Ollie: As many of you know, in Health Coaching and Beyond, Tim and I mix up conversations between the two of us, chewing over hot topics and latest ⁓ ideas, and interviews with thought leaders that we admire in the field. This week I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Rob Kemp, who's a real authority in coaching and mentoring generally. He got his MSc in coaching and mentoring from Sheffield Hallam, and then got a doctorate in coaching and mentor from Oxford Brooks. ⁓ and he's in the process of writing the coaching handbook.

ollie: Welcome back folks. It's lovely to have you back for another episode of of ⁓ Health Coaching and Beyond. And I'm delighted today to be joined by Dr. Rob Kemp, ⁓ who is someone who I've known for many years and has been in the coaching space much longer than I have and Tim and I have. ⁓ so it's great to have Rob on. And ⁓ Rob, perhaps you could start by just talking about your journey to coaching in general and the sort of things you've done as a as a way of introducing your experience.

Ollie: So I can't think of anyone else more well qualified to talk to us about the similarities between coaching in general and the specifics of health coaching. So we dive down into what brings health coaching into the general family of wider coaching and mentoring and where the differences lie. Of course, that leads us also into thinking about how AI could or perhaps shouldn't be called a coach alongside what humans do in terms of their coaching. So we really hope you enjoy this conversation and that it

Rob Kemp: Yeah, yeah, thanks, Olly. And it's good to talk and hopefully today we'll both be able to do a bit of talking to sort of, you know, put together our thinking on this whole piece around coaching and health coaching.

Ollie: Inspires your thinking.

Rob Kemp: ⁓ I ⁓ am a coach, primarily ⁓ a practitioner. That's what I ⁓ I do a bunch of other things that, but that's my kind of primary ⁓ role, the thing that I do most. spent... nearly two decades, probably 18, 17, 18 years in the corporate world, mainly in sales and marketing, but also in learning and development, which is where I really got my kind of bug for coaching. And then since 2006, seven, so that's yeah, 20 years, I've been primarily earning my living as a coach. So yeah, I've got a couple of decades in and seen a lot change in the coaching world during that period. ⁓ Yeah, so it's my passion. It's the thing that I get up and do and that I would do without being paid, right? Because I love coaching. ⁓ I actually came across coaching really early in my career. was working for an American company and they were forward thinking in this respect. So it must have been like... 1994, 95 and I had a field coach ⁓ and you know she would come out with me on my job and bring in a tape recorder and say do you mind if I record this kind of coaching session? I'd be like no let's go, let's record it and that's where my first interaction with coaching started. Now you know it was fairly functional, it was relatively basic but it was really really useful ⁓ and I think throughout my years of experiencing coaching from a coaching perspective and as a coach. I've tried to kind of really focus on those things about coaching, which I believe are the most special. So the relationship and working towards a desired future and outcome for people, making sure it's kind of professional and a good experience for folk. So, yeah, and I'm still on that journey of trying to make it the best possible kind of coaching interaction, the best possible experience. for people ⁓ and I think that's probably a never-ending story.

ollie: Brilliant. And so at the moment then, t what sort of context are you using your coaching in now?

Rob Kemp: Yeah, so all sorts. like I coach commercial people, ⁓ sales people, sales managers within the commercial context. But probably 60 % of my work at the moment is in higher education. So working with research leaders who are either early careers, maybe mid-career. ⁓ And then the third program I support is ⁓ national and international research leaders ⁓ who are putting in big bids, building big research teams. And, you know, although the higher education sector at the moment is a bit of a tumultuous place, it's a difficult environment for lots of reasons. It's still absolutely fantastic to be able to work with either people who are just starting out on their research journey or who are literally like international big hitters like V name in their field. That's kind of exciting, really. And, you know, I enjoy just sort of hearing about their content and what they're doing, even though that's nothing to do with the coaching. It kind of floats my boat that I might be working with someone in biomedical sciences one minute, someone in engineering for another minute, someone in history and English and drama for another minute. And it's just great. It's really kind of ⁓ that variety of context, even though we're still talking about research. It's just really for me enlivening, you know, and I love that kind of closeness to knowledge creation. So, yeah, that's that's what I do. Bye.

ollie: Yeah, lovely. And and so I guess w ⁓ would you say your category, if you like, is sort of leadership coaching or performance coaching or team coaching, or is it a mixture of all of those or something else?

