AI and Coaching | The Academies

Well, greetings. It is Susan Richardson with the Academies with a couple of beloved and cherished colleagues with me today, and we are celebrating our final day of Facebook Live sessions in honor of International Coaching Federation's International Coaching Week. And our topic today is two simple letters, AI, and those two simple letters are packed with, as you might imagine, a great deal of complexity and uncertainty and excitement and who knows what. And so we plan to have a conversation today around AI in coaching. And the folks who have been able to join us are Stacey Duhon and Lee Gossier. And I would love for both of you to introduce yourselves briefly. And Lee, you can probably better pronounce your last name than I do. So let's start with you.

To share with who you are and how you're here. You know, your pronunciation is getting better every time you come back. Yes, yes, it's Lee Gauthier here. Thank you so much, calling in from north of Toronto in Canada. Currently, I'm leading several lives. I'll mention a couple here. One in my director role at impro.ai, where we are using coaching and AI combined. I lead the micro coaching practice as well as our consulting function. I also, in a consulting practice, focus on executives and leaders, helping them up their game in their current workplace or supporting them to find a new one where they can flourish. And then, of course, I am on the instructor team at the academies.

Thank you. And Stacey?

Well, obviously, I'm Stacey Duhon. And I also have several lives, as Lee puts it. I am a senior director— associate senior director of career management at the Foster School of Business here in Seattle, where I get to coach emerging leaders on their journey through their MBA program. I also have a small coaching practice, and I get the honor and privilege of working here with Susan and Lee as an instructor, a facilitator for this, the Academy as a Coach training program.

Excellent. And we'll admit that we were on for a few minutes prior to going live, and we couldn't but not that this topic is so related to coaching in that anytime you move into a coaching mindset, you're looking at changing, you're looking at moving towards something that you, you know, is out there, but you don't have all of the details filled in, the granularity of what it exactly is going to look like. And because of that, there's often this some level of uncertainty, there's a level of excitement, and there's a level of unknown. And so we're going to be talking about some unknowns We're going to be talking about some excitement. We're going to be talking about how to navigate through some of that as well. So it should be an interesting conversation here. All right, so let's start off. Well, how is AI being used in the coaching space? Who would like to kick us off with that?

I can start with a, a couple of applications that I'm seeing. And so it's really varied what's going on out there. And, and again, as you mentioned, Susan, it's, it's, it's going to evolve and it evolves every day. So we have applications where we see actual coaching being done by a chatbot, for better or for worse. We see coaching that is augmented by AI, which is exactly where I am right now in Pro.ai. And then we also see AI as a support mechanism to coaches with respect to how they're building their businesses. I mean, heretofore we've heard that, you know, may or may not be true, but many say that coaches are excellent at coaching but maybe are lacking the business development, sales, or marketing skills. And therefore AI can come in and support them to grow their business. And or for those coaches who have a platform where they have content of some sorts, courses or otherwise, AI can also support the coach in that manner. So that's what I'm seeing. Stacey, what are you seeing?

Very similar to what you've just said. I might say just a slightly different way. Like, obviously there are companies out there that are using AI as a platform, like the company that you're working for, right? But if you're just a standalone coach, you have your own private practice, I'm seeing coaches use it with really good impact. On all their marketing material, whether it be helping them generate text and verbiage for their websites, for if they're in podcasts and they want to do a summary of what their podcast is, an AI platform can help you summarize something in 30 seconds that might have taken you, you know, 30 minutes to an hour to do. They're using it for helping them market their webinar. You put in, here's the information that I'm going to be sharing in my webinar. How would you summarize this? How would you market it? So on a very tactical level, Coaches can really have AI platforms help them with all their business marketing material, which is what you were saying, Lee. And I haven't seen it quite this way yet, but I know it's where it's going, is they are going to be using it to support, to augment your own coaching where, you know, they have already— organizations are using it for customer service where you have a little chatbot like on the side so that when you're working with a customer, if you don't really know where to take them, that bot is listening in on you and suggesting questions and suggesting information. So I know that that is where, if it's not already there in some places, it is where it's going, is you'll be able to use it to support your coaching if you get stuck, right?

