How to get the most out of product coaching - Lily Smith (Managing Director, BBC Maestro) and Randy Silver (Product and Leadership Coach)

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you tell somebody that they're wrong, then they're just going to be defensive most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

How did you start becoming a coach?

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Um, badly and by accident. Providing a space for somebody, forcing them to really think through some things and be honest with themselves about something. What is it that's going on? What's bothering me? What's frustrating me? What's stopping me right now?

SPEAKER_01 0:20

I hadn't received any sort of formal coaching in my professional career until really very recently. He completely flipped the script on me, and I was just like, what? I have to do all the work.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

The rise of AI and LLMs. What's your experience been like?

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I found it really, really helpful, and I did use it quite a few times.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Coaching is not about telling people what to do or giving them answers. It's about holding a space and reflecting onto the coachy. Welcome back to well, it's weird. I can't say welcome to the product experience podcast, but you're here every week. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:02

I'm doing really good. Thanks, Randy. Thanks so much for having me. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Well, thank you for having me. So, yes, you've guessed. We are the each other's guest this week. We are doing a special deep dive episode. Uh, a few years ago, we talked about coaching, but we left a lot of questions unanswered. We've learned a lot and the entire practice has changed, and we decided we wanted to talk about it a little bit more today.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

And this is tricky for me because I am not a big fan of talking about myself. I much, I much rather would ask other people questions, which is why I love coaching, because you don't have to talk about yourself at all, really. And you can just dig into someone else's life and someone else's challenges. But we are going to be covering all bases, as Randy said. So without further ado, let's get stuck in. One of the first things we were going to cover um in terms of coaching and how coaching is used in product management, but also, I guess, generally in business, is starting to become a coach. So, Randy, why don't you kick us off? How did you start becoming a coach?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Um badly and by accident is the honest answer. Somebody asked me if I would coach them. Well, I had coached people at work before in the context of the of being a manager and in the context of being a leader in an organization. Sometimes you were asked to mentor and coach other people. And I did that, and I thought I was all right at it. And then uh somebody external came to me and said, asked me if I would be their coach, and I agreed. And I don't think I'd ever experienced good coaching at that point. I'd never had good coaching myself. And looking back at it, it's not that I was terrible, but I don't think I was very good at it either. And I've learned a ton since then.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

And have you so have you now had formal coaching training? What's your kind of coaching creds, as it were?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Yeah, so I'm very explicit with people that I work with that I am not a formally trained coach in terms of the International Coaching Federation or anything like that. Um, I have a lot of experience coaching. I have a diploma now in gestalt-based team coaching, but I've also had a lot of experience both doing it and being coached. And being coached by and working with lots of other coaches, and I have learned a ton. So, but I'm very explicit with people that about what my level of training is, what the experience with me is like. And what I found is that most people in our profession, most people in in product-related things, they're not looking for a strict coach relationship most of the time. They're looking for someone who is part coach and part mentor. So the way that I define that is strictly coaching is not about telling people what to do or giving them answers. It's about holding a space and reflecting onto the coachy. And I'm very explicit. I will talk to the person about my experience, I will talk to the person about other people's experience, people I've met uh through the podcast and lots of other things, and people I've managed and people I've coached, and I will share anonymously things that I've seen work and not work. But I'm also explicit that this is not me telling them what to do. This is to provide a conversation and give them some suggestions of I've seen this work or not work in certain environments. You're in a different environment. What does this spark? What's the conversation we might have? Where do you want to go with this? How much you use this information? All of which is to say, from a coaching perspective, I probably talk too much in sessions, but not as much as I used to.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Okay. Well, I'll make sure I tell you to shut up in this session.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

I would expect nothing less, but Lily, what about you? What's your you've had some coaching training, you've done some coaching in work. What's what's your experience like?

