Traditional coaching has always had a significant bottleneck: One skilled leader could have a team of 15, 30, sometimes 40 people. No matter how good the coach, there’s only so much time in the day. Most companies have accepted that constraint as a fixed cost of doing business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s changing with the arrival of AI coaching. But should businesses focus on one over the other? Not necessarily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Research<\/a> suggests that both approaches work. Each has its own strengths, but in many cases, they complement each other rather than compete. Where AI coaching makes daily practice accessible and scalable, human coaches bring the judgment that complex, high-stakes moments demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a recent BetterUp<\/a> study, 51% of employees said they\u2019d be interested in a hybrid of both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The real question for business leaders is which one to deploy, and when, so you amplify the outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Human coaches bring what no algorithm can replicate. They can sense the politics of a reorg, find the right tone for a hard conversation, or help someone think through a career decision they haven’t fully put into words yet. That kind of judgment takes human expertise, which comes from lived experience and an instinctive read on the people involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trick is, human-to-human coaching doesn’t always scale easily, and it isn’t cheap. Take TEKsystems, which hires around 350 new sales development reps a year, most of them stepping into complex, global IT sales with limited experience. Getting those reps ready to talk to customers used to depend almost entirely on sales coaching time with their direct leaders for roleplays and pitch reviews. But the leaders were each managing 15 to 40 direct reports across more than 100 locations. The cost of their expert time was high and there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to give every new rep the coaching they needed to gain confidence quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expert time is only getting more valuable. Every coaching moment needs to count. <\/p>\n\n\n\n AI coaching today is a mix of conversational guidance and structured practice. A sales rep runs a pitch against an AI coach that responds like a real prospect, pushes back with objections, and gives immediate feedback on tone and clarity. A new manager talks through a tough feedback conversation with an AI coach, then gets pointers on what to say differently next time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s exactly what makes it useful for daily practice. It’s available at 11 p.m. the night before a big presentation or ten minutes before that really important client call. It doesn’t get tired of running the same roleplay ten times in a row, and it gives feedback right away instead of at the next scheduled check-in. There\u2019s more freedom to fail without judgment, no matter how poor the attempt was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Employees appreciate the accessibility and added psychological safety. In a recent Conference Board survey<\/a>, 91% of employees who’d tried AI-based coaching said they’d use it again, and 96% said the coaching felt personalized to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next frontier is proactive coaching, or AI that reaches out before you need it. Degreed’s AI Labs team is testing this with Invisible, an experimental AI coach that messages someone ahead of a high-stakes moment, like a big meeting on their calendar, to prompt practice and discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHuman Coaching At Work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
AI Coaching At Work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n