Key Takeaways

• A 25-person pilot built the business case before any budget ask. Colleen Sugrue tested AI coaching with a deliberately mixed global group of supporters and skeptics across business, HR, and IT roles. Their feedback on 24/7 access, coaching quality, and native-language support made the case to leadership for her.
• Language was the breakthrough for global scale. AGCO operates in 8 core languages plus 26 more. AI coaching removed a translation barrier that previously slowed talent programs by months, giving every region equal access to quality coaching for the first time.
• Integration into the talent lifecycle drives adoption. AGCO embedded Nadia into performance reviews, calibrations, talent reviews, and engagement survey action planning, so coaching arrives at the moments that matter rather than waiting for employees to seek it out.
• Revenue per employee reframes coaching as a business investment. AGCO measures AI coaching by how much revenue each employee can generate through gains in speed and productivity, a talk track that engages the CFO and business leaders far more than cost savings.
• Human coaches, AI coaches, and HR each have a defined role. AGCO still uses human coaches for long-term executive engagements and set clear boundaries early so the AI coach never crosses into territory that requires an HR professional.
• Adoption grows through leaders, then grassroots pull. AGCO focused on willing early adopters instead of pushing skeptics. Once leaders saw success and pulled in their teams, employees began requesting licenses on their own.

‍

Why a Culture of Coaching Matters at AGCO

Colleen Sugrue, Head of Global Talent at AGCO, opens by framing a culture of coaching as one of the biggest drivers of employee engagement, productivity, and happiness, and the challenge that follows: delivering it to a 24,000-person global workforce at a justifiable price point.

Levi: You might remember me from six minutes ago. What you don't know, last night, every flight out of Toronto to New York got canceled. So I was frantically trying to book a flight. And then, of course, all the flights early in the morning were canceled. But I persevered. I flew to Montreal last night. I landed at 11:30. And I flew out of Montreal at 7:30 a.m., and I got here at 9:58 a.m., 12 minutes before the second panel. Anyway, that's just me complaining.

But I'm really excited to be chatting with Colleen. We'll share a bit of her journey and the journey of AGCO, working with us, scaling coaching. And maybe as a start, Colleen, why don't you introduce yourself and share what's really important for you and AGCO right now?

[00:00:46.175]

Colleen: Right. This is... No.

[00:00:47.653]

Levi: You just flip the...

[00:00:49.340]

Colleen: Think I'm good? Yeah, great. Hello, everyone. Colleen Sugrue. AGCO is a global manufacturer of pure-play farming equipment. You probably don't know what we are. But if you think about John Deere, tractors, combines, precision agriculture, that's us. We do the same thing. We're not John Deere. Sorry, we're AGCO, of course, but that's a good starting point.

We are fully global. We're in about 230 locations. I head up our talent arm of that, focused on: do employees have the right knowledge, skills, abilities, capabilities? Do we have the right change initiatives in place? That full spectrum. And I've been partnered with Valence now, this is our third year that we have been working together, to bring coaching full scale globally across our organization. So a little bit about it. And I think you'll learn some more as we continue our talk.

[00:01:50.640]

Levi: And maybe just, why do you believe in coaching? Why do you think that's important to have at AGCO?

[00:01:55.439]

Colleen: When we started this journey, I had this concept. We all know, and I know everyone in this room knows this. Coaching, and a culture of coaching within an organization, I think, is one of the biggest drivers of employee engagement, employee productivity, and overall happiness within the organization. We know that. The data show that. Gartner's been telling us this for years. All the research institutions have been saying this.

But the challenge that we had was just like we talked about. How do we scale that? How do we bring that at a reasonable price point that we can justify to the organization? How do we bring that to everybody? And in our case, how do we bring that to everybody in 25 different languages at the same time? So that was the ask. I went and said, "All right, culture of coaching. I believe in it. We know that we, as an organization, believe it, but how do we do that at scale?" That's where it started for us.

Why Enterprises Struggle to Scale Coaching

Scaling coaching across a global enterprise breaks down on cost, language, and access. At AGCO, a 24,000-person farming equipment manufacturer in about 230 locations, Head of Global Talent Colleen Sugrue believed a culture of coaching drives engagement and productivity, but delivering it to every employee in 25 languages at a defensible price point was impossible with human coaches alone. That gap is what led AGCO to AI coaching.

