Leading Beyond the Framework 🧭 — with Richard Hughes-Jones

And let's face it, even the last month or two

have been crazy, right, in terms of what's happening in tech.

And the, you know, this change has been bubbling away

as it relates to AI for the last year or so.

But right now, things are really changing.

But actually, I don't think that all the things that underpin

what moving into more senior leadership roles has changed.

Look at here.

Welcome to a new episode of The Factor In Podcast,

where every two weeks, we interview a world-class tech leader.

Today's guest is Richard Eug's Johns,

a professional executive coach with more than 20 years of experience.

With Richard, we talked about how to coach tech leaders

through uncertainty and everything that's going on with AI,

how to navigate it, how we should think about our role,

and what it means to step outside of the framework.

We also explored how to leverage AI for coaching,

how to blend human and AI advice to get the best of both worlds.

So let's dive right into the action.

Welcome, Richard, and thank you so much for being on the show today.

So pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

I'm looking forward to this.

Thank you.

So Richard, you are an executive coach to founders,

CEOs, and senior tech leaders in high-growth companies.

And you have more than 20 years of experience

from being a strategic consultant to facilitator and a coach, of course.

And the occasion to have you here is that we met

through our mutual friend Thiago Gisi,

who has been on the podcast too,

and he's a former coaching client of yours.

And you've recently written also a great article together

about learnings from this coaching journey,

and absolutely loved it.

It's, I think, it's one of the most honest accounts of coaching I've read.

So I wanted to have you here to explore how you think about coaching

and many of the themes that you've been exploring with Thiago as well.

Let's do it. Yeah.

No, and thank you for that.

The article came out the other week,

and we've had some really good response to it.

I think it's not often you get to hear a coach and their client

kind of riff on the work they've done together.

So it was really fun to do that with him, yeah?

Yeah, absolutely.

It made me think that we should see more of that if people are willing to.

So I want to start from from the basics that is we have talked to one another

about a couple of weeks ago, and I know that you come from

more strategy consulting background, even government work,

and not tech tech engineering work.

So how did you end up coaching CTOs and founders and tech people?

Good question, right?

Let me I'll go I'll give you a very quick counter.

Because yes, started off in strategy consulting.

I spent about five years in government, interestingly building a big government

program, and I was part of the team that I was the first member of.

We had to pay a million pound, sorry, a million people, one and a half

billion pounds.

It was this big government program.

I was the first member of the team by the end.

There's about 25 of us on the team and we had a big outsource contract

with the with Siemens.

I say that because whilst it wasn't a tech startup, it was a really interesting

journey of going from being, you know,

early member of a very small team or the first member of a small team to

creating something quite big.

Yeah, I was working at Deloitte at the time and I went back there and I knew

I knew it was I knew it was time for a change.

And I thought, you know, how can I take some of these learnings and apply

them? I'd start doing some work at Deloitte.

They were doing some work in the startup space.

And I thought this just looks much more interesting and exciting, quite

frankly, than corporate consultant.

So I kind of jumped, I did the jump off the cliff, you know,

deploy the parachute as you falling and work it all out and started working

around with startup founders.

I think that journey's progressed.

I was started working with fairly early stage founders and now working

increasingly with kind of growth stage and do some corporate work as well.

But yeah, that was, that was, that was the background story.

Hey, if you're using AI to code, you know the pain, too many terminal

pains, multiple agents running at once, copy pasting context between them and

trying to remember which bench has bought.

So the bottleneck is not writing code anymore.

It's coordinating the agents and I've been trying a new app these days from

Augment code called intent purpose built to solve this problem.

Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents, not just

finding them side by side.

It starts with the living spec that updates as agents make progress.

So every task stays aligned with no manual coordination.

Intent works best with Augments, Augy and their context engine,

but you can also bring code code, context or open code.

Intent is what comes after your ID.

Try it for yourself at augmentcode.com slash intent.

Yeah, I love this.

And I think one counterintuitive thing is that you would expect a

CTO coach or a coach of people in tech to have a strong technical background.

And instead when we, when we met the first time, you actually told me that

you think this is an advantage not having it in some cases.

So what, what me through that?

Yeah, I know it's not intuitive.

I think it's an advantage because it means we, when I'm working with clients like

that, we just, we don't get pulled into that technical detail.

