Can AI replace me? Can you get leadership coaching from AI? According to one of the top executive coaches in the world, the answer is…
…yes.
And that’s a good thing. Why? Because it forces coaches to be what they should be, with or without AI.
I’ll get to all that in a minute. But first, the back story.
Last year, I was on a conference call with Marshall Goldsmith, one of the world’s top executive coaches and author of “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.” On that call he said that he was working on an AI version of himself that, in many ways, was a better coach than he was.
Wow. Better?
That caught my attention.
Fast forward to this month and Goldsmith released Marshallbot. You can ask Marshallbot questions, and the AI collection of his books, writings, speeches, and more over decades will provide you an answer. Goldsmith and the artificial intelligence company Fractal have said that they’re making it available for free, forever.
I’ve been playing around with it and it’s really good. I asked Marshallbot about the most common questions it has been asked and here’s the list:
- How can I become a better leader?
- What can I do to improve my team’s performance?
- How can I help my employees become more engaged?
- What strategies can I use to manage change effectively?
- How can I develop better habits for success?
The information is very useful. But why would this be good for coaches? Why is it a good thing that AI might be able to do something people used to ask me for and do it as well or even better?
Marshallbot is great at giving general information, just like Goldsmith’s books, but it does it much more efficiently. Instead of hunting through his books, articles, blog posts, and speeches for something he said about a certain topic, I can just type in a question and get an instant answer.
The role for a coach is to help them adapt that general information to their specific need and hold them accountable to making the change.
The world is drowning in information. But information doesn’t lead to transformation without action. Without action, a self-help book is just a shelf-help book. A more efficient delivery of information should allow business coaches – including growth partners like me – to focus our time on personalization and application.
Ultimately, AI is doing to business coaching what it is doing to everything else: automating low-value activities. That will allow coaches to spend more time on the things that provide higher value. Which is good news for every coach…except those that only provide low value.
Do you need someone to help you apply the information you already have to the specifics of your business in order to achieve some kind of transformation? Reach out and let me know.