AI Coaching Is Only as Good as the Prompts You Feed It—And Why the Right Tool Matters

If you’ve ever popped open ChatGPT and typed in “How do I give tough feedback to an employee?”, you’re not alone. It’s fast, it’s free, and it can be helpful in a pinch.

But asking a general-purpose chatbot to be your coach is kind of like asking WebMD to help you train for a marathon. You might get some solid advice, or you might end up overwhelmed, discouraged, or treating a problem you don’t actually have.

AI can be a powerful partner in leadership development. But only when it’s designed to coach well, not just to talk.

Why Prompts Matter

Let’s start with the obvious: AI isn’t magic. The quality of your coaching experience depends heavily on the quality of the input.

Ask something vague, you’ll get a vague answer. Ask something overly specific without context, and you might get an unhelpful shortcut. But frame your prompt with clarity, such as, “How can I give feedback to a peer who’s been interrupting me in meetings without sounding passive-aggressive?” and suddenly, you’re getting somewhere.

That’s not about gaming the system. It’s about framing the challenge, identifying what you need, and reflecting on how you want to show up. Good prompting is just good self-awareness, externalized.

But Prompts Aren’t Everything

You could write beautiful prompts all day long. But if the AI on the receiving end isn’t built to coach, it won’t really matter.

That’s the difference between using your favorite LLM and using a purpose-built AI coaching tool like Tenor. When the tool is designed for real leadership development, it does more than respond. It reflects, it prompts, it nudges, it remembers, and it scaffolds your growth over time, not just in one-off exchanges.

At Tenor, our AI coach is grounded in the International Coaching Federation’s (ICF) core competencies, which are the global gold standard for ethical, effective coaching. That means it doesn’t just spit out generic feedback or force-fit one-size-fits-all frameworks. It gathers information, asks provocative questions, encourages reflection, and follows through. And it’s designed to hold up the same principles you’d expect from a world-class human coach: trust, presence, active listening, and accountability.

Generic AI is like an open mic. Coaching AI is like a trusted training partner who knows the science of growth and your org chart.

Don’t DIY Your Development Strategy

It’s tempting to think, “Why not just ask a chatbot?” And sometimes, that’s a fine place to start. But if you’re serious about building coaching into your organization, then structure, continuity, and design matter.

You wouldn’t hand your team an empty Google Doc and call it a training program. So why hand them a blank chatbot window and call it coaching?

If you want scalable, personalized growth support that meets people in the flow of work and helps them actually change behavior, you need more than access to AI. You need the right tool that’s built with coaching science, organizational psychology, and real-world leadership challenges in mind.

AI coaching isn’t just about giving advice. It’s about growing capacity.

And for that, the tool, and the thinking behind it, matters.