Hey, and welcome to another edition of my Lunch Table podcast gonna stray off a subject of sustainability and conscious development right now into an area which is also really close to my heart, and that's of coaching. So today I want to dive into maybe one of the most, and hyped and dare I said, misunderstood items that's floating around the world of development and learning. And that's AI coaching, artificial intelligence coaching. Now it sounds like that's a bit in the future but. Is it really coaching? So if we think about how our clients work, and I'm a, professional certified coach with the ICF. I've done lots and lots of training and CPD work over the years to bring me to my level of understanding about what coaching is about. But if we think about what AI coaching promises to do, it's about democratizing coaching and making some of the coaching models more available to lots and lots of people. However, there is a snag. Whilst nearly 70% of organizations are already playing with this, they're testing it and they're fully integrating performance tools, which are powered by ai. Getting something which is a bit more of a silent partner and to go with you on a learning journey is a bit more tricky because ultimately the power of coaching is down to how you as a coach, work one-to-one with you as a learner. And that one-to-one relationship is linked into something called somatics, which is body language. What is happening with the body when you are having a conversation, it's linked into nuances, which is the way people are saying something, and it can be a slight inflection at the end of a sentence. Which may give you some clue if you are listening to what people are saying as to how confident they are or how nonchalant they are about saying something. So it's those particular things which I think is gonna be making the AI coaching model may a bit further out than what people are thinking. If I'm working with some leaders and we're looking at the strategy development for their organization, we do that frequently. Then sitting down with a sheet of paper or a set of post-it notes to look at the flow about what's gonna happen can be absolutely empowering because you've got hands on the process, hands on the design, hands on the delivery commitment, which takes you to the next stage. And I'd question whether the AI coaching model yet will help. Rebecca Ruman made a really nice distinction. She suggested that there's two things for us to think about. One is AI coaching, which is where there can be a, an AI generated bot actually coaching somebody. And then there's AI in coaching, which is where you are using artificial intelligence models to help your coaching process. So things like appointment bookings. I use a couple of those at the moment in various different aspects of what I do. Or maybe it's a case you want to capture a note about something you've been thinking about. And I use an app called Letterly for that. I talk into my phone, I then press a button and it gives me a succinct summary in bullet points if I want it about what I've just said. So that's a definition of AI in coaching. Similarly, it could be about you run a, an accounting system. I use Xero as an example, and. It automatically sends out invoices, or you have systems which link into Xero, your accounting system, to ensure that invoices when they're raised on a website are raised through seamlessly. So there's the automation aspect there to think about, which is really quite interesting. So what we need to think about is what is it that makes coach, is it human or do you think it could actually be superseded by a machine? I. But let's take a step back and let's start right at the root. Let's start right at the start. What is coaching really, and if we think about AI coaching, which is what this quick podcast is about, what's actually being replaced, if anything, if I've worked with lots of coaches and I dunno whether you've worked with a trained coach at all, but you get so much more than just a conversation with them. And it's far more than just asking good questions, which is what an AI does. It's about active listening. It's about presence. It's building a safe space where growth happens, not just on paper, not just on the chatbot, but also in our parasympathetic nervous system to help us feel good. So human coaching really does involve the empathy system. It's about real time adaptation. It's about emotional intuition and it's relational right at its core. So in contrast, if we thought, think about the term AI coaching, most of the time it's probably not coaching at all. It's led by prompts. Maybe thinking about a digital journey journaling experience. It may give you some nudge based on track behavior in an algorithmic type of way, and maybe it could even simulate com conversation powered by some of the large language models or LLMs, which are out there at the moment. So are these useful actually, yeah. They are really useful. Absolutely. Are they coaching? No, not really. So here's the thing, yeah. AI doesn't really know you and it's knowing you, which is the key thing here. It understands patterns. It's not really listening to your silence, it's reacting to your syntax, the way you say things. I remember a demonstration of an AI speaking platform the other day, and one of the things that was being demonstrated is the audio version, the