Artificial Intelligence and Coaching: The Rise of the Digital Coach

“Artificial Intelligence won’t replace managers but managers who use AI will replace managers that don’t.” Erik Brynjofsson and Andrew McAfee, AI pioneers.

Substitute coaches for managers in the above quote. It’s equally true. The marriage of coaching and artificial intelligence has been on the horizon for a while but is only now coming into full view. Coaching is growing in importance to business people, athletes, Millennials, Gen Z’ers, health seekers and those on a career journey. Over the next decade, artificial intelligence tools will augment the strengths of executive, life, health, and sports coaches around the globe.

Every industry has pioneers, early adopters, and laggards. Pioneers see the future. While early adopters can’t necessarily see the future, they know it’s coming, it portends change, and so they adopt new thinking to stay alive. Finally, there are the laggards. They’re not sure the business will ever change and are slow to accept significant change opportunities because they have always been successful just as they are. Unfortunately, because of the blistering pace of technological change, the gap will only expand in the next five years. Consequently, laggards will find it increasingly difficult to keep pace.

Artificial intelligence presents a world of promise. It presents a new environment teeming with ideas, hopes, and dreams. Nevertheless, what makes the current environment so very different than in the past is the amount of investment currently being poured into the technology. Trillions worldwide in large corporations and new start-ups, research, training, academics, and innovation. We can now leverage new computer storage capabilities, processing speeds, stronger algorithms, and pools of AI talent to design new solutions inspiring us to find new and practical ways to use these tools to help when coaching your own clients.

By investing in the increasing alignment of AI and coaching you are demonstrating your pioneer tendencies. You are proactively providing your coaching business with a leg up on the competition. I’m not suggesting you become a coder or programmer. In fact, the opposite. AI tools, straight off the shelf are becoming available to enhance your coaching expertise. If you’re a coach (or are aspiring to be one), and you are looking to differentiate your offering to the marketplace, your existing clients, and your potential clients, then pursue digital coaching. By augmenting the human interaction of coaching with tools that make the interaction easier, more fulsome, and more exciting, artificial intelligence becomes the coaching partner of the future.

Look for Brians’ second of 10 posts in the series here next month.

ROCKY.AI is featured in Brian Lenahan’s new book “Digital Coaching: Coaching in the Era of Artificial Intelligence”.

Brian Lenahan is the author of Amazon published books “Artificial Intelligence: Foundations for Business Leaders and Consultants” and “Digital Coach: Coaching in the Era of Artificial Intelligence”. He is the Author-in-Residence of the Toronto-based AIGeeks meetup community, a graduate of MIT’s AI Strategy program, and a former executive of top global bank.

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