Tag: AI-coach

Sneha is a management graduate with a strong passion for leadership development and workplace growth. As a writer for Risely, she brings fresh insights into leadership strategies, team dynamics, and professional development. With a keen interest in marketing, she blends analytical thinking with storytelling to create engaging and actionable content.

Ready to Take Your Training Programs to the Next Level?

Transform your training programs with personalized, AI-driven solutions. Start your journey with Risely today!

Sign Up Now!

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich

Sneha MishraApr 16, 20258 min read

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich Effective leadership doesn’t always begin with a grand vision. Sometimes, it…

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth

Sneha MishraApr 14, 2025

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth You know the frustration all too well. Your organization invests thousands in…

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

Sneha MishraApr 8, 2025

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development? As an L&D leader, you’re likely familiar with this frustrating reality: 82%…

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

Sneha MishraMar 31, 2025

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report(1), 71% of L&D professionals are now…

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

Sneha MishraMar 20, 2025

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals According to a McKinsey survey(1), only 11% of…

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

As an L&D leader, you’re likely familiar with this frustrating reality: 82% of organizations consider leadership development critical⁽¹⁾, yet only 14% feel prepared to deliver it effectively. Meanwhile, businesses collectively lose millions each year due to leadership gaps that traditional programs fail to close. You’re stuck in an impossible situation.

Your executives demand measurable leadership improvement across the organization.
Your managers need personalized development that fits into their packed schedules.
And your budget? It certainly hasn’t increased to match these expectations.

AI learning platforms are changing this equation, by providing personalized experiences that improve engagement and knowledge retention while reducing costs. For instance, companies implementing microlearning strategies have observed a 40% increase in course completion rates and a 30% improvement in knowledge retention within six months⁽²⁾. Additionally, organizations adopting eLearning methods have achieved substantial cost savings, with some reducing training expenses per learner from $95 to $11. Lets walk you through how AI learning platforms are reshaping leadership development. You’ll discover practical frameworks for evaluating these technologies, implementation strategies that drive adoption. Whether you’re completely reimagining your leadership strategy or enhancing current programs, this guide provides the roadmap you need to build stronger leaders at scale without sacrificing the personalization that makes development stick.

Table of Contents

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

What is an AI learning platform?

An AI learning platform uses artificial intelligence to deliver personalized, adaptive learning experiences with real-time feedback and data-driven insights, but in a sea of “AI-powered” learning solutions, how can you identify platforms with genuine intelligence versus glorified automation? As an L&D leader, you’ve likely encountered numerous vendors claiming their leadership development platforms are “powered by AI” but what does that actually mean for your organization?

What Makes a Learning Platform Truly “AI-Powered”?

True AI learning platforms go beyond simple if-then automation. Think about your current learning systems, do they just serve pre-programmed content based on basic rules, or do they genuinely adapt to your leaders’ needs? Consider these core capabilities that separate authentic AI Learning platforms from clever marketing:

Personalization at Scale: AI continuously tracks learning behavior to tailor content dynamically. It adjusts difficulty levels, recommends resources, and refines learning paths in real-time to match individual strengths and gaps.
Content Intelligence: Instead of just retrieving content, AI generates customized learning materials by analyzing industry trends, company philosophy, and real-world challenges, ensuring relevance and agility.
Adaptive Assessment: AI moves beyond static quizzes, evaluating responses to complex leadership scenarios. It provides deep, personalized insights into decision-making, communication styles, and hidden biases.
Context-Aware Coaching: AI offers situational guidance by integrating real-time data, such as business performance metrics and leadership behavior trends, to deliver actionable coaching moments.
Emotional Intelligence Analysis: By analyzing tone, sentiment, and interaction patterns, AI detects emotional strengths and gaps in leadership, providing personalized strategies for improvement.
Predictive Learning Analytics: AI forecasts future learning needs based on career trajectory, performance trends, and market shifts, proactively preparing leaders for upcoming challenges.

Think of it this way, a traditional LMS is like a GPS system: it provides directions but can’t adjust to traffic or driver preferences. True AI Learning platforms are self-driving cars that actively navigate the learning journey, making real-time adjustments based on the passenger’s needs and road conditions.

What Are the Different Types of AI Learning Platforms?

Now that you know what makes a platform truly intelligent, let’s discuss the various AI learning platforms available for your leadership development initiatives. The landscape has evolved dramatically, with options designed to address specific aspects of your leadership pipeline. As you evaluate options for your leadership initiatives, you’ll likely encounter these categories:

Comprehensive L&D platforms with AI features: Systems like Cornerstone and Workday have integrated AI to enhance their traditional LMS capabilities. They’re ideal if you need an all-in-one solution.
Specialized leadership coaching platforms: Platforms like Risely use AI coaches and supplement human coaching with algorithmic interventions.
Adaptive learning systems: These platforms, such as Area9 Rhapsode, focus primarily on adjusting content difficulty based on performance.
Content creation and curation tools: Solutions that automatically generate or organize leadership materials based on your organization’s needs.

What are the Strategic Benefits of AI Learning Platforms for Leadership Development for your organization?

What if your organization could provide a personalized learning plan to every manager, regardless of location or budget constraints? AI learning platforms are making this a reality.

Addressing the Scalability Challenge

The Problem: Traditional leadership development only reaches a fraction of your managers. With coaching costs of $200-500 per hour, most organizations can only afford to develop their top executives, leaving middle managers without critical support. The Benefit: AI-powered platforms democratize leadership development by delivering personalized coaching at 70-80% lower cost. This means you can scale development to all leadership levels. How It Works? The high cost of traditional leadership development means that organizations can only afford to coach their top executives, leaving middle managers and emerging leaders without the support they need. This lack of development leads to frustration, disengagement, and missed opportunities for growth, ultimately impacting team performance and overall company success. AI-powered platforms solve this challenge by scaling the learning program experience through lowering costs while still providing personalized coaching. Using advanced algorithms, the platform assesses each manager’s strengths, performance, and areas for improvement. It then delivers tailored leadership modules, continuous feedback, and personalized learning paths that evolve with their progress. Ultimately, this improves leadership retention, strengthens the succession pipeline and ensures that you have loyal managers committed to growth. With tools like Risely’s AI Leadership Development Coach, you can ensure that all managers, at every level, get the guidance they need to succeed—without the financial strain of traditional coaching.

Creating Hyper-Personalized Learning Experiences

The Problem: Generic leadership programs fail to address individual needs. When was the last time your one-size-fits-all training actually changed behavior across different management styles and experience levels? The Benefit: AI systems create truly individualized learning journeys by analyzing each leader’s unique profile, challenges, and growth areas. How It Works? Generic leadership programs often miss the mark, leaving managers with content that doesn’t match their specific challenges or experience levels. This makes it hard for them to apply what they’ve learned or see real improvement. AI-powered platforms solve this by personalizing learning. They assess each manager’s skills, identify growth areas, and deliver tailored content, practice opportunities, and feedback that adapts based on real-time performance. This ensures learning is always relevant and timely. With Risely, there are personalized development paths and nudges that focuses on what each manager needs. For example, your engineering manager might work on feedback skills, while your marketing leader focuses on strategic thinking, ensuring they get the right guidance at the right time to make lasting changes in their leadership.

Delivering Just-in-Time Support When Leaders Need It Most

The Problem: Traditional training happens separate from real work. Your managers attend workshops but struggle to apply learning when facing actual leadership challenges weeks later. The Benefit: On-demand coaching delivers support at the moment of need, increasing skill application by 70% compared to traditional training. How It Works? Traditional training often happens in isolation, managers attend workshops, learn new skills, but then struggle to apply them when real leadership challenges arise weeks later. This gap between learning and practice can prevent lasting change and leave key skills forgotten over time. AI-powered platforms like Risely bridge this gap by delivering support exactly when it’s needed. Managers receive just-in-time, contextual guidance tailored to their current situations. This on-demand coaching ensures that learning is applied right away, making it easier for managers to put new skills into practice and drive meaningful, lasting behavior change.

Data-Driven Insights for Continuous Improvement

The Problem: Traditional leadership development offers minimal visibility into outcomes. Beyond satisfaction surveys and completion rates, how do you know if managers are actually improving? The Benefit: Comprehensive analytics reveal which skills are developing across your organization and where gaps remain, allowing you to continuously refine your leadership strategy. How It Works? Measuring leadership development is tough. Traditional assessments are often inconsistent and not done frequently enough, making it hard to know where your managers truly stand. Without regular check-ins, it’s challenging to pinpoint what support they need, and problems can continue without a clear solution. AI-powered platforms make this process much easier. They help you assess all your leaders regularly, without the heavy cost and complexity of in-house assessments. With continuous tracking, you can get a clear view of your managers’ strengths, where they’re improving, and where they still need help. For example, Risely’s Skill Center provides you with a dynamic dashboard that lets you see how your leaders are progressing in real-time. This allows you to make smarter decisions about where to focus your development efforts, ensuring each leader gets the right support at the right time.

Evaluating AI Learning Platforms: A Framework for HR and L&D Leaders

When you’re evaluating AI learning platforms for leadership development, you’re not just dealing with a sea of options but also trying to align them with your organization’s unique goals and challenges. The real struggle is in determining which platform fits seamlessly with your current systems, delivers measurable results, and can scale with your needs. To make this easier, focus on the areas that matter most to your organization, whether it’s improving leadership engagement, driving business outcomes, or integrating effectively with your tech stack

Core Features to Look For in AI-Powered Learning Platforms

The foundation of any effective AI learning platform lies in its technical capabilities. These features aren’t just nice-to-haves but essential components that determine whether your leadership development initiative succeeds or falters. As you evaluate options, pay close attention to:

Adaptive learning engines that adjust content difficulty based on user performance
Personalization features that tailor development paths to individual leader needs and roles
Content curation tools that automatically refresh leadership materials with current best practices
Engagement mechanisms that nudge busy executives to complete critical learning activities
Assessment capabilities that measure both knowledge acquisition and behavioral change
Integration flexibility with your existing HR tech stack, especially performance management systems
Analytics dashboards that demonstrate leadership capability development across the organization.

AI Platform Pricing Models

The financial investment in AI learning platforms extends far beyond the sticker price. Understanding the nuanced pricing structures helps you avoid budget surprises and ensures sustainable value over time. When reviewing vendor proposals, be aware of these common pricing approaches:

Subscription models: Per-user pricing may seem straightforward but can penalize usage growth
Tiered pricing: Carefully evaluate which leadership features sit in premium tiers
Implementation costs: Factor in customization, integration, and data migration expenses
Hidden fees: Look for charges related to content updates, API calls, or advanced analytics
Calculate true ROI: Include time savings, improved leadership outcomes, and reduced external consultant needs

Always ask: “What costs might arise in year two that aren’t apparent today?”

Platform Selection Criteria for Leadership Development

Beyond features and pricing, the ultimate success of your AI learning platform depends on how well it aligns with your organization’s unique leadership development ecosystem. This alignment is what transforms a generic technology tool into a strategic leadership accelerator. When making your final selection, prioritize:

Alignment with your leadership model: Can the platform adapt to your specific competency framework?
Content relevance: Does the leadership content reflect your industry challenges and organizational context?
Executive user experience: Will busy leaders actually engage with the platform, or will it become another digital dust catcher?
Customization depth: Can it reflect your organization’s language and leadership principles?
Security standards: How is sensitive leadership assessment data protected?
Implementation support: What resources will the vendor provide during your leadership rollout?
Ease of use for your L&D team: How much time and effort will it take for your team to learn and manage the platform? Is it intuitive enough for them to use without extensive training?

Consider creating a weighted scorecard that evaluates each platform against your specific leadership development priorities. This disciplined approach prevents “shiny feature syndrome” and ensures your selection addresses your organization’s unique leadership challenges.

Implementing AI Learning Platforms: Best Practices for Success

Your AI learning platform investment could transform leadership development or become another underutilized tech solution. The difference lies in implementation.

Securing Stakeholder Buy-In for AI Learning Initiatives

We talked about this in our podcast with Katie Greenwood to secure stakeholder buy-in for AI learning initiatives. She noted that early engagement is crucial. Understand each stakeholder’s “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM).

Use data and metrics to demonstrate the tangible business impact and potential ROI of AI-driven learning.
For executives, highlight the potential for increased ROI, cost savings, and competitive advantage through AI, as demonstrated by training more employees with fewer resources.
For managers, emphasize how AI can lead to more effective and productive teams.
For employees, showcase how AI can personalize learning, improve skills, and reduce workload.

A focused pilot program works wonders here. Select a specific leadership challenge (strategic thinking, feedback skills) and a receptive department. Document pre- and post-implementation metrics to create a compelling case study.

Integration Strategies for Maximum Impact

An AI learning platform that exists in isolation quickly becomes forgotten. Your implementation plan should address:

How the platform connects with your existing HR tech stack
Where learning moments appear in daily workflows (Slack, Teams, email)
Single sign-on capabilities to reduce friction
Data flows between systems for comprehensive analytics

Change Management for AI Learning Platform Adoption

Even the perfect technical implementation can fail without proper change management. The introduction of AI-powered learning represents a significant shift in how leaders develop—and human nature tends to resist change. Start by segmenting your audience and crafting targeted messaging:

For senior leaders: Emphasize strategic advantages and organizational capability building
For middle managers: Focus on team performance improvements and coaching efficiency
For individual contributors: Highlight personalized growth pathways and practical skill application

Address common forms of resistance head-on:

AI skepticism: Demonstrate through workshops how AI augments rather than replaces human judgment. Show concrete examples of AI-human collaboration in leadership development.
Learning fatigue: Showcase how AI reduces overwhelm by curating precisely what each leader needs when they need it.
Privacy concerns: Host transparent sessions about data collection, usage policies, and opt-out options.
“This too shall pass” mentality: Distinguish your AI initiative from previous learning fads by connecting it to lasting organizational priorities.

Gamification can be particularly effective during rollout, achievement badges, leaderboards highlighting early adopters, and visible progress metrics create momentum. Build a network of champions across departments who receive advanced training and serve as local experts. Above all, model the continuous growth mindset you’re trying to instill. Openly share how you’re using the AI tools yourself, including both successes and learning moments, to normalize experimentation and ongoing development. Remember that success metrics should evolve beyond initial adoption. Track behavioral changes, skills application, and leadership effectiveness improvements to demonstrate lasting value from your implementation.

A Case Study: AI Learning Platform in Action

Best Friends Animal Society, with 900+ employees split between remote and field work, faced unique leadership development challenges. Their workforce’s distributed nature, unpredictable schedules, and emotionally demanding roles made traditional training programs impractical. The solution came through implementing an AI-powered learning platform: Risely that addressed their specific needs through three key components:

Personalized Microlearning: The platform delivers tailored 15-minute daily learning experiences that adapt to each manager’s specific challenges, team dynamics, and professional context.
On-Demand AI Coaching: As Janis Cooper, Director of Leadership and Staff Development explains, “With Risely’s AI coach Merlin, managers now have a virtual coach at their fingertips, available anywhere and anytime, even when they’re on the road caring for animals.” This replaced prohibitively expensive human coaching with 24/7 accessible guidance.
Comprehensive Skill Assessment: The system assesses 30+ leadership competencies, creating precise development pathways and organizational benchmarks.

The implementation has transformed leadership development at Best Friends Animal Society by:

Extending development opportunities to previously underserved team members
Delivering contextually relevant training for non-profit leadership challenges
Achieving significant cost savings compared to traditional methods
Reinforcing organizational values through AI-guided interactions

“We are equipping our managers not just with the latest technology but with the skills and confidence they need to lead in our fast-paced and mission-driven environment,” notes Cooper. This case demonstrates how AI learning platforms can democratize leadership development, creating personalized, accessible, and contextual learning experiences that align with operational realities and organizational goals.

Conclusion

Remember, your competitive advantage isn’t just in having leadership programs, it’s in how quickly you can develop capable leaders at scale while maintaining personalization. AI makes this possible today.
Don’t overlook the power of just-in-time support, your leaders need guidance in their moments of uncertainty, not just during scheduled training sessions. This is where AI coaches truly shine.
The data insights you’ll gain will transform your approach. You’ll finally see precisely which leadership interventions drive behavior change, allowing you to invest resources more strategically.
Start with a specific leadership challenge rather than a complete overhaul. Perhaps focus on new manager development or communication skills where you can demonstrate clear value quickly.

References

Ready to Take Your Training Programs to the Next Level?

Transform your training programs with personalized, AI-driven solutions. Start your journey with Risely today!

Sign Up Now!

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich

Sneha MishraApr 16, 20258 min read

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich Effective leadership doesn’t always begin with a grand vision. Sometimes, it…

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth

Sneha MishraApr 14, 2025

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth You know the frustration all too well. Your organization invests thousands in…

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

Sneha MishraApr 8, 2025

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development? As an L&D leader, you’re likely familiar with this frustrating reality: 82%…

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

Sneha MishraMar 31, 2025

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report(1), 71% of L&D professionals are now…

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

Sneha MishraMar 20, 2025

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals According to a McKinsey survey(1), only 11% of…

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report⁽¹⁾, 71% of L&D professionals are now incorporating AI into their learning strategies, nearly double the adoption rate from just two years ago. Yet a striking skills gap has emerged: while 86% of learning leaders acknowledge AI’s critical importance to their function, only 24% report feeling confident in their ability to effectively leverage these technologies for leadership development. In this guide, we’ll explore the 5 essential AI skills for L&D leader. You’ll discover practical frameworks for integrating AI into leadership development initiatives, learn how to balance technological capabilities with human expertise, and gain strategies for upskilling yourself and your team. We’ll explore real-world applications showing how AI is transforming coaching, content creation, skills practice, and program measurement. Whether you’re just beginning your AI journey or looking to advance your existing capabilities, this guide provides a clear roadmap for developing the AI skills for L&D Leaders in the coming years. The window for gaining competitive advantage through AI-enhanced leadership development remains open right now but it won’t stay that way forever.

Table of Contents

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

Why Have AI Skills Become Non-Negotiable for Today’s L&D Leaders?

