I’m happy to share this new open access research that I co-authored with Jonathan Passmore, looking at how human coaches use their experience to differentiate their practice from AI coaching. We interviewed a group of experienced executive coaches to explore how they draw on career experience in their coaching practice.
What did we find?
➡️ Coaches bring a wealth of career experience into their coaching practice, but they vary considerably in how explicitly they use it. Some keep it largely separate in order to maintain a clear boundary with the client’s agenda; others allow it to shape their underlying approach; others use it more directly as a catalyst in the conversation.
➡️ The credibility of the coach from their career experience may help establish trust, rapport and depth more quickly (and even before the first session).
️➡️Experience can enable coaches to ask better questions, reach the real issue sooner, and challenge the client with greater confidence when needed.
➡️ A shared professional language can be helpful, especially in shared coach/client sectors. But this is not always the case: some coaches felt that a little distance from the client’s world actually helped them stay curious and avoid slipping into assumption or advice. Domain knowledge can be useful, but it is not a magic wand – many leaders, especially newer leaders, often need more support with universal human and relational challenges in business, such as influencing people, complex team dynamics, and conflict.
➡️ Coaches relate differently to the boundary between coaching and mentoring. Some maintain a very clear distinction. Others move more fluidly across that boundary, selectively sharing their own experience. Sometimes it’s not just the story itself that matters, but the feeling and thinking process behind it that the coach reveals. In some cases, vulnerability, authenticity, story, metaphor, and analogy become valuable resources for helping clients think differently.
➡️ Participants viewed their developmental journey and their ‘coaching maturity’ as key – it helps coaches make better judgements about when and how to use their experience, stay alert to bias and ego, regulate the inner “advice monster”, and develop the confidence and intuition to sense what may genuinely serve their client in the moment.
What this shows is that coaching is more than the delivery of a method, or technical process that AI might emulate. Skilled human coaches practise through who they are: their values, purpose, and experience. They bring lived credibility, relational judgement, and a skilful use of story, vulnerability and challenge, which is shaped over time through practice, reflection and maturity.
This is part of a broader series of research papers being conducted by Coaching at Henley Business School, led by Jonathan Passmore – watch out for further studies this year including myself and other collaborators!
https://lnkd.in/emW_8ve8