How Will AI and Executive Coaching Coexist in the Future?

Artificial intelligence is changing almost every aspect of how we work, how we make decisions, how we learn, and how we lead. And that raises an important question for our profession:

What happens to executive coaching as AI becomes more sophisticated?

Will AI eventually replace certain aspects of coaching? Will it simply become another tool in the coach’s toolkit? Or could AI actually make the human side of executive coaching more important than ever?

To help us explore those questions, we’re joined today by Mike Lyons and Greg Pfister, co-founders of KaiRise.

Mike and Greg are practitioners with decades of experience in agile product delivery and building teams that actually ship. Together, they’ve taken that experience and built an AI-powered learning platform designed to adapt to each learner’s individual role, context, and goals.

And that's where this conversation gets really interesting.

Greg Pfister and Mike Lyons, co-founders of KaiRise, join Rich Baron and Maikel Bailey on this episode of Mainline Executive Coaching ACT as we dive into one of the most important conversations facing leaders and executive coaches today: How will artificial intelligence and executive coaching coexist to create stronger leaders and better organizations? Together, we explore how AI is changing the way we learn, work, make decisions, and develop talent—and where technology ends and the human element of coaching begins. 

Mike Lyons and Greg Pfister, the co-founders of KaiRise, are practitioners with decades of experience in agile product delivery and building teams that actually ship. Together they've built AI-powered learning that adapts to each learner's role, context, and goals. Not one-size-fits-all coaching, but a personalized experience from start to finish. Their latest course, the ICAgile-certified Product Management program, is getting strong reviews from practitioners in the field. Listeners can use code 'coaching' for 20% off any KaiRise course at kairise.com.

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John Mattone Global:                                                                                                          https://johnmattone.com/

Rich Baron:
rbaron@richbaronexecutivecoaching.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-baron/
rich@johnmattone.com

Maikel Bailey:
mbailey@intelligentleadershipec.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maikelbailey/
https://maikelbailey.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Welcome, you're in the right place right now. We are on mainline executive coaching ACT. This is for leaders. This is for leaders who have been in the leader seat for a long, long time. This is for emerging leaders. This is for people that are not even starting emerging but are dreaming about it, but they want to become great leaders. And cultural transformation, ACT. This is what we do here. Leaders and cultural transformation are connected. They can't get away from being each other. They affect each other both ways. Are you a leader that's affecting it in a positive way? Creating a culture in your organization that affects leadership in a positive way. It's a symbiotic relationship. And at its best, it creates great things. We've got a couple of guests here today. I'm with my partner, Rich Barron. I'm Michael Bailey. We've got two great, very interesting guys who come out of the world of computers and programming and just this whole AI world. So we're excited to have them, bring them on, give them some time to give them, uh share their points of view about this emerging, changing, dynamic, incredibly fast world of AI. This is a great uh Fister and also Mike Lyons. These are the two gentlemen that are with us today. So let's start out. Let's take a minute each. Guys, give us your 30-second elevator speech in terms of who you are, introducing yourself to our audience. Let's go with you, Greg.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Uh, sure. Thanks for the intro, Michael and Rich. Nice to be here with you guys. Um uh the 30-second spiel is I've been in IT and tech for the last three decades. Uh, worked my way up from coding through leadership. Um, have been a part of several startups that have been acquired by larger uh organizations, and most recently was focused on um agile, lean, agile practice within uh the big consulting firm I was at before. And uh today we are focused on how to um make learning stick. And we have uh a company called ChiRise that's focused on uh lean, agile type training, product management, things of that sort. And we've got some innovative ways as to how we're leveraging AI to uh to really help solidify the learning within those those courses.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

In particular, leadership, Mike Lyons. Right. Okay, good. Thank you so much, Greg. Mike, you're on.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, hey, I'm I'm Mike Lyons. Thanks, thanks for inviting us on. Like Greg, been in the IT field my my whole career. And um, what we've seen just sort of year over year as IT progresses and things start moving faster is the the bottlenecks in organizations shift from different areas to different areas. Uh, and right now that bottleneck is in the sort of question, should we build it? And so organizations today are struggling with this idea, should we build it? And that it is whatever product or service you're trying to bring to the marketplace. Um, and that bottleneck is moved because of AI. So we're we're out um helping people understand what to do with that bottleneck and and how to actually use AI to help them relieve it.