As an L&D professional, you’re likely familiar with the overwhelming challenges facing the industry today. From drowning in mountains of learner data to the constant pressure of scaling training programs across diverse teams, the demands can feel relentless. Many L&D teams struggle with making sense of all the data they collect. You might have assessment results, completion rates, and engagement metrics, but turning these into actionable insights often feels like solving a puzzle with missing pieces. Without the right tools, this valuable data sits unused while learning programs continue to operate on assumptions rather than evidence. Another common headache is the need to scale training effectively. Your organization keeps growing, teams are increasingly remote or hybrid, and everyone needs different training at different times. Using traditional methods, you’re constantly choosing between quality and reach – a frustrating compromise that leaves many learners underserved. Perhaps the most significant challenge is delivering truly personalized learning experiences. Your learners have diverse needs, backgrounds, and career paths, yet most training programs still follow a one-size-fits-all approach. This leads to disengagement, poor knowledge retention, and ultimately, wasted resources on training that doesn’t stick.

The AI Shift: Is your Job at Risk?

The L&D landscape isn’t just evolving, it’s transforming at lightning speed. AI tools are rapidly becoming standard in creating learning content, analyzing performance data, and delivering personalized learning paths. What once took weeks of manual work can now happen in minutes through AI assistance. If you’re hesitant to try these technologies, the stakes are higher than you might realize. Organizations are increasingly expecting their L&D teams to leverage AI to deliver better results more efficiently. Those who can’t meet these expectations risk being sidelined or replaced by professionals who can utilize AI’s potential. Think about it this way: if you could choose between an L&D partner who manually creates standard training materials versus one who uses AI to quickly develop personalized learning plans backed by data insights, which would you pick? This is the choice many organizations are making right now. The truth is, AI isn’t coming to L&D – it’s already here. From AI-powered content creation tools that can generate scenarios and assessments in seconds to learning platforms that automatically adapt to each learner’s needs, these technologies are becoming essential, not optional. By developing your AI skills for L&D now, you position yourself as a forward-thinking L&D professional who can bridge the gap between human expertise and technological advancement. Rather than fearing AI as a replacement, you can leverage it as your most powerful ally in creating meaningful learning experiences that truly impact your organization.

The Scalability-Personalization Paradox

Perhaps the most compelling reason AI skills for L&D have become non-negotiable is what we might call the scalability-personalization paradox: The Challenge: Organizations need to develop thousands of leaders across different levels, regions, and contexts each with unique strengths, gaps, and learning preferences. The Traditional Approach: Either standardize content for scale (sacrificing personalization) or customize programs for impact (sacrificing scale). The AI Solution: Machine learning algorithms can analyze skill gaps, learning preferences, and contextual factors to create dynamically personalized learning journeys at scale. For example, consider how Netflix transformed entertainment with personalized recommendations for millions of viewers simultaneously. Netflix’s recommendation system processes vast amounts of data, including viewing habits and ratings, to curate personalized content for each user. In a comparable manner, AI in leadership development can process data on leadership behaviors and learning interactions to deliver targeted developmental content. This approach not only enhances engagement but also accelerates leadership growth across diverse populations, effectively balancing the need for both personalization and scalability in training initiatives.

5 Core AI Skills for L&D Leader

In today’s rapidly evolving workplace, AI isn’t just a buzzword, it’s becoming an essential part of the L&D toolkit. Whether you’re just starting to explore AI skills for L&D or looking to deepen your expertise, developing these five core skills will help you harness AI’s potential to transform your learning programs.

1. AI Literacy

AI literacy is your ability to understand AI fundamentals, including how AI systems learn, what they can do well, and where they struggle. It includes knowing key concepts like machine learning, natural language processing, and generative AI. Let’s start with understanding AI types relevant to learning. You must recognize how different AI technologies serve distinct purposes in development programs:

Generative AI: Creates new content, scenarios, and personalized learning materials
Recommendation engines: Suggest tailored learning pathways based on individual needs and behaviors
Natural language processing: Powers conversational learning experiences and content analysis

A critical aspect of AI literacy is prompt engineering, the art of crafting effective instructions for AI tools. Think of it as learning to speak a new language that helps you get the most from AI systems. For example, instead of simply asking, “Create training on communication,” you should write, “Create a 3-module outline for a business communication course for new managers, including key learning objectives for each module and suggested activities.” The difference in results can be dramatic. Without AI literacy, you risk making poor technology decisions, underutilizing powerful tools, or implementing AI in ways that create problems rather than solutions. Many L&D professionals waste hours fighting with AI tools simply because they don’t understand how to effectively communicate with them. How Will This Skill Benefit You?

Confidently discuss AI solutions with vendors and IT teams without feeling lost in technical jargon

Create clear, effective prompts that get better results from AI tools like ChatGPT when developing learning content

Identify realistic opportunities for AI to enhance your learning experiences while avoiding overhyped promises

2. AI-Powered Learning Course Development

This skill involves using AI as a collaborative partner in creating learning experiences knowing which aspects of content creation to delegate to AI and where human expertise remains essential. It includes using AI to generate initial drafts, create varied examples, develop case studies, design assessment questions, and even create basic graphics or video scripts. Here’s the guide for how to create a course with AI. In practice, this might look like using AI to quickly generate a first draft of compliance training content, which you then refine and enhance with your instructional design expertise. Or you might use it to create ten variations of a scenario to practice the same skill in different contexts, making learning more transferable. You could also use AI to transform a lengthy technical document into an engaging microlearning series with key points, analogies, and practice questions. The key is understanding that AI excels at generating volume and variations but requires your expertise to ensure the content aligns with learning objectives, organizational culture, and instructional best practices. How Will This Skill Benefit You?

Cut content development time in half by using AI to create first drafts that you can refine and personalize

Quickly generate varied examples, scenarios, and case studies that make learning more relevant and engaging

Produce more learning content without expanding your team, helping you meet increasing training demands

3. Personalized Learning Design

Personalized learning design means creating training experiences that adapt to individual learner needs, preferences, and performance. With AI, you can design systems that automatically adjust content difficulty, provide tailored feedback, and create individualized learning journeys for all without requiring manual intervention for each learner. For example, with tools like Risely, your employees receive personalized guidance and support from AI coach- Merlin, who provides personalized feedback to their specific challenges. When an employee struggles with a particular skill, like handling difficult client conversations, Merlin can recognize this pattern and automatically deliver relevant tips, practice exercises, and reminders right when they’re needed. Merlin can provide gentle nudges for behavioral change like “Remember to ask open-ended questions in your next client meeting” and celebrate wins when progress is detected. Without this type of AI-powered personalization, many learners disengage when content feels irrelevant or overwhelming. Generic learning experiences often result in some employees being bored while others are confused, neither group getting what they actually need to improve. McKinsey research⁽²⁾ indicates that L&D functions leveraging AI appropriately are delivering personalized leadership development at scale while reducing program costs by 20%. These aren’t marginal improvements, they represent a fundamental shift in how effective leadership capabilities can be built. How Will This Skill Benefit You?

Design learning paths that automatically adjust based on learner performance, ensuring everyone gets the right level of challenge

Create more inclusive learning experiences that accommodate different learning styles and needs

Boost completion rates and knowledge retention by delivering content that feels personally relevant to each learner

4. Data Analysis and Interpretation

Data Analysis and Interpretation involves transforming learning data into actionable insights that drive improvement. It’s about knowing which metrics truly matter, how to interpret patterns, and how to make data-informed decisions about your learning programs. Continuing with the above mentioned example, with Risely, you gain access to comprehensive dashboards that visualize your employees’ learning activities, engagement patterns, and skill development. Instead of relying on completion rates and satisfaction surveys alone, you can see how well your managers are performing on key leadership skills, and get benchmarks across the organizations, which managers & team members are having issues with. For example, your dashboard might reveal that 70% of your customer service team excels at problem resolution but struggles with empathetic communication. With this insight, you can create targeted learning experiences focused specifically on empathy skills for that team. You might also discover that managers who completed a particular leadership module show measurable improvements in team engagement scores, providing concrete evidence of that training’s effectiveness. This level of data insight allows you to move beyond intuition to make evidence-based decisions about your learning investments, from designing assessments that accurately measure skill levels to creating precisely targeted learning interventions. How Will This Skill Benefit You?

Spot patterns and trends that reveal which learning approaches are working best for different groups

Make evidence-based improvements to your programs instead of relying on gut feelings or participant satisfaction scores alone

Show leadership concrete evidence of learning impact, strengthening their support for your L&D initiatives

5. AI Tools Selection

AI Tools Selection involves evaluating and selecting the right AI learning technologies for your specific needs. It requires developing a structured approach to assessment that considers factors beyond flashy features, looking at integration capabilities, user experience, content control, data privacy, and alignment with your specific learning challenges. In practice, you’ll create clear criteria for tool selection based on your organization’s unique requirements. For example, if you’re looking for a tool to help with content creation, you’ll evaluate options based on the types of content you typically create, the level of customization needed, and how the output integrates with your existing learning platforms. You’ll need to look beyond vendor demonstrations to understand how tools will actually function in your environment. It means asking tough questions about implementation requirements, requesting trial periods, and possibly running small pilot projects before making major investments. How Will This Skill Benefit You?

Save money by investing only in AI tools that address your organization’s actual learning needs

Avoid the frustration of implementing tools that don’t integrate well with your existing systems

Build a streamlined tech stack that enhances your learning offerings without overwhelming you or your learners

Developing these five AI skills doesn’t happen overnight, but even small steps forward can lead to significant improvements for you.. Start by focusing on one skill that could address your most pressing L&D challenge, and build from there. Remember, the goal isn’t to replace your expertise with AI, but to enhance what you already do well with powerful new capabilities.

Roadmap to Building Your AI Skillset

Building AI skills for L&D isn’t an overnight achievement—it’s a strategic progression that begins with honest self-assessment and deliberate skill development. As L&D leaders, you’re uniquely positioned to not only implement AI in your organization’s learning strategies but to model the very learning journey you design for others.

Step 1: Assess Your Current AI Readiness

Before diving into courses or experimenting with tools, take stock of where you stand: Self-assessment framework for L&D professionals Understanding your AI readiness isn’t just about technical knowledge, it’s about your mindset, awareness, and application capabilities across multiple dimensions:

AI Awareness: How familiar are you with AI concepts, capabilities, and limitations?
Technical Comfort: Can you interact with AI tools and understand their basic functionality?
Strategic Vision: Do you see how AI fits into learning strategy beyond just automation?
Ethical Understanding: Are you aware of bias, privacy, and ethical considerations?

Identifying your strengths and development areas Most L&D leaders find themselves stronger in learning design principles and weaker in technical implementation. Be honest about where you excel and where you need growth. For example:

Strength: Understanding adult learning theory and how to design effective experiences
Development Area: Knowing how to effectively prompt AI systems for specific content generation

Understanding your organization’s AI maturity level Your personal AI journey exists within an organizational context. Assess where your company falls on this spectrum:

AI Novice: Limited awareness, no formal strategy
AI Aware: Recognizes potential, isolated pilot projects
AI Ready: Clear strategy, active implementation in progress
AI Mature: Integrated AI capabilities, measuring ROI

Donald H. Taylor’s “Intention and Reality” model states, “There is always a gap between what we intend to do and what actually happens in practice.” Many L&D leaders want to use AI but struggle to take the first step. Time, complexity, and lack of support often hold them back. As Taylor puts it, “Turning intention into reality requires action, experimentation, and a willingness to embrace change.” The key is to start small, learn the basics, try AI tools, and show results. AI won’t replace you; it will make your work easier and more impactful. Without assessment, many L&D professionals waste time developing skills they don’t need while overlooking critical capabilities. A personalized assessment prevents this scattershot approach. You’ll develop a targeted learning path that addresses your specific needs, saving months of unfocused effort. L&D leaders who begin with structured self-assessment report reaching implementation readiness 40% faster than those who jump straight into learning tools.

Step 2: Create Your AI Learning Plan

With your readiness assessment complete, it’s time to build a learning roadmap. Focus on AI applications relevant to L&D, start with beginner-friendly content, and choose resources that offer hands-on practice. Practical learning will help you apply AI effectively. Free platforms like Coursera, edX, and Google’s AI Hub provide a solid foundation, while paid options like LinkedIn Learning and Udemy offer structured courses and certifications. Joining AI-focused L&D groups or attending webinars can also help you stay updated and connected.

Paid vs. Free: What’s Right for You?

Free resources are great for getting started, but they may lack depth and structured learning paths. Paid options often provide guided instruction, practical exercises, and certification—useful for credibility and career growth. A mix of both ensures well-rounded learning without overspending. By curating the right learning materials, you’ll accelerate your AI literacy and confidently integrate AI into your L&D strategy. Recommended resources for developing AI literacy Balance your learning across different formats: Courses

Learning How to Learn with AI on Coursera
AI for Everyone by Andrew Ng

Newsletters & Podcasts

“AI in L&D Weekly” by Donald Clark
Learning Scientists Podcast episodes on AI
Risely’s Podcast on L&D

Hands-on practice:

Schedule weekly “AI experimentation time” to test tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Midjourney
Apply AI to a current challenge: “How might I use AI to improve our onboarding materials?”
Keep a learning journal documenting insights and questions

Experiential learning opportunities with AI tools Theory without practice yields limited results. Schedule hands-on time with these tools:

Content Creation: Experiment with ChatGPT, Claude, or Bard to generate learning materials
Image Generation: Try DALL-E or Midjourney to create learning visuals
Video Creation: Explore Synthesia or D-ID for creating training videos
Data Analysis: Use Obviously AI to analyze learning data without coding

Start with a real L&D challenge from your work and attempt to solve it using AI. Document what works, what doesn’t, and how you might improve your approach. The AI field is vast, and without a structured learning architecture, it’s easy to get lost in technical jargon or theoretical concepts that don’t translate to practical L&D applications. Your learning should be deliberate, not accidental. A structured plan ensures you develop versatile skills that directly impact your work. You’ll gain confidence faster by focusing on relevant applications rather than trying to become an AI generalist.

Step 3: Start Small but Think Big

Build confidence through targeted experimentation: Begin with pilot projects that have minimal risk but potential impact: Starting small allows you to test AI in a controlled environment without major disruptions. This helps you learn, adjust, and build confidence before scaling AI adoption.

Use AI to generate discussion questions for an existing workshop
Create a personalized learning path recommendation system
Develop AI-enhanced job aids for a specific role

Document your process and results: Tracking your steps and outcomes provides clear insights into what works and what doesn’t. It also helps demonstrate AI’s value to stakeholders, making it easier to secure buy-in for future initiatives.

What problem were you trying to solve?
How did AI help (or not help)?
What was the learner’s response?
What would you change next time?

Attempting organization-wide AI implementation without proven success cases is a recipe for failure. Small wins build both your confidence and organizational trust in AI-enhanced learning approaches. Beyond the immediate benefits of each project, these pilots create an evidence base for larger initiatives. Success metrics from small experiments provide compelling data when seeking resources for broader implementation. They also help you identify which types of learning challenges respond best to AI solutions in your specific context.

Step 4: Collaborate and Learn Continuously

Accelerating your growth through community is very crucial because it allows you to learn from others’ experiences, stay updated on AI trends, and gain support in navigating challenges:

Form strategic partnerships with IT and data teams who can support your initiatives
Create an AI Learning Circle within your organization where colleagues share discoveries
Contribute your insights through blog posts, internal presentations, or industry forums

As you develop AI Skills for L&D, you’ll find that it enhances rather than replaces your L&D expertise. The goal isn’t to become an AI engineer, but to become an L&D leader who leverages AI to create more impactful, personalized, and efficient learning experiences. AI adoption in L&D isn’t a solo journey. The field evolves too rapidly for any individual to keep pace. Cross-functional partnerships also ensure you don’t create solutions that conflict with organizational data policies or technical architecture. A collaborative approach accelerates your learning curve exponentially. Organizations with cross-functional AI learning communities report 3x faster adoption of effective practices. These relationships also help you navigate potential obstacles before they derail your projects, from data privacy concerns to integration challenges.

Conclusion

Let’s wrap this up simply, becoming AI-savvy as an L&D leader doesn’t have to be scary. These AI skills for L&D we’ve talked about can really boost your impact, making your training programs more data-driven, personalized, and effective. Here are some recommendations as you move forward:

Start small but don’t wait: Even understanding the basics of AI gives you a good foundation
Focus on real problems: Look at what’s not working well in your programs and see how AI might help
Try things out: You’ll learn more by actually using AI tools than just reading about them
Keep the human touch: Remember, AI helps your work but doesn’t replace your leadership and empathy
Connect with others: Learning alongside peers makes everything easier

But here’s the thing – there’s a real cost to sitting on the sidelines. Without AI skills for L&D, you might:

Have less influence with executives (because you lack data-backed insights)
Face budget cuts (as programs without clear ROI often get cut first)
See your career options shrink (as AI knowledge becomes expected in senior roles)

AI isn’t coming for your job – it’s here to make you better at it!

References

Ready to Take Your Training Programs to the Next Level?

Transform your leadership development programs with personalized, AI-driven solutions. Start your journey with Risely today!

Sign Up Now!

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich

Sneha MishraApr 16, 20258 min read

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich Effective leadership doesn’t always begin with a grand vision. Sometimes, it…

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth

Sneha MishraApr 14, 2025

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth You know the frustration all too well. Your organization invests thousands in…

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

Sneha MishraApr 8, 2025

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development? As an L&D leader, you’re likely familiar with this frustrating reality: 82%…

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

Sneha MishraMar 31, 2025

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report(1), 71% of L&D professionals are now…

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

Sneha MishraMar 20, 2025

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals According to a McKinsey survey(1), only 11% of…

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

According to a McKinsey survey⁽¹⁾, only 11% of business leaders believe their leadership development initiatives yield meaningful results. Yet, they allocate large budgets to L&D initiatives. This gap isn’t just about content quality- it’s about scale, personalization, and delivery. As an L&D leader, you face constant pressure to produce more high-quality leadership content with fewer resources. A typical leadership course requires 130-150 hours to develop—that’s nearly a month of full-time work for a single program. Meanwhile, there’s a demand from learners and managers for customized content for different leadership levels, business units, and also to address emerging challenges. Well, now you can do it all with the form of AI-powered content creation, that is make a course with AI. Early adopters report cutting course development time by 40-60%⁽²⁾ while actually increasing content personalization and relevance. This isn’t about replacing instructional designers, it’s about amplifying their capabilities and focusing their expertise where it matters most. In this guide, we’ll walk through exactly how forward-thinking L&D departments are leveraging AI to transform their leadership to create course content with AI. You’ll discover practical frameworks for planning, researching, developing, and refining leadership courses with AI assistance. We’ll explore specific tools that solve real L&D challenges, and address the concerns about maintaining authenticity and organizational voice. Here’s the guide for how to create a course with AI

Table of Contents

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

How to Create a Course With AI : A Step by Step Guide

What if you could design, research, and build leadership courses in half the time while improving quality? With AI, this isn’t just possible, it’s becoming standard practice for forward-thinking L&D teams.

