Coaching Voices: The Association for Coaching Podcast

This episode is part of our 'A Day in the Life' series, where we talk to coaches about their real lives and businesses. What happens when creativity, personal story and deep self-reflection find their way into coaching? In this warm, honest conversation, our host Maxine Bell, talks with Paul Williamson, Group Head of Talent Development at ATG Entertainment.  He has designed acclaimed in-house leadership development programmes, helped to build a successful internal coaching faculty, and coached leaders at all levels within the organization. Paul traces his path from a creative childhood filled with art, drama and storytelling, through management roles, to becoming a qualified coach. Like many people, he was steered toward more 'sensible' career paths, but his creative instincts never left him, and he came to see creativity as a powerful tool for transformation.
 
Central to Paul's practice is Childhood Story Work, the approach pioneered by Dr Sarah Hill. He explains how looking at your own childhood story and its influences can reveal surprising connections between early narratives and present-day behaviour, work he describes as "transformational for me personally." Paul sees his role as creating a safe container for deep exploratory work, one that invites people to call on "all aspects of who they are, including their creativity." Drawing, music, imagery and metaphors help clients move beyond intellectual defences and into deeper layers of meaning.
 
Running through the conversation is the question "Who am I?", which Paul returns to throughout his work and his own life. It shapes how he shows up as a coach, from his shift away from structured models like GROW towards a more intuitive, emergent style, to his commitment to self-care, supervision and reflective practice. For Paul, the goal is genuine connection: finding out "what lights up their soul."
 
You will learn:
·       Understanding the early narratives that shape us can reveal the influences behind present behaviour and empower clients to change limiting narratives and create real transformation.
·       The importance of creating a safe container for creativity and deeper, exploratory work.
·       The power of asking 'Who am I?' and 'How do I want to coach?'
 
 
'I think if you can encourage people to step into that childlike space of wonder and possibility, you can start to get wonderful results.'
 
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For the episode resources and guest bio, please visit: 
https://www.associationforcoaching.com/page/dl-hub_podcast-channel_day-in-the-life-of-coaches-childhood-storywork-creativity

In this final episode of our series: AI, Ethics and Trust in Coaching, we step back from individual perspectives and ask what all these conversations might be telling us about coaching itself. Rebecca Rutschmann, co-founder of Viva la Coaching, researcher, educator and long-standing explorer of the space between coaching and technology, joins host, Smaranda Dochia, to consider whether AI is forcing the profession to become clearer about what coaching is really here to do.
 
Together they explore what should remain distinctly human, why people choose to work with another human being in coaching, and what we want technology to support rather than replace. Rather than framing AI as something to embrace or resist, the conversation is about engaging with curiosity, maturity and agency, and making deliberate choices about how we use it.
 
It's a conversation about finding our core, and about what AI may be asking the coaching profession to become next.
 
You will learn:
 
·       New capabilities are pushing us to revisit what coaching is for, who it can reach and why people value working with another human.
·       It's not a choice between embracing or resisting AI but staying informed, curious and deliberate about how you use it
·       Build strong roots in who you are and what you value, with enough curiosity to explore what is becoming possible.
 
 
"You need your North Star; you need your core. As long as you have roots, you can also fly. That's something my parents taught me very early. You need roots to hold you tight, and you need wings to fly."
 
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For the episode resources and guest bio, please visit: 
https://www.associationforcoaching.com/page/dl-hub_podcast-channel-AI-ethics-trust-in-coaching-what-AI-asks-of-coaching

AI coaching is moving fast, but the evidence hasn't quite caught up with the excitement. In episode 9 of our AI, Ethics and Trust in Coaching series, host Smaranda Dochia sits down with Professor Nicky Terblanche, Professor in Leadership Coaching at Stellenbosch University Business School in Cape Town, South Africa, where he leads the master's and PhD programmes in leadership coaching. Nicky began his career in electronic and software engineering before moving into coaching and applied psychology and has been researching AI coaching since well before generative AI arrived on the scene.
 
The conversation centres on a key distinction: 'AI in coaching' versus 'AI coaching' itself, and why the field still needs clearer definitions and professional boundaries. Nicky brings the research into focus, sharing findings that AI coaching can be effective for goal attainment, but has yet to show the same results when it comes to areas like stress, wellbeing, and resilience: the deeper developmental terrain where skilled human coaches still lead. They also explore whether AI should even aspire to imitate a human coach, why coaching methodology matters when evaluating a platform, cultural bias in AI coaching tools, and how AI might ultimately raise the bar for human coaching rather than simply replace it.
 
Throughout, one message keeps returning: keep an open mind, but remain critical and ask for evidence. Nicky's research suggests a more nuanced picture than either the hype or the anxiety around AI coaching would have us believe - AI coaching can already support outcomes like goal attainment and offers real value through its scale, cost, and accessibility, reaching people who might otherwise have no access to coaching at all. But when it comes to deeper transformation, human coaching still holds its ground. Nicky's closing challenge lingers too: perhaps we're worrying too much about AI replacing coaches, and not enough about what it means to outsource our thinking to technology over time.
 