And I think something will come onto it a lot in this conversation is as you,

you know, as you move through the ranks as you move into those more senior leadership

positions, it's not being, it's not being the technical expert that gets you to

the next level.

So, you know, typically when a, when a client comes to me when I'm working with a

client, I'm not helping them become technically better at what they do.

Like they've reached a point in their career where they are technically

very good, excellent at what they do.

No, no, no one's questioning their ability to, to, to do, to turn up and do

their job on a daily basis.

It's, it's, it's other things that are holding them back.

And so because we, we can't get pulled into that technical stuff, we have this

space to work on other things.

And I think that's probably that one of the biggest factors.

There's also a relational aspect in that often when you're moving in, if you're

a technical, if you're a really strong technical leader, you're moving to that

next stage in your leadership career, actually, you're, you're interacting more

with the business as a whole and you're, so it's, it's actually, you know,

it's knowing how to have those conversations with other members of your

senior leadership team, other people across the business.

That's, that's what you, that's what you're really working on.

And I, and I can kind of be that interface.

I can be that person that was in those positions and understands how those

people are thinking.

So, yeah, yeah, it, it is really counterintuitive, but it seems to work really

well. Yeah, yeah.

And I think it only makes sense when you look at it through the lens that the

technical details at that level don't matter anymore, which is really, I think,

a non trivial realization for many people in, I mean, it's the ultimate,

what got you here won't get you there since we all started our career

syntax by, you know, working with computers and writing software.

So would you say that generally speaking problems of executives and leaders

in tech are similar to those in other industries, probably everything

becomes a little bit of the same.

I, I think it really does.

I think that, I think that's exactly what goes on.

And so actually, when you're, when you're working with senior leaders,

what their background is, is, is far less important than, than what they're

thinking about or how they're making sense of what they need to do next to

get to the next level.

And actually a lot of things, the things that they need to be doing and the

way that they need to be thinking is very universal at that stage.

And so we are, we are getting into into it.

And you, you told me that this is the moment of possibly biggest change that

you've ever experienced in your, in your career, because of everything that's

going on, AI.

So speaking of these challenges that we have been hinting at for senior leaders,

especially in tech, what, what are you finding out the, the most common

challenges from the people you work with right now?

So that's, it's a good question.

And you, you primed me on this and it stood out as one of those are really

good question.

Because I think things will get into in this podcast about the difference

between that sort of technical and what I think of as more adaptive,

systemic leadership, it would be really easy for me.

I could give you the technical answer to that, you know, in terms of the

specific things that leaders are grappling with.

And let's, you know, let's, let's face it, even the last month or two have

been crazy, right?

In terms of what's happening in tech and the, you know, this change has been

bubbling away as it relates to AI for the last year or so.

But right now things are really changing.

But actually, and again, I think things will come on to, I don't think that

all the things that underpin what moving into more senior leadership roles

has changed, things are the ambiguity still there, the complexity still there,

all the uncertainty still there.

Is it happening a little bit quicker right now in this current moment in time?

Probably yes, like definitely yes.

Are we at some form of an inflection point?

It would appear so.

But all the things that, that leaders need to be thinking about and

working with in terms of how they develop as leaders haven't necessarily

changed, I don't believe.

In fact, they're probably just even more pertinent right now than before.

Yeah, so can we say that to type back to what we said before that AI is yet

another of these technical details in a way that kind of don't matter at that

altitude.

I mean, the problem.

So it was the same more about people, more about yourself.

Can you abstract away from the AI really?

Yeah, yeah, let's do that.

So that is the challenge, isn't it?

So the technical leader is the person that has the answers and often needs to know

the answers, we need to need to know that they have the answers.

The situation we're at the moment is one in which nobody knows the answers,

like nobody knows the answers.

Just look at the look at the articles that are flying around X at the moment.

You know, I keep coming, not I'm not the first person to say I can forget who

it's by the, you know, nobody knows anything and it's easy, you know,

that's not to be nihilistic and say that nobody knows anything at all.

And we can't make any predictions about where the world's going or anything

like that.

It's not to say that, but it is to say that no single expert knows what's going

to happen over the next couple of years.

No one person knows that.

And, you know, for a leader working within that context, that is incredibly hard.

And as you know, as a coach, I'm there to try and support them through that

process of just helping them try to make sense and understand it.

Yeah.

And I guess so part of the work is not getting to the answers,

but maybe being comfortable with this ambiguity that is, it's a fact of life.