Word of Caution: L&D course creation is a very human task. AI will serve as your co-pilot, but it’s important to remember that you should never hand over the reins entirely. The human element is essential, especially in cases like leadership training, where emotional intelligence, nuanced communication, and organizational culture play a crucial role.

Step 1: Planning Your Learning and Development Course Structure

Before diving into AI tools for creating courses, take the time to lay a strong foundation for your learning material and course by focusing on a few key areas:

Define Clear Learning Objectives
The first step is to set clear, measurable learning objectives that align with your organization’s leadership competencies. These SMART goals should tailored to the needs of both your learners and the company. With AI, you can refine these objectives further, but you need to ensure that they stay aligned with your strategic goals.
Create a Content Outline
Once you have your direction, build a content outline that AI has the ability to expand upon. You’ll use AI to generate relevant examples, case studies, and scenarios, but the overall structure of the course should reflect your vision and expertise. Think of AI as a tool to fill in the gaps, not to replace your strategy.
Determine Metrics for Success
How will you measure success? Whether it’s engagement rates, learner performance, or feedback, your metrics should align with your learning objectives. While AI would help you automate the collection and analysis of these metrics, it’s still up to you to interpret the data and adjust course content as needed.
AI as a Strategic Tool, Not a Replacement
AI is great at analyzing successful L&D programs and identifying patterns, but it can’t define your strategic direction. Use AI as a support tool, but trust your human expertise to guide the overall course structure. For example, AI tools will help you brainstorm ideas, but the learning goals you’ve set will shape the final content.

Quick Tip: When setting your learning objectives, break them down into smaller, achievable milestones. AI tools help track progress and help adjust the course content if learners are struggling to meet those milestones. Dowload Risely’s Free SMART Goal Template to get started.

Step 2: Content Research and Organization with AI

After setting your course structure, it’s time to get into content research. But one major issue is time constraints. As an L&D professional with limited resources, research, trend analysis, and content creation takes up valuable time. AI helps speed up this process, but it can’t replace the need for human oversight. You’ll still need to curate and filter the information to ensure it aligns with your goals. Another problem is keeping content current. L&D trends evolve constantly, and staying updated is tough. AI tools will do research for you but you still need to interpret and decide what to include. Here’s where AI really helps: it accelerates research and provides relevant insights, but it can’t do the entire job. Use it to gather data, generate examples, and automate analysis. But remember, you’re still the one who refines and curates the content.

Use AI for Research: Tools like Claude or ChatGPT help you gather the latest L&D research and trends. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to generate specific scenarios for your course, such as “Create three examples of difficult feedback conversations in healthcare.” These tools will save you time and help you gather fresh ideas.
Organize Findings Using AI-Powered Tools: Once you have your research, tools like Miro’s AI features helps you organize everything into logical modules. This makes it easier to visualize connections between concepts, case studies, and learning objectives, and will give your course structure more clarity.
Incorporate Structured Surveys for Learner Feedback: Tools like Elicit allow you to create and analyze structured surveys to understand what your learners really need. AI will help you synthesize this feedback and tailor the course to better address their challenges, ensuring your content is relevant and impactful.
Explore Complex Research Efficiently: Sometimes research can be dense and time-consuming. AI tools like Perplexity summarize complex academic papers in real time, saving you time and helping you integrate the latest leadership theories into your course.
Leverage Academic Research for Evidence-Based Learning: Platforms like SciSpace let you access and collaborate on academic research papers. You can use these resources to build credible, evidence-based content that supports your leadership competencies, ensuring your course is grounded in the latest academic insights.
Continuous Improvement and Data-Driven Iteration: AI assists with continuous course improvement. By tracking learner performance and engagement, AI also highlights areas where learners are struggling and suggest ways to update the content in real time. Tools like Risely, an AI-powered leadership development coach, can provide personalized insights to help managers, leaders for continuous improvement and bridge skill gaps effectively. Post-course feedback analysis, powered by AI, can also help refine the course for the next round, ensuring continuous improvement and relevance.

Quick Tip: It’s helpful to use AI tools as your research assistants. When creating leadership courses, you can input prompts like “What are the top leadership challenges for 2025?” and let the AI bring in real-time data. It’s an easy way to start gathering relevant information quickly.

Other Interesting Reads

Step 3: How to Create Course Content with AI Effectively?

AI makes personalizing training for different types of learners seamless. For example, suppose you are running a leadership development platform: Marketing managers deal with brand messaging, customer insights, and cross-functional collaboration. AI generates case studies around leading creative teams, handling conflicts between sales and marketing, or adapting to shifting consumer trends. For tech managers, the focus shifts to agile leadership, innovation, and managing engineering teams. AI will help curate content around leading remote development teams, balancing speed with quality in product releases, or handling stakeholder expectations in tech-driven projects. Meanwhile, operations managers might need content on process optimization, supply chain leadership, and crisis management. AI will help you generate leadership scenarios that reflect logistical challenges, cost-cutting strategies, or efficiency improvements, making learning more practical and industry-specific. Instead of a one-size-fits-all generic leadership program, AI allows you to customize learning paths, examples, and challenges to fit each managerial role. With the right input, AI adapts tone, complexity, and real-world context, ensuring every learner gets a relevant and engaging experience. While AI is a powerful ally, it’s important for you to understand how to integrate these best ai content creation tools effectively into your course creation process. ChatGPT (OpenAI)

Excels at: Generating diverse leadership scenarios, creating discussion questions, and developing case studies
Best for: Quick content ideation and addressing “what if” leadership scenarios

Claude (Anthropic)

Excels at: Longer, nuanced content with stronger reasoning and fewer hallucinations
Best for: Evidence-based leadership content requiring balanced perspectives

How to get better leadership content from AI writers?

Use role-based prompting: “Act as an executive coach explaining how to deliver difficult feedback” yields better results than generic requests
Provide context about your audience: “Create content for new engineering managers transitioning from technical roles to leadership”
Request specific formats: “Generate a 10-minute interactive exercise on delegation skills with clear facilitator instructions”

The quality of your AI outputs depends entirely on your prompting skills. If your prompt simply says,“Write about leadership” you are not going to get much out of it, because:

Lacks clarity on tone, length, audience, and specific focus.
Too broad, making it difficult to know what type of content is expected.

What should you write instead?

“Act as a leadership coach. Create a 400-word article for senior executives about how to inspire innovation while maintaining a strong ethical framework. The tone should be authoritative yet approachable, and the format should include real-world examples of successful leadership.”

Why does it work?

Clear instructions on tone, length, audience, and content type.
Specific in terms of desired outcome and structure.

AI Pitfalls to Watch Out For

AI is a great assistant, but it’s not flawless. There are a few red flags in AI content that you should look out for while creating an L&D course with AI:

Factual Accuracy: AI sometimes generate incorrect information. Always verify the data and insights before using them in your course.
Biases in Content: AI models can inherit biases from the data they’ve been trained on. Review the content for any unintended bias that could affect the credibility or inclusiveness of your course.
Engagement and Interaction: AI will generate text quickly, but it might not always produce highly engaging content. Make sure your course includes interactive elements, such as quizzes, exercises, and discussions, to keep learners engaged.

Step 4: Enhancing Engagement and Visual Elements

By now, you’ve built a solid course structure and refined your content with AI, but how do you make it engaging and memorable? AI-powered visuals, branching scenarios, and interactive elements will help you transform passive learning into an immersive experience. However, the challenge is knowing when and how to use them effectively. Let’s be real, dumping AI-generated infographics or videos into your course won’t automatically make it engaging. The key is using the right medium for the right learning moment while ensuring content remains inclusive, relevant, and accessible.

Bringing Concepts to Life with AI Tools with these Best AI content creation tools

Here’s how you can use AI to enhance engagement to create course content while keeping learner experience at the core:

Make complex ideas interactive with infographics: Instead of lengthy text, tools like Canva’s Magic Design will instantly turn key leadership principles into easy-to-understand visuals. A great use case? Visualizing decision-making frameworks like the Situational Leadership Model.

Tell compelling leadership stories with custom illustrations: Want to depict diverse leadership scenarios? AI tools like DALL·E or Midjourney can generate tailored images, but here’s the catch, AI has a bias problem. Always review generated visuals to ensure they reflect inclusive and diverse leadership representations.

Simulate real-world decision-making with branching scenarios: Leadership isn’t theoretical, it’s about making tough calls. Use ChatGPT to create interactive, choose-your-own-adventure-style leadership scenarios where learners navigate challenges like handling a team conflict or giving difficult feedback.

Polish your presentations effortlessly: Static slides don’t cut it anymore. Tools like Beautiful.ai transform text-heavy slides into sleek, engaging presentations in minutes, ensuring leadership concepts don’t just inform but inspire.

Quick Tip: Don’t just use AI-generated content as-is. Instead, personalize it, adjust case studies, tweak wording, and add real-world context. AI is an assistant, not a substitute for thoughtful instructional design. AI will generate leadership content fast, but will it ensure accuracy, relevance, and inclusivity? Not quite. That’s why this final step is all about refining, reviewing, and quality-checking what AI produces before delivering it to learners. Think of AI as your co-pilot, it’s great to create an online course with ai, but you’re still in the captain’s seat. Here’s how to keep your course high-quality and bias-free:

Quality-Check Your AI-Generated Content

Develop a Leadership Content Checklist: AI sometimes hallucinates (yes, really). Before rolling out your course, check that AI-generated insights align with current leadership best practices, not outdated models.
Watch out for hidden biases: AI often mirrors historical biases—for example, depicting only men in leadership roles or defaulting to Western corporate settings. Be intentional about diversifying scenarios and ensuring inclusive language.
Test for engagement & relevance: What sounds good in theory may not resonate in practice. Gather pilot group feedback and refine AI prompts accordingly. Ask: “Does this leadership scenario feel realistic?” and Would this example make sense for our industry?”

Step 6: Assembling Your AI-Powered Course

You’ve structured your course, refined the content, and added engaging visuals—now it’s time to bring everything together into a seamless, accessible learning experience. But here’s the challenge: compiling, organizing, and delivering content effectively without losing personalization or engagement. Luckily, AI-powered course assembly tools will help streamline the process while ensuring learners get a structured, interactive, and tailored leadership development journey. Here’s a couple that you might want to check out: Articulate 360 with AI

Key feature: AI Content Generator creates interactive leadership courses from simple prompts
Analytics strength: Tracks completion and decision paths to identify leadership tendencies

Docebo Learning Suite

Key feature: AI-driven content recommendations and learning path creation
Personalization capability: Creates individualized development plans aligned with leadership competency frameworks

By following these steps, you are well equipped with how to create a course with AI with the strategic insight that only human L&D professionals are able to provide.

Enhancing Leadership Development with AI Coaching

Traditional leadership courses face a fundamental challenge: they are designed to teach skills that can only be mastered through practice and personalized feedback. While structured courses provide essential foundational knowledge, they often fall short in supporting leaders during critical moments when that knowledge must be applied in complex situations.

The Gap Between Knowledge and Application

Leadership development strategy isn’t just about knowing, it’s about doing. Research shows that without immediate application and reinforcement, 90% of content is forgotten within a week. This “forgetting curve” is particularly problematic for soft skills development, which requires consistent practice and contextual learning.

How AI Coaching Bridges the Gap?

AI-powered coaching creates a continuous learning experience that complements traditional leadership courses in several powerful ways:

Just-in-Time Support

Unlike scheduled training, AI coaches are available precisely when leaders need guidance. The AI Coach helps you to structure conversation, anticipate reactions, and practice responses. No static course could provide this support at that moment.

Personalized Guidance for Specific Challenges

AI coaching adapts to each leader’s unique context and challenges. It analyzes individual communication patterns and suggests improvements, recommends approaches based on team dynamics and organizational culture.

Safe Environment for Practice

You can rehearse difficult scenarios without real-world consequences. Even simulate tough conversations with virtual team members, test different approaches to complex leadership situations and receive immediate feedback on communication effectiveness

Consistent Reinforcement

Behavioral change requires repetition and ongoing feedback. Micro-learning nudges that reinforce key leadership concepts. Pattern recognition that identifies improvement areas over time. Progress tracking that celebrates development milestones Try Merlin – AI coach at Risely for a hyper-personalized learning to build people leadership skills all your managers need.

Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them

As AI reshapes leadership development, three critical challenges threaten to undermine even the most optimised content strategies.

Challenge of Maintaining Authenticity

Authentic leadership content reflects lived experiences and organizational wisdom that AI alone cannot replicate. What you should do instead:

Implement an AI-human collaboration workflow where AI generates initial drafts that experienced leaders then enhance with personal anecdotes and insights.
Use “voice calibration prompts” that incorporate your organization’s values: “Generate content that reflects our collaborative leadership approach characterized by transparency and psychological safety”.
Create a library of organization-specific examples and stories that would be referenced in AI prompts.

Cultural Sensitivity and Inclusivity Hurdles

Effective feedback differs significantly across cultures, presenting a challenge for multinational organizations implementing AI-driven leadership development. Many AI tools, initially trained on Western-centric data, may fail to resonate with diverse global teams. Try to focus on –

Develop regionally-specific content parameters and review guidelines.
Use diversity prompting, for example “Create leadership scenarios that reflect diverse cultural approaches to conflict resolution across Asian, European, and Latin American contexts”.
Establish a diverse review panel representing different regions, backgrounds, and leadership styles.

Leadership Is Not Ready to Commit to an AI Solution

When leadership is unsure or resistant to adopting AI, it can stall organizational progress and innovation. Keep these best practices in mind:

Present data-driven case studies to leadership, demonstrating how AI has successfully enhanced similar organizations’ operations and bottom lines.
Engage leadership with pilot AI projects that allow them to see firsthand the potential benefits of AI tools before making a full commitment.
Create a roadmap for AI adoption that outlines the clear benefits, timelines, and required resources, showing leadership how AI aligns with long-term organizational goals.

Lack of AI or Digital Literacy Hindering Adoption

AI literacy is crucial for employees and leaders to fully embrace AI tools, but a lack of digital literacy can create roadblocks to adoption. But you can cover this gap:

Offer foundational AI training programs to employees at all levels, focusing on practical applications and understanding AI’s role in their work.
Provide hands-on workshops where employees will interact with AI tools in real-world scenarios, allowing them to develop confidence in using AI systems.
Use peer champions within the organization who are digitally savvy to mentor and guide others, helping to bridge the literacy gap

Difficulties with Integration

AI-generated materials often clash with existing content in tone, terminology, and pedagogical approach.

Create an integration framework that maps which content elements should be AI-generated versus human-crafted
Use the “extension technique”: “Using our existing leadership competency framework as a foundation, extend the ‘influential communication’ module with practical exercises that maintain our established approach”

The most successful organizations view AI not as a replacement but as an amplifier of human expertise. By addressing these challenges, L&D leaders can maximize AI’s efficiency while preserving the authentic human elements that make leadership development truly worth it.

Key Takeaways

AI transforms leadership development by enabling faster content creation, personalization at scale, and better consistency, while complementing (not replacing) human expertise in areas like authenticity and cultural sensitivity.
Structure your AI-assisted course creation process with clear steps: define learning objectives, research with AI tools, generate diverse content types with well-crafted prompts, enhance with visuals, and maintain quality through careful review to create course content that is well optimized.
Beyond static courses, AI coaching provides you with just-in-time leadership development with personalized guidance, simulated role-plays, and consistent feedback that reinforces learning and addresses practical challenges.
You should start with specific AI tools for different content needs: writing assistants for course materials, multimedia generators for engagement, and course assembly platforms with analytics to measure leadership development progress to create online course with AI.
Implementation works best when integrated gradually, maintaining your organization’s voice and values, and establishing a quality review process to ensure content aligns with your leadership philosophy.

References

Ready to Take Your Training Programs to the Next Level?

Transform your training programs with personalized, AI-driven solutions. Start your journey with Risely today!

Sign Up Now!

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich

Sneha MishraApr 16, 20258 min read

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich Effective leadership doesn’t always begin with a grand vision. Sometimes, it…

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth

Sneha MishraApr 14, 2025

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth You know the frustration all too well. Your organization invests thousands in…

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

Sneha MishraApr 8, 2025

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development? As an L&D leader, you’re likely familiar with this frustrating reality: 82%…

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

Sneha MishraMar 31, 2025

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report(1), 71% of L&D professionals are now…

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

Sneha MishraMar 20, 2025

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals According to a McKinsey survey(1), only 11% of…

Generative AI for Learning and Development: Getting Started

In 2024, organizations spent $401 billion globally on corporate training⁽¹⁾, yet 70% of employees report feeling unprepared for the future of work and seek reskilling or upskilling⁽²⁾. The disconnect isn’t surprising when you consider that most L&D teams are stretched thin—creating personalized, engaging content for thousands of learners while racing to keep pace with rapidly evolving skill requirements is not an easy feat at all. t’s a common challenge that’s pushing many L&D leaders to explore a powerful solution: generative AI. The emergence of generative AI isn’t just another tech trend. It’s promised to be a paradigm shift in how we approach learning and development. According to McKinsey’s 2024 State of AI report⁽³⁾, 65% of organizations surveyed were actively using AI, almost double from the previous year. If we were look at these applications by industry, “professional services” that includes Human Resources, Learning and Development, consulting, research and training, we will discover the biggest increase in adoption and meaningful cost reduction. The potential is enormous: AI can now create customized learning content in minutes, deliver personalized coaching at scale, and generate data-driven insights about learning effectiveness. This comprehensive guide will show you:

How generative AI is transforming traditional L&D approaches
Real-world examples of organizations successfully implementing AI-powered learning
A practical framework for getting started with generative AI in your L&D strategy
Key considerations and best practices for maximizing impact while managing risks

Whether you’re AI-curious or ready to dive in, you’ll learn how to harness this technology to create more effective, scalable, and personalized learning experiences for your organization.