Adding AI Coaching Alongside Human Coaches

[00:02:56.740]

Levi: Okay, great. And just, why did you want to go with...? And I know you have... How did you think about human coaching and AI coaching, and why did you want to add AI coaching to the mix?

[00:03:08.380]

Colleen: Initially, it was really just cost. When we started the journey, it was how do we do it at scale at a reasonable price point? Now, today, we still use human coaches too, and I want to be clear about that. In our overall structure and strategy, that's still a very real piece of it.

But we also knew that we had this gap to how do we get to that mid-level manager that we all know really is the one that's going to need that the most? And how do we make sure that we can be autonomous across the organization with that? How do we make sure that the coach can be there for somebody when they need them in every single time zone we have, which is a global time zone? We have reporting structures where... Personally, I sit here in New York, but I have people who report to me in every time zone that exists. So how do we have somebody there for them when maybe I, as their leader, couldn't be there? Those are real challenges that we were facing.

Why Companies Add AI Coaching to Human Coaching

Companies add AI coaching to reach employees human coaches cannot cover economically, especially mid-level managers. AGCO kept human coaches for long-term executive engagements but added AI coaching to give 24,000 employees across every time zone access to support the moment they need it. Cost drove the initial decision; availability, autonomy, and reach across a global workforce sustained it.

Embedding AI Coaching Into the Talent Lifecycle

[00:04:07.620]

Levi: Yeah, great. Okay, so you've got 24,000 people. You're trying to scale coaching. Are there moments or specific use cases or instances where you think coaching is really valuable? Are there moments where you wish your employees were getting coaching?

[00:04:23.120]

Colleen: Talent professional here. All of us know the employee lifecycle, from the second that you start engaging them in the talent acquisition process to the second you off-board them. There are these key moments that matter. So yes, first interactions, onboarding, performance reviews, end-of-the-year calibrations, talent review, Voices, which is our employee engagement survey results, and action planning.

All of those moments have a specific touch point that we believed could be really impacted by having a trained coach to guide the leader and guide the people through those touch points. So the approach that we have taken is how do we...? Nadia, in our case. Does everybody call her Nadia real quick, yeah?

[00:05:11.300]

Levi: Yeah, true story, yeah.

[00:05:12.279]

Colleen: True story, okay. So Nadia, in our case, she is now integrated into that full talent lifecycle in these moments that matter. When it's time for a manager to have a performance conversation or a difficult conversation, they have a coach that's trained, understands our process, understands AGCO's guiding principles, understands who we are and what we believe in.

The employee has the same benefit. The employee can also say, "I want to prepare to have a conversation with my manager. I believe that I should be up for a promotion. Help me prepare that." And Nadia's a coach that can do that. So we've integrated into all of those points, those moments that matter, we would call them.

[00:06:02.120]

Levi: Yeah, this is, I think, one of our big learnings as a company. What we maybe imagined at first was just a coach in the flow of work: I wake up and I have stress, how do I handle that? I have a difficult conversation. I need to give feedback to a coworker. I have too many priorities. I don't know which ones to do.

But we've really noticed that talent lifecycle and learning programs, if you integrate into that, it can be much more powerful. And also, some subset of your organization, and this would be a curious question for you too, Colleen, some subset of the organization really loves... You make something available, and they seize it. And then some other subset, it is maybe harder to reach them. Have you seen anything as you integrate into those workflows? Have you reached different people that might not volunteer to get coaching more readily?

How AI Coaching Integrates Into the Talent Lifecycle

AI coaching delivers the most value when embedded into existing talent moments rather than offered as a standalone tool. AGCO integrated its AI coach, Nadia, into performance reviews, end-of-year calibrations, talent reviews, onboarding, and engagement survey action planning. When a manager prepares a performance conversation, the coach already understands AGCO's process and guiding principles, and employees use the same coach to prepare for promotion conversations with their managers.

Driving Adoption: Trust, Early Adopters, and Grassroots Growth

[00:06:52.439]

Colleen: Yeah, I think that's always going to be the case for all of us. I think the biggest points for us that we've really hit some resistance with have been the trust issues. What are you going to do? Is this recorded? Are you going to be able to share this data? So we do have that curve. We have our early adopters or people who are ready, and then those who are still questioning whether or not that's okay with them.