And it's okay that we don't know the answers.

Probably it is.

And I think the challenge with this topic is quite abstract, you know,

fundamentally humans, we're not wired for uncertainty.

We want to know where the lions are so that when we come out of our cave,

if we know where the lions are, then we can avoid them.

If we don't know where the lions are, then that makes us anxious, nervous and uncertain.

The challenge is saying to someone, well, just get comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.

Is that's, that's, it's very easy to say.

It's very hard to do.

It's really hard to do.

And it's also really hard to articulate and explain to someone in a conversation

like this because it's quite an abstract concept.

What is the most effective way to help?

I mean, there's no one way, for sure, it depends on the person, the situation.

But how do you think through this?

Because you see, I've told you a simple thing like we need to be more comfortable with ambiguity,

right? And you, you're riding in kind of pushing back to this.

That's easy to say, but it doesn't help actually people, right?

So as a coach, how do you understand what's the best way to help people navigate in this?

If there are like, baby steps and practical things that they can do,

because I do think that there are many things that I understand on a rational level

that I should think about something in a way.

But then I don't know how to get to get myself actually believing that, you know,

an embrace in that.

There is a, it feels like there is a gap and I don't know how to bridge that.

If that makes sense, it does, it does make sense.

I was reflecting, you know, we kind of go on this journey, don't we?

Individual contributor, we're learning, we learn very set things, we learn our skills,

we learn our craft, though we start to learn our craft, I was a consultant,

so I learned PowerPoint, I learned Excel, I learned how to stand up in front of clients,

developers, engineers, obviously go on a different path.

We get to manager and we start learning how to give effective feedback

and have one-on-ones and those sorts of things.

And there's generally a path towards doing that and there's all sorts of models and frameworks

that we can use to help us out.

By and large, if we do those things and we're, you know, we're not sociopathic

and we're relatable people and we've got the intelligence we need to do the job,

we will get promoted, you know, we will keep working our way through.

And we get to this point where, you know, we start getting introduced to more advanced leadership concepts

and, you know, we're told that we need to think more strategically and have more executive presence

and that sort of things.

And these are all things that we do have to do and they're all really helpful.

But they still have seen to only get us to this certain point and that's often when clients come to me

and say, look, I'm kind of stuck, I'm stuck and I'm confused, I don't know what's going on,

I've done all these things, I've read all the books, I've followed the playbooks,

and I'm either not getting to the next level or I've got to the next level and

something's not landing, like what's kind of going on.

And I think, you know, Tiago, Tiago coined this phrase post framework, thank you, Tiago,

I like it, I would add a slight, I'd add post conventional framework in there, you know,

this idea that we've, we've kind of, we've done all the right things,

we've followed these models and frameworks and things, but now we've got to this point

where it's just not working and why is that? And it's because we moved into this position of

leadership that is, that's just, there is far more complexity, is uncertain, there's a lot of

ambiguity that we, that we have to navigate as leaders, we have to navigate personally as leaders,

but we also have to take our team on this journey through all this uncertainty as well.

That's context, your question was, well, how do you do that? And I think, you know, as a coach,

the certain, the, the theories and the frameworks don't go away, I think they just become more

nuanced. And the things, the things that I, yeah, the conversations that I have with clients

around how you help them do that. So we'll answer your question, what are those things?

I think it begins with that in a work. And in a work isn't just being more emotionally intelligent.

In a work is taking the time to look inwards, explore deeply what's, what's going on for you,

what's, what's driving you, what's motivating you. You know, what are the changes that, that you,

you think you need to make? Coaching is predominantly forward looking, but there's also, you know,

we've, where we are now has come from somewhere. It's been influenced by experiences we've had

and things we do. So there is a piece in coaching around looking backwards to sort of help people

understand why they think about things the way that, the way they think about them and why they

do certain things. So I think that, that in a work, it's certainly been the, one of the biggest

evolutions in my own coaching journey is developing my own ability to, to do that deeper work with,

with individuals to help them get a better understanding of, of what's going on for them.

That's one aspect. You know, other work I tend to do with clients is around perspective taking.