You will learn:
 
·       'AI in coaching' and 'AI coaching' aren't the same thing. The field still lacks clear definitions and professional boundaries, and getting this distinction right matters for standards and accreditation.
·       AI coaching if far off from replacing human coaches but it does have value in it's scalability and reach.
·       The real risk may not be replacement - it's outsourcing thinking:  what happens to our critical thinking and capability when we lean too heavily on technology to do it for us.
 
 
"AI coaching is not competing with human coaching, but it can be incredibly scalable and helpful to millions of people who would never otherwise have any coaches."
 
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For the episode resources and guest bio, please visit: 
https://www.associationforcoaching.com/page/dl-hub_podcast-channel-AI-ethics-trust-in-coaching-AI-coaching-research-service

Across workplaces, AI tools are being introduced at remarkable speed. Licenses are being purchased, productivity gains are anticipated, and employees are being encouraged to experiment. But access to AI is not the same as knowing how to work with it well. In episode 8 of our AI, Ethics and Trust in Coaching series, host Smaranda Dochia sits down with James Varnham, who brings 26 years of experience in learning, workforce development, and AI adoption, to unpack what's actually happening inside organizations as AI moves from experimentation to daily practice. They dig into the gap between leadership ambition and employee readiness, the rise of shadow AI and the data security risks it creates, and why generic, one-size-fits-all training rarely builds the kind of AI literacy organizations need.
 
The conversation centres on a key distinction: knowing how to use AI is not the same as knowing how to collaborate with it. True AI literacy means understanding when AI adds value, how to steer and question its output, and where human critical thinking has to stay firmly in the driver's seat. James and Smaranda also explore the growing role of coaching in this shift—not as a way to help people feel better about AI, but as a space to think clearly about what to delegate, what to protect, and how to hold onto judgment, agency, and a sense of human worth as the technology evolves around them. They also turn to the question of employee wellbeing, including how AI adoption can quietly erode confidence when people feel uncertain about what's expected of them or fear being left behind.
James makes a pointed case for AI coaching tools too: their scalability makes coaching more affordable and able to reach far more people than human coaching alone ever could. But he's equally clear about their limits—organizations and individuals both need to learn where an AI coach's usefulness ends and where a human coach needs to step in. Ultimately, this episode reframes what "successful" AI adoption should even mean. Rather than measuring it by how much AI gets used, James and Smaranda suggest the better measure is what happens to human capability because of that use—whether people are growing sharper and more confident, or quietly ceding judgment to the machine.
 
You will learn:
 
·       What real AI literacy means – understanding that using AI isn't the same as collaborating with it.
·       Adoption of AI in organizations is outpacing readiness and wellbeing needs attention too. James shares tips on how to bring AI into a workplace with a reminder that AI will involve continuous learning.
·       AI coaches make support more affordable and accessible at scale but knowing when to hand off from an AI coach to a human one is essential.
   
"We're still very, very immature when it comes down to, as I said, organizational adoption of AI."
 
Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review! Your feedback helps us bring you more valuable content.
 
For the episode resources and guest bio, please visit: 
https://www.associationforcoaching.com/page/dl-hub_podcast-channel-AI-ethics-trust-in-coaching-organizations-workplace-AI-literacy

AI has brought new urgency to questions the coaching profession has wrestled with for years: what is coaching, what value does it create, and what kind of practitioner should coach education produce? In episode 7 of our series, AI, Ethics and Trust in Coaching, host Smaranda Dochia talks with Jonathan Reitz, a coach and coach educator with nearly three decades of experience, about his unexpected path from broadcasting into coaching and what that journey taught him about the profession's evolving identity.
 
Jonathan draws a sharp distinction between coach training, which transfers skills, and coach education, which reshapes the practitioner's identity, ethics, and self-awareness. He argues that meaningful development doesn't happen in the classroom alone: it comes from a blend of focused instruction, field experience, deliberate practice, community reflection, and a wider circle of trusted support. As AI tools increasingly position themselves as "coaches," he makes the case that providers and professional bodies carry an institutional responsibility to prepare adaptable, reflective practitioners, not just add an AI module to existing curricula.
 
The discussion also digs into the practical and ethical terrain coaches now have to navigate: GDPR-level data handling, client-controlled recordings, one-year deletion policies, and the difficulty buyers face in measuring coaching ROI. Jonathan's view is that coaches should aim for AI augmentation or redefinition of their practice - never inversion, where the coach hands off genuine cognitive engagement to a tool. Even coaches who choose not to use AI themselves, he notes, need enough fluency to understand the language and developmental world their clients now inhabit.
 
You will learn:
 
·       AI and coaching bots have forced a reckoning on defining coaching
·       Coach education beats training, and it belongs in the field with practice and community
·       Ethics and AI fluency are the differentiators. There are foundations of responsible practice that must be in place before AI fluency can start
 
 
"I think the advent of some of the AI tools that are in the world right now have forced us to say, hey, with these AI tools now calling themselves coach, what is it that they're doing that I also do? And what is it that I do that they are not doing?"
 
Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review! Your feedback helps us bring you more valuable content.
 
For the episode resources and guest bio, please visit: 
https://www.associationforcoaching.com/page/dl-hub_podcast-channel-AI-ethics-trust-in-coaching-coach-education-definition-ethics