Is It Time To Embrace the Technology Transformation of Coaching?

The coaching market is young but has undergone a number of transitions, not least the professionalization of the industry. As the corporate world digitizes, the coaching industry has begun to follow. In fact, digitization and the development of multiple communication and performance apps has been driving coaching buyers’ expectations over the past three or more years. Buyers who have seen the introduction of Slack, LinkedIn Learning and multiple other communication and development tools are asking how they can scale their coaching practice to deliver similar outcomes. What seems obvious is the future of coaching is now being shaped by digital transformation, as has wider L&D, and organizational life. But what is also clear is there is a nervousness within coaching – a desire to stick to the cottage industry methods of the 2010’s.

The work environment: the most permissive to transformation

Technology over the past decade has become ubiquitous in the work environment. The main drivers have been productivity, efficiency, performance, and convenience. In coaching it has come the same. Over the past two years, it has become almost impossible to run a coaching business without a computer, given lockdowns and restrictions across the globe. But other technologies, from the growth of coaching platforms, to whiteboards, diary management systems to VR are all beginning to impact on the way coaches manage their businesses. Each brings implications both in terms of management but also questions about the future of ethical practice and for coach training.

Early transformations: can I use a widely spread technology to coach?

The first widespread technological innovation in coaching was the telephone. In fact, many of the early American coaching pioneers, such as Thomas Leonard started with phone coaching. Phone coaching enabled the coach in widely dispersed locations, such as the US, to coach across the whole country. While coaches lacked the visual cues from facial expressions and body language, they became highly skilled in drawing inference from voice tone, pace of speach and silence. Research studies have confirmed there is no difference between face-to-face and “distance” coaching in terms of the outcomes (Berry et al, 2011 – Geissler et al, 2014 – Morgannwg-Box, 2015).

Video Conferencing tools: the answer to the drawbacks of phone enabled coaching

The emergence of video conference tools in the early 2000’s, such as Skype, enabled a gradual migration from voice only to audit and visual communications. Confidence in these grew during the early 2010’s and step-up dramatically from 2015 onwards with the growing popularization of Zoom. These apps compensated for the main drawbacks of phone enabled coaching: while offering the same benefits. However little regard was given to data protection (GDPR), to scalability and measurement. This was to all come later.

Also during the early 2010’s, other apps also started to emerge, offering coaches the benefits to engage with online whiteboards (Murel and Miro) both launching in 2011, as well as calendar systems (Calendley). By the late 2010’s, many coaches were starting to explore their potential as tools to facilitate and help clients in capturing notes in sessions, and in booking appointments.

Furthermore, many video conferencing tools have embedded features such as “mute”, “record”, “screen share”, “whiteboards” and “breakout rooms”. There has also been a growth in supplementary tools, which offer more functionality, and are now embedded in many apps. It’s worth noting that the pace of change means that staying up to date with the fast-changing landscape is a task in itself, but failing to do so is even more dangerous.

Digital coaching platforms: democratizing the access to coaching

The most recent step in the technological revolution has been the emergence of digital platforms. Many only date-back 3 or 4 years, and were experiencing strong growth before the global pandemic, but the impact of lockdowns and the emergence of hybrid working in many organizations has super charged this growth. Many have seen five-fold growth in 2020 and 2021. The best of these platforms bring together the science of coaching with the technological innovations, offering large global organizations secure digital communications using audio and visual channels, but which the ability to offer coaching to hundreds of employers across 50 or more countries, all with build in performance metrics dashboards collecting data on coach and coachee evaluations of the sessions, number of engagements, length of session and coachee evaluations of their progress.

The role of GDPR

With the switch online, one challenge facing many global organizations and digital providers is the need for compliance with data protection rules in the regions where they work. Among the most challenging are the EU’s GDPR regulations, recently amplified by Schrmes II, a court ruling which further raised the bar in terms of compliance.

While EU providers such as MoovOne, CoachHub and Sharpist have built GDPR compliance into their processes from the start, many non-EU players are engaged either in a catch up process, trying to adapt their processes, such as where data is stored, or in some cases have abandoned compliance and instead are opting to focus on regions where lighter regulation applies.

At least one large provider has decided to move in the opposite direction and have implied a programme of recording all conversations as part of its processes. The intent here is likely to be to create the data sets to be able to programme an AI coach.

What does the future hold?

For many coaches, this fear of the emergence of the AI Coach is the main fear. That professional coaches become automated. While secret recording practices continue by non-EU providers this is for some a direction of travel which interests them, but for many this presents a 1984 future which they would not choose to select. Instead, EU platforms appear to be more in leveraging AI to help in coach-coachee matching (Graßmann et al., 2020), in selecting personalized learning through creating a “Netflix experience” in their learning libraries, creating nudge activities to encourage continued learning between sessions and exploring the potential of VR as a tool to enable new experiences for coaches and their clients.

What’s clear is that technology will play an increasingly important role in the coaching industry, and this trend will gain in speed in the following years. Digital transformation remains one of the major priorities in the corporate world.

Given this, what should coaches do? The first step is a choice to either embrace technology, engage with multiple platforms, seek out new apps and approaches and start to experience with these, from whiteboards to digital calendars and review the opportunities on digital platforms. Secondly, make an active commitment to keep up with new technology. In this space, early adopters have the advantage.

What is the one technology innovation to watch for 2022 and beyond? Probably VR. Virtual Reality devices, such as Facebook’s Oculus 2 are becoming increasingly cheap. These are supported by the emergence of new apps like MeetVR, providing spaces for coaches and their clients to meet. These don’t simply offer meeting rooms with white boards, pens… but many also offer the chance to integrate data from other applications, and immersive environments from Dubai City Centre to a German mountain top view across valleys. Such tools might offer the perfect destination for global teams to connect, and engage in team coaching or development workshops, reducing their carbon footprint, saving time and creating an engaging experience.

Conclusion

As coaches, we should take responsible for shaping the future of our industry. While new tech giants have emerged, it is coaches who’s skills and insights are playing a part. It’s our responsibility to ask about the data they hold and collect. Professional associations also have a role to play setting standards for digital provision, ensuring legal and ethical compliance.

We have seen from the failures of government how over dominant firms in the tech space can become unethical over time, only by a collaborative approach with coaches, professional bodies, apps and tech companies ensure ethical and legal practice stays at the heart of the profession, and the industry adjusts to changing needs in training and practice.