Our new A.I. 'Practice Partners'

Could A.I. enable you to reinforce your people’s ‘People Skills’? As you know, I run workshops on tough workplace conversations and many other workplace leadership and people-skills topics.

Instead of the usual (and often awkward) peer-to-peer role-plays, I’ve now developed custom and realistic AI voice agents as practice partners with clients including Kia, Foodstuffs, Gallagher Insurance, Zespri, New Plymouth District Council, Niko, and MetLifeCare. After one series of workshops with one client in the middle of last year, they’ve now experienced a 50% decline in formal disciplinary issues. What might that be worth to you?

At the end of the face-to-face workshop (and afterwards), participants have live, realistic phone conversations with one of several possible kiwi characters in one of several possible scenarios, followed by an immediate coaching session based on my training and led by AI-me. I've worked up the agent, workflow, and feedback / coaching, and the client can provide their custom scenarios, common personalities and problems encountered specific to them. Trainees can practice, get feedback, adjust, and re-practice. No awkwardness, no judgement, and extremely immersive and effective in bedding-in long-term skills for behaviour change in the real world.

It’s a safe way for staff to build real muscle memory. Knowing stuff is not as useful as doing stuff. It keeps all the plusses of live training but is more time / cost effective. AND, the pilot participants commented how human the experience felt.

I'm always looking for ways to get better and to help my clients' people get better. These cool new tools make the practice more immersive and the skills stickier. 

Here's a link for a general leadership conversation demo if you're interested in having a play with a basic demo and seeing how it and the training might help your people struggling with (or avoiding) conversations. It’s quite a shift from the usual people-skills training tools, to augment and enhance face-to-face workshops. https://www.terrywilliams.info/trainer/general-leadership-demo-practice-partner (Be sure to use your phone's browser!) Check out these case studies on how some clients used them: https://www.terrywilliams.info/trainer/case-studies-in-ai-powered-performance-training 

Hey, I was (and am) as suspicious of new tech as anybody, BUT, taught well, constrained wisely, and aimed strategically, these clever little bots can actually be positive, useful, and popular.