From Basic Copilot Use to AI-fluent Executive.

How personalised AI coaching helped one senior leader save time, reduce pressure and build the confidence to make AI part of the way he works.

Chris Knew AI Mattered. The Question Was How to Make It Genuinely Useful.

Chris is Head of Engineering, Health & Safety and Continuous Improvement for Park Cakes, a large UK food manufacturing organisation employing approximately 1,000 people.

He wasn’t new to AI.

He was already using Microsoft Copilot for some straightforward tasks and understood that AI was going to become increasingly important – both in his own role and for the organisation around him.

But there was a gap.

Using AI to summarise information or help draft an email was one thing. Understanding how it could support the more complex work of a senior leader was quite another.

As Chris put it: “We’ve got to embrace this, but where do you start?”

That became the starting point for three weeks of personalised one-to-one coaching with VTT’s Catherine Nicholson.

The objective wasn’t to teach Chris a list of Copilot features. It was to help him discover how AI could become genuinely useful in his work.

Start With the Executive, Not the Technology.

Generic AI training wasn’t what Chris needed.

As a senior leader, his working day involves real operational information, decisions, projects, people and priorities. The value would come from applying AI to those things, not just practising on fictional exercises.

So, the programme began with Chris.

• What was taking his time?
• Where was he experiencing pressure?
• What information was he working with?
• What would he like to do better or faster?
• Where could AI add something to the quality of his thinking rather than simply generate another piece of content?

Working confidentially together meant Chris and Catherine could explore genuine work as it arose.

The coaching therefore developed around Chris’s priorities rather than asking Chris to fit himself around a predetermined AI curriculum.

Session One: From Knowing About AI to Seeing the Possibilities.

The first session explored how Chris was already using AI and began opening up what else might be possible.

The important outcome wasn’t a long list of new features. It was curiosity.

Chris began spotting opportunities to experiment within his own working day.

Between the first and second sessions, he put that thinking into practice. Among other things, he:

• Created a one-page email summary to identify accidents and incidents from the previous 24 hours
• Developed a daily RAG-status report from shift information, including actions
• Experimented with AI-supported research
• Developed his use of OneNote for coaching journals and preparation
• Began exploring how AI could support projects outside of work

There wasn’t conventional ‘homework’. Chris took ideas from the conversation and applied them to live work.

His description of what happened after that first session says rather a lot: “My mind was whirring.”

Then Came a 20-minute Moment.

One of the clearest demonstrations of the potential came from a real project Chris needed to complete.

He was working on a new organisational opportunity and needed to produce a project plan and cash-flow projection.

The work involved an Excel-based Gantt chart, equipment lead times, a launch timeline and staged payment calculations.

Chris estimated that he would normally have spent somewhere between two-and-a-half and three hours completing the task.

Working with Copilot, he completed it in approximately 20–25 minutes.

And the benefit wasn’t simply the time saved. He had also created something he could adapt and use again.

The goal of AI fluency isn’t to make an executive do the same work a little faster. It is to help them begin seeing different ways of doing the work altogether.

As Chris reflected: “What it’s giving you is capacity to do more with less.”

Session Two: From Experiments to Better Ways of Working.

By the second session, Chris and Catherine had something much more useful to work with: Chris’s own experience.

• What had worked?
• What hadn’t?
• Where had Copilot surprised him?
• Where could an initial experiment become a repeatable way of working?

Together, they explored increasingly sophisticated applications of Microsoft 365 Copilot across the tools already sitting within Chris’s working environment, including Outlook, Excel, OneNote, Word, PowerPoint and Forms.

The emphasis remained firmly on application.

AI was beginning to support activities such as:

• Reviewing emails and identifying important incidents or information
• Organising operational information into useful reports and actions
• Researching legislation and industry developments
• Planning and financial modelling
• Preparing for coaching conversations
• Turning accumulated notes and knowledge into something more useful

The shift was subtle but important.

The question was becoming less: “What can Copilot do?” and increasingly: “How could AI help me with this?”

Session Three: Building His Own AI Support Team.

By the third session, Chris’s relationship with AI had moved on again.

