How technology will enhance the human connection in coaching
Eliza, the world’s first chatbot therapist, was developed in the ‘swinging 60s’ by computer scientists who wanted to prove that conversation between humans and machines would remain merely superficial. To their astonishment, they discovered they were wrong.
Instead of treating the software as inanimate, users started attributing human feelings to Eliza – even though the chatbot’s responses were little more than basic pattern matching, rephrasing and repeating back what had been input, with regular prompts such as “tell me more” and “I see”.
The creator, Joseph Weizenbaum, found that even his secretary asked him to leave the room so she and Eliza could have a private chat.
What Eliza demonstrated was that humans were more open to confiding in robots than expected. Fifty years on, chatbots that simulate human conversation are commonplace in business. You can now install apps on your phone that offer chatbot therapy, and the technology is sure to revolutionise coaching services.
The artificial intelligence and machine learning in bots will assist human coaches, making interactions with clients more targeted and effective.
Will machines replace the executive coach? Not for the foreseeable future. At some stage, technology is expected to produce ‘super intelligence’ – a point known as ‘singularity’ triggering runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilisation. At that point, who knows what will happen?
Making coaching affordable and ubiquitous
In the meantime, human-to-human coaching will be supplemented and enhanced by technology, fine-tuning the matching of people with their coaches, getting the skills and chemistry right. Technology will also scale coaching services to all levels of organisations and to companies that previously could not afford it.
Over the next five years, this blended approach may see chatbots answering questions between scheduled human-to-human sessions. Coaches can follow-up and supervise, but coaching providers will effectively offer an on-demand hands-on coaching service.
By introducing technology into a very people-centric process, it can be used as a tool to enhance the human connection.
Bots will coach the coaches, analysing sessions and pointing out where improvements can be made – such as missed opportunities to ask better questions. They will also give access to resources which are specific to the issues being discussed in the session.
Employers will get greater oversight of their coaching programs, thanks to an improved collection and analysis of data. At present, organisations with coaching budgets worth millions of dollars are still managing them by spreadsheet. They may collect basic data, but it is difficult to collect and keep track of and cannot be used strategically.
The right kind of technology can standardise the process of coaching, while tracking the progress of individuals.
A universe of data
Without extensive collection and analysis of data, it is often difficult to know what works in coaching. However, by recently surveying and analysing the data on our CoachLogix platform, a client realised that executives who were at risk of leaving the organisation were 80 per cent less likely to quit when they had received coaching. It is a powerful use of technology and the client saw that the return on their investment in coaching was tremendous.
Data can be collected from hundreds of thousands of coaching relationships across time such as the profiles of the coach and coachee, how long they have worked together, what assessments they used, how they were measured and their progress, what the feedback was from their manager, peers and their direct reports.
Once you are in a universe of data that has this kind of information, you can learn a lot more about how coaches could and should be used. Eventually, you could have a bot with access to billions of data points.
Many companies already collect and analyse data about many things, but using Big Data for coaching is a new development. But as these type of technologies become more accessible, and the computing power continues to increase, I think possibilities for coaching are endless.
About the Author:
Alex Pascal, PhD, is Founder & CEO at CoachLogix, a secure, cloud-based coaching management platform designed to monitor the progress and impact of coaching engagements.