And the approach that we've taken with that is: if you're not ready, that's okay. We will be here for you when you are. So we've really focused on the people who want to try it, who want to engage. And what we have found in that approach, once somebody starts using it, and our leaders have the biggest influence in this, once they start having success and then pulling in their teams, and then those teams start pulling in others, the conversation changes. It no longer was me going out saying, "Hey, you should try this." It was people who didn't realize they already had licenses coming to me to say, "Hey, can I get a license?" And we just said, "Sure." We didn't have to explain that they've had it. No, we just said, "Sure." And then people were engaging that way. So we've taken that top-down but also grassroots approach to it.

How to Build Trust in an AI Coach

Trust concerns are the biggest source of resistance to AI coaching adoption. At AGCO, employees asked whether sessions were recorded and whether data would be shared. The team's answer was patience: focus on willing early adopters, let leaders demonstrate success and pull in their teams, and never pressure skeptics. Adoption flipped from push to pull, with employees requesting licenses they did not realize they already had.

Removing Barriers of Language, Time, and Access

[00:08:21.120]

Levi: You're getting to this already, but just share more of what's working, what's going well, what's part of the success?

[00:08:27.180]

Colleen: Yeah. The biggest... Gosh, for us, the biggest success was large language models giving the ability to translate in multiple languages. That speed for us was... That changed our complete landscape. That was everything to us because I don't know if anybody here has had to translate some of this. Yes, I see some nodding heads. If you've ever had to translate, it slows you down by months. We didn't have that barrier anymore. Nadia speaks any language somebody could possibly want, even the languages that, as a company, we don't recognize.

We have 8 core languages and then 26 other languages that are out there. It doesn't matter, though, because she speaks everything. So that barrier itself for us was huge. Now, that's not just Nadia. That's really any large language model that we have. So I think that had been incredibly successful for the first time as a global entity. Global talent, they're like, "Oh, you're not in our region, you're not in our country, you can't help us." Well, I actually had a solution now that I could help them.

So I think that was one of the biggest. I'll also call out just the idea that this coach can be available to them whenever, wherever they need them. Time zones didn't matter. Nobody had to wait to schedule a meeting with somebody. If you find yourself in a position in which you needed coaching, support, and guidance right away, you had that.

We have it integrated. We're a Microsoft company, so we have it integrated into our Teams platform. So just like somebody would want to call me as their manager in the middle of the night, they could actually just call Nadia as well in the same platform that they would have used to call me. So we really are looking to remove these barriers of language, of time, of accessibility. Once we did that, then it opens up the possibilities from there.

How Enterprises Scale Coaching Across Languages and Time Zones

Language capability is the single biggest unlock for scaling coaching globally. AGCO operates in 8 core languages plus 26 others, and translation previously slowed talent programs by months. Its AI coach speaks every language employees need, works in every time zone without scheduling, and lives inside Microsoft Teams, the same platform employees already use to reach their managers. Removing language, time, and access barriers made truly global coaching possible for the first time.

AI Coaching in the Flow of Work: A Real Example

[00:10:35.700]

Levi: That's great. I feel like you're teeing everything up well. Could you share, and in our prep you mentioned one or two stories, what does this look like for either you personally or an employee at AGCO? What's a type of conversation, or help, or an example of real life for this?

[00:10:52.659]

Colleen: Yeah. All right. So I am also a huge Nadia user. Maybe I'll use myself. Again, protecting the anonymity of others' psychological safety. I think that is really important that we don't share others' stories. But let me use mine because I'm here and I can do that. I use Nadia often, daily actually. And usually, the best way I use her is, "Hey, I am about to go into a meeting," or "I'm about to send an email," and I set up that context.

This is Haj. She's in Budapest. Gives her a title. This is what she's going to do. And historically, I've had some challenges communicating with her to get her to deliver on the things that I need her to. So can you help me prep for this session? And get me ready. And so she'll help me with that. Now, we usually start that conversation just on my computer in my office.

But this morning I took the train. I don't live in the city. I took Metro North, if anybody's familiar. So I'm on the train. I'm driving down. And sure enough, I needed something that I didn't get the results that I needed. I didn't get Haj to send me... I'm making that name up just so you know, but I didn't get Haj to send me what I needed.

So I just pulled out my phone. I was in Teams. I contacted Nadia. I said, "Hey, we tried this last week. It didn't work. Can you help me? Let's craft an email on how to follow up to this and get back to her so that we can really have a clear call to action here."