SPEAKER_04 4:26

Cool. Outstanding. Thank you. So let's jump into this. You you know, you you bring up an interesting point here about what it is, whatever that product is. What are we gonna bring to market and how do we best put it out there, right? Is it even worth it? And it kind of comes back to leadership on on both ends. Is are we gonna be able to make a decision, uh uh an informed decision about this product? And how is it gonna impact the people that are gonna be building it or making it or uh monitoring the PL or you know, all all the above. All the above. What do you feel is the biggest bottleneck as of say today?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Respond to that. I think from from sort of from an IT perspective, uh, the the bottleneck in creating um products, for example, has typically been software development. And those cycles are rapidly reducing. The cost to build and try things is rapidly approaching zero. And so as we sort of see that shift happening in the in the product space, the bottleneck moves from can we do this thing, to a product management decision of should we do this thing. Product management is kind of the discipline of understanding the marketplace and what your customers are are desiring. And uh it does include, you know, product management includes includes services as well. It's not just a product. Sure, there's products, but there's also services, whatever the company's doing to uh uh capture market. So those that's where that sort of just bottleneck is is moving. The the other sort of um not unintended consequence, but but the consequence of the AI disruption is that strategic leadership time horizons have shrunk dramatically. The idea of a five-year plan is it's it's almost kind of laughable at this point. No one has a five-year plan. You can't. The technology just won't let you. So uh the decision factor for leaders and organizations, the time, the time horizon is rapidly decreased, rapidly shortened. And I think we as leaders and organizations, we we have to we just have to understand that's the new normal for us. It introduces a whole host of other challenges, I think.

SPEAKER_04 7:08

You know, here's an interesting thought around this. And and and Greg, jump in here as well. So my my whole career was in medical device, medical device manufacturing, green, um, you know, Six Sigma, lean black belt, the the whole nine yards. It really got into waste and all those other things. And it's it's interesting how previously we really looked at what waste this was creating in the system. How could we eliminate waste in the system? Now we're kind of utilizing AI to inform us of these decisions. But one of the things that that I think we're missing is the biggest waste in any organization isn't materials. It's people's time, energy, and talent. So time is a huge, huge issue around making these decisions, whether or not we're gonna get it to the the out to market, whether or not we're gonna even manufacture it, we're gonna we're gonna invest in RD, all this sort of stuff. How do you see organizations starting to lean towards AI to help make these decisions?

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Well, I I think that we're starting to see that, right? We're seeing training and courses and classes and things around the idea of how do you use AI for some role, right, in the organization, which is interesting. And really that's about sort of prompt engineering, which maybe that's useful, maybe it's not, but uh the you really need to bring, and what Mike and I have always said, you need to bring the human into that picture. You can't just rely on AI to understand the answer and the intricacies of what's going on, what's your product, and things of that sort. And you know, related is uh, you know, people are concerned with uh AI slop and it it just makes it easy to produce a lot of content. And that if we're concerned about lean and waste, um you you run the risk of really spinning some cycles and and just spinning your wheels and wasting a lot of time. So uh you know, I think that over time we're gonna have to see that that AI really has to get more integrated into the the the company itself, the data of the business, in order for it to be able to help be like the uh the the confident, the coach to the people that need to make these decisions, right? It's to give them informed content. I think Michael, we we talked earlier, and you mentioned like, well, it's really good at producing a lot of content for me, and it is, except that you need it to be focused. And I think that's where the evolution, and we're starting to see that, um, where they're integrated into the the actual inner workings of the business.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