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Yeah, so I have, but I I feel like probably in terms of the number of coaching sessions that I've done and received is probably in volume a lot less than than the work that you've done. But I have actually had some formal coaching training. And don't ask me what the certificate was that I got at the end, because I cannot remember. But it was a 12-week course, um, introduction to coaching course, and it was fantastic. It was really good. And at the place where I used to work, we would do triad coaching. So every month we would get together and the whole business would basically coach each other. So um I guess I did gain quite a lot of experience through through that, and you would have someone in that group observing you and giving you feedback on your coaching as well. So it was a real coaching learning experience too. And yeah, and I haven't done very much recently, but I have been, I've kickstarted that triad coaching program at BBC Maestro recently, and everyone has been really loving it. So yeah. Oh, one of the things I was going to mention as well when you were talking about starting, you know, starting coaching and your experience, your early experiences of coaching other people and receiving coaching. So I haven't I hadn't received any sort of formal coaching in my professional career until really very recently, maybe in the last few years. And the first session that I went to, I remember thinking, this is great. I can get all this stuff off my chest, I can just like let this guy have it and tell him all of my problems. And so I literally just unloaded everything in this session, probably in the first 10 minutes of like, this is annoying and I don't know what to do about this, and rah-rah, rah. And he completely flipped the script on me, like, you know, and was just like, okay, well, that's all in the past. So what's your focus right now? Like, what are you what are you concentrating on right now that you need to change in your own behavior for the future? And I was just like, What? I have to, I have to do all the work. This I thought you were gonna solve all my problems for me. And he was like, No, that's not the way coaching works. So I kind of hated it in that moment, but then I also loved it because the rest of the session was so forward-thinking and positive, and I got way more out of it than just moaning and complaining about my professional life.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Yeah, it's a really interesting thing because the people I work with, they most sessions start off with something, but that's not necessarily where they end up, and almost never it's is it where they end up because there's the symptom of something, and then sometimes that will take a long time to work through, and that's multiple sessions. Um, and so we dig into just one component of it, or sometimes that symptom is really just masking a root cause, and we deal with the symptom really quickly sometimes, and then start going towards the so what's really driving this? What's really going on? And it's it's that combination of providing a space for somebody and forcing them to really think through some some things and be honest with themselves about something. And it's really fascinating. And it, you know, when I get coached, I you know, the way I found my coach, to be honest, was completely by accident. I didn't think I wanted a coach or needed one. And then we had Donna Leishaw on, and Donna is a professional coach. And in researching uh the stuff we were going to talk to her about, which was actually storytelling, I was taking a look at her site. I was researching her, and I said, God damn it, I think I need this. This what the what the and after having her on as a guest and seeing her talk at a conference, I said, Yeah, I'd really like to spend some time talking to her and seeing what uh how she could hold me accountable to things, how she could help me be a better version of myself. And she's been my coach now for years, and it's a fantastic relationship. I got a huge amount out of it. And it's yeah, it's not what I was expecting at all going into it.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

So, what would you recommend if someone was thinking about being coached or thinking, I don't need a coach? Like, what do you say to people about when is the right time to get that coaching relationship set up?

SPEAKER_00 9:38

You have to be ready to be coached because you just like you said, you might go into it with one thing in mind, but it's going to be turned on you and you need to do the work. Um, if you want to get the most out of a coaching session, you should do some preparation for it. It doesn't have to be a ton, it could be five to ten minutes, but just think about what is it that's on your mind? What is you don't just walk in reacting to the last meeting you had, the last call you had. Think about what is it that's going on, what's bothering me, what's frustrating me, what's stopping me right now. And that's not necessarily, again, that's not necessarily what you're gonna work on, but it's the starting point for the conversation. If you just walk in with nothing, it's gonna be tough because you're gonna waste half the session just figuring out what it is that you want to talk about. And that's I mean, waste is probably too strong a word, but sometimes you get some really valuable stuff out of it, but you can't do that every week or every session. And you have to be ready to do the work after the session as well. You need to put stuff into practice, you need to be willing to, you know, deal with the fact that you're gonna learn things about yourself that you can't always change other people, and uh, or you can, but you have to put the change into yourself first to have it uh be visible and have an effect on other people. And yeah, it's it's what about you? What did what have you learned from from both coaching and being coached about this?