Well, we talked through a few things. We did that. I sent the... It's easy to just copy and put it into the same Teams message. And I will say that when I was sitting back here in the first session, she sent me a note. Haj sent me the note, and she said, "Hey, no problem. I'm so sorry. Here's the response that we needed."

All of that said, that's just one story. I don't know if it's a great story, but the point of it is that Nadia's been integrated into the flow of work for me. And I think if you can find a way to integrate these things into the day-to-day, whether you're home in your office, on the computer, you're on a train in your Teams chat, it doesn't matter. You have that support when you need it, where you need it, and in what language you need it to.

[00:13:33.146]

Levi: That's great and fun, too. You left this morning with a problem. You were on the train. You got some advice on the problem. You took action on the problem, and it was like the problem was solved before you even had your session. In two hours, you went from problem, help, advice, action, solved.

[00:13:49.740]

Colleen: Yeah, and I think that that's really what we're up against now with AI. We talk about, I forget who said it, you're carrying around your laptop because you have the code running in the background. That is very real for us. I think we all, this is the human capability that we have to figure out how to manage. You are running 20 different agents at the same time. And these tools, they're just connecting this ecosystem for us in this flow of work, and it's still up to the human to navigate and coordinate all of those pieces.

But it's also up to all of us and our providers and our partners on how do we integrate all of that connected tissue so it feels seamless. And I think that's the challenge that we all have, is how do you do all of these things at the same time and keep it all together? Which we can, and we're doing. I think that's an example of how we're doing it.

But agents are running in the background, and then they're helping us do the other things. All my AI tools are helping me be able to sit here on the stage today to free up the time to be with you all, to have the personal engagements that nobody can replace this. Whereas I really do feel like a year ago, I might have made a different choice. I might not have been able to be here because I have too many things going on.

I'm running a whole nomination process right now for our high-potential leadership programs. Well, now with AI, I have that stuff actually running in the background, and I get to be here with you. So how do we leverage the tools to be able to do those things? Took us on a little bit of a tangent, but I think it's important.

What AI Coaching in the Flow of Work Looks Like

AI coaching in the flow of work means getting coaching support at the moment a problem arises, in the tools employees already use. Colleen Sugrue, Head of Global Talent at AGCO, uses Nadia daily: on a recent commute, she opened Teams on her phone, worked through a stalled communication with a colleague, drafted a follow-up email with her AI coach, and had the issue resolved within two hours, before her workday formally began.

Building the Coaching Ecosystem: Human Coaches, AI Coaches, and HR Boundaries

[00:15:44.299]

Levi: No, no, that's great. I think you half answered one of the things we planned to talk about, which is what does your architecture or ecosystem look like? I know you have some human coaching, you have AI coaching, you think of Nadia maybe in the org chart, then you have these other non-HR agents. Maybe just help folks think, how have you architected or set up the different resources that you're making available to your employees?

[00:16:07.627]

Colleen: Yeah, sure. Let me start with one thing. This has been a little bit of a mindset shift for me. We used to always think about org charts and structures, and you have people that report in org charts and structures. Well, I think we need to reshift that. I think we now need to start thinking about, it's not just people, it's these AI agents, it's Nadia. And I shifted the talk track about how I think about Nadia. I think about her as an extension of my team. And I actually think about her as an extension of everybody's team.

So we have this really interesting... I don't have the answers. I just know that it's happening. We have this really interesting piece where we have humans and agents, or whatever we end up calling them long term, commingling in this reporting structure. So I do think about Nadia as my head of AI coaching at AGCO.

But that said, it's not the only piece of coaching we have. We do have partners that we leverage for long-term engagements, 6, 12 months engagements for our executive team. But it's putting all of that together. So again, going back to human capabilities, I don't see this as a job loss for anybody. I just see it as how we are releveraging our human capabilities.

And our human capabilities here is how to architect that landscape, that ecosystem of when do we use an in-person coach? When do we use AI? And the real truth of the matter is, for any HR professionals in the room, when does HR really have to be involved, and how do you set those boundaries? We partnered very much early on to make sure that we had that talk track right, because we don't want the AI coach to ever step over the boundaries of what a true HR professional would need to be involved in.

So again, that's a little bit of our ecosystem. We have live coaches, we have AI coaches. We're really intentional about the role that HR plays in this. And then the third piece now that we're really double-downing on is how do we think about Nadia or AI coaching in terms of sales or commercial sales for us? And how do we think about it in terms of the job function-specific pieces that it makes sense? That's the next evolution for us.

