The Future of Coaching

REDEFINING THE EXPERIENCE AND PROMISE OF EXECUTIVE COACHING

BY NATALIYA ADELSON, PH.D. & JONATHAN KIRSCHNER, PSY.D.

AIIR Consulting creates business results for organizations by increasing the performance of leaders. AIIR’s services include Executive Coaching, Team Effectiveness, Leadership Pipeline Development, Talent & Culture Advisory, and Talent Development Technologies.

To learn more, visit us at www.aiirconsulting.com

The World has changed In this era of economic uncertainty and disruptive innovation, leaders have come to expect nothing and to over-prepare for everything, in anticipation of the unknown. Since the 1980s, the speed of technological innovation, proliferation of new technologies, and declining costs of transportation have hastened us toward a borderless world. At the click of a button, leaders, teams, and organizations can connect across the world, making the challenges of geography and distance irrelevant. More recently, the functionality of mobile devices and the rapid evolution of apps have allowed individuals to access work continuously and fluidly, unencumbered by the traditional boundaries of the nine-to-five workday. The ubiquity of the Internet also faces us with an exponential influx of information. As business supply chains grow more global yet more interconnected, leaders and executives increasingly harness the power of technology to create new products and services, achieve greater operational efficiency and speed, and reduce costs.

As of 2015, Millennials represented just over 34% of the US labor market, followed in turn by Generation X (~ 34%) and Baby Boomers

(29%). If initial forecasts are any indication, the influx of Millennials is just getting started. By the year 2025, Millennials will account for approximately 75% of the US workforce. Each generational shift to date has heralded a fundamental set of values and beliefs distinct from those of the previous generation. Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, for example, prefer vertical hierarchies with high power distance, whereas Millennials value interdependence and collaboration, reflected in flat organizations with low power distance.

The largest segments of today’s workforce, Millennials and Generation Xers, both value freedom in their work schedules and the ease of collaboration and information sharing offered by technology. With a growing segment of contingent, part-time, and virtual workers, companies have completely revamped the traditional workforce paradigm. The constraints of physical location and time of day are increasingly minimized and office bound, nine-to-five workdays are being replaced by more flexible workplace policies. The ability to connect anytime and anywhere to dialogue, share information, and collaborate on projects has become the reality of daily work routines.

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REDEFINING THE EXPERIENCE AND PROMISE OF EXECUTIVE COACHING

Executive Coaching: The Path to Progress Virtual coaching, which emerged in the 2000s, is defined as a “formal one-on-one” relationship between a coach and a client, in which the client and coach collaborate using technology to assess and understand the client and his or her leadership development needs, to challenge current constraints while exploring new possibilities, and to ensure accountability and support for reaching goals and sustaining development (Ting & Hart 2004, p. 116). The popularity of virtual coaching is reflected in the multiple studies undertaken to measure its prevalence and efficacy. The evidence supports what most coaches knew all along: that virtual coaching can be as effective as traditional face-to-face coaching.

In the beginning, virtual coaching was conducted by telephone. According to a 2009 ICF research report, telephone-based coaching constituted 47% of all coaching sessions. Since then, the use of the telephone in coaching has continued to rise, and today many coaching practices are built exclusively around phone delivery. While the cost effectiveness and availability of phone coaching are obvious, there are limitations. The absence of a visual connection and the inability to discern non-verbal cues and gestures during telephone sessions limit the coach’s ability to access and diagnose the

coachee’s emotional states. The client, in turn, receives incomplete sensory input when the coach provides feedback during a session. Leaders and executives with visual informational processing and learning preferences thus find phone-based coaching less than optimal. Studies have shown that that 55% of communication input is due to body language (Mehrabian & Wiener 1967 and Mehrabian & Ferris 1967), bolstering the case for the importance of visual communication.