Rob Kemp: Yeah, it's a mixture of all of those, but I guess with probably a skew towards leadership coaching, like who we are as leaders, how we are as leaders, ⁓ you know, how we choose to show up, how intentional we are about that, how we attend to and look after our teams, those sorts of issues, ⁓ those sorts of topic areas are pretty common. ⁓ But, you know, it can be anything from, you know, work disagreements to frustration with systems to, you know, it could be anything. But leadership as a topic fascinates me, you know, that whole thing of, you know. what creates a great leader? What intentional things can we do to be better leaders? Are we looking at our leadership as just something that happens or are we working towards something? And then looking at the kind of leadership styles, how directive or non-directive, how visionary, how affiliative, how democratic. I love kind of pulling those things apart with people and going. Who are you? How are you wired? And how do you translate that into the role of leadership? And what might you need to pay attention to given that orientation? So yeah, that's just work I love. I love doing.

ollie: Yeah, and and it's what got what really interested me about bringing onto the podcast is we got talking about what you're doing and we got talking about, you know, w well, when does health coaching become health coaching as a separate thing? 'Cause you you were sort of saying, well, actually a lot of what I do bring draws down on health and wellness. It's kind of integral to how a leadership functions and how a person or a team performs. ⁓ so y it sounds as though kind of health and well being comes into what you do quite a bit.

Rob Kemp: It definitely does. I would say probably the most present part of that is around kind of work and non-work ratios, right, and how people attend to their work, particularly in academia. It's not uncommon for people to be working late into the evenings and taking weekends and shortening holidays. So creating a healthy balance. Sometimes, not very often, but sometimes a wider wellness piece will come into the conversation. That might be about their individual desire to just live a healthier way. Or it might be a recent kind of health scare or diagnosis. It could come from anywhere. I do a lot of my coaching outside now, walking around anything I can find, generally lakes or parks, just because if I can offer them nothing else, I can give them the best part of 10,000 steps.

ollie: Yeah. Yeah, and you get and you get yours in as well. It's a great way that, isn't it? You combine the two together.

Rob Kemp: I get mine in as well right selfishly yeah yeah selfishly so if I'm doing two or three yeah I don't tend to do more than I don't do more than three in a day three is a lot I tend to do two clients a day but

ollie: Yeah, bro, I like that. That's a that's a great tip for people anyway, isn't it? Doing coaching. yeah, so so it's fascinating, isn't it? Sort of I want to dive down with you all. What what do you think are the sort of core elements of coaching as a whole, which are sort of common across all forms of coaching, health coaching, leadership coaching, ⁓ performance coaching. And you know, you've been to our conference, you were very kindly talked about ⁓ AI, which we'll come on to a little bit later, but ⁓ you know w ⁓

Rob Kemp: and

ollie: What y what do you see as maybe a bit different about health coaching from what you've observed so far? So the commonalities and maybe the differences.

Rob Kemp: Hmm. Yeah. And, you know, probably head off by saying there are probably a lot more commonality commonalities than there are differences, but the differences I think are important and worth not just skipping over. Right. I think ⁓ I don't think the coaching profession has really done itself any favors because it hasn't nailed down any. sort of unified definition of what coaching is. In fact, way back in like 2009, Garvey Stokes and Meghansson wrote, you know, we wholly accept that there may never be a unified definition of coaching and mentoring. and they sort of go on to say, so probably what we need to do is be clear about defining it for our own context. But that almost set the profession at like, well, it doesn't matter then, we'll just define it for our context. And so when you get an entrant into the, like a technology entrant into coaching like AI, It's very difficult to sort of evaluate or if it's your, know, if you want to defend the profession against AI because we don't really have solid definitions. There are lots of definitions, but none of them really have proliferated. And, you know, when I'm writing a paper or submitting something, I'll probably draw on a few definitions of coaching because no one really covers it all. Tatiana Bakorova and I were writing a ⁓ which was born out of frustration really. Genuinely I woke up annoyed ⁓ about way in which ⁓ AI described in the coaching field and ⁓ I woke up early like 4, in the morning. I got up and by sort of 9 o'clock there was a paper ⁓ which I sent to Tatiana. ⁓

ollie: Mm. The best way they're written in in that when it comes out of your head just spontaneously.

