World class sports persons. Musical geniuses. Charismatic business leaders. Would you happen to know of a commonality between all of them?

(Drum roll) They all have coaches! Coaches who continually have nudged them into taking real action in the direction of their goals by stretching, nurturing and making them accountable for their actions. This keeps them engaged and focused on achieving their goals.

The coaching industry has been brimming with humans as coaches for quite sometime now. However, artificial intelligence has been taking walks around this industry as well. While, some may argue that its nice to have someone who can actually sit down, listen to you and nudge you in a different direction through effective questioning, others may also argue that along with the listening comes judgment, along with sitting down comes physical meetings and along with nudging comes biases.

In the new age of lightning fast solutions and hybrid working spaces, who would it be for you – a human coach who can listen with appropriate expressions, provide verbal nods however could only meet you during a certain time of the day and have limited meeting space OR would it be an AI coach who is available at any time, anywhere, listens to you objectively however is not physically sitting in front of you in human form? Lets look at some thoughts that may provide you with insights on the same.

Effectiveness of AI vs Human coaching

Since its inception in the 1950s, there have been varied periods of growth and decline for artificial intelligence due to doubts on its actual vs claimed efficacy. Lately, however, there have been massive strides in the developments of AI in almost all industries; coaching has been one of the latest entrants.

AI coaching is helping the coaching industry reach the masses just by being economically available at any time and any place. Till sometime back, the lack of empathy and non-human like response was still keeping human coaches as front runners. However, with use of advancements in AI like sentiment analysis being used to identify the emotional tone behind the body of the text, this gap will soon be extinct.

In fact, a recent study conducted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information(NCBI), confirmed that the AI coach was just as effective as the human coach.

Costs of Coaching

It’s a well known fact that for a long period of time, humankind has only benefitted from coaching. In fact, the benefits of coaching are well researched however everyone does not have access to a coach due to the exorbitant costs by coaches. And why not? There is a shortage of skilled coaches which again disrupts the demand and supply ratio. Currently, coaching and its rewards are left to only the privileged few. As per an Oxford review, it is projected that AI coaches are destined to become advanced enough to replace human coaches mainly due to the cost advantage that it has to offer.

A Gradual shift or a gentle Tsunami

Companies are slowly realizing the potential and the economies of scale that AI coaching has to offer and are beginning to invest in them for the benefit of their employees. Whilst the intent is clear, organizations are taking their time to research the offerings of different AI coaching providers like Sherlock SuperCoach, Better Up and the rest. The many features of the apps like usability, ability to record and analyze virtual meetings, tracking user progress and providing real time update on the internal climate to the organization are being thoroughly scrutinized amongst the many.

What would be your primary objective when you are scouting for an AI coaching app for your organization? Would it be something as simple as user friendliness of the app or a more deeper objective of the greater good of the employees at large?

Do you think an AI coach is convincing enough to get an individual to take intentional action? Also, like a lot of our other clients, do you contemplate it as reasonable to deploy an AI coach for young careers (Gen Z and young millennials) in your organization – a generation that is most connected with their virtual selves and at the same time, a generation that are most vulnerable to social anxieties? We’d love to hear your thoughts.