The Evolution of Coaching Technology With the proliferation of new communication technologies, virtual coaching options have also expanded, enriching the depth of

communication options available to executive coaches and their clients. The most prominent shift has been the inclusion of visual pathways through consumer-based video conferencing technologies such as Skype, ooVoo, Google Hangouts, and most recently FaceTime. These video conferencing

technologies introduced visual feedback into the practice of virtual coaching and provide a deeper relational experience. While this presents a considerable advance from telephone-based coaching, consumer-based video conferencing has its own limitations. Jitter (video choppiness due to an irregular flow of electronic packets), audio/visual latency (delays in the transmission of electrical packets), echo, and degraded resolution tend to diminish user experience. Feature overload




The absence of a visual connection and the inability to discern non-verbal cues and gestures during telephone sessions limit the coach’s ability to access and diagnose the coachee’s emotional states. The client, in turn, receives incomplete sensory input when the coach provides feedback during a session.

on some of the interfaces further distracts from a clear, real-time connection experience by offering tangential “tools.”

Telepresence technology uses HD video conferencing technology to offer greater audio-visual clarity than Skype and similar platforms, and a real-time connection that allows for a truly immersive experience during a coaching session. This is made possible by the “media richness” or breadth of sensory engagement, which in turn enables a deep emotional connection accompanied by a synchronous information exchange between coach and coachee. Telepresence-based executive coaching thus simulates for participants the impression of physical presence despite being in different locations. Not only does telepresence-based coaching provide a rich and satisfying client experience, it is more economical, eco-friendly, and practical, as

well. Most importantly, the virtual connection created by telepresence technology allows for the formation of trust between coach and coachee – a key requirement for effective coaching engagement and its accompanying behavioral change.

Because it uses device-agnostic technology, telepresence coaching eliminates the need to set up a separate meeting or take the time to meet with a coach in a separate conference room. Rather, the client can access coaching sessions on the same laptop or iPad that is used to perform other tasks, allowing for the seamless integration of executive coaching into the client’s routine. This change in the mode of delivery further helps coaches to reduce resistance to the coaching process by making it an organic part of the workday. The overarching goal of telepresence coaching technology is to create a real-life experience of




Telepresence Coaching from a tablet, PC or a VTC room system

coaching, provide ease-of-access, reduce disruption to the flow of work, and reduce the costs associated with face-to-face coaching for individual executives and their teams.

Technological advances are also providing coaches and their clients with new ways to harness and organize information. For example, asynchronous means of communication like email and text messages, which occur over time, rather than being instantaneous, can be used to follow-up or “check-in” between coaching sessions. Email- and text-based communication thus can enrich and bolster the continuity of development between sessions. This helps to deepen the learning process and increase the probability of sustained behavioral change by bolstering the conversion of short-term memory into habitual, long-term memory.

Enter the Coaching Zone™ Today’s business leader lives and works in an age of hyper-connectivity with access to a constant flow of information. Immersive telepresence, short text conversations, email dialogue, and content-sharing all contribute to executive coaching; however, the concurrent use of so many avenues for communication can also create information fragmentation and overload, through the existence of multiple logins and locations for information storage, for example.

AIIR Consulting designed the Coaching Zone™ to centralize these various types of synchronous and asynchronous communication modalities. With the Coaching Zone™, coach and client can both log in to a shared, confidential, cloud-based platform from any computer or device. Once there, clients can go straight to their coaching notes to view a summary of their last session, chat with their coach via text, or launch a telepresence session, all in the same environment. The Coaching Zone™ goes beyond the expected “media” platform by offering both coach and coachee additional capabilities, such as real-time collaboration and document sharing. The availability of these “productivity tools” is invaluable to corporate executives, who are used to having the latest

technology at their fingertips to support the achievement of business objectives and to communicate with their teams. The end result is streamlined, immersive,

and life-like executive coaching, which once experienced cannot be easily forgotten.




AIIR Consulting designed the Coaching Zone™ to centralize these various types of synchronous and asynchronous communication modalities.