And I think that's, I think that's something pertinent at the moment. Andy Grove has that great

line about snow melts from the edges. You know, if you want to understand where, what, what change

is going on, then the person you want to go and talk to is that person that's, you know, that might be

your junior dev or something who's right on the front line of what's going on at the moment. And

it's probably more up to date with a lot of stuff than you might be. And so it's working with clients

to say, you know, to help them get out their own heads, I suppose. I've listened to your Annie

Duke podcast the other day. You know, she said, you want to make a hard decision. You need to get

out there and get everyone else's perspective that, you know, broaden your own perspective by,

by listening to other people. So those are often common themes in coaching conversations. I do

think quite what I find really interesting work around polarities and safe to fail experiments.

So when we think about, we're talking here about, because we're talking here about work,

we're talking about working in complexity and not to not to sidetrack, but the challenges where,

you know, we're not the human brain, it's not evolved to work that well in complexity. It's

evolved to work quite well in complicated environments where we can kind of piece things together and

get to the answers. But in complexity, we have to work in different ways. So, you know, polarity

work with clients is quite interesting. So, gives you some examples. You know, a clarity is,

it's where two interdependent but seemingly contradictory states have to have to be held

at the same time. Yeah. But it's some work with interesting work with Tiago around this. You know,

and he was working with this one around, how do I both bit empower my team, but also be direct

at the same time. You know, to be leadily we're told that we have to have a strong opinion and

be direct in terms of what we think. You know, another clarity that I worked with a technical

client on was the needs of the team and the needs of the business. And actually, that was what was

really, that was holding their leadership back because they were very focused on the needs of the

team. And this was causing some kind of deep internal stress, because of the way in which it

linked to the values that they held and things like that. I stop you here. I stop you here for

me. So, it's the goal you think is to kind of break our mental model that this is, these things are

are at odds one another. Like, we often think about empowerment versus, you know, being more

directive. And as it is, as if it is like a spectrum and you have to decide where to fall on

the spectrum, right? Yeah. So, you're saying instead, this is not a contradiction, just like with

the other example, you can or like do what's good for the business versus what's good for the team.

So, the fallacy is that we think in terms of versus one versus the other.

You've, I mean, you've used the word versus there, which is exactly the word to pick up on because

it's not versus it's not exactly. I know why you've used it. And it's kind of, because it feels

like the right word to use. But these things, yeah, it's not versus. So, it's this either or,

sorry, it's this both and mindset or either or mindset rather than both and two things can be

true at once. And it's developing the capacity to hold both of those things at the same time.

And lean into them, depending on the situation, you know, the context that you find yourself in.

And often that's what what comes through the coaching conversation is one,

recognizing that the power is there in the first place, you call these out to people and it's

really interesting because they're like, oh, I couldn't have named it like that myself because

they're just experiencing it. But when you call it out, they can see it for what it is and then

you can explore it with them, which actually leads on to, you know, the other one of the other

things that we do a lot of in the coaching conversations is these safe to fail experiments.

What are the things that you can go out and try in order to get a better understanding of the situation?

And so a safe to fail experiment is something that, yeah, it's something that you can do. And if it

doesn't, if it doesn't go according to plan, it hasn't, hasn't made you look stupid, it hasn't

damaged the business, hasn't, it hasn't destroyed a relationship, but you've learned something,

you've, you've got, you've had that feedback loop, you've had that faster feedback loop that

then allows you to iterate and try something else. Does it relate to being a human and a leader?

All this, this stuff is, it's quite hard and it's not, it's not necessarily apparent when you're

in the, when you're in the moment. And I think that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what the,

that the coaching relationship and space is, is there to provide for people?

Yeah, I think, I don't know if you would agree with this, but when, when you talked about

breaking this kind of false dichotomies, breaking these polarities and expanding your perspective,

made me think of what you said before about breaking the framework and getting past framework.

Do you think it's some of the frameworks that we use kind of corner us into, into a way of looking

at things that sometimes is limited, right? So they serve us well for a while, right? But they,

they, they create like a simplified version of the world where, for example, you know, serving the

business versus serving the team, it's two things that you, you need to find a sweet spot. And maybe

that's two, for a while, or, you know, a simplified version that allows you to get from A to B,

but you get to a point where this is not two anymore and you need to think outside of that box.

So frameworks don't serve us well anymore at some point.

I, I mean, I could not agree more with what you just said. What is a model? What is a framework?

