AI coaching is one of the buzziest trends in leadership development right now. These tools aiming to democratize leadership coaching using AI are emerging from everywhere, and it’s easy to see why.
If you’ve ever worked with an executive coach, you know how powerful that experience can be. But traditionally, coaching has only been available to the most senior leaders.
The idea of making coaching scalable—so every manager and even individual contributors can benefit—is exciting for leadership and team development. This is why so many HR and departmental leaders responsible for supporting large, complex teams are exploring these solutions.
But here’s what I’ve learned after nearly two decades of leading teams, advising senior leaders at Fortune 500 organizations, and partnering with organizations ranging from startups to growth-stage technology companies:
AI coaching alone isn’t enough.
If you want managers to succeed, not just reflect or learn a framework, but actually lead, you need to give them more than leadership prompts and nudges. You need to equip them with a complete AI coach and team-building assistant: one that helps them develop personally and gives them tools to actively build stronger, more connected teams.
Managers Are Being Asked to Do the Impossible
Let’s be honest, managers today are under a ton of pressure. They’re expected to:
- Deliver “best quarter ever” results
- Keep their teams engaged
- Lead with empathy and resilience
- Adapt to hybrid, remote, and global dynamics
- Support mental health and well-being
- Respond to real-time cultural and political tensions
Given organization shifts and cost-cutting measures, many managers have been promoted into people leadership roles and are now doing this without proper training, coaching, or support systems. Even the most talented, well-intentioned managers struggle when they don’t have access to the right tools.
They want to lead well. But they’re stretched thin. And traditional support just isn’t built for today’s pace of change.
What AI Coaching Gets Right—And Where It Falls Short
AI coaching democratizes access to coaching guidance. It helps managers become more self-aware and knowledge about best practice leadership frameworks and concepts. And it delivers consistent support on-demand, 24/7/365, in a cost-effective way.
But here’s the problem: most AI coaching tools are focused only on the manager as an individual.
You’ll see prompts like:
- “Here’s how to be more inclusive.”
- “Try this framework for giving feedback.”
- “Reflect on how you lead under pressure.”
These are helpful insights, but they rarely lead to real change unless they’re put into action.
There are two limitations that most AI coaching tools haven’t solved for:
- They ignore the uniqueness of each team member. Great leadership isn’t one-size-fits-all. One person on your team might need feedback delivered gently with context, while another values blunt, straight-to-the-point direction. Generic advice from a chatbot can’t account for those nuances, and it often shows up when a manager tries to put the advice into action.
- They stop short of enabling team-level impact. Most tools don’t help managers take the next step: turning insight into action with their teams. They don’t support real conversations that build trust, align the group, and shift collective behavior.
The result is that managers might know more, but their teams don’t necessarily feel or perform differently.
What Managers Need: A Team-Building Assistant + AI Coach
At Rising Team, we believe managers deserve more. So we built something different: an AI leadership coach and team-building assistant that combines:
- AI-powered coaching through our assistant, aRTi, that offers real-time, personalized guidance to managers and ICs, and
- Software-guided team-building sessions—science-backed tools managers can use to run live experiences with their teams that strengthen trust, connection, motivation, and team performance
Imagine a manager who gets this kind of support:
- They ask aRTi how to rebuild morale after a tough change. aRTi gives advice, and suggests the perfect team session to open dialogue and rebuild trust.
- They’re prepping for a tough feedback conversation. aRTi walks them through a proven framework and offers them a script that takes into consideration that specific team member’s preferred feedback style, daily and long-term motivators, and learning preferences. So the feedback actually lands, and the team member grows as a result.
- They see low psychological safety scores from a recent engagement pulse survey. aRTi recommends team-building sessions that can run that are proven to lift their scores.
This is what managers really need: not just information, but empowerment and tools to equip them to lead.
Why This Approach Delivers Real Results
When you combine AI coaching with team-building sessions, magic happens.
1. Insight becomes behavior
Managers stop wondering what to do and start doing it, because they have the tools to put their insights into action both in 1:1 daily interactions and in team settings.
2. Teams grow together
Leadership development doesn’t happen in a vacuum. With Rising Team, managers and teams evolve together, actively honing skills and building connection on a deeply human level.
3. It scales without friction
Rising Team is easy to use and built for real life. Whether you’re supporting 50 managers or 5,000, our system works across every setting: in office, hybrid hybrid, frontline, and fully distributed or remote.
Mostly important, it works where building culture really happens–in team meetings, everyday interactions, and shared experiences.
What to Look For in an AI Leadership Coaching Platform
If you're exploring tools to support your managers, here are five questions worth asking, especially if your goal is to create lasting impact across teams:
- Does it go beyond coaching to also guide team interactions and shared experiences?
- Does it fit into the flow of a manager and team’s work and save them time in the long run?
- Is the experience grounded in a way that creates team connection and psychological safety?
- Can it scale across every level of leadership?
- Does it actually shift team dynamics and improve how people work together?
If the answer to any of these is “no,” you might be looking at just a coaching tool, not a full AI team-building and leadership assistant.
Final Thought: Coaching Is a Start, But It’s Not the Finish Line
We all want to help managers succeed. And it’s exciting to see new tools emerging in this space. But we have to remember: coaching, on its own, isn’t enough.
Managers need to be able to act with confidence, with support, and with tools that drive real results.
That’s what Rising Team provides: a complete system to empower every manager to build a thriving team.
If that sounds like what your organization needs, we’d love to show you how it works.
