Two years ago, in the middle of a live online Coaching session, my coachee did something I had never experienced before. This is what makes Coaching so interesting to me. One cannot say how sessions will turn out. So, we were in the middle of discussing a difficult situation. I would safely say it was one of those questions where there is no neat answer, and certainly no answer that can be found by ticking a few boxes. She kept thinking and I patiently waited. Then, quite casually, she looked up and said, “I’m using ChatGPT for this.” and she carried on to type in the question / prompt with no hesitation.
For a moment, I was taken aback, not quite sure what to do with that. Was I supposed to be offended (Hello! I was right there!) ? Or was I supposed to be curious about what may come up? Or maybe impressed because she had the presence of mind? But really, all I wanted to do was just ask her not to do it. Strangely, I chose to laugh and even encouraged her for her sake. What happened eventually is another story but what I am getting at is this. I was a human coach sitting across from another human being, and my coachee had decided that the best way to answer my difficult question was to consult a machine. For a moment, I felt defeated almost to the point I questioned myself about the question I had asked.
Now after two years, that moment feels less funny and much more significant. Why? Simple as it sounds, AI has tip-toed into the Coaching room. Not only in coaching but leaders are increasingly using AI to think through difficult decisions, prepare for challenging conversations, processing workplace dilemmas, sometimes explore career questions, reflect on relationships at work, and even summarise books so they can sound smart for an upcoming conversation. The trend is seemingly to ask questions they might once have taken to a Coach.
There is a very good reason for this. AI is available whenever you need it. There is no calendar invitation to negotiate, no waiting for the next coaching session and no awkwardness about saying something at 11.47 p.m. that you perhaps would not say to another person.
You can type, “I am frustrated with my boss and I don’t know whether I am being unreasonable,” and within seconds, you have a remarkably patient conversation going.
It can help you organise your thoughts. It can offer perspectives. It can ask questions. It can help you rehearse a difficult conversation.
For a leader in the middle of a crisis, or simply in a moment when their coach is unavailable, that can be incredibly useful.
However, I have to say that there is this thin line. AI can augment coaching for now. It should not become the core of the coaching experience as yet.
I say as yet because who knows what AI can bring to the table in the future to come. But for now, coaching is not simply a person you have to listen to and it is certainly not a solution to getting quick answers. If this is what is happening in your sessions, then we need to evaluate what is really going on. Coaching sessions can also leave you more with thoughts you can brew till the next session. This space gives the coachee their answers or solutions on their own. Basically, the work can also happen in the in-between. The little space that is between the question and the answer. That is where the magic lies.
A Coach surely knows “what” a leader says, but they lay emphasis on the “how” they say it. It is the little nuances, like the hesitation before an answer or a story they keep repeating or even a contradiction between what they say they want and what their behaviour suggests.
A Coach remembers or is supposed to remember. Something a leader said three months ago may suddenly become relevant today. A pattern may emerge across conversations. A seemingly small comment may reveal something much bigger. There also comes the part that can be uncomfortable because a good coach challenges by asking questions that may not be particularly convenient.
The coach is also mostly waiting and most importantly, they do not immediately fill the silence. They encourage you to sit with the question, clarify it and do not let it slip by as a quick fix to something urgent. That is the very human part of coaching.
Leadership dilemmas are always urgent, out of the blue and more so are made up of a lot of things that the leaders themselves are. There is their own history, personality, relationship, insecurity, ambition, contradiction and beliefs. So, when a leader takes to AI and with their own baggage and how they are asking AI, “I am struggling to delegate because my team isn’t ready, “ AI will assume that to be the truth and offer frameworks on delegation, trust and accountability. It can even ask useful follow-up questions. But a Coach may ask something so different that it challenges the leader’s basic premise that their team is not ready. Maybe the leader has been saying for months that they want to develop their team but every time the team takes ownership, the leader steps back in. That is the pattern that needs focusing.
Maybe, the real issue is not what the leader is making it out to be (readiness of the team) and AI cannot distinguish this. So when a coach will ask a question like “What if your team is not the problem?”, it could probably be the most important coaching moment in the whole session.
I also want to clarify that just because a human being asked a question instead of a machine, it does not become powerful on its own. It becomes useful and powerful because it comes from a relationship that the two have built. The coach knows the person to whom this question is asked. They have context, history and they have earned enough trust to challenge without the challenge feeling like judgement. That is the distinction that matters the most. One may argue so does AI, but to bring back to perspective, it is just the history of prompts
AI can be extraordinarily good at helping us think. But a human coach helps us examine how we think and sometimes, more importantly, why we keep thinking the same way.
The truth is Coaches are using AI too.
It would be rather ironic for coaches to sit on one side of this conversation and tell everyone else to embrace technology while we remain untouched by it. And to be honest, we are experimenting too. Well! How do we do it? In the best possible manner to augment our practice in a way that makes the whole Coaching experience very interesting and more impactful than it already is. We are using AI to support research, create reflection prompts, prepare learning material, explore different perspectives, structure notes and perhaps sometimes even develop specific resources.
One thing is clear – AI is here to stay. The question for our profession is therefore not whether we should resist it. It is how, when and where we should use it responsibly.
The distinction between using AI to support coaching and using AI as the coach will become increasingly important. As professionals, we need to understand the technology well enough to know where it adds value and where it begins to dilute the very thing that makes coaching coaching.
We need to be mindful and careful about confidentiality, privacy, data, bias, professional boundaries and the limitations of an algorithm that may sound remarkably human without actually having a human relationship with the person in front of it.
Most importantly, we need to make sure that technology serves the coaching relationship rather than replacing it. I have come to believe that the future is not either/ or. I do not believe leaders need to choose between technology and human coaching.
In fact, I think AI can make the coaching experience even richer when it is used well.
A leader can use AI between sessions to capture and relate to the conversation that took place. Maybe we can start thinking of really how it can help. I do not hold all the answers but maybe someone will and can share the very same with all of us. While the machine can help with preparation, the human can help with the exploration.
I am still looking for ways and means and that means that I need to educate myself first and how this will work and should work. Interestingly though, in my own experience, I have seen people who initially turn to AI for coaching eventually gravitate towards a human coach. And I do not say this as Coaches above AI. Maybe AI helped them articulate what they were feeling. Maybe it helped them see that the issue was deeper than they thought or maybe they simply discovered that while an AI could keep asking questions, they wanted someone who could actually know them.
Coaching is a relationship and over time coaches begin to know the real person behind those critical conversations. They see the person behind the performance, the confidence killing doubts, the patterns in decision making and sometimes, they see the possibility in you before you are able to see it yourself.
AI will undoubtedly become a bigger part of how leaders think, work and reflect. We should embrace that. As coaches, we should be curious enough to learn it, responsible enough to use it well and discerning enough to know its place.
To sum it up, AI can extend the reach of coaching. It can strengthen the preparation for coaching.
But the relationship at the heart of coaching remains human. No doubt use AI in all possible manner that suits you but when the question becomes difficult, personal, uncomfortable or deeply human, there is still enormous value in sitting across from another human being who is willing to stay in that space with you.
And yes, if you happen to open ChatGPT during the coaching session, I may still laugh.
But I might also ask you:
“What were you hoping ChatGPT would tell you that you didn’t want me to ask you?”
And now, that could be a coaching conversation.