Table of Contents

Generative AI for Learning and Development: Getting Started

Understanding Generative AI for Learning and Development

Let’s talk about what happens when artificial intelligence meets the messy, beautiful reality of how people actually learn. Not the sanitized version we see in tech demos, but the real deal – where some days you’re sharp as a tack, and others you can barely remember your coffee order. Generative AI for learning and development isn’t just another buzzword to add to your toolkit. It’s more like having a ridiculously observant teaching assistant who never sleeps and somehow remembers everything about how your team learns best. The kind that notices when someone’s eyes glaze over during technical training and thinks, “Hmm, maybe we should try explaining this differently.” Here’s the thing: While traditional training programs lumber along like cargo ships – massive, slow, and hard to redirect – AI-powered learning dances. It pivots. It adapts. When someone’s struggling with a concept, it doesn’t just repeat the same explanation louder (we’ve all had that teacher, right?). Instead, it reshapes the content, finding new angles until something clicks. How? Check out this conversation with an AI coach to see it live:

But let’s be crystal clear about one thing: This isn’t about replacing human connection with cold algorithms. Rather, it’s about amplifying what makes learning deeply human – curiosity, adaptation, and those wonderful “aha!” moments when knowledge finally sticks. Read further: 7 Easy Ways to Use AI in Learning and Development

Pros & Cons of Generative AI for Learning and Development

Think of it as giving your L&D team superpowers. Not the flying-through-the-air kind (sorry), but the ability to truly meet each learner where they are, when they need it most. But before moving into the applications of generative AI for learning and development teams, let’s explore the pros and cons in greater detail.

Advantages of Using GenAI for L&D	Risks in Using GenAI for L&D
✅ Adaptive Learning Paths: Creates personalized learning journeys based on individual progress, style, and pace – no more one-size-fits-all training	❌ Human Connection Gap: GenAI misses nuanced emotional cues and complex interpersonal dynamics that human facilitators naturally grasp
✅ Time-Saving Content Creation: Generates first drafts of training materials, quizzes, and assessments in minutes rather than hours	❌ Data Privacy Concerns: Raises questions about information security and confidentiality of learning data
✅ 24/7 Learning Support: Offers round-the-clock assistance for learners across different time zones and schedules	❌ Quality Consistency: Can produce uneven or generic content that needs significant human refinement
✅ Consistent Feedback: Provides immediate, standardized feedback while maintaining objectivity across all learners	❌ Integration Challenges: May not seamlessly fit with existing learning management systems or company processes
✅ Data-Driven Insights: Tracks learning patterns and identifies skill gaps with precision that manual monitoring can’t match	❌ Over-Reliance Risk: Could lead to decreased human involvement in critical developmental conversations

The bottom line: Think of generative AI as a powerful assistant, not a replacement for human expertise in L&D. The key is finding the right balance where technology enhances rather than diminishes the human element in learning.

With this mind, let’s explore what L&D pros are doing with GenAI in the next section.

How are L&D Teams Using Gen AI for Their Work?

Between the AI cheerleaders and the skeptics, there’s a sweet spot where real work happens. Let’s cut through the noise and look at what L&D teams are actually doing with generative AI right now.

Johnson & Johnson’s AI-powered Employee Assessments

Johnson & Johnson needed an efficient way to assess employee skills and align them with evolving business needs.

Implemented AI-driven skills inference technology to evaluate employees’ competencies.
Enabled personalized career development by identifying skill gaps and recommending targeted training.

This lead to:

More accurate skills assessment for leadership development.
Improved training effectiveness, leading to enhanced workforce capabilities.

DHL – AI-Driven Career Marketplace

DHL wanted to improve employee retention and career progression by offering tailored development opportunities.

Developed an AI-powered internal career marketplace to match employees with relevant positions.
Recommended upskilling programs based on individual strengths and career aspirations.

The result?

Boosted employee engagement and retention by providing clear career pathways.
Created a more agile and skilled workforce through AI-guided training.

Best Friends Animal Society – AI-Powered Leadership Coaching

Best Friends Animal Society needed scalable leadership development for managers across different locations.

Used Risely’s AI-powered leadership coaching for personalized feedback and growth plans.
Integrated experiential learning, including equine-assisted leadership training, for a hands-on development approach.

The impact?

Strengthened leadership culture within the organization.
Increased engagement in leadership development initiatives.

Virti – Immersive AI-Driven Training

Organizations needed realistic, risk-free training environments to prepare employees for high-stakes scenarios.

Built an immersive AI-powered platform using VR/AR for hands-on leadership training.
Simulated real-world decision-making scenarios to improve leadership skills.

The result:

Improved knowledge retention and decision-making abilities among trainees.
Scaled immersive leadership training cost-effectively across organizations.

Getting Started with Generative AI for Learning and Development

Your AI implementation doesn’t need to be perfect – it needs to be practical. If you’re ready to transform your L&D efforts, here’s your step-by-step guide that cuts through the complexity and gets you started.

Step 1: Know Your Ground

You’ll want to start by taking a hard look at your L&D ecosystem. What’s eating up your team’s time? Where do you see your content creators struggling? Map out exactly where your resources are going – you might be surprised to find that 80% of your effort goes into tasks AI could handle.

Look at your content creation workflows, how you’re delivering training, and where your assessment bottlenecks are. When you quantify these pain points, you’ll have solid data to guide your AI investment decisions.

Step 2: Pick Your Battle

You don’t need to revolutionize everything at once. Instead, zero in on one area where you’re feeling the most pressure. Suppose you are in charge of leadership and manager development:

Are you spending weeks adapting content for different regions? Then your effort needs to focus on ensuring that localization is easier with generative AI for learning and development. For example, teams with leaders spread out across different geographical territories use Risely’s AI coach Merlin to provide them support in their native languages.
Is your team drowning in assessment creation? Then something like Risely’s in-built set of leadership skills assessment will help you.

Pick a project that will give you quick wins and clear returns. You’ll want something concrete enough to measure but significant enough to matter to your stakeholders. At the same time, you do not want to put hours into experimenting without a promise of results.

Step 3: Tool Up Smart

When you’re choosing your AI tools, think practical, not flashy. You need solutions that will play nice with your existing systems and won’t require a computer science degree to operate. You should also consider that your team will first have to spend some time learning these tools before it starts to show results. If that sounds like a big ask, don’t be afraid to go for free trials, demos and pilots with vendors until you are sure. Ask yourself:

Will this tool actually solve your specific problems?
Can your team learn it quickly?
What’s the real cost when you factor in training and maintenance?

Don’t let fancy features seduce you – focus on what you’ll actually use. We have compiled a list of easy to start with L&D tools that can get you going:

Step 4: Set Your Guardrails

Before you dive in, you’ll need clear rules of engagement. Set up straightforward guidelines for how you’ll use AI – think of it as your safety net. You’ll want to establish who reviews AI-generated content, how you’ll protect sensitive data, and what quality standards you’ll maintain. Make these guidelines clear enough that anyone on your team can follow them without second-guessing.

Step 5: Measure What Matters

You can’t improve what you don’t measure, but you also don’t want to drown in metrics. Focus on numbers that tell your success story: How much time are you saving? Are your learners completing more programs? Is your team able to support more training initiatives? When you track these metrics consistently, you’ll spot patterns and opportunities for improvement that you might otherwise miss.

Remember: Your goal isn’t to win awards for the most innovative AI implementation – it’s to solve real problems that make your L&D function more effective. Start with what’s right in front of you, use the tools that make sense for your context, and build from there. You’ll find that even small improvements can lead to significant impacts when you approach them systematically.

Key Takeaways

Generative AI is transforming L&D by enabling scalable, personalized learning experiences through automated content creation, adaptive pathways, and data-driven insights. Organizations can leverage this technology to deliver consistent, on-demand leadership development while reducing costs and time investments.
Successful implementation of generative AI for learning and development requires a balanced approach combining AI capabilities with human oversight. Focus on clear strategic alignment, robust data governance, and comprehensive change management while maintaining the crucial human element in leadership development.
Start small but think big – begin with specific use cases like personalized microlearning or AI-powered coaching, measure results, and scale based on success. Integration with existing L&D systems and establishing clear metrics for success are crucial first steps.
While generative AI offers significant benefits, organizations must actively address challenges around data privacy, potential biases, and system integration. Regular monitoring, validation of AI-generated content, and ongoing optimization are essential for long-term success.

References

Deeksha, with a solid educational background in human resources, bridges the gap between your goals and you with valuable insights and strategies within leadership development. Her unique perspectives, powered by voracious reading, lead to thoughtful pieces that tie conventional know-how and innovative approaches together to enable success for management professionals.

Grab free assessments to support you on the leadership journey!

Explore your capabilities in 30+ core and advanced leadership areas with Risely’s suite of assessments.

Start Now

What’s Culture Add and Culture Fit? | Victor Bullara

Deeksha SharmaFeb 6, 20254 min read

What’s Culture Add and Culture Fit? | Victor Bullara Do we hire for culture, or not? This has been a…

What’s the Impact of Using AI in Hiring? | Victor Bullara

Deeksha SharmaFeb 4, 2025

What’s the Impact of Using AI in Hiring? | Victor Bullara AI is reaching everything a workplace offers, and the…

Mastering Leadership Hiring | Victor Bullara

Deeksha SharmaFeb 2, 2025

Mastering Leadership Hiring | Victor Bullara Hiring the right leaders is critical to the success of your business. In this…

10+ Interview Questions On Team Management You Must Know

Deeksha SharmaJun 14, 2024

10+ Interview Questions On Team Management You Must Know Team management is a critical aspect of any successful organization, where…

Discussing AI in Learning and Development with Dr. Steve Hunt

AI is the big thing for our age. But, do we truly understand what the two letters stand for? What can AI really do? And where do the limits stand? If you are a learning and development professional searching for these answers, you are at the right spot. We have Dr. Steven Hunt, a lifelong AI learner and the author of HR tech trifecta of books, speaking about AI in learning and development with Ashish, covering:

What are the strengths and limitations of AI in HR practices today and in the future?
What can AI do, what can it not do, and what might it be able to do in the next five years?
What is the impact of AI on the learning and development (L&D) space, and what are the main applications and use cases?

And much more…

Watch Now

Meet the Speaker!

Dr. Steve Hunt is the author of a trilogy on HR tech, including his popular tome, Talent Tectonics. In his present avatar, he’s the Founder at i3 Talent LLC. Previously he has contributed to building the talent function at SuccessFactors. Steve’s long experience with technology and workplaces makes him the go-to person for understanding the advent of AI for the L&D space.

Connect with Steve: LinkedIn

Understanding AI in Learning and Development with Dr. Steve Hunt

AI is essentially a sophisticated mathematical pattern recognition algorithm that can interpret data and spot patterns to make predictions or provide information. It can automate repetitive tasks.
AI lacks wisdom, care, and the ability to make value-based decisions. It can help with decision-making but cannot ensure the decisions are correct. It cannot care for other people or make ethical judgements.
Generative AI can be thought of as an “infinitely knowledgeable intern” who is eager to provide information but does not know whether the information is correct or not.
The primary purpose of work has shifted from basic survival to knowledge and service jobs that focus on exceeding expectations, solving problems and making people feel good about using technology.

AI is changing the landscape of work by automating repetitive tasks, which frees up humans for more creative and caring roles. It is important to focus on tasks that are not repetitive. AI in learning and development is helping by:

Identifying skills people need to learn
Matching people to the right training resources
Delivering microlearning experiences in the flow of work
Democratizing coaching
Capturing information from subject matter experts
Enabling immersive virtual learning experiences

What should L&D leaders keep in mind while using AI?

AI can help identify people’s potential based on existing skills. For example, a high school teacher may have similar underlying skills as a store manager.
Organizations need to become early adopters of AI rather than waiting for it to mature, and they need to be part of the product design process with startups.
AI is not meant to eliminate jobs, but to eliminate repetitive tasks and allow humans to focus on more uniquely human tasks, such as caring for others and imagining.
Humans are wired for change and learning, whereas organizations can become resistant to change as they grow.
AI blindly applies data, so biased data will lead to biased results. There is a need for regulation around the use of AI, similar to the pharmaceutical industry.
Organizations need to rethink how they evaluate expertise and how they compensate people, especially for jobs that involve caring for others.
L&D leaders should experiment with AI, find “true HR professionals” who are excited about using technology, and provide concrete examples of how AI can solve business problems to convince leaders to invest in it. Organizations must ensure they are using technology for effectiveness rather than familiarity.

Further reading: 7 Easy Ways to Use AI in Learning and Development

Meet the Host!

Ashish is an entrepreneur tackling workplace development challenges through Risely, an AI copilot that helps managers and leaders build essential people skills.

Drawing on his experience in technology and organizational behavior, he’s passionate about creating scalable solutions that transform how companies develop their talent. His mission is to empower leaders to build thriving teams and sustainable organizational success.

Connect: LinkedIn

Grab free assessments to support you on the leadership journey!

Explore your capabilities in 30+ core and advanced leadership areas with Risely’s suite of assessments.

Start Now

What’s Culture Add and Culture Fit? | Victor Bullara

Deeksha SharmaFeb 6, 20254 min read

What’s Culture Add and Culture Fit? | Victor Bullara Do we hire for culture, or not? This has been a…

What’s the Impact of Using AI in Hiring? | Victor Bullara

Deeksha SharmaFeb 4, 2025

What’s the Impact of Using AI in Hiring? | Victor Bullara AI is reaching everything a workplace offers, and the…

Mastering Leadership Hiring | Victor Bullara

Deeksha SharmaFeb 2, 2025

Mastering Leadership Hiring | Victor Bullara Hiring the right leaders is critical to the success of your business. In this…

10+ Interview Questions On Team Management You Must Know

Deeksha SharmaJun 14, 2024

10+ Interview Questions On Team Management You Must Know Team management is a critical aspect of any successful organization, where…

AI in Human Resources: Strengths, Limitations, and the Future of Work | David Bernstein

AI is the hot buzz word taking the world by storm. The human resources functions are no different. AI brings in many new possibilities of increasing efficiency, but also poses several challenges that HR professionals need to think about before jumping on to the bandwagon. In this podcast conversation, David joins Ashish to talk about:

What are the latest trends in the HR Tech space, and how are these trends impacting both the supply and demand sides of HR?
How is AI being perceived and adopted by HR professionals, and what are the potential challenges and benefits of using AI in HR
What are the key messages for HR professionals and vendors to navigate the evolving HR landscape and improve their practices and solutions?

Watch Now on YouTube

Meet the Speaker!

David Bernstein is Global VP – Partnerships and Alliances at Daxtra Technologies, with over 25 years of experience in HR Tech and specializes in business development, product marketing, GTM strategy, and product management.

Connect with David: LinkedIn

What’s Trending: AI in Human Resources

Everything old is new again: Many HR topics that were discussed in the past, such as diversity and inclusion and skills management, are resurfacing with new importance.
Skills are a key focus: Understanding and managing employee skills is crucial for businesses to thrive, particularly in a competitive job market with a shortage of talent.
Digital transformation is essential for businesses to be agile and keep up with competitors using newer technologies. For companies, leading digital transformation is no longer a yes or no question; the times call for rapid change that HR teams need to manage smoothly.
AI adoption in HR is still in its early stages: Many HR professionals do not fully understand how AI works and how to leverage it effectively. In fact, for most HR professionals today, the use of AI in human resources is limited to simple things like content creation or supporting documentation. The vertical and niche use cases that can truly become superpowers are underexplored.
AI should augment human skills, not replace them: There is concern about the potential for bias in AI tools. It happens in many popular cases where the training data skew the results. Then there’s the fear of being replaced by AI, which takes up more tasks every day. As a result, HR needs to think twice about using AI to empower employees, not simply to offload tasks.
HR needs to be more strategic: HR professionals need to understand how they contribute to the success of their businesses and how to add value.
Vendors need to understand the buyer. HR vendors need to understand the needs and challenges of HR professionals to create valuable, integrated solutions rather than just point solutions. As a new wave of tech is emerging, there’s a lot of excitement about the solutions it can bring forth.

Meet the Host

Ashish is an entrepreneur tackling workplace development challenges through Risely, an AI copilot that helps managers and leaders build essential people skills.

Connect: LinkedIn

Level up your AI game with Risely!

Start Now

What’s Culture Add and Culture Fit? | Victor Bullara

Deeksha SharmaFeb 6, 20254 min read

What’s Culture Add and Culture Fit? | Victor Bullara Do we hire for culture, or not? This has been a…

What’s the Impact of Using AI in Hiring? | Victor Bullara

Deeksha SharmaFeb 4, 2025

What’s the Impact of Using AI in Hiring? | Victor Bullara AI is reaching everything a workplace offers, and the…

Mastering Leadership Hiring | Victor Bullara

Deeksha SharmaFeb 2, 2025

Mastering Leadership Hiring | Victor Bullara Hiring the right leaders is critical to the success of your business. In this…

10+ Interview Questions On Team Management You Must Know

Deeksha SharmaJun 14, 2024

10+ Interview Questions On Team Management You Must Know Team management is a critical aspect of any successful organization, where…

Friend or foe? AI for you

Geraldine Murphy , Global Learning Experience Manager at The Heineken Company, shared an interesting insight in the last edition of LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report.

While talking of a move away from one-size-fits-all training, her vision called for a major shift from traditional leadership training to a dynamic mode of delivering leadership development resources.

She discussed two major facets in this equation: the human-led leadership transformation focuses on deep inner work, such as values and purpose.

Do you want to guess what made the other half?

Contrary to popular fear (or expectations or hopes), AI is not set to replace humans. Instead, it’s here to empower humans. It does so in leadership development and coaching by solving for the lack of real-time guidance and insights.

Suppose you don’t have a coach (as most leaders don’t) but do have a people management challenge (as most leaders do)—what’s the way out? AI-powered coaching solutions like Risely’s Merlin bridge this gap effectively through coaching at the point of need.

At first glance, solutions like this seem unreal.

Can an AI ever understand how annoying Karen from Finance is? Can it handle Smith’s mood swings as well as I do?

We’ll let you figure it out here with Merlin for free. Start a role play with your frenemy colleague and let us know.

Amid the threat of job loss due to AI, there are also positive signals, like Asana’s report that 65% of employees understand human-centered AI and believe it will be helpful at work.

In people management roles, what does helpful AI look like?