You, I mean, you said it, it's, it's a simplification of reality. That's, that's what it is. It's,

reality sort of so messy abstracts, confusing, all those things that the human brain has to sort of

wrap some structure around it. Now, it's not to say they're not useful. They are, they're more

than useful. They're essential because otherwise the world is just, it's just too much for us,

but they are a simplification. And I think, you know, this gets into the, this is getting into the meat

of some of the, of the, of the, the sort of leadership shifts that you're trying to help a client

with, which is to say that, yeah, if you're, you're surrounded by all these models and frameworks,

you're told that if you follow them, you'll be successful, but you've followed them and you're,

you're successful, but you're not getting to the next stage that you want to or you've got there

and things still, things still don't feel quite right. So what do we do with that? Let me just

take a step back. So I tend to work with clients who, the, there's different types of clients.

I tend to work with clients who come to me and we have a really interesting, we have, we have this

type of conversation. And I think we both come to an understanding that, and this is back to Tiago's

post framework, it is that given where they are now, there isn't an off the shelf solution for

them. There isn't an out the box. There isn't me telling them, well, you need to go and do these

things and you will get your promotion or you will, you know, be more effective in the role you're

doing. The conversation is around, we need to unpack this, like we need to really unpack this,

explore it and we're going to help you develop your own framework and that will draw on all sorts

of other frameworks, the really good stuff that's out there, but you're at this stage where, yeah,

you can't just, you can't just pull something else in, run yourself through it and out pops you

as an evolved leader. We're going to, we're going to work out what your framework is. So that's,

that's one aspect of the work. Now, depending on where someone's at, that doesn't always land

because we're back to, we're back to uncertainty. It's, when someone tells you

that there's a framework to get you to the next level, that's very, it's very reassuring.

It's like, ah, right, okay, this has happened before. There's somebody else who's

been in my shoes and worked this out. So if I follow this and I do the right things, I'll get to

the next stage. That, you know, that, that feels good. If someone says to you, well, this is all quite

nuanced and abstract, isn't it? Like the world's a very complex place. You're at a stage where

you need to work it out for yourself, drawing on all that rich wisdom and wonderful stuff that's

out there. Yeah. Well, that's not so cozy. That's like, oh, this sounds like hard work.

Yeah. And I want the answer. And I think, you know, getting, but I don't know, hopefully that's

slightly less abstract way of explaining this sort of the shift that you're trying to help

someone make. And honestly, you know, the people walk away at that point and they say, well,

no, I'd rather go somewhere else. I can find the solution as it were, but lots of people don't.

And we go into these wonderfully rich coaching conversations. Yeah. And you know, I'm trying to,

you know, think trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who's working with you. And I'm

thinking, if you told me these things about my own, like, issues and things I told you,

how I would feel. And I agree I would feel kind of uncomfortable. And so while you were answering,

I tried to ask myself, what is it? Something that would make me less uncomfortable about this

situation. And that's probably if I felt like there is, okay, maybe there is not a framework

for a model properly in my own situation, but maybe there is kind of, and I have to create

this framework for myself together with you together with my coach, but maybe there is kind of a

meta framework. I don't know, some kind of the set of questions I can ask myself to figure out how

to create that framework or something like that. I think there are ways and means and tools and

techniques of helping someone get there, which is some of the things we talked about around,

you know, that these helping people work with polarities, helping people try these

safe to fail experiments. There's just, you know, going back to models, the theory here is really

interesting as we think about as it pertains to sort of mastery and development. People do get trapped

with their models because if the model works well, then why would we want to, why do we, why do we

want to shift to a different model? There's some really interesting work around a guy called Nick

Patrick, who's a leadership expert, calls him heat moments. And actually, what you want to do is

expose people to heat moments, and those are moments that are uncomfortable by design, because when

we're in, when things are comfortable, our models are working, they're kind of working, they're

doing their job, they're helping us make sense of the situation, which is what they're designed to do.

But when we shift into positions of discomfort, that's when we realize that our current models,

they're not working, because they're not helping us make sense of that reality. And so, where

that's when our models get disrupted, and we, our brains generate nuance, they generate new models

that help us make sense of this new reality that we're in. So, you know, part of the reason of

doing things like self-safety-fail experiments with, or getting clients to do safe-to-fail experiments

is to try and nudge them into these different realities. And I, you know, I think as a point for

anyone, generally thinking about their career development, it is how do I push myself into these

situations that we want to be stretched the right amount. We don't want to be, you don't want to

stretch, otherwise you just, you know, you break down, you're, you're burnout, you know, whatever it is.