SPEAKER_01 11:01

I think my so it's been interesting, like restarting the triad coaching program at BBC Maestro. And you know, it's that thing, like you say, of when you don't have experience of coaching those first few sessions, you're kind of just like feeling your way through like how the interaction works. And actually, I didn't ask the team to do any prep for the session. I just said, just come along. I'm gonna give you a question or a a kind of a theme for the session, and then you're gonna explore it with um, you know, with your coach. And that actually worked quite well. But I think I think you can do it in that situation if you're, you know, if you're getting coaching in a business and that business or the the person who's facilitating the coaching or whatever has a bit of an understanding of the work that you do and the atmosphere of the business at the time, then they can say, you know, talk about growth and like how you contribute to growth or something like that. You know, it can be something quite broad and quite simple, um, but a little bit directive so that it gives a bit of an anchor to the conversation. So yeah, I think, but I I do agree if you're if it's a coaching relationship and it's not necessarily like linked in with like a broader business coaching program, you do probably need to have a little bit of a think about what you want to get out of the session and prep for that.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

You know, I've got two things I want to respond to on that one. So one of them is that I'm a big fan of triad coaching. I think it's a wonderful thing, especially when you don't necessarily have a professional coach who's working with you because it's something you can set up as peer-based uh within a company. The only things that are required are good attitude and some time and sponsorship from the executive level to uh to spend on it. And people having a good attitude and coming into it, you'll iterate, you'll get better at it. I ran an um intro to coaching workshop at a conference recently, and we did triads and people absolutely loved it. And people with no experience at coaching, uh, we use the liberating structures uh troika consulting system, and it's a fantastic. If you've never seen liberating structures, it's a wonderful website with lots of different ways of organizing people and teams to have better conversations and help each other out. And Troika Consulting is a specific triad model that I'm a big fan of for this type of thing. The other thing I want to say is, you know, even though I just advocated if you're doing one-on-one coaching, uh, come prepared for it. The gestalt coaching uh certificate uh diploma that I just did is very much the opposite of that. Because it but that is about working with uh pairs uh or dyads or groups of people, and it's very non-directive. It is welcoming people in, providing a safe space and a little bit of structure for them, but letting them talk about whatever they want to and watching what emerges and then observing and helping them to be mindful and observe and notice things that uh the the behaviors that come out. And that can be really interesting as well, but it's different than you can't really do that as well in one-on-one. Um, it's more about noticing how people are with each other. And uh when you can't do that with yourself. Well, I can't anyway do that with say you with me as your coach, because then I'm part of the system with you instead of observing the system. So it's a really interesting uh way of approaching things. And I was astounded by how powerful uh uh a method it is.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Hmm. What else did you learn on that training course that's like your kind of top takeaways?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I think this is one of the things I've learned over the years in general, partially because my coach Donna is gestalt trained as well. So I've observed her doing these types of things with me, and it naturally became more of my approach. But one of the critical things is, you know, when I'm doing the mentorship side, I'm telling people these are things I've seen work, but I'm not telling them what to do. And very rarely am I telling people that I think that I believe that they're making a mistake or they're doing something wrong. Sometimes there is a factual thing, they're misusing a technique or something like that. That's something that you can talk about. But if it's more about how you're working with other people, how you're approaching things, what your attitude towards it uh things is, if you tell somebody that they're wrong, then they're just going to be defensive most of the time. So rather than approaching it that way, the the Gestalt method has something called the optimistic stance, which is uh, you know, if you and and your partner come in to work with me and you spend the whole time yelling at each other and complaining and sniping, I'm not going to tell you that you're getting along badly. You already know that. You know that problem. But I might tell you, do you notice how well you how good you are at articulating your needs to each other? Um, you know, there are things that are uh very good and well developed and potentially positive about the system that you can notice and help people notice. And doing that also then potentially helps them notice the things that they are not doing or the effects that it has on other people. And that's the critical thing is you need to internalize these things and understand it before you're going to put the work in and change. Uh really lasting change comes from you noticing things about your behavior and wanting to change, uh, say this thing I'm doing isn't working as well as I thought it might. What can I do differently? And it's a much more of a nudge experience and not even necessarily an intentional one. I may not be directing you. I may just, you know, towards a specific outcome or resolution, but helping you notice the things that are potentially getting in your way.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