Rob Kemp: Well, I sent it to Tatyana because she was my doctoral supervisor ⁓ and she's great and I just love the way she writes in her work and she sort of just said, yeah, great topic, let's talk about it Rob. So then we spent six months kind of honing the paper and making it in a different way. But where we started was... what are the foundational elements of coaching without which it can't really be called coaching. So we did a big literature search, we talked to lot of people, we had a lot of conversations and went to the definitions and we came up with six areas which we believe sit at the ⁓ absolute foundation of coaching. The first being joint inquiry. So joint inquiry is that two people are involved in that inquiry, notably two humans. ⁓ But two people are involved. It's joint. It's not done to you. The second was around sense making, like making sense of the world, but with a focus on action. contextual, so it's about ⁓ your context and you as the expert and knowledge broker of that context. ⁓ Fifthly, fifthly, is that a word, Ollie? Fifthly? Okay, I'll use fifthly. It's about a trust-based relationship. So ⁓ when you think about coaching and you think about... how much value you're going to get from it. A lot of that's rooted in the trust. Not to a small degree, because we don't disclose things to people who we don't trust. We perform, we shield, we mask. And in order for there to be some sort of real meeting of minds, a level of disclosure and honesty needs to exist that can only exist when trust exists between two people. And then finally that it's contracting based, right? So it's not just a general conversation that we're having and we dive into without any thought. We think about what the conversation is meant to do, how it's meant to happen, what we might like or dislike about that conversation, what it might feel like, where challenge and support might come in, confidentiality, all the stuff that sits around what a good contract looks like. Not necessarily a written contract, but a kind of... a contract of understanding between two people. Yeah, so those are the six areas that we came up with. Not in a way that we... guys, we invited the coaching community to say, contribute to this, have a conversation about this. To date, there's been no sort of significant challenge. And those people who are publishing in AI and coaching refer to our paper, but don't substantively deal with any of the things that we've said in it. So yeah, it's an interesting time. And when I think about health coaching or when you think about health coaching. You can apply those six criteria, right? You can say, okay, is this a joint inquiry? Yes, it's joint inquiry. the coach might have some positionality. There might be some ends or goals that are already kind of set in health coaching or desirable. And I started to think about it, Ollie, and I was like, do you know what? That's not so different because when you work in a corporate environment, organizations are paying money for a return. when they they utilize coaching and that return is based on your performance or the team performance. And so to sort of suggest that there is no predetermined agenda in organizational coaching is fudging it a little bit because companies wouldn't pay for it unless there was a return on their investment. They're doing it for a reason. So I don't see a great degree or say a degree of difference there. Not a difference of kind.

ollie: Sure.

Rob Kemp: when you think about the other five elements, know, I guess you do all of that sense making, you know, do you help an individual to sort of make sense of why they are, where they are, why they've been referred, what their barriers and issues are? Yeah, of course you do, your sense making with a focus on action, like what needs to be different in order to X, Y, Z. And you could go through each area and I don't think there are... I don't think there are massive challenges in any of them. Other than that, there's a sense of... There's a sense of inequality in some ways in terms of the knowledge and the position that a health coach has, the agenda that they kind of must hold to be a health coach. ⁓ But other than that, I can't see massive differences between what health coaching is and what I would just describe as general coaching. Don't know. What do you think?

ollie: Yeah. It's really interesting, isn't it? And I think maybe it's around something about about the orientation and the focal point, isn't it? And whilst we've been starting to work with businesses, it's really interesting because I guess it's part of our battle almost is is persuading people that the health and well being of the workforce is an essential ingredient in performance and leadership and those sorts of things. And I I don't think it's not been known before, but maybe the intentional focus on it in a way that brings in other aspects that can help. is maybe what distinguishes health coaching from other other forms of coaching. And and when we've been training people in the NHS, it's been interesting because there's a obviously NHS holds a huge ⁓ knowledge base around health and wellbeing. And and in a way what we've mostly been having to do is just bring in the coaching skills to to ⁓ to match alongside that and to show how coaching skills can mesh into what the health service delivers. Interestingly, I think in in business where perhaps coaching skills are more

Rob Kemp: Right.

ollie: integral to how businesses work, certainly the most sort of ⁓ you know the most enlightened ones and and probably the highest performing ones. So perhaps the orientation there is a little bit more around bringing some of the health literacy and the health content and the sort of awareness of what contributes to your health. So you know not not just specific health conditions like blood pressure and controlling your diabetes, controlling your mental health, you know, the lifestyle factors

Rob Kemp: Mmm.

ollie: the social determinants of health, but then also those kind of like sense of self worth and self esteem that we know directly relate to health. So it it's I I it's probably very similar stuff, but maybe just coming at it from a slightly different angle, I guess.

Rob Kemp: I think that's true. was sort of chuckling inside because I do remember in the early 2000s working on a program called the Corporate Athletes, which is a horrible title. ⁓ But the idea was exactly what you're talking about, really. was bolting together both the kind of natural, practical, you know... sort of seemingly obvious stuff like hydration, movement, exercise, know, good work, non-work balance, all that stuff with some, ⁓ with what exactly you talk about, which is the sort of self-esteem, self-worth, know, motivation, flourishing at work, right? So I kind of liked it in one way, but in another way, I didn't. yeah, I don't, don't do much training anymore, probably for that reason. ⁓