But you need to be pushed enough to make you change the way that you're thinking about

those situations that you're in. I think it's a great skill to be able to

take something that is uncomfortable for you, like some kind of change in how you,

you do things and extract a very small first step that is meaningful but doesn't feel

as stressful or design is more journey, right? I think it's a very important ability.

Yeah, and I think as a coach, you know, what you can do is you can listen, empathize to people's

experience, try and understand what's going on for them. And that's where, you know, coaching

isn't about telling people what to do, but you can make suggestions around things that they

might go and try, that they've not thought of themselves, that they can go and try, that will help

nudge them into those situations in which they learn more about the situation generally. But also

they, they learn more about themselves as well, they learn about how they respond and react to it.

And by the way, I'm, I'm thinking also at the work you've done with Thiago, which we will link

the article in the show notes for everybody to see. And I love how he extracted these principles

and he framed them as questions. And I remember a few of them. And for example, I think there's

a question that is like, am I trying to be the hero in this story? And is that actually helping?

And I thought, wow, this is such a great question. I should ask that myself, not just once, but

you know, remember to ask that to me once a quarter or something like that. And it's just great

to be able to, I think we, if we get to a leadership position, I take it for granted that you do

already a lot of introspection and thinking about what you should do. It feels great to be able

to surface like great questions that generally uncover ideas and parts about your work and yourself

that you had not thought about. Yeah, I mean, that the, is it worth with, with Thiago's permission,

because I have asked him and check, you know, this, this, am I trying to be the hero? Because I think that,

that was an interesting one in terms of it, where did that come, you know, where does that come from?

And actually, I think that talks to being the technical ex, but being the person with the

answers, being the person that, and Thiago writes about this in, in great length, so do read his

article. But, you know, being the person that gets the job done, gets to the answers, is busy,

is running around, I think he refers to it as a, you know, but this is a badge of honor. And it

makes you feel good and you feel like it, that others must be looking at you and thinking, gosh,

this, you know, this, this person works, works really hard. Yeah. Actually, you know, and we all,

we all, we all tell our own story, you know, we, we create our own stories in our own heads as well.

And that actually, you know, one of the, one of the big pieces of work that I do with leaders

is obviously exploring if there is something like that hero mentality there, but also trying to help

them find time to not be the busiest person in the room running around. There isn't one senior leader

I've worked with, successful senior leader I've worked with who isn't finding themselves, you know,

time in the week to do the more reflective work. Now, there's probably a little, I think there's

a little bit, there is selection bias in coaching because you only experience the people that come to you

for coaching, but yeah, just exploring, exploring these, these things that we tell ourselves,

these, these things that are going on at a deeper level, putting them, helping someone put them

into words and then over time, you know, those, those principles always emerge over, over a series

of conversations, they don't, they don't come out right at the start. And, you know, my job as a coach

is to help observe, reflect those back and and and and draw them out of people. But again,

it, you know, it takes us into this place of saying that there isn't six, those, those,

those principles aren't universal. Every, every person you work with will have a different set of

principles. Will there be themes, of course, of course, there will be, you know, absolutely,

but they will all be unique. Yeah, speaking of themes, so would you say there are,

even though each one has a different combination of these questions and themes that need to explore,

based on their, you know, strengths, weaknesses and situations, would you say there are some

usual suspects or some questions that are proven to, to be helpful many times for many

engineering leaders. The first ones that you, you're thinking when you're working with customers

to uncover more of their reality. Yes, there's a question I love asking, which I will credit to

a lady called Jennifer Garvey Berger, who does some wonderful thinking around leadership and how

adults develop generally, which is to ask, what kind of leader are you now and what kind of leader

do you, do you, do you need to become? Because it's just a really good way of getting people to,

to sort of, take that snapshot of, well, what am I, you know, what, how am I leading now? What am I

doing? What, and what is working and what isn't working? But they to reflect and recognize that,

that there's a shift, there's a, there's a growth there, there's, there's, there's, there's,

things that need to change. And what are those things that need to change? What, what is going to

make me the person that I need to be? I think with Tiago, one of the principles we had was

how, how would a, you know, how would an experienced CTO navigate this? So that's part of the

perspective shifting as well. You're just, you're just, you're just, often think of coaching as,