How to Architect a Human and AI Coaching Ecosystem

An effective enterprise coaching ecosystem assigns clear roles to human coaches, AI coaches, and HR. AGCO uses human coaching partners for 6-to-12-month executive engagements, deploys its AI coach Nadia across the full 24,000-person workforce, and defined boundaries early so the AI coach never handles situations that require an HR professional. Colleen Sugrue describes Nadia as her head of AI coaching, an extension of every team rather than a replacement for anyone's job.

Measuring Impact: Speed, Productivity, and Revenue per Employee

[00:18:43.263]

Levi: So we've been working together for two years, so you've had Nadia and Valence for two to three years. Maybe first, what are the benefits or impacts? What kind of changes have you seen?

[00:18:57.259]

Colleen: I think the two pieces that matter the most right now are speed and productivity. Our employees can operate with more speed, having a coach by their side, than they've ever been able to do. And right now, we also know that speed matters. The faster you can get something done and not lose quality, this is assuming quality remains that baseline, speed matters, and we get that. That is very measurable in terms of how long people need to spend on performance reviews. Huge time saver for us in coaching through that performance review cycle.

So speed, which gives us the opportunity costs there for productivity and ultimately the time that they're spending doing something else and using those human capabilities that a machine can't do, is where we're getting our benefit. So when we at AGCO are looking at this right now, we're not thinking about this as a cost. We're changing the talk track of how we look at employees, and we're using the revenue per employee metric.

What we really want to track to and measure is how much revenue can each employee get us? So tools that allow for speed and productivity allow for more revenue per person. And I think if we can start having that positive talk track into what we're trying to do, the more successful we'll be. It's about taking the people we have and having them drive more to our revenue goals. That's what's going to make us win.

[00:20:51.299]

Levi: Yeah, it's really interesting. I think of our whole client base. There's a bunch where the business, not HR, but the business, is very excited about what's happening, for basically the exact reasons that you just said. We're increasing speed, we're increasing productivity. In some places, there's sales coaching that leads directly to sales benefits. And it's so interesting to see the clients where the business is really engaged on that and feels like there's benefit versus the clients where it feels like an HR thing.

Because an HR thing, in my experience with our clients, is a cost to be managed. Whereas a business benefit, and obviously those two things can link together, but when there's a business benefit, you get a lot more energy, excitement, freedom, and, honestly, dollars to make your vision come alive.

[00:21:47.759]

Colleen: Yeah, I think it's a really important point, those HR professionals in this space. We are always seen as a cost. And now we have the opportunity to come into the business and say, "Well, actually, we're going to allow your people to be more productive, more relevant to the business." And I think if you could start with that piece, you will capture people's attention, as opposed to let me show you all the great things coaching can do. We know all the great things coaching can do, but we don't want to lead with that as the main message.

[00:22:24.680]

Levi: Yeah, I think with a lot of new tools and new solutions, there's an opportunity to reframe what the benefits are as well. So you have a chance to tell maybe a different story than had been told in the past and maybe demonstrate impact in a way that you hadn't been able to in the past.

[00:22:40.000]

Colleen: Right. And I think we can go back to what we have always known, which is organizations who implement a culture of coaching are more successful. We already know that. All of the data points to that. We just hadn't been able to figure out how we're going to do that at scale globally. But now we have solutions, now we have opportunities to do that.

So again, just starting back at the beginning of why coaching matters in an organization, and what coaching, regardless of the tool you use, regardless of if it's a person or if it's a technology. That doesn't matter. What matters is that they're getting quality coaching to help them do their job better. That's what matters. And that's what matters to the executive team.

How to Measure the ROI of AI Coaching

AGCO measures AI coaching through speed, productivity, and revenue per employee rather than cost savings. Time spent on performance reviews dropped measurably when employees had a coach guiding them through the cycle, and Head of Global Talent Colleen Sugrue tracks how gains in speed translate into more revenue generated per person. Framing coaching as a driver of business results, rather than an HR cost to be managed, is what won attention from business leaders and the CFO.

What Comes Next: Coaching That Drives Business Growth

[00:23:30.079]

Levi: Great. We didn't prep for this one, but I feel like I'd be remiss to not ask. And there'll be lots of time for questions. This'll probably be my last question. What do you see coming up next, especially as you think of Valence, Nadia, and your workforce? What are you hoping for or planning for in the future?