The Future of Coaching The most advanced coaching platforms available today – like The Coaching Zone™ – streamline the complementary modalities of synchronous and asynchronous communication, so that business leaders have a rich, immersive experience that is congruent with twenty-first-century operating styles and needs. This has created immense efficiency and cost savings, while at the same bolstering coaching outcomes by accelerating development. This is the cutting edge of coaching today, but where will future technologies take executive coaching tomorrow?

We predict that five trends in technology will mature and enhance the evolution and impact of executive coaching:

1. Virtual Reality (VR): In VR-based executive coaching, a real executive coach will use his or her avatar to coach, deliver feedback, or in some way “interact” with a coachee. As with all things virtual, the VR-based coaching will not happen in a real business setting but will take place in a virtual reality.

2. Internet of Things: Sensors in our watches, clothes, and various mobile devices will provide health data, biofeedback, and relevant analytics that will guide the pursuit of attaining sustained high performance.

3. Big Data Analytics: New technology will enable us to take all the data we collect on ourselves, our teams, and our organizations, and harness this information to achieve a stronger competitive advantage. IBM’s Watson computer is a good example of what Big Data Analytics can do.




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4. Automation: Most of us have met them by now. Known as the “chatbots” or just “bots,” they are the new automated agents popping up in the user interface universe and making their way into health, hospitality, IT customer support, and other industries. Can bots do better than a customer support representative or a health counselor? The answer depends on the complexity of the task. In situations where information is shared or algorithm-based problem solving is concerned, the bots seem to be gaining recognition.

5. Artificial Intelligence: New advancements in AI will give today’s bots more “personality” and broaden the range of their capabilities. One wonders if bots will one day be able to replace executive coaches. Since coaching is not “linear,” but rather a highly creative activity akin to an art, based on a combination of scientific knowledge and business experience, it may take a while before AI-equipped “coaches” become as good as humans.

We live in a world of rapidly evolving technologies that continuously influence the way we work, pushing our systems to become better, faster, and cheaper. With global coaching providers such as AIIR Consulting championing the cause, business leaders, executive coaches, executive leaders, and HROs are well positioned to benefit from the rapid innovation of disruptive technology. We are just beginning to understand the dynamics of human-computer interaction and some of the risks involved in fully outsourcing simpler types of coaching to AI in a not-so-distant future. However, in today’s world of ceaseless change and innovation, one constant is high-performance leadership. Executive coaches must adapt and push the limit on everything we know while staying focused on the timeless principles of creating sustained behavioral change. The future is now!

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Also contributing to this article was AIIR Consulting’s contributing editor Sarah Town.

Nataliya Adelson, Ph.D. | Senior Consultant | AIIR Consulting, [email protected]

Dr. Nataliya Adelson is a Senior Consultant with AIIR Consulting in the NYC area. She is a business psychologist with particular expertise in leadership development, executive coaching, and the application of technology in coaching.

Jonathan Kirschner, Psy.D. | Founder and CEO of AIIR Consulting, [email protected]

Jonathan Kirschner is the founder and CEO of AIIR Consulting. His is based in the Philadelphia area. As a business psychologist, coach, entrepreneur and technologist, Jonathan is passionate about creating value for leaders, their teams, and their organizations.

To learn more about how you can optimize you can infuse technology into your coaching and Leadership Development strategy, visit us at www.aiirconsulting.com

Authors

Copyright © 2016 AIIR Consulting, LLC. All rights reserved.

http://www.aiirconsulting.com

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Copyright © 2016 AIIR Consulting, LLC. All rights reserved.

AIIR Consulting creates business results for organizations by increasing the performance of leaders. AIIR’s services include Executive Coaching, Team Effectiveness, Leadership Pipeline Development, Talent & Culture Advisory, and Talent Development Technologies. To learn more, visit us at www.aiirconsulting.com

AIIR Consulting Technologies Include:

TELEPRESENCE COACHING



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