Coaching in the Age of AI: Meeting Clients Where They Are
Hosts: Felice Tilin, PhD, PCC and Marco Bertola, MCC, MSOD
CCEU’s: TBC
Core: ~ | Resource: ~
AI becomes increasingly present in our clients’ lives and organizations. How do we continue to meet the client where they are while helping them prepare for where their world is going? AI is entering the coaching conversation whether coaches introduce it or not.
Our clients are encountering AI in very different ways. Some arrive having already used AI tools to “coach” themselves. Others have barely experimented with AI or are actively avoiding it. They may lack the time, interest, or the psychological safety to experiment while watching colleagues and organizations move rapidly around them.
Leaders are increasingly being asked to introduce AI into their organizations while managing uncertainty about what it means for people, roles, teams, and jobs. While experimentation with AI is widespread, organizational transformation has lagged. The challenges are often less about the technology itself and more about people and change.
When clients bring AI-generated thinking into coaching, coaches can help deepen reflection and learning. With AI-hesitant clients, coaching can encourage curiosity and build resilience during change. With leaders navigating AI-driven change, coaches can support them in leading people and
organizations through uncertainty.
This creates important new territory for coaches. Rather than becoming AI experts, coaches need to become increasingly skilled at helping clients think, learn, experiment, make choices, and lead through uncertainty.
What We’ll Explore
During this interactive session, we will explore three increasingly common coaching situations:
1. The AI-Enabled Client
2. The AI-Hesitant Client
3. The Leader Navigating AI Transformation
The goal of this session is not to teach coaches the latest AI tools. It is to strengthen our ability to coach the person who is encountering AI.
Learning Objectives
1. Recognize three distinct AI-related coaching situations and adapt the coaching conversation to
the client’s level of experience, confidence, and responsibility.
2. Explore how to work with clients who bring AI-generated answers into coaching, helping them
move from information and recommendations toward reflection, judgment, choice, and action.
3. Draw on research and collective experience to generate coaching approaches for AI-related
uncertainty and resistance, including fear of falling behind, changing professional identity, job
disruption, and ambiguity about the future.
A Question at the Center of the Session
As AI becomes increasingly present in our clients’ lives and organizations, how do we continue to meet the client where they are while helping them prepare for where their world is going?
Felice J. Tilin is an author, educator, organizational consultant, and executive coach who specializes in helping people navigate the human side of change. She is an Associate Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and Founder and President of GroupWorks Global, where she leads the firm’s work in executive and team coaching, leadership development, and coach education. GroupWorks Global offers ICF-credentialed programs, including Coach Training at Level 1 and 2, advanced accreditation in Team Coaching, and CCEs in areas including AI Coach Advantage, Gestalt Coaching, and Mentor Coaching. Her work brings together research, organizational development, and decades of experience developing leaders and coaches. “From the Coaching Leader to Team Coaching: Building Collaboration in Interprofessional Healthcare Teams” is a forthcoming chapter in an edited volume published by Springer.
Marco Bertola brings together the perspectives of a Master Certified Coach, educator, organizational development practitioner, mentor coach, and coach supervisor. As Managing Director of Education for GroupWorks Global, he helps lead the design and delivery of coach education and advanced professional development for coaches.Marco has more than 15 years of international experience in leadership development, organizational change, and coaching, working both inside large organizations and as an external consultant. He is also a professor of Emotional Intelligence at LIUC University and holds a Master of Science in
Positive Organizational Development and Change from Case Western Reserve University.As a certified mentor coach and coach supervisor, Marco is particularly interested in how coaches continue to develop their judgment, presence, and effectiveness as the context around coaching changes. His work focuses on helping coaches, leaders, and teams learn, experiment, and adapt while keeping the human relationship at the center of the work.