Will your next coach be an AI?
Is technology going to upend the Coaching Gold Rush?
There was a fascinating article in the New York Times this month about the usefulness of ChatGPT as a therapist. The writer, an 81 year-old clinical psychologist started using the AI as an experiment and now reports using it as a thought partner for upwards of an hour a day. It is pretty evident that despite what the anti-clanker resistance might say, a lot of people are gifting trust to computerised confidants. This week the fallout of lonely romantics losing their server sweetheart as GPT5 wiped away the doting attention of GPT4 is only further proof of this.
It raises really interesting questions about the role that AI tools will take in our lives. It is pretty evident that many people are finding themselves an AI partner who doesn’t leave them feeling judged. From a work perspective I’m especially interested in how AI will fill the coaching space.
Earlier this month I chatted to Kate Niederhoffer, a social psychologist who is a senior leader at BetterUp. When I was with a client last month they’d mentioned some research by the firm suggesting that its technology was delivering some serious uplifts coaching performance in the workplace. I got in touch to ask more.
The BetterUp website includes a few details about the results they are seeing, suggesting sales performance rises by 14% in AI-coached sales people and that productivity is seeing a 40% uplift. Burnout levels halve and manager effectiveness rises 86%, the site says. In person Kate was a little more reticent to put hard figures out in the world. (In fact I recorded the discussion to use as a podcast but it wasn’t substantial enough to use, sadly).
She explained to me how BetterUp is building their product to deliver AI coaching, saying that when individuals have an open-minded ‘pilot’ mentality (rather than a ‘passenger’ mindset) they are seeing huge uplifts in productivity. So far, so growth mindset blah blah blah, growth mindset is a lovely idea but tends to show unimpressive uplifts in real life data, so I wanted more detail.
Kate told me that one of the first things that managers use is a short role play experience that builds readiness to handle difficult situations. Handling difficult people situations used to be a mainstay of management training but like so much of training it’s been scaled down in the last few years. There’s plenty of evidence that practicing the tough stuff makes us better at it.
The range of roles that the AI can play is one of the main appeals of the technology she tells me, alongside that lack of disapproval and 24 hour accessibility. For BetterUp the ability for the AI to coach managers is the emergent opportunity, with big uplifts reported in team innovation and performance.
I’m openminded to hear more, I’d love to see if this proves to be effective for wider audiences. Therapists often talk about the importance of the patient-therapist relationship, where the quality of the outcome is totally dependent on the strength of the trusting bond. While most people think that this bond would come from human-to-human connection, it’s certainly possible that AI could confound us by allowing everyone to find the sort of therapist most receptive to them.
Derek Thompson has observed that when it comes to civilian uses of AI therapy there are plenty of reasons to be concerned. The pandering, obsequious nature of ChatGPT doesn’t seem likely to give the tough love direction that some patients could benefit from. In contrast, the selling point of workplace AI is to produce demonstrable uplifts in performance and as a result it’s likely to prove to be a better application of the technology.
But there are clearly system effects at work here - how is this going to impact the Coaching Gold Rush? Anyone of a certain age will have witnessed their friends training to be coaches as a second act to their careers. These moves are largely based on the idea that coaching attracts a premium price and it can offer a very agreeable lifestyle. It raises further questions about AI job displacement, if we’re going to see that computers prove to be a better substitute for humans in the space then that coaching certificate might not be the golden ticket that so many people were praying for.
Have you used AI coaching? Get in touch to tell me how you got on
Fascinating article about how AI is disrupting the world of McKinsey and fellow consultants: ‘Artificial intelligence can increasingly do the work done by the firm’s highly paid consultants, often within minutes’. The firm is deploying AI agents to every employee adapted to write PowerPoint decks in the firm’s tone of voice. Can’t help but think that a distinctive tone of voice is going to be hard to defend as time goes on and AI gets more sophisticated. The article says that engagements that complete with the ‘arrogant’ delivery of a deck are no longer in demand and the next generation of consultants are expected to ‘get in the trenches’ of delivery. That real world impact of their lofty pronouncements is the one thing that consultants have always struggled to deliver
81% of engaged workers reported having fun at work last week: I always love it Elle Hunt’s features and here she tackles the challenge of having more fun at work. (Warning: includes photos of ethnically balanced workers giving high fives to each other)
A couple of articles observing the same theme: that recent jobs have disproportionately affected middle management. Bloomberg says that on average middle managers have twice as many direct reports as they did five years ago. The Wall Street Journal says that leaders are peacocking their toughness to investors by trumpeting their falling workforce
Employers are overwhelmed with AI generated job applications - applications are up 45% in the last year alone