Interconnectedness, AI and Coaching, with Rob Kemp

Diving into the core of coaching, the episode explores its values and impact on individuals and organisations, particularly schools. Our guest, Rob Kemp, shares insights on measuring the impact of coaching, the role of authenticity, and the emerging relationship between AI and coaching. The conversation also touches on the readiness of organisations for coaching and the broader implications of these practices on human connectedness and organizational culture.

00:00 Welcome to Interbeing: A New Season Begins

02:01 Introducing Today's Guest: Rob Kemp

03:34 What Does Being Human Mean to You?

03:59 Authenticity and Relational Coaching

07:54 Deficit vs. Strengths-Based Models in Education

13:36 The Future of Coaching: Revolution or Evolution?

22:35 AI and the Democratization of Coaching

23:40 Six Criteria for Organizational Coaching

25:38 AI's Limitations in Coaching

30:08 Challenges and Misconceptions in Coaching

31:57 Ensuring Organisational Readiness for Coaching

42:42 The Importance of Trust in Coaching

43:19 Final Thoughts and Reflections

A qualified and experienced Coach, Rob Kemp is a Doctor of Coaching & Mentoring, (2021) holding an MSc in Coaching & Mentoring (2013), and a post-graduate certificate in coaching (2005).

He has coaching experience in the public sector, commercial organisations, education, not-for-profit and voluntary organisations. Sector experience in creative and digital industries, life sciences, new technology, low carbon and clean technology, with extensive experience of senior management and directorships in varied organisations, and specific responsibility for performance, learning and development. Rob was previously the large organisation liaison person (LOLP) for the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, and coordinator for East Midlands Regional Network.

You can find Rob’s paper on AI and coaching, written with Tatiana Bachkirova, at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17521882.2024.2368598#abstract

You can find us on Linkedin at

Matt Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-hall-msb/

Naomi Ward: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomi-ward-098a1535/

Interbeing is made by Making Stuff Better https://makingstuffbetter.com/ and produced by Emily Crosby Media https://emilycrosbymedia.com/

Transcript

This transcript is AI generated.

[00:00:00] Naomi Ward: Hello and welcome to series four of the MSB podcast and to our new name, Interbeing 

[00:00:13] Matt Hall: in our previous seasons, we've explored themes like belonging, organizational health, and the future of education. 

[00:00:19] Naomi Ward: This time, we are returning to the source of what we do. Coaching and how the values of coaching can support people in schools to look both inwards, reconnecting with their own humanity and outwards to cultivating generative relationships with care and curiosity.

[00:00:38] Matt Hall: You might be wondering about our new name, inter being is a term coined by Zen Master tick Horn. It describes the deep interconnectedness and interdependence of all things. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything is in relationship constantly influencing and being influenced by everything else. 

[00:00:57] Naomi Ward: This thread of relationship of inter being colors, everything we're exploring this season, we are in conversation with voices we are drawn to in the world of coaching and with educators in international schools who were walking with us, reflecting on what's changing for them and the questions they're living into now.

[00:01:15] Matt Hall: We're not here to present coaching as the answer to everything. Instead, we want to have honest, open conversations about where coaching works, where it doesn't, and what possibilities lie ahead. 

[00:01:26] Naomi Ward: And this season is just the beginning. Inter being is also the name of our annual in-person gathering a space to explore these themes more deeply face-to-face.

You can find more about that in the show notes. 

[00:01:40] Matt Hall: As always, we are guided by curiosity and by the aliveness of the unfolding conversation between us. We ask everyone the same first and last question, but what happens in between is shaped by the people in the room, including you. 

[00:01:54] Naomi Ward: So thank you for being here.

[00:01:55] Matt Hall: Welcome to Inter Being.

[00:02:01] Naomi Ward: So today we are in conversation with Rob Kemp and Rob is. Possibly the most knowledgeable and humble person when it comes to just his wisdom and immersion in, in coaching. 

[00:02:18] Matt Hall: Yeah, he really is. He's been a, he is been such a ally of ours, hasn't he? As, as MSBs grown and, and now leads on our impact and evaluation, um, work, you know, which is no, no easy feat when you're trying to reasonably and realistically, um, measure the impact of.

Coaching. Um, and he does it with, you know, he is got a doctorate in this and does it with real care and, um, kind of subtlety of thought. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to him to to, to listening and talking to him about how that looks in other organizations. 'cause he works beyond schools, how schools and organizations readied themselves for coaching and what are some of the pitfalls.

I also really wanna ask him, 'cause I know he is published a paper on this about. This growth of ai. He, he wouldn't position, I don't think he'd say he was an expert in AI in coaching, but he's definitely got some strong views on it, which, uh, I think I may share, but I might be wrong. So I'm, yeah. I'm looking forward to having a chat.

