Is your Procurement team afraid of AI, or just running on empty?

We're hearing a lot about AI in Procurement right now. Technology promises efficiency gains, better insights, faster decisions. But what I often notice in Procurement-related content is that the adoption conversation is focused on resistance and fear of losing roles to efficient robots.

But what if that's not the whole story?

Maybe It's Not Fear…Maybe It's Just Too Much

The Procurement profession has been through a lot in recent years. Supply chain disruption. System implementations. The Procurement Act in the public sector. Hybrid working. Restructures. Redundancies. Each one demanding that Procurement professionals adapt, learn new ways of working, stretch further with the same (or fewer) resources.

Now here comes AI. Another transformation. Another learning curve. Another promise that "this will make things easier in the long run."

The problem is that many are living in the short run. And the short run is relentless.

The Procurement professionals who are not yet engaging with AI might not be afraid their skills will become obsolete. They might simply be thinking: "I'll just finish this supplier negotiation first, then I'll look at it” or “once we’ve got this tender out of the way, we'll take a look”. 

But "this" never ends.

There's always one more urgent task, one more stakeholder request, one more issue that can't wait.

The unknown of AI gets perpetually pushed to tomorrow.

Is this really resistance of AI? Or is it exhaustion? Maybe it’s the fatigue of relentless change?

Whether it is fear or fatigue, each requires a different response from you as a leader.

If It IS Fear: Create Safety and Meaning

Some of your team may genuinely be concerned. Worried about their relevance, their expertise becoming obsolete, their value being diminished. And who could blame them when the market is tough, redundancies are happening and fear is the narrative in our newsfeeds? Negativity breeds negativity. The unknown does bring about cautiousness and fear in many of us. And we’ve certainly experienced more than enough uncertainty over these recent years.

If fear is genuinely what you are seeing in your Procurement team, here are some points that might help:

Acknowledge the identity shift. Rather than dismissing concerns with "AI won't replace you", have honest conversations about how roles might evolve, what opportunities it could bring. What could a Category Manager do if AI handled spend analysis? They might focus on strategy and relationships; activities that create value but often get crowded out by the operational noise.

Make it about strengthening your team’s proposition, not replacement. Help them to see AI as removing the work they don't enjoy (endless data cleaning, routine follow-ups, meeting minutes) to create space for the work they went into Procurement to do.

Start with the curious. Don't mandate adoption across the board. Find one person who's interested, let them experiment in a low-stakes way, and create space for them to discover what works, what doesn't, and – crucially - where human judgement remains critical. Then invite them to share their experience with colleagues. Not a polished presentation about AI's benefits, but an honest conversation: "Here's what I tried, here's where it was brilliant, here's where I still needed to step in." Peer learning reduces threat and builds collective confidence in a way that your enthusiasm never will.

If It Is Actually Overwhelm: Create Capacity First

But if what you're actually dealing with is a team at capacity, adding AI training on top of everything else won't work - no matter how much you talk about future efficiency gains.

Here's what you could try instead:

Stop something before you start something. Seriously. What can you pause, simplify, or stop entirely to create breathing room? Which reports does no one actually read? Which meetings could be shorter or less frequent? You cannot ask people to transform whilst they're drowning. The Stop/Start/Continue exercise is a great, simple tool that can help you to cut through the noise.

Make AI adoption part of existing work, not extra work. Don't create a separate "AI learning project." Instead, pick one painful, repetitive task your team is already doing and say, "Let's try using AI for this specific thing." The learning happens through solving a real problem, not in addition to it. Think of it as habit stacking, if we were to follow James Clear's guidance in Atomic Habits.

Give permission to de-prioritise. If you're asking someone to spend time experimenting with AI, explicitly tell them what they can let slip or hand over. Otherwise, they'll just add it to an already impossible list.

Protect the space. Block time in calendars. Create "no meeting" periods. Whatever it takes to give people actual headspace, rather just theoretical permission to learn.

The Leadership Work: Diagnosing What's Really Happening

Your job is to understand which responses you're dealing with, and it will most likely be different for each member of your team.

Invite conversation. Not "Why aren't you using the AI tool?" but "What's really getting in the way for you right now?"

Listen for the difference between:

• "I'm not sure I see the point" (meaning/fear issue)
• "I don't have time" (capacity issue)
• "I'll get to it after this crisis" (overwhelm/prioritisation issue)

Each needs a different response from you.

What This Requires of You

Leading through AI adoption - or any change, really - requires you to:

Accept that enthusiasm isn't enough. Your belief in AI's potential doesn't create capacity in your team's diary or mental bandwidth.

Challenge your own assumptions. Are you interpreting exhaustion as resistance? Are you adding to their load in the name of reducing it?

Make hard choices about priorities. If AI adoption matters, what matters less? You can't have everything as a top priority.

Model sustainable change. Show your team what it looks like to learn something new without burning out. Share your experiments, your questions, your "I don't know yet" moments. Emphasise the team effort. 

A Coaching Question to Sit With

Look at your team right now. Are they resistant, or are they running on empty? And what would change about your approach if you knew the answer?

This is the real work of Procurement leadership right now. Not just implementing technology, but understanding what your people actually need to make change sustainable. Sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is create space, rather than fill it with another spinning plate.

How Coaching For Procurement Ltd Can Help

Coaching For Procurement Ltd offers a full suite of coaching solutions designed to empower and support Procurement leaders and their teams; from Procurement team coaching and workshops through to ILM qualifications using the unique P.R.O.C.U.R.E® coaching methodology and frameworks, as well as 1:1 coaching. We work together on your inner game at these pivotal moments of your Procurement journey.

If you would like to explore how my coaching programmes can help you to have a greater impact as a Procurement team, please reach out to find out more: www.coachingforprocurement.co.uk/contact-me