We’re in the Coaching Century – but with the upcoming growth of AI-based coaching at scale, shouldn’t you be worried?
How can coaching be the perfect career, when AI can match people to the perfect coach at a fraction of the cost?
If AI can identify areas of improvement for clients and identify their learning styles, why would they need you?
I drew the picture above of a robot coaching a human client, in the style of van Gogh, using an AI drawing generator. It took 3.5 seconds to draw…
AI-based coaching is already beginning to use algorithms to monitor leaders’ communication and interactions online. It can help them become more effective in real time, with intelligent nudges and daily micro-learning opportunities.
Companies are building internal coaching software to create internal coaching networks. And corporations are developing proprietary leadership programs and online learning platforms to coach their executives.
People’s smartphones can capture private journal entries that can be analyzed by software, to make reflecting on deliberate practice a natural way to help you learn. Cell phones are becoming pocket flight simulators, able to help people improve and grow high-level skills such as sales, leadership and negotiation, with in-the-moment, real-time feedback through a headphone or screen.
We’re only scratching the surface of what is coming in the years ahead. Remember, the thing about AI is that it is literally learning new ways to support people every single day.
Well, thanks Rich – how the hell do I compete with that?!
Where are the opportunities for one-to-one coaching in the future?
What happens to personal coaches in the years ahead?
Uncanny Valley
Some coaches are nervous that advanced AI will one day take their jobs.
I predict that expert coaches will become irreplaceable in the future.
Only real leaders will be able to truly connect with leaders person-to-person. Only humans will be able to laugh with you and cry with you. No AI can do that.
The most important skill of a great coach is to help you push to the very edges of your comfort zone – and often past it. When a great coach hears the words, “I hate you!” it’s followed by a smile and gratitude.
Software that pushes you is going to regularly hear the words, “F**k you!” and there will be no smile behind it, I can promise you!
Robots and AI will continue to make our lives easier in many different ways but they also have the power to totally creep us out.
Here’s a nutrition-coaching robot:
More than 50 years ago the Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori, came up with the phrase “Uncanny Valley” to describe the sense of unease and discomfort you feel when you encounter a robot with human-like characteristics, or a digital avatar or animated character.
Mori believed these feelings of unease are a survival instinct. He wrote, “This eerie sensation… is an integral part of our instinct for self-preservation.”
Who wants to hang out with this guy online?!
This is the Coaching Century and you have the perfect career
A decade ago, I wrote in The Prosperous Coach: “The coaching profession has a problem that is two-fold: there is a low bar for entry and a high bar for success.”
In ten years, only two things have changed:
- The barrier to entry has got lower. Anyone can become certified online as a coach. You can literally do this overnight, for free. Almost every “coach training company” promises immediate wealth and success if you only sign up for their coach training. And coaching companies offer everything from career coaching to high-level leadership training.
- The barrier to success has got higher. Which makes your job simple but not easy.
First, you must apply The Prosperous Coach Approach… In a world where most coaches will struggle, you need to build your business by serving people powerfully. You must learn to see what others cannot see and you must dare to say what most people would be scared to say. You need to create clients by invitation and referral, one conversation at a time. Over time, you’ll build a word-of-mouth business, no internet marketing needed.
Second, you must become a Powerful Coach… sought after because you’ve built influence and a body of work. You become known in a crowded marketplace because you share ideas of distinction and unique IP that provokes people’s thinking. You must be unafraid to break the rules, to speak truth to power and even to create your own rules. Over time, you will become preeminent – distinguished, outstanding and admired – and able to command fees beyond the range of most coaches.
Many coaches have a misconception that there is a template for the business of coaching. There is no such thing. The Validation Committee does not exist. There is no Licensing Bureau of Coaches.
Get an ICF certification if you wish. Just know that you don’t need it.
Don’t fear AI, learn about it. It may be helpful to you and your clients in the future. It won’t replace you any time soon.
Most coaches have always struggled. Don’t be most coaches.
Great clients want relationship-based coaching, not robot-based coaching. AI can help uplevel people’s skills. Only a great coach can help a client uplevel their vision, shift their way of being and make the impossible a reality.
You can be an extraordinary, influential coach if you are willing to put in the time, educate yourself, and surround yourself with an extraordinary community of other high-performing, high-fee coaches.
That’s why I am here. To support you to become both a Prosperous Coach and a Powerful Coach.
I’ve spent the past few weeks dreaming and scheming… In the days and weeks ahead, we’ll be launching a range of different ways to support you in becoming a world-class coach:
- THE CALIFORNIA DEEP DIVE – Sit on my hot seat in a room with only 10 people. Feel the flame as you are coached by me personally!
- FOUNDATIONS – Launch your coaching business from scratch…
- ONE MILLION DOLLARS! – How to make your first $1M as a coach…
- HOW TO COACH A SUPERHERO – the 4PC edition – Watch me coach the top coaches on the planet, in order to become one…
- PROJECT KAIROS 2023 – Starting mid-September, join my flagship program to master The Prosperous Coach Approach…
- 4PC – Apply to join the beating heart of my community. Learn from and with the top 20% of the top 20% of coaches. Meet us in Italy, Alaska, Iceland and Portugal over the next two years!
- THE 4PC ACCELERATOR – Join me and 4PC in October 2023 for our annual opportunity to learn alongside us in a private 4PC Intensive experience.
- THE 90-DAY MONEY GAME – Apply The Prosperous Coach Approach to increase your impact & income.
- THE ART OF THE IMPOSSIBLE – A blueprint for setting & accomplishing impossible goals – for yourself and your clients
- THE INFLUENTIAL COACH – Learn to create powerful original IP & become preeminent in your field. Write books that create clients, develop your own Intensive & build a world-class digital studio
Over the next ten years you’ve got to become an extraordinary, influential coach.
I’ve got your back.
Love. Rich