[00:23:46.519]

Colleen: Yeah, for us, I am really excited about this data side of things. How do we think about coaching that's driving revenue for the business? And so using Nadia in those ways with our commercial sales team, as well as some of our key target areas. Now, what we have done at AGCO is we have three main priorities we're going after to innovate and make change with AI. So I'm going to be partnered specifically with those teams to build coaching solutions that will help drive our AI transformations in those businesses.

So again, I'm using an AI tool for coaching to help drive innovations in AI for an organization. Just going back to it, it's not necessarily about a tool, but it is about what we know coaching can do to impact transformational change. How do we do that? That's what I'm excited about. So we're set up. We have our foundations. Now, it's all about driving that business growth.

Audience Q&A: Implementation, Adoption, and AI Coaching Design

[00:24:54.619]

Levi: Great. I think we have lots of time left, but why don't we open it up to questions from the audience? I have a couple more questions I can ask, but I'll just trust the magic of the microphone.

How AGCO Piloted AI Coaching Before Buying

[00:25:08.539]

Melanie: Hi, Levi and Colleen. Hi, I'm Melanie Staff-Parsons, and I'm with Danaher. And I'm just really curious as to how did you go about implementing this whole process when you started out working with Valence?

[00:25:27.599]

Colleen: Okay, well, great question. Let me go back and see if I remember. How did we go about implementing it? We just tried it. But that was the approach that I was going to. I still remember the first time I heard about the concept of AI coaching, and I thought it was possible. I was watching a recording, and I was in my garage. I was actually standing on a piece of furniture. And I remember listening to it, because I needed to do something with coaching, so I was reading all these things.

And I remember listening to a webinar that somebody had done. And I stopped what I was doing, standing by my table, and I said, "We have to try this. I have to try this. I have to see if this is a real thing, if this is going to be possible." So I started calling some friends, my global friends, because I needed to make sure that we had global support and buy-in on this. I said, "Hey, you all, I'd love to try out an AI coaching tool, and I'd like you to be my partner and test this with me."

So I put together a global team of about 25 people who were in various roles. Some of them were business roles, some of them were HR roles. I was pretty intentional about partners I felt like I needed to have. So I brought in IT, or even partners that I knew might not be on board. So I took both of those audiences. Where am I going to have my biggest resistors? Where am I going to have my biggest supporters? And we did a trial. We had just those 25 people. We gave them access to, and it was Valence, so we gave them access to that tool.

And at the end of that, I really just asked them, "What did you think? How did this go?" And I had languages, and everybody in language, and they loved it. They started building my business case for me. So before I even went and asked for money or anything, I tested something. I said, "Look, we tested it with 25 people. Here's what they told me. They told me that they had access to a coach 24/7. They said that the feedback they got on coaching was relevant, it was quality, it was successful. They told me that they were able to save time. They told me that it was so reassuring to be able to talk to somebody in their native language," because a lot of people in our corporate environment didn't have that ability at the time.

They could talk to a peer, but they couldn't talk to somebody knowledgeable in their core languages. So that's what made our case for us. And then we took it from there. And at the time, the second piece of that story is I started with a small group of 25, but we made the decision to have the tool be open and available to everybody in the organization because we didn't want to limit the person who needed that coaching support. We all know you might not need coaching support for six months, and then something happens, and you need somebody then, and you need somebody for the next six weeks with you. And the reality is sometimes in the procurement of human resources, it can't move that fast. So we wanted to remove any barrier that we possibly could.

[00:29:09.779]

Levi: And then just a typical... I don't know if this is what your question was getting at, but also, there's discovering your goals and the value, and figuring out that it'll work, and then there's also an IT security process and a legal process. And we've been through over 100, again, with Fortune 2000 companies, and passed everyone.

Sometimes what I have found is that every quarter, the IT departments have their acts together more, and it is quicker and easier. And what I have found is that the legal departments are a little more behind, and they're a little bit more difficult. But we've gotten through enough of those that we know how to expedite that process. But those two processes happen every time, and you get through it.

[00:29:47.119]

Colleen: Yeah. Saddle up for that process, you all. It's a ride, but also get them involved early.

How to Pilot an AI Coaching Tool

The most effective way to pilot AI coaching is a small, deliberately mixed trial group that builds the business case before any budget request. AGCO's Colleen Sugrue assembled roughly 25 people across business, HR, and IT roles, intentionally including likely resistors alongside supporters, and gave them access to the tool. Their feedback on 24/7 access, coaching quality, time savings, and native-language support became the evidence that convinced leadership, and AGCO then opened access to every employee.