He wasn’t simply following demonstrations. Catherine could introduce an idea, Chris could explore it himself and they could then use the coaching conversation to challenge, refine and extend what he had created.

He began developing reusable Copilot agents focused on areas important to him, including:

• Health & Safety
• Engineering
• Coaching & the development of colleagues

These weren’t generic AI assistants. They contained tailored instructions and starter prompts, and Chris was beginning to add his own knowledge and source material.

That included taking handwritten coaching notes, converting them into text and making them available within his Copilot environment to support future coaching preparation and reflection.

He was moving beyond isolated prompts towards something much more powerful: a personalised AI support system built around his role, knowledge and priorities.

What Changed in Three Weeks?

The evidence of change was clear.

At the beginning, Chris was already interested in AI and using some of its basic capabilities. He wanted to understand what else was possible and where to start.

Three weeks later, he was independently experimenting, creating repeatable workflows, building specialist agents and applying AI to genuine executive work.

There were tangible productivity gains – the 20–25 minute project-planning example being the clearest.

But Chris identified another benefit that mattered just as much: “It’s allowing me to deliver the role less stressfully.”

AI wasn’t simply helping him produce more. It was beginning to give him greater capacity.

And perhaps most importantly, it had changed his attitude towards what came next: “For me, it’s like gold. It’s an absolute energiser. It’s my apprenticeship for the next phase of my career.”

The Real Outcome: Confidence to Keep Going Without the Coach.

For Catherine, one of the strongest signs of success came towards the end of the programme: “The change wasn’t that Chris suddenly knew everything about AI. None of us does. It was that he no longer needed me to show him every step. That’s the capability we want to build. Not dependence on an AI expert, but the confidence, curiosity and judgement to keep exploring for yourself.”

AI fluency can’t be a fixed body of knowledge, as the technology will continue to change. The more valuable capability is knowing how to explore it, question it, experiment with it and apply it intelligently to real work.

Why One-to-One Executive AI Coaching?

Chris’s experience also highlighted something important about how senior leaders learn AI.

Executives don’t necessarily need another generic course. They may need somewhere confidential to ask the questions they feel they ought to already know the answers to. They may need to work with sensitive documents, priorities and problems that would never comfortably fit into a group training exercise. And they need someone who can help them explore what’s possible without trying to turn them into an AI technician.

Chris captured that need particularly well: “There’s a real need for an independent subject matter expert who isn’t trying to sell you a package, but can show you the capabilities and help you choose what you need.”

The AI-Fluent Executive.

The AI-Fluent Executive is VTT’s personalised one-to-one coaching programme for senior leaders who want to move beyond basic AI use and discover how it can genuinely support the way they work.

Across three 90-minute coaching sessions, executives work confidentially on their own priorities, workflows and challenges.

The aim isn’t to teach everything AI can do. It’s to develop something more sustainable: the confidence, judgement and habits to keep discovering what AI can do for you.

For Chris, that journey had already moved well beyond writing emails and summarising documents.

In three weeks, AI had begun to change how he approached his work.

And he was ready to keep going.

Who in Your Organisation Needs to Make This Journey?

You probably know the senior leaders who are already embracing AI.

But what about the others?

• The executive who says they’re using AI, but whose experience doesn’t extend much beyond drafting an email or summarising a document
• The leader who goes quiet when AI comes up around the board table
• The highly capable, experienced executive who knows they are falling behind, but would rather not expose that uncertainty in front of colleagues

These aren’t people who need a group course on how to use Copilot. They need the opportunity to catch up… privately, practically and without judgement.

The AI-Fluent Executive gives senior leaders confidential one-to-one coaching with VTT’s Catherine Nicholson, working with their own priorities, their own challenges and, where appropriate, their own work.

There is no need to admit what they don’t know in front of a cohort, no generic programme to sit through and no expectation that they become AI experts.

The objective is to help an experienced leader move quickly from “I know I should be doing more with AI” to having the confidence, judgement and practical capability to use it and to participate more intelligently in the AI conversations shaping their organisation.

If you’re responsible for developing your organisation’s leaders, ask yourself a simple question: who can you already picture?

If someone immediately comes to mind, talk to VTT about The AI-Fluent Executive.