[00:03:17] Naomi Ward: Yeah. Diving into some big questions. 

[00:03:19] Matt Hall: Hi Rob. Thanks so much for joining us on. This episode of Into Being, and we're gonna start where we always start, which is today, on the 16th of July, 2025. What does being human mean to you? 

[00:03:36] Rob Kemp: So we're starting with the easy questions. Are we Matt?

[00:03:39] Matt Hall: Yeah. I thought we'd start lightly.

[00:03:42] Rob Kemp: You may as well have said, what's the meaning of life? And then expect.

[00:03:45] Matt Hall: Okay. Well I can if you like.

[00:03:48] Rob Kemp: Um, no be being human. Um. I think, I think it depends who you are. I can only really answer for me. Um, but, but for me, I definitely align much more with the kind of philosophies about what it is to be human, um, that are Eastern rather than western, you know, so the, we rather than the, i, you know, the community and sensing rather than kind of, you know, thinking as a, as a way to kind of be human.

So I would definitely use the word relational if I had to put a definition together. That's my kind of meaning, uh, being in relation. Um, but that wouldn't be true of everyone, right? You know, if you're a, if you're a hermit off the, uh, you know, off the Western Isles of Scotland, you know that's not your meaning.

That's not what it means to be human. Um, so it depends who you are, where you are. But for me it's all about being in relation, in relationship with other people, with other organizations, with other systems. Um, that's my re and dra and it's, and it's kind of, you know, it's very personality orientated as well, I would say.

If you ask my reason for being, it was, it would be probably to love and to be loved. That's it, simply. So, yeah, and I think we walk this kind of interesting path. Don't move between the I and the we, you know, the individual and self-interest and the we of the collective interest and greater good and

I think. Working at the extremes of those is problematic, isn't it? You know, it's all about me and about no one else, or it's all about everyone else and not about me. Both of those extremes are kind of problematic. Um, but being somewhere in the middle, uh, is probably healthier. 

Thanks. And I know a lot of your work that you do in the world is centered around allowing people to be more human at an organization or level or in an organization.

I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit about that, that work and particularly it's the, the role that coaching's played in that. 

Yeah. I mean, we all have our own view of the world, don't we? And how, how it operates. And sometimes I kind of see the world a little bit, like, um, maybe a bunch of actors walking around with, uh, you know, performing roles.

And, um, I'm minded of Irving Goffman's work of you, presentation of self in everyday life and how we have this kind of on. Off stage kind of bit in the wings. Um, and so authenticity, like, so what does authenticity really mean? What does it mean for coaches? What does it mean for, for people in general? And so a lot of the work that I do is really about.

Connecting people with their authentic self, um, and bringing more of that to their work and how they show up. It's interesting. Um, think thinking about personality and authenticity and all those things, you know, um, I, I remember way, way back being kind of tested on some psychometric profile, the name of which I won't mention.

And, um, you know, it being explained to me that, you know, I was this sort of style and if I wanted to kind of get along with influence these sort of people, then I needed to be a different way. I needed to be much more their way. And that was how to get on in life, right? To be able to flex and be this sort of social chameleon.

Um, and. I kind of heard the message, but inside me was this voice going, I don't really want to be any less of me. You know, I want to be more of me. Um, and so I've always had a problem with that kind of idea that really the way to operate, get on, be promoted, be liked and recognized is actually to, to flex whether people to, to, to the extreme.

[00:07:36] Naomi Ward: You know, 

[00:07:37] Rob Kemp: that doesn't mean. I don't do it because I think we all do it to some, some extent. Um, but my work is really about trying to bring the authentic self in terms of less acting, less mask and more authentic values and more authentic self. 

[00:07:54] Matt Hall: It's a really interesting perspective, particularly related to schools which are often charged with that problem, particularly with working with students that our model is, and we explore this a bit in the last season.

Our model is. A deficit model. You know, where are your gaps and how do we fill them? And what if schools were, where are your strengths and how do we grow them? Um, and um, again, my curious brain is wondering whether tools like the ones you describe, or organizational approaches that are, you need to be more like something else, whether they have their roots in our education system.

[00:08:31] Rob Kemp: Yeah, it's funny, you know, I mean, I, I like over my, you know, couple of decades of working primarily as a coach, I found people much more interested in the conversation about deficit than they have about strengths. You know, just, just experientially. Um, I found people who. Really are uncomfortable in that area of like, you know, what's going well and, um, how might I leverage that unique, special thing that I bring in my circumstances.

They're almost less kind of capable in some way of having that discussion than they are of the kind of deficit fixing things, which I find curious. I, I'd much rather talk about the things that I'm great at than those things that I'm not so great at, but it seems to have been a feature over the, over the years.