You know, one of the things that I noticed about AI and working with AI is that um there it takes a certain amount of sophistication to create that conversation and those questions or requests that move from the broad into the narrow, into the specific stuff. That in itself, in itself, that in itself is a kind of skill, a kind of experience. And uh obviously, if you take a look at it in terms of the human experience, it's that a person, that person who's in a leadership position that's been around the block a number of years, been in a number of positions, maybe even globally, have done that kind of thing. Uh, they've developed his fellow or a woman to become a real leader. And they keep putting him in different situations again and again and again. They're really testing to see are you just a high producer or are you really a high potential leader? That's what they're really, really looking at. And in that refinement process, what you get is a leader who is, if they have real integrity, they've got solid core values that are operating in inside of them, they can look at situations and quickly assess what's going on. And they can see it quickly. It's that gut reaction kind of thing that that really makes them amazing leader. Like, how did you know that? How do you in fact all the data said that was not the way to go? And yet you looked at it and said, this is the way to go. And amazingly, for those people that are following in their footsteps, you might say, or working with them, they're right. So there's that level of sophistication that happens with human beings over a period of time. So I'm looking at this same thing in terms of AI can move very, very quickly, and how to ask the right questions, the right kind of formats, they would put that stuff in. And so in the human being experience, I don't know if that's something that can be hurried. Because again, we're talking about brain growth, we're talking about experiences, uh, absorbing the experience, the the goods, the bads, the wins, the fallbacks, the all that kind of stuff. So as you take a look at this idea of uh in coaching, what we do is executive coaching, is maturing individuals to a level of competency and confidence in not only what they do, but who they are. You follow what I'm saying here? So, with that notion of this is the goal that we're leaking we're leaning into that we're seeking, tell us how, explain to us how AI can do that in an accelerated, healthy, and helpful way that actually makes things better qualitatively, not just quantitatively.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

It's a good point. Um, the uh the team over at 37 Signals talks about this often, the sort of gut computer. Uh David Hanemeyer Hansen and Jason Freed over there. Um they they talk about the gut computer and how, you know, as humans it takes us, but it just takes time. It takes time in the field, experiencing the winds, you know, the the exhilaration of launching a new service, uh consulting with a client. And then of course the experience of maybe the, you know, we'll I'm air-quoting here, kind of failure or or learning moment, if you will, from from when things maybe don't go as planned. Uh, and that builds this gut computer, Michael, I think you're kind of talking about. And there's probably many people uh in the audience that are you know nodding along that, yeah, we've developed over time that that gut computer. I think one of the ways that AI might sort of speed along the creation of the gut computer, if you will, is by those exhilarating highs and those failure learning moments can happen much more rapidly today. For example, it it no longer needs to take six months for you to find out if this idea is going to pan out with your client, whether it's a product or service. It can be done in much less time. Maybe it's six weeks, maybe it's six days, maybe it's overnight. So our experiences as humans, they're coming faster. This has been happening for decades, though. It's not just necessarily AI. Look back over your life. Your experiences are happening to you faster today than they did 10 years ago. AI is going to exponentially change the number of things that happen to you on a regular basis. And whether that's good or bad or otherwise might be a topic for a different day. But just the you, you and me, and all of us on this call and everyone listening, your daily experiences are happening faster to you today than yesterday. So your gut computer is getting actually built faster. It's kind of the way I look at it.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

So the question for coaches is not only experience and uh growth, it's at a fundamental level of health. We have plenty of people that are very, very smart, know a lot of stuff, can do a lot of stuff, and yet they suffer from imposter syndrome. And imposter syndrome has got maybe at least a couple of flavors to it. One is somebody who can actually do the stuff, who's really that bright, really that capable, and yet they lack the belief inside of themselves that they are that person, that they have that kind of capacity, that they have that ability to bring forth things and do that, and they doubt themselves like crazy. You know, they just don't know how to catch up that emotional aspect, confidence to their performance. Then there's the other ones, the imposter syndromes, who are, yeah, they're all that. Oh, yeah, I am all that. I got that down, I got that covered. I know that they're really good at dancing, but when it comes to real delivery, they are just gooses on a on a grease sheet. And so, but they're very good at faking it. So when we're dealing with these people that are getting in executive coaching, there are those people that just don't believe, but they are. They're those people that I'm already there, you know. I don't think I need your help. I just need to get you to agree that I am that. So, how do we get those two ends of the spectrum working in the way with the AI and I know they're two different topics to get them into the reality of actually being genuinely that person? Help me there.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