Getting HR Business Partners on Board

[00:29:55.500]

Melanie: Yeah. And full disclosure, we are in conversation with Valence right now. I was also curious as to how did you engage the HR business partner population and get them on board?

[00:30:26.019]

Colleen: Yeah. I can take that, yes. You need that, but again, I talked about my biggest supporters, biggest challengers. I made sure to pick one of each of those. So you want your champion from the HR business partner community, and you also want to know... Europe for us is a challenge with some of the laws around AI, so I made sure that I had them involved in the process too. But once we got past the hurdle from the HR business partners, being really clear and intentional about the difference, you all know these things, the difference between coaching and the HR business partner and where we're not going to bleed over.

We had to get really intentional about getting clear about that up front. Once we did, we had the support of every HR business partner. Do you know how many times the HR business partner gets questions that they just need to have somebody...? Nadia works for them now. Nadia is the one that they can say, "Hey, you have this question, I'm sorry I can't meet with you right now. Let's leverage Nadia. If you still have questions, come back after that, and we can talk."

So we were giving the HR business partners a tool to help them get their lives back, too. And so if you think about how you can create that value for each of your stakeholders in that group, for us, it became a pretty easy sell. Yeah.

AI Coaching vs. Enterprise LLMs Like Copilot

[00:31:59.440]

Levi: Am I the...? Oh, who's the mic person? Here, let's go to this side.

[00:32:02.480]

Colleen: You are now.

[00:32:06.500]

AnneMarie: Thank you so much. AnneMarie Glebinski, I'm an enterprise-wide talent leader. So I have so many questions. I listened as you were explaining that Nadia is fully integrated and supported you in answering a challenge that you had. Could you share a little bit about how you're directing leaders in the organization to leverage Nadia versus another enterprise-wide LLM, like ChatGPT, across the organization? That's my first question. And then my second question is, when you deploy Nadia, what scope of the population gets access to leverage the coaching? Is it all people leaders, is it all employees in the organization, or is it targeted, and why?

[00:32:47.099]

Colleen: Yeah, great question. I'm going to answer the second part of that question first. We implemented an enterprise-wide solution. Any employee at AGCO with our email address can log in through single sign-on. So if they log in through Teams, it automatically logs them in, and Nadia is the app there. They can go to the web version as well. So it's open there.

So the question becomes, the first question, how do we integrate that in some of the other tools? And talk about the difference. We don't have a comparable tool that has full access licenses. We have Microsoft 365, but we don't operate the Pro version, which is what you really need to be super successful there, except for 3,000 people, because it's incredibly expensive. So we actually don't have another solution that can compete with it in that space. That's our scenario.

However, one of the pieces that makes Nadia different, too, is she gets integrated into those talent lifecycles. So you get a, hey, it's performance review time, that email that everybody gets, the system pushes it out, but it's not just the system, it's Nadia as well when they send that communication out, and the communication says, "And Nadia's here to help you through this, and here are the questions we suggest you start by asking." And it's starting with talking to Nadia about what your career goals are, and then we walk them through that whole process.

But integrating into those places, it's now in the same place, as opposed to even Copilot, for example. Copilot's not integrated with our HRIS systems or our financial systems, but Nadia is in our case, because we were able to move quickly to do that at a lower cost.

[00:34:51.199]

AnneMarie: I'm so sorry to follow up.

[00:34:52.909]

Colleen: Yes.

[00:34:53.290]

AnneMarie: I'm deeply curious, and I think this is important. Thank you. So how did you influence, I suppose, to go in this direction of investment for that particular tool, because companies right now are really fixated on tools, right or wrong, versus the business strategy? So to make a decision to go with a coaching culture and a tool as your central LLM, if you will, how did you convince that was the way to go, and is it being leveraged like other enterprise-wide LLMs would be leveraged to conduct deep research, all those other things beyond the development aspect?

[00:35:33.295]

Colleen: Yeah. Let me be clear, too. They do have access to other tools as well that are going to partner here. I think, again, though, it just goes back to, and I'd be happy to connect with you, and I can share the slides that I used, but it really was talking about companies that invest in a culture of coaching, what they get. And we didn't even talk about tools. I just said, "This is what we need to do," because if we can get speed, and productivity, and engagement in a different way, we will have more revenue generated per employee.

