Are we losing ourselves…and each other? Coaching, AI and the Human Connection
In my ten years of coaching in professional and financial services I have quietly witnessed two themes become more commonplace amongst my clients:
A greater sense of isolation, disconnection, and a feeling of being “different”, especially at work.
A frantic speeding up of the world – a desire for more and more efficiency coupled with a sense that nothing can ever be done quickly enough.
How did we get here? Perhaps one place to look is technology. For sure, technology continues to serve us in incredible ways – and ways that we could not have imagined even ten years ago. The very real feeling of dread I get when I rummage in my bag thinking I have lost my phone is enough to tell me that my reliance on technology runs deep and is utterly intrinsic to almost every aspect of my life. Is this a good thing? I am not sure, but becoming less dependent on one’s phone these days is all about making small tweaks to screen time, not a wholesale rebellion. Tech advancements are too far down the line for us to have any real hope of reversing the tide. We are all now locked into technology.
The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the utterly magical ChatGPT is set to have a seismic impact on all our lives. More than 100 million people use ChatGPT every week – the speed of take up is mind blowing and is a signal for how technological changes are coming down the line a way that is hard for any of us to fathom. As the education entrepreneur Michael Simmons tells us,
“When someone who is 10 years old today is 60, they’ll experience a year of today’s rate of change in just 11 days.”
As a mother to a 10-year-old, I am both thrilled and scared by this.
In the coaching world AI is beginning to make some valuable contributions. A couple of weeks ago my own coach used an AI-led coaching-specific platform to record our conversation. The summary it created instantly after the call was extraordinarily accurate and useful. There was something deeper missing from its bullet point summary though, which I found hard to put my finger on. But still, it was a useful list of what we had discussed, giving my coach a strong basis for her own write-up.
On the horizon there are AI platforms offering instant and low-cost coaching support – with the coachee spending time with a bot who asks insightful questions to help him/her/them to do their best thinking. There are lots of positives to AI coaching including:
Total focus, with the AI coach never being distracted in the way us human coaches can be, albeit momentarily. Your AI coach will be all yours for your time together and will never drift into wondering if they left the iron on or worrying about an upcoming conversation.
The potential for anonymity and literally faceless coaching which many coachees may find comforting and feel encouraged to be honest and open – perhaps more freely and rapidly than in human coaching.
Efficiency! No need for “chemistry” sessions or the diary dance that comes when one busy person needs to find uninterrupted time with another. Just log on and go.
Constant, “always on” access to support wherever and whenever you need it. Waking up at 3am worried about tomorrow? Log on to your AI coach who will talk you down from the metaphorical ledge.
An encyclopaedic and 100% reliable access to every possible question or model that may spark helpful thinking in the coachee.
Instant post session notes that reflect the spoken content of the conversation.
Comprehensive and instant thematic data on the topics brought to coaching, as well as potentially new ways to evaluate the impact of coaching.
There’s lots of good here and I’d rather people access machine coaching than none at all. AI will undoubtedly have a place in some basic behaviour-level coaching and this should be embraced as a way to get what is a high-investment intervention out to a much wider audience. But this level of coaching is at best transactional not transformational. Transformational coaching requires that most precious and unique of factors - the human connection.
What AI coaching cannot deliver:
Being present physically and emotionally as one human being to another. Listening, and I mean really listening, to what is being said and not said, and experience with the coachee what is felt in the room and what we as two human beings each feel. This means both coach and coachee draw on the millions of tiny, many unfathomably, data points that arise when one human sits with another to help him/her/they to achieve a goal. There is profound power in this in ways we don’t fully understand. In the words of Brené Brown, “Connection is the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued."
Working in an embodied way, encouraging the coachee to connect to their felt sense, their gut instinct, the part of us that knows but cannot say why, using the room and props (real or virtual) to make sense of the challenges the individual is facing.
Sharing as a coach (if and when the time is right) our own experience or sense from the conversation – as a person who is also living in the world and experiencing infinitesimal thoughts, feelings, challenges, joys, hopes, fears. Real coaches bring an empathy that is gained from life experience and a genuine desire to support and connect with another human being.
The use of silence and pauses as a powerful way to encourage the coachee to slow down to do their best thinking.
Giving absolute certainty regarding confidentiality. Is anyone clear where all the information fed into an AI programme actually goes? Do I trust what tech companies do with my data? Even if we accept it is not confidential and so use AI coaching anonymously can I truly let go of what I think I should say and just say what is on my mind when I am being careful to not name names, not get into specifics?
Holding the coachee accountable with just the right level of challenge for that person in that moment of time. Of course, a bot can ask me to report back on progress and challenge me on my commitment to change, but do I care what it thinks and, more importantly, does it care what I say?
Potentially no more bias or judgement than a bot. One of the arguments for AI is that it would be completely unbiased and without judgement, but this isn’t necessarily true – the output is only as good as the data it feeds off. If most bots are programmed by, say, white men what does this do to the lens through which an AI coach operates?
Working in a powerful, appropriate and sensitive way on complex diversity issues relating to gender, culture and race.
Engaging in robust supervision. All good coaches have to have regular supervision with an accredited supervisor, a “super coach” of sorts who holds the coach to account and supports them to be at their best. Who will supervise AI and ensure its best practice?
Leaving the coachee feeling they are indeed not alone in the world and that another human being has thought, felt and been alongside them.
As the two themes emerging in my practice – isolation and pace – tell us, we are crying out for more human connection, not less. We all crave ways to escape technology when we can and seek ways to resist the slippery slope of greater reliance. Deep down we know instinctively that putting everything in the hands of technology is, at a basic primeval level, just not good for us in the long run.
I’ll be watching the rise of AI in coaching with interest – and I am genuinely curious and open minded to learn more about its potential. And yet…and yet…I feel a sense of impending ruin for our quality of life if we increasingly look to technology for deeper connection.
“Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it. ”
This article was written by Helen Cowan, founder of The Tall Wall.