Mm-hmm. So that— I'm sorry.

No, go ahead, Susan.

Yeah, so that sort of fascinates me because the suggestion of questions, it's absolutely going to be determined by The question that you might suggest is really going to be determined by what your depth of training is. It can also need to be related to where that client is, and that's going to be a big spectrum. It's always like take them to the next step. You want to meet them where they are, not where you think they should be. But I was reminded very quickly when you were mentioning the chatbot and the support, both Lee and Stacy, you mentioned this. When we do our group mentor coaching training in the academies, and if we have an external live client that people are practicing with, new coaches are practicing with, on occasion I will say, I may prompt you with one question privately in the chat in case it looks like, you know, you might want a little bit of a support. And so just sending that one question can sometimes get people back on track And my personal bias would be that that question be something related to the who of the coaching, so that you're really getting at what is that person's strengths and values, or the client's strengths and values. So just making connections there.

What comes to mind for me, Susan, when you say that is one of the things that it is very good at doing already is you can, and I think we've both all watched some videos around, you can say, hey, I want you to act like you're Socrates, and I want you to, you know, here's my situation, and please please give me a question that you might ask based on this. So I believe that at some point in time, like, let's just say, you know, you run, you oversee the academies, we have a certain brand in a certain way, plus everything we do is based on the ICF Core Competencies. With you being able to put your brand in by having— they can— all the transcripts of all your coaching can be in there along with the ICF Core Competencies, and you will be able to ask it to coach like you and ask questions in the way and in the form you would ask them so that it can support you in giving questions that are more like what, how you would actually do it. So that's where it's going to be going one day.

Yeah. To be on brand and to pull in the neuroscience-informed coaching that we train. Yeah, I love that. I have a funny comment. So I'm getting the comments from the Facebook Live. James Beeman, one of our faculty members, is listening in, and his comment was, I love that, Stacy. And did you use AI to prepare for today's session? So I'm not sure.

I did. I did.

I love it. Yeah, I did too. I mean, it's an assistant, right? And that's what I think is helpful to get our heads around because there's like, there's a lot of groups out there. There's those who are like, you know, this is the end of the world. There are those who say this is the best thing ever and everyone in between. And the truth of the matter is nobody knows. We don't know. And so insofar as we can harness the technology as coaches and professionals to, you know, focus on the deep work versus the shallow work, I think we're ahead, right? And so that's how I try to think of specifically what I'm talking about is GPT. What I try to use GPT for is for things that will save me time so that I can do the human or the coach things better. And for me, that's helping me reconcile this great divide between, you know, for better for humanity or worse, because we really don't know. It is here. And so let's shape it into something that we as coaches and we as humans can use. I mean, that's my bias today, Susan. But if we watch this 10 years from now and I'm like wrong, okay, that's fine with me too. I love the fact that this is a new space. And as you said at the top of the call, we can be curious and we can admit that we don't know what we don't know.

Well, and if we're being transparent, you know, I am not an early adopter of any technology. So obviously this has been going on for a while. For years there's been artificial intelligence. And the generative piece of artificial intelligence is really what's taking shape right now. And the only reason I'm even jumping in as soon as I am is because it is going to be required for all the work that I do, in particular at the University of Washington, the Foster School of Business. Our students are already using it. And as a career management or as a career coach, I have to keep up with it. So I'm going into it. But as I've been reading all these articles and seeing all the different ways, not just in the coaching area, but in all the ways, I am excited and exhilarated and like, this is going to be great. We get to live in a time right now that something as disruptive as the internet is being invented, right? And used, but it's going to be bigger and faster. But I'm also just as much terrified and horrified and worried of what the danger could be. So when I'm researching and looking and learning, it's with a lot of different emotions at one time. And thankfully I'm a coach because I can hold all those emotions at one time while I learn. Learn and embrace, which is what we do as coaches, right? We have a growth mindset. It's one of our core competencies. It's one of the core competencies of the ICF. It's what we train our folks on. And so we're getting the opportunity to model it right here, right now, while we're moving through ourselves through this.