talk version. The AI got very impatient and started a conversation before the coachee had time to think about everything they wanted to say, and so they tried to program it by using the word over at the end of every sentence when they'd finished, and they wanted some form of involvement from the ai. The AI really didn't get that. And the conversation was just not really working at all. But listen, this isn't an attack on ai, but it's about clarity. Yeah. So ai, it can deliver some real good in what we do. It can add some clarity to what we'd want to achieve. It can help prepare us. For a coaching session by helping us to get our communication, helping us to get our thoughts in process in a way that may be alone, may not be able to do maybe what we can think about it, about AI coaching is that it's definitely not coaching, but it can assist you in getting ready for it. So if we start thinking about now what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunity, threats, and looking at humans versus sort of the algorithm stuff. Listen, we don't really want to. Go down a classic strategic lens, but it's quite useful. So if we think about us as human coaches, what are our strengths? Our strengths are things like empathy, deep listening. We build trust and we build a safe environment. We can sense shifts in body language, in tone, in excitement, in energy, that no machine can really process meaningfully at the moment. And we draw from lived experiences because we're all unique in our experience. We rely on that for nuance and not just, not logic. So what's the co what's the weaknesses? So us as a resource, we're actually cost costly. And are we scalable? We may be for our own business, but for big organization, probably not.'Cause human time doesn't really clone very well unless we have a clone of ourselves. We can bring our own biases and our own logic. Unless we train ourselves not to do that through maybe regular supervision and conversation and interventions with other coaches and coaching supervisors. And there's a big issue with consistency across coaches. Some coaches specialize in one area and other coaches specialize in different areas and have different interests. So that could be a big challenge. Where can I see the opportunities coming is where we embrace the AI capability, the AI possibility, and maybe start thinking about how we can use a hybrid model so we can build a blend of human tech systems, which could be really good. Maybe some of these things can be. Lifelong transformation type projects based on real human relationships with an AI just basically prodding you and acting maybe as a JO journaling tool as we're going through, but we also need to realize that the AI disruption is here and it's creeping around the edges of what we do. For me, that is really quite exciting as a professional certified coach because. It forces me to think about what is it that I do, which is so human? What is it that I do, which is not copyable by an ai? And it comes down to this somatic stuff, this connection, this ability to hold a space for your client, which potentially brings us to a different space. We also need to start thinking about the change in the marketplace, the change in marketplace. There are a lot of coaches out there, or people who like to call themselves coaches. Forgive me, I'm not going to cast any dispersions on anybody who's calling themselves a coach.'cause we all have different definitions of what it is until we get a firm understanding of what a good definition of a coach is, which certainly the bodies are trying to do. Quite regularly then it's gonna be very difficult to look at how we should be working aside from maybe the code of ethics that the organizations have. So let's just flip this now across to think about AI systems. So what sort of strengths have they got? If we look at it they're really hyper scalable. They're on 24 7, so we don't need any diaries. We don't need to say, okay, listen, I can see you tomorrow between nine and 10. As soon as the support is needed, then people are allowed to get into that system. They don't form judgment. They don't hold assumptions about you. They don't look at what is going on outside in the world for you. So they're a very neutral, and what I say, clean type of system. However, they are also built on systems which do have bias of which they're trying to eliminate of course, but it can also spot patterns of behavior or language across timelines that humans simply can't do. And we can't compute. So if you're having a sequence of coaching sessions with a client, there can be some nuances that maybe a coach will miss, but certainly an AI could pick up threads if that is then fed into it. Weaknesses they don't really have much empathy. They don't generally damage you, but they don't have the AI tools that I've seen. Don't have much empathy with you. They haven't experienced the life experience that you are going through. Every, every bit of response is basically looking at word patterns and potentially what they've seen elsewhere. So they haven't got that sort of feeling of that sort of understanding. They're also quite blind when it comes to context. So apart from the pure academic justification or may maybe a justification of an environment based on hallucination, which we know they do, and they sometimes give that illusion that they can be very