I love that. Very helpful. I was literally just thinking, oh, I need to use that with some people.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Maybe a phenomenal thing. It and it's one of those things that I did not understand what it was going to be like. And during the the very intense training sessions that I did, uh just observing other people, uh, having it done to me and doing it to people. Yeah, it was a very intense, very rewarding experience. It's amazing how many emotions come out very, very quickly from people. Uh and you wouldn't necessarily think that's going to happen in a workplace environment. But one of the things I realized is, you know, all leadership teams have the tendencies of toddlers and teenagers anyway. And there's a lot of that in there. You don't treat people like that, but you can see a lot of, you know, you're a parent, I'm a parent. You can see behaviors in in children that you then see in executives just expressed differently. And it's a lot of primal wants and needs and not being heard and things like that. And you realize there's a lot of that in there. And how do we how do we support that? How do we address those things without necessarily explicitly doing them head head on? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

And one of the other things we we were gonna talk about was when you stop a coaching relationship or when you stop a kind of a series of um coaching sessions. I guess in some cases, people would like block out like a book of six or a book of twelve or something like that, or maybe like six months even. It's funny because I actually did get some, I just was remembering I got some coaching from Matt LeMay at one point on a very specific uh topic at work. And uh I think I probably had not very many sessions with him, like three or four, maybe, maybe it was more than that. But very quickly he got to the or he helped me get to the root cause of like what I needed to change or what needed to be fixed and how I was going to do that. And so we wrapped it up fairly quickly because I was like, okay, I know what I need to do. And I just it's gonna take a little bit of time to do it. So I just let's kind of take a break and um and let me just go and do this thing. And it it actually did take me even longer than I thought it was going to to kind of make the adjustments in in the work that we were doing to solve the problem that that we had been discussing. But I think, you know, sometimes when you have a really good coach who does understand your work really well, you can get to a a solution fairly quickly or a plan.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Yeah. And there's a couple of different approaches to this sort of things, you know, depend on on how you or your company are approaching this. Sometimes there's a specific issue that you want to address, which may be a very limited number of sessions. Uh sometimes it's more continued development, or somebody's moving into a new role, stepping up to a new level, or something like that. And it's more just continued support. So there may be a specific thing or two at a time, but then there's an ongoing uh it develops because you have different problems at different points or different challenges that and you, or maybe you just want uh an hour every so often to talk to someone or 90 minutes to talk to someone in a safe space just to explore your thoughts where you're not being judged by other people. There are some coaches I know who who do this in a very you know structured way of let's get you out of the immediate problem and then let's reassess and see where do you want to go. And and you can have a multi-year relationship based on something that started out as a single problem. But sometimes you just get to a point where you're like, okay, actually, I'm feeling pretty confident. I'm feeling pretty good right now. I don't need to continue with this program. Maybe you have other problems that someone else would be better addressing. Maybe you're just in a good space at the moment and you don't need to work with anyone at that point. That's absolutely fine. I also offer um, one of the things I've done with people is I offer ad hoc sessions because there are times I know people just feel stuck and they're in a leadership position and they're not psychologically safe enough in that environment. You know, they can't go to their boss and say, I don't know what to do. Uh and so they just need an hour or two of working through some hard problems and being able to step further back. So I call those unstuck sessions. And I know other people do them as well. And they're really valuable sometimes of just you need somebody who's not judgmental and who's been there before to just point some things out and ask you some hard questions. Because I'll be honest, when whenever I've done those, the person already knows the answer, but they just can't see it. And it'll take them days, weeks, potentially even months to get there. But just a nice session with someone who has not got Stakes in the game, who is pushing them just the right way, not hard, but just in the right way, and the knows which questions you're not asking yourself or not facing up to can really just say, yeah, okay, I knew this, but I wasn't ready to admit to myself I knew it. And those are fantastic too.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