That's a good question. Um, you know, I I I actually think that we are, and we've all lived through these eras. We are obviously in the era of AI. And and you mentioned earlier that it's about, well, those who are gifted at prompting so that they can get the kinds of results that they want back from AI. I think that where it's gonna start to affect leadership even more, you're not gonna have leaders sitting there going, how how should I react today? Um, and how do I do these things by doing prompts? I do think it's gonna get embedded into the infrastructure of the business. And so it's gonna be able to cut through the noise and be able to give that insight into them. So maybe that helps the poser that you were just talking about. I don't know, that they now have actually better insights as to what's going on and they uh don't have to dance as much around it. Um, and maybe for those that feel a lack of confidence, maybe they might that might prop them up with a bit more confidence of understanding what actually is going on and they can and they can relay those things. It's kind of a a different look at that, but I I think today's AI is not gonna be what tomorrow's AI is at all. I I think it's gonna I think it's gonna change. I think today's AI is let me chat with it or let me talk with it. And and it's helpful and it's useful. Um, but I think it's gonna get embedded into the systems in which we operate our businesses and is just way more insightful and we'll have better insight as to what is going on. It's not gonna solve the human connection. That that's still, you know, gee, how do I deal with my uh my my CFO over here? We're always button heads kind of thing. That you you need to work through the relationship issue and those kinds of things that are that, you know, uh if we didn't have to communicate, everything would go well within the the the C-suite or or the executives or any level really. Um but I do think it's gonna change and arm people with better information as as they go forward.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Probably the two biggest challenges that leaders have, and this is I think um not just recent, I think throughout time, is the ability to communicate well and clearly in a way that connects. And the other ability is uh the ability to create real relationships. Those are the two things that that we see that you've got great leaders, but they don't communicate well or they don't know how to create relationships. They come from the school of just do it because they said so. I'm smarter than you, you just haven't figured that out yet. Just do it that way. And so, in terms of again, coming, let's bring it back to the context of what we're talking about. Great stuff on the big big picture stuff, all that stuff. Let's bring it down to the ground level of a coach working with an individual client. And now we're taking a look at helping them go through the process of self-discovery, self-awareness, and you know, developing some greater sound sense of self-management, being able to manage themselves, motivate themselves better so that they can now work, communicate, and work with other people. Help us to understand how that coach could use AI in tandem with working with the coachy, and in turn the coache work with AI in tandem with the coach.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Um when we think about this, uh one of the sort of core problems that we're trying to tackle as a company is is in this area. And for us, it's been it's been primarily focused on the the um the coach who is uh coaching teams to develop services and products for organizations within the IT space. But I think there's a definite crossover here to the to the leadership coach. You know, when when uh one of our coaches, when when um when she's doing individual coaching at the at the uh to her customer, um, she's maybe asking powerful questions or a set of powerful questions to to draw and figure out what some of the core problems are. Well, well, one of the ways that our coaches can use AI is by creating uh a sort of um um I don't want to use the word like digital clone because it carries too much baggage, but there is an idea that that you can you can take all of the things that are in your head, all the things you've ever written, every video you've ever recorded, every podcast, every newsletter, every LinkedIn post you've ever done, every book you've ever written, every word, and put it into a single uh data area that can be that can be accessed 24-7. And as a coach, you can use that to come alongside you to replace you. That's why I don't like the word clone, because clone almost sounds like you could replace the human. I don't I don't I don't want that, even if you could.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

There are some people I would like to replace, just so you know. Just for the record.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