Is it going to do everything while you relax? Probably not. (Although 1 in 6 US employees ARE open to the idea of having an AI boss)

Instead, AI makes things easier, as discussed in the first use case above of AI coaching.

We always assume and talk about the basics: AI will make data handling and routine administrative work easier, reduce biases, and remove the friction of small tasks.

But there’s more to it; the same report shared that over one-third (37%) of employees want to use AI for creative brainstorming. Going back to Murphy’s statement, we can see the need for brainstorming support even more clearly.

Look at the use cases she refers to, insights for:

career discussions
strategy development
marketing campaigns

All three have one thing in common. They are traditionally high-level human jobs. It is not what we’d ideally like AI to replace. After all, why can’t AI focus on cutting down my laundry while I effectively create value with my solid career plan (final final (2) version.pdf)

AI in people management also works similarly on the creative side. For one, AI coaches can bring skill development to your mobile device and everyone in your organization. It cuts down heavily on the cost of enrolling everyone in a leadership development program and the chase of getting everyone onboard for training that steals their work hours.

That’s not all. AI helps you overcome daily challenges that do not quite fall within the scope of any leadership training. It can address the pesky questions—how do we talk to Rahul about his underperformance? Or how does Brenda plan to meet the deadlines with such slow progress?

An AI coach helps you figure these out with insights or, sometimes, even a role-play.

AI is at work like your co-pilot to drive growth along with you, but it’s currently performing only selective tasks. In the years to come, it is likely to get better, but it still won’t help with laundry.

Ashish

Ashish is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in strategy, coaching and product. In the present avatar, he is building Risely, an AI-enabled leadership development platform in between breaks from treks and baking.

Let’s bring change: one feedback at a time.

We’ve built Candor as a tool to share anonymous feedback from employees with team managers. It’s free. Give it a spin here and start connecting.

Start Now

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich

Sneha MishraApr 16, 20258 min read

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich Effective leadership doesn’t always begin with a grand vision. Sometimes, it…

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth

Sneha MishraApr 14, 2025

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth You know the frustration all too well. Your organization invests thousands in…

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

Sneha MishraApr 8, 2025

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development? As an L&D leader, you’re likely familiar with this frustrating reality: 82%…

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

Sneha MishraMar 31, 2025

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report(1), 71% of L&D professionals are now…

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

Sneha MishraMar 20, 2025

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals According to a McKinsey survey(1), only 11% of…

Learning at Work in the Age of AI

How is Learning at Work Shaping in the Age of AI?

The traditional way of learning at work is changing fast because of AI. This change allows companies to improve how they teach and develop their staff. By using AI, you can make learning experiences more effective, personal, and engaging for your employees. But exactly how? In this blog, we will look into several ways to integrate AI into your L&D processes and initiatives so that 2025 turns into an AI-mazing year of learning at work.

Table of Contents

How is Learning at Work Shaping in the Age of AI?

Where’s AI in learning at work today?

But before we begin, let’s set some context. AI in learning and development at work is not simply about adding an LLM to your workflow. There are more comprehensive solutions that can unlock massive value for your team. Since several organizations are turning into early adopters, there’s a lot of enthusiasm and expectations about what AI brings. As the change leader in this scenario, it becomes imperative for you to understand what AI can and cannot do and communicate these ideas effectively to the stakeholders around you, like the C-suite and the employees involved in learning programs. AI is changing how we help employees grow. It provides helpful data, automates tasks, and offers tailored learning experiences. This technology helps HR and L&D leaders and employees make better choices for their career paths. It connects personal goals with what the organization needs. But that’s not the end of the story. AI’s effect on employee development goes beyond just learning new skills. It’s also about building a culture of ongoing growth. It gives employees the tools they need to reach their full potential, which they might not have been able to access earlier. As a result, this leads to more job satisfaction, higher productivity, and a more engaged and motivated workforce.

Is AI going to replace people at work? What can L&D do about this anxiety?

A big worry about AI is that it might eliminate jobs. But we can reduce this worry by actively helping employees learn new skills. As Steve Hunt mentioned in a recent podcast episode with Risely, every technology that eliminates some jobs creates many more. We are undergoing a fundamental shift in the purpose and meaning of work for society at large.

AI shouldn’t be seen as a danger, but as a way to gain new skills and improve the skills you already have. Primarily, L&D teams should focus on:

Finding skill gaps and offering specific learning opportunities
Fostering a culture of learning at work and professional development
Motivating employees to take on new technologies and grow their skills

By investing in employee development and making clear paths for career growth, organizations help their workers adapt to changes in the job market. This way, they can use AI to improve their careers and reach their career goals. That’s about the employees, what about the learning and development teams – how should you use AI?

5 Ways to add AI to learning at work in 2025

Learning at work has changed a lot. We no longer stick to one-time training events. Instead, we are moving toward a continuous learning approach. When you embrace continuous learning, you can:

Encourage innovation and speed by creating a culture of constant improvement
Build a workforce ready for the future that can handle rapid tech changes
Improve employee engagement and keep them by investing in their growth

This change is needed so employees can keep their skills and knowledge up-to-date. They have to adapt to new technologies and changing business needs. Switching to continuous learning brings both challenges and opportunities for L&D teams. It asks for a cultural change that supports lifelong learning and encourages employees to take charge of their growth. AI technologies are important in this change. They offer personalized, easy-to-access, and interesting learning experiences for employees at a fraction of the cost. A few ways to effectively add AI to your L&D strategy are:

#1 Build personalized learning experiences

AI creates personalized learning paths for employees. It makes them feel more confident and addresses their different learning needs, which cookie-cutter programs offered so far may overlook. For example, Risely, the AI co-pilot for people managers, offers a dynamic learning journey that fits the unique context of every people manager. The challenges of leaders and managers are diverse and affected by many factors, an AI can match this array of needs by identifying which areas need more support and when. This tailored approach keeps employees engaged with content that fits their needs. It leads to better knowledge retention and skill development. The outcome is a more confident workforce that can help the organization succeed.

#2 Democratize access to learning in your organization

How many people can you meaningfully train in your entire organization? For most L&D teams, the number isn’t huge. Moreover, since many learning at work opportunities run in cohorts, employees must wait before getting help. It means letting the problems arising due to lack of skill development pester for a long, and at times, they grow into bigger troubles. For instance, if a manager is bad at delegating and has to pass six months before they can get training, their entire team will face overburdening work for that time. Meanwhile, more challenges like turnover due to tight deadlines and heavy workloads become prominent. Adding an AI coach like Merlin to this manager’s learning and development plan will help cut down on the problem. It will help the manager access support and help in a way that fits their unique needs, such as the challenges with a couple of specific team members. Similarly, an AI coach can reach hundreds of managers without the L&D team needing to scale up operations and having multiple leadership coaches on the roaster. It’s also a great way to reduce challenges arising from geographical and time zone differences among workplaces.

#3 AI-driven analytics for tracking learning progress

AI-powered analytics give L&D leaders useful insights about employee growth and how well learning programs work. By monitoring learning progress and engagement, AI can find out where employees are doing well or having difficulties.
This approach, based on data, helps HR leaders to tailor learning help, offer specific support, and see how learning actions affect the entire organization. AI-driven analytics makes sure that learning programs match business goals and help the company’s overall success.

Other Interesting Reads

#4 Enhance employee engagement through gamified learning experiences

Integrating fun and game-like features into learning experiences helps improve employee satisfaction. This method encourages a culture of workplace learning. AI-powered platforms use elements like challenges, rewards, and leader boards to motivate workers and make learning enjoyable. For example, Risely uses daily nudges as a microlearning pathway for leadership development. It shares a small actionable insight to support a small bit of progress toward each manager’s specific challenges. By using these game-like features, employees can remember what they learn better. It also creates a friendly competition and teamwork among them. By adopting AI for gamified learning, companies can make the learning process more fun and effective. This plays a critical role in increasing employee engagement and satisfaction.

#5 Improve skills gap analysis with AI’s predictive abilities

Another interesting use case that L&D professionals can explore with AI’s abilities is improving the skills gap analysis for their teams. The conventional skills gap analysis exercise takes time and resources. Ultimately. this exercise offers us a list of skills and competencies that the team needs to build in order to fit in. But what if, we could figure out what the team needs to succeed in the future? The predictive abilities of AI can forecast what skills would be in demand soon. That way, you are not just chasing after what has already happened. Instead, you can make the first move in the industry and build a competitive edge. For example, let ‘s assume you are leading L&D for a retail chain. With the help of AI for learning at work, you can:

Identify emerging skill trends in the retail industry
Predict potential skill obsolescence
Anticipate technological and market changes that will impact required skills

Your next would be planning a learning and development program using these insights. Further, as we discussed in the first point, you can personalize the learning track to meet the individual learning needs and align with the business goals simultaneously. Read more: 7 Easy Ways to Use AI in Learning and Development

Wrapping Up

AI is changing how we learn. Many new tools and platforms are now available. They help organizations improve their learning and development programs. These AI-driven solutions offer personal learning experiences, automate tasks, and provide insights based on data. There are many options, like platforms that adapt to each learner and mentorship programs that use AI. Organizations must assess their needs and pick the tools and platforms that match their learning goals and objectives in effective ways. In conclusion, using AI in workplace learning is not about taking over human skills but making them better. AI gives people personalized learning, helps them gain new skills, and supports their growth. By using AI, companies can build a culture where learning never stops. Employees get to play fun games and benefit from helpful AI insights. We can check how well AI learning programs work through set goals and feedback to keep improving. As we move into the AI age, it is important to use the right AI tools, fit them into what we already have, and keep an eye on future trends in AI and workplace learning. Welcome this change to make a more lively and employee-focused learning space.

Turn your L&D plans into reality with Risely’s easy to apply templates!

Grab your free copy of Risely’s learning and development strategy framework and get started.

Download Now

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich

Sneha MishraApr 16, 20258 min read

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich Effective leadership doesn’t always begin with a grand vision. Sometimes, it…

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth

Sneha MishraApr 14, 2025

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth You know the frustration all too well. Your organization invests thousands in…

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

Sneha MishraApr 8, 2025

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development? As an L&D leader, you’re likely familiar with this frustrating reality: 82%…

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

Sneha MishraMar 31, 2025

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report(1), 71% of L&D professionals are now…

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

Sneha MishraMar 20, 2025

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals According to a McKinsey survey(1), only 11% of…

How to Make Non-profit Leadership Development Work?

Learn how non-profit leadership development programs play an important role in organizational success, with one of the USA’s biggest animal welfare non-profit organizations showing the way of AI adoption.

Table of Contents

How Nonprofit Leadership Development is Shaping Up in 2025?

Non-profit organizations are one of the most vital pillars of the American society. But here’s a sobering fact: they are also some of the most high churn workplaces, with some research suggesting annual rates as high as 24%. Non-profit organizations are often mission-oriented, but people within them frequently have unmet professional aspirations. For instance, research by NonprofitHR shows:

The top two reasons for voluntary turnover were better opportunities (reported by 57% of the people) and lack of opportunities for career growth (reported by 43% of the people.)
About 48% of the respondents faced challenges with retaining people working in entry-level roles.

The result is evident. The non-profit organizations are losing their share of young workforce as they are unable to offer a roadmap toward growth. Amid the resource scarcity that characterizes non-profits, as well as the highly demanding nature of the work, the workers are left with few choices but to move on. One critical factor in this gap is the lack of support that people managers offer in such workplaces. Since non-profits are characterized by resource scarcity, there are bigger claims on the time, money, and efforts before professional development programs can scoop up. In such a scenario, the people managers have a great role to play. A number of roles in non-profit sectors call for frontline work, putting the managers in a position to directly influence, coach and guide their team members. Given the varied nature of non-profit missions, a lot of this happens outside conventional workplaces with desktops and coffees. At times, it’s not in the hands of managers either. Most managers in non-profit organizations are not trained in vital people management skills like coaching and motivating others, and thus set up for failure (which itself happens due to time and resource scarcity). Since the model of leadership is incomplete in itself, there are further hurdles in the development process.

The Nature of Non-profits Poses Unique Challenges for Leadership Development

Let’s understand this better with an example. The Best Friends Animal Society is one of the USA’s foremost warriors for pets in shelters. As a sanctuary for homeless animals, it brings together a passionate group of volunteers working on-field for rescue, support, and care. With a workforce of 900+, more than half of whom work remotely while the rest are distributed in care and training operations, Best Friends has a dynamic work environment frequented by emotionally charged moments. This blog post will take up their case to learn more about non-profit leadership development programs. Since the workforce is distributed and partly remote, centralized development programs for people managers are a huge task. The complexity increases for teams across multiple states or countries, with different departmental objectives, personal goals, and learning needs being the first layers demanding personalization. Moreover, as many people are working on the ground, there is limited time available to participate in leadership development programs that could last days or take online courses frequently offered as replacements.

This unique set-up poses challenges for managers to find the time they need for growth and development. And then there’s this emotionally charged field of animal welfare where they need to be prepared to handle diverse and sensitive situations effectively. Yet, it’s not always feasible for them to commit the time to do the manager training or even short e-learning courses.

Janis Cooper

Director of Leadership and Staff Development

A lot of non-profit organizations have similar stories, leading to a few common leadership development challenges:

Establishing consistent leadership and management development programs

This becomes a big challenge because uncertainties are the rule, not the exceptions. There are frequent changes and reallocations that the leadership of non-profits is always grappling with, leaving little bandwidth to invest in the professional development of their people. Moreover, as Janis explained, several people are working in the field. It leads them to have uncertain work hours, availability of time, and mental capacity to learn effectively. The matters are further complex due to the involvement of volunteers. Since not everyone is a full-time employee with specified work hours, learning budgets, and defined trajectories, organizing development programs is much more complicated.

Enabling learning on the go for busy professionals

Suppose you are managing a team of volunteers. You know that you need to have a leadership development program in place for them. But your options are;

A great leadership coach with solid credentials and an hourly charge of $600 who is available for your team every alternate Wednesday.
A recommended leadership development workshop led by people you look up to, which involves three-day residential learning at the charge of $5000 per person.
An online course on a reputed platform that your team may or may not consume passively to tick boxes and get a certificate.

These options are not just hypothetical. Most offerings for non-profit leadership development training are unrealistic and do not align with the job requirements. To take any of these courses, people need to shell out significant fees, take a good deal of time off work, and need a level of mental freedom that our industry does not offer. This creates a big quandary for L&D and HR teams of non-profits who are searching for effective ways to develop people leaders.

Getting leadership development training that matches the context of non-profits

Workplaces in the non-profit sector differ from corporate ones in a major way – a lot more emotional investment is asked for at every level. As a mission-driven team, you are deeply tied to the outcomes you build toward. For the leadership roles, this poses a unique challenge where they need to focus on professional growth for their own sake and balance it with a high amount of passion and empathy toward the cause. That’s why burnout and emotional distress are quite common in non-profit organizations, which call for a higher focus on non-profit leadership development training focused solely on building emotional resilience, healthy ways to be empathetic, and building work-life balance.

Measuring the impact of leadership development for non-profits

Every workplace has a hard time tracking the impact of leadership development programs. The story is the same for non-profit organizations. It is further complicated by two factors:

First, the HR teams must manage multiple stakeholders. Investing in leadership development training for non-profit managers would be feasible only with their approval. Thus, measuring impact is vital in making a solid case and securing the necessities.
Second, there is a usual delay in adopting innovative solutions based on advanced tech. It keeps non-profits under the grasp of older management philosophies and training methods.

As a result, non-profit leadership development programs need to be very clear about tracking the right metrics, setting benchmarks, and effectively showcasing impact. All of these challenges of developing leaders in non-profits tietie into the broader HR issues, such as planning career progression paths, creating succession pipelines, and better retaining people. Investing in non-profit leadership development impacts all of these since it shows the people that you care.

Other Interesting Reads

What are the Leadership Development Goals for Non-profit Organizations?

Similarly, Best Friends Animal Society’s critical area is developing people leaders and managers. They have developed programs to support these professionals at different points in their career journeys, from onboarding to remedial training if needed. To sum up, their objectives take this shape:

Ensure that the people leaders are supported at all times in their jobs since the nature of work does not align with fixed hours or locations.
Provide access to personalized training, particularly for skills like emotional competence and communication critical to professional success.
Engage the latest tech in leadership development to meet the needs and expectations of the workforce, in order to retain them at the organization.

With these ideas in mind, the team moved ahead with integrating Risely into their existing and planned manager development programs.

How to Create an AI-powered Leadership Development Strategy for Non-profits?

While the team had multiple leadership development programs on their agenda, they added Risely to the mix to increase support coverage and reach more people, which was a critical gap in the strategy. You can hear it out from Janis, who leads Leadership and Staff Development at Best Friends Animal Society:

Fundamentally, we can see three pillars of Risely contributing to the success of leadership development programs at non-profit organizations like Best Friends Animal Society:

Nudges and activities for daily learning

Microlearning is a lifesaver for busy professionals, which is very common in the non-profit sector as we discussed earlier. It becomes even better when it matches their contextual needs and helps them beat people management challenges by investing as little as 15 minutes a day. Nudges on Risely are personalized at multiple levels:

Your skill development needs: First, it focuses on the skills you need to work on. As a result, the leaders of organizations like non-profits that call for high human skills but offer little time to learn them effectively can leverage this mode of learning and development.
Your team members: You might struggle in delegating tasks to one team member and confronting another. Risely takes care of that too by ensuring that microlearning resources are shared with your specific team members in mind.
Your strengths and areas of improvement: What does having a low score on communication skills really mean? It could be need of improvement in listening, or a lack of clarity, or something else entirely. Risely’s action-oriented nudges meet you at your level of skill growth.
Your job function: It would not make sense to teach a sales manager something only an engineering manager deals with, so why do we do this in people skills. Risely’s nudges are personalized to your job role. Thus, the situations, tips, and advice you receive matches your unique context.

On-demand coaching with the AI Merlin

One-on-one coaching is among the best tools to support developing leaders. But as Janis explained, most employees do not have the time needed to invest in learning that way. Plus, it creates a big organizational overhead. An AI coach like Risely’s Merlin solves for this by ensuring coaching access 24/7, even when the team member is on the road. For non-profit organizations, people pose a unique challenge. There’s the need to value their time while also supporting their growth. Increasing the access to coaching through AI-powered services like Merlin helps Best Friends meet the growing needs of their people leaders. For example, suppose a manager is on the way to address a conflict with a network partner. They can practice this conversation with Merlin since it can take up people’s roles as you define them and become your role-play training partner. That’s just one scenario: there are plenty of difficult conversations that people managers need to have and situations that put them in doubt where a coach’s nudge will help.

