And just like that, AI Coaches share space with Human Coaches — and always will.

If you haven’t tasted from the broad menu of AI Coach options that vary greatly in quality, here’s a primer. Think about your last back-and-forth experience with a customer service chatbot, but instead of discussing a refund on a recent purchase, you’re sharing personal or professional challenges with an algorithm trained to respond based on a focused dataset (such as goal attainment of cognitive behavioral therapy). I’ll leave it to your imagination the degree of satisfaction that might follow from there. Here’s another item from the tasting menu. After the recent RIFS of federal government workers, which IMHO was conducted with stunning levels of cruelly and inefficiency, human Coaches came together, as a community, to offer coaching support, pro-bono. You don’t see that from Chatbot AI Coaches.  Perhaps they’ll be capable or the creators will make those types of offers at some point, but I don’t have to spend much time right now wondering about the value of Clients might receive between “pro-bono AI Coaches” and the human ones.

For now, we Human Coaches can breathe easy while the wild west coach bot marketplace shakes out. They’re  primitive and in some cases outright annoying. One service I experimented with sent me cutesy and overly familiar text reminders, “Yo Cliff! How are action steps from ____ coming along?”  I couldn’t stop the texts without canceling the service, which ended up being my next “action step.” Funny stuff and initial worries aside, there’s  a serious element and we (Coaches and Coach Community) need to  “be prepared” as my late father was (too) fond of quoting from his boy scout days.

AI Coaches will always “outwork” us Humans. They’re on and available “24/7” and never complain about how early/late their Clients text them seeking support. They coach in every language and are familiar with the cultures norms of the Clients who speak those languages. As we speak and sleep, they’re improving themselves to become increasingly personalized to Client needs and will offer Clients customization options to create many AI Coaches/Avatars suited to specific needs and preferences. All that will also seem to happen, “just like that.”

It may be a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but I’ll say anyway that this AI Coach tension we’re experiencing our Clients deal with too — in the context of broader AI impact on jobs, workplace cultures, and the world and what it means to be human. How do we welcome ourselves to this party and how prepared are we, will we be, to embrace the reality/ies while holding faith to prevail in the end? Reality And Faith — that’s a “polarity” for those not familiar — an interdependent pair we can leverage. In two upcoming presentations in March for DC Metro International Coaching Federation and the  Association for Coach Training Organizations, I’m looking forward to “confront brutal facts” of AI Coaches (and AI in general), while holding “unwavering faith” in our ability as Coaches and community to prevail in the end — among other polarities we’re all in, and can (hopefully!) benefit by seeing/leveraging.

The Quick and Dirty

  • I’ve put a number of AI Coach recordings and transcripts through the rigor of ICF ACC-level BARS (Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales) and PCC-level Markers and none come close to passing. Mostly, there’s loads of contra-evidence due to the fact that they’re not truly “coaches” based on the pure definition of coaching. Many/most are closer to e-Mentors or thinly veiled e-consultant/advisors.
  • AI and AI Coaches will always carry with them issues of ethics and other potential biases.
  • “Democratizing” coaching could be a good thing to improve accessibility and cost effectiveness.
  • The future of Coaching will leverage the Human And Tech polarity — Augmenting And Automating” — to leverage emotional/social intelligence dimensions and efficiencies where opportunities can best be applied and done most effectively in partnership with Clients.

Research on the Impact of AI Coaches

An AI Coach can be effective in goal attainment and self-resilience. Several studies also show that AI can match human coaches to deliver structured interventions, on particular domains (such as productivity) coaching.

Working alliance, a key factor in coaching relationships, has mixed results in AI coaching. While some AI systems establish a moderate working alliance with clients, others struggle to foster the deep rapport necessary for trust-based coaching relationships.

Ethics

Unfortunately, and no surprise here — not a lot of research on ethical concerns in AI coaching. What is well established are general risks underpinning all use of AI, namely: data privacy, security, bias, and little meaningful regulatory oversight. Every AI coaching platform will navigate these ethical challenges, and they will do so more-or-less, well and their track record may change by the day/hour. So – it’s difficult and nearly impossible to ensure they are unbiased and trustworthy. This puts issues such as transparency in any use of AI and decisions that are based on use of AI on the Coach to ensure informed consent about risks and ethical use of personal data.

Interdependent Pairs (aka Polarity, Paradox) for Coaches and Coaching Field

General AI literacy must leverage several key polarities in service of the Greater Purpose Statement (GPS):

GPS=Generative Change That’s Sustainable for the Coach
Adapt to AI Consciously And Integrate AI Consciously

GPS=Best of Human-Tech Partnership for the Client
Augmentation And Automation
Transformational (Human Coaches) And Transactional (AI Coaches)

GPS=Physical, Emotional, and Mental Well-Being for Humans

Tactical (short period) Technology Breaks And Strategic (long period) Technology Breaks

A few high-leverage Action Steps for Coaches/Humans:

  • Treat the power of AI/technology and its intake like food — disciplined indulgence with overall healthiness in mind, always.
  • Building-in daily times for tech breaks and extended times for tech breaks.
  • Keep abreast of evolving AI trends and AI Coaching research to understand strengths and limitations of AI.
  • If an AI Coach is considered, do so in partnership with Clients — fully disclosing benefits/limits, and transparency.
  • When used, treat the AI Coach as the “third party” to Human Coach/Client partnership — evolving/evaluating its benefit to the relationship.

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