There are some. And you so so what what she can do is be available for that that you know regularly scheduled meeting once every two weeks where we're gonna get uh on a call or meet for coffee. But when she's not available, her customer can access her brain via a chat or an email or even a phone call. Um, because you know, we can use voice technology, or we can so you can even call call call up your coach. So I think there's an augmentation that happens here for the coaches. Without getting into the technology, it's called an AI rag, and um, that's just a corralled version of AI that's just around your content. And this is so important because I can go ask Chat GPT or Claude or Perplexity, I can go ask it leadership coaching questions. I'll probably get pretty good responses too. Actually, very good responses, completely generic and not applicable to my exact situation, but good responses nonetheless. And it certainly doesn't have Michael's voice or Rich's voice to it. It's just what ChatGP thinks about leadership coaching. But if you can create a uh an AI rag of just your content, you can control what the AI response. It won't hallucinate because it can only pull from your data. You can tell it not to make things up. There's ways to control all that. So all of that long rambling to say, I view AI as an just an augmentation of coaches' existing role. It makes you more available than you can. You just can't possibly be everybody's 24-7 coach. You just it's just not possible. You can't, right? You're just a human. The AI doesn't care what time of day it is or how busy you are, it just doesn't know, it just works.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

Well, that would actually be antithetical what coaching is. We're not creating umbilical cords. What we're looking to do is cut umbilical cords. They've got too many umbilical cords out there, their families and the pastel and all this stuff, but we want to start snipping that stuff so that they can become an autonomous human being.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Yeah, you have to meet with them to do that, though, right? I mean, that does take your time and conversation. So that's not how it stands at that point. I think it's it's like actually got to be part of it. In fact, wouldn't it speed it up?

SPEAKER_02 24:06

In the weaning process, what you're looking to do is to help people trust themselves more. And trust themselves by doing assignments, then learning from those assignments, finding the application of the assignment, and then incorporate that to what it is that they're doing. And again, begin that cycle again of learning, application, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. That's when you really take a look at what coaching is, it's uh it's changing all the looking for all the outside of okay, am I all right? Am I doing it? What changing all that and bringing that focus into the autonomous person of who they really are. You can't really create great synergy or synthesizing or innovation with people who are emotionally dependent. That's what we don't want. We want people who are emotionally independent to create relationships that are interdependent. That's what we're really looking for. So, in regards to that, I'm still not sure what all that stuff means. I get what that's going on. Let's take a look at it this way. And then I don't know, Rich is gonna want to pop in and do something. Um I've got a client that I'm working with, let's say, and I they I've given them an assignment, they've got very specific things that we have agreed to based upon what it is that they want to do. All right, and I give them certain tools to help them manage and focus themselves and so on and so forth. My I think for most coaches, for most coaches, what they want, and I rarely have this happen, just so that you know. Very rarely does it happen. I say you can call me, send me a text, send me an email. I don't want you stuck. If you get stuck, give me a call, let's get you unstuck, even a text message, I will get you unstuck. I want that connection. But rarely do I ever have anybody follow up with that. That's how that's how I I can think of over, yeah. I've coached thousands of people, and probably out of that maybe 20. That's how rare the event is. So, and I think that's probably true for most coaches. So, as we take a look at this idea of getting AI involved, I'm concerned that they're all you're doing is creating another point of seeking approval rather than creating an independent, autonomous human being. Maybe I've got it wrong. You unravel that for me, would you?

SPEAKER_00 26:29

You actually you raised a couple of good points that uh we could let's explore. So, one is it's interesting that you don't get that call, and people do get stuck. Um and it reminds me of a little bit of like the psychological safety um and whether they're willing to reach back out and say, uh, I'm stuck, I don't understand, or what have you. And and I do think that uh if you could um, you know, how could this complement someone? Uh everything that we're doing in our courses and our AI engines that we're using is similar to what you're saying, is you've you're coaching, you've given them assignments, they're go-to-go work on those things, and they and they want to get feedback with you at the next session. And and I think AI could help complement and help reassure those things in a safe way, but not replacing the coach meeting that you're gonna have every two weeks either. So I do think that there's some interesting plays in there that might open a door up for someone that wants to be coached. Um, in a psychologically safe, they can uh, and I know you want to build the trust at the human level, but humans are humans. And so they may be willing to start to interact with something that is trained on your expertise as the coach and giving them your feedback during the two-week period that they're not reaching back out to you and get some answers. I I don't know. I think there's a there might be a play.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

