New AI tools show up faster than most cleaning companies can evaluate them. The harder question, according to two speakers at the 2026 ISSA VEO Conference in Dallas, is whether the people expected to use those tools will trust them long enough to make a difference.

That question drives “Leading with AI and Humanity in the Age of Transformation,” a session led by Karina Neff, ISSA’s chief engagement officer and founder of Spark Strategies Group, alongside Elvis Cordova, chief operating officer of The Access Granted Group. Neff has spent years building technology for the janitorial industry, including leading tech at Pioneer. Cordova brings more than 20 years of leadership in federal government and national nonprofits, with past roles as deputy under secretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and chief of staff at The Wilderness Society.

Starting with the numbers

Neff opens with data. A SHRM survey of nearly 5,900 U.S. workers, conducted in March and April 2026, found 41% use AI for work. The same survey found 47% of workers say their organization has formally implemented AI, while an equal share say theirs has not.

She then polls the room on who uses AI and whose companies have put any governance around it. The technology itself changes daily, with new models and tools hitting the market constantly. What gets overlooked is everything surrounding it.

“What most companies lack is the understanding of cultural management, emotional intelligence and how that really does … impact the scalability of any technology,” Neff said.

After more than five years building products for the industry, she has seen what happens when frontline team members don’t understand why a change is being made. Adoption might hold for 30 or 60 days. After that, people drift back to the old way of doing things.

Trust is the bigger obstacle. Many frontline workers worry about being replaced, and Neff noted AI has amplified fears of micromanagement. Explaining the purpose behind each change, including why it’s happening and how it helps, is how leaders get ahead of that.

Emotions came before language

Cordova explains why those feelings deserve a leader’s attention. Human emotions developed long before language, he said, and for most of our history as a species they were how people knew whether they were safe or under threat.

“Our emotions are a way of making sense of the external environment that’s going on around us,” Cordova said.

A leader who ignores that is missing information needed to decide how fast to implement a change and where people will need help. Cordova compared it to statistics. Numbers tell part of the story, though without the qualitative side the picture stays incomplete. People are natural storytellers, and change tends to stick when it’s explained as one.

He also took on a few misconceptions. Emotional intelligence has nothing to do with being nice, he explained.

“It’s about being effective,” Cordova said.

It isn’t a fixed personality trait either. Cordova described it as a set of skills that get stronger with practice, beginning with self-awareness and self-management and extending to social awareness and managing relationships with others.

What imposter syndrome taught him

His interest in the subject is personal. As a first-generation American of Salvadoran heritage, Cordova was the first in his family to go to college and the first to study abroad. For years, he admitted, he carried an unexamined belief that he didn’t belong. The result was constant overachievement and a habit of treating every mistake as proof of that belief.

Someone eventually introduced him to emotional intelligence. Awareness helped, though it wasn’t enough on its own. He had to change how he responded when he fell short.

“Rather than beating myself up, I began managing that identity,” Cordova said.

People who enter an industry or role where no one else shares their background are especially prone to that kind of isolation, he noted. It’s a point with clear relevance for a conference built around Hispanic professionals in the cleaning industry.

Small wins earn the next yes

Neff shares two stories from her own transformation work. In one, a leader on a large digital transformation project closed a full day of strategy work by writing the group’s goal on a sheet of paper and having every stakeholder in the room sign it. Later, when complications surfaced and one stakeholder wanted to back out, the leader pointed to the paper and reminded everyone what they had agreed to.

The second comes from her time at Pioneer. Between 17 and 25 area managers in the Washington, D.C., metro area were each responsible for 35 to 45 nightly reports built from photos sent in by supervisors. Collecting the photos, dropping them into PDFs and emailing them took two to three hours a night, often running until 1:30 a.m.

Before changing anything, Neff sat with each manager and watched exactly how they did it. One pulled photos from his notes app, another from email, another from his phone’s picture library. She then built a template that pulled the information automatically, cutting the job from as much as three hours to seven minutes.

“It drastically changed their life,” Neff said.

The payoff went beyond the time saved. When she brought the next technology change to that group, they were far more willing to hear it.

Meet workers where they are

Practical barriers can quietly derail adoption. Neff recalled that many older workers didn’t know how to use an app store or didn’t have data plans. Early on, she would visit sites with gift cards and download apps for workers herself. Then she recognized most of the workforce already lived on WhatsApp, where their families were.

“Meet them where they’re at,” Neff said.

