The Standard · People, HR and L&D
Coaching
Coaches with AI as preparation and reflection, never as a substitute for the conversation.
You prepare coaching sessions, reflect on patterns, and document progress across programmes. The assistant can widen questions and organise notes, but it can misread meaning or suggest directive advice.
The exam for Coaching is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Coaching, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to broaden a coaching session with overlooked questions, patterns, and alternatives for the coachee.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with the coachee’s goal, session purpose, source notes, question format, length, and required themes.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the reply into an empathetic, non-directive session plan or coaching record with your own judgement.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check suggested questions, progress patterns, and claims against coaching notes before using them with the coachee.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep coachee identities, sensitive disclosures, and personal data out of the brief and delivered record.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which coaching preparation or documentation the assistant handles, which interpretation you keep, and who approves risks.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A session preparation brief from anonymised coachee goals and prior progress notes.
- 02
A question bank from a coaching theme, with non-directive questions and rationale.
- 03
A post-session coaching record from de-identified notes, progress signals, and agreed next steps.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in coaching. They briefed the assistant with anonymised goals, caught misleading progress patterns, and delivered a non-directive session plan.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Coaching
- Who it is for
- Professional coaches, managers, and learning practitioners who use coaching in their work.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Lesson Planning
Plans lessons with AI, aligned to objectives and checked for accuracy and level.
- Assessment Design
Designs assessments with AI and validates that they measure what they claim.
- Instructional Design
Designs learning experiences with AI and keeps pedagogy, not the tool, in the lead.
- Online Course Creation
Builds online courses with AI-generated material that is verified before learners see it.
- Mentoring
Mentors with AI-assisted resources and judgement about when advice must be human.
- Career Development
Plans career development with AI and tests its suggestions against real evidence.
- People Management
Manages people with AI-assisted planning and communication while keeping decisions and fairness human.
- Feedback & Performance
Gives feedback and runs performance conversations with AI preparation and human accountability.
Everything in People, HR and L&D, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Coaching covers this skill. No book is required to pass.