The Habit Mechanic - Unlock your Human-AI Edge

Coaching Is Failing in the AI-Era: 4 Reasons Why

• Dr. Jon Finn

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Why do most performance psychology approaches fail to deliver lasting results? Dr. Jon Finn - creator of Human-AI Performance Psychology - tackles this challenging question head-on, revealing statistical evidence that even gold-standard talk therapies like CBT only help one in five people—with benefits typically fading within a year.

Drawing from three performance psychology degrees and extensive field experience with elite performers, Dr. Finn shares the four fundamental flaws in traditional coaching approaches that led him to develop the Habit Mechanic AI Edge system. This revolutionary framework has helped clients secure tangible results like circa $90,000 salary increases, and equity positions by becoming leaders in human-AI performance.

The breakthrough lies in understanding Brain States first, creating both long-term and daily strategic plans, and implementing a comprehensive behavioral automation system. Unlike conventional approaches that offer disconnected tips and tricks, this system treats personal performance with the same strategic seriousness businesses apply to their planning processes. The result is a four-step AI-Edge Success Cycle that addresses the growing complexity and overwhelm of our AI-enhanced world.

Most remarkably, Dr. Finn's and his team's approach doesn't require abandoning everything you've tried before—it provides a better container that amplifies existing tools and adds "super boosters" to make them stick. As he eloquently puts it, "You're only ever one Brain State habit away" from transformation.

Ready to experience what's possible when performance psychology is rebuilt from first principles for the AI-Era (i.e., Human-AI Performance Psychology)? Learn more about one-to-one coaching on our website, download "Train Your Brain for the AI Revolution," or join our upcoming webinar "The AI Lie" on May 14th to discover what successful individuals and teams are doing differently in the age of artificial intelligence.

Speaker 1:

Hello Habit Mechanics. It's Dr John Finn here I am doing a walking podcast on my way into the office this morning. I've been astounded by some of the results that our coaching clients are getting with our new human AI performance psychology structure. They're consistently just getting these amazing results, and often highly tangible, like securing $90,000 pay rises, being given equity in businesses because they're now seen as leaders in human ai performance. So we've been reflecting on well, why is that? Why is this? Why? Why is the system we're teaching getting such good results?

Speaker 1:

And I think for me I have to go back to the beginning, which is why did I create tougher minds? Why did I create the habit mechanic? Why did I extend that in the AI era to the habit mechanic AI edge system? Sorry, I'm walking up a hill, so I'm slightly of breath. So it's because broadly what I got taught at university and I've got three performance psychology-related degrees, including a PhD just didn't work so well in the field and largely what I was taught was based on talk therapy. Sport psychology gets pretty practical. You learn tools and things like that to teach people. But when I got into the field and started to work with clients and athletes in particular, very high-performing elite people, I learned that those tools didn't work very effectively. That's why I started creating the tools and systems I have and I think and actually if you, that's not just me saying this there are now large sets of data showing that, for all the hype around talk therapy, it is not very effective. The data shows very clearly. Studies of over 52,000 people shows that CBT, which is the sort of gold standard talk therapy only can be proven to help one in five people. One in five people. And the kicker is those results don't seem to last more than 12 months before people default back to the unhelpful ways of thinking and doing they were before the therapy. And why is that the case? I think there are four core reasons and I want to unpack those. And it goes to some way to explaining why we created a system like we did.

Speaker 1:

Traditional coaching doesn't consider brain states. Most of it doesn't consider the brain at all in the first principle sense. Even the systems that say they're neuroscience based, I'm very dubious as to what they mean by that. What is understood? It doesn't strike that they operate from a first principle model about how brains work, and that's completely understandable because we've only been able to look inside brains for about 25 years now. I was very lucky at the start of my education that that's what I began to learn about off the bat, so to speak. So if we want to be successful, we've got to understand our brain states and get brain state intelligent. And that's why, in our four-step success cycle which we talk people through in train your brain for the AI revolution, we show you how to measure your brain states to start with, and you get a score. You get a human AI readiness brain state score.

