From Advice to Coaching: How Great Leaders Build Thinkers in the Age of AI
Shifting from quick answers to illuminated thinking on your team.
Is the support you are providing so valuable people would be willing to pay for it?
Does that question change the way you think about how you contribute as a leader? Leading people is hard. There’s never only one way to share information or help someone learn. And understanding the difference between giving advice and coaching is a critical leadership skill.
That challenge intensifies in the age of AI. How do you develop people who can think in new ways when it feels easier to “just ask the chatbot”? How do you reinforce that human thinking still matters, when AI can produce an answer instantly?
Moving from Advice to Coaching (Good to Great)
Sometimes the difference between good and great is subtle. It can be the difference between choosing what’s easier and what’s harder. It’s easier to be good; it’s more difficult to be great. In the age of AI, giving answers has become even easier. Your team doesn’t come to you only for a quick solution anymore, since they can ask a chatbot, get a confident response in seconds, and move on.
Providing advice and insights in many situations is good leadership. Drawing on your experience and firsthand knowledge makes your support feel more credible and compelling. Your team, or the individual you’re working with, will likely appreciate your perspective. What can feel two-dimensional coming from a computer feels fully three-dimensional coming from you. It feels value-added, and you walk away from the interaction on a positive note. Still, it’s the easier approach: ask a question, get an answer that’s quick and to the point from a computer, deeper and more nuanced from you.
When answers are cheap, thinking becomes the differentiator. The leader’s job isn’t to compete with AI on speed. It is to develop judgment, context, and decision-making so people can use AI well without being led by it.
Coaching with Questions (Not Answers)
The harder approach is to not answer the question directly. It is to understand the situation further. Why is this a problem for your team or that individual? What have they considered so far? Have they experienced this set of circumstances before, and if so, what did they do? If not, what do they think they should do?
This becomes a more difficult conversation, not because it is uncomfortable or has a negative tone to it, but because it is creating more mental work. Giving an answer is easy. Receiving an answer is easy. I ask, you answer, I go do what you advised. I don’t have to think too much about what needs to happen next. Everyone gets a shot of dopamine, and we tend to repeat that process the next time an obstacle comes up.
That in most people’s eyes is good leadership. Most of us are probably guilty of doing this. I know I am, and I still do it more often than I would care to admit. We get busy and in the moment we fall back to the easier, feel good path to address the situation at hand.
In an AI world, that easy cycle and quick dopamine hit makes you feel like you solved your problem without having to interact with anyone. But if you’ve used AI, you know that if you flip the script a little and give it more context, or even ask the AI bot to ask you questions first, you get better answers. Working with people is no different and gives you that same, more in-depth, real life response we discussed above.
As a leader, if you want to find new ways to ask better questions, AI can help you as well. Provide the situation and context. Prompt for the kinds of questions that may help uncover the things you cannot see. A simple question like, “What am I not considering,” can open up an entire library of possibilities that will help you support your team in new ways, but still with the human component firmly in place.
Use AI to generate options, not to outsource judgment.
What Humans Still Own in the Age of AI
Without prompting, AI only gives you an answer it can piece together from a huge collection of words. It doesn’t actually know what is happening in your world at that moment. The humans in the loop, and especially you as the leader, can help with:
Defining the outcome (what “good” looks like; which tradeoffs are acceptable)
Add context (local conditions, constraints, store/customer realities, culture, timing)
Apply judgment (when the “right” answer depends on risk, values, and consequences)
Verify accuracy (AI can be wrong, outdated, or overly generic)
Own accountability (people are responsible, not the tools)
Create human connection (buy-in, motivation, conflict, coaching presence, and trust)
The next time your team asks for advice or an answer, pause, then begin to ask questions instead of providing immediate responses. Challenge the person you are working with to think about how they believe they should respond or approach getting to their desired outcome. In fact, verify they know what their desired outcome is. Then continue to ask questions that will guide them to an answer that works for them. This is now you playing the role of what many hope AI will do. The difference is you’re living the experience with them.
It will feel a little more difficult, as they may not have been prepared for the longer discussion and had hoped for a quick answer. But when complete, I am confident that both of you will feel even better than you would have when providing the quick answer. And, more importantly, the person you are working with will have a better roadmap for how to handle situations like that in the future and know they can rely on you and not just a chat bot to solve problems.
In the age of AI, great leadership isn’t having all the answers. It is really about building the strongest thinkers.
How do you use questions to help coach your team beyond surface level answers?
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