In this episode of Implementors, Ted Wolf sits down with Kim Bohr, President and Chief Operating Officer of SparkEffect, to explore a question most organizations overlook: what happens when trust erodes quietly, long before performance problems show up on a dashboard? Kim brings a practitioner’s perspective to trust as an operating condition, not a cultural slogan. She explains how leadership decisions made during disruption—reorganizations, AI initiatives, leadership transitions—can unintentionally weaken trust even when intentions are sound. Because these breakdowns often go unmeasured, leaders mistake the downstream effects for resistance, disengagement, or execution failure. Throughout the conversation, Kim introduces how trust can be observed and tracked over time, allowing leaders to spot early warning signals and intervene before trust damage becomes systemic. She and Ted discuss why emotional intelligence and critical thinking are not “nice to have” skills, but essential leadership capabilities when navigating uncertainty and AI-driven change. The episode also reframes AI adoption as a human challenge first. Kim makes the case that organizations don’t fail to realize AI value because of insufficient technology, but because trust conditions weren’t strong enough to support behavioral change. When trust is treated as an afterthought, even sophisticated AI programs struggle to gain traction. This conversation invites leaders to rethink how they approach change: not by asking whether their strategy or tools are sound, but by asking whether trust is being actively monitored, protected, and strengthened at every stage of transformation.