I don't know, may, maybe it is about how we're brought up socialized, schooled, educated that, you know, it is a lot about gap filling, you know, knowledge gaps, skills gaps, performance gaps. Uh, so maybe we're just sort of conditioned into that way of thinking that, well, if I sought these things, then overall I'll be better.

What, whatever better means. 

[00:09:44] Naomi Ward: We, we had some interest, an interesting perspective at our recent conference where someone offered that that was a result of capitalism. That if we're always in deficit, then we'll always consume, right? So it's part of the system we're swimming in and the language that we are immersed in.

So we're talking about a new language, aren't we? Like words create worlds. What about a language that moves towards life? Coaching rather than deficit. Yeah. And, and what, and what that looks like within an organization. 

[00:10:20] Rob Kemp: Yeah. I think, I think that's really well observed. Um, and, and it's all tied up with this idea of, of actually being human in one in another way, which is, you know, the striving of the self, you know, the idea.

We're sort of wired for the next thing that when we achieve something, you know, that that achievement's kind of gone and we, we just want more and more and more. And that definitely ties in with the idea of capitalism, doesn't it? Like I don't hear organizations saying, do you know what? We're profitable, we're big enough, let's just do this.

What they tend to say is, we're profitable. We could be more profitable. If we scaled, we could be far more profitable, we could do more, we could do better. And I think the ethos or the approach or, or the value even right, of more equals, better drives all sorts of things, both beneficial and consequential.

Um, but I think when we take those approaches and when we say those things, I think we should say them with, with much more mindfulness of what we're actually saying. And again, you know, often in my coaching I'm having conversations about what it means to take a particular stance eg. You know, growth 

[00:11:32] Matt Hall: more, better that lives, I think, in my experience in a lot of coaching models as well, right?

Or, or a lot of rationale for engaging in coaching or rolling coaching out across an organization. Greater productivity, higher performance, greater impact promotion. 

[00:11:54] Rob Kemp: More, more, more. 100%. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, very goal oriented, you know, what's the goal, what's the achievement that you want? I mean, less prevalent in, in some forms of, you know, some kind of theoretical genre of coaching, you know, when you're thinking about something like GAL or, uh, maybe psychodynamic coaching, you know, so there are, there are, if you like.

Schools of coaching in which that kind of more better goal orientation isn't so prevalent. But the vast majority of kind of coaching models, tools and approaches, um, that we see used in organizations are that kind of, you know, generative, performative, goal orientated type type of coaching. I was, I was laughing at the end, at the end of a coaching session I had last week.

Um, we sort of had a bit of an after conversation about, about the session. It was a bit like an after session and we got onto this topic of, of, you know, goal orientation. And I was talking about where I was with it. And my coach, he said, oh, well I better formulate some goals then for next time should I.

And I sort of laughed and thought, well, if that's what you wanna do, great. I will work with whatever you wanna work with. But I also want you to know that this kind of thing that we're doing, this relationship that we're having is about more than that. It's about who you are in the world, how you operate, how you feel, the direction or the path that you want to go in.

You know what, what have your needs, wants, desires. That are being satisfied at the moment and, and, and which are not. I mean, we sort of had a little laugh about it, about goal orientation, which is not unusual conversation to have with a coachee, but it's one that happened last week. 

[00:13:31] Naomi Ward: There are two sort of paths that I'm seeing, and I know Matt will see more and so will you.

But one is like, is so is it time for a revolution or, or an evolution of, of coaching? As you know, it's a very young profession and context, and I'm also hearing this. Idea of the coaching relationship as a practice for relating to take out into wider contexts. 

[00:13:56] Rob Kemp: Yeah. 

[00:13:57] Naomi Ward: Where do we need to go? 

[00:13:58] Rob Kemp: Yeah, I mean, is is, is it time for a revolution?

I mean, I think it's interesting, isn't it? Like some ideas in coaching seem to take hold really, really quickly and others don't take hold or have a very slow burn. Um, and it, it must be 10 years ago that, um, Susan David, David Clutterbuck and David Meson published a brilliant book Beyond Goals. It's fantastic.

It's, it's on my shelf and it will stay there forever. When I do my book clear outs, it's one that will stay. And you know, they sort of said, you know, some people are writing that goal space, but some people aren't yet ready for that. And some people are kind of beyond that. And it's an idea that sits there in the coaches sphere, um, but hasn't really taken hold that much.

And I think. Part of that is because coaching at scale is sponsored by organizations, right? You know, it's funded and sponsored, and organizations seem to want and need a kind of crisp definition of what, what coaching is, what it's there to do. Some return on investment, all, all that kind of good stuff. Um, and talking about being beyond goals, kind of, you know, people being more comfortable in their world, kind of existentialism, they're not really, you know, they're not snappy marketing kind of lines, are they?

