Handling Resistance and Skepticism

Overview

Resistance to Copilot adoption is normal, expected, and often contains valuable information. People resist for different reasons—fear, past experience, workload concerns, or principled objections—and each type of resistance requires a different response. Dismissing resistance alienates people. Understanding it improves your adoption program.

This video covers how to identify the different types of resistance you’ll encounter, respond effectively to each, create conditions that convert skeptics, and recognize when resistance is pointing to genuine issues you need to fix.

What You’ll Learn

• Types of Resistance: Fear-based, experience-based, practical, and principled resistance
• Response Strategies: Tailored approaches for each type of concern
• Converting Skeptics: How to turn resisters into your most credible advocates
• Listening for Signals: When resistance reveals real problems to address

Script

Hook: resistance is information

When someone pushes back on Copilot, your instinct might be to convince them they’re wrong. Resist that instinct.

Resistance isn’t the enemy. It’s information. When someone says “I don’t trust this AI tool,” they’re telling you something specific about your adoption plan—what it’s missing, what it hasn’t communicated, or what legitimate concern it hasn’t addressed.

The organizations that handle resistance well don’t treat it as an obstacle to overcome. They treat it as feedback that makes their adoption program stronger. Understanding why people resist tells you exactly what your plan needs.

Types of resistance

Not all resistance is the same. Understanding the type tells you how to respond.

Fear-based resistance comes from anxiety about the future. “Will Copilot replace my job?” “Is the organization monitoring what I type?” “Am I going to become obsolete if I can’t use AI?” These fears are deeply personal and often not spoken directly. They show up as avoidance, dismissiveness, or passive non-compliance. The person doesn’t refuse to use Copilot—they just never get around to it.

Experience-based resistance comes from past disappointments. Every organization has technology rollouts that were promised to change everything and then didn’t. SharePoint was going to transform collaboration. Teams was going to eliminate email. When you announce the next transformative tool, experienced employees are understandably skeptical. They’ve heard it before. Add the broader AI hype cycle, and fatigue is real.

Practical resistance comes from current workload and relevance. “I’m already overwhelmed. I don’t have time to learn another tool.” “I don’t see how this helps with what I actually do.” These are people who might be open to Copilot if someone showed them specifically how it helps their work—but nobody has. They haven’t been convinced it’s worth their time.

Principled resistance comes from genuine ethical or accuracy concerns. “I don’t think government agencies should use AI to draft official documents.” “AI generates inaccurate content and that’s unacceptable in our work.” “There are unresolved questions about AI-generated content in FOIA.” These concerns are legitimate and deserve substantive responses, not dismissal.

Each type requires a different approach. Using the wrong response—like providing technical facts to someone with a fear-based concern—makes things worse.

Responding to fear-based resistance

The first rule: acknowledge the fear directly. Don’t dismiss it. Don’t minimize it. Don’t say “there’s nothing to worry about.” Fear doesn’t respond to logic—it responds to empathy and evidence.

Be specific about what Copilot does and doesn’t do. “Copilot assists with tasks like drafting, summarizing, and analyzing. It doesn’t make decisions, doesn’t replace judgment, and doesn’t operate independently. You control what it does and you review everything it produces.”

Show how Copilot augments rather than replaces. Point to specific examples. “Instead of spending an hour drafting a briefing from scratch, you spend 10 minutes refining a draft that Copilot created. The expertise is still yours—the drafting time isn’t.” This reframes Copilot from a threat to a time saver.

Invest visibly in training. When an organization deploys AI and invests in training people to use it, that signals something different from “we’re replacing you with AI.” Training investment says “we value your role and we’re giving you better tools to do it.”

Responding to experience and practical resistance

For experience-based resistance, validate their past experiences. “You’re right. Not every technology rollout goes well. And there’s a lot of AI hype right now that makes it hard to separate real value from marketing.” Validation builds trust. Once someone feels heard, they’re more open to hearing how this rollout is different.

Then demonstrate the difference. “This rollout is phased—we’re not deploying to everyone at once. We’re measuring results against criteria we defined in advance. We have a support model with champions and training, not just a license assignment. And we’re collecting feedback and adjusting as we go.” Show them the structure, not just the promise.

For practical resistance—people who are too busy or don’t see relevance—show, don’t tell. Generic Copilot demos don’t work for these people. They need to see Copilot applied to their specific work. “Let me show you how Copilot handles the email triage you do every Monday morning.” “Here’s how it summarizes the weekly status meeting you always miss.” Concrete, role-specific demonstrations overcome practical resistance more effectively than any presentation.

Let results speak. Don’t oversell. Instead, let peers share their real experiences. When a colleague says “Copilot saves me two hours a week on meeting follow-ups,” that’s more persuasive than any official communication.

Converting skeptics into advocates

Here’s a counterintuitive strategy: give skeptics a role. Instead of trying to convince them to adopt Copilot, invite them to evaluate it. “We’d value your critical eye on this. Would you be willing to try Copilot for two weeks and give us your honest assessment?”

This reframes the relationship. They’re not being sold to—they’re being consulted. Most people take this role seriously. They try Copilot with genuine attention, and many discover value they didn’t expect.

The “try it for two weeks” challenge works because it’s low commitment. Two weeks isn’t a permanent change. It’s an experiment. And experiments that produce positive results change minds more effectively than arguments.

When a skeptic converts, their advocacy is more credible than any champion’s. Everyone knows the champions were enthusiastic from the start. But when the person who publicly questioned the initiative says “actually, this is useful for…“—that carries weight.

Accept that some people won’t convert. As long as they’re not actively blocking others, that’s acceptable. Forced adoption creates resentment. Voluntary adoption creates advocates. Focus your energy on creating the conditions for discovery, not on achieving 100 percent compliance.

Close: when resistance signals real issues

Pay attention when resistance is persistent and specific. Sometimes it’s not about change management—it’s about real problems.

If multiple users report that Copilot is surfacing content they shouldn’t see, that’s a permissions issue that needs fixing. If Copilot consistently produces poor results for a specific workflow, that might be a data quality issue in SharePoint. If users report that Copilot disrupts their existing processes, that’s a workflow integration issue that needs attention.

Fix these issues. Don’t message your way past them. When you fix a problem that a resistant user identified, you’ve earned their trust. You’ve demonstrated that feedback matters and that the organization is deploying Copilot responsibly.

Healthy resistance makes your adoption program stronger. Welcome it.

Sources & References

• Microsoft Copilot adoption resources — Change management and adoption guidance
• Microsoft 365 Copilot overview — Copilot capabilities for addressing misconceptions
• Microsoft Work Trend Index — Research on workforce AI attitudes and adoption