Of course I use AI in my preparation. Specifically and deliberately. Before a session I feed in summaries from my client calls, the context, the challenges, the dynamics they have described. Then I ask for scenarios and roleplay prompts built around what is actually happening in their world.

Not generic. Not “imagine a difficult colleague.” Their world.

And you can feel it in the room. The moment someone reads a scenario and the nodding starts, because it is familiar. Sometimes they glance at each other, just briefly, when it is one team. That is when the work begins.

Recognition is not a nice-to-have in communication training. It is the condition for learning. If someone has to translate a scenario into their own context, you have already lost some of the room.

AI does not replace the preparation. It sharpens it. The insight still comes from the client conversation. The craft still comes from knowing what to do with it. But the specificity, the part that makes someone think “this is exactly what happens in my team,” that is where AI earns its place.

🤔 What makes a scenario feel real rather than generic?