And I think this is part of the, part of the sort of dissonance that we get within selling coaching services for want of a better word. Offering coaching services for money, um, and organizational kind of needs set up an orientation. And I think there is this very, very fuzzy space in the middle. It was kind of part of my original research that I did, um, at Brooks for my doctorate, uh, on emotional labor.

And I, I, I gave it a title, I called it commercial emotional labor. So the idea is this, that uh, somebody who is a coach or representing coaches goes in to an organization to offer their services to sell maybe to a senior leader or HR and training might be their, um, commercial leader maybe, and. They kind of, they, they look like the sort of person who fits to that organization and they talk the language of the organization, you know, performance and targets and, uh, KPIs and all, all the good stuff.

And coaches seem to be chosen on the fact that they're really articulate and they can kind of, you know, use all the right words and to get the work. When they go and do the coaching, life is very, very different. It's not about being articulate and kind of fitting in with the system and focused on KPIs and those, it's almost sometimes the opposite of all of those things.

It's been a great listener. It's being counter to the system and, and offering, you know, provocation and challenge to the way that, that things are, it's offering opportunities for individuals to be provocative themselves. So there's this real dissonance between how coaching services are kind of sold and then how coaching is done.

[00:16:51] Matt Hall: Yeah, it's, it's every marketing team's nightmare, isn't it? You know? Yeah. What's the tagline? We're gonna, we're gonna help you stay exactly where you are. Yeah, yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna help you be more present. Uh. Which, which is, yeah, doesn't, doesn't have a very, health doesn't have a very comfortable place in capitalism as Nomi says.

No. 

[00:17:11] Naomi Ward: So there's something here about coach as provocateur, full trickster, you know, just prodding and pricking a bit at surface and, and that feels like a very human quality to see the big picture and connect. Something that no one else is saying, even if everyone can see it. 

[00:17:36] Rob Kemp: Yeah. And we're privileged to be apart from the system somewhat.

Right? So we can see things that, you know, things occur to us that don't occur to them because we work across multiple systems and we're not part of the system. And so when we see and hear things that we find kind of odd, curious, questionable, it's easy for, easier for us to notice those things than it's for the individual.

So I think there's, there's part of. Uh, the, the sort of privileged position that we have of, of, of distance to the system, but that, that role that you are talking about, Naomi, of kind of provocateur for what you know, for one term, I think that that can only be done in really high trust. And I think that skill of being able to offer provocation with, with kind of kindness and good intentions, and sometimes that takes some framing.

You know, sometimes you can't just come out and be a provocateur. Sometimes you need to frame that provocation. I'm saying this because I notice that, or, um, I don't say this for any of reason than to be helpful, but do you find this, you know, so I think, you know, sometimes framing what we do, framing the provocation within even a trusting relationship.

Allows people to accept the provocation without as much resistance as they might do otherwise. We've built a very competitive world in many ways, haven't we? You know, at large scale. And, and it's competitive within organizations and, you know, the smart people and, and those in senior roles that are the ones who can defend their arguments well and, you know, um, you know, be, be slick and, and kind of, you know, cogent, concise, all that stuff.

And so we built a world in which those things are valued. And so in coaching, when we try and break into that. There is often some resistance. Um 

[00:19:29] Naomi Ward: mm-hmm. 

[00:19:29] Rob Kemp: And, and I say, uh, you know, when I, when I start coaching with someone, I say, if this starts to feel like a normal conversation that we're having in everyday life, we're definitely doing it wrong.

Okay. Because it's not meant to be like that. We're meant to be taking away the layers. And you can say that at the beginning of a relationship and people are nod and say, oh yeah, no, that, that sounds great, or Yes, or whatever. It takes a long time to actually get to that space of operating outside the, the societal organizational school norms of, of communication.

So yes, I do see myself as a, as a, as a clown joker, provocateur in, in many ways, but there is some planning, pre-work, ground setting and skill in doing that, in order not to provoke, um. Some of the reactions that are unhelpful in that space. You know, 

[00:20:20] Naomi Ward: and I guess we're circling around this question of human humanity relation, relating trust.

You are in a lot of work around the relationship between AI and the coaching world and, and the human And that's interesting in the organizational world because coaching is expensive, right? And so, yeah. Where are your thoughts on, on that relationship? 

[00:20:43] Rob Kemp: Yeah. Um, it, it's definitely a, a big topic of interest for me at the moment.

