In a world where artificial intelligence increasingly delivers personalised flattery, curated validation, and endless streams of agreeable responses, we face a paradox. On the surface, this looks supportive – but beneath it, something vital is being lost.

True coaching is not about flattery. It is about courage and compassion: the courage to challenge and disrupt, and the compassion to do so in a way that honours the humanity of the client.

This lecture explores how coaching can resist the lure of sycophancy—whether from culture, organisations, or AI—and instead stand as a space of brave inquiry, compassionate observation, and transformative growth.

Nick will look at how transformative coaching, grounded in principles such as dialogic inquiry, paradigmatic exploration, and unknowing curiosity, creates the conditions for profound shifts that no algorithm of flattery can replicate.

Far from being a space of cosy reassurance, coaching at its best is a crucible – a place where assumptions are questioned, worldviews are re-examined, and new ways of being can emerge.

In this lecture, Nick will ask: What does it mean to coach for disruption rather than affirmation? How do we hold a relational space that is safe, yet uncompromisingly real? And what role can human coaches play in an age where machines are eager to please?

About the Speaker

Nick is the founder and CEO of Animas Centre for Coaching, the global leader in transformational coach training.

A philosophically oriented coach and coaching supervisor, he is fascinated by how we make sense of ourselves in the world and the mental paradigms we operate from that shape our experience and actions.

Nick established Animas in 2008 to provide training in innovative approaches to coaching that built on psychological and philosophical principles. Over time, Nick developed his thinking further around transformative coaching delivering a number of presentations on philosophical perspectives on coaching and human change.

Nick has coached since the early 2000s, firstly working within the public sector through his own education and training business before becoming a personal coach, group coach, business mentor and coaching trainer.

Passionate about best practice and deepening coaching practice, Nick also established the International Centre for Coaching Supervision to provide high-quality supervision training around the world.