I I yeah. And actually I've completely forgotten about this, but I have a friend who is um a trained coach who I who I do this with like every now and then. If I have usually it's some kind of dilemma or question about my career or like my professional development, and she's fantastic. Like I'll just message her and I probably speak to her like once every six months or something. So like, hey, I need a I need a minute. Can we have a chat? And she'll, you know, she'll do like a proper sort of coaching session um and unpick a few things with me. And they're always really, really valuable. So yeah, I I agree. Having someone that you can call upon in a very ad hoc manner is is can be just as helpful.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

And building up that relationship because the person then has some context with you and understands, okay, what's changed since last time and you've you've faced this problem before, and that doesn't have to turn into uh a coaching contract, a three-month, six-month, twelve-month program. It can, as you said, just be an ad hoc thing and maybe one session and maybe a couple, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yeah, it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

So one thing that's changed a lot, Lily, uh, since we talked about this last is the the rise of AI and LLMs. And I know a lot of people who have used uh substituted that for human coaching. And you've had a play with that, haven't you? What's your experience been like?

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, I think it was probably one of the first things I did with Chat GPT was see if I could write some kind of prompt that then encouraged it to respond in a coaching style. And it wasn't, it wasn't a very long prompt. And it was something along the lines of I don't want you to give me any answers. I just want you to ask me questions which prompt me to think differently about the the topic that I'm going to message you about. And I think maybe there was like one or two other things of like how I wanted it to respond to me. But it was, I found it really, really helpful. And I did use it quite a few times. I haven't actually used it recently, but I think there's a I think there's definitely space for using LLMs for coaching and you know, building on like a very specific prompt of like how you like to be coached and kind of developing uh that context with the LLM as well, so that they have an understanding of the conversations that you've had before. Although, you know, that's probably not even that necessary either. But yeah, I I think there is space in the world for LLM coaching.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

I'm not sure on where you are on it, although I'll admit I use it a little bit in a different way, but similar. So I've uh our friend Dave Colleen, who we've talked to in the past, has an AI chief of staff called Dex. Uh, and Leon Dharmady uh has built a thing called Rundoc, which uh helps to manage agents. So I've recently mashed the two of them together and I have it interacting with me on my on my Slack. Uh, and I have a chief of staff channel that I've created, and every morning it prompts me and says, right, here's your agenda for the day. Here's what you want to get accomplished. What do you think and what are you doing? So I've been scattered in the past, and uh, I've noticed sometimes I go, you know, I work by myself. If I don't have a structured week, I might go after shiny objects instead of concentrating on things that I had said were my, you know, were my business priorities. Um, so it's been fantastic to help me be more structured about myself. So it does that every morning and then every evening and it prompts me and says, so what did you actually get done today and what's changed? And it helps me recalibrate. And it's you know, very early in in days on on this, and it's fantastic, but that's not a substitute to me for the the kind of coaching I do because even if it asks me hard questions, I don't think that it's going to challenge me and hold me to account in the same way that a person does. It's not going to create space with me. It's not going to read my body language and some of the subtle cues and things like that in the same way. So I think it's really valuable as an adjunct and does a lot. Uh, it can potentially do a bunch of heavy lifting. It can also do training and some other things, but I don't I'm seeing nothing as a full substitute for a coach. Not at this point.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

I was gonna say, not yet.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

We I was talking to somebody the other day and we said uh last night actually, and we were joking about uh everyone says, well, you know, AI is gonna replace everybody, but not my job. My job is special. And we realize the only people at the moment that we could say that AI is not going to replace yet is NVIDIA, because no matter what, they're gonna be needed one way or the other.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Yeah, yeah, that is very true. Um, but I I mean I can see a world where you know you can train or program an LM to coach you as well as, or probably better than some coaches, because there's probably some pretty rubbish coaches out there. Let's let's face it.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