ollie: Well it it's fascinating, isn't it? The the sort of enablement piece. I think really almost what we're missing to link it all together in terms of the sort of how does health coaching if you like come properly into the whole coaching family i is I think a recognition of the role that people play for themselves and the enabling part which is so core in in in coaching, isn't it? You know, bringing ⁓ raising people's agency and ⁓ is is so much more important than perhaps people give it credit to. I I think people often think that health is all about having the right medication, you know, maybe having the right kind of exercise plan, the right nutrition plan and so on. And those things are important to a degree and some core knowledge around it is important. And a and a good health coach will have core knowledge around that. But I think it's so much less important than people think. And maybe maybe people want to believe, you know, ⁓ it's great, my health will just be sorted out, my doctor just tells me what to do or but actually the realization that the role you play and how you think and how you behave minute to minute, day to day, ⁓ you know, the way you perceive yourself, the way your self-identity is, the way you manage stress, the way your your brain works, is so influential on the symptoms that you have. ⁓ and I think connecting that together is is the is the bit that's ⁓ I'm I'm just seeing that penny drop a bit. And I'm it's interesting talking to you about it, because I see that you

Rob Kemp: Hmm.

ollie: you see it from the other side where you perhaps come in without a specific health remit, but actually a lot of what you're doing is addressing how people are navigating their health and well being in the context of of their high performing environment.

Rob Kemp: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because, know, the two questions of, you know, like, who are you? That piece of like how people are wired and what their orientation is, you know, maybe some 360 feedback. You know, that's the kind of who bit, the kind of traits, the habits, the personality piece. But I'm really also equally focused on how are you? How are you? Right. How are you doing? How are you living? How is this impacting on you? Is this what you intended? Is this what you expected? What might you want to change about it? You know, if you could, what would you? And it's interesting because like organisations, sort of employee coaches.

ollie: Yes.

Rob Kemp: Let's be honest, at a basic level, to increase performance, right? For a large part of the, you know, okay, maybe that's a gross overgeneralization, you the work that I've done over 20 years, a lot of it has been performance related. Not just in deficit, you know, things could be going well, but they want it to go even better, right? So, and organisations sort of think that the way that happens... is by like doubling down on competency frameworks and, you know, key performance indicators and all that stuff. And I think exactly the opposite. I think if you work with the whole person and you understand them in their environment and what could be better and what could change for them, the natural consequence of that is that they do a better job. They give more discretionary effort. You know, they're more focused in the areas that make a difference. not by focusing in on those areas but by holistically working with a person in their role or their lives. ⁓ Now can I prove to you that that's true? No. Do I absolutely believe it? Yes I do. ⁓

ollie: So so no no no coaching without health coaching really or at least a health and well being element in it, right?

Rob Kemp: Yeah, or holistic coaching or yeah, yeah, absolutely. No coaching without health coaching because it's part of it's part of the whole piece. And if you look at that, you know. standard piece of kit for life coaches right the wheel of life or the wheel of anything you know it'll always have that in right you know it'll have you know health wealth family you know relationships spirituality whatever the things are it sits naturally there in the kind of life coaching arena as a sort of you know part of the kind of cortex if you like but not necessarily within the corporate environment or the or higher education or wherever and I I can't not bring in those elements of how are you, because how are you isn't just here, you know, it's here, it's everything. So yeah. Yeah, it's almost as though we have a slightly different kind of ⁓ context. We have a slightly different... ⁓ starting place, but actually the ending place might not be that different, know, albeit that you're working with referred patients a lot of the time. You know, you're working potentially and actually with illness rather than wellness. So there are some kind of some differences about our context, but ultimately we're doing similar things.

ollie: Yeah, no, absolutely.

Rob Kemp: We're trying to make people's lives better, right? That sounds like a grand claim, doesn't it? So what do you do? Well, I try and help make people's lives better.

ollie: You do, and you I suppose you can't do that without considering their health and wellbeing. And it I wonder maybe one thing to try with you, i i try out with you is that ⁓ I'm just sort of thinking about y you're right, o often probably with a health coach, you might be d deliberately aware of a specific condition that you're trying to improve, I suppose, from a health point of view. but also maybe we're a little bit more focused on trying to assess people's capability of looking after themselves as well. ⁓ I don't know if that comes into what you do. ⁓ you know, we we use things like the patient activation measure to sort of, you know, literally ask you know, how good are you with looking after yourself? ⁓ and you know, what what are you already doing? Which I guess once you start to get down that what you're doing, you're into the realms of what you might do with people as well. But we we of a big ab ⁓ advocates of tailoring our health coaching towards people's skills to look after themselves. So I suppose it's quite orientated around their health and well being skill set. ⁓ but that does that come in that may well come into what you do as well.

