Carylynn Larson is an author and leadership coach who creates space for leaders, teams, and organizations to thrive.
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Are chatbots poised to take coaching out of the hands of leaders and professionals? As a psychologist, leadership coach and aspiring futurist, I’d say “not yet” and perhaps even “not for the foreseeable future.” However, that doesn’t mean that artificial intelligence (AI) can’t drastically augment coaching conversations.
Building on the sentiment that “AI won’t replace humans, but humans with AI will replace humans without AI,” I absolutely believe that AI can take coaching to the next level. Let’s get practical and explore ways that you can use a chatbot to improve your coaching conversations.
1. Chatbots can generate great questions.
We usually know the topics that will come up in our coaching conversations. With even a vague concept of what topics are on the table, you can reflect on questions you might ask. A chatbot can jump-start your thinking about which questions are truly the best fit for any particular person.
Try this: Ask your chatbot to...
• Generate a list of questions to help a person reflect on an important new assignment.
• Generate a list of open-ended questions to help a person reflect on why they might be receiving feedback that they [insert a specific piece of feedback].
• Generate a list of powerful questions to help a person reflect more deeply on their goal of [insert a specific goal].
Remember that great coaching isn’t about dumping a bunch of questions onto a person but rather carefully choosing questions that nudge the person beyond their current thinking, in the direction that they’re trying to go. What your chatbot can’t do is decide which questions are most powerful given the person you’re talking to and what they say they want from the conversation.
2. Chatbots can help you share insights instead of advice.
Coaching also involves offering your own insights and observations in a non-leading way. Removing advice from the way you share your insights helps the person you’re coaching think more, not less. For example, whereas most conversations are filled with statements like “If I were you, I would...,” taking a coaching approach challenges us to frame our input as nothing more than one possible perspective or data point.
Sharing insights instead of advice is one of the hardest skills to master, and your chatbot can accelerate your learning curve.
Try this: Ask your chatbot to...
• Reframe the following advice as concise insight: [insert advice you want to share].
• Help me understand why I think it’s a good idea to [insert a piece of advice you want to give].
Reframing advice as insights is a powerful way to communicate to the person you’re coaching that you realize that they are a unique individual and your way is not likely to be their way.
3. Chatbots can help you frame feedback in a nonjudgmental way.
People often ask for feedback on their ideas or approaches. And even when they don’t ask, feedback may need to be given. One key to giving feedback effectively is to frame it as nonjudgmental, and this is a task at which chatbots excel.
Try this: Ask your chatbot to...
• Reframe the following statement in a nonjudgmental way: [insert a statement].
• Reframe the following feedback in a nonjudgmental way: [insert feedback].
Once again, your chatbot isn’t likely to land on the perfect words, but it can certainly guide you to the most powerful way to frame your feedback, given what you know about the person and the situation at hand.
4. Chatbots can expand the feedback we provide.
Chatbots can provide a broad set of perspectives to augment your own feedback, which can then set the stage for more thoughtful and less biased coaching conversations.
For example, a client of mine recently asked for my feedback on the degree to which she was balancing “authority” with “deference” in an email she had crafted to an important stakeholder. While I had my perspective, we found that my chatbot expanded both of our perspectives.
Try this: Ask your chatbot to...
• Give me feedback on the degree to which the following email shows [insert a desired characteristic].
• Give me feedback on the ways in which the following communication could be more inspirational: [paste the text of the communication].
• Suggest ways that I can make the following guidance more clear and concise: [paste the guidance].
Here’s the practicality of AI-augmented coaching.
Once you discover the value that a chatbot can offer, the question becomes how you might—practically speaking—integrate a chatbot into your coaching endeavors.
The key to success is to let nothing—certainly not AI—come in between your connection with the people you’re coaching. Nothing replaces human connection. This means that using a chatbot in the middle of conversations, or even having a chatbot open in the background of your conversations, is likely to be more of a distraction than it’s worth. Furthermore, using a chatbot as a crutch when you stumble or find yourself at a loss for words may only degrade your confidence and, worse, your presence.
Instead of scheming around how you might use a chatbot in the background of coaching conversations, consider how you might leverage AI to grow and refine your coaching skills. For example:
• Use AI to prepare for conversations and prompt those you coach to use AI to help them prepare. A chatbot can empower both of you to come to coaching conversations prepared with stronger insights and/or better questions to explore together.
• Use AI to reflect on conversations you’ve had—for example, to reflect on how you might have translated advice into insights and/or what additional questions you might have asked. This can in turn help you prepare for future conversations.
This is just the beginning of the AI revolution. Becoming a “human with AI” is essential, perhaps inevitable.
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