AI Coaching Tools and Insights

Guess what? I used AI to create this image

For me, coaching has been about helping people grow, building awareness of new paths for my clients, and helping them take meaningful steps toward achieving their goals. I’m not sure that will ever change for me, but the how of coaching is changing all around me and us. And it’s changing fast. AI is now finding its way into every corner of our profession, from recording the sessions to making it easier to keep clients on track. We can’t stick our heads in the sand on this one. Someone recently wrote about how acting like AI is not infiltrating every facet of work is like trying to insist on everyone using flip phones. You can't escape the presence of AI and you don't want to.

Because I was curious about the opportunities and the worries around AI, I started doing some research. Why not, in the spirit of growth, share what I have learned. Here is what I have found out:

Tools Worth Sharing

A few tools stood out to me in the last two years since I’ve been really paying attention to AI in Coaching. (By the way, I didn't receive any kickbacks or anything from any of these organizations and never have)

• CoachBetter.ai – To be perfectly honest, I thought this functionality belonged to Cloverleaf (I saw them at Converge 2022 and I do recommend checking them out even though I’m not a user), but apparently I was wrong. I haven’t seen this tool in action but this concept was very interesting to me. This tool will “analyze coaching transcripts and identify markers that align with ICF competencies at different certification levels. By examining coaching conversations, the platform evaluates various coaching competencies and provides detailed feedback.” Kind of like a mentor AI tool, but not in real-time. Another tool like this is called RaeNotes. This is great for helping coaches stay on-track and become better at their craft.

• Otter.ai, Fathom, and Canva Magic Studio are productivity boosters that already help coaches save hours of the paperwork processes many of us can’t stand, although I do kind of enjoy writing my notes out after the calls, because it’s a great reminder of what was important and even what was potentially missed. Whether it’s summarizing sessions, drafting follow-up notes, or creating a professional workbook in minutes, these platforms free us to focus on the human side of coaching.

• Simply.Coach and many other coaching management platforms out there use nudges and in-between session support. This helps free up your time as a coach to keep clients on track to do the hard work between sessions and hit their goals, practice mindfulness, and build habits.

• ChatGPT, Co-Pilot, or other LLMs. If you don't know these Large Language Models (LLMs), you really have to start paying attention to them. These tools can help you craft emails, gather links to resources, and draft outlines for handouts (I don't love how they actually write the handouts but I do find them useful for helping me get started on resource-making). This can save you hundreds of hours to just get started on resource creation and idea generation. Other tools, like Jasper (which use LLMs within the platform), can actually craft the content a little better than the freebie LLMs can do.

  
  

But it’s not all roses and butterflies. There are still some issues with using AI that haven’t really been worked out. There are no official regulations around the use of AI, so how much personal information is too much for an AI tool to know, how long is it stored, and what is being done with the data? I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly trusting big tech companies to delete my information after I ask them to. I know a lot of clients aren’t really ready to be recorded let alone having that recording saved on a platform in the Cloud and accessible enough that an AI algorithm is accessing it for data analytics.

Privacy is a huge concern and I’m not sure we have the answers yet on if all these companies are truly being thoughtful in how they handle client data.

AI is already a part of our lives. It's going to have to become a part of your coaching at some point in the next couple years. The real choice is how we integrate it responsibly, ethically and with the ICF guidelines in mind. If your clients are amicable to it, you can try to:

• Extend the learning by giving clients automated and ongoing support between sessions.

• Save yourself time and become more efficient by offloading the note-taking and task tracking tasks for yourself, and

• Expand your insights into your coaching effectiveness by mining the data provided from some of these coaching tools.

  
  

Listen, we know AI tools are not good at actual coaching. I’ve tried some of them, they are advice giving machines. Some of them are good at asking you questions but don't wait for a response, they just stack questions like my kids with their Lego blocks. And in the end, no matter what it spits out for you, AI tools do not have  empathy, intuition, or a nuanced understanding of language and somatic understanding to really be a good coach—that all comes from a real, viable human. At least it does right now. But there are lots of opportunities to use these AI tools to make your practice better and get aquanted with what the future is holding.

Your job as a coach is to help create the space for growth. If AI can help hold that space a little wider or hold it open a little longer, why not explore it?