Charlotte Dixon

Why organisations work with Charlotte Dixon

• One financial services client has run her digital mindset workshops for over a year. Their L&D officer reports that staff came out of the first session understanding why they had been resisting AI, which is the diagnosis most adoption programmes never get to.
• She spent years in therapeutic care at Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Tavistock, and Oxford NHS Foundation Trust. That is a different training from the change-management field, and it shows in how she handles a room that has arrived unconvinced.
• Her method is published and checkable, not proprietary. The Startups Magazine feature sets out exactly how she runs it, including asking teams to plot themselves on the Kübler-Ross change curve in front of each other.
• She interviews the people making the argument about what AI leaves out, rather than quoting them second hand. Her Honest Conversations guests include Eve Poole OBE, author of Robot Souls.
• Her work has landed in Baillie Gifford, Walter Scott, Scottish Water, the Scottish Government, Glasgow Life, and Napier University, so she is used to environments where caution about a new tool is institutional rather than personal.

Biography highlights

• Business psychologist, executive coach, and director of Charlotte Dixon Consulting, Edinburgh
• Therapeutic care background at Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Tavistock, and Oxford NHS Foundation Trust
• MA Psychoanalytic Observational Studies, Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust; BSc Psychology, University of York; AoEC-certified executive coach
• BPS-listed training in mindfulness, CBT+, ACT and CFT; Facet 5 personality profiling practitioner
• Organisational clients include Baillie Gifford, Walter Scott, Scottish Water, the Scottish Government, Glasgow Life, and Napier University
• Contributor to Startups Magazine, including “Beyond artificial intelligence: leading with a digital mindset” in the March/April 2025 issue
• Host of Honest Conversations About AI, whose guests include Eve Poole OBE, author of Robot Souls, and specialists from The Data Lab Scotland

Biography

A financial services organisation has been running Charlotte Dixon’s digital mindset workshops for more than a year. According to their learning and development officer, staff came out of the first session able to say why they had been resisting AI.

Her route into that work went through NHS mental health services rather than consulting. She worked in therapeutic care at Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Tavistock, and Oxford NHS Foundation Trust, and took an MA in Psychoanalytic Observational Studies at the Tavistock and Portman. Observational studies is training in reading what a group is doing, not what it says it is doing.

That is a useful skill when a leadership team says it supports the AI programme and the usage data says otherwise. She now works with senior leaders across Baillie Gifford, Walter Scott, Scottish Water, the Scottish Government, Glasgow Life, and Napier University, alongside charity clients including VOCAL. On her Honest Conversations series she has taken the same question to Eve Poole OBE, whose book Robot Souls argues that the human material AI omits is the material that matters.

The method is on the record. Writing in Startups Magazine, she describes asking teams to plot themselves on the Kübler-Ross change curve in front of their colleagues, then auditing where confidence actually sits before any tool is introduced. Her three opening questions are equally plain: how confident are people with AI tools, do they feel safe making mistakes with them, and what support would get them engaging.

Key speaking topics

• The psychology of AI adoption
• Resistance to new technology at work
• Digital mindset and AI readiness
• Leadership under pressure
• Psychological safety in teams
• Burnout and resilience
• Imposter syndrome in senior roles

Ideal for

• CHROs and HR directors whose AI rollout has stalled somewhere between the licence purchase and daily use
• L&D leads building AI capability across a workforce with very uneven confidence
• Senior leadership teams in financial services, utilities, and public bodies, where caution about a new tool is institutional

Audience outcomes

• The specific beliefs stopping their own people from using AI tools, said out loud rather than guessed at
• A read on where different parts of the team sit on the change curve, and what each position needs from a leader
• Three questions to put to their teams about confidence, safety to make mistakes, and support required
• Language for talking about AI anxiety that neither dismisses it nor feeds it