How the Arrival of AI-Enabled Coaching is Changing Learning and Development
Artificial intelligence (AI) has ingrained itself into our daily lives. From self-driving cars to streaming music, AI can be found anywhere. In today's digitalized world, it comes as no surprise that AI is being used in the coaching space.
What is AI?
Before we jump into Artificial Intelligence (AI) in coaching, let's talk about what AI is.
In other words, we use AI to essentially replace "repetitive" jobs-- tasks that could be automated with robots and machines. This automation frees employees from having to perform tedious tasks that are part of their overall responsibilities, giving them further time to work on more challenging and rewarding projects.
How AI is being used in the leadership development space
So how exactly is AI being used in leadership coaching?
These are the top three ways companies are using AI to improve the leadership development experience:
1. Professionals and their coaches are receiving more accurate insights
The AI driven model collects real time data from the user. With the data, the model can provide actionable learning insights for the user and share further information about why certain results may be occurring. For example, low engagement, high productivity or high absenteeism can be flagged by models and brought to the attention of the individual’s manager or Head of Employee Effectiveness.
When L&D leaders receive these insights, they obtain a holistic understanding of their overall learning progress and retention, as well as pinpointing wins and opportunities for improvement.
2. Personalization at scale by automating coaching itself
Given how fast technology is advancing, many coaching companies are working on replacing the need to meet with a coach altogether. When people have access to apps that allow the user to receive personalized guidance in leadership development or goal setting, it is tempting to try to automate the process to lower professional development costs per employee.
Generally, users of these apps briefly answer a few questions pertaining to their overarching goals. Then, the AI models generates action items in which the users will need to complete in order to achieve said goals. Users are sent nudges and notifications via their app to ensure accountability. As a result, AI models send the user progress reports, customize their metrics based on the organization’s goals, and change the way learning content is delivered.
This is no doubt a controversial use case of AI to replace the human, rather than improve the human’s effectiveness in their role (as coach in this instance). It’s important to note that using technologies like this does potentially risk losing engagement from the users since they know they are in discussion with a bot rather than a human. Often, interacting with a bot lowers accountability and engagement. This is a risky space when considering adoption rates, especially the more senior and experienced the individual using the software.
3. Mitigate human bias
There is no doubt that a coach’s expert support is limited by their experience and coaching framework. No matter how much expertise the coach has, even the most experienced and validated approaches can seem subjective.
That is where AI can mitigate this human bias.
Opinions will always feel slightly objective, but when backed up by data, the impact is increasingly credible. A coach can tell a person that they made improvements on their goal, but with an AI driven system, the coach can show and explain their progress over time in more detail.
How other leadership coaching platforms are using AI
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