The Transformational Impact
of Artificial Intelligence on
People Success

Your Guide to the New Frontier of
Coaching, Guidance, and Development

Leadership coaching for employees is one of the best evidence-based ways to improve effectiveness, engagement, performance, and, ultimately, business outcomes. 

In short, coaching and guidance drive people success. 

Coaching allows every employee in an organization to boost not only their own performance but also the performance of their teammates, a brilliant ripple effect that translates to a big competitive advantage for businesses. But most employees don’t have access to coaching, and thus, can’t benefit from it.

Coaching presents important benefits that have never before been enjoyed on a broad scale by employees at a low cost to their employers.

This guide explores the potential of AI applied to coaching. With the dawn of new and innovative artificial intelligence applications, which we're only beginning to see, access to AI-enabled coaching will open up for employees. As access increases, more employees will be able to interact with always-on, expert coaches trained in the principles and best practices of coaching. The limitations of traditional coaching as we know them will be lifted. As a result, businesses can reap the rewards of coaching across their organizations at every level, and they’ll enjoy more purpose-driven cultures, better alignment to strategy, better connection to the mission and vision, and improved employee experience.

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There are a number of key differences between “co-pilots,” ChatGPT-like models, and a purpose-built AI-powered coaching platform, which we will explore. Read on for what to look for in AI-enabled coaching technology, as well as an in-depth look at the advantages of AI-enabled coaching over traditional coaching.

The Radical Impact of Coaching Your People

It’s no secret that the world’s best executives and leaders rely on coaches to help them operate at their best, unlock hidden potential, and create exceptional organizations. From Mary Barra to Satya Nadella, Steve Jobs to Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg to Marc Benioff, world-class leaders depend on their coaches to level up their game and push them to new heights.

Among people who work with leadership coaches, 70% report an improvement in individual performance, 51% report an improvement in team performance, and 61% report an improvement in business management, according to research from The ICF (International Coaching Federation).

The radical impact of coaching can be seen across job families and performance metrics. BetterUp reports that its customers see a 60% increase in sales teams meeting their quota, a 40% increase in the ability to motivate others, and a 39% improvement in stress management. Google’s product managers worked with BetterUp and saw a 29% improvement in strategic planning, and a reduction in burnout. Reddit experienced 38% higher retention rates, 2.5x promotion rates, and 71% higher performance rates for employees who participated in a coaching program compared with those who did not.

Simply put, coaching for employees is one of the best evidence-based ways to support people success, improving effectiveness, engagement, performance, and, ultimately, business outcomes.

And yet, most employees don’t have access to the benefits of coaching.

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So Good It’s Almost Unfair: the Advantage of Coaching for All Employees

If highly experienced leaders like the CEOs of Pepsi, Ford, Microsoft, and Pfizer benefit greatly from coaching, what kind of impact might it have on employees outside of the C-suite? What about the potential impact on employees who have less experience than these world-class CEOs and are much more in need of the benefits of coaching? Imagine the difference it could make to front-line managers and first-time managers and their teams.

Unfortunately, in most organizations, the transformational impact of coaching is only available to top executives and a small group of senior leaders.

The case for coaching is a straightforward one to make: coaching sets employees up for success. Successful employees are happier and more engaged, and this individual success translates to business success. Employees who belong to highly engaged business units experience an 81% reduction in absenteeism and an 18% increase in sales, according to Gallup. Highly engaged business units are 23% more profitable.

At the same time, employees today are facing unprecedented challenges and changes in the workplace–from the expansion of remote work and globally distributed teams to various disruptions in technology and culture. No wonder 44% of US workers say they have felt burned out at work.

Imagine what democratizing access to coaching could do for these managers and their organizations.

Leadership coaching has the potential to be a transformational powerhouse for any organization if scaled up to all employees. 

When everyone can access a coach, transformational change can happen. Seventy percent of people who worked with a coach reported improved personal performance, and 51% said it enhanced their team's performance, meaning every business can acquire a tremendous competitive advantage simply by opening up access to coaching.

Besides individual and team performance, coaching has a number of secondary cultural benefits. On an organizational level, making coaching available to everybody often results in a more purpose-driven culture, better alignment to strategy, better connection to the mission and vision, and improved employee experience.

Additionally, the types of behaviors that coaching develops—self-awareness, resilience, adaptability, communication, empathy, growth-mindset, and cognitive agility—result in widely transferable skills across functions and levels that are essential components of long-term growth.

