As the practice of personal and professional development continues to evolve, the decision of whether an AI (artificial-intelligence) coach such as Dr FeelGood or an offline, human coach is right for you requires careful thought. Both options have relative strengths and limitations to consider. For support, someone to check in with, or to offer empathy through text (at a specific date and time), an AI coach might fill the bill. If you need a personalised service, someone available at all hours for a real-time conversation, or an individual who will understand your emotions on a visceral level, then an offline coach might be the better choice.
Personalization in Coaching
A human coach, by contrast, can adapt the coaching style to the individual’s circumstances, read beneath the words, and offer personal, adaptive strategies that are specific to an individual’s emotional and situational context, which can result in a deeply specific, contextualised form of coaching.
By contrast, an AI coach such as Dr. FeelGood can draw on data from large populations to provide personalisation at scale. It can identify patterns and preferences over time and make recommendations and reminders that feel tailored to you. An AI might not be able to offer the emotional understanding or subjective context that you get from a human coach, but its data-driven insights could be surprisingly helpful for crafting a personalised development plan.
Availability and Consistency
Second, AI coaches are easily available. Because they are always on and online, they can offer help on demand. This immediacy can be critical when it comes to helping you stay motivated and improving, especially for those with erratic schedules. 4:0† source For instance, a counsellor could use a chatbot to provide support and direction for their clients.
Human coaches are at the mercy of logistical constraints – their time is limited to scheduled sessions and, in an emergency, clients might have to reschedule, halting their momentum. However, for those who would benefit from a more sustained, heart-to-heart dialogue, the disadvantage could be worth overcoming.
Empathy and Emotional Insight
Empathy is a key ingredient of successful coaching. When we humans coach, we tend to use empathy unconsciously to put another person at ease and build up trust, creating a safe space for the coachee to share their fears, hopes and failures. The human coach can intuitively shift gears and tailor their coaching depending on the emotional cues from the other person’s body language. This can lead to a more dynamic response and allows things to move much faster, often ending up in breakthrough insights.
Unlike humans, an AI coach will answer these questions using algorithms that only mimic empathy, potentially making their responses seem wooden or inauthentic to some users. Dr Feelgood might be brilliant at getting users to keep exercising (every little win does count!) but has no innate emotional intelligence for nuancing each interaction – which, as any third-party support-giver knows, can be vital to dealing with the tricky inner landscape that many coachees will have.
The Strengths of each Coaching Style
Where humans excel as coaches is in long-term planning, and in tackling deeply rooted (and often sensitive) issues that need empathy, confidentiality and humane judgments, among other things. Humans can also, if necessary, appropriately modify methodologies, and provide continuous, evolving support.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, AI coaches are at their best in areas of routine encouragement and basic behaviour tracking: they can process large amounts of data, help to pinpoint and highlight habits and trends that otherwise might not be easy for an individual to spot, and are completely judgement-free when it comes to hearing about your goals, or setbacks, that might make you blush to share with a fellow human. 4.0 ^dBsource.
Considerations on Weaknesses
Human coaches might have all the empathy and intuition in the world, but areas that they fail in include the ability to be consistently objective