And interesting that you, you would mention that, Stacy, the way you phrased that, that there might be some concerns. And we actually have a comment from Anna Elizabeth via Facebook. What do you think are the pitfalls of AI when it comes to using it for your coaching business?

I can take a stab. Well, first off, coaching is around confidentiality. I mean, one of the things that we kind of take an oath for when we become coaches is the confidentiality of our clients and maintaining that and honoring that so that we don't communicate when we're at a networking event who our clients are. We don't share on LinkedIn who our clients are unless we have written I've gotten permission to do so, right? One of the things that's going to be so very important, and it's integrity too, also working with integrity. So those two pieces kind of go together for me. When you're working as a coach with AI, if you happen to want to use it, let's just say you're not a part of some business, but you have your own platform and you want to use AI to augment your coaching. You might be putting your transcripts of your recorded calls into ChatGPT, say, for instance, that information is no longer mine with the ChatGPT. ChatGPT, and I use that just kind of universally. There's all other kinds. Google has its own version and Microsoft has its own version, but that's just the word I use. It's now theirs. That information that I have put in is now out there for their learning. So I'm going to have to first make sure that if I ever have a transcript that I put in there, first my client knows that this is what I'm doing and they've agreed to do so. 2, making sure that anything is in that transcript, especially if I'm doing leadership coaching with someone in an organization and they've shared something important about their business, that can't be in the transcript because now it's out there for the public. So I think we're going to have to be keeping that in mind. And I also know I just read something in some article somewhere that I'm pretty sure in the next version of the ethics that ICF will put together that they're going to have to have some ethics specifically around AI added to all the other ethics that we already uphold. So that's kind of my take on it. Lee, what else do you see?

Yeah, I think those are all great takeaways, Stacy. And what I would add to that is that remember the nature of this is that GPT, if that's what we're talking about specifically, is not thinking, it's predicting based on what it has read. And so oftentimes it will make up stuff. And so we call that hallucinating, right? It's hallucinating. And so the pitfall, to answer the question, is if a coach doesn't know this, doesn't check the work, who knows, we're human, is tired and doesn't see it, and then somehow puts that forth into their coaching without that layer of human checking. You could be very off, off base. I think one of the bigger challenges is, is if coaches and coaching companies start to think that the bots can actually become the coach without any human interface. So in our company right now at impro.ai, we are human coaches augmented by AI. And it's fascinating because when we work with clients, many times people are asking us, because they know there's AI. Where's the AI? Am I talking to a person or I'm talking to a bot? And the majority of them really want that human connection, that, that person-to-person, that being heard, that being seen, that being held naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. AI currently, GPT currently cannot do that. They cannot have that human connection. And so therefore, I think that folks who are thinking about using this in their practices want to think very carefully about all the points really mentioned. And I'm sure there's many, many more.

Well, and also, I think every time there's a pitfall, there's a pro and there's a con, right? Because I think about one of the things that it will help people with is it kind of level the playing field for folks who can't afford coaches or who maybe the the way that their life works, they're only free, like, in the middle of the night or really late at night when coaching is not available. Well, they're already doing some therapy via, you know, coaching AI. So, I mean, therapy via that way. So for those who can't afford a coach or is at a different time, they actually can get coaching in a way that they would never have been able to get coaching before. So that's the plus, right? There will be clients out there that will be using only AI to help them get a basic shift and basic learning and growth. However, the pitfall of that part, we all know what Lee just said, is that maybe in some basic situations that could support the client, but there's so many other scenarios where not having that human connection and being really able to understand what's being said and the nuances of the conversation could really hurt that client if they're relying on just the AI bots because as Lee said, they don't— the bot doesn't know anything. It doesn't understand anything. It's just trying to please you. It's trying to answer your question and give you information. It doesn't understand what it's really giving.

