Overheard among CoachAccountable users contemplating how they could use AI in their coaching:
…I’ve experimented with a few note keeping tools but want to see what/if I can integrate into CA so that actions falling out of conversations can potentially be generated more easily
Regular readers in this space will know that I’m leery of incorporating AI into coaching for several reasons, and this particular use case reveals yet another.
To see why, let’s back up.
In this earlier missive titled “Make Sure Your Clients Own the Action Plan”, I illustrate the difference in how we all relate to orders that came down from on high versus a plan we cooked up ourselves.
Now, if we’re not talking about something our boss or commanding officer told us, we tend to resist the former, and are naturally more bought into the latter.
So now we’re considering action plans that are automatically generated based on conversations.
Imagine how easy it is to discount an action plan that you knew was generated by AI? Assume 100% accuracy (lol), your coach gives you an action plan that no one bothered to type up. Not you, not your coach. This is just what came out of a recording of a conversation. Things that were said, without anyone exerting any effort to deem any parts as commit-worthy, are now presented to you as YOUR plan of action.
Whatever inaccuracies in such a plan would be easily written off. But then the line separating technological failures and “This is hard and I got confronted and so I don’t wanna do it” gets SUPER blurry. If AI generated the plan, no one’s truly responsible for the plan, so the plan has diminished power.
All to save, what, two minutes? Four?
If it was always and only getting done faster, the best symphonies would be one measure long. The best books would be single paragraph summaries.
We take time with these things because of what gets created within the person experiencing them.
Taking time to mindfully craft an action plan creates things that give power to the plan itself. Creates a belief that it is worth doing. Creates clarity and refinement of what is most worth doing, and in what order. Creates a sense of ownership of the promises implied (“I will do X by such-and-such date, I will do Y by…”).
If AI can save you that time, on the surface that’s great, because who doesn’t like to have more time freed up? But it misses the point of what taking that time gives you. And even if AI’s output is just a starting point, just a leg up that will be manually reviewed and refined, all of that still goes away. Because the better that AI output is, the more it will be merely skimmed and rubber stamped as good and done.
Saving time is the booby prize.