So that was the case. You have your CFO, that's the case you're going to make. "Let me show you the dollars of what this looks like, and when we map that out, how is it really impacting those bottom lines?" So I didn't really talk about the tool at all. I talked about the case for coaching in an organization. That was the approach, the sell, that I took.

Now, I also had this team of 25 people who was able to test Nadia against some of these other tools, and every time, I swear I don't work for Valence, but every time it happened, that was the preferred tool. They had the experience that they needed and wanted in that environment, and it wasn't me making the case anymore.

[00:36:57.054]

Levi: One more thing that's just happening recently, actually instigated by Microsoft, but we have a deeper integration and a partnership with Microsoft, and what we understand is that they actually see a unique and different use for Copilot than for Nadia. And so they recognize the relational intelligence and the coaching of Nadia. And what we have found is that sharing about that with the business leaders is very helpful for them in their thinking.

Two minutes. The final question. Let's go to a back row. It's always the front row who gets the questions. Let's go to a back row.

How an AI Coach Differs From an Enterprise LLM

An AI coach differs from a general enterprise LLM through deep integration with talent processes and organizational context. At AGCO, Nadia connects to HRIS and financial systems, arrives inside talent lifecycle communications like performance review kickoff emails, and is available to all 24,000 employees through single sign-on in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft itself, now in a deeper partnership with Valence, positions Copilot and Nadia as serving distinct purposes, with Nadia recognized for relational intelligence and coaching.

Customizing an AI Coach With Competency Frameworks

[00:37:41.000]

Tess: Hi. My name is Tess Misiaszek. I'm with AMN Healthcare, and I was just curious. In the way that you were describing Nadia, it sounds like a very broad slate of coaching concepts, content, knowledge, but did you inform the model with certain competency frameworks, leadership frameworks to be able to match the outcomes that were desired and those types of leadership outcomes?

[00:38:06.739]

Colleen: Yeah. The short answer is yes. We actually fed her with quite a bit of our overall leadership competencies, our core values as an organization. All of those things we have preloaded. So when she goes to have a conversation about performance reviews, she knows what are our core competencies that everybody is measured against. So she'll guide them to that, like, "Hey, I know that these are your competencies. Where would you like to start in the conversation?" So yes, we have all of that that has been preloaded. Is that the word you would use, Levi?

[00:38:40.559]

Levi: Sure. Works for me.

[00:38:41.460]

Colleen: Preloaded.

[00:38:42.639]

Levi: I think of four layers that Nadia uses in coaching. Let's just call Layer One coaching: what would a good coach do? Then Layer Two is the coachee: who is that person? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? How do they deal with conflict? What are their learning goals? Then the third layer is, who are they working with? Who are their counterparts? And what do we know about those people? And then the fourth layer is what Colleen just mentioned: what is this organization? What is their leadership framework? What are their processes?

How Organizations Customize an AI Coach

Organizations customize an AI coach by preloading it with their leadership competencies, core values, and processes. AGCO fed Nadia its leadership competency framework so that performance review coaching references the exact competencies employees are measured against. Valence Co-Founder Levi Goertz describes four layers of context in Nadia's coaching: general coaching craft, the individual coachee, the people the coachee works with, and the organization's frameworks and processes.

Closing: A CEO Who Uses the AI Coach Himself

Levi: But thank you. We are at the end. I don't know if you want to... You might not want to share, but I know your CEO has said something in private that was positive about your work. You're looking scared. Okay, you can do it? Okay.

[00:39:29.041]

Colleen: No, go ahead. Finish that.

[00:39:30.420]

Levi: Basically, your CEO is feeling amazing about the work that you are doing, and you have been privately lauded within your company by your CEO for the work you're doing. And Colleen is bold, and I think it is well deserved.

[00:39:44.800]

Colleen: Yeah, I guess maybe I'll end with this. That's absolutely true. And even our CEO uses the tool. He uses it. He believes in it because there's value to it. And he's even told me before that when he's tired, and sometimes he just needs a minute to find the words and talk it through, he uses Nadia as the tool for that. So I think we have these testimonials at every layer. And, of course, yes, it has made me look good at the same time.

[00:40:17.019]

Levi: Thanks so much for coming, Colleen. Really appreciate it.

[00:40:19.069]

Colleen: Thanks for having me.

‍

‍