I got what you're saying. Then Alert to I'm gonna turn it over to you for a bit here as well. The psychology, the physiology of that experience is very simple. It's very, very simple. It's the kid that's crawling that wants to stand up and walk. There is something innate about some little kid who is so persistent in standing up, falling down, standing up, falling down again and again and again. They never give up. Rarely do you see a kid say, I've had it, I'm just staying on all fours. I'm done with the falling down. We've had that, we've done that, doesn't work. There's something innate about people wanting to stand on their own. There's something about humane beings wanting to be seen as competent. That's a key thing here. And I think that's what I experience with clients is they don't follow up unless they really are jammed, because they want to be able to say, I did it, I figured it out, I got it, I got it done. That's kind of a thing that I'm thinking out here. I agree. I don't want to create another, I don't want to create another electronic pacifier out there for them. Anyway, that's kind of what I'm saying. This is really great conversation. Rich, jump in, please.

SPEAKER_04 29:11

This is um the more that I hear this, and the more uh with my experience as uh, you know, a COO with John Matone and also director of global coaching, one of the things that I'm seeing over the past year and a half has been a big shift in uh executive coaching. Previously, we you know, have you had experience coaching? Yeah, great. Have you got uh any ITF certifications or other certifications? Yes, great. Okay, let's talk to you, let's let's build this call, this chemistry call. That shifted and this year it shifted even as as the time goes on, even uh uh situation I'm dealing with right now this week. As we talk about these leaders and these organizations shifting towards more and more towards the the use of AI. And and and as well as this gut computer growing faster in order to keep up with the organizations that are really using AI. One of the things that that is specifically now being asking for by the gatekeepers in the organizations who are looking for coaches is no longer how long have you been a coach? Have you been a coach? Have you gotten certifications? That is secondary now in a big way to have you had executive experience? And the big question now over the last two months, I'm seeing now not only have you had executive experience, but have you had experience with implementing or making decisions based on AI? That's huge. That's huge right now. Matter of fact, I I I send out some some um bios and they send it back and said, no, we need to look at people who have had experience in the AI world. This is in in some ways one of the things that we work with as job coaches, Michael and I. Keeping yourself relevant, keeping yourself up to date on what's going on in the world. The world of executive coaching is changing. Now, the whole premise around executive coaching is still the human element. Things that AI can't provide is empathy. You can ask it all sort of sorts of questions, but it's just based on your prompts, the answers. There's no real empathy there. There's no real understanding, there's no real trust. And unfortunately, there are those who are struggling with that and finding it in AI. That's that's a different conversation altogether. So my question to you is is simple. The future of executive coaching is, you know, executive coaches are always going to be around the people, leading leaders, leading people. But the gate now is being harder to access unless you have had this experience. What would your suggestion be to executive coaches going forward if they really want to get in the the door with these organizations where the shift is really more and more knowledge around AI and making decisions, uh, getting that kind of information? Well, how would you how would you do that? And and and really kind of Mike, and it's too, it's back to what you said that gut computers getting faster and faster all the time.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Can I let's uh I want to ask about the the qualification of experience with AI. Did you get do you have like a layer deeper? Is it that you understand how to apply AI within their business or in coaching, or is it that you need to coach the executives on how to use AI as a part of their leadership um you know strategy and plan, or maybe it's a little bit of both.

SPEAKER_04 33:21

Well, Greg, and that's that's a phenomenal question. And herein lies the issue. If we go back to who the gatekeepers are who are requesting us to submit these bios, that's a lot of the problem. It's maybe an assumption on their part, this is who we really need. Has it been someone who has actually implemented AI? Has it then been someone who's taught AI? Has it been someone who's had um experience making decisions with AI? And so is it really what the end user needs? That's the problem. What does the end user need, the client really need around leadership development versus what the gatekeepers are saying they need? So it's kind of a it's kind of a two-edged sword, but nonetheless, there is this assumption that we have to have people with X, Y, and Z. Where with executive coaching, we really want to focus on the person. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Yeah, yeah, it does. And I I could see that that's the difference between wants and needs, uh, certainly.

