Coaching, AI and CFI’s position

Friends, I would like to talk about coaching, artificial intelligence and CFI’s position on this subject.

Maybe a year ago when there was a strong emerging evidence that artificial intelligence will play an increasingly strong role in coaching. Many of us at CFI went through a range of thoughts and emotions.

At one level, being deeply humanistic and believing in the personalized nature of our work, asked ourselves, how can AI play a role and should it? At another level, we realized the power of artificial intelligence and its inevitable attraction to individuals, both coaches and coaches, in embracing it. At a third level, as coaches, we are constantly coaching leaders to be adaptive, to respond to changes positively. And we told ourselves that we should practice that ourselves.

So a year later, I must say that we are in a fairly good place on this subject. What have we done?

We first set up a study group to understand artificial intelligence, to understand what role it can play in coaching. The study group consisting of many members of the CFI community put together an outstanding report, shared it with all role holders in CFI, at the end of which we were able to take a position on what artificial intelligence can and should mean to coaching and CFI.

At one level, we believe that AI can help coaches be more efficient in the work they do. It is possible that AI can also help coaches be more effective in the work they do. At a third level, we believe that because we are dealing with individuals, data protection, privacy, confidentiality, safety are extremely important and we need to have very strong guardrails to ensure that we do not cause any unintended harm.

Today, we have a strong ethical code on how we will embrace AI with responsibility. The foundation of which is that we will inform clients, we will inform coaches, we will ensure that they have the veto power in the use of AI. We have also launched a program to help coaches learn to use AI with a certain level of mastery and responsibility because ignorance can cause fear.

Knowledge and expertise can only help us do it with responsibility and competence. Today, we are in a position where we continue to celebrate the uniqueness that we as coaches bring but also recognize the value that AI can offer to a coach as an aid and as a support in the work that they do.

At a deeper level, I believe we have learned to adapt to what we believe is a significantly disruptive technological development and we feel quite proud about it.

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/QXbqQZtOZ0c