you accept AI as your boss - independent academic polling says no, overwhelmingly (Quinnipiac put it at 15%, this year****). People don't want AI in charge. They just don't trust the human in charge enough to bring them a problem or not reprimand them.
This gap was visible in 2019. Before most of us had used a chatbot, before "AI at work" was even a category. Which means this was never really an AI story. It's a six-year-old trust story, and AI just gave people an easier way to act on it.
Marion has the actual answer here:We'd add: don't let the AI story distract from the leadership one either.Go ahead, click play.
