Now you know AI is an ineffective coach, be careful you don’t hire its human equivalent 🤖
I am concerned the coaching industry is increasingly defaulting to a standard of polite validation over rigorous challenge — unwittingly mimicking the AI sycophancy I deplored the other week.
There is a dangerous misconception that high-impact coaching is only about inspiration and empathy. In fact, truly effective coaching demands a brutally specific inflection point.
About half my clients have had a disappointing coaching experience before our paths cross. This aligns with the results of a recent European survey of senior executives showing 68% had worked with an executive coach in the previous three years but only 41% could articulate a precise, measurable outcome beyond “helpful conversations” or “gained clarity.”
What too often happens is that the coaching mandate targets “strategic thinking” or “leadership presence” or “strategic communication” or “innovation capacity”. Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?
Six months later, you have had insightful conversations, perhaps even shifted some perspectives. HOWEVER, your P&L looks identical and your team dynamics haven’t changed.
Rather than some corporate buzzwords, you need a forensic examination – a conversation where you admit: “I’m acquiring a competitor and need to integrate 140 people without destroying both cultures”.
And where you receive a coaching plan: a structured process that lets you look forward to specific interventions, milestones and outcomes. Otherwise, you will receive support dressed up as coaching, when you deserve cognitive, behavioural and organisational change.
Effective coaching offers encouragement over validation, pragmatism over theory, and responsibility over reassurance.
You won’t twist in agony but you’ll regularly fidget in discomfort. As you make trackable progress – in observable behaviour and in improving business metrics.
This is when a coach delivers their kind of high performance.
If you’d welcome a forensic audit rather than polite validation, feel free to message me 😊
📞 + 41 79 532 4754
📧 alexandra@coachingforinspiration.com
#coachingforinspiration