16 Reasons AI Won’t Replace Your Executive Coach
When we start hearing artificial intelligence will transform society like the discovery of fire did, and 40-60% of global employment will potentially be disrupted by it, it’s no wonder some of my fellow executive coaches are getting anxious AI could replace them.
Since I haven’t started worrying about that yet, I got worried that maybe I’ve got a blindspot so I’d better dig into the topic, just in case!
According to my first research pass, AI seems poised to potentially replace novice and average coaches, but delivering only a basic simulation of “coaching” at scale for cheap.
Truly exceptional coaching, though, is likely to remain the province of mere mortals, albeit ones with a radiant presence and extraordinary EQ. They will certainly be augmented by AI tools.
No one articulates the bottom line of this better than the incomparable Ann Farrell, CPCC, PCC, MGSCC, Founder and CEO, Quantum Endeavors®, Inc. and Inpowered Coaching Institute®: “I believe the big thing AI will do for the executive coaching industry is to dispel the myth that the power of it lies in asking powerful questions, and responding with acknowledgments and championing.”
“The true power of executive coaching is what is enabled by the experience of being truly seen, deeply understood, and unconditionally accepted without judgment by another human being as the catalyst for greater self-acceptance and self-love – the keys to transformational growth.”
“It's this deep human-to-human connection that enables us to do the courageous work of owning how we are getting in our own way, understand what it’s costing us, and take the leap into more of our full potential,” Farrell says.
Indeed, it seems improbable for the foreseeable future that AI will be able to replace great human coaches because AI doesn’t offer these essential components of a transformative coaching experience:
1. Trust
Without full trust in a coaching relationship, results are superficial at best
An AI could be programmed to say empathetic things but if we know it doesn’t have genuine feeling for us, it surely loses its efficacy.
We’ve also seen the dangerous costs created by some large tech companies using social media surveillance. Are you really going to bare your soul to a machine that could record and potentially use your tenderest vulnerabilities and secrets against you?
While a human coach can certainly fail at keeping confidences and nurturing their client’s psychological safety, if they do so, their business won’t last very long.
2. Empathy
Mirror neurons suggest we’re built for relationship
“The biology of our bodies, with mirror neurons generating empathy, tells us that there is something special about the potential for the coach/client relationship that cannot be replicated by a machine,” writes Tim Brodie, CEC, RCT-C, CCTP, MMM, in Choice: The Magazine for Professional Coaches’ recent issue on tech and AI.
He points to American psychologist Carl Rogers who postulated the three essential ingredients for client change: “…the therapist [coach] needs to experience unconditional positive regard for the client, experience empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference, and communicate that understanding to the client…Only people can feel another’s suffering and keep company with another in that pain.”
So, actually being cared for – not pretend cared-for as with AI – is a key component of healing and transformation. The best coaches in my experience do truly care about their clients, and their clients know it.
“AI lacks emotional intelligence and cannot provide the same level of empathy and human connection that a human coach can offer.” ”
3. Feeling
A much-undervalued function humans still need
Much of current human culture is biased towards thinking, doing, logic, action, analysis, facts, and goals. On the other hand, feeling, being, experiencing and authentically relating and connecting have been less valued for a few millennia. Yet, humans have never lost the deep need for them.
In fact, many of my clients, having conflated some vital feeling experiences with weakness, incompetence or irrelevance and suppressed them, surface a profound, often unrecognized, hunger for greater balance as we explore their lives.
Not only can more technology not deliver feeling and this balance to them, I’d argue it can actively sabotage it.
4. Intuition and the Unconscious
The wellspring of insight, creativity, healing and wisdom
At this stage, AI cannot grasp the human personal unconscious or collective unconscious, the most powerful, if ineffable, of human potentiators, if you’re coming from a depth psychological perspective as I am.
While AI has much to offer, it lacks intuition, to say nothing of genuine wisdom.
“AI doesn’t have the ability to read beyond the words the client says,” says Eva di Pierro, Jungian Coach and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner at RE-Connectyou.