Since coaching is already on-demand and hyper-personalized, it saves the L&D function some effort of hiring coaches, matching them contextually, and constantly monitoring the flow. Moreover, you are deploying the latest technology for L&D, thus showcasing how much you value your employees.

With Risely’s AI coach Merlin, managers are now going to have a virtual coach at their fingertips basically available anywhere and anytime, even when they are on the road caring for animals.

Janis Cooper

Director of Leadership and Staff Development

In-depth skill assessments for every learner

Assessments and growth go hand-in-hand, as one leads to the roadmap of the other. Yet, conventional skill gap analysis leaves much to be desired. By deploying Risely’s leadership skill assessments for people managers, Best Friends Animal Society is changing things up massively. Risely’s leadership skill assessments are a great tool for measuring the health of 30+ critical leadership development skills. They also offer analysis at the sub-skill level, thus going deeper into both diagnosis and problem-solving. Company-wide benchmarking helps managers stay motivated and look forward to reaching and creating new standards across the organization. All three key actions tie into each other. The ease of assessing numerous managers on leadership skills frees up L&D bandwidth big time. It further goes into creating personalized learning journeys for them, which pave the way for coaching with Merlin and daily growth through nudges and activities—thus setting up a positive growth cycle.

Looking Forward

As an animal welfare organization, Best Friends Animal Society highlights the values of transparency, accountability, and trust in everything they do. Risely’s AI coach, Merlin, helps reinforce them in conversations with the team members by becoming a company culture agent. You can program the AI coach to reflect upon company policies and values and even include them as suggestions. So, even if your manager is lost on the way, someone is holding them back and showing them the way toward achieving what matters the most to you.

We are really thrilled that we are equipping our managers not just with the latest technology but with the skills and confidence that they are going to need to lead in our fast-paced and mission driven environment.

Janis Cooper

Director of Leadership and Staff Development

In the coming year, Best Friends Animal Society is exploring ways to add Risely to more of its leadership and staff development programs. The AI-copilot for leadership development has enabled Best Friends to reach out to more people who need support, enhance employee experiences, and ultimately do more of what they love doing—caring for animals. Non-profit leadership development programs are super important in your success story. The only challenge is that so far they have been designed without your interests at the core. At Risely, we are trying to flip the script. Sign up today and share your thoughts on what resources would benefit you the most. Connect with our sales team at info@risely.me to explore sustainable pricing options tailored for non-profit leadership development.

Join the Risely tribe. It’s free!

Start Now

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich

Sneha MishraApr 16, 20258 min read

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich Effective leadership doesn’t always begin with a grand vision. Sometimes, it…

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth

Sneha MishraApr 14, 2025

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth You know the frustration all too well. Your organization invests thousands in…

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

Sneha MishraApr 8, 2025

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development? As an L&D leader, you’re likely familiar with this frustrating reality: 82%…

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

Sneha MishraMar 31, 2025

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report(1), 71% of L&D professionals are now…

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

Sneha MishraMar 20, 2025

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals According to a McKinsey survey(1), only 11% of…

7 Easy Ways to Use AI in Learning and Development

AI is changing the learning experience. It offers personalized learning paths, automates tasks, and gives useful insights about learner progress and areas that need improvement. AI for learning and development does not need to mean content creation alone! In fact, there are many effective ways to leverage it in your team. You are at the right spot if you wonder what, why, and how. This blog will decode seven impactful yet easy ways to 10x your L&D superpowers with AI.

Table of Contents

7 Easy Ways to Use AI in Learning and Development
- 7 Impactful Ways to Add AI into your L&D Flow
- To Sum Up

7 Impactful Ways to Add AI into your L&D Flow

Say “trends,” and you’ll hear back “AI!” As one of the hottest and most anticipated L&D trends for 2025, we want AI to change the world for us. Creating engaging and useful training content is very important for learning and development success. AI tools are becoming strong supporters of L&D experts. They help by automating the work of creating content. This gives more time to work on important plans. But, what exactly does that mean? Let’s look at seven new uses of AI in learning and development (L&D). These technologies are changing how companies train their employees. AI helps you create personalized learning paths, offers virtual mentors, and adds fun through gamified experiences. All of these tools can make learning better for your people. When your L&D teams use these advanced AI tools, they can work more efficiently. You can also engage employees more and improve training programs. This way, employees get the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in today’s workplaces, while your impact becomes the talk of the town.

#1 Use AI to Personalize Learning Content

One big benefit of AI in learning and development is its ability to create personalized learning experiences. AI algorithms can look at a lot of data about each learner. This includes their job roles, skills, how they like to learn, and what they want for their career. Using this data, with the help of AI, you can make adaptive learning pathways that fit individual needs. Personalization is a huge benefit when it comes to learning, especially when the content and challenges are dynamic, such as in leadership development. Since there are many factors in a leader’s learning ability including their learning preferences, time availability, years of experience, industry, etc. personalized journeys make more sense than the usual cookie-cutter leadership development programs. AI helps you achieve this. For example, at Risely, we begin the process by asking the leaders about their people management challenges and then assign learning modules along the path. Similarly, we can think of a learning platform that changes the difficulty level of lessons based on how the learner is doing. If an employee is doing well in a certain area, the AI system can suggest harder material to keep them interested. But if a learner finds a topic tough, the AI can offer more help or recommend other learning resources. By giving tailored learning paths, AI helps your organization’s employees learn at their own speed and focus on the areas where they need the most support.

#2 Add an AI Coach to Offer 24/7 Support

Providing personal coaching and guidance is hard. This is true for big organizations with different workers. Just think of the diverse needs that the sales and engineers managers have within your organization. And that’s just two job roles. AI-powered virtual mentors give steady and tailored support during the learning process to each role. These virtual coaches serve as personal guides. They answer questions, give feedback on assignments, and provide encouragement. For example, in a sales training program, a virtual mentor can give salespeople real-time feedback on their pitches. It can suggest ways to improve and point out their strong points. Or, an AI coach like Risely’s Merlin offer support to people managers 24/7 for whatever situation or challenge they need. It ensures that they are constantly covered and never need to hesitate before seeking help, even for very niche or specific issues. For instance, suppose you are a manager named Andrew who needs to take updates from a difficult colleague. You know the conversation is going to go downhill. There will be excuses, unclear answers, and you will lose your mind. What if you could prepare and practice? That’ll help you when the punches are thrown your way. With Merlin, our AI coach for people managers, you can set-up role plays after programming what the other person behaves like. Here’s what your conversation with the reluctant colleague, Neil, might look like:

Try it out yourself here, it’s free to start: Meet Merlin!

#3 Use Gamification to Pump Up Engagement

Keeping learners engaged is very important for any training program to succeed. AI makes learning more fun and interactive through gamification. This leads to better completion rates and help people remember what they learn. Gamification adds game-like features, such as points, badges, leader-boards, and challenges, to learning. What’s more, AI adjusts these features to fit each learner’s likes and progress, which boosts engagement and motivation. There are many ways to add fun to learning and development with AI, such as:

Personalized challenges: AI creates challenges that match each learner’s skill level and goals.
Adaptive feedback: AI systems give quick feedback and support, improving the learning process.
Progress tracking and rewards: AI checks how learners are doing and give points, badges, or other rewards to keep them motivated.

#4 Forecast Learning Outcomes with Predictive Analytics

AI can help learning and development by predicting future learning results and trends. It looks at past training data, how learners perform, and industry standards. This way, AI can figure out how well training programs work and find ways to make them better. Imagine an AI system that tells who might fall behind in their training. It can also show which training programs will help improve job performance. These insights help L&D leaders make smart choices. You can use data to get the most from your training money and align L&D programs with company goals. Predictive analytics also helps your L&D teams act ahead of time. Then, you can give the right support to learners who need it the most.

Other Interesting Reads

#5 Build Empathy with AI-based Personalization

Do you know what’s the hardest part of ensuring that coaching is successful for employees? It’s neither the money nor the time. More often than not, it’s the people and the relationship. The success of coaching, which is a very common mode of developing leaders and managers, hinges on a safe and secure relationship between the learner and the coach. For most professionals, this is hard to get right since it involves opening up either in front of a stranger or with someone who’s their senior and potentially impacts their promotions and growth within the company (at times, outside, too, due to their networks.) As a result, even access to coaching is not the end-all because unless the HR teams and every individual involved in the process make a conscious effort to make vulnerability safe, there are bound to be limitations. There are a few practical challenges, too, such as the coach not keeping up with the learner between sessions, lack of reinforcement, and missing constant support. Challenges, after all, do not pop up on a schedule. In such a scenario, empathy and a premise that promises safety become the top priorities for any L&D team. AI coaches can help you achieve this. For example, Merlin is designed with the values of user-centricity and empathy in coaching at its core. It further ties into your company’s policies, mission, and values and brings them up during the coaching conversations with your employees. And, of course, it remembers the past conversations, so there’s no worry of catching up or hesitating before bringing up something awkward. AI could be your solution to the perpetual coaching problems that keep showing up.

#6 Add AI to Reinforce Learning After Training

Today’s fast-paced world demands sticky learning. We need to keep up with changes and connect the dots rather than memorize endless lists of items. The way to thrive in this scenario is constant reinforcement of learning. Teams still treating learning and development as a one-stop exercise are setting themselves up for failure—unless, of course, they adopt AI for learning and development and use it to reinforce ideas consistently. The most straightforward way of doing this is feeding the material to AI and prompting it to test our knowledge. But is that all? Surely not. For instance, the managers taking up any Risely masterclasses get months of complimentary access to Risely, offering interesting ways to continue learning without breaking their schedules. For one, they get access to daily nudges and learning activities that tie into the skills they need to build. As a result, the practical focus on skills goes on for a longer time. If some tips don’t work out or the manager simply wants to talk about something they have tried, they can always come back to Merkin, Risely’s AI coach, who offers 24/7 support. There’s the chance to reassess your leadership skills as the learning journey progresses and closely monitor progress. Consider all this against a leadership development program that offers three days of learning and nothing beyond it. What sounds like a better deal? AI can help you unlock these benefits for your employees, which would have otherwise burnt a hole in your pockets.

#7 Conduct Skills Gap Analysis in Real-time with AI

Identifying skill gaps is important for organizations to keep up with today’s fast-changing business world. Checking employee skills manually can take a lot of time and often be wrong. But AI offers a better and faster way to look at skill gaps using data. AI systems can look at employee performance data, their training records, and industry trends to find out where skills need to get better. For instance, if many people in a marketing team have a hard time with data analysis, the AI can point this out as a skill gap that needs fixing. This kind of real-time analysis helps learning and development (L&D) teams to find skill issues early. They can create focused training programs that fit their organization’s needs and help employees build the skills they need to succeed in their jobs.

To Sum Up

AI has a lot to offer for learning and development teams. You can use AI in learning and development in many ways. We have curated seven of those fun yet useful methods of applying AI to L&D here:

Use AI to Personalize Learning Content
Add an AI Coach to Offer 24/7 Support
Use Gamification to Pump Up Engagement
Forecast Learning Outcomes with Predictive Analytics
Build Empathy with AI-based Personalization
Add AI to Reinforce Learning After Training
Conduct Skills Gap Analysis in Real-time with AI

Try these out and share your thoughts with us! This changes how we learn and helps those who are learning. Using AI not only makes things faster but also helps solve common problems in L&D. It opens the door for ongoing improvements and new ideas. When you use AI tools and technologies, you can improve training programs to meet the changing needs of today’s workforce. But remember, AI is there to help you out, not replace you. There’s the human element that only you bring to the table! We explored this further with Dr. Steve Hunt, who has been a lifelong learner of AI and author of three books including Talent Tectonics, catch the discussion below:

Planning L&D initiatives just got easier!

Grab your free copy of Risely’s L&D strategy framework today and bring your ideas to life.

Download Now

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich

Sneha MishraApr 16, 20258 min read

How to Build a Leadership Journey? ft. Thomas Ulbrich Effective leadership doesn’t always begin with a grand vision. Sometimes, it…

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth

Sneha MishraApr 14, 2025

AI and Leadership Development: Driving Synergy for Growth You know the frustration all too well. Your organization invests thousands in…

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development?

Sneha MishraApr 8, 2025

How Are AI Learning Platforms Transforming Leadership Development? As an L&D leader, you’re likely familiar with this frustrating reality: 82%…

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders

Sneha MishraMar 31, 2025

5 Essential AI Skills for L&D Leaders According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report(1), 71% of L&D professionals are now…

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals

Sneha MishraMar 20, 2025

How to Create a Course with AI: A Guide for L&D Professionals According to a McKinsey survey(1), only 11% of…

Executive Communication Coach: When And How To Choose

Good communication is a must for professional success. After all, half of people management is all about saying the right things in the right way. But that’s where it gets tricky, too: effective communication is hard to nail down for many of us. In light of the advent of distributed and remote teams, workers feel burnt from communication. Amidst these troubling waters, executive communication coaches are a great source of relief. They can help you leave the problems behind and work with you to build a solid skill set. Should you get one? Let’s try to answer that today.

Table of Contents

Executive Communication Coach: When And How To Choose

Who’s an Executive Communication Coach?

An executive communication coach is a trained expert who helps people improve their communication skills at work. They work with clients like you to make their messages clearer, boost presentation skills, and create a more engaging way of speaking. Executive coaches usually work with high-level leaders like CEOs, executives, and business heads. Their goal is to help these professionals deal with the unique communication needs of their jobs. A main part of executive communication coaching is realizing it is not just about speaking well. It’s also about communicating in a way that inspires, persuades, and gets people to act. It means the coach must understand your goals, audience, and any specific communication challenges you might have.

What can an Executive Communication Coach Help you with?

Executive communication coaches help you improve your communication skills through various techniques. One key method is storytelling. Coaches know that stories can greatly influence how we connect with and understand information. They guide you to find and use exciting stories from your own experiences, data, or ideas. These stories then become part of your presentations, business pitches, or daily conversations. Executive communication coaches also pay attention to other important parts of communication that we often don’t think much of. They emphasize vocal variety, body language, and the use of visuals. They know effective communication is more than just words. It’s also about how those words are delivered. They teach clients like you how to use pauses well, show confidence with body language, and create presentations that look great and support what they say. In the end, executive communication coaching focuses on personal development. It encourages you to step outside your comfort zone. Coaches help them find their true voice and give them the tools and confidence they need to communicate well in any situation. As guides and mentors, coaches offer support, encouragement, and helpful feedback to create lasting changes.

Other Interesting Reads

When is the Right Time to Get an Executive Communication Coach?

Knowing when to hire a communication coach is important. It can help you get the most from your investment. While there is no single answer for everyone, certain signs can show that you might need help. These signs often point to the feeling that your communication skills are not matching your career goals. You may think that your message is not getting through. Maybe your presentations feel weak, or you don’t feel confident when you speak. A good executive communication coach can help you improve in these areas. If you often face the following, it may be time to seek professional help:

You are Consistently Getting Negative Feedback: Do you often get negative comments about your presentations, emails, or how you communicate? While some constructive feedback can be useful, regular negative feedback points to a deeper communication issue that a coach can help fix.
You are Feeling Nervous or Unready in Communication Situations: Do you feel anxious about public speaking, important meetings, or even casual networking? Feeling nervous or unready can make it hard to connect with people and share your message. An executive coach can give you the skills and confidence to handle these moments better.
You are Having Trouble Moving Up in Your Career Despite Your Skills: Do you feel stuck in your career even though you have the know-how? Often, it’s not that you lack skills that hold you back, but that poor communication holds you back. A coach can help you show your leadership abilities and communicate your worth clearly, helping you find new chances.

Let’s Assess Your Current Communication Power

Before you look for an executive communication coach, consider your current communication challenges and what you need. This self-reflection will help you find the coach who can best support you. Start by judging your communication strengths and weaknesses. Ask yourself what you do well and where you struggle. Is it hard for you to make your presentations clear and engaging? Do you find it tough to connect emotionally with your audience? Or maybe you feel unsure about your delivery style. Knowing your specific challenges will help you find a coach who can help you effectively. Also, think about what you want to achieve with communication coaching. Are you looking for a promotion, wanting to be a stronger leader, or just hoping to speak more clearly in your daily life? Having clear goals will help you find a coach that matches your aims. This way, you can create a coaching program that fits your specific needs. Let’s make this even easier. Take Risely’s communication skills assessment (it’s free) and get detailed insights into your skills.

Start Free Assessment

How to Find the Right Executive Communication Coach for Your Needs?

Choosing the right executive communication coach is important for a good coaching experience. There are many coaches out there. So, it is important to choose wisely to find the best one for you.

#1 Criteria for Choosing the Right Coach

When looking for a good executive communication coach, there are some important factors to consider. First, find a coach with experience and skills in the specific areas you want to improve. For example, if you are a tech company CEO getting ready for an IPO roadshow, it is best to seek a coach who knows about financial communication and investor presentations. Next, consider their coaching style and teaching approach. Some coaches follow a strict plan, while others take a more flexible approach. Choose one that best fits your learning style and personality. Also, ask about the tools and resources they use during coaching sessions. A good coach will give you practical exercises, helpful feedback, and support to help you improve over time. Lastly, focus on finding a coach who can help you create a clear narrative. Good communication is about telling a great story that catches attention and relates to the audience. An effective coach will help you find your unique story and use it to connect with stakeholders and inspire action to reach your communication goals. Read more: What Makes A Coach Great? 6 Essential Qualities

#2 Researching and Comparing Potential Coaches

Once you’ve outlined your criteria, begin by researching potential coaches online. Explore their websites, read client testimonials, and look for any media appearances or publications that demonstrate their expertise. Professional networking platforms can also provide valuable insights. Next, schedule initial consultations with a few coaches who interest you. These consultations are an opportunity to gauge their personality, communication style, and methodology and determine whether their methodology aligns with your needs. Prepare a list of questions beforehand to ensure you gather all the necessary information. After you choose your communication coach, the next step is to build a partnership. Start by sharing your goals, expectations, and worries. Being open will help the coach adjust their methods to meet your needs. Keep in mind that coaching is a two-way process. Being involved, practicing new skills, and talking openly with your coach are important. It will help you get the most out of your coaching experience.