Rob Kemp: Mmm. Mmm. It can. mean, I wouldn't say routinely, it certainly can. You know, the are you looking after yourself piece often, ⁓ you know, what does looking after yourself look like for you? Like this is a really stressful time. What are you doing? What are what are your kind of, you know, what are the things that you use in order to kind of come down from this highly stressful environment? Because we all know that there are useful and healthy things to do that really do help you come down. And there are ways of using, you know, alcohol, drugs, whatever it is, you know, so there's unhealthy ways of dealing with that.

ollie: Yeah, yeah.

Rob Kemp: with that stress and that's all part of the, you know, are you capable of looking after yourself? Are you looking after yourself? ⁓ And I can think of sort of specific examples where, you know, I've had wide ranging conversations, you know, about even such bizarre stuff as like home organisation or, you know, living in a tip or what, you know, which for you is might be much more common. for me, in my kind of... I guess executive world or whatever. It's not something people commonly talk about, they do when they know that there's a problem and there's a high level of disclosure, relationship and honesty. They go, this thing is really getting in the way for me and it's been like that for years. So that's quite interesting. mean, so many thoughts buzzing around in my mind here. Like, for example, what Greer calls the gray space. you know, space between coaching and therapy. You know, where is that? you know, whilst coaches would be much more likely to make a referral, you know, if they felt that they were sort of bordering on being in a boundary of kind of therapy or the clinical. I guess you're kind of different because you... partly are the referral, Like they've been referred to you already. So I wonder whether there's something in that dynamic of referral referring. Like what happens when, what happens if someone can't cope? Yeah.

ollie: Yeah. Well what Yeah, no, and I mean it's i it's really interesting. I suppose most of the health coaches that we train or that ⁓ that that will not necessarily have a a dual role. They'll they'll be specific health coaches, ⁓ whether that's in the workplace or in or in the NHS. But some will have a dual role, so they'll have a therapy background or they'll be a GP and I guess they have to decide which hat they're wearing sometimes. ⁓ but it is a it's a tough distinction actually, isn't it? And there is a gray space. I mean How how do you determine in your work space then when you start to feel you're encroaching or drifting into a sort of therapy? What what are the things that indicate to you that you're you're you're starting to gonna get into the therapy world rather than th than than the the coaching that you wanna stick to?

Rob Kemp: Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think I don't think there's any like clean cut. Like this is therapeutic. This is non-therapeutic, right? ⁓ this is forward looking and this is backward looking. That's there. I don't think it's clean like that. But when I start to hear language around motivation, around ability to cope, around lack of enjoyment. around issues coming back for people that are surfacing like repetitive kind of thoughts you know those kind of the language around that would start to heighten my awareness of a boundary and so you know I've asked whether people have had therapy, have been in therapy, you know, I've asked whether they think they might benefit from therapy given, you know, coaching isn't there to do that and coaches aren't qualified to do that. Yeah, so I'm pretty highly, highly attuned to the language of ⁓ what I see as clinical, you know, the language of depression, the language of high anxiety. Yeah. ⁓ I have a mental model that I sometimes get out, is using Seligman's concept of optimism, which looks at the personal, the permanent and the pervasive. So, you know, the personal, is it my fault or someone else's fault, internalization or externalization? The permanent, you know, is it permanent or transient? And pervasiveness, is it local or global? And when people use the language of it's all my fault, I'm a bad person, I'm rubbish at this, I can't do it, it's my fault, it's rubbish now and I can't see it changing, And it affects everything in my life. You're talking the language of depression, And in fact, think Seligman correlated people with very low optimism scores, high pessimism scores with people who are clinically depressed. But the language makes it kind of easy to sort of to pick up and be aware of. So I think just having lots of models, lots of information, lots of knowledge in your head allows you to not make a diagnosis, I'm not qualified to do that, Lord forbid, but to be wary of those areas that stray.

ollie: Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Kemp: professionally into places where we're not qualified. I mean, there are, of course, the coaching psychologists who are qualified to make those assessments. so that's a different kind of case. But again, they haven't contracted to do that. So they wouldn't be into that. They wouldn't be into that piece there. They would they would have to do something else in order to say, do you want coaching to stop? know, yeah.

ollie: Yeah, no. And it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, we to often talk with health coaches who are working with people, you know, with chronic pain and a range of mental health issues where you actually you know they're likely to have a diagnosis of anxiety and depression and to have maybe had some treatment, maybe on often not having treatment at the same time as health coaching perhaps, but you know, they may have been on medication or have have had talking therapies and so on, may have worked and may not. so, you know Often you're sort of I guess you're dealing with them in parallel, aren't you? You know, a huge volume of people, you know, one in five at any one time living with a serious mental illness. So, ⁓ you know, it's likely to sit there as alongside what you're trying to do with people with your coaching work, right? I mean, do you ⁓ do you do you sort of find yourself adjusting what you do sometimes in terms of perhaps the pace or the depth or the content or or does it sometimes become a red line for you, think there's this is this is gonna block my coaching, your your your your mental health?

