Will AI wreck your business coaching practice?

Try spending some time interacting with an AI platform like ChatGPT whilst pretending to be a business owner with the kind of problems you help them address (scalability, systemisation, delegation, structure and so on).  I anticipate that you will be impressed with the answers you get.

If you are stuck for questions then try:

  • "Why do I feel overworked as a business owner?"
  • "Give me a method for systemising my business"
  • "How do I improve my sales process?"

How do the answers compare to the ones you would give?  I anticipate that you would be pretty happy to give these answers yourself.

Does that mean business coaches and consultants like you are out of a job?  I don't think so - not yet.

The information provided by AI systems is already available to business owners, on Google, in books and in blogs.  AI reduces the effort required to locate and correlate it (and, I understand, will extrapolate to provide original answers), but if access to information was all that was required for business owners to improve their business then we (coaches and consultants) would have been out of a job long ago.

As a business coach, what is it that you provide beyond information that separates you from AI?

Here's a model you can use.  Let's call the first dimesion the "Business owner improving her business" process (omitting repetitions and feedback):

  1. Recognise the problem
  2. Imagine a solution
  3. Formulate the question
  4. Understand the answer
  5. Plan and organise the change
  6. Successfully execute the change

Here's the other dimension of the model - a list of capabilities our business owner might need in order to make change happen, again, omitting linkages for clarity:

  • Imagination
  • Knowledge
  • Intelligence
  • Leadership
  • Organisation
  • Confidence

Picture these two lista forming a matrix.  "Understand the answer" requires strength in, say, intelligence, imagination and knowledge.  "Successfully execute the change" might require strength in leadership, organisation and confidence, and so on.

As a coach you must not only provide the necessary information but also help their client overcome any deficiencies in their ability to follow the change process - to fill the gaps in the matrix.  You must to provide support, encouragement and focus whilst your client struggles with the practicalities of changing a live business.

It seems likely that true AI that can provide something akin to business coaching will emerge.  But for now, AI seems like a great way to make your life easier and help you focus on where your value as a coach lies.

Based on an original article on my website www.nickbettes.com

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