Yes, it can map patterns, right? And do pattern recognition, which is really powerful because as coaches, if we work with a client over time, Even though we may take notes, even though we may have a great memory, we're not always able to connect the dots back to our very first conversation. That's where AI comes in, is they can have the whole thread, the whole dialogue, and prompt you and remind you of, well, this is what's already occurred. These are the things, these are their cognitive biases that are happening, and so on and so forth, which then can make your coaching deeper and more laser-focused. On the flip side, though, when we coach, we do whole body coaching, right? Like, we're not just listening to the words, we're listening to what's said, what's not said. If we are coaching, you know, eye to eye, we're looking at body language, we're looking at facial expressions. All of these things come in together in terms of what makes up a great coach, in terms of where you're going to go with your client, right? And so for now, again, I always premise that I don't see that capability, not in the short term, perhaps not even in the long term with AI.

Well, I think that's important. What you just said is like, right now, if you're using AI as a coaching modality to augment, you will easily see the play. If you're a coach and you understand how it's supposed to operate, you will easily see the places where AI cannot do. The job of a human coach for all the reasons that Leah, you just said. However, we are in its infancy right now and no telling what it will be capable of in even a year from now, much less 2, much less 3. So I think we'll be constantly revisiting this to— the verdict is out for me. I think maybe one day way out there it could, definitely not there anytime soon.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Stacy. We have no idea, right? Which is why, back to Susan's point, this is an exciting time.

Yeah, there's a comment on the Facebook also from Ray Sims about the concerns about intellectual property. So Stacy, when you were referring to certainly the confidentiality, that's, that's another big piece about all of that, all of this.

Um, yeah, and intellectual property for an individual or a business.

Yes. Right.

Well, what I just recently read, and again, everything gets outdated so fast, is they are coming out with a version, if they haven't just come out with a version, where you can turn off— because what I was mentioning is that the AI platforms use everything they learn to then go build themselves and make themselves smarter and to be able to be more productive and effective. But there is a new function that will be coming out, but more of a business AI, where for a corporation you could turn that off and it won't be able to use that information and then use it to grow itself. So I think that's one of the things that it's trying to— when they see the pitfall, they're trying to put something in place to help with that. I don't know if that answers.

For sure. I think everything we're talking about is presupposing that we're using something as an individual off the internet, like one of the services that you can purchase. For sure, all of that data is going to be in their, their database. However, of course organizations, coaching companies as well can buy technology such that it resides within their own servers and is their own data and doesn't go back out to train other AI models. Right. So again, depends on what lens we're looking at. But as coaches, as I'm going to say, ordinary coaches like us on our own self. Yeah, exactly. If we're going to use these technologies and buy licenses for them for our coaching practices, is, we need to know exactly what the fine print is.

Yeah, absolutely.

I have another direction here to sort of look at this as well, and this is the, the pitfall which very possibly could be addressed. Um, and that is, as it— let's say if you're using it to augment your coaching, there's research that talks about 95% of our actions are unconscious. We just get into autopilot. There's the research from, was it Dr. Harlow that did monkey research where they separated baby monkeys from their mothers and gave them two options, a soft cloth, like a teddy bear type experience, and a bottle. The little babies went to the soft cloth. They didn't go to the transactional, give me food. Eventually they'll go there. But if you start thinking about just taking these sort of pieces that are very human, how do you get that into your AI? And maybe the better question is, if a coach is supposed to be able to expand and deepen thinking, feeling, and behaviors, that's below the surface. How do you get at that unconscious piece? How do you ask potentially evocative questions that may not be interpreted as psychologically safe, and yet that's part of what you need to do as a coach. So, um, that's, that's a convoluted, long question, but there's something there about like, how do you get it, that belief beneath the surface when it's hidden?

Do you mean using AI?

Oh, can you Like, how do you load in right now? Yeah, you load in 95% unconscious into the system to augment the coaching.

