AI isn’t here to take your job, says Dr Lisa Turner, its role is to free up your time to help amplify your focus. Could this be the beginning of a new era in coaching?
When AI first came on the scene I seized on it as a useful tool. I love new tech, but quickly found it was limited in what it could actually do. Creating content like a boring robotic corporate drone, I used it but sparingly.
Fast forward to now and I use it daily for a huge range of tasks in my business and coaching practice. From marketing, creating systems in my business, writing standard operating procedures, editing videos, creating content, analysing data, managing my calendar, AI is well and truly ensconced in my work.
AI is still advancing rapidly, and it’s becoming a very real possibility that some coaching may be replaced. The reality of using AI in coaching is nuanced; it’s not the enemy but a tool. The question isn’t whether AI will change coaching (it already is) but how coaches will evolve in response.
If you’re still offering first-generation coaching with goal setting, accountability, and structured action planning, AI can do much of this work faster, and cheaper and often better.
But for coaches willing to evolve with AI, it offers an incredible opportunity. Not only can it boost your business productivity, if you approach it correctly it can enhance your coaching, expand impact, and free you to do deeper, more transformational work.
The real winners will be those who embrace AI as a partner rather than as a competitor, using it to free themselves from routine business and coaching tasks and step into transformational and transcendent coaching,
Let’s explore the three generations of coaching, the risks and opportunities of AI at each level, and how coaches can thrive in an AI-augmented world.
The three generations of coaching: where AI fits in
Coaching has evolved over time, and AI is accelerating its development. Understanding the three generations of coaching helps us see where AI poses a threat, and where coaches can remain indispensable.
1st Generation: Transactional coaching (goal-orientated coaching)
Focus: Goal setting, accountability, and performance improvement.
Common approach: Using frameworks like GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, Will) to help clients set and achieve objectives.
AI’s role: AI-powered tools can help clients set clear goals, track progress, and provide accountability and motivational nudges.
Risk: AI is beginning to replace coaches who only offer this level of coaching. Tools such as the Vision Planning agent, and coaching apps and bots are rapidly gaining ground.
Opportunity: Coaches who move beyond transactional coaching into deeper work will become highly sought after.
2nd Generation: Transformational coaching (mindset and emotional mastery)
Focus: Coaching that goes deeper into a client’s beliefs, emotions and thought patterns. It focuses on personal growth and overcoming inner barriers, limiting beliefs, emotional resilience and mindset shifts.
Common approach: NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), and CET (conscious emotional transformation).
AI’s role: AI can help identify unconscious patterns in clients’ thoughts and emotions through sentiment analysis.
Risk: AI can assist with self-reflection, journal prompts, writing hypnosis and meditation scripts as well as a master hypnotherapist and spiritual teacher. This frees up the coach to focus more on mindset work. The absence of disapproval and criticism, along with the anonymity that AI agents offer creates safety and non-judgement where the client may open up even more.
Opportunity: Coaches at this level remain highly valuable, but the ones who embrace AI tools to enhance their practice will have the advantage.
3rd Generation: Transcendent coaching (deep transformational work)
Focus: Helping clients explore their identity, values, and meaning in life, and achieving higher consciousness, energy mastery, flow states, and spiritual connection.
Common approach: Deep inner work, reflective dialogue and powerful transformational tools, esoteric and transpersonal work.
AI’s role: More advanced AI agents such as the Enlightened-Self Mirror, Higher Self Alignment Guide, Consciousness Mapper and Soul Purpose Pathfinder are proving powerful allies but can’t release intuition, or emotional connection.
Risk: Very low as AI can’t replace deep human connection, spiritual insight or higher consciousness coaching.
Opportunity: The future belongs to transcendent coaches who integrate science, spirituality and deep transformation. AI won’t reach this level of coaching, making it the most future-proof coaching model. It cannot replicate intuition, energetic connection or wisdom.
Make it work
How to integrate AI to support (not replace) your coaching at each level
Coaches who use AI instead of fighting it, can take advantage of a massive opportunity to free time for deeper work.
1st Generation coaches (transactional coaching): How to incorporate AI to your advantage
- lUse AI tools to boost productivity and marketing functions, such as content creation, article writing, web and sales copy support, editing videos, managing bookings and follow-ups.
