TL;DR
- Coaching is not just giving advice, and AI requires good questions for it to give you good answers. The problem is that coaching is the opposite, you are supposed to be ASKED good questions so you can give good answers.
- AI does not have enough nuance to ask the right questions that YOU need based on your responses.
Notes
Let’s start with what coaching is not:
- Coaching is not to give you advice
- Coaching is not “here’s my problem, fix it”
- Coaching is not therapy
- Coaching is not a clear, set-in-stone process or method
If any of these surprised you, let’s go into more detail:
- Giving advice is more consulting, which, while I do work in some consulting or advice-giving into my work, that isn’t all the time, and shouldn’t be the focus of the conversation
- I do not fix people’s problems, or achieve their goals, only they can do that. I do, however, help them get to that “aha!” moment, where things become clear, and they finally get to peak through the fog that has been clouding their mind
- I do not work with trauma or mental health issues, not only am I not qualified, but the point of coaching is to look into the future, not the past. While discussing the past is important for some topics, we cannot change the past, and coaching is here to focus on what we *can *change now
- Coaching has a wide variety of methodologies and frameworks to help people, but good coaching does not rely on any of these anyways, a good coach will be able to help the client whether it’s a conversation at a bar, hiking up a mountain, or sitting in a coffee shop on a video call
Now, why can’t AI just do these things for you?
Something you need to understand is that AI is a network of words and information, and with the way it’s structured, it identifies patterns in this information. When you start a sentence, there are words that are more likely to come next, and words that are not.
I like cats and ___
Thanks to AIs predictive power, it knows the most likely word to come next is “dog”. It’s not thinking, it’s just predicting what word fits best.
This is how it creates all its responses, based on patterns from what was said before. No new information, just a mix and match of the old that seems new and personal.
You can go on ChatGPT right now and ask it to coach you, you might even feel good about the questions it asks and responses it gives. You can then go along with your day, happy that you saved the time, money, and effort involved in coaching.
The problem isn’t whether or not AI can coach you, because it definitely can, the problem is that AI does not coach well. And this is the difference between results and just feeling good.
AI is great at the basics of coaching, asking inspiring or challenging questions, summarizing your thoughts, and giving you feedback. The problem is that any good conversation can do that for you, but what a *good *coach offers goes far beyond that.
Good coaching usually provides a couple things that AI simply cannot.
- Accountability
- Experience
AI is only as useful as the person using it. You ask it the questions *you *want the answer to, and it complies. Good coaching, however, asks you questions you might not want to answer, and gives you responses you might not want to hear, but need to. Coaching should not be an easy process, and the problem with AI is that you can make it as easy as you want, just log off or ignore it. When you get coaching, you’re getting someone that will not only support you, but hold you accountable to achieving your goals. Sure, the results are still dependent on you, and you can put in as much effort as you want in real life, but actually having someone there counting on you to make it, that’s completely different.
Coaches also bring experience. While AI has vast knowledge about every topic, that usually results in impersonal, overwhelming, and just plain irrelevant responses. Coaches have the advantage of real-world experience with the problems you are facing. They’ve helped others do that exact thing, and they can help you too. AI might know *about *helping others, but that’s like saying “I know how to drive a car because I memorized the car’s manual and watched every YouTube video about it”. Simply put, you don’t know if you’ve never tried, and coaches have gotten results time and time again.
Another, more subtle, impact of coaching is on the subconscious level.
You might not be aware, but when you are in a coaching session, you are building a bond with another human that cannot be replicated by AI. Deep thought, laughter, sadness, excitement, and overwhelming joy cannot be felt by a computer. It does not resonate with your story, understand what you’re going through and the feeling of ambition inside you. Only a real human can make you feel truly accepted and heard in a way that brings about lasting change. This is what coaching is for, not just answering your questions and giving you bits of advice. It’s to create a change deep within you, or help you achieve a lifelong goal, and this cannot be done by simply asking questions to a digital web of information.