Self-Awareness First Before AI

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Transcript

Welcome And New Platform Preview

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, it's Tim Hagan from Progress Coaching, and welcome to another episode of Coaching Conversations. Now, we're going to do something a little bit different this episode is I want to share with you today's episode is being brought to you by Assess to Coach. This is our new platform coming out in July 2026 that provides unlimited access to assessments that convert into coaching plans. And the coaching plans can be quick coaching guides, a list of activities or questions, 12-week coaching plans, 48-week coaching plans, strategy. It can also be peer-to-peer coaching plans. It also can be something that we call Convo Builder that actually builds out the ideal conversation, where we anticipate responses from the coachy, and then we literally craft out a framework for people to respond to it appropriately. And so as we go through today, one of the things that I go back to fundamentally, and we just led a session and we do a whole series called Coachability Series. I do believe everything starts with self-awareness. And I think with self-awareness, probably one of the best things that I've ever read was a book by Tasha Yurik. And if you haven't read this book, please get it. It is phenomenal. And here's why. She tells stories, she illustrates research. It is one

The Self-Awareness Gap And Blind Spots

SPEAKER_00 1:20

of the best you will ever, ever read. And here's why. She did something that I think is brilliant. She surveyed people and asked somebody a simple question. And recently I just did it with my wife. Do not do this stuff with your spouse. My wife is a procrastinator. My wife flew through medical school, and all of her friends say, Oh, she worked her butt off. I'm like, No, she didn't. She was, she just flew through. She's just that smart. So she procrastinates. And I go, Beth, you procrastinate. She goes, No, I don't. It's a blind spot. We all have them. And so what Tasha talks about in her book is she surveyed people and simply asked, Are you self-aware? 95% said yes. When she tested them and made them go through a series of progressions to validate, out of that 95%, only 10% were. And you know, when you think about self-awareness and you think about it's the secret sauce to AI, and you're like, well, wait a minute. Let me just fast forward. You know, when we think about the challenges that we have, when we think about the challenges we have in terms of the workforce today, things are moving really fast. And I just I've had it, I predicted this two years ago. I'm now getting it every day. Now I shouldn't say every day, I'm getting it a lot. And that is my employee asked me,

AI Fear At Work And Readiness

SPEAKER_00 3:05

is my job going to be replaced by a you know, AI? How do how should I respond? I get that all the time. And so what's happening is AI is exposing the mentality of today's employee. Am I ready for change? We just built out an AI readiness assessment, which is part of our assessed to coach platform. And it asks these questions around change and uh willingness and ability. And I had somebody just say, Oh, I hate this thing with AI. It's just blowing things up. And I said, So how are you successfully preparing yourself? He goes, Oh, I'm not touching it. And I smiled, didn't say a word. And he said, What are you smiling at? I go, I know your answer, but I want to give you 60 seconds to not answer so you can come up with a different answer. So I'm kind of prepping the mentality. And he goes, What's that? I go, What if you don't have a choice? He said, Yeah, I said, 60 seconds. So one of the greatest things we can also do as coaches is get people to reflect, get them to think in the moment. I mean, that's why we coach. And what was really interesting is that at 60 seconds, he came up with a different answer. About 40, he started to do this. He started thinking because his immediate response was rejection, push it away. I'm not cultivating self-awareness, and I'm sure as heck, not going to embrace this thing called AI. And it pushes people into these different mindsets. And he said, Boy, I hadn't thought of it that way. 60 seconds. Now, I didn't say this to my my friend, but I did say to myself, it took you 60 seconds to think, you know what? I could be vulnerable here. I should do something about it. So I gave him a guide that we wrote on AI readiness. And he said, Boy, this has really helped. And a couple weeks go by. He goes, Boy, this Claude thing, this Claude Cork, this is kind of cool. I said, Yeah, it's kind of cool. It saves you a lot of time, huh? He goes, Do you use ChatGPT? I said, Well, we use that and open eye and claude. I said, We're looking at perplexity. The tools are fantastic. To ignore them would be just not a smart thing to do. Now, do I think our jobs might change? Sir, my job's changing exponentially. That's why we built Assess to Coach. It is an AI-powered platform that takes assessments, whether it's disk, EQ, other things, and we spit out coaching plans specific to the expectations of the leader or the employee. That's what we do. Our whole mission with AI and automation is to make coaching easier for the leader. So I bring all this up not to sell you, but to give perspective. I can't just simply do training. I can't simply just do a training course on a topic because you can go out to an AI tool and get those answers quickly. So we're now delivering, you know, cohorts and more community-based stuff, which I love, by the way. And so what we have to do now more than ever is get people to self-discover. And why coaching now more than ever is needed. Here's why. There's a great article at written by a coach, a certified coach, executive coach at Stanford from an article at Fast Company. My friend Joe

