AI in Team Coaching Series: I Built a Coaching Bot. Here’s What I Still Can’t Answer

Two years ago, Ro Gorell started an experiment. Not because she had a plan, but because she had a question she couldn't leave alone: could AI ethically do part of what a coach does?

What followed was messier, more instructive, and more surprising than she expected.

This session traces that journey honestly. From building Sol, a coaching bot designed to explore whether AI can qualify a potential coaching client, to developing Ro AI, a coaching and facilitation tool grounded in her change management expertise, built specifically to help team leaders move teams through change. Two bots. Two very different purposes. One ongoing learning process that isn't finished yet.

Ro will share what she tried, what didn't work, and what the process forced her to confront about her own practice. Because you can't instruct a bot on how to handle silence, or respond to "I don't know," without first getting precise about what you actually believe those moments are for.

The session is designed to be interactive throughout, not a presentation with questions saved for the end. Where conditions allow, participants will have direct experience of both Sol and Ro AI in action, with space to react, interrogate, and disagree in real time. The room's responses are part of the session, not an addition to it.

The session then opens into the wider question. Coaching bots are already inside practices and large-scale provider models. The profession is changing whether coaches engage with it or not. But Ro's argument isn't that every coach needs a bot. It's that every coach needs to get clear on where they stand, because that clarity is what makes the technology useful rather than just fashionable.

The coaches who will matter most in the next decade won't be the ones who mastered the tools first. They'll be the ones who stayed in the question long enough to know what they bring that no tool can replace.

This session is for coaches who are curious, uncertain, or quietly unsettled by AI, and who want permission to experiment without needing to have it figured out first.

About the Speaker:

Ro Gorell is a coach, change specialist, and co-author of the 50 Top Tools for Coaching. Through Grow Talent, she works with leaders and teams navigating complex organisational change and high-change environments.

Ro’s work sits at the intersection of leadership, coaching, facilitation, and organisational transformation. Her recent experimentation with AI coaching tools explores not only the practical application of technology in coaching, but also the ethical, relational, and philosophical questions emerging as AI increasingly enters professional coaching practice.

Grounded in deep experience supporting leaders through change, Ro brings a practical, reflective, and refreshingly honest perspective to conversations about the future of coaching in an AI-enabled world.