It's very prevalent in the, um, what I laughingly call the coaches sphere, you know, the, the space in which coaches talk to each other, which seems to be my LinkedIn feed, that's all it contains. Coaches talking to each other. Ai, I mean, I, I, I think AI is extraordinary. Like I just, I'm bowled over actually sometimes by the capabilities that it has.

It can pull together information far quicker than we can that, you know, it just, yeah, it, it's extraordinary and it's a massive technological leap. But yeah, I sure will definitely change, you know, the world of work, um, productivity, all those things. Um, I think we're, you know, we're in early stages of that, but you can imagine in 10 years time where AI is much more integrated into many things that we do, that, you know, um, things will feel very different.

I think there's a risk that things will feel dehumanized in the same way that, you know, when we used to have a, have a bank manager or, or a teller at the bank that we used to ring up or go and talk to and have a conversation that now we just interact with a, with a keypad and some technology and, and maybe, maybe an AI bot that the, the bank has created that isn't that useful at the moment, but probably will be one day.

For me, it feels kind of dehumanized and yeah, less useful. Um, uh, Tatiana Bakker over called AI in coaching, the unification of coaching. And, uh, it wasn't a word that I'd heard before, but I will looked it up immediately and went, that's exactly what it is. It's unification, you know, it's something of a lower quality and a, and a, um, you know, a frustrating technology.

It was one of the reasons I, I, I, about a year ago, Tatiana Backer over and I wrote a paper on AI and coaching, talking about whether AI was an opportunity for democratization. Um, because coaching's expensive and, you know, um, there aren't as many coaches as people. Uh, you know, is, is it an opportunity for democratization or is it offering something else, which is of a, um, a lower quality and not really coaching.

Where we started at was as a profession. We haven't done ourselves many favors because, um, we haven't been very clear. We haven't communicated very clearly what organizational coaching is. There aren't many definitions of organizational coaching. There are many different definitions of coaching. Um, but none of them, for me seem to capture everything.

Um, and they, they come from different places. Um, they're orientated in different ways. So if we can't clearly and crisply define what we mean by coaching or organizational coaching, it's very difficult then to say, well, AI can't do that. So what we did was we started from the space of saying, well, what is organizational coaching?

We came up with six criteria against, which then we would say, well, ca, can AI do these things? Is it, is it capable by nature of doing these things? Um, so the first was around joint inquiry. To sort of have a, a joint co-created space, which understands subjective experience, that that understands context, that that's based on kind of authentic response to one another, this joint inquiry or joint journey.

The second was around making sense of our experience and our experiences with a, with a focus on action. Um, so what's happened to me? Why has it happened? How might I think about it and what might I do as a result of those things? The third was around values. Um, like value-based, being purposeful and ethical.

The fourth was about being highly contextual, like really, like every person I coach, even if they're in the same organization, their particular context is so important to the discussion that we're about to have. Um, so highly contextual. The Penta one, number five was a relationship based on trust. So it has to be a, a joint inquiry based on on trust.

And then finally number six was around contracting and being contracting based. That coaching is a contracting based activity, not just in the contract that exists between, you know, a school and MSB, for example, but the contract that a coach makes, makes, keeps, and adapts during a coaching, um, assignment or a coaching relationship.

So that's not a definitive list, that's not the world. You know, according to Backer Over and Kemp, that that was our offer for, these are the six kind of pillars that we think, um, hold up organizational coaching. But that paper was meant, meant to be, or intended to be the start of a conversation about, well, what else might be important in organizational coaching?

But as a starting point, because no one else has really done that. We thought that was a good at least basis to say, well, can AI do these things? Um, and not, not just can AI do these things or will be able to do these things in the future? Like, is it a matter of technology when Ai, AI gets smarter, you know, more functional, better at what it does, but, but can it by its nature?

Um, and on in each of those areas, we argued that it, that it wasn't possible. Um, you know, AI likes subjective experience. It's a language model. You know, it can't make sense or, or reflect. It can't show empathy. It can, it can emulate empathy pretty well, but it can't have, uh, empathy. Can it have ethical responsibility?

No. I mean, it, it can't it just ask it, it, it will tell you that it, it can't act ethically, and there are lots of examples of it acting unethically. So, yeah, a ad nauseam really, you know, you can, you can look at each of those tests of like, is is it possible or will it ever be possible for AI to fulfill some of those, uh, basic criteria.

And then you move a little bit wider and, and say, well look at the coaching world as it is. What are the things that make a professional coach, you know, coach training, maybe accreditation, professional associations, professional supervision, CPD. None of those things apply to an ai. And so it's almost like we have accepted.

What's called artificial intelligence, intelligence into the space of coaching without critically saying, hang on a sec. Not can we, but, but should we mm-hmm. Allow this technology into the, into the space. 