Consider also that most managers are promoted into their roles not due to their competence at management or their soft skills but because most career ladders by default progress to managerial positions. The initial training new managers receive and any ongoing guidance, coaching, or development provided to managers typically take the form of one-size-fits-all classroom learning. This training tends to provide generalized leadership guidance, not personalized to anyone in particular, and isn’t very effective long-term.

Most organizations are simply not taking advantage of the full potential of their employees. 

It is for these reasons that companies that are able to provide all employees 24/7 access to coaching will gain an almost unfair competitive advantage over others.

How can all employees get access to coaching?

If done the traditional way, giving everyone at a company access to coaching is an extremely costly endeavor.

And coaching is rarely offered on a just-in-time basis. Because of the scheduled monthly or quarterly nature of traditional coaching, the employees who need coaching and guidance as challenges arise miss out on converting those challenges into opportunities. It is also quite difficult to control or even monitor quality and consistency across entire organizations.

With the rise of the new generation of AI technologies, the state of coaching is quickly changing. It will now be possible for every employee to have access to best-in-class guidance, coaching, and developmental support when they need it. 

The good news is that the application of AI in coaching isn’t some far-off possibility. It’s here today and is beginning to change the lives of employees. Progressive, high-performance companies are already beginning to see the potential for upleveling their people through a combination of traditional coaching and AI-enabled coaching platforms.

The Rise of Generative AI and Associated Technologies

Let’s explore how modern AI technology could be applied to the practice of coaching and what it could mean.

There has been nothing short of a revolution in AI in the last two years. Ever since ChatGPT widely demonstrated the remarkable power of Large Language Models (LLMs), there have been quantum leaps in capabilities and proficiencies. Generative AI (or Gen AI for short) models like GPT-4 can already pass the bar exam in the 90th percentile, score in the 93rd percentile in the Reading and Writing section of the SAT, ace the Biology Olympiad in the 99th percentile, and comfortably pass all three parts of the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam without any specialized training or reinforcement.

Newer developments in AI continue to push the envelope even further. Besides text-based LLMs, there are also multi-modal Gen AIs that can work with and generate images, video, and audio. Newer technologies and advances such as the ability to hold up to a million words of context in short-term memory during a conversation, enable even more use cases.

Today’s state of the art in AI consists of what are called “Frontier Foundation Models.” Foundation models are trained on several trillions of words of human text, which approaches almost everything humans have written since the beginning of time. They are then fine-tuned with human feedback to be able to hold conversations and perform various tasks. These foundation models have access to almost all of human knowledge, including images, audio, and video.

To specialize in specific use cases such as assisting in legal, medical, financial, or programming tasks, or coaching for that matter, the foundation models need to be further refined and bolstered. This can be done through fine-tuning with domain-specific data, and techniques such as Reinforcement Learning through Human Feedback (RLHF). The resulting systems can be further enhanced with techniques such as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and in-context learning.

Gen AI is not without its challenges. Without adequate guardrails, foundation models sometimes suffer from “hallucinations” where the AI makes up things that are not based in fact, and they can, in some situations, exhibit various kinds of bias learned from skews present in the datasets. One of the purposes of fine-tuning and specialization is to curb hallucination and to reduce or filter out bias. Techniques such as retrieval augmented generation, or RAG, and in-context learning are used along with domain-specific content, guardrails, and extensive quality assurance to protect against hallucinations, bias, and other ways AI might fail.

What to look for in AI-enabled Coaching Technology

Note that an AI-powered coaching platform is not a thin wrapper around a general-purpose AI model like ChatGPT, or a simple extension of work-oriented “co-pilots,” although both of these can provide some out-of-the-box benefits. There are a number of key differences between “co-pilots,” ChatGPT-like models, and a purpose-built AI-powered coaching platform.

While AI-enabled coaching platforms take advantage of Gen AI capabilities in language understanding, reasoning, and access to vast amounts of knowledge, these platforms also have to incorporate domain-specific knowledge, best practices, tools, systems, and software to recreate and even enhance the coaching experience. Some of these additions include:

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  1. Domain-specific knowledge about coaching methods and best practices supplemented with expert-level knowledge/content on topics such as: psychology at work, leadership competencies, managerial skills and proficiencies, organizational behavior, the art and science of feedback, communication, decision-making frameworks, organizational development & effectiveness, team effectiveness, employee engagement, mindfulness and well-being, analysis and interpretation of survey and 360 feedback, action planning for employee survey results, and much more.

  2. Protection against hallucinations and bias, and guardrails for safe and productive conversations done using techniques such as fine-tuning, RLHF, RAG, and in-context learning, as well as extensive domain-specific QA, testing, and content guardrails.

  3. Easy ingestion and incorporation of company-specific content and frameworks, from mission, vision, and values to company policies, strategy, culture, goal-setting methodologies, career planning and career tracks, and management philosophies.