Speaker 1:

And the next reason, then, that I think traditional approaches talk therapy based approaches are failing people is because people are more overwhelmed than ever. The world is more complex. Ai is making it even more complex and they tend to um, when you learn how to coach using a cbt talk therapy based model, you really get taught to focus on tools and tactics, which sometimes people call tips and tricks, and they make sense when you're taught them and people agree it would be a good idea to do that thing to help them to be a better leader or be a better team member or manage stress better so they can sleep at night. But people quickly forget them and often those tips and tricks are not part of a bigger strategic approach for the individual. You all, we all, know that and understand that businesses have strategies, they have strategic plans, they have long-term strategic plans and short-term strategic plans, and what we've learned is that if you, if you, if you're an individual and you're trying to be at your best, and you don't have a long-term strategic plan and a short-term strategic plan, the likelihood is you're going to struggle. So that's why in steps three and four of the success cycle so sorry, steps two and three of the success cycle step two is the, the task director system and step three is the day designer system. These are essentially ways to develop your own strategic plan for your future self, but also for today and the next 24 hours.

Speaker 1:

And then, once you have those strategic plans, any tools that you're using or that you learn to use and you know, in our own approach, we have I think we have about well, nearly 40 tools now. Actually, those tools are more powerful because they're part of a strategic approach to being healthy, happy at your best in the AI era. And again, when you're just doing normal coaching and people tell us this, they tell us I don't think there's one person we've worked with who hasn't tried coaching before? And they always tell us I've tried this before, but your stuff works and the other stuff doesn't work. People very nice, they're very, very friendly, but and I thought it was going to help me but it didn't but this is, and that's because we're taking into consideration the brain in a friendly way brain states, we're helping people to create the long-term strategy plan and then the daily strategy plan using our task director system and our day designer system.

Speaker 1:

And then the final step and this is where traditional approaches this bit often just doesn't exist. And if it does exist, it has no level of sophistication. Um, it's. You need a way of automating your approach, your behaviors, in other words your habits, so that you don't just do them once or twice, you make them as automatic as the unhelpful behaviors were. And this is why you need a comprehensive understanding of, of behavioral science, not just nudge theory. That's just one ninth of what explains why we do what we do, not just skin as reward and penalty systems again, that's one ninth not just carol dwight, mindset ideas, and I could go on but all of these big behavioral science theories that people trumpet as the answer are actually part of a jigsaw puzzle and we've learned that the jigsaw puzzle has nine parts and that's what our nine action factor system represents. It's like a bridge between. It gives you literally a bridge between where you are now and where you want to be.

Speaker 1:

Um, and in our success cycle, in train your brain for the air revolution, in Train your Brain for the Air Revolution. That's captured in the routine engineer component. So, yeah, I'm not saying this stuff to be to brag or anything. I want to help people to do better. I'm just trying to explain why I don't think that the gold standard therapy that everyone talks about all the time is only actually proven now to help one in five people and those results only last for about 12 months. It's very explainable when you understand first principle insights about human brain function and that's what we designed the success cycle to do just to give you that four-step model to address those four core points we know are essential if we actually want to make a positive strategic change in our lives, and I think, more than ever as the world becomes more aggressive, we need to think about ourselves as a business in the sense of you need a strategic plan, you need to be very if you want to be healthy, happy and at your best, and that might be the goal of your business. You need a strategic plan to help you to do that. But that strategic plan will be useless unless you understand your brain states. It'll be useless unless you have a daily way of deploying it, like our day designer system, and it will be useless unless you have a robust behavioral science approach, like our nine action factor model and the routine engineer system. So I hope that um that's got you thinking that, even if you've been trying things before and they haven't been working, there is, I think, a different approach that you can use, and it doesn't mean you have to throw out everything you've been doing. You can keep doing that. But what the success cycle gives you is a better container, a better model to put those things into and to add some uh super boosters to, so that it makes some of the things you've tried before but couldn't quite stick with um even more powerful. So that's all I wanted to say.

Speaker 1:

We do have a webinar on Wednesday, the 14th of May, and we're going to be talking about the title is the AI Lie and it's about how many people and teams are getting overwhelmed by AI.

Speaker 1:

It isn't delivering what it says it will on the on the packet, if you like, um, and I want to show what, what teams that who are being successful and what individuals who are being successful are doing instead. So that's what we're going to talk about, um. If you are interested in learning more about one-to-one coaching, just go to the website and give us an email, um. You can now also actually get a copy of the train your brain for the ai revolution from the website, um, so you can just download it directly from there if that's of interest. And then the only other thing I would finish with is if you have found something in this interesting, write it down, make a note about it, and then you've got a better chance of putting it into action. So I hope that was insightful. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and remember you're only ever one brain state habit away.