imagine, you know, you're standing there and it's night, you know, and you're, you're shining a

torch at something. And you only see what's in the light. But actually, there's, there's,

the stuff all around it. And as a coach, you're just, you're just shining the torch around to try

and uncover things that someone's not seen or thought about before, that perhaps they didn't even

know we're there. And that, and that's, that's, that's, that's the process that you go through. So,

that's a question that I often ask people on, you know, early on in our coaching relationship,

because it just, it frames, it really gets them thinking. And it frames any work that we, we

might then do together. So I go through my own coaching journey. Some of these questions just,

just tend to come out of my mouth. And I'm never quite sure exactly where they've come from,

which, you know, I'm led to inform, I'm led to think that that means I'm doing my job relatively

well. But, but no, I think, you know, I think the fact that you, you, you have to think about this,

I think it's 100% coherent with what you said before that is we need to think post framework,

right? It's not, it's not that easy that your job is to look at a set of questions and just ask

them to everyone. And so it makes a lot of sense. But anyway, that the question about leaders,

we are right now versus the one that we aspire to be. It's very, I think it's very important.

I will ask that myself from from time to time. Perhaps a good way of framing this is to say that,

that Tiago called out that I had asked him that I didn't necessarily realize at the time,

I'd asked him, but I think as, as we were talking about, I think it was delegation, you know,

asking someone why they don't, why don't you delegate can lead to quite a quite a protective

response, asking someone that's hard about delegating leads to a very different response.

And, you know, I think really this, this is this, this stuff's the heart of, it goes to the heart of

what, what can really help clients on as they go on these leadership transitions, transformations,

because it helps them really get under the skin of what's what's going on and what's

hobbling them back in a way that some, you know, some of the more, the more straightforward,

if you like, traditional approach to coaching, which is just predominantly forward looking,

doesn't necessarily drive the same level of what's, you know, what's the word reflection.

So I wanted to use the, since we are talking about coaching, I wanted to use the final,

like segment of the interview to explore something that I know you're experimenting with,

that is using AI to do some, some such coaching. So how are you thinking about this? How do you

think AI can help with coaching leaders and with your work? Gosh, right. So I would, I would be

very clear from the start and say that in terms of using AI at a, at a, at a basic level of tech,

but I think it's more about what it can do and how it can help the client. The coach, let me just,

let me just contextualize this by saying that the, the coaching industry is fairly traditional

and quite old-school. So the role that AI can play in coaching, brings up a lot of feelings for

people and opinions, shall I say, even just the idea of recording a call that there can be a lot

of opposition to that. I've been really lucky with the type of clients I work with because they are,

because I work in tech, when you say to someone, hey, would you like to experiment with AI?

The answer is hell, yeah, like of course, why would we, why would we not use this, this stuff to help

with asking? Why are you even asking? But I can say, it does bring up very different responses

for other people. So I just wanted to put that in there. This started just with building some

GP, the GPT's with clients and putting notes into them so that they've got, they've got that

repository there to go back to, you know, I think in the, in the most, in its most basic form,

you speak to your coach every couple of weeks, three weeks, whatever it is. If you've got those

transcriptions there in, you know, just with a basic setup, it starts to know you, it starts to know

what you're thinking about. I did some quite cool stuff with one client where we, we did a little

kind of baseline survey about who they were, what they wanted for their business, what they wanted

for their life in the next five years. So it, you know, whilst, whilst it's not there to necessarily

help you make judgment calls, it can do, it's got that context. I think it's going to be really

interesting. So that's how I've been using it with clients in its most straightforward form,

the pattern matching that you can do, the reflecting that you can do are fantastic.

And then your clients use these custom GPT's to get like lighter advice with respect to the deep

sessions that they have with you, like every day advice, they can ask it questions and so on.

Yeah, exactly. And it's got, it's got all their, it's got all their context. And it's something

that I can go back into as a coach and, you know, it's more than just check in on what we talk about

last sessions, but it's, you know, it is, it is so much more powerful than humans. We're pattern

matching machines and we're very good at seeing patterns, but we're not as good as an AI.

So for things like that, you know, you can, for reviewing someone's year and helping them

think about that and just surfacing things that you've not necessarily seen, what I'm also

really interested in is what it, what it will be able to do, you know, what it can do now. I'm not,

I'm not advanced in terms of what I can build from a tech perspective, but are people out there

that can, you know, what will it be able to do in three, six months time, let alone a year or two?