There's rubbish everything out there. We're not gonna judge it all by the the worst. But uh I was reading something, uh, an interview with an author, uh, a celebrity journalist, Taffy Bradeser Ackner, the other day. And she was talking about she interviewed, she did a profile, interviewed in air quotes, Tilly Norwood, the AI actress, uh, who I don't think is even, I think the plug has been pulled on Tilly Norwood, but she went out to do a celebrity profile and talked about the experience and said, you know, one of the things she's learned over the years about doing celebrity profiles is you can ask hard-hitting questions, you can ask good questions, you can befriend the celebrity to up to a point and do all kinds of things. But the real secret she's found is just being quiet and providing space. But and we know this from discovery, you know, you ask a question and then just let the silence sit. People will fill it with all kinds of interesting things that you weren't expecting. But Tilly would never would never fill the silence with anything. Should Tilly, the AI, would sit there and let the silence go as long as you did. Tilly had no awkwardness about just letting things, she had an answer, she gave it, and that she was done, period. And I think there's a very human thing about holding space and making connection that the AI isn't doing, certainly not at this stage. And the a good human connection, the gestalt uh training that did other things, just about how you provide a space for someone to go beyond where they were and in a very safe way draw other things out. Um yeah, I think it's a just a different experience at this point.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Okay, so maybe it's not quite there yet as a replacement for human coaching, but how have you been using AI tools in order to improve your coaching or you know, the outputs of your coaching sessions?

SPEAKER_00 29:36

I haven't actively been using them yet, but I've talked to lots of other coaches and some of them are, and that's really intriguing. And the reason I'm not using them has nothing to do with ethical qualms about it at this point. It's just I I like my practice and I'm still evaluating how I want to use some of these new approaches. But I know other people who use say, say, otter or granola or something else to capture the transcriptions, and they do that so that uh they can be fully present during the conversation and don't have to take any notes. And then they can very quickly uh edit the transcript, take some notes, and share that with their coache uh right after the session. And that can be really powerful for the coachy as well. And then you can go back and look at trends over time and track action items and things like that. And so there are things that are really, really valuable for it. And it is potential, I've also heard um people thinking about creating bot versions themselves that clients can can query. And that's not one I'm I'm I've gone for. I know a couple of people who have tried it. Um the thing that's really sacred to me or really valuable to me about the coaching relationship is the conversation that we have and the relationship that we have. And the advice that you ask me today may be different based on what I've learned or what you've learned or something subtle about your circumstance. And if you ask it of Randy Bot, you know, I don't know what advice it's giving you, even though it's trained on everything I've written and I've written a bunch. So I'm it's it's a very strange business. You may come up and then have a conversation with me and say, Well, you know, your bot gave me this advice, but I wasn't part of that conversation or that relationship. So it's one of those that I haven't seen it being used successfully, or any coach who said, I really stand by this and think it's it's a valid replacement, although for specific training subjects and things like that, I've seen people use it uh externally with others and people are experimenting. So it's an interesting one. Would would you use a a Randy bot, a Mat Lame bot, a coach bot of some sort?

SPEAKER_01 31:51

I think I probably would. Yeah, if I wanted like a quick fix or just like a I think it's that thing of if your expectation is set that this is a bot and that this is AI, then you know, you can try it and see if it helps you with the problem that you're in or the challenge that you have and and take what you want from it. But I mean, I'm sure if someone was using a Randy bot, they wouldn't then come to a conversation with you and be like, hey, remember that conversation we had, unless they didn't know that it was a Randy bot, which I'm pretty sure you would tell them that it's no, but it's it's just it's a weird parasocial relationship that happens over time, and sometimes people forget.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

You know, it's an honest thing you I've been doing doing with this, and I can't remember, was it my actual conversation with you or one of the conversations I had with the bot?

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah, I mean, that would be my problem anyway, because my memory is really bad. So I'd be like, was that a dream that I had, or did we have that conversation?

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Well, I can tell you this conversation has not been an actual dream. It's been lovely, but not a dream. At all real.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

It's a real wait, it's a virtual, real conversation. And now you have to guess if this was all created by AI or if we were actually talking to each other. Um, well, it's been a pleasure, Randy. Thank you so much for joining us on the product experience podcast this evening.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

And Lily, I don't have any more questions for you tonight. Thank you for joining us. And to everyone out there, have a lovely day.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

The Product Experience hosts are me, Lily Smith, host by night and chief product officer by day.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

And me, Randy Silver, also host by night. And I spend my days working with product and leadership teams, helping their teams to do amazing work.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Luron Pratt is our producer, and Luke Smith is our editor.