Indeed, the best human coaches are very attuned to what their clients are not saying but possibly thinking, feeling or are totally unaware of.
5. Authenticity
No true intimacy is possible without it
The AI isn’t a person, so you can’t ever really know it – its background, family, preferences, goals, values, life experiences – because it doesn’t have any.
It’s not the AI’s personality you experience – it’s a make-believe made up by someone(s) you will never know.
While human coaches don’t spend a lot of time sharing such personal details of themselves in client sessions, this context is important for many clients, especially when they’re deciding if the coach is right for them in the hiring period.
“I cannot imagine being able to build the necessary intimacy with a robot,” says Siobhan McCann, an executive coach and leadership development consultant at Midderigh Vox. “You’re aware you’re dealing with an avatar.”
6. Depth
Without capacity to go deeper, results stagnate
If authenticity is absent, you cannot go very deep in an interaction with anyone, including an AI coach.
Without depth, you’ll be hard-pressed to achieve transformative results from coaching.
Superficial inputs beget superficial outputs.
7. Truth
AI can get facts wrong or make them up
Even ChatGPT has a disclaimer warning you to check its facts.
Human coaches make mistakes too, but the good ones don’t just make stuff up when they don’t know something!
“We cannot take AI output for granted as absolute truth,” writes data scientist Andrea Paviglianiti in Choice. “A training set is somewhat static: it does not change until new data is provided. Humans, on the other hand, keep learning and assessing their views – even unconsciously or when they are not paying attention – in a continuous feedback-feedforward cycle.”
8. Experience
AI hasn’t absorbed all of human experience yet
AI can only learn from the inputs it’s given, and not only with facts; not all human experience has been documented and shared with AI in a data set.
“When I’ve used a chatbot app, it didn’t show me that it has cultural references that are lived or experienced with its own eyes,” says a coach, Regina. “It can be helpful but not in place of a coach.”
And, adds founder of the Coachtech Collective and co-founder of AIcoach.chat Sam Isaacson on a recent Coaches Rising podcast: “Robots are useless when they are dealing with things that humans have never dealt with before.”
What if you have a situation that falls outside the AI’s purview? This happens all the time on chatbots and automated call trees, much to our exasperation.
9. Interpersonal Modeling
Human interaction is best demonstrated by humans
Many of my clients want to learn how to relate more effectively to their fellow humans – how to respond rather than react to others, give and receive feedback, resolve conflict, lead and manage people.
Could a robot really show us the best way to transform our relating patterns with other humans, better than an adept human coach? I believe AI could offer helpful tips but would struggle to demonstrate the best nuanced responses in a real-time interaction.
10. Motivation
We still like to please each other and avoid shame
Tech-based reminders and metrics like I use with my clients via CoachAccountable are great accountability tools, but some part of my clients’ motivation is supplied by not wanting to have to explain to me why they didn’t follow through on a commitment.
Doubtful they’ll care as much about their impact on an AI coach.
For example, in one weight loss study, people lost 74% more weight when they used an AI app plus a human coach rather than just the app alone.
11. Radiance
There’s nothing quite like an inspiring light from within
This is a rare and powerful human quality very hard for a machine to compete with.
“The best coaches that I have experienced have a magnificent presence,” wrote Anna Sumara, MSc, PCC, CPCC, faculty at the Co-Active Training Institute which trains coaches globally, in a recent LinkedIn post on AI. “They are also very creative and playful, almost irreverent, creating from anything that shows up in the session.”
12. Somatics
Humans have human bodies and that matters
“What does an AI do about the client’s energy? How can it read and respond to that?” asks Melanie DewBerry, an indigenous ceremonialist and former coach and lead trainer at the Co-Active Training Institute.
“So much of coaching is about watching someone’s body language, listening to the tone of their voice, looking for nonverbal clues to help you understand if this is a sensitive topic or they’re brushing off something that might be deeper,” says Meg Rosenbach, People Business Partner at Springboard Collaborative.
Siobhan McCann once noticed a client was “literally tight-lipped,” so she demonstrated how they were holding their lips which led to some reflection and ultimately an insight.