SPEAKER_04 34:34

Yeah, oh yeah. And and and that that's the problem. How do we get, you know, what my I guess the bottom line is what advice would you give executive coaches out there to cross that threshold?

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Well, for one, AI isn't going to go away. So I think it behooves anybody that's in it at executive level coaching or anything like that. They probably should be familiar beyond I can type a few prompts and I get some results, you know, digging a bit deeper on how might we leverage this in business and things of that sort. Um, it isn't necessarily going to solve the human relationship challenge, but like Mike said earlier, um, it can give you to AI today a lot of salient good feedback on relationship building, right or wrong. Uh it it's good at doing that also. So um so yeah, I I would um, you know, as a if I was a solopreneur and I was an executive coach, I would be probably personally, I'd be dabbling with how do I sort of uh codify my expertise into some AI tools and agents and skills that I could then share with said organizations and say, hey, yeah, I've got a couple great skills. These are, you know, you can have a library of skills that sort of are tweaked a little bit for this business. So it's a little more relevant to their space, but it's uh, you know, it's in your voice and it kind of comes back with, you know, patent answers and good good feedback and things. I mean, we'd have to get zeroed in on specifics, but but I I I think that I would probably head down a path that says, oh yeah, I'm I'm on the AI train, and here's how I've packaged up my expertise in a way that you could leverage it, said business or executive coach. I don't know. That's Mike, what do you what do you think? That's that's my that's how I would go about it.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Yeah, I think it it ties a little bit back to that, like, you know, how do you scale, how do you scale coaching? And so having having your your your knowledge and wisdom and content and all of that available uh for others, not just executives, but what about like middle management? Don't they need coaching as well? Like there's a whole layer down where you make yourself more available by using AI to scale you. Um but if if you have if you're a if you're a coach and like you have no idea like even where to begin, good news, there's there's all kinds of very short and free courses on how to get AI fluent, primarily brought to you by the big players in the space. That's going to be open AI. So visit open AI, they have free training. Like you should understand when we say AI, we do not mean Chat GPT. That's not what I'm talking about. You need to immediately understand, I'm not talking about a large language model. That's an interesting component of AI, but that's not AI. So go get smarter about that. Visit OpenAI and take some of their courses and learn. So there's some you can do that tonight in 15 minutes and be smarter than the next executive coach next to you. There's nothing stopping you from learning. And then once you do that, you could even build out a learning program using a large language model to help you do that and come up with a 30-day training plan for yourself. All of this is free. You don't have to come buy one of my certified courses, although I'd love it if you come buy my certified courses. You don't have to. You can go do a lot of this for free. Get smart about AI. I do think it provides a competitive edge. It's a competitive edge today that I don't think any of us can can avoid. Um, as Greg pointed out, uh I mean I'll sometimes meet people and they'll be like, I you know, I don't use AI. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you absolutely do. You absolutely are using AI. If you turned your computer on today, you're using AI. Did you watch Netflix last night? Uh AI. You know, did you open your mobile device? Yep, AI. It's all around you. It's okay. Just get smart about it. And uh, I think there's ways to do that very fast, very free.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

Yeah. Let's wrap it up here. Yeah. Let's wrap it up here, gentlemen. Uh, it's been a great, I would love to talk with you guys again. This is a fascinating conversation that we go into really in-depth to it.