  4. Proactive Agentic AI systems for providing nudges and follow ups, executing on growth and development plans, and delivering micro-learnings.

  5. Built-in tools for self-assessments, collecting and analyzing feedback, self-reflection, sound-boarding, and socratic learning.

  6. Integration into flow-of-work enterprise tools such as scheduling, messaging, conferencing, and other work systems for immediate 24/7 access and usage in the flow of work.

  7. Integration into enterprise learning and development systems (LMS/LXP), HRIS systems, 360 and Survey systems, OKR & goal-setting systems, etc.

  8. Data analytics for reporting on usage and effectiveness, and aggregated insights from conversations such as key topics and challenges faced by employees, as well as continuously learning from and refining the product. Gen AI needs to be supplemented with conventional analytical systems to produce these insights.

  9. Considerations for global workforces, localization, and language and cultural differences

  10. Enterprise-grade security, reliability, confidentiality, and privacy, including logging and auditing.

📖 READ MORE ABOUT WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN AI COACH

The Advantages of AI-Enabled Coaching over Traditional Coaching

AI is redefining the way employees learn, grow, and execute. Every person in an organization should embrace an AI guide—for coaching, guidance, and expert advice—to help them be their very best.

AI-enabled coaching platforms have several benefits and advantages over traditional scheduled coaching. Some of these are listed below.

Access for All Employees

AI reduces the number one barrier to entry for all: cost. The typical cost for traditional (human-only) coaching programs can range from $7,000 to over $25,000 per employee per year. Company-sponsored AI coaching platforms provide high-quality conversations at a fraction of the cost of traditional coaching. Employees whose companies buy AI coaching software simply need access to a device and a reliable internet connection to get started on their coaching journeys.

Just-in-Time Coaching and 24/7 Availability

In a fast-moving work environment, the issue with relying only on scheduled coaching sessions (typically bimonthly or monthly) is that the conversation tends to be about stale topics that have lost their urgency and relevance. Sometimes employees struggle to even come up with topics to discuss. 24/7 availability of an AI coach radically changes the status quo. Without scheduling limitations or off hours, employees can talk through problems as they come up and receive instant feedback and guidance. Challenges and fires can be converted into opportunities. Learning is immediate and relevant.

Competence in Multiple Specializations and Holistic Integration

An important benefit of AI coaching compared with traditional coaching is that the AI can have competence in multiple different coaching specialties and styles. Further, it can holistically integrate these specialties for a best-in-class tailored experience.

Traditionally, coaching has specialized in a number of areas of competence. While there are extremely skilled coaches who can flex to a number of situations, typically coaches tend to specialize in specific areas of organizational effectiveness. These specialty areas include feedback and 360s, performance coaching, well-being, engagement and organizational development, team effectiveness, overall leadership, strategy, change management and communication, and DEI.

For example, an organizational development coach who is primarily trained in organizational survey analysis and action planning brings a different focus and speciality to the table compared with someone who specializes in performance coaching. Coaches also tend to specialize or focus on specific tools and methodologies that are more appropriate for certain situations than others. Examples of such tools include the MBTI, DiSC and Enneagram, or specific competency models, and values and strengths assessments.

The AI coach, on the other hand, can be trained to have full competence over the entire breadth and depth of modern coaching practices, tools, and techniques and can adapt and tailor its coaching to the specific situation and coaching needs of the employee, whether it’s about how to give great feedback, protect their time, how to use mindfulness to manage personal stress and create mental resilience, how to motivate a burned-out team, or how to help with creating a change-management strategy.

An AI-enabled coach can be trained in any and all modern coaching practices, tools, and techniques.

The AI coach is always up-to-date on the latest knowledge, skills, and best practices based on data and evidence. Because most employee challenges are a complex set of overlapping aspects—team, stakeholders, decision making, communication, and personal psychology—the ability for AI to take into consideration all the relevant pieces, integrate information from various sources—including engagement surveys, 360s, company mission and values, and DEI statements—and deliver best-practice coaching across all of these aspects has the potential to dramatically improve the overall effectiveness of coaching.

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Coach-Employee Fit and Style Matching

An often overlooked element of traditional coaching is that the success of coaching often depends on the “style fit” between the employee and the coach. This is a function of several attributes, including the employee’s learning style, their experience level and background, and how that matches with the coach’s philosophy, training, and personal style. 

