How to Benefit from AI Coaching

Sep 30

Your next coach might be AI, and it’s ok. The question is: How can you make the most of it?

AI coaching is swiftly moving into the coaching industry. More organizations are adopting AI coaching every day, and more employees at all levels are turning to it for support.

Research on the outcomes of AI coaching is promising but mixed. While AI coaching helps with goal attainment, it does not create the same sense of connection: even if there is an experience of a positive bond formed with AI, oxytocin is not produced (oxytocin plays a role in stress regulation, psychological safety, a sense of connection and belonging).

Still, a well-calibrated AI coach can be a better option compared to ‘no coaching at all’. AI coaches excel at structure, availability, and breadth. They’re tireless, judgment-free, and always ready with another angle to explore.

How do you get the most from AI coaching?

Leaders: Treat AI coaching as your brainstorming partner.

Engage AI coaches for structured support, fast just-in-time iteration, judgment-free feedback, and safe reflection. For example, use it to:
•   Prepare for difficult conversations. Role-play scenarios with a resistant peer or a disengaged team member and practice how you might respond.
•   Work through decisions. Lay out your options and ask the AI to stress-test each one from multiple perspectives, such as financial impact, customer perspectives, and employee experience.
•   Build self-awareness. Use AI coaching for regular reflection, tracking what energizes or drains you, and how you respond in different situations. Over time, patterns will emerge, allowing you to gain deeper insight into your behavior.
•   Strengthen leadership skills. Review scenarios of common leadership challenges like delegation, feedback, and recognition, and find effective approaches that fit your personal style.

HR and OD Professionals: Position AI coaching as an accessible development tool.

AI coaching should be framed as a practical extension of human coaching. It can serve as an on-ramp to coaching, helping employees clarify what they need and how coaching can support them. Organizations can benefit from AI coaching by:
•   Expanded access to coaching. Many employees will never have a human coach. AI gives them an approachable, non-judgmental space to reflect and practice.
•   Blended formats. Use AI tools to support day-to-day growth, paired with human coaching for depth and transformation.
•   Surfaced insights. Anonymized patterns from AI coaching conversations can highlight workforce-wide themes like stress, communication gaps, or recurring leadership challenges.

At the end of the day, the real value of coaching is not in providing more answers, but in helping clients find confidence in their choices and experience clarity they can trust. Human coaches do this best, but AI coaches can still play a meaningful role in getting you there.

The bottom line: even though AI coach won’t make the hard calls for you (to be fair, neither will the human coach), with the right prompts it can help you sharpen your thinking, improve your skills, and help you be prepared better.

How are you thinking of weaving AI coaching into your development strategy? Please share your thoughts, as I'm cuirous what's working for you and where you see the limits (for now).

With gratitude,

Alina
Dr. Alina Bas, PCC
Executive Coach & Strategist
Adjunct Professor, NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science
https://AlinaBas.com/schedule
Alina@AlinaBas.com

NEWS & UPDATES

This semester, I also get to do one of my favorite things: teach at NYU Graduate School of Arts in Science, in Industrial / Organizational Psychology Master's program. The course is called Personnel Selection, and let me tell you: the textbooks cannot keep up fast enough with the changes that are happening in the Talent Acquisition industry these days. Very exciting.

In the summer, I got to teach some exciting workshops including Intuition: Myths, Science, and Practice, which was open to the public, and Emotional Intelligence in Action: Cultivating Awareness and Executive Presence, for the Emerging Leader Program for geographically distributed managers within the transportation industry. Could the leaders in your organization benefit from similar programs? Let's discuss what may work for your company.

I've listened to and read quite a bit last summer, and shared some of my favorites here: https://www.alinabas.com/blog/do-people-still-need-people Now, I am reading a fantastic book about intuition written by Dr. Laura Huang, a Harvard (now Northeastern) academic whom I've cited many times. I agree with her on many points, and having this book out there paves the way for my academic and practitioner work on intuition.

I would love to hear what you are up to these days. And if you want to talk shop and get me to do coaching or leadership development for your organization, let's talk about it as well.