SPEAKER_04 38:54

We're not we're not anywhere near down the road where we need to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

This is this is fascinating. So if uh you guys are open to it, let's do that again. What would Mike my invitation to you would be this give us like your 30 second, 60 second takeaway that you would like the listeners to take away from today's conversation. Let's start with Mike and then we'll go to Greg.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

When I think about um coaching, executive level coaching, I I I think I see in in this space something we see in our in our IT space. It's sort of a it's a race to the bottom. People are paying less, they're buying less because they can do more on their own. And so we have to figure out how do we meet a changing market demand. And executive coaches, you're in the same boat with us, software delivery experts. You you're in the same space. It's happening faster, it's happening cheaper, people can get what they want in new ways. So we have to learn how to adapt. And and executive coaches, you you have a product, it happens to be a service. So get smart about how you market and sell that service. And and I think AI is the answer for that. Right. Thank you. Great, Mike.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

I I'd follow with um, we've been through a lot of these um moments in history where you know it's like, oh, the computer and it's gonna ruin things, or or the internet, and how's that's gonna all these people are gonna lose their jobs and you know, and it's really stacking S-curves, right? It's like sort of like there's a lot of new opportunity. And AI is at the very beginnings of these new opportunities. So related to the fact of if you're an executive coach, I'd be digging in a bit on the AI. I wouldn't, I wouldn't stick your head in the ground, I would be looking for, okay, what is out there? How can I take advantage of what is out there and and and and lever it? Um, and while we were talking, I did a quick search. There are executive leadership skills that you could people could start to add to their claude and their uh all those things are there. So I think there's a huge opportunity for those executive coaches that are inclined to do so to dig in and figure out how do they play in this new world and start to uh uh offer new offerings that they never could before. So don't look at it as a threat, look at it as an opportunity and start shifting and running towards something versus running away from something.

SPEAKER_02 41:39

Yeah. All right, gentlemen.

SPEAKER_04 41:40

Yeah, great point.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

Thanks so much. Great points.

SPEAKER_04 41:43

And you know, just me, my thoughts real quick as an executive coach and a coach and and really under thinking that leadership is about serving people, you know, that's kind of where where you know my thoughts really land on this. But you know, something you mentioned, Greg. Where would lean manufacturing and Six Stigma, the Toyota process be without Henry Ford? Had Henry Ford not created the assembly line. And it's evolved to where it is now. Same thing, evolution. It's here to stay, and how do we evolve with it? How do we make it work? So lots of lots of thoughts around this, right? You know, what's the future got to bring? And love to continue the conversation. So tell us how do they get a hold of you guys?

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Uh thanks for that. Yeah, we'll uh we'll we'll provide a link to our website. We're at kairise.com. And um, we we also want to offer all of your listeners discounts to all of our courses. Um we offer we are the global leader in self-paced product training. All of our training is self-paced and AI enabled. When you take one of our courses, you'll interact with my digital clone. So um it means every every in every activity you do in our course, you get a personal response from my clone. Um my clone has a a chat feature, um, and you can interact with that as well. Um, so we're we're pretty excited about that, and we we're happy to partner with you guys and make that available. Mike, spill spell your URL. Yeah, it's kairise.com, k-a-i-r-i-se.com, chi-rise.com. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

You'd you'd relate to that, kaizen and rise.

SPEAKER_04 43:30

There we go. Okay, is that where that came from?

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:33

Nice. All right. Uh good stuff, there, good stuff. All right. Get a hold of us, Michael Bailey, M-A-I-K-E-L Bailey.com. You can get a hold of him uh there. You can get a hold of him on LinkedIn. Same with me, Rich Barron, executive coaching. Uh, you can find us uh both on the John Matung Global website. And uh, you know, balls in your court, reach out, let's have a have a conversation. You know, it's uh a lot of a lot of uh interesting conversation around AI now, and it's there's there's no shortage of opinion, there's no shortage of of uh you know way this is growing. So let's hear from you. Let's go from there. So, Michael, you got any shout-outs?

SPEAKER_02 44:20

You know, I don't, other than to the world.

SPEAKER_03 44:25

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a world, the world of AI, the AI world. Everyone, get with it.

SPEAKER_04 44:35

Get with it. And I I've got one here real quick. I I'm gonna call out. Uh Antioch, Tennessee. That's one I haven't seen. So welcome. Um, welcome from Antioch. So uh to close up here again. Um, you know, we're all kind of in the same boat together right now, right? So take care of each other. That's what servant leadership is about. That's what leadership is about is you know, let's take care of each other and uh let's keep moving this ball forward.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

Leaders lead well. Thanks, guys.