Yeah, I do, I do think though, Susan, um, you can. I, I feel the opposite in this regard, if I'm understanding your question correctly, in that what AI does really well is pattern recognition, right? And, um, we know that that there is a big part of coaching is intuition, but it's also informed, right, by our training, our experience, etc. And so I do think that AI can be trained to recognize patterns and then therefore create brilliant questions. What I think the dynamic there is, is whether or not it's being trained on a database of all your clients or just that client, right? So if it's more of a generic model that's being trained and not, not reading or not listening to you and your client, then it's going to have some assumptions, it's going to fill in some of the gaps because it's like, well, most humans have this bias here, therefore this is that bias, right? That's going to be what happens. I think the differentiation for me, Susan, is if it's just within that context of that one client and it's listening to all of the recordings or participating somehow in all of this, they start to create a pattern of you. And therefore, I think the questions could be very, very meaningful if it's done in that way.

Yeah, I can see that. Sort of like understanding the, the core conflict relational theme. It's a term that's some may be familiar with, and then recognizing what are the perceptions that are leading to then a behavior that may not be supporting you.

Yeah, like if I say across 5 conversations, I use a phrase or a word 5 times and it's maybe a throwaway comment that the coach doesn't pick up, but the AI does and says, Lee, you know that your client in the last 5 sessions have said this 5 times. There's something there. Go check it out.

Right. I think that's the power of the AI in coaching, um, for us. And that doesn't negate the pitfalls, Susan, that you are referring to of there's a piece of that. And I don't— we're not there yet for it to get at the level that we would ever feel comfortable as a coach right now and how we support our clients. But, you know, I think at some point in time it may be there. I'm not ready to say that yet, but I think we'd be there at some point.

So as we think about sort of experimenting in the future as coaches, what suggestions or wisdom would you want to leave us with around AI and coaching?

Oh, Gosh, of all the things. What's the— well, I guess the one thing that I would say is AI is here and we have to embrace it. So as a coach, we do train ourselves and our clients to embrace the uncertainty and the ambiguity and what is next in whatever area we're in. And that's where we are with AI. So as a coach, if you are coaching, It will be in our future, so find a way to embrace that and bring your growth mindset and jump in. There's so many positives, but also just understand the pitfalls of it too, so that you can still bring the same level of integrity and confidentiality and the solid coaching that you already do with your clients. You just move it in a different platform. But you still bring that same level of coaching. I don't think I said that so succinctly, but I think you get what I mean.

Yeah, you said it beautifully. And I would add to it, experiment, obviously ethically, on yourself perhaps first, with a client or someone who's willing, with full disclosure, play. I would say that that's the only way that you're going to find out what are the parameters with which you can use this this technology. And the other thing that I would be thinking about, which I'm just scratching the surface on now, is, um, what can it do versus I, right? So if we have a finite amount of time and we wanted to deliver greater value to our clients and as a profession, how can we go down that list and say, what are the things that I, Lee Gochee, as a coach, as a human, can do and do that and do that well. And then sort of outsource, for lack of a better word, everything else, the shallow work as I called it earlier, to the AI, whether it's building your practice or actually doing some of the research or some elements of the coaching. And when you have clarity on that, then I think you can really harness this tool, uh, for good, right? Using our tagline, changing minds for good. I just, you know, I just want to say that, as echo what Stacy just said, it's here. Let's use it ethically, responsibly, and for good.

Well, this has been a fascinating conversation, and thank you so much, Stacy and Lee, for weaving in what I think is the whole coaching mindset that we can bring to this, this discussion. And if you missed some of this and would like to see the full discussion, you can go to our YouTube channel for the Academies or visit us at theacademies.com. We also have each of the conversations that we had earlier in this week on our YouTube channel. We look forward to seeing you there as well. So again, thank you. Happy International Coaching Week, exploring your potential. And this certainly is a topic for our potential, isn't it?

Yes.

All right. Have a great weekend.