Coaching Article

Six Ways Coaches Can Refine Their Emotional Intelligence to Stay Ahead of AI

June 4, 2025
By Jeffrey E. Auerbach, Ph.D., MCC, NBHWC

The advantage that a human coach has includes the lived experience of navigating human complexity, the intuitive wisdom that comes from working through our own personal struggles and growth, and the genuine empathy that emerges from our own life journey. But our human advantage isn't guaranteed — it must be continuously cultivated.

The coaches who will thrive aren't just those who understand emotional intelligence conceptually — successful coaches will embody EI at increasingly sophisticated levels. Exceptional coaches of the future will have heightened their EI by doing their own developmental work. They will have assessed their emotional intelligence, uncovered their own blind spots and refined the emotional intelligence behaviors and attitudes that matter the most, leading to a balanced use of their EI characteristics, helping them to be at their best with their clients. Learn more about coaching and fast-track ICF-accredited coach training.

How Executive Coaches Can Stay Competitive in the Age of AI

Human coaches who deliberately refine their emotional intelligence not only become better at helping others — they future-proof their relevance and impact in a world increasingly influenced by AI. In executive coaching we deal with clients who are under tremendous pressure, shoulder huge responsibility and need to adapt to rapid change. In wellness coaching we often are working with clients that have severe health problems and the emotional stress that goes along with them. Empathy, support and connection with their human coach is most cherished by our coaching clients.

I recommend coaches use the Emotional Quotient Inventory 2.0 (EQ-i 2.0.) with their clients and that you take it also and develop a plan to further refine your uniquely human emotional intelligence factors to make yourself preferable compared to an AI coach.

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Here are six powerful, evidence-based tools and activities that coaches can use to continue developing their emotional intelligence.

Emotion Log Journaling to Deepen Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is foundational to all aspects of coaching, and we all benefit from revisiting this core competency. One method is to use an emotion log journal.

For a period of two weeks, at the end of each day, reflect briefly on the following questions:

• What feelings did I have today?
• What thoughts accompanied those feelings?
• How did I respond to those thoughts and feelings?
• What assumption was I making at the time?
• If it would have been better to manage a situation in an alternate manner, what would be helpful if I could do it over again?

This process strengthens your capacity to notice and name emotions, understand your patterns, and be present with clients more effectively.

Use the PRC Technique to Strengthen Impulse Control

Even coaches — who often have higher than average emotional intelligence — can become reactive under stress. Especially when you are the leader and the spotlight is on you, impulse control is critical.

The PRC technique, which I developed to assist my coaching clients in 2000, is similar to approaches used in many mindfulness programs and cognitive behavior therapy approaches.

In my simple PRC technique, I ask clients to remind themselves in a stressful situation to use "PRC" before reacting:

• P – Pause and take a slow breath
• R – Reflect on what I'm feeling and thinking
• C – Choose how to respond in a constructive manner

The PRC technique is quick and private, nobody else can see you are doing it, but it helps you handle stressful situations from your best self. Use PRC during coaching, but also in your personal life. You may want to practice pausing before reacting to a colleague's email or a family member's comment. These micro-moments of self-regulation strengthen your overall self-management, stress tolerance and impulse control skills, and for coaches contribute to our coaching presence.

Practice Cognitive Reappraisal with Your Own Emotional Triggers

Cognitive reappraisal is the practice of reframing how you interpret emotionally charged situations. I often use this approach with my executive coaching clients, and you can benefit from it too. For example, if you feel discouraged after a coaching session that didn't go as planned, rather than labeling yourself as a "failure," or a "bad coach," consider instead a realistic and more accurate thought, such as: "Not every session will be perfect — this is a signal for me to reflect and grow."

As a coach, your ability to reflect and identify your own thoughts that are not accurate or helpful sets the stage for your own personal growth. Engaging in this process helps you be a centered and mature professional who takes a wise perspective even in challenging situations.

Use Empathy Mapping to Understand Emotional Blind Spots

Coaches are often naturally higher than average on the EQ-i 2.0 assessment in empathy, but we all can develop emotional blind spots — especially in cross-cultural or high-stress situations. Since my view of wellness coaching is that we need to include a broad perspective of well-being, I often talk about social well-being with my coaching clients. Appropriate use of empathy is critical for nurturing healthy relationships, the foundation of social well-being.

Empathy mapping is a helpful exercise you can use for your own growth:

• Reflect on a difficult interaction with a client, colleague, or a family member
• Ask yourself: What might they have been thinking? Feeling? Fearing? Hoping?
• Consider what you may have missed in the moment

Using this approach regularly sharpens your empathic accuracy and helps you evaluate if you may be projecting your assumptions onto the other's experience.

Role-Play to Reflect on Your Coaching Presence

Coaching presence is the ability to be fully engaged, grounded, and attuned to the client in the moment — mentally, emotionally, and physically. It involves listening deeply, sensing unspoken emotions, adapting fluidly to the client's energy, while maintaining a non-judgmental openness.