#3 Setting Goals for Your Coaching Journey

Setting clear and reachable goals is very important for a successful coaching experience. These goals should match your wishes for professional growth and focus on the specific communication challenges you want to solve. Start by focusing on the areas of executive communication that need the most attention. For example, if you want to take on a leadership role, your goals may include improving your public speaking, making powerful presentations that motivate people, or communicating with senior executives. After understanding your main goals, work with your coach to divide these big goals into smaller, simpler steps. It might mean setting deadlines for specific tasks, like giving a practice presentation, writing a strong pitch for investors, or leading a team meeting successfully.

#4 Strategies for Maximizing the Coaching Experience

To get the most from your coaching, you need to take part and focus on improving yourself. The coaching sessions give you a great chance to learn and get feedback. However, real changes happen when you use techniques and strategies outside these sessions. Practice is very important. The more you practice, the more comfortable and sure you will feel. Use what you’ve learned in your daily life. It could mean paying attention to your body language in meetings, truly listening to your colleagues, or practicing your public speaking skills in front of a mirror. Don’t hesitate to ask questions or ask for help. Your coaching sessions are all about your growth. If you’re unsure about something or need extra support, speak up. Your coach is there to help and give you the tools to succeed. Find more insights here: What Makes An Effective Executive Leadership Coach? With Examples

Conclusion

In conclusion, hiring an executive communication coach can help you grow as a leader and boost your career. It is important to notice when you need coaching. You should also look at your communication challenges and pick the right coach for you. Working with a communication coach means setting clear goals. You should try to get the most from the coaching experience and ask the right questions to succeed. By choosing executive communication coaching, you will gain the skills to handle tough communication situations.

Great communication is a cornerstone of a solid career.

Assess your communication skills with a free assessment today.

Start now

Executive Communication Coach: When And How To Choose

Deeksha SharmaAug 26, 2024

Executive Communication Coach: When And How To Choose Good communication is a must for professional success. After all, half of…

5 Unique Benefits Of Online Leadership Coaching

Suprabha SharmaMay 1, 2024

5 Unique Benefits Of Online Leadership Coaching Remember the days of leadership development being confined to a stuffy conference room…

Performance Management Training: Empowering Managers To Manage Better

Suprabha SharmaApr 23, 2024

Performance Management Training: Empowering Managers To Manage Better Remember that feeling of dread when you knew performance review season was…

Manager Development Goals And How To Reach Them: Opportunities And Areas To Focus On

Suprabha SharmaApr 15, 2024

Manager Development Goals And How To Reach Them: Opportunities And Areas To Focus On You’ve meticulously crafted a development program…

Grooming for Management: The Key to Building a Sustainable Leadership Pipeline

Suprabha SharmaMar 14, 2024

Grooming for Management: The Key to Building a Sustainable Leadership Pipeline Imagine a crucial leadership position opening up in your…

Conflict Coach 101: A Beginner’s Guide

Did you know? Since 2008, we have doubled the hours we spend in conflicts at work. Research by the Myers-Briggs Company suggests that an average manager spends 4 hours handling conflicts weekly. These conflicts could be within their team, another team, or involve themselves. Conflicts are not so uncommon anymore. The same study shows that 36% of people are involved in some sort of workplace conflict every week. Conflict coaching is a helpful way to aid people and teams in dealing with tough situations to find resolutions in scenarios like these.

Table of Contents

Conflict Coach 101: A Beginner’s Guide

What is Conflict Coaching?

Conflict coaching is a step-by-step process of developing conflict resolution skills and emerging from conflicts derailing work teams. A trained expert called a conflict management coach helps individuals or groups deal with and solve problems. In several coaching sessions, the coach works with clients to find the main reasons for the conflict. They also help you see different viewpoints and create practical ways to talk to each other better. This process allows you to work together to resolve issues and reach agreements that work for everyone.

How Can a Conflict Coach Help You?

Investing in conflict coaching has many benefits for leaders and people managers. It helps you grow personally and helps your organization succeed:

Better conflict resolution skills: You learn useful tools to deal with conflicts in a smart way. You can turn disagreements into chances for growth and new ideas.
Better communication: Conflict coaching teaches you to talk clearly, listen well, and keep an open conversation going. It helps you build stronger relationships with their teams.
More self-awareness: During coaching, you become more aware of yourself and your emotions. You learn about your conflict management style, strengths, and weaknesses. This empowers you to handle disputes better and feel more confident in tough talks.
Build loyalty in teams: Conflict coaches also create a safe and private space for you to discuss personal challenges, communication issues, and power struggles. They help you notice and deal with biases to make better choices and create a more inclusive and respectful workplace.

Getting help from a conflict coach can make things better. A coach acts as a neutral person who helps with communication. They can find the root causes of the conflict and guide everyone towards a resolution process. This approach can help create a healthier and more productive work environment. But when is the right moment to get started? Let’s figure out.

5 Signs That You Need a Conflict Coach

Recognizing the signs of unresolved conflict is important. It helps you deal with problems before they get worse. It could be time for conflict coaching if you see ongoing tension, less productivity, or more staff absences. Ignoring workplace conflicts hurts team spirit and may even lead to legal trouble or damage your reputation.

Difficulty in Addressing Conflicts

Not all of us are great at addressing problems head-on. While it’s easier to sweep challenges under the rug, for the time being, they only fester and grow bigger. This manifests in several ways:

Avoidance: You consistently put off addressing conflicts, hoping they’ll resolve on their own.
Discomfort: You feel anxious or uncomfortable when confronting issues directly.
Ineffective approaches: Your attempts to resolve conflicts often backfire or make situations worse.
Lack of objectivity: You struggle to remain impartial when mediating disputes.

As a result, the conflict remains present and active within the team without getting the attention it deserves, slowly eating up from the inside and leading to the second point we see below.

High Turnover Rate

What do bad work atmospheres with frequent conflicts lead to? Stress, delays, and so on. All of these fuel your best talent to fly away because they curb their performance and career progress. Conflicts could be escalating the turnover on your team; there are several signs, such as:

Employees becoming disinterested in offering suggestions and ideas over time
Employees hesitating to speak in common forums
Visible groupism and peer pressure on some employees
Lack of collaboration or delays in your projects when your team needs to work together

High turnover is costly for organizations financially and in terms of lost knowledge and productivity. It also damages your team’s morale and the company’s reputation.

Ineffective Communication and Collaboration Barriers

Ineffective communication leads to problems at work, such as arguments and misunderstandings. When people cannot express their thoughts and feelings clearly or do not listen to others, teamwork is difficult. But that’s not all; communication. Communication skills are more important for managers during conflicts because they cannot understand and participate effectively in the resolution process without them. Hence, if you feel like you have no idea how to address a conflict on your team, head to a conflict coach soon.

Persistent Team Disputes and Low Morale

Team disputes hurt how your employees feel at work. It can lead to less productivity, people feeling disconnected, and more stress. If these disputes are ignored, they can make the work environment toxic. This, in turn, stops teamwork and new ideas. Conflict coaching is a way to address these problems and improve the team’s vibe.

Personal Stress

Not all conflicts exist around you; some of them will pull you in, too. It refers to the emotional toll on the manager, which might include:

Feeling overwhelmed by team conflicts
Experiencing anxiety about going to work
Losing sleep over unresolved issues
Decreased job satisfaction and motivation
Physical symptoms of stress (headaches, fatigue, etc.)
Difficulty separating work stress from personal life

If this felt relatable, it’s time to start the search for a conflict coach. It is not just about the conflict that started two weeks back; it’s about your growth as a professional, which gets impeded in a stressful and unproductive environment. These signs are often interconnected. A manager who has difficulty addressing conflicts may experience increased personal stress. This stress can impact your leadership, potentially leading to a higher turnover rate. Similarly, a high turnover rate can create more conflicts and increase stress for the remaining team members and the manager.

Other Interesting Reads

Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Conflict Coaching

Effective leadership relies on positively handling conflict. It means turning problems into chances for growth. Important qualities you can work on with a conflict coach include empathy, active listening, and emotional intelligence. When you see and appreciate different viewpoints, you help everyone feel valued and included. Let’s break down the process of working with a conflict coach in more detail below:

Step 1: Assessing the Conflict Situation

The first step in conflict coaching is to assess the situation. It means gathering information from everyone involved. It is important to understand their views and find the main causes of the conflict. Initially, you might have a biased view of the conflict happening around you. You need to master active listening and approach those situations without assuming things. With active listening and empathy, the conflict coach makes a safe space. Here, people on your team can share their feelings and experiences without fear of judgment. It helps clear up misunderstandings and the deeper issues causing the conflict. This way, the coaching process can be tailored to meet the needs and goals of each person involved. Learn more about conflict handling here:

Step 2: Setting Goals for Conflict Resolution

Once you understand the conflict, the next step is to set clear goals for solving it. It means working together with all the people involved to find out what they want. You will also define what a successful outcome looks like. Setting goals gives direction in the coaching process and ensures everyone is aiming for the same target. Goals help measure progress and determine whether the strategies used during conflict resolution in your team are effective. They should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This way, there is a clear plan for reaching a result that helps everyone. With clear goals, the conflict coaching process is more focused. It makes people on your team more likely to find lasting solutions and improve their relationships.

Step 3: Developing a Personalized Action Plan

After setting clear goals, the next step is to create an action plan. This plan should focus on the specific conflict and help reach the desired results. You need to find steps, strategies, and techniques that fit the people involved and their unique situations. The action plan should include specific communication skills to practice. It should also list conflict resolution methods and ways to manage emotions and triggers. This might mean role-playing different situations, practicing active listening, or looking at other viewpoints to better understand. A good action plan serves as a guide for the conflict coaching process. It equips people with the tools and strategies they need.

Step 4: Implementing the Plan with a Conflict Coach’s Guidance

Implementing the action plan needs commitment and consistency. It also requires ongoing support from a trained coach. The coach helps you through the process. They give encouragement, hold you accountable, and offer feedback as you practice new skills and deal with tough conversations. The coach acts as a facilitator. They create a safe space for you to think about your experiences, handle setbacks, and celebrate wins. The coach might also provide extra resources and role-playing opportunities or change the action plan as people grow and their needs change. Still, the onus of action is yours, so make sure you keep up! With a skilled conflict coach guiding them, individuals feel brave enough to leave their comfort zones. You can practice new ways of communicating and tackle conflict directly. The coach’s role is very important for providing the structure and support needed for success and lasting change. P.S. Risely’s AI coach Merlin is super helpful in role play practices!

Step 5: Monitoring Progress and Making Adjustments

Monitoring progress and making changes are very important in conflict coaching. Regularly checking the action plan, assessing progress toward goals, and finding ways to improve help everyone on your team grow and succeed. The coach works with each person to watch their progress, celebrate their achievements, and see where changes are needed. They might use methods like journaling, feedback sessions, or role-playing to check how skills develop and find any problems that hide under the surface of your team. The conflict coaching process stays flexible as you always monitor progress and make changes when needed. It meets individual needs and focuses on creating lasting, positive changes in how people communicate and handle conflicts.

Step 5: Monitoring Progress and Making Adjustments

Can’t Find A Conflict Coach? Merlin Will Help!

Conflict coaches are great. But here’s a fact: not all of us have access to coaching as much as we need. Sometimes, it’s the budget, sometimes the absurd schedule, and sometimes, it’s us – talking to a coach about internal matters of the team does get hard. Merlin, Risely’s in-built AI coach, is there to save you from all these problems (and many more, to be honest.) Merlin provides on-demand coaching based on your context and challenges in a hyper-personalized way. There are three interesting ways to how Merlin works as a conflict coach:

Situational discussions: If you are in a conflict and want to resolve it, we have you covered. Share your situation with Merlin, who will offer you practical tips and ideas on how to navigate those troubling waters much more easily.
Role plays: You are sure how you want to address a conflict, but you wonder how the other person will react. Merlin facilitates role plays after understanding the personalities and colleagues so you can practice those tricky conversations before time runs out.
Skill development: When you know you want to improve your conflict resolution skills but don’t know how Merlin is there to help.

Start your journey for free today –

Try Merlin

Assess Your Skill

Conclusion

Conflict coaching is helpful for leaders who want to handle disputes better. By knowing when to get help from a conflict coach, you can prepare important skills and follow a clear guide. It will improve your conflict resolution skills and leadership. Use available resources, set clear goals, and make tailored action plans with a conflict coach to create a pleasant workplace. Embracing conflict coaching will boost communication, teamwork, and employee morale. It leads to better success in your organization and higher employee satisfaction.

Conflicts can derail your growth. Solidify your skills now.

Assess your conflict management skills with a free assessment today.

Start now

Assertive Conflict Resolution Techniques | Brenda Hooper

Deeksha SharmaFeb 8, 2025

Assertive Conflict Resolution Techniques | Brenda Hooper Can assertive communication help you out in resolving conflicts? In this podcast conversation,…

7 Conflict Resolution Scenarios At Work For Practice

Deeksha SharmaSep 9, 2024

7 Conflict Resolution Scenarios At Work For Practice Conflict resolution is one of the most important people management skills you…

Conflict Coach 101: A Beginner’s Guide

Deeksha SharmaAug 24, 2024

Conflict Coach 101: A Beginner’s Guide Did you know? Since 2008, we have doubled the hours we spend in conflicts…

5 Secrets To Conflict Resolution At Work For Managers

Deeksha SharmaMar 19, 2024

5 Secrets To Conflict Resolution At Work For Managers Conflict is all too common. We often encounter this ever-present demon…

Top 5 ways for Leadership Training Emotional Intelligence

Aastha BenslaFeb 22, 2024

Top 5 ways for Leadership Training Emotional Intelligence The most effective leaders are not just intelligent but are emotionally intelligent.…

Do You Need A Product Leadership Coach? 5 Signs

Did you know? The first product managers were working almost a century ago. The concept of product management was first noted in the words of consumer goods giant P&G’s President, Neil H. McElroy. He called for “brand men” who will focus on managing products, packaging, distribution, etc., eventually morph into product managers. Over the years, the role has expanded, with digitalization adding another layer of complexity. Modern-day product managers are mystics who manage multiple stakeholders and handle packages of data like pros before walking into another meeting to fight for their vision. But the pros need a supporter, too, deservedly so! That’s where a product leadership coach comes in.

Table of Contents

Do You Need A Product Leadership Coach? 5 Signs

What’s a Product Leadership Coach?

A product leadership coach is someone you can trust. They help product leaders grow in their careers. In personalized coaching sessions, they help product leaders see areas for improvement, set clear goals, and create plans for success.
Unlike mentors who share what they’ve done in the past or trainers who teach skills, a product leadership coach focuses on helping you understand yourself better and grow into a strong leader. Ken Norton, a prolific former product manager at Google, reflects on the role of a coach for PMs in his essay –

“A great coach can partner with you on what matters most: your values, your vision for the future, your purpose, what you truly want, the perspective you take, how you make choices, what authentic leadership means to you, overcoming imposter syndrome, and finding meaning in your career and your life. Connecting to this is like a north star for how you live your life and guide your career, the same way a strong vision can guide a team to winning products. You wouldn’t start building a product without a vision, so why not have one for yourself? I wish I’d tapped into coaching much earlier.”

These coaches are great at making a safe space where you can honestly talk about your strengths and weaknesses. They use different coaching techniques to help product leaders become better at decision-making, communicate well, and manage relationships with other team members. A product leadership coach encourages self-reflection to fuel your journey toward professional goals. It leads to better product strategy, stronger team dynamics, and a healthier product culture. Read more about coaching: Essential Guide to Effective Leadership Coaching

How Does a Product Leadership Coach Impact You?

Coaching has a big effect on product leaders and managers. It gives them important skills and new perspectives that help them succeed in their jobs. When you have regular coaching sessions, you learn more about your leadership style. You learn your strengths and what you can improve on. This self-awareness ensures that you lead with more confidence. Coaching also helps product leaders ensure that their teams are focused on the company’s main goals. This means that their product strategy and actions are important for the organization’s success. With the right support to think strategically, a product leadership coach enables you to build a clear vision and move toward execution. The good effects of coaching go beyond personal growth. They also improve your team dynamics and product management practices. As you enhance leadership skills, you create a space where feedback and open communication are valued. It leads to better teamwork, new ideas, and improved team performance.

Other Interesting Reads

Do You Need a Product Leadership Coach?

As a product leader, it’s important to recognize the need for help. It is important for growth in both your personal life and your career. Product management is an exciting job, but it has its difficulties. It often requires you to deal with unclear situations, guide teams during tough times, and make key decisions that can greatly affect outcomes. So, what does help look like? Product leadership training takes many forms. Primarily, you can choose from three modes:

Product coaching helps unlock your potential. It provides guidance and support to improve skills and performance.
Mentoring is when a more experienced person shares their knowledge to help someone less experienced.
Training teaches specific skills or knowledge through courses. The goal is to make sure you have what they need for a certain job.

Each method has its own value. The right choice depends on your needs and objectives as a product leader or manager. Coaching is especially helpful for tackling leadership challenges, improving skills, making better decisions, and handling complex work situations. But when should you start thinking of a product leadership coach? There are a few signs:

Sign 1: You are Struggling to Align Your Team with Company Vision

Aligning your product team with the company’s vision is very important. It gives everyone a purpose and helps them work towards the same goals. Without this alignment, teams often face confusion. They may not know what to do, leading to disengagement, mixed priorities, and a feeling of not owning the results. If you keep explaining the company vision or struggle to link your team’s daily tasks to the larger goals, you might need help from a product leadership coach. A coach can help you share the vision better, turn it into clear goals for your team, and create a way to measure progress and celebrate achievements. With a coach, you can connect the big picture with daily tasks. This will help your product team feel united and motivated. When everyone works together, they can put their best effort into reaching shared goals and help the organization succeed. You might like: What are Leadership Vision Statements? 10+ Examples to Help Build Yours

Sign 2: You Face Difficulty in Stakeholder Management

Managing stakeholders is very important. It helps you get support, secure resources, and deal with complex work situations. It means making strong relationships, understanding different views, and handling conflicting priorities. But, managing stakeholders can be tricky. It often needs good communication, negotiation, and influence skills. If you find yourself often in conflicts with stakeholders, or if you struggle to agree on product strategy, it may mean you need to improve your stakeholder management. A product leadership coach can help you learn how to identify and prioritize stakeholders. They will teach you how to understand what motivates them and how to communicate in a way that connects with their views. Also, a coach can help build your confidence and skills for handling tough conversations. They will show you how to address objections in a positive way and create an agreement around your product vision. Their support can turn stakeholder management from a challenge into a strength. This helps create a teamwork atmosphere where different perspectives lead to product success.