[00:27:10] Matt Hall: Yeah. It feels like a real distinction between what, what's possible and, you know, what can we have versus what do we want?

And, um, I, I was reminded of, reassured actually. Recently when someone, someone had pointed out to me that the weekend was invented during the Industrial Revolution. 'cause the industrial revolution was powering forward at kind of immense growth and change. And, and, and someone I, and I, I, you know, I'm happily misquoting all of this and someone will listen to this and say, no, it wasn't.

But anyway, the, the principle is a useful one, which is, you know, someone paused and said, what do we actually want? Do we want a industrial system? That means that people are working factories for every last minute of every day, or do we need to build in some break? And I'm sure there's a cynical version of that that says, yeah, the weekend was invented to increase productivity.

Maybe it was, but, but I, I, I, I guess the, there's an invitation there, isn't it? You know, we can have these things. Someone did a sales pitch to me recently about, you know, MSB could be rolling out chat bots to every teacher in the world. Um, yeah, we could. Mm. Um, do we want every teacher in the world to be having a coaching conversation with the chatbot?

I don't. Mm. 

[00:28:27] Naomi Ward: I think there's a really rich invitation to ground ourselves in what we do want, which is where we're heading and, and how we express that and. Take a stand for it. And we've, we've done some work on this in MSB and one of the sentences is that we've landed on is we are grounded in our care for each other.

And I'm taken back to what you said, you know, to love and be loved. So is there an invitation that we're sort of being forced into to claim what this is? 

[00:29:02] Rob Kemp: Yeah, I, yeah. Being forced into. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, not, not a moment too soon. Really. I mean, it's, it, it's back to the, you know, why coaching and, and what's the value of coaching?

Um, it's easy to work with somebody who has experienced coaching and believes in its power and knows what it'll do, even though they can't define it. Well, then it would be to go and, um, convince, uh, you know, a finance director or you know, someone who holds the, the money responsibility, who doesn't know what coaching is.

And I think. Or hasn't experienced coaching. And so it sort of led the profession almost to this sort of, um, almost sort of pseudo kind of spiritual place of, you know, it's about belief and about experience. And, um, you know, you'll know when you've had it, you'll know the value of it when you've had it, but then not being crisp about articulating what that value meant to that person.

And it also comes back to another really critical point about like, well, who receives the benefit of coaching? Is it the individual? Is it the organization? Is it the coach? You know, who's getting benefit right out, out of this relationship? I would argue that probably all those three things can, can be true.

They're not mutually exclusive at all. And I would also argue that some of the benefits that individuals receive, things like a feeling of wellbeing, a bit more of a feeling of balance, the ability to kind of have difficult conversations with people, the ability to challenge the, the status quo, the ability to be more boundaried.

The process of becoming more reflective, all those things are organizationally beneficial. It's just very difficult to draw a straight line between those things and the thing that often organizations value the very most, which is a top line and a bottom line. Um, and I think. That, that's at the heart of some of the, the problem that we experience as a profession is articulating value in, in a credible way, because value means different things for different people.

So, yeah, I mean, I've been an evangelist for coaching for a long time, um, and, and I've got deeply involved in trying to evaluate, you know, help evaluate coaching from as many perspectives as possible. You know, the, the personal, the interpersonal, the, the, the system, the kind, you know, the, the, the finances that I've, you know, I've tried to look at coaching from a sort of 360 degree perspective to try and pull out what it does for organizations.

Now, I don't think we will ever be able to do that in a way that would convince somebody who's only interested in the profit, but I do think we could do it in a way that's credible for most kind of thinking leaders. 

[00:31:57] Matt Hall: Yeah. One of the things we've talked about before, Rob, which I think, no, at the moment, I'm really confident AI can't do, is this, is this contextual understanding of where coaching fits.

And I mean, maybe it will, uh, the, the technologist will say, we're, we're working on it. But you know, how, how do you ensure an organization is ready for coaching and an individual is ready for coaching? And how might organizations, particularly the ones that we're working with, avoid. The risk that coaching becomes the proxy for other things that need addressing.

Curious about your experience and on that. 

[00:32:33] Rob Kemp: Yeah, yeah. No, they, they're good thoughts. I mean, like when organizations bring, when schools bring MSB in, like what's their, like what's their raise on Detrol? Why are they doing that? 

[00:32:45] Matt Hall: I mean there, there's, there's often a range, a range of reasons. Um. The predominant one is they're looking for some cultural shift to greater connectedness, greater understanding of each other, greater cohesiveness between and amongst teams.

Um, I'm really assured actually that often, particularly in the education world, the the lead headline is, is not necessarily productivity, performance outcomes, even though sometimes that. Case needs to be made to people in a senior level in the position who are looking at the numbers in the bottom line or the educational outcomes.

