Will having a niche protect coaches against AI?

I've been watching the development of technologies more closely than most for a while, but I'd have had to have been living under a rock to miss the way artificial intelligence has been impacting the world over the past couple of years. The free-flowing conversations on virtually any topic currently on offer from the ChatGPTs of this world are just the beginning of a technological wave that's starting to profoundly disrupt pretty much every industry, coaching included.

It's no wonder, therefore, that many coaches have been asking themselves the question: "How do I protect my practice from being eliminated by low-priced AI?"

I've asked myself that question, and thought I ought to write something about it while listening to an episode of the excellent Lifting the Lid on Coaching Supervision podcast, with Clare Norman MCC and Steve Ridgley . Yannick Jacob was the guest, and was speaking about how a coach needs to understand who they are, which will ultimately present itself as their niche.

Market wisdom has said for some time that having a niche as a coach is the best way to get clients, and it makes sense. Someone needing a coach because they're entering their first board role is much more likely to want to work with a coach who talks a lot about first board roles that one who doesn't. But it can feel difficult to paint oneself into a corner as a coach because, philosophically at least, when our coaching is non-directive in theory we have the capability to coach anyone.

But - perhaps - that thinking needs to be revisited with the onset of accessible AI coaches like AIcoach.chat. AI coaches entirely remove the ability for independent coaches to outcompete through being the lowest price; does that mean defining a niche has become more important than ever, or does the superior level of information an AI has access to done away with the idea of having a niche?

How to pick a plumber

I was trying to think this through and was reminded of the thought process I'd engaged in a few months ago, when one of the taps in my kitchen sink starting dripping. I tried to find a plumber to help me out. The first person I spoke to explained that he was confident he'd be able to sort the problem, but the second spoke so specifically about the technicalities of taps that I had no option other than to give him the work.

That's why defining a niche has worked historically. It's probably true that the first plumber would have done just as good a job - it might have even been done better - but the second plumber's niche brought a level of confidence that led to a straightforward decision.

While AI language models can generate reams of generalised coaching content pulled from models available in books and websites, they haven't had access to the most obscure (some might use the word niche) information that doesn't appear on the internet. A lot of the personal experience one gains through grinding one's way through a profession isn't captured anywhere that would have been used to train AI models.

That personal experience is what's always made the difference in defining a niche. For a long time I worked in professional services on assurance projects, and as a result have found it very straightforward to build rapport with coaching clients in roles within Risk, Compliance and Internal Audit. I understand their role within the governance structure and the challenges they face, like how they need to communicate with authority on everything from cyber threats to ESG compliance without being a true expert in any of them. That provides a good grounding for our coaching work that even the best AIs can't hope to achieve.

For the foreseeable future, AI coaching can't replicate the experience of having been there. As humans, we communicate simply through our presence that I understand you. It's one thing for an AI to robotically synthesise generic responses, and quite another for a human to compassionately understand a journey they've been on themselves. "It's tough having to downgrade an audit report" spoken by a machine effectively sounds like "Humans, am I right?"

Is the trick to lean into humanness as our niche?

As AI capabilities expand further the ability to present ever-more-convincing illusions will only grow. As it does that, our awareness of what humans can uniquely provide ought to also develop. In my own practice, as conversations are occasionally initiated based on something I've written on AI, the metaverse and blockchain, I've ended up working with a fair few leaders in organisations actively being impacted by not only AI and disruptive innovation, but also the climate crisis and political unrest. While "dealing with volatility" has inadvertently become my niche as a result, what I've learned is that the extremely human attributes of creativity, resilience and personal reinvention and rediscovery are what we end up leaning into. These are the sorts of qualities that transcend AI paradigms and increasingly convince me that we're not at all close to seeing AI truly replace humans in these sorts of areas.

AI can't draw from personal experience. It can't sense and feel in the way we can. It does have what feels like limitless knowledge - far greater than any human has - and will continually improve in its ability to simulate true emotional intelligence, but the ability to take that to a felt level of abstraction and make sense of the human experience is a superb niche. AIs beat humans at information but not at wisdom.

I'm therefore concluding that having a coaching specialism, backed up by context-driven expertise, will extend the amount of time our roles remain defensible and differentiated from AI. Leaning into our unique experiences in leadership and deeply personal, emotional topics (like trauma, mental health, menopause and social mobility) will ensure we remain relevant.

That doesn't mean we do it once and draw a line under it! Even if we do specialise we still have the responsibility to continually evolve our coaching by understanding the latest thinking, always questioning our assumptions, and staying up-to-date with what technology is capable of.

More than all of that, however, it's the magic of the human touch that will never be made obsolete by AI.