While the best coaches tend to flex and adapt to different methodologies according to the learning styles and needs of employees, more often than not, typical coaches tend to specialize in one or more styles that they are trained in. These styles include directive coaching (where the coach provides specific guidance, advice, and instructions to the employee) and non-directive coaching (which involves the coach asking questions and facilitating self-reflection, allowing the employee to arrive at their own insights and solutions). Other styles of coaching include Goal-Oriented Coaching, Developmental Coaching, Performance Coaching, Transformational Coaching, and Situational Coaching, among others.

On the other hand, AI coaches can quickly identify and tailor their style to create the best possible “fit” for each employee and the situation or challenge at hand. This enables coaching to not only meet the employee where they are but also expand and grow with the employee.

Coaching Personalized to Employee and Company Preferences

Employees can receive tailored interactions and continuous feedback based on their skills, preferences, and previous conversations. AI can personalize coaching interactions to individuals over time, checking in on progress and helping them achieve long-term goals. AI platforms have perfect memories, continuously analyzing and adapting the approach to users.

AI-enabled coaching is also tailored to company content. It can be trained on the company’s mission, vision, and values statements to ensure alignment with the company’s strategies and objectives. It can match the management philosophies, culture, and other practices in the company.

The AI coach can provide guidance on situations specific to individuals, all while employing the unique perspective and culture of a given organization.

Insights & Analytics

The data aggregated from coaching sessions and company usage can be used to generate analytics and insights for both the individual and the organization.

Users can get personalized insights into their conversations over time, leading to greater self-understanding and the ability to view the arc of their growth and development or gain visibility into recurring themes.

HR leaders can get aggregated insights into the challenges their people are facing, such as top managerial challenges and topics users ask about.

Proactive nudging, follow-ups, and prompting in the flow of work

Unlike traditional scheduled coaching interactions, AI coaching can also be proactive and nudge employees with follow-ups and reminders in the flow of work. It can deliver micro-learnings and prompt employees to follow up on next steps for their development objectives. It can check in at comfortable intervals to make sure the employee is feeling supported. Done well, these proactive systems can gently nudge employees beyond their comfort zones to discover new areas of their genius.

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The Future of AI in Coaching

The future holds boundless opportunities for innovation in coaching as a practice, as well as deeper, richer coaching experiences for the people who rely on it for professional and personal growth. Of course, with any disruptive employee-facing technology, businesses should carefully investigate an AI coaching platform before rolling it out, vetting it for concerns around coaching quality, security, data privacy, policy alignment, and more. There are exciting possibilities for how these platforms can begin to blur any distinctions between coaching, learning and development, and engagement, with each of these areas becoming more powerful due to the overlap and influence of the other.

 

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Key takeaways:

  1. Personalized guidance and real-time feedback at scale made possible by AI coaching will revolutionize the way coaching works. The application of AI in coaching isn’t some far-off possibility. It’s here today and is beginning to change the lives of employees. Progressive, high-performance companies are beginning to see the potential for upleveling their people through a combination of traditional coaching and AI-enabled coaching platforms.

  2. Every business can acquire a tremendous competitive advantage simply by opening up access to coaching. Seventy percent of people who worked with a coach reported improved personal performance, and 51% said it enhanced their team's performance. Businesses can reap the rewards of coaching across their organizations at every level, and they’ll enjoy more purpose-driven cultures, better alignment to strategy, better connection to the mission and vision, and improved employee experience.

  3. AI-enabled coaches vary widely in terms of effectiveness. Thin wrappers built around a general-purpose AI model like ChatGPT, or a simple extension of work-oriented “co-pilots” won’t provide the benefits of an AI-powered coaching platform. While AI-enabled coaching platforms take advantage of generative AI capabilities in language understanding, reasoning, and access to vast amounts of knowledge, these platforms also have to incorporate domain-specific knowledge, best practices, tools, systems, and software to recreate and even enhance the coaching experience.

  4. AI-enabled coaching platforms have several benefits and advantages over traditional coaching. The limitations of traditional coaching as we know them will be lifted. Benefits of AI-enabled coaching include reduced cost for everyone, just-in-time coaching and 24/7 availability, competence in multiple specializations and holistic integration, coach-employee fit, coaching personalized to employee and company preferences, analytics, and nudges in the flow of work. 

  5. As with any employee-facing technology, businesses should carefully investigate an AI coaching platform before rolling it out. Vet AI-enabled coaching platforms for concerns around coaching quality, security, data privacy, policy alignment, bias, and more.

Wisq

About Wisq

Wisq is an AI guide for people success. Wisq delivers real-time guidance, personalized coaching, and expert advice aligned with your company’s practices, principles and content. Wisq is deeply embedded in key HR processes and supports employees at critical moments in the employee lifecycle. For more information, visit wisq.com.