But we often partner with the right people, I think, that are looking for a much re richer and more to connected culture in their schools and know that that will create a range of benefits that may, that may not be measurable. Um mm-hmm. So we're in a, we're in a good, we're in a good place. I think often when we partner.

I also think we could be better at readiness and being clear about what's possible through coaching. 

[00:33:49] Rob Kemp: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Um, and, and it's to do something, it's to contribute towards something. It's to, it's to have an effect in some sort of way, whether that be culture or, or leadership or whatever.

As you were speaking, I was reminded of a, of. Of a project I was involved in a good sort of, probably 15 plus years ago, but, uh, um, it, it sort of plays to what we're talking about here and, um. I remember working on, on the projects and doing the work and doing the coaching with, with another coach. And it was good.

We, we did everything that we said. We sh you know, that we did everything they wanted us to do and the outcomes that they were looking for were achieved with the individuals we were, we were coaching. Um, and I remember the MD of the organization coming up to me at a conference afterwards and saying. I was kind of disappointed.

Coaching didn't do more, and part of me wanted to sort of, you know, tear my hair out. Um, part of me wants to laugh and part of me wanted to cry. And, you know, what I wanted to say to that individual, um, and probably should have said was, well, you didn't do anything else except pay us money to do coaching.

You know, your, your leaders still are working from a real kind of model of, you know, top down command control. It's a very, very kind of, um, claustrophobic culture where ev every, you know, movement is sort of scrutinized, you know, it's not a very nice place to work. And so the fact that we were able to achieve anything is frankly, a miracle.

What, what I actually did was sort of smile and walk off, but, um, um. But, but that sort of pertains to what we're talking about really, or relates to what we're talking about because coaching is intentionally brought into organizations. It doesn't slide in it, you, it doesn't just happen, you know, there's, there's a lot of work that needs to put coaching into organizations.

But I think there are a few questions that need to be asked. You know, like, what is it we need to do as an organization to be ready for this? What do I need to do as an individual? How do we prepare coachees? And the third, probably even more important, or at least as important question is. What are the things are we going to do?

What else around coaching is going to happen to support the changes that are required? Um, or that we want or that are desirable? Because I think often coaching is put in as the sort of magic bullet panacea kind of, well it's okay 'cause we've paid all this money for coaching and that's going to change things.

Um, and I think, I think it's a bit naive actually, frankly. I think it's naive from a kind of, you know, an organizational perspective, a leadership perspective perspective, an organizational development perspective. You need to be pulling on all the levers that you have. You need to be using all the resources that you've got.

You need to be thinking about every part of your business, you know, your school, how it works. In order to think how do we re, is there any realignment we need to do? Is there any adjustment we need to do? Are there new programs that we need to put in? Is there is then fresh thinking that needs to be done.

In order to support the ultimate change that we're trying to achieve. And rather than relying on, uh, coaching to be the thing that makes all of the difference. I dunno if that resonates with you, but Yeah. It's my experience. 

[00:36:55] Naomi Ward: Yeah. Yeah, certainly we've, we sort of advocate that coaching is not a means to an end.

It needs to be connected to what you're doing and your, your change agenda. And, and that's about deep partnership, which is something. We're good at. 'cause we are, we are, we are good at listening. But I think, yeah, somewhere, it's somewhere to put our attention and it's somewhere for our partners to put their attention too.

And there's this, this is something I've come across as well, which is, um, if you bring in coaching and you want people to be more authentic and more vocal and step up into more leadership, are you ready for that? So there's the readiness of your culture. Are you a listening culture and are you ready to be challenged?

Otherwise, the one-to-one container becomes a, a hidden venting space, which is very limited. So the more I think about it, the more the organizational groundwork is everything. 

[00:37:54] Rob Kemp: Mm. It's critical. Yeah. I mean, the benefit that you have, um, at MSB is you're working with people who have the ability to affect change, right?

You know, you're working with leaders, you're working with people who, you know, have some authority and have some presence in the system who can, you know, who can do things. Um, but that doesn't have to, that doesn't have to just originate in the coaching conversation. It can, it can originate before coaching starts, you know, outside the coaching conversation.

So I think. There are, there are other scenarios aren't there, where actually you're working with people who are much less senior and they don't really have the, the ability to affect change and, um, that's a different scenario altogether. So I think you do have the benefit of actually working with a group of people, generally speaking, who are, who have some kind of agency and power to, to do something if not individual, if not individually, certainly collectively.

So I think that's a good thing. I guess if there was a, a sort of. A way of kind of, you know, collecting our thoughts on this. It's, it would be, don't expect coaching to everything. You know, coaching is gonna do something. Coaching might be the seed. Coaching might be the thing that encourages people to, to take action.