Rob Kemp: Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah

ollie: for instance, is is just too too ⁓ you know too prominent an issue at the moment for me to be able to coach with you.

Rob Kemp: Yeah, it's a really good question. I'm deep in writing a book for coaches. ⁓ So I'd say I'm about halfway through. ⁓ ⁓ Because I think part of this power imbalance that I was talking about earlier ⁓ exists for a number of reasons. But one of the reasons is because coaches spend a long time training and they spend a long time practicing and they've got all the knowledge or a lot of the knowledge, some of them. And you've got a coachee who arrives at the relationship, know nothing about it. They don't know what it is. They've got your name and a time. And so I wanted to, I want to address some of that imbalance around knowledge, but from a very practical perspective. Basically, how do I get the best from this opportunity that I've got of coaching? That might be self-funded or it might be sponsored by an organization. What do need to know? What's the important stuff? And a lot of it is about agency, right? You talked about earlier. But I was considering last night just that very question of ⁓ what do you do? ⁓ and I highlighted the coach's responsibility in talking with their coach about just exactly what was going on. So your coach doesn't know what he she doesn't know. If you're in therapy or had therapy and they don't know, then they don't know. So it was all about this disclosure piece and then deciding together what the best way forward is, whether that be continue as is, be careful of boundaries, whether it's stop and you go and do something else. for now and see if you want to come back. So it was very much trying to include the coachee in the discussion and allow the coach to be kind of fully aware of the situation. And do know what? I think generally that happens naturally, but it kind of comes out in time. You know, people will often say if they've had mental health struggles or if they're, you know. if they're currently on an antidepressant or an anti-anxiety or you know so people will tell you in time down the line when the trust is built.

ollie: Yeah. And I th I Yeah, and that sings in, doesn't it, to that first point of that sort of joint inquiry that you're sort of like you're sharing the progress you're making together. I I I really like that, the way you define that in those sort of six things you talked about there. and that's a core feature, isn't it, I guess, of negotiating together as two humans, what's appropriate, what adjustments you might make, or whether it's just not the right time for things that you're doing. Brilliant. Rob, I wonder if ⁓ I mean it was fascinating to hear you talk about you you're

Rob Kemp: Yeah. Yeah.

ollie: what drove you to sort of define what coaching is was was the threat of AI to some degree. And I know you've talked about this before, the sort slight misappropriation of the word coach. ⁓ you know, and so I d wonder to maybe just the last bit just to dive down in that, because you're, you know, you're clearly someone who thinks a lot about ⁓ you've been you've been submerged in the world of coaching, like you say, it for ⁓ more than two decades and with huge amount of experience in all sorts of realms.

Rob Kemp: Mmm. Hmm

ollie: And now this new tool is coming in and everyone's calling it an AI coach. And you know, how how does that sit with you?

Rob Kemp: Right. ⁓ yeah, I mean it doesn't suit very well. It doesn't sit very well with me. ⁓ yeah, yeah. No, I mean not not that I'm a, a naysayer or a Luddite. It's quite the opposite. I love technology and I use AI on a daily basis. ⁓ yeah, I, I, love what AI does and I think, ⁓ in skilled hands AI is revolutionary.

ollie: I was deliberately provocative thereof.

Rob Kemp: In unskilled hands, I have some questions about how useful it is based on a lot of stuff. for someone who knows their subject well, who knows when AI is making it up or when they've got it wrong, it's a great tool, even if it needs sort of... gently prodding into shape pretty regularly actually. ⁓ But if you can handle the made up references and the kind of misunderstandings and the missed key point, if you can handle all that stuff because you're using it to actually maybe. to organise your thinking or to ⁓ structure an argument or a point. It's fantastic. Love it. Love it and have a relationship with it. No doubt. No doubt. ⁓

ollie: Yeah.

Rob Kemp: So the question for me isn't, is AI useful? Like AI is, you know, still really in its infancy, right? And yet it's really, really powerful. ⁓ It is transforming and will transform our worlds. So I have no problem with AI at all. I don't have a problem with AI in the self-development space or in the health space either. ⁓ I just think we need to be a little bit careful about our whether we jump in with two feet or whether we experiment safely. Because actually, if AI were a prescription only medicine, Ollie, it would have a black triangle. But based on lack of empirical evidence and safety warning, right? The safety warning that we get that basically says, yeah, I know I make things up, live with it. So if it was in another field, we wouldn't have unleashed it at the scale that we have unleashed it so far. So that's slightly worrying for me ⁓ without the evidence.

ollie: Mm.

