Are human coaches irrelevant in the age of AI?
No, the opposite actually.
One of the biggest challenges coaches have always had is that most people don’t know why they need one in the first place.
They think it’s just someone listening. Or mentoring. Or someone telling them what to do.
And they can’t understand why they’d pay for that. Fair enough, honestly. A lot of what gets sold as coaching is exactly that.
Then ChatGPT turns up and suddenly millions of people are talking through problems, reflecting on decisions and being asked questions they wouldn’t normally ask themselves.
For some people, it’s the first time they’ve ever experienced anything remotely like coaching. And that’s fascinating.
Because once you’ve had a taste of exploring your thinking instead of just reacting to it, you start to realise things don’t have to stay the way they are and you can get help to think things through.
But AI isn’t coaching. Not really.
A good coach doesn’t just help you think.
They notice the thing you keep avoiding.
✅ The belief you’ve mistaken for a fact.
✅ The story you’ve been telling yourself for ten years.
🙈 And sometimes tell you the thing you least want to hear.
Based on lived experience, something AI can never replicate.
AI is brilliant at helping people start the conversation. A great coach helps them continue it, with real human empathy and understanding.
If your coaching can be replaced by ChatGPT, that’s probably useful feedback. But I don’t think AI will end human coaching.
It’s creating millions of people who finally understand why coaching matters.
P.S. there’s a lot to unpack in that image. I particularly like the bowl of boundaries and how the racoon thinks it’s unqualified… 🤣
P.P.S. stop dating lizards.
Come talk to me about it on LinkedIn