But don't expect it to be your, the panacea for the thing that you are trying to do. You need to think more broadly than that. 

[00:39:09] Matt Hall: Which brings us right back to what you said at the start. I think Rob, I think one of, we, when we asked you about what it means to be human, I think you used the phrase, you know, we, we exist in connection with each other and nothing exists in isolation and coaching.

Coaching is no different. Um, and I don't think there's any other initiatives I can think of in schools or in organizations where you would introduce it, expecting it just to do its thing by itself. Mm-hmm. So there's something about, yeah, always managing the expectations and thinking about how it integrates with what's happening already and what, as Naomi says, what, what groundwork might need to happen beforehand.

That's absolutely key to it being a successful catalyst for what you wanted to do. 

[00:39:53] Rob Kemp: Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:39:56] Matt Hall: I'm wondering if your answer to that question's changed after our conversation, what it means to be human. 

[00:40:03] Rob Kemp: I don't, I don't think it has. I don't think it has, um, o other than if it is just about being in relation and being in relationship and, and if it's just about kind of, you know, being loved and showing love, um, maybe there's, there's a part of being human that's also about.

Understanding and being kind of mindful, cognizant, being somewhat focused on the potential kind of good that that does in the world. Okay. So, um, so I'm talking about, it's not all about being, it's also a bit about doing, um, if that makes any sense, but yeah, relational relationships in context. In your organization, in, in the wider system.

So, I mean, you know what? I'm kind of a believer, uh, rightly or wrongly, that if you do your best, if you offer your authentic self, if you do the work that you think you've been put on the planet to do. Good can only come of it, and I'm kind of happy to let that just float out into the, into the universe and do its work.

Um, perhaps I would be, you know, perhaps I might be more intentional about what, you know, what, what that is, um, and where it impacts and that might be helpful. Um, but it certainly doesn't change my view of being human as being, you know, relational and in the world. But I am starting after that conversation just to be a bit mindful of the balance between 

[00:41:28] Matt Hall: mm-hmm.

[00:41:28] Rob Kemp: Being and doing. 

[00:41:30] Matt Hall: Small is all. Small is good. Thanks so much for joining us today, Rob. Really appreciate it. 

[00:41:36] Rob Kemp: Uh, you, you are most welcome. Um, it feels like. Many of the conversations that, that you and I and Naomi and I have had over the past couple of years, um, with a microphone. Um, so good. So thanks very much and, um, really enjoyable.

[00:41:50] Naomi Ward: Yeah, thanks Rob. So, lots of themes that will feel poignant to hopefully some of our listeners who are thinking about where do I start, how do I bring coaching in? What is it for? How do we get ready? What is my responsibility? And I think. On the back of this conversation, it, it is a little bit about slowing down and answering those questions.

'cause what I love about Rob in this conversation is he has this expertise and then he also knows the magic that coaching can create. So he sort of holds both perspectives. 

[00:42:27] Matt Hall: Yeah. And I just think that that paper he's written, um, which if you're looking for it, um, we'll put a link in the show notes. Is.

It's such a simple and effective framework to answering all of those things, including the role of AI in coaching. You know, those six, six areas. But particularly for me, the one that really stood out was that, um, relationship is, is built based on trust, uh, and, and that the need for trust as a starting point for the conversation.

Um, when you think about taking coaching into organizations, the, the need to explore trust before you take coaching into organization, the role of trust in a coaching conversation. Um, if that's not there, and it certainly can't be created by ai, that's for sure. I think we established that then. 

[00:43:11] Naomi Ward: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:12] Matt Hall: Then you are gonna struggle for the coaching to be, um, to be doing its thing. Whatever you want its thing to be, right. As always, I think, I think what Rob shared will, will kind of settle and percolate in me is. As the days and weeks go on. 

[00:43:27] Naomi Ward: Mm. But you have this gift map for simplifying things, and I think perhaps readiness is about trust, and then trust is about listening.

Mm-hmm. So, yeah, one to reflect on and, and everyone who learns to coach with us, I'm curious about, yeah. Those six things that Rob named. Mm-hmm. Um, let, let's deepen our humanity in service of relating, um, and. And the connectedness in our schools. I know you're doing wonderful work already. We'll see you next time.

[00:43:58] Matt Hall: Yeah. Let's stay curious. Thanks for listening. If something in this conversation stirred something in you, a thought, a feeling, a question, we'd love to hear about it. You can find ways to connect with us and more about the inter being gathering in the show notes. This podcast is part of a wider dialogue, one that unfolds between us, our guests, and you.

So whether you're walking the dog, driving to school, or just taking a quiet moment for yourself. Thanks for being part of it. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep listening in. This is into being.