We’ve all been there. You’re asking an AI for help, and it completely misses the point. You explain what you actually need. You give examples. You try different ways of asking. But it keeps giving you variations of the same unhelpful answer.
Here’s why: AI can’t genuinely change direction. It follows patterns from its training, layering new responses on top of its original interpretation rather than truly reconsidering your question. Even when you tell it exactly what’s wrong with its approach.
This matters because real growth—whether in your career or personal life—requires something AI fundamentally cannot do: the ability to step back, recognise when your approach isn’t working, and genuinely pivot.
What Real Pivoting Looks Like
In my coaching practice, I work with the PIVOT model:
Problem → Insight → Vision → Opportunities → Transition
It’s about moving from surface issues to deeper understanding. Often, the real challenge isn’t where you first thought it was. That realisation—”oh, the actual issue is something completely different”—requires the kind of self-awareness and mental flexibility that AI simply doesn’t have.
AI can’t question its own assumptions because it doesn’t recognise them as assumptions. It can’t explore genuinely different approaches because it follows predetermined logical paths. And it can’t integrate feedback to change its fundamental reasoning process.
The Three Things AI Cannot Do
- Self-awareness. AI follows its training patterns without recognising when those patterns are limiting or wrong. Humans can identify their own biases and choose to challenge them. AI cannot.
- Non-linear thinking. We can hold multiple interpretations, abandon one approach for another, completely reframe our understanding mid-conversation. AI follows sequential paths and struggles to backtrack or explore alternative routes.
- Genuine adaptation. AI can’t step back and question its own reasoning process. It can’t recognise when it needs to change direction and then actually do it.
What This Means for You
If you’re relying on AI for personal growth, you risk pursuing surface-level strategies whilst missing the deeper work: examining your values, questioning your perceptions, challenging your fundamental assumptions.
Real transformation requires breaking free from inherited values, ingrained patterns, unconscious biases. It requires someone who can help you see what you can’t see yourself, who can challenge your thinking in ways that open up genuinely new possibilities.
That’s where human connection becomes irreplaceable. With our human brains—the most complex objects ever encountered in the universe—we can operate outside logical boundaries. We can help each other make real change, not just optimise existing patterns
The Opportunity
AI is excellent at processing information within existing frameworks. But changing the frameworks themselves when they’re not delivering results? That requires human insight, human challenge, human support.
This is what coaching offers: the ability to genuinely pivot. To recognise when your approach isn’t working and explore fundamentally different directions. To break free from the patterns that got you here but won’t get you where you want to go.
Our opportunity in the era of AI isn’t to compete with machines. It’s to be more fully human.