Sign 3: You Have Challenges in Prioritizing and Decision-Making

Effective product management relies on prioritizing and making decisions. It means sometimes you must make tough choices, even when you don’t have all the information and time is short. While using analytical skills and data is important, having a clear way to prioritize tasks, weigh trade-offs, and guide the product in the right direction is also key. If you often question your choices or feel stuck because of too much analysis, it may be time to improve how you make decisions. Also, if you feel stressed by many competing tasks or can’t clearly explain your product roadmap, you might need to work on your prioritization skills. A product leadership coach can help you build a strong system for prioritization and decision-making. They can assist you in setting clear standards for evaluating opportunities, creating ways to collect and analyze important information, and forming a plan to make quick and smart choices. With their help, you can boost your confidence, allowing you to lead your product effectively and make tough calls firmly. How strong are your prioritization skills? Take a free prioritization skill assessment!

Sign 4: You Are Feeling Stuck in Your Career Progression

Career growth in product management often means handling bigger responsibilities, leading larger teams, and shaping product strategy at a higher level. This change needs more than just technical skills; you also need strong leadership skills, good communication, and the ability to deal with complex team dynamics. If you feel stuck in your career or not ready for leadership roles, it might mean you need to improve your leadership skills. A product leadership coach can be a great help on your career path. They can assist you in figuring out your career goals, understanding your strengths, and areas where you can grow. They can help you develop a solid plan to reach your goals. They also support building key leadership qualities like communication, delegation, conflict resolution, and team motivation, which are important for senior product roles.

Sign 5: You Have Inconsistent Product Performance and Team Morale

Inconsistent product performance, missed deadlines, and low team morale can show that a product team is facing problems. Many factors may cause these problems. Often, these issues come from unclear communication, not being aligned on priorities, or lacking a clear product vision. It’s important to tackle these problems early to create a better work environment. If you see a drop in product performance, like missed milestones or lower product quality, it could mean the team is not working at its best. Low team morale, a lack of interest, or team members feeling disengaged can also point out hidden problems that need fixing. A product leadership coach can help you find the main reasons for poor product performance and low team morale. They can assist you in creating clear communication methods, building a supportive team, and aligning everyone around a common product vision.

You Need a Product Leadership Coach. What Are the Next Steps?

Cool. You know you need a product leadership coach. What’s next?

#1 Clarify your goals and expectations

Starting your coaching journey means knowing what you want and being active in the process. First, think about your goals for coaching. Do you want to improve your leadership skills, improve how your team works together, or handle a career change? When you start with clarity regarding goals, you and your coach can make a coaching plan that fits your needs. When you check out possible coaches, think about their style and how it fits with how you learn. Some coaches give clear guidance and steps to follow. Others ask questions to help you discover things on your own. Read about qualities of a good coach and make an informed choice. Read more about the journey of finding a coach: How to find the executive coach you need?

#2 Remain consistent and engaged with your coach

Also, prepare for coaching sessions by thinking about your past experiences, challenges, and what you want for the future. Bring real examples of times when you struggled or areas where you want to grow. Think of questions to ask you coach. The more open you are about your situation, the better your coach can help you devise effective strategies. Lastly, keep an open mind during coaching. Be willing to try new ideas and question what you already believe. Coaching often means looking at things in new ways, trying different methods, and stepping beyond what feels safe. With this attitude of growth, you can learn a lot and reach your full leadership potential.

#3 Reflect and evaluate constantly

Check your progress with your coach regularly. Look at how well your strategies are working and find areas you can change. This ongoing review helps keep your coaching plan relevant as your needs and goals change. Be open to changing your approach, trying new techniques, and adjusting your goals based on what you learn during coaching. Coaching is not a straight path; it requires you to change and adapt over time. By using data to measure success and being ready to adjust your plans, you can ensure that your coaching helps you grow as a product leader.

What if product leadership coaching feels like a mis-match?

Fret not! Product leadership coaching is a helpful avenue for many. However, it may not match the needs of every product leader, especially given our time and budget constraints. More ways of product leadership training can solve the common challenges in such setups:

the coach does not provide regular inputs outside of coaching sessions
your schedule does not permit you to take long coaching sessions
your organization does not sponsor product leadership development
you don’t want to share your concerns with anyone
you don’t feel comfortable with coaching one-on-one

And so on. Merlin, Risely’s built-in AI coach, helps overcome these challenges by offering hyper-personalized coaching at the point of need.

Are you wondering how to talk to that colleague the next morning? Ask Merlin right now, even if it’s 3 AM.
Not feeling great enough to type out your woes? Use the voice mode in 40+ languages.
Unsure why a situation is stuck? Tell Merlin and analyze together.

Start a new chapter of your career now, ask Merlin. It’s free.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, noticing when you need a product leadership coach can help your career and team’s performance. A coach can help you deal with issues like aligning the team with the company’s vision, managing stakeholders, making decisions, moving forward in your career, and boosting team morale. Working with a product leadership coach means setting clear goals, making a coaching schedule, including your team, putting strategies in place, and checking on success. If you’re looking for a reliable coach, consider their experience, skills, and how well they match your needs.

Meet Merlin, an AI coach who gets you!

Merlin offers personalized coaching through guidance, suggestions, and role-plays with your context in mind.

Start now

Building a Coaching Culture with Jo Wright

Building a Coaching Culture with Jo Wright As AI takes over, we are all searching for the part that makes…

Deeksha SharmaFeb 20, 20255 min read

What is Immersive Learning? A New Era in Education

In this blog, you’ll learn what is immersive learning and how it is changing training, increasing engagement, and influencing the…

Avantika AnandFeb 15, 2025

The Clear Coaching Models: A Revolutionary Approach to Coaching

This blog delves into the principles, significance, and applications of the CLEAR coaching models, exploring how they transform organizational development…

Avantika AnandJan 26, 2025

Drive Meaningful Growth With The STAR Coaching Model

In this blog, we will explore the key elements of the STAR coaching model, outline effective implementation strategies, and discover…

Avantika AnandJan 22, 2025

The OSKAR Coaching Model: Proven Techniques For Lasting Impact

In this blog, we’ll explore the key elements of the OSKAR model, its benefits, and how to implement it to…

Avantika AnandJan 20, 2025

How to choose the right leadership coaching platform?

Your coaching journey can make a lot of difference for your team. Plus, with more use of AI and other advanced tech, manager and leader development coaching solutions are becoming more common than ever. Plenty of platforms offer everything you could dream of – remarkable coaches, personal touches, one-on-one sessions, and more. The question is: which coaching platform is the best one for you? Keep in mind that not all teams and managers are made alike; coaching needs differ. So, what works best for your friend’s team may not work for you. In this blog, we will discuss choosing the right leadership coaching platform for your team. Look for tips on using your chosen platform effectively to maximize its benefits.

Table of Contents

How to choose the right leadership coaching platform?
Other Related Blogs

Searching the Right Leadership Coaching Platform for Your Team

When searching for the perfect coaching platform for your team’s learning and development, there are several vital points to remember. We have covered the top ten things you should consider before investing in a leadership development platform below:

#1 Evaluate Platform Usability and Accessibility

Step one is picking a platform that’s easy to use. After all, you want to retain people and ensure they fully use the product. For this area, think of metrics that can explain usability and accessibility. First, you need to look at the overall look and feel of the platform. Does it align with your existing systems? Or would it be hard to learn as a new tool? The easier it is to get around and the more accessible it is, the more likely people will use it and stick with it. This makes the whole coaching journey better for all team members involved. Platforms that consider everyone in the workforce by including features that meet different needs help unite everyone. You should aim for simple but effective platforms where everything works smoothly on any device because this helps keep everyone engaged and learning well. Explore learn journeys on Risely to see these principles in action. Tailor made with experts curating the content and AI empowering distribution across your team: How does Risely train leaders?

#2 Assess the Breadth and Depth of Coaching Content

Second, check the depth of the content. Here’s the thing: your organization has managers and leaders at different levels of understanding. Does the leadership coaching platform offer content to cater to each level? Can it explain one concept at varying levels of understanding and experience? You want something that covers all sorts of leadership skills, like talking well with others and knowing how to handle talent. Ensure it has enough material for everyone, from the top bosses to every team member. The right one should guide each person toward reaching their best through learning paths made just for them. With this in mind, see if what the platform offers matches your team’s needs to grow professionally and meet business goals.

#3 Check In-built Features for Tracking Progress

A complete leadership development platform needs to offer much more than a list of courses and modules to complete. After all, you need to measure what your team learns. For that, features like in-built skill assessments, as Risely provides for nearly 20 core people management areas are important. For example, a self-assessment on active listening can tell you about changes in that area, and the team’s score tells you about the observed change. A few other platforms integrate personality assessments instead. And yet, the game does not end at assessing; you need a dashboard to make sense of the metrics you view. A good leadership coaching platform will empower you to track growth on specific skills over time, growth of specific team members, and improvements over specific people management challenges. Competitive benchmarking across the platform and within the organization are also great features that complement built-in assessments and motivate users to keep progressing. Wondering how it works? Try an assessment now, it’s free! Leadership skill assessments by Risely

#4 Understand Integration Capabilities with Existing Systems

No one loves switching applications multiple times a day, least of all, buggy or unfamiliar ones. Thus, when picking out a coaching platform, it’s super important to see how well it can work with your existing systems. You want everything to blend nicely so that switching over is easy and you get the most out of what the leadership coaching platform offers. For instance, Risely offers seamless integrations with workspaces like Teams and Slack so that coaching support is available at the moment of need. There are no extra steps needed to access help. Go for platforms that sync up without a fuss with what you’ve got now, making things more efficient and effective.

#5 Identify Customization Options for Personalized Learning Paths

Can sales and technical managers find equal value in the same leadership training? Likely not. In fact, one of the major reasons why training fails is that it fails to meet the contextual needs of the audience. So, what a sales manager wants will be different from what a technical manager wants, and neither can be neglected in your organization. There are many ways to personalize coaching experiences on a leadership development platform. For example, Risely’s learning journeys are different for each user. They are based on the initial questions about challenges and context answered by them. Similarly, personalization is a great feature to support managers through career transitions. Suppose someone on your team is moving from managing three people to twenty. While they have the skills, they will need fine-tuning and support to executive effectively, which Merlin’s personalization can offer. This way of personalizing things makes getting better at leadership more direct and effective.

#6 Find a Fit for the Coach and Your Team

The fact remains that human coaches can only do so much. Most coaches come with specific and niche expertise, either in a specific skill or a specific context at work. What your team needs is a diversity of ability and adaptability. Think back to the sales and tech managers – can one coach do justice to them? An AI coach like Merlin can provide this because it has expertise garnered through large amounts of data as well as the ability to continuously keep learning. Plus, with coaches, the question of building a relationship and being available rises inevitably. At Risely, we solve this with a unique solution. We have Merlin, an in-built AI coach trained to offer context-based coaching. You can explore it in voice mode with support for over 40 languages, ask questions anytime you want, and even do role plays and reviews of conversations. Here’s an example for you:

#7 Check for a Robust Analytics and Reporting Dashboard

It’s all about metrics, and we are here to ensure that you are keeping an eye on the right ones. When picking out a leadership coaching platform, it’s really important to look at how good its analytics and reporting section is. With this feature, you can monitor how your team members are doing, see if their leadership skills are improving, and ensure that the coaching is helping reach business goals in a smart way. Plus, not every stakeholder wants the same metrics. As their goals differ, so do the numbers they track!

What metrics do they like?

Having detailed analytics, such as Risely offers in the Admin view, lets you understand more about skill development, which means managing talent based on actual data. Good reporting tools also let you figure out if the money spent on coaching is worth it by looking at the return on investment (ROI), making it easier for everyone in the organization to make decisions backed up by facts.

#8 Consider Pricing Models and Return on Investment

How much are you willing to shell out for leadership development? A one-on-one session with a seasoned coach would start from $200 an hour, and it can go up to $1000. Let’s take a different turn; this three-day workshop looks amazing. The cost? $2500 per person. It’s not so ideal for all the managers on your team who would benefit. Money matters, and that’s why there is so much to consider before picking the right leadership coaching platform for your team. The steep costs associated with conventional leadership development methods often limit accessibility.

You should also consider how this choice might improve leadership skills and make the whole team perform better. Go for a leadership development platform that boosts professional growth throughout your company and gives good value back compared to what you spend on it—this is known as getting a favorable return on investment (ROI) on training. Looking into these things carefully will guide you toward investing wisely.

#9 Explore Support and Community Engagement Features

Engagement is critical to the success of management and leadership development programs. In fact, lectures, the most typical form of training, show lowest retention of content among learners as per the works of education specialist Edgar Dale. Thus, your search also needs to focus on how the leadership development platform provides support and gets everyone involved. This kind of setup really helps people grow professionally together. You should look for places where team members can talk, share what they’ve been through, and learn as a group. Community support improves the coaching journey because it gives your team a safe place to talk things out and get feedback. Good support keeps your team motivated throughout the process. Go for leadership coaching platforms that engage everyone so your team can keep learning and growing.

#10 Assess User Reviews and Success Stories

Before you pick a leadership coaching platform for leadership development, it’s really important to look at what other people have said about it and check out their success stories. Hearing from others can tell you a lot about how good the platform is and if people are happy using it. Success stories are great because they let you see how the coaching has helped in real situations, showing what could be possible for your team’s growth. By looking into the good feedback and these inspiring tales, you can choose something that fits well with your team’s goals.

How to Implement Your Chosen Leadership Coaching Platform?

Once you’ve picked the perfect leadership coaching platform for your team, it’s all about how you roll it out. Here are four major steps that you should take:

Plan for a Smooth Rollout

Start by marking important steps and picking a team (or specific members) to handle the rollout. Your first task is ensuring everyone knows what’s happening at every step. To deal with any pushback, use strategies that help manage changes smoothly. In addition, run training sessions so people can get comfortable using the new platform. It’s also crucial to have support ready and ways for people to share their thoughts to improve things as we go along. Getting leaders on board is key to getting everyone else excited and clear about what we expect during this whole process. At this stage, remain in touch with the team building the leadership development platform, too, because you will need to exchange queries and ideas.

Encourage Adoption Among Leaders and Teams

The success of leadership development and growth programs depends on multiple stakeholders, and some of them can impact the processes much more than others. Senior leaders and team managers are the influencers who can inspire others to use the platform extensively by setting up the right examples. As a result, getting them onboard becomes important for multiple reasons:

They are involved in getting budgets and permissions
They can influence adoption
They can help you overcome resistance and build consensus

To get leaders and their teams on board, it’s key to talk about how the leadership coaching platform can really help boost leadership skills, meet career ambitions, and push professional development forward. Point out that this tool gives senior leaders a way to lead their team members toward achieving everything they’re capable of. It’s important to keep conversations about the coaching journey open so everyone feels comfortable growing personally. Read more: How to Obtain Buy-In for Training from Stakeholders?

Integrate Feedback Loops for Continuous Improvement

What your team has to say about the leadership coaching platform matters greatly. Because, after all, they are the users and beneficiaries. When we listen to feedback from these, people in charge can get even better at their jobs, helping them grow personally and professionally. As the leader of such an initiative, you must monitor the feedback. You can do this in many ways:

First up, straight away, go and ask. Get the reactions from participants in informal conversations so that they are comfortable expressing opinions on their own terms. It’s a no-pressure way to gather feedback on training that you can use to establish yourself as the enabler of their development.
Second, you can use training evaluation programs. The survey questions are typically designed to briefly describe the experience. It covers everyone and allows you to understand experiences along a standard set of metrics at scale.
Third, look at the usage data. How many people are completing the goals? Are they sharing their achievements? Is your team meeting deadlines? All of these indicate the level of enthusiasm about the leadership coaching platform.
Lastly, you can also take up focus group style interviews, where you sit with some team members and discuss the leadership development platform in-depth. This exercise would be great if you could generate ideas for custom features or use cases to integrate into the executive coaching platform.

Having open talks regularly and checking how things are going often ensures that leadership skills keep getting sharper, leading to overall success in work.

Other Interesting Reads

Measure Impact on Leadership Development

To really understand if a leadership coaching platform is doing its job in boosting leadership skills, it’s crucial to look at the correct numbers that show how leaders are growing. You can see where progress is happening by keeping an eye on specific metrics that match up with what makes a good leader. It’s also important to check if the money spent on this training is worth it by looking at returns on investment (ROI). Looking into how many people leave their jobs, whether goals for the business align with what’s being taught, and if your team members feel more connected after getting coached helps, too. Using analytics lets us keep track of all these things to tweak our approach as needed. Making choices based on solid data helps ensure we’re always improving at developing leadership within our company. What’s more, along with learning metrics, there are more data points that you will need to be an impactful L&D leader. Think of what your team asks from you – completion rates? Participant engagement rates? Goal achievement? All of these further tie into the business metrics (reduced absenteeism, higher productivity, lower turnover, etc.) that define your value. By measuring these effectively, you can make a compelling case for the business impact of L&D. If you have read so far, we know you care. Check out Risely and get in touch to create a custom offering for your team’s needs. Start your journey with a free trial for 14 days today, and hit us up the moment you get WOW’ed at info@risely.me

Conclusion

To wrap things up, picking the right leadership coaching platform is essential to boost how well your team does and grows. You’ve got to look at a bunch of metrics like how easy it is to use, what kind of content it offers, whether it can work with other systems, ways you can make it fit your needs better, analytics tools available for tracking progress on the leadership development platform as well as pricing structures and feedback from other users. After choosing one that fits best for leadership development efforts in your organization, ensure everything goes smoothly by carefully planning its introduction phase, encouraging everyone to get on board, taking into account any suggestions they might have along the way, and keeping an eye out on how much difference this makes in improving leadership skills fostering teamwork among members leading towards greater success across the whole company.

Measure the impact of your training programs with a free template.

Grab your copy of Risely’s training evaluation plan template and get started.

Download Now

Other Related Blogs