This month, MF's Head of Digital Learning - Hugh Reynolds - gives his take on a text full of tech…
What is the book called?
‘The Digital and AI Coaches’ Handbook: The Complete Guide to the Use of Online, AI, and Technology in Coaching’. Edited by Jonathan Passmore, Sandra J. Diller, Sam Isaacson, and Maximillian Brantl (Routledge 2024)
What is it about?
It’s a collection of articles by experts, consultants, academics, entrepreneurs, in-house and jobbing coaches about all kinds of issues faced – or allegedly faced - when doing coaching digitally. Digital coaching is a very broad and diverse concept, but here it means pretty much any coaching which isn’t face-to-face in the same tangible space. The book is well and truly grounded in the assumption that the future of coaching will be ever increasingly digital – though by no means wholly digital.
Why is reading this book important for organisations and individuals?
This depends on your role and how you’re developing. It is such a mixed bag – I’m confident that those new to coaching would find many of the coaching practice articles helpful – if only to gauge and investigate the different styles of approach that working online can require. If you’re already doing some coaching online – or have been on a journey of discovery through the Covid-19 pandemic around how to coach someone in another room – you may be pleasantly surprised (as I was) at how much your own reflections and experience chime with the formal studies. You may be somewhat frustrated (as I was) by more than one or two rather mundane conclusions which might have been interesting in 2014 but are no longer so interesting now so many of us work online.
Those wanting to start-up their own coaching empire and develop it with the aid of AI would be well served by 11 insightful case-studies with which the book concludes. Despite what is claimed on the cover I reckon the key audience here isn’t so much practicing coaches, but those who want to understand the landscape of early 21st century coaching – the story so far around how the industry is being disrupted, some of the fears and opportunities around this.
What are the key learnings to take away from this book?
As mentioned, it’s something of a mélange. Let me pick out some favourite points I focussed in on.
- One of the more practically minded chapters is about Technologies for Creativity in Coaching (Majumdar and Brown, Chapter 8). Although it doesn’t give specific examples of what to use and how – the advice given on finding out what you really need in your coaching ‘digital toolbox’ is: connect with what motivates and stirs your creativity. To me this suggest a need to give ourselves the time and permission to play and experiment with digital tools.
- I enjoyed Chapter 15 (Geißler and Rödel) – despite having to navigate some very esoteric terminology – because it contains a rich discussion about creating ‘media rich environments’ for digital coaching. It does not confine itself to the coaching relationships – but the broader range of ways the process of coaching can be supported. With audio messages, video mail, email, online journalling, collaborative ‘wikis’ and so many platforms available for interaction these days, which coaching media should I use in my coaching to best ‘orchestrate’ it? There’s a conceptually rich account of the theory – which isn’t so fruitful in helping practicing coaches ensure they can answer the question. There’s a valiant attempt to attribute various ‘values’ to different components of media (touch, eye expressions, outer appearance) and consider how the presence or absence of these components might influence the coaching. The good news, in a nutshell, is the authors conclude: coaches are really very good at compensating for differences. If we remove components (say, next time the video feed on your Zoom call fails) good coaches can coach through the remaining components. Phew!
- The chapter on the Changing Nature of the Coaching Industry ( Evans-Krimme and Passmore, Chapter 21) was another thought provoker. Whilst it’s not saying too much we don’t already fear from the wider debate around AI - I think it’s worth emphasising the bare financial points stated clearly in this one: “While our natural reaction may be that as a personal service humans will in the main prefer to speak to a human, costs may significantly influence human behaviour. In a world where a coaching session costs $200 for an hour of coaching, with a coach that has 2,000 hours of coaching and which is available in 48-hours time, in contrast to an AI Coach which is available instantly, at the cost of $5 a session (or even zero). Such a choice may well drive many towards AI chatbot coaching.” ( Evans-Krimme and Passmore, Chapter 21, p.273). This stark reality is set in a more optimistic context for human coaches: hope that there is room for both coaching futures – a scenario that blends human and artificial intelligences. What I’m still unclear on is whether the growth in AI is necessarily bound to see the existing demographic that can afford face-to-face coaching migrate towards AI coaching support methodologies instead. How might free, or affordable and effective AI extend the demographic that can currently access coaching? Case studies like the one on ‘Rocky AI’ (Novic, Chapter 31) provide some clues.
Why should I read this book?
If you’re studying for a coaching qualification such as our ILM Level 7 Diploma, I’d recommend being very selective in what you take from this book. Take it little and often rather than in one overwhelming dose. Find one or two articles which resonate with your own context or interests. They’ll provide a helpful and healthy challenge to traditional accounts of coaching practice – and they’ll inform you about how to adapt face-to-face practice to a digital medium. I do have to give a health-warning though: some of the language used is overly abstract and technical (even for experienced practitioners) and probably best-suited to more academic communities of discourse. If you wanted to write a thesis on coaching – and speak to other theoreticians about it at conferences – this book is just what you need. If you’re interested in translating theory into something all coaches and other non-specialist professionals can digest – or if you love finding easy take-away insights – this book may be the last thing you need.
What coaching questions does this book provoke?
One such question relates to work on ‘The Online Disinhibition Effect’ “Some research (Suler 2004) proposes that a feeling of anonymity and increased safety nurtures disinhibition and therefore leads to more openness during coaching.” (Passmore, Diller, Isaacson and Brantl, Introduction, p. 5) Digital media afford much more opportunity for anonymous interaction – with associated risks like deception and other foul-play. Yet might we do well to re-evaluate the benefits of anonymity? (Perhaps we should also recall its value in more ancient, analogue practices such as the Sacrament of Confession in the Catholic Church.) Given that the coach-coachee bond is typically seen as success critical, what is the nature of that bond in an anonymous coaching relationship? I’ve often found myself questioning the value of coaching ‘profiles’ – a tradition of sharing information and credentials in advance of the start of a relationship. Am I really the best judge of the sort of coach I need? What biases do I display when given a choice, and a bio and a picture? Whilst these concerns aren’t developed in the book– other very important ones around diversity bias in artificial intelligence are (Gengler, Hagerer and Gales, Chapter 18).
And finally . . .
‘Handbook’ is a bit of a misnomer. It’s an anthology! And I think in the first instance it’s going to be much more handy to those wanting to write about and develop strategy around coaching than those more focussed on doing it.