Rob Kemp: So can it help set goals? Can it help prime people around goals before sessions? Can it help keep people on track? Can the tech help health coaches and normal coaches keep abreast of things? Can it see patterns and trends? Can it be evaluative? Yeah, it can do all of those things and is doing so already. My only problem is with naming. Naming it an AI coach is a problem for me because a coach, whether you're a health coach or whether you're a business coach or an executive coach, whatever sort of coach you call yourself. Once you become a coach, you carry some professional responsibilities, notably the six that we started with. And AI simply can't hold those because they're relational. can only ever happen between a human being.

ollie: Yeah.

Rob Kemp: At a very simple level. Yeah. Yeah, go on.

ollie: It's fascinating though, isn't it? It is it is fascinating. Sorry to interrupt you, but it's fascinating because I wonder if maybe, you know, you talked about the trusted relationship that you have with a with a genuine coach. That's what makes it coaching and, you know, your understand your ethics and your values. And I and I loved in the paper ⁓ that you wrote with Tanya that you talked about, you know, an a a an AI coach can't get supervised. You know, they kinda they don't have supervision. ⁓ which is like a really good tangible sort of distinction between a human doing something. But

Rob Kemp: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

ollie: I do wonder whether we maybe over trust AI. I mean, I don't know about you, you know, there's there's a th they're so clever, aren't they? The large language models are so convincing that you're talking to a another human and they sort of remember everything about you. They can draw on so much knowledge base. It's quite it's quite tempting to want to trust them, isn't it? And I and I I wonder if we're kind of trying to do we're gonna have to try and work out where that level of trust or how deep that level of trust goes, particularly as it gets better and better, right?

Rob Kemp: Yeah. Hmm. Mmm. You're right, as it gets better and better at emulating human behavior and emotion, as it gets better and better at emulating empathy or emulating humor or emulating, you know, some of the things that go around trust. Yes, our guard drops and drops and drops. There is a very recent paper that looks at AI in coaching, which suggests that actually, you know, some people are far more comfortable disclosing things to AI that they wouldn't. disclosed to humans because of the element of shame and embarrassment that they don't feel with an AI because they know it's not another human being who's judging them. So I think you're right. don't think we've kind of nailed, I don't think our understanding is fully formed on those things like trust. And that's why I think we're too early in the development cycle of this stuff in people development or in health coaching to sort of operationalize on a large scale because we haven't even answered some basic questions. know, like, ⁓ I can't hold a... qualification of credential and accreditation. It can't be supervised, as you said. What does CPD look like for an AI? There are so many unanswered questions. Now, does that mean we shouldn't experiment with it? No, I'm actively experimenting with it in every possible way. Does it mean we need to be ethical and take care? You know, you don't you don't have to go very far to look at unethical behavior from AIs or data breaches from AIs. You know, I think they will get safer and safer over time, but it would not surprise me. at all that in the next six months if we saw a major data breach from you know from Claude or chat gpt, Anthropic or Meta or whoever you know it's not beyond the bounds of possibility and if that were the case what are the things that I've said to AI in my multiple conversations that I probably wouldn't want there out in the in the world that I probably wouldn't want other people to know because it's private information that when you put it together with other information is exploitable in some sort

ollie: Yeah. Yes.

Rob Kemp: So I'm not, ⁓ whilst I'm experimenting in a gung-ho way with it, it's not that I have no concerns over data privacy. ⁓

ollie: So if you I mean I I I I think we're all in the same place, Rob, almost with the i you know, curious, excited, experimenting. ⁓ undoubtedly a core part of what's gonna feature in a a a really good coaching mindset and systematic approach, whether it's, you know, all the type of coachings we've talked about. But so ⁓ well let me tie down that if you weren't you d you're ⁓ you don't like the name AI coach, what would you rather AI be called than? Have you got an alternative name for it? Go on.