I think it's going to be really, I think the coaching industry is in for some big changes over

the next few years, like, like every industry, but it's going to be really interesting. And I just

wanted to make sure that I was getting on the front foot of it as a, as a, as a non techie.

You know, there is, there is this whole narrative that the people who are going to, to benefit the

most from AI for their lives is the ones that are going to be able to share the most context with

it right about about their work, about their lives. And I believe that's absolutely true. I also

believe it's not easy in many cases because what does it mean to share context? How do I pull

things out of my head about these or that thing that happens in my life? And I think especially

about these topics and themes, the role of the human coach, even in a scenario in which AI

takes over AI does, most of the job is going to be an incredibly important one where you are an

expert who is able to, to get information and feelings and ideas out of the people's heads.

You know, like, you know, what, like a biographer, right? What does a biographer ask? They ask

questions and to get that kind of information and, and the AI can benefit a lot from that in,

in ask humans too, of course. I think you're right. And I think for the time being at least,

that is where I, I could imagine a world where, you know, say, yeah, you don't speak to your

human coach every other week like you did before, but you speak to them maybe six or eight times a

year because that is that the AI needs that context. And where we're at the moment, the human

is still the best medium if you like to have that conversation with the client

to help draw that out of them, put it into the AI and then let it do its thing and that

that my, my, my whole philosophy around AI and coaching is augmentation. You know, it's not

a placement. It's not how does AI replace the human coach, which is what when you talk about AI

and coaching, it's interesting. A lot of non AI people just assume you're talking about the AI

doing the coaching. Yeah. And you're like, no, well, well, well, no, that's not. I've been

experimenting it with it for a year plus now. Never once have I used the AI to do my coaching.

I've used it to help me and my clients get a better understanding of what's going on for us.

And it's, I'm trying to sort of remain neutral, but it's a really powerful tool and I think,

you know, I'm really keen to keep exploring how it can be used. Yeah, I think that

a good way of looking at it is not necessarily at what the surface that is about skills,

but more about that, which is, I think it's inevitable that our, the frontier between our own

skills and those of the AI is going to restrict in favor of AI more and more, but more about what,

what are the unique human factors that we are bringing on the table with our job? And to me,

I'm damson coaching in the past. It's there are elements of empathy and accountability that you

build with your, with the clients who work with that. I just not there with the AI. So they,

they, they bank on us being human and sharing our challenges. And I don't see even in a world in

which, you know, worst case, the AI is perfectly capable of understanding all of these problems.

I just don't see it being just as effective, right, because of what bonds us as humans, but I

might be wrong, of course. Yeah, well, again, so we're into this world of nobody knows, do they?

And I'm not at the frontier of AI enough to know what it, what might be in development now.

I know that even now it can do more, you know, just from the videos, it's getting better at being

able to do reading emotions and that sort of thing. But I, perhaps it's perhaps it's as much a hope

that we retain that human element. Because if we don't, then that feels even more scary. I,

yes, I'm just not sure. But it's certainly there was a good clip of Brian Armstrong the other day

coming back CEO talking about how he's using AI. And I'm keen to explore it with more clients as well,

because I think there's just a quick snippet. There's a theory by a guy called Chris Aguerris, he

talks about espoused theory and theory in use. So when you're working with a leader and you have

that coaching conversation and they you talk about what you're going to say at the next board

meeting or town hall. I think his research effectively suggested that almost every time the person

what doesn't do what they said they were going to do. Obviously now AI, if you've got the

transcriptions of that coaching meeting and recorded the call and you've got the town hall or the

board meeting, then that opens up a whole new dimension. You know, all permissions confidentiality,

you know, all dealt with appropriately. But if you've got that information, that opens up a whole

new coaching conversation that you can be having with a CEO, CTO or whoever. So I think the use

cases are there's a lot of use cases that we haven't even necessarily thought of yet. Interesting

times. Interesting times and I'm excited times. Yeah, that I'm an optimist. So I want to I really

think we'll use this for to be more effective and to do better work. So I'm excited to see what's

next. I'm I'm I'm I'm being I'm going to be an optimist with you. I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying

some days I some days I'd slip into a bit of pessimism, but generally I'm an optimist. Yeah,

yeah, me too the same. Thank you so much Richard. It was a great chat and thank you so much for

coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you.

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