AI Reflections, Part II: "Me, my Peer Coach, and AI", September 2026
AI Reflections, Part II: “Me, My Peer Coach and AI”
And what about me, how do I use AI?
Do I do my part in using it responsibly and ethically?
September 2026
These AI reflections (see Part I) also helped me think about how I use AI. Do I do my individual part in using it responsibly and ethically?
The Value of Having a Human Peer Coach
Most of the time, when I need to unpack something, I do it with a peer coach. Over the last four years, since becoming a full-time Leadership and Life Coach, I have discovered that conversation seems to be the most natural way for me to process my thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and ideas, especially the ones I did not realize I was carrying.
Why with a peer coach? When I’m with a peer coach and I play the client, they don’t tell me what to do. They ask me questions that help me unfold what’s already inside my head. They also notice when I’m triggered or going into that trap of minimizing or even aggrandizing myself. When I gloss over something important, they gently bring me back to it. In each of my coaching spaces, I also talk a lot, almost too much. I circle around ideas, contradict myself, clarify and realize things I didn’t know I’d been holding. Sometimes it takes a while to get to what I really wanted to say in the first place. But with my peer coaches, they become like a thoughtful “human mirror”. They hold what we coaches call “the emotional space”. They challenge me in ways that I can’t do by myself. They help me hear and see myself more clearly and in an “observer mode” type of way. They say things like, “May I share an observation? On one hand you say this, but on the other you say that. Which is it? Your energy also shifted when you talked about this. What might that be about?”
To have someone ask those questions in a fully present, timely, safe, non-judgemental and curious way gets me to check myself and to extract everything I didn’t know I knew and which were just waiting to come out.
And where does AI come in for me?
At the same time, during these peer coaching sessions with me as the client, I use AI as more than a “digital secretary.” I love that it can record, summarize, organize, structure, and sometimes reframe what I said, and often, from a very long-winded coaching session! So, this means, it can sometimes influence the final shape and clarity of my writing even when the raw experience, judgment, and responsibility are still mine. For someone who talks maybe too much, it’s hard to remember everything I say over twenty minutes. As I’m very much a verbal processor, I tend to generate more words than I can later hold in my head. The AI bot helps me document or “play” back what I’ve already said and reveal what I may have been trying to say beneath the verbal dump. After a session, AI can condense all my meandering into a few clear points or a rough structure for an article. Some of what it says is, of course, filler or gibberish depending on how many words I ask it to produce. But I still have to check, correct, most of the time rewrite, and take responsibility for what finally appears under my name.
AI and my Exit Interview as a WTO employee
A few months after I got a copy of my hour-long exit interview shortly before I officially retired from the World Trade Organization, I decided to transcribe it and ask all sorts of questions to through the AI-chat. This was a good exercise for me because it allowed me the opportunity to ask questions like,
“Based on my recorded interview, how did I show up as a leader as I reflected on my Professional Development in the WTO?” What were my biggest strengths, weaknesses and values?
“What were my main crucibles that led to a satisfying and successful career in the WTO?” What was my biggest lesson learned for career longevity in the organization?
“How did I show up as KM professional and officer when I looked back at the initiatives I implemented?”
“What did we prioritize as a team and as me leading as Chief of KM during the first 6 months of the launch of the section?”
“What was the team’s strategy in cultivating a Knowledge Sharing culture in the organization?”
“What were my main hurdles in getting KM buy-in even though the KM section was already officially formed?”
“What were the key factors that led to successfully advocating for the benefits of implementing Knowledge Management in the organization?”
“What values did I hold as an international civil servant, wife and mother??
“What were my most significant achievements that have marked my career at the WTO?”
What did I enjoy the most in working in the WTO? Biggest regrets? Biggest frustrations? Most proud of?
What will I miss the most after retiring from the WTO? What will I not miss at all?
I can imagine any staff member could ask all sorts of questions about each of the retirees in the data library. By having an AI-type chat setup alongside these various recordings, it wouldalso be a useful tool in order to have a general idea of what types of experts and/or expertise had left the organization.
How does AI inject input for me?
Where I do ask AI to inject new input is to help me find blind spots. For example, during coaching sessions, I further ask how I show up, either as a client or as a coach. “How did my coaching meet up the standards of the official ICF PCC to MCC markers?” What questions could I have used to go up a notch in my coaching level?”
When I write my thoughts, I ask it to help me spot any factual errors I may have assumed or included, or parts where I may have sounded naïve, unrealistic or presumptuous. I ask it to help me address or improve explain my arguments but still in a truthful authentic way. I also ask it to find parts where I may have talked too harshly about family, friends or former colleagues, and how best to write in a way that won’t offend or put them in a negative light. I also ask the AI to find parts in my writing where I may come off as arrogant, self-righteous or judgmental.
It really is a good check. And while I prefer to be true to myself, especially when making things public, I strive to make adequate efforts to be kind and constructive with my words and refrain from being too harsh, which I often am when I vent freely with my peer coach. The THINK acronym (Is it True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary and Kind), popularized by British pastor, Alan Redpath, becomes a good reminder for me.
This combination of peer coach and AI helps me because it still honours how I naturally process things. I am, by nature, a talker, doer, orchestrator, and someone who often needs a partner to slow down, reflect, and clarify my thoughts with. The peer coach helps me go deeper and stay honest with myself. The AI agent helps me summarize, structure, and test the clarity of what I said so that the writing is less likely to bore or lose my readers. But I also have to be honest that AI can make my thoughts sound smoother and more coherent than they first came out. So my responsibility is to check whether the polished version still feels truthful, proportionate, and recognizably mine. And because I instruct it to work only on specific recorded (and consented) sessions with my peer coach, I still have that capacity to check and say, “Now that’s a little bit of a stretch, buddy. That doesn’t sound like me.”
Together, peer coaching and AI help me work more truthfully and, I hope, more ethically. AI is a useful editorial partner for summarizing, organizing, noticing patterns, and clarifying my words. But, I imagine, like many people, I still need to test its suggestions against my own experience, judgment, and sense of what is accurate. My raw ideas usually begin from my conversations, encounters, questions, curiosities and lived experience. AI may offer possible framings or alternatives. But I treat those as prompts to consider, revise, or even immediately reject rather than as conclusions to accept. This way, it helps me strengthen and not replace my own responsibility for connecting the dots.
My working relationship with AI
I prefer to partner with AI so that it frees me from doing things that bore or drain me, like editing! It saves me time when it gives me the bottom line, organizes and clarifies my own words. But it doesn’t get to think, feel, or decide for me! By establishing and implementing personal boundaries especially the “not deciding for me”, this still allows me to express my thoughts and ideas in a way that will make reading my stuff not entirely unpleasant for the reader, and still be authentically me.