Rob Kemp: Mmm Mm-mm. I have, but it's a bit academic and it won't stick. It's ARP, automated reflective prompting, which is far more kind of indicative of what it does. The problem is AI coach is established. It trips off the tongue. It's easy to say. As soon as you say it, people know what you're talking about. But just because that's true doesn't mean we shouldn't really scrutinize what that means when we call AI a coach. Right. It doesn't mean that it's been through a peak health program and done 50, 100, 250 hours of coaching. It doesn't mean that it's gone through a post-grad, an MSc, a doctorate in coaching and spent 20 years doing it way over 10,000 hours. That's not what it means. All right. Now, The problem is that AI can aggregate a lot of that kind of research knowledge and it can aggregate a lot of the sort of experiential stuff and kind of spurt it back out in a ⁓ credible way, in a way that looks credible to most people. But that's not the same thing as being able to have joint inquiry to understand context, be able to meaningfully make a contract, to be values based and have an ethics forum. know, just two of those... ⁓ just two of those basic areas of ethics and contracting. If you ask any AI whether it's capable of being ethical, you'll be really interested in the answer. And if you ask it whether it's capable of forming a contract, you will also be interested in the answer because it can't do either of those things. So are we ready to unleash something that can't guarantee to us that it will behave ethically or that it will enter into a contract, either a formal contract, a written contract or a verbal contract and keep it? Are we ready to unleash that? ⁓ You know, particularly on a vulnerable audience, Potentially vulnerable audience. So, you know, I know it's useful. I know it's already embedded in some of the systems that, you know, the coaching platforms that are out there. It's useful for me personally. I just don't want it to be called an AI coach Because I think that's a what's what's the word? It's like it's a category error It's a kind of you know, it's not a difference of degree. It's a difference of kind and I want that Now if it's not ARP or automated reflective prompting or if it's something else great

ollie: Fair enough. Yeah, yeah.

Rob Kemp: Just AI coach to me gives gives me a little shiver every time I hear it.

ollie: We may maybe have to recategorise AI as our assistance or something like that. I don't know. But it's good it's it's clearly gonna be a topic that's gonna I mean it seems to come into a most a lot of our podcasts now and it's a topic that I think we're all interested in. And I I know we're planning for the autumn to to have a round table and and be lovely, Rob, to have you involved in that, ⁓ because you've clearly thought a lot about this and you've written about it. ⁓ but

Rob Kemp: Right, yeah. Mmm.

ollie: We've we've come to the end of our time, so thank you so much ⁓ for your kind. Is it any any last points you think that you want to get across that, you know, when you think about ⁓ you know, ⁓ sort of coaching in general and health coaching, or do you think we've covered enough today?

Rob Kemp: We've covered a lot. mean, I think another rich area that maybe at another time we can delve into is the kind of theoretical kind of base and traditions of health coaching, the tools that it uses, motivational interviewing, kind of self-efficacy stuff, compared with what's out there in this kind of eclectic world of coaching outside of the health arena. Because I feel as though there's this kind of broad... Sway the genre or traditions of coaching that don't live in health coaching now, but they could ⁓ You know, so that's one little thought the other little thought that might just be a nice leaving point is there's already for the EMCC the European mentoring and coaching council There's already a health and well-being special interest group and I would love to see it if peak or you know the the health coaching profession could come together with with special interest group like that and say what we do isn't quite the same as what you do but it's so highly related let's form something that's like really focused on on health coaching as well as wellbeing in general, because I think that would really help health coaching be brought into the mainstream of the coaching kind of discourse and discussion. And it will also help the mainstream of coaching, discourse and discussion to understand what health coaching is, which I've really benefited from by knowing you guys and coming to the conference. It's really aided me and I can see all sorts of benefits like, know, coaches do like health coaches do. a good number of hours of CPD each year. Well, why couldn't coaches who work in the corporate space come and do some CPD at peak, looking at your models and your way of looking at ⁓ health? So I think there's all sorts of potential crossover and benefits that that sort of union, whether it's that or something else, might really kind of prove fruitful for both what seem like sides at the moment. And I wish they didn't. So that's really, I guess, the idea.

ollie: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a great well, that's a great way. That's a it's really interesting to hear your perspective from having been in the field for so long. And I know ⁓ Caroline, one of our directors, is is involved with the MCC health and wellbeing ⁓ arm, just you know just a new ⁓ and I think there is a job to do there. Absolutely. It's ⁓ you know, is is the health coaching like the new coaching kid on the block and you know, we need to make sure that the families aligned and we know where the commonalities are and but also where the differences are.

Rob Kemp: Yeah.

ollie: and and you know, celebrate those but integrate them because so often they come into they're so relevant to to the to coaching work as a whole, isn't it? And it's been beautiful to hear you describe that today, Rob. I really appreciate you giving us time. Thank you. And I I'm sure this conversation will pique the interest of so many so many people out there who are grappling with health coaching in in the NHS, in the workplace, ⁓ or you know, ⁓ one to one. But you know, that it's it's a really evolving field. So thanks so much for your thoughts today.

Rob Kemp: Yeah. My absolute pleasure, Ollie. I mean, you just need to wind me up and tell me the subject and you know, I'll talk coaching all day long. So if you're looking for a 10 hour, you know, a 10 hour session, you know, I'm up for it now. It's been great and then we're good to be with you.

ollie: Lovely. Thanks, Rob. Brilliant.