Instead of asking workers to adopt something new, she moved messages and training into WhatsApp, which runs on Wi-Fi at little cost to employees. Costs can surface in unexpected places, too. When rollouts at unionized sites shifted work onto employees’ own phones, phone allowances had to be negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement, a very different expense than a company-issued device.

Even a routine software migration has an emotional side. Moving an office employee from QuickBooks, HubSpot and other separate tools into a single platform looks like a technical job on paper. That employee may have years of habits built around the old way, and the change can hit harder than anyone planned. By Neff’s estimate, a platform onboarding that takes four to six weeks with good change management can take twice or three times as long without it.

“People need to understand the entire picture,” Neff said.

The same holds for robotics. Robots were once mostly a conversation for the largest contractors, she noted, and now smaller companies are putting them into buildings. If frontline staff don’t hear directly what that means for them, a worker with decades of loyalty may assume a robot is replacing him and stop giving full effort. If the goal is to reduce hours, Neff urged owners to “just be honest about it.”

The brain under pressure

Technical skills may get someone hired, Cordova noted, though leadership is what earns the promotion.

“Leadership is its own discipline,” Cordova said.

Part of that discipline is understanding what happens in a stressful moment. Picture a long week, then a Friday afternoon email that sets you off. The amygdala’s job is survival, he explained. When it senses a threat, cortisol starts flowing and the body pulls resources away from the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for logic and abstract thinking. That’s an emotional hijack. It’s also why the same email usually reads differently on Monday.

Self-management means recognizing that moment and using whatever coping mechanism works, whether that’s a minute of slow breathing, a walk, music or prayer. Cordova often takes his dog for a walk.

Leaders’ reactions travel further than they might think. Cordova pointed to mirror neurons, which help infants learn by imitation and stay with us for life. People learn from how their leaders behave, and a defensive reaction teaches defensiveness. A mentor gave him a phrase he still leans on when a conversation gets tense.

“I’m not judging. I just observe it,” Cordova said.

Framing a problem that way keeps the other person out of defensive mode and leaves room for an honest conversation.

Why anything new feels like a threat

The brain constantly sorts what’s happening into threat or benefit, Cordova explained. When the two feel even, it leans toward avoiding pain. That’s why people often stay in uncomfortable but familiar situations and why the unknown can register as danger. The pandemic made this plain as work and social life were upended.

His answer is psychological safety, meaning a workplace where people understand what’s going on, know they can make mistakes and have support while they adjust. When Cordova learns a new skill, he reminds himself that feeling a little scared is fine. It simply means he’s stepping outside his comfort zone.

“The emotion is valid. It’s not about suppressing the emotion. It’s about understanding the emotion is there for a reason,” Cordova said.

Conflict has a place, too. Cordova encouraged teams to agree on ground rules up front, such as no personal attacks and no dismissing each other’s ideas, so disagreement stays productive. When a meeting heats up, a leader can point back to the rules everyone accepted.

No off button

Neff also offers a candid warning from her own experience. In the past six months, she has been deep in AI strategy work, producing things far faster than she ever could before. That pace led to multiple nights working until 5 a.m. and 12-hour stretches at the computer without getting up for water.

“There is no off button. I am never going to be done,” Neff said.

The toll on her mental health was real, she acknowledged, and she eventually set guardrails for herself, including regular breaks and limits on weekend work. Those boundaries matter as much as anything being built. Leaders rolling out AI need to weigh its mental and emotional impact on their people as seriously as its productivity gains.

Judgment is the real edge

Cordova cited a commonly repeated estimate that adults make around 35,000 decisions a day, from what to wear to which way to turn at an intersection. During waking hours, that works out to one every couple of seconds. With that much to process, the brain has to choose what to notice. A network called the reticular activating system handles that filtering, based on what we’ve told ourselves matters. It’s the reason a car you’re researching suddenly seems to be everywhere.

How a leader shows up shapes what a team focuses on, and Cordova sees that as the point where AI and emotional intelligence meet. A lawyer friend once described how the internet spared him from digging through boxes of files in a warehouse. AI takes that much further, delivering answers in seconds, though a person still has to decide what to do with them. Relying on it too heavily carries its own risk.

“AI leverages, emotional intelligence helps you be a better judge, and ultimately, that will be your exponential advantage,” Cordova said.

Neff points to a client organization she has worked with for six months as evidence. Every week, the team holds a huddle on its technology transformation to review progress and upcoming milestones. The company’s stated values now show up in those meetings, and the team has fully bought in. A project that could have stayed purely technical ended up strengthening the whole organization.

The session closes on a favorite line from researcher and author Brené Brown: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”