As defined by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), coaching presence means being "fully conscious and creating a spontaneous relationship with the client, employing a style that is open, flexible, and confident." This skill is central to building trust, and inviting meaningful client reflection.

Role-playing can be a powerful method for examining and refining your coaching presence. Record a brief session with a peer — or use an AI avatar or script-based role-play — where you coach through a difficult scenario. For example:

• A resistant or defensive client
• A client who becomes overwhelmed or tearful
• A client who is disengaged or emotionally flat

Then, thoughtfully review the session with the following in mind:

• Nonverbal cues: How much were your body language and facial expressions showing empathy and openness, or did they shift into subtle defensiveness or impatience?
• Emotional tone: How much did your voice remain calm, grounded, and warm, even if the tension rose?
• Relational space: How well did you allow enough time and space for the client to fully express themselves, or did you rush to problem-solve or become directive?
• Self-regulation: If the experience became uncomfortable, did you try to deepen the connection — or did you disconnect, intellectually or emotionally?
• Adaptability: How much were you able to remain flexible, or did you hold too tightly to your own agenda?

This type of reflection on a practice role-play gives you the opportunity to observe yourself carefully — something that is difficult to do in an actual coaching session. This metacognitive perspective allows you to notice habits, strengths, and subtle areas for improvement. Over time, this kind of intentional reflection leads to higher self-awareness, accurate self-assessment, and more genuine connection with clients. This allows you to stay centered no matter what the client brings to the coaching session. Role-playing also helps move coaching presence from being an unconscious process to a consciously cultivated capability — one that your clients will feel and appreciate.

Mentoring with a Masterful Mentor Coach

While self-guided development is practical and important, working with a masterful mentor coach offers an effective personalized pathway to emotional intelligence refinement and coaching skill mastery. Mentoring provides nuanced, experience-based feedback that helps you refine not just your coaching skills, but also your emotional presence, self-regulation, and ability to show empathy.

Experienced mentor coaches function as a mirror — reflecting subtle cues in your coaching that you may not notice on your own. This deepens your self-awareness and helps you understand where your emotional intelligence is a strength in your coaching style and where you need more balance. A mentor coaching group is a safe process for insight, experimentation, and refining your growing edge as a coach.

At the College of Executive Coaching, we've enhanced the value of mentor coaching by integrating the use of AI-assisted feedback tools, such as Ovida, into our group mentor coaching experience. With expert guidance from Patricia Schwartz, MCC, Certified Mentor Coach, our small group mentoring cohort offers both traditional mentor feedback and cutting-edge AI analytics.

Through peer coaching and recorded session analysis, Ovida provides detailed reports on how you are demonstrating ICF core competencies — offering objective, data on behaviors such as open-ended question ratio, active listening, interruption frequency and question style. Combined with the insights of a masterful mentor coach, this enables you to:

• Receive specific feedback on your use of empathy, listening, and presence
• Identify blind spots in your coaching patterns or tone
• Use metrics and AI-generated insights to track your development
• Reflect more deeply on your strengths and areas for refinement

This combination of human mentoring and AI-supported reflection provides more comprehensive feedback than traditional mentor coaching alone, accelerating your growth as a professional coach. The is an example of how outstanding coaches are using the power of AI plus the wisdom of a human mentor coach to make sure they are not left behind in an AI world. This will be the future of how professional coaches will develop excellence — we will partner with AI to leverage the co-intelligence of AI plus have our core being nurtured by the wisdom, presence and support of a human mentor coach.

Mentor Coaching

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Emotional Intelligence is the Human Coach's Strongest Asset

As AI coaching bots become more advanced, they will simulate empathy more convincingly and offer increasingly seamless user experiences. But only the human coach can:

• Feel compassion
• Intuit what's unspoken by drawing on lived experience
• Genuinely care for the client's well-being

Your ability to be emotionally intelligent, attuned, and intentional will shape the quality of future human executive coaches and human wellness coaches compared to bots. By continuing to develop your own emotional intelligence, you will continue to invest in your uniquely human and unreplaceable valued characteristics, your compassion, and your deep human insight. That is what coaching clients will continue to value and be willing to pay high executive coaching fees for.

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References

• Auerbach, J. (2001) Personal and Executive Coaching: The Complete Guide for Mental Health Professionals. College of Executive Coaching
• Auerbach, J. (2014) The Wellness Coaching Workbook. College of Executive Coaching
• Foster, S. & Auerbach, J. (2015). Positive Psychology in Coaching. College of Executive Coaching
• Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004). The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 3(2), 71–100.
• Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26.
• Keng, S. L., Smoski, M. J., & Robins, C. J. (2011). Effects of mindfulness on psychological health: A review of empirical studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 31(6), 1041–1056.
• Pennebaker, J. W., & Chung, C. K. (2011). Expressive writing: Connections to physical and mental health. In The Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology.
• Riggio, R. E., & Tan, S. J. (2013). Leader interpersonal and influence skills: The soft skills of leadership. Routledge.