- Implement AI tools such as chatbots to provide structured action plans between sessions. Agents, eg:
– Vision planner, which helps clients set and identify their most important goal as well as create a plan with actions and milestones
– Goal tracker and accountability reminders
Develop your approach from transactional to transformational coaching to future-proof your practice.
2nd Generation coaches (transformational coaching): How to use AI to your advantage
- Use AI-powered tools such as
– Journal prompt creator
– Sentiment analyser
– Guided meditation script writer
– Hypnosis script writer
– Emotional block and pattern recognition models
- Combine AI-generated insights with deep intuitive coaching to help clients unlock hidden patterns.
Transformational coaches who blend AI insights with human wisdom will thrive
3rd Generation coaches (transcendent coaching): How to use AI to your advantage
- Leverage AI-powered tools such as
– Hypnosis Script writer
– Enlightened-Self Mirror
– Higher Self Alignment Guide,
– Consciousness Mapper
– Soul Purpose Pathfinder
- Provide AI-assisted pattern analysis to help clients see energetic shifts over time.
- Focus on intuition, higher consciousness and deep transformation and areas that AI cannot replicate.
Transcendent coaching is the most AI-proof model, as it relies on energetic mastery, wisdom, and intuitive leadership.
Turning your coaching process into an AI chatbot or app
Instead of AI replacing your coaching, what if you replicated yourself and your methodology with AI to expand your reach?
One of the powerful opportunities for coaches is turning their coaching methodology into an AI-powered chatbot or app.
Take your unique coaching method and make it accessible to more people without diluting your work.
How your personal AI chatbot can enhance (not replace) you
1. Your client uses your AI coaching assistant in a membership portal
2. The chat bot or app guides them through your core coaching process, allowing you to scale your reach.
3. You focus on your deep transformation work, intuition and wisdom personally to your clients, making human coaching even more valuable.
Make it work
What a coach needs to develop an AI chatbot or app
A reliable, repeatable, and unique coaching methodology
- Your process should be structured enough for AI to follow but flexible enough to personalise responses.
Full awareness of your methodology and how to give clear instructions to the AI
- You’ll need to break down your coaching approach into clear, structured steps that an AI can follow.
- Define key prompts, decision trees, and expected responses.
The ability to train an AI agent and continue to develop it
- AI chatbots need to be improve over time. You’ll need to refine responses, update content, and troubleshoot where needed.
A platform to build and host the AI chatbot
- Choose a platform that integrates with your website, membership site, or coaching portal.
Personalisation capabilities
- The bot should be able to adjust responses based on the user’s progress.
- Ideally, it remembers past interactions and offers relevant insights over time.
A clear AI + human coaching balance
- Define what the AI handles vs. what you handle.
- AI should enhance, not replace, human coaching.
Integration with your coaching ecosystem
- If you offer one-to-one coaching, the AI can direct clients to book live sessions when needed.
Ethical considerations and client confidentiality
- Be transparent about AI usage.
Let clients know where their data is stored and how it’s used.
l Ensure the AI chatbot follows ethical coaching guidelines and avoids giving advice beyond its scope.
Bonus: If you want your AI chatbot to sound like you, train it to speak in your voice using your existing coaching materials, blog posts and recorded sessions.
Human connection will never go away
AI can handle logic, structure and data, but it cannot replace deep human connection, wisdom or intuition. People will always want people, and the messy, spontaneous, unexpected responses that humans do so brilliantly.
The most successful coaches will be those who integrate AI with their deep human connection, wisdom and spiritual insight. AI is not the end of coaching – it’s the beginning of a new era, where the best coaches evolve beyond goal-setting and into profound transformation.
AI isn’t here to take your job, it’s here to take over the tasks that shouldn’t be taking up your time. The future belongs to coaches who embrace AI to amplify their impact, scale their coaching, and focus on deep, transformative work.
About the author
- Dr Lisa Turner is founder of CETfreedom, a spiritual and consciousness awakening organisation, specialising in training professional coaches and practitioners in her signature process Conscious Emotional Transformation, (CET).
She holds a PhD in mathematical modelling and aero-acoustics and is a certified trainer of multiple coaching and transformation modalities. She is also the author of Our Conscious Tipping Point (Rethink Press, 2024) and CET Yourself Free (Rethink Press, 2022).