Toby Sinclair · ICF Professional Certified Coach · Founder, Real Talk Studio
I help enterprises with the human side of AI — the change management, the coaching, the conversations nobody scheduled. I'm not a consultant who read about AI. I build an AI company every day, and I've spent a decade coaching the leaders who have to make change stick.
Founder, Real Talk Studio
An AI simulation platform used by enterprises to build real conversational competence
ICF Professional Certified Coach
A decade helping senior managers lead change people actually follow
Ex-JP Morgan
Ten years in financial trading, so I know what regulated, high-stakes environments demand
The gap
The gap isn't technical. It's human: fear, identity, skill, trust, and managers who've never had to lead a change like this. That's the gap I work in.
Done
They bought the licences.
Done
They ran the town hall.
Missing
They still have teams quietly not using it — or using it badly.
How I help
01
Hands-on workshops that take teams from “we should use AI” to actually using it well. Practical, tool-agnostic, and grounded in real workflows — identifying use cases, building judgement about what AI should and shouldn't do, and making adoption a habit rather than a mandate.
For: leadership teams, functions rolling out AI, L&D leaders who need more than a webinar.
Book a training conversation →02
One-to-one and team coaching for leaders navigating AI transformation. The same coaching craft I've practised for a decade, pointed at the hardest change most leaders will face: role anxiety, resistance, restructuring conversations, and leading teams whose work is being redrawn.
For: senior managers, exec teams, and the people carrying the change.
Explore coaching →03
My company. Teams rehearse feedback, conflict, and high-stakes conversations with AI — before they happen for real. It's also my daily proof: I don't advise on AI from the sidelines, I build with it, sell it, and live its limits.
For: organisations that need verified conversational competence at scale.
Visit Real Talk Studio →Why me
I've done both, at the same time, for years.
Every day I run an AI company — designing with large language models, shipping product, watching where AI genuinely helps and where it quietly fails. Every week I coach leaders through the human consequences: the fear, the scepticism, the skills gap, the conversations they're avoiding.
That combination is the point. When I train your team on AI, it's informed by building a real product. When I coach your leaders through the change, it's informed by twenty years inside demanding organisations — from JP Morgan trading floors to enterprise boardrooms.
You don't need another AI keynote. You need someone who can sit with your people and make it real.
What working with me looks like
Case study
One of the world's largest advertising and communications companies. WPP's people teams face the same question every HR function does right now: will AI happen to us, or through us?
I ran a working session with their HR and talent leaders built around one shift: HR as leaders of AI adoption, not passengers. Together we got hands-on with AI across the work they actually do —
The reframe that landed hardest: AI in HR isn't a cost-saving exercise. It's an opportunity engine — for the function's credibility, for the employee experience, and for HR's seat at the transformation table.
Book a session like this →“Leaders of AI adoption — not falling behind it”
Trained recruitment teams to use Claude through a DEI lens ahead of a major hiring drive
Embedded AI practice into a live leadership programme so managers rehearse hard conversations, not just discuss them
Essays
01
Adoption, change, and what happens to people when the tools change faster than the culture.
View articles →
02
How senior managers build cultures people want to be part of — especially under transformation.
View articles →
03
Feedback, conflict, and the discussions teams postpone until they become expensive. (AI has added a few new ones.)
View articles →
Latest
Most new manager training teaches models, not conversations. Here are the conversations every first-time manager actually faces in year one, and how to practise them, from someone who builds conversation simulations for a living.
Read article →Ten realistic difficult conversation scenarios for managers, with what people get wrong and what good sounds like, drawn from real practice sessions on an AI roleplay platform.
An honest comparison of crucial conversations training options: the official course, workshops, peer practice and AI simulation, from a practitioner who builds conversation training for a living.
Why sales role play in team meetings fails, what a real practice scenario needs, and five worked sales role play scenarios you can run this week, from a founder who builds sales simulations.
A founder's honest guide to AI roleplay training: how conversation simulation works, where it beats traditional role play, where it still falls short, and how to evaluate platforms.
Reading
The ideas I return to: coaching, culture, and how people actually change. Short notes, written from the seat of a practising leader.
Browse the library →