Why Coaching Matters More Now

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Leggett sent it to me. And it was so interesting because they're talking about how AI gives the answers that people want to hear, which I think is really interesting. And so coaching is really a two-step process. Number one, it's getting someone to look in the mirror. Number two, it's getting them to take action on number one. I've been defining coaching fundamentally like that for 33 years. Now, how do you start with number one? You start with people's strengths. Gallup reports, people engage eight times more. So start with the good things they do. It builds up goodwill, it builds up trust, it builds up momentum to move into the areas where we have opportunities to improve. Now, somebody once said to me, and I'll never forget this. Well, how do, you know, how do we get people to see that? You know, because I think my people are pretty self-aware. I said, really? And she said, Yeah. And I go, so when was the last time someone knocked on your door and revealed to you their shortfalls or shortcomings? And we're in a workshop setting, and she goes, You asked really good questions. I said, You stall really well. And we started laughing. And she said, No, I said, How many of your people honestly will demonstrate resistance when you give feedback? She said about 50%. I smiled and I said, Those are the ones who verbalize it, right? Do the other ones just kind of nod when you give feedback? And you're under the assumption they just fully agree with you. She said, Boy, you've got me really thinking. We started laughing. And so what's happening now is that AI is really important. Conversations are now more valuable. And I'm going to give you kind of a parallel. When the pandemic happened, we all started to work from home. We all got reclused from each other. We're wearing masks. It was a weird time. Then, as time went on, the pandemic started to dissipate. Now, what we found out during the pandemic is oh, I hate working at home. I feel bottled up. I don't have to drive in. This is kind of cool. I'm saving on gas. I'm not in traffic. I'm getting my work done. I'm not having the idle conversation that would make my day longer than what it needed to be. But here's the flip side of that. Years later, people were saying what? I can't wait to get back into the office and see people. See, when technology goes up, so does the need for human connection. Then what happened is what? People wanted hybrid working models. Well, can I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday from home? That became a big point of contention. Huge news. What did it change? It changed the conversations leaders needed to have with their employees. AI is going to perpetuate, accelerate, demand that we have conversations around these topics. So when we're having these conversations and we're having these situations where we have to really be fully embedded into coaching our employees, I go back to one fundamental thing, everybody. At the end of the year, please don't let AI do your end of the year review. I'm even seeing tools like that. Because the minute that AI misses something, and it will, just like we will as human beings, see, AI is not walking down the hall, at least not yet. It's not walking down the hall and observing.

Don’t Outsource End-Of-Year Reviews

SPEAKER_00 9:30

It's not calling you into the office arbitrarily for the good stuff. There are great AI tools. We build them as well. I have about 40 AI products I've built. The challenge that we have is human connection is where it's at. Now, let's be candid. When we do the end-of-the-year review, what what happens? We don't really get excited. We don't typically leave our end-of-the-year review and say, Well, I got the raise exactly what I wanted and deserved. We come up with reasons due to a lack of self-awareness of where I should have been paid more because we have blind spots. I forget the negative attitude I demonstrated every month, but I should have been paid more. And people lose logic, they lose reasonable behaviors. We're emotional creatures, yet we need that emotion. AI, at the end of the year, if it gives a report to the manager and the manager says, Lisa, here's your end-of-the-year review. I got your AI report. And you're getting a merit raise of 2%. She's now mad. You know what just went through Lisa's mind, our hypothetical employee? You didn't even spend any time. You don't even know what I do. And that's what we're headed towards. So what's the answer? One, continue to craft self-awareness. You craft self-awareness by asking questions. If I tell somebody, Bob, you have a negative attitude, what does Bob do in that moment? He comes up with seven answers in two seconds of why I'm wrong. Versus saying, Bob, what do you think you do really well with your teammates? Bob answers, Bob, what are two things you could do that would be more influential and maybe even raise your level of play with your teammates in terms of relationships? What are the first two specific things that just came through your mind? I use the word specific in two because it triggers the brain to answer, not like,

Questions That Create Real Change

SPEAKER_00 11:15

well, I can't think of anything. Because if I ask Bob, do you feel like you get along with your employees or fellow teammates really well? What is he going to say? No, they hate me. What he's going to say is what? Yeah, I think I do. It's rhetorical. Questions drive self-awareness. Once questions are answered in a way that there's an openness, you take action, you take application, you take practice, you apply it. That's how you craft self awareness. Put your comments in. Let us know your thoughts. If you have any questions, put them into the comments. We'd be happy to answer them. And I'll put my email address in at the bottom of this, but feel free to send me an email of your thoughts or even a question you might have as it relates to this topic. Thanks everybody. Hope you enjoyed this.