Coaching Conversations in 2025
Coaching Conversations with Tim Hagen, where we teach leaders and managers how to coach their employees. This is the ideal podcast for leaders, managers, and aspiring leaders to improve their coaching and leadership skills to create a more positive coaching culture within their teams.
In 2025, we're doing weekly podcasts on various coaching topics and strategies that will rotate throughout the month, as opposed to 2024 where the weekly episodes featured a monthly theme. Coaching Conversations will continue to have four episodes per month and we're going to sprinkle in masterclasses, which will be lengthier, workshop-style formats.
We also invite you to join the new FREE e-publication, the Workplace Coaching Times founded by Tim Hagen. This weekly newsletter contains expert insights on coaching strategies on specific topics like sales coaching, leading with empathy, and self-awareness techniques, and much more. We're a community of leaders, managers and coaches transforming workplace challenges into coaching victories—one conversation at a time. Subscribe here: https://coachingtimes.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Coaching Conversations in 2025
Reimagining Coaching Conversations with AI
Welcome to Coaching Conversations
We have created a NEW and Innovative line of books called Workplace Coaching Books. These books use QR codes with embedded audio and video lessons speaking directly to the reader. Each book comes with assessments and journal based coaching pages where they document what they've learned and what they've applied. In addition each book comes with the self analysis link that prompts them to share what they've learned and what they've put into action leading to greater learner application a
Check out our Approachability & Coachability series, a webinar-based coaching approach that encourages all leaders and their employees to become approachable and coachable through specific, actionable techniques and strategies. This leads to better teamwork for leadership and creates a positive coaching culture within an organization.
Get more info here: https://form.jotform.com/233023396805051
Are you interested in the latest coaching strategy from Tim Hagen? Check out the new Journal-Based Coaching Guide series, where you can improve critical workplace skills by listening to audio lessons via weekly QR codes from Tim Hagen, and journal what you've learned from the lessons. Current topics include emotional intelligence, motivation, accelerating teamwork, mastering self-regulation, and more crucial workplace topics.
Check out how the new Journal-Based Coaching Guide series works and start your leadership development journaling journey today at https://www.WorkplaceCoachingBooks.com.
Recently, our company has embarked on a very cool, a very cool endeavor, and that is our own custom tool using artificial intelligence to measure coaching conversation skills. Now, with that being said, I think it's a very interesting, very interesting opportunity for us as a company. But people have asked me my own people inside my own company have asked me so why are we doing this? I said you know what's interesting, the more I think about the concept of AI coaching partners. So we're actually calling our tool Coaching Pal, and it is the pal of leaders who really want to become great coaches. Whether it's a live conversation or a simulation or a role play, we're actually going to measure people and give them insight to where they're making an impact conversationally and where they potentially could be maybe even interrupting trust, interrupting a relationship that they're having with an employer, somebody that they're coaching. With that being said, I think AI is an incredible tool. It's an incredible tool. Yet we tend to think of AI in very, I would say, broad brushstroke, manic descriptions of well, now it's going to replace all the human interaction. No, I actually have a different relationship with that. I think AI is going to help us with human relationships.
Speaker 1:So the other day, somebody asked me to come up with something and I'm like, oh, I don't have time to do this, you know I'll do it tonight. All of a sudden, I'm like, wait a minute. So I asked ChatGPT for some advice on something and I'm learning how to use the prompts. I'm getting better at using the prompts. I always thought that was kind of like what do you mean? Prompt engineering? What does that mean? The fact of the matter is it means a lot when you know what to ask for. When you're telling ChatGPT to be an expert and come up with seven specific strategies and then you fill in the challenge, it does a great job. It frames it out for you. Does it really embody everything that I wanted to say? No, and it's the same thing with coaching. So when I think about somebody going to an AI tool and we've built them and we have an AI tool and oh, by the way, we're going to build this AI tool and it's going to replace human-based coaching, I disagree because, at the end of the day, we got to be very, very careful, very careful.
Speaker 1:I just had this with somebody just about two weeks ago, where somebody said to me we're going through this huge change, transformation, we're going through all this stuff. And I said you know our leaders are going to be asked a lot of questions. And the person said this stuff. And I said you know our leaders are going to be asked a lot of questions. And the person said yeah, he goes. Yeah, we're going to get hit with a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1:And he started to talk about tactically well, maybe we could come up with like a repository of what to say, like scripts. I said, oh my gosh, when somebody is talking about being replaced with technology and you're scripted, what's your first impression? When I said that he said mechanical, insensitive, not empathetic, I said yep, so I'm going to ask you a question. He said what's that? I go, hey, is my job being replaced by AI? Is my job or career in trouble? And he started to talk like yeah, I know those will be some of the questions. I said no, I'm asking you right now. And I put him on the spot. Good guy, good friend, client for a long time. He said well, tim, you're kind of putting me on the spot, I go. That's my point. Our leaders are going to be put on the spot.
Speaker 1:Coaching conversation skills are vital and we have to be really good at them. Let me give you another one. Let me give you insight and, if you're interested, send me an email at tim at progresscoachingleadercom. I'll send you the first glimpse of our scoring tool, and the idea behind this is the following is that when you are having conversations with somebody and I was just in a meeting and I was watching two people talk we're at the table and we're kind of having a conversation and you could tell the two were getting heated with each other and what was really interesting is the language was, I believe you know, really kind of stoking the fire. This person kept saying yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but, and kept interrupting the other person. At the end of the conversation.
Speaker 1:I said do you mind if I share with the two of you something?
Speaker 1:Sure? I said yeah, what I hear you saying is you agree that this problem exists? Would that be safe? And they both wanted to start talking. I said no, no, it's just a close-ended question. He said well, yeah, we do.
Speaker 1:I said okay, you agree that the problem is there and that it needs to be solved? Well, yeah, I said okay, so you're actually in agreement, but you slightly disagree on how to solve it. They said well, yeah, but I said no, don't say anything. I said would you agree? There's multiple ways to solve it? He said yeah. I said why don't you do this? Take two solutions from each person and test it.
Speaker 1:But test it not to get the other person, not to show that your solutions were right, but to see what will really work, versus trying to be right right now. And they both looked at me and said, oh, that's a great suggestion. The waters calmed. Now it doesn't always happen like that and I don't want to sit there and profess. Look at how great a coach I am. That's not my objective of sharing that with you. Yet they were so emotional, they got so morphed into. I got to be right. It's got to be my idea. They weren't even having a conversation, they were talking over each other. We all make that mistake. So when you think about AI, ai can actually help you become a great human-based coaching conversationalist.