Technology & Coaching: Friends or Foes?
As 2026 planning gets underway every department in an organization is talking about how technology, specifically AI, might improve processes, might drive efficiencies and ultimately might lead to better outcomes.
Learning and development is no exception. In fact, conversations about technology within learning started before COVID and really accelerated when all training switched to a virtual format. It’s led to a lot of learning in the last five years about what works and what doesn’t. And it creates the question that teams considering coaching need to consider:
Do technology and coaching go hand-in-hand or does the value of one negate the value of the other?
Our work on AI storytelling has helped many leaders and companies build understanding of what AI actually is and how it will play out in different ways and across different processes. We think of it as selling to the outcome and painting a clear picture of the end result. That’s how you get people aligned for the effort and work that may be required to get there.
Technology in coaching is a similar comparison. If you think through the outcome you want coaching to deliver, you’ll make better decisions about how technology partners with coaching.
But that wasn’t the approach five years ago. When the outcome was about finding ways to keep people involved in learning, technology served its purpose well. Give employees access to a platform, and they can find resources and short-form courses on many different topics. But as development goals have reset, giving people access to learning doesn’t seem to be enough. And that’s why many organizations are rethinking how they leverage coaching and technology together.
While the big coaching platforms provide coaching to everyone, anywhere and at any time, it comes at a cost of continuity and expertise. When the priority is reaching everyone, technology wins. When the priority is getting results, the 1:1 relationship with a consistent coach is essential. And in most companies, it’s a combination of both objectives reached in different ways that seems to be the best choice.
Specific to communication coaching, technology is very limited. There are innovative AI tools in the market that are exploring ways to assess the habits of a speaker– the number of um’s, the pace of speech, eye movement, etc. But it can’t adjust the habits, and that leaves a communicator with awareness of bad habits but little direction on new ones. More importantly, the emerging tools leave out the most essential ingredient of effective communication, the listener.
Communication is about influence and impact and less about preset patterns of voice modulation. In fact, when coaching focuses only on patterns for a communicator, you’re training to a standardized model rather than someone’s unique skills and strengths. And while it may be efficient, you won’t get great adoption or outcomes. For the best results, coaches and technology need to work together.
Consider these three Cs that we use to blend technology into our practice:
CONFIDENCE – The starting point of measuring results is a participant’s own feeling of confidence and competence about a new skill. We use technology to measure a starting point and end point. Regardless of frequency of sessions or activities someone does through an app, if someone isn’t feeling more confident, they won’t invest the time to strengthen a skill. Technology can track that measure and encourage an individual to see progress.
The coach notices the nuances that technology misses. A participant may say they feel more confident, but a coach can read the non-verbals and the subtle input that suggests the competency isn’t coming through. Working together, technology can give a coach added insights to enrich the engagement.
CONSISTENCY – To develop an effective communicator, you focus less on the occasional home run and more on consistent base hits. That’s when you know that skills are being adopted and adapted into an individual’s approach. A coach hears the results of different settings but doesn’t always see the progress first-hand.
Technology can complete the picture. Video recordings of live events taken from the perspective of a listener can help us assess how the communicator came across and how the listener felt in response to the message. Over a series of recordings, we’re tracking more than the habits of a communicator. We’re getting to group response and engagement with a communicator.
COMMUNITY – Videotaping opens the door to the listeners’ perspective which is the most accurate measurement of ROI. A communicator needs a 360 view to continue to assess and understand impressions.
Over longer engagements with high-profile leaders, we build a feedback loop to capture impressions after high-visibility events. This allows us to blend response to the communicator’s style as well as effectiveness of a communicator’s message. And on all engagements, we can add a pre and post assessment to measure how a communicator’s community is feeling about impact and takeaways.
Again, technology helps us blend anecdotal feedback with measured and tracked impressions. The coach leads the engagement, and technology adds the supporting inputs to validate impact.
So…is technology a friend or foe of coaching?
I would say a great friend, as long as you leverage the strengths of both to better outcomes. AI itself has a great term for how to think about technology in coaching: human in the loop.
Essentially it means keep the coach front and center and focused on guiding adaptable changes for an individual. Leverage technology to track improvement or catch the lack of it across a coaching engagement.
If you’re considering the role of technology in your L&D plans, we’d love to help you consider how you balance efficiencies with outcomes. And specific to communication, how technology and coaches can work together to deliver an impressive ROI.
Also Read: Communicating the Value & Impact of AI
