Balancing AI and Human Connection in Coaching: Unlocking the Future of Leadership Development

Can AI truly revolutionize the world of coaching, or are we risking the loss of essential human connection? Discover how artificial intelligence is reshaping self-coaching and leader-driven coaching strategies, and learn why it's critical to strike a delicate balance. We'll guide you through an exploration of various AI tools, including the groundbreaking chat GPT, and delve into the importance of personalized AI solutions. Through the lens of real-world studies and personal insights, we unravel why human-based coaching remains indispensable, especially for cultivating self-awareness and employee engagement.

Unlock the secrets to leveraging AI effectively within a broader coaching strategy. We dig deep into the potential pitfalls of over-reliance on AI, sharing compelling examples and cautionary tales. From the fundamentals of workplace coaching to the magic of human touch, you'll gain actionable insights on integrating AI as a valuable supplementary tool. Stay with us as we highlight the importance of leaders investing genuine time in their team’s growth, ensuring AI serves as an enhancer rather than a replacement in your coaching arsenal.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

So where will AI fit into the coaching world? You know AI is really going to take on a lot of different elements, from people going into an AI tool and self-coaching to leaders prescribing an AI tool for self-coaching. Ai can also be utilized to leverage content and you're going to hear the term chat GPT, but now you can actually build your own GPTs. There's a lot of different tools to create this everybody. Now let's go back to the fundamentals of coaching people in the workplace. Let's take the traditional relationship between a leader and an employee, which is where we play in terms of our company progress coaching. So when you are coaching somebody and you might coach them on, let's say, being a better teammate, you might use an AI tool as a supplemental coaching strategy. Here's one of the most fundamental things that I think about with AI. Now keep one thing in mind We've built out three or four of our own AI tools. We are not against AI, yet I'm going to make a strong comment. One of the things that we have to be very careful of with artificial intelligence for workplace coaching is not using it as a tool to replace human-based coaching. Here's why, if 85% of people lack self-awareness and that is according to a study by Tasha Yurk in her book New York Times bestseller called Insight. If 71% of people, according to the Gallup organization, are neutral or actively disengaged, then we can't assume somebody's going to say you know what, boss, give me an AI tool, my attitude is terrible. It's probably not going to happen. Also, gallup reports that people engage eight times more when we lead with somebody's strengths. An AI tool is not going to know that, certainly not right out of the gate, so it might start asking questions right away. So if an AI tool asks a question such as do you feel like you're a good teammate and I'm using a rough example here what is somebody going to say? No, I'm terrible. They're going to say yes, of course, because they lack self-awareness. They're probably going to be neutral or actively disengaged.

Speaker 1: 3:03

So the challenge that we have and this is, I think, a major lesson for organizations and its leaders make sure you're using AI as part of your strategy. Make sure it's a prescriptive tool, not the entire tool, because something's going to happen magically at the end of the year. You're going to do the end of the year review If you are a leader and you are not coaching and you're using the data from an AI tool and if you were to say to somebody, well, I have you average across the board, or you're only going to get a 2% raise, or whatever it might be, that employee will immediately go to the stratosphere of you haven't spent time with me, how would you know? Then they're going to start to weaponize it's a terrible term, but I'll use it weaponize AI against leadership. You're not spending time with me. I'm doing all this work. We've got to be careful and make sure that AI is part of a strategy and not the entire solution in the workplace.