companionable. You can have a conversation with your best friend, your best AI coach, which I really don't like the phrase of, but that friendship that you have is totally plastic. It doesn't exist. So where can the opportunities go? Certainly, I can see some benefits of AI coaching. Being able to offer some simple level, maybe even goal setting type theory stuff into a large number of people very quickly, leveraging towards a certain direction for an organization, using some form of clever bot type system. I can see some, something like that happening fairly soon if it's not being done already. I'm seeing that if we think about. Some of the tools that we already use, some of the psychometrics that we use already, a lot of us coaches use them to form the basis of a conversation with clients. However, some of these tools are also very expensive and having some form of AI capability to do some quick provocation work. Well, let's have a look at your personality type idea can create a conversation point. Now for a purist, that's quite tough because I'm not really interested in acade academic based material here. What I'm talking about is the opportunity to have a provocation or a discussion based on how potentially they've completed a certain questionnaire. So I can see this area becoming quite thorny over the next few years. As we develop further, we also have. Some challenges for trust and privacy, and these have been well documented through other channels. But we do need to be thinking about where is the information going that potentially we are recording or we are sharing on these AI systems. And that can be a. Big dynamic, especially if we're thinking about organizations which could be sharing confidential information about end of year accounts or maybe some strategic plans for the following year, which they've worked through with the coach. So we need to be really careful about how we use those and recognize that and build that into our privacy policies. There's no regulation in this space at the moment. Sure. There's some European directives that we can look at, and there's some of the basic GDPR type stuff we've got in the uk, but ultimately there's no regulation which really controls what the term AI coach actually is. I could build one tomorrow, for example, and when I build one tomorrow, I could. Then just put it out there, put an AI badge on it and say, okay, we've got an AI coach now. Is that ethical to do? Hmm, maybe not. So listen we, there's a lot of things going on in this space at the moment. An awful lot of space. But it's not all doom and gloom, but it's, it is a call for us to understand what is important for us. So when we start thinking about what a, an AI coach can be, we need to recognize that the way that we use that term really does matter. The words matter. So what I implore you to do is think about it. When we call thing by something by the wrong name, we confuse expectations and we actually de credit both of them. And it's never. Easy to then move it. So calling the system, AI coaches suggests equivalents to train professionals who invest years in mastering the art of behavior change through trust, security, presence, and partnership. It's like calling a recipe app a chef. Helpful. Sure. Guiding definitely. But coaching, no. So what could we call these tools instead? Maybe something like an AI led development assistant or a behavioral insights engineer or digital accountability partner, and I must admit, digital accountability partner is something which I'm wrestling with at the moment because I think that could be a way forward. But we need to think about what is the accurate label that we're going to be talking about. Let's think about something which talks about what it's going to deliver for us and keep it in the. The language which we intend keep it less inflated.'cause when we label things properly, we also design them properly. Yeah. And that's where the future lies. It's not in AI replacing human coaches, but in AI powering a smarter hybrid journey. Imagine this, you gauge with a digital system that offers trends, prompts, and nudges. And once every few weeks you reflect with a coach. Hmm. That's interesting. That combo. It's not a replacement. It's a multiplier, isn't it? So that is actually really quite important, isn't it? How do we get the AI stuff to work with us? How can we multiply it? So let's bring this home. Now, human coaching is not going away because presence, empathy, and emotional depth. That's human business and AI systems they're not villains either. They're incredible tools. They're scalable, they're data rich. They're unbiased in the ways humans can't be, but they are not coaches. So let's stop calling AI what it's not, and celebrate it for what it is. Not an end, not a fix, but a phenomenal support system when aligned with real human care. So if this has provoked you in a way which you didn't think that you're going to be provoked, it'd be great to hear from you and carry on with that sort of conversation. So keep an eye out on LinkedIn. Over the next few weeks, I'm gonna be setting up a couple of I. Just drop in sessions really to explore. Okay, so what? What is the AI coach stuff and how does it work with us? How does it improve what we're doing? Let's see where it goes. So my name is Simon Hague, signing off from my lunch table today. Take care. Have a great week.