Relationslipping: How AI is eroding team trust and coordination
BetterUp and Miro research reveals that relying on AI instead of teammates causes a 22.3% drop in coordination and 21.9% drop in trust.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Using AI to replace teammates is causing team relationships to slip away
- Team coordination dropped by 22.3% and mutual trust decreased by 21.9%
- One in five employees turns to AI before a teammate when facing problems
- Solutions include team-level success metrics and maintaining daily communication
When faced with a question, many workers now choose to prompt AI instead of walking over to a teammate because it answers instantly without waiting or hesitation. However, this behavior that makes individuals work faster carries an invisible cost at the team level, leading researchers to coin the term 'Relationslipping' to describe how workplace relationships gradually slip away unintentionally.
This term originates from a recent Harvard Business Review study by researchers from BetterUp, led by Chief Scientist Kate Niederhoffer alongside Stanford University communication professor Jeffrey T. Hancock. A survey of 1,033 full-time office workers across more than 20 industries in the U.S. found that teams where relying on AI over colleagues became the norm experienced a 22.3% drop in coordination and a 21.9% decrease in mutual trust. Meanwhile, Miro's survey of over 9,500 executives and employees revealed similar warning signs.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
Relationslipping derives from relationship combined with slipping. At its core is a fundamental truth of teamwork: a good team does not require everyone to know everything, but everyone must know who to ask. Social psychologist Dan Wegner calls this a transactive memory system, which allows team members to rely on each other's expertise. The study indicates that AI is actively eroding this system through displacement, where AI replaces human conversation rather than supplementing it.
The 'Relationslipping' phenomenon highlights that individual productivity and team synergy do not always move in the same direction. As technology is designed to serve individual users through personalized AI, the necessity for human interaction naturally declines. Modern organizations rushing to adopt AI must ensure these productivity tools do not inadvertently dismantle the collaborative fabric of their teams.
"The more employees turned to AI instead of a teammate, the more their trust in each other and their ability to coordinate seemed to erode."
Kate Niederhoffer and Jeffrey T. HancockThese impacts extend far beyond survey responses. Teams with lower trust find it harder to accept each other's advice, stop relying on peer knowledge, and waste time double-checking work. Researchers concluded that displacement turns coordination into redundant friction and dead ends. Furthermore, 1 in 5 employees admits that AI is their first thought when encountering a problem, and those with high AI trust are 2.2 times more likely to bypass teammates.
What makes Relationslipping difficult to fix is that everyone is acting sensibly on their own. Getting instant answers from AI without bothering anyone is a logical individual choice. Additionally, AI is agreeable and always validates user input, which can make human interactions with their pushback and friction feel harder by comparison in the minds of employees.
Fortunately, neither research team suggests banning AI. Instead, they recommend adjusting implementation methods to prevent team fragmentation, such as maintaining daily communication through asynchronous digital channels and measuring AI success at the team level through shared workflows rather than individual tool preferences.
Source:
Techsauce
Found something wrong in this article? Report an issue with this article
Comments
Leave a Comment