“The absolute best next step may result when my ‘powerful question’ is simply...silence. Or a raised eyebrow,” said Carl Dierschow, PCC, CCOC, CLC, CSFBC in Choice.
Could AI discern, communicate and/or demonstrate these body-based idiosyncrasies as effectively?
And without a body that can sense and feel, how can robots fully relate to human beings?
Sam Isaacson predicts that “humans will deal with the odd cases [in coaching], so they need a human to feel the nuance to be with it.”
Adds Anna Sumara: “Another layer is that we [humans] also have a nervous system, and we can co-regulate each other with that.”
13. Fallibility
When our imperfections are strengths
“AI cannot replicate the power of what happens when two perfectly imperfect human beings connect with the single purpose of the self-actualization of another,” notes Ann Farrell.
“Our fallibility can be the magic in coaching,” adds Siobhan McCann. “The nuances of working with someone through whatever challenges or ambitions they have requires someone fallible who can relate to what the client is going through. This is the birthplace of true empathy.”
14. Contextual understanding
Humans have an advantage in complex dynamics
“Coaches rely on intuition and contextual understanding to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics. AI algorithms, although sophisticated, may struggle with the nuances of human behavior and context, leading to potentially inaccurate or ineffective advice,” writes Olga Reinholdt, PCC, in the International Coaching Federation blog.
“Human coaches can understand the specific context and nuances of an organization, its culture, and its unique challenges,” concurs ChatGPT. “AI may struggle to provide context-specific advice and recommendations.”
“Coherence with personal meaning and accuracy with contextual relevance are two areas where human coaching provides a more functional outcome than AI coaching alone.”
15. Complex Problem Solving
We’re still better equipped
ChatGPT has some additional self-awareness in another area for growth: “AI is limited when it comes to addressing complex and multifaceted leadership challenges that require deep understanding and creative problem-solving.”
16. Connecting the Dots
We are more likely to notice a pattern in a client
Whether it’s pattern recognition or seeing the big picture, “AI can’t connect the dots like a human coach can, especially the less obvious dots,” one of my clients who works in AI remarked.
*****
What you would lose out on by swapping your coach for an AI will not only be felt by you in the coaching session but puts you at a clear competitive disadvantage in your career.
“Some of the biggest rising skills of the coming years of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are going to be creativity, collaboration, interpersonal dynamics, and teamwork.”
Hire a human coach who excels at these vital human skills to stretch you and level you up.
The thing is, even if a machine could give me the exact same coaching session my human coach gave me, word-for-word, I’d still prefer my human coach because of our relationship which delights and motivates me. It’s that connection (not transaction) that I desire most – and makes me most effective.
I doubt I’m alone.
Robots might not need compassion or connection, but we humans still do.
(The author with R2D2 at Lucasfilm in San Francisco)
In fact, the more AI and other tech seeps into and pervades our lives, the more need I can imagine there will be for exceptional human coaches, counselors and therapists – not less.
The coaches that will survive and thrive through this upheaval will be the deeply intuitive, compassionate, creative, resilient, grounded and wise ones who keep growing themselves. Their being and what they radiate will matter more than just their technical skills.
“Sublime, transcendent executive coaching, at the nexus of art, science and consciousness, will certainly be augmented by AI tools yet remain securely in the province of mortals, inspired by the unsurpassed human psyche.”
Perhaps the Covid pandemic left us the most telling clue of all of where the chips will fall: “People broke social distancing rules during lockdown because we didn’t want to be without other humans,” says Siobhan McCann. “I can’t imagine a world where a relationship with a human being isn’t preferable to a robot. We live for it. It’s an essential aspect of our survival impulse. When our human connections aren’t good, we pay for it in trauma.”
So, given all I’ve learned recently about AI and coaching, I’m still not worried about my career, but I’m certainly going to stay on my toes and continue to challenge myself to keep evolving into the best version of me I can be, serving my clients with relentless dedication.
In fact, AI might ultimately be a good thing for the coaching industry, inspiring us all to dig a little deeper and step up our game.
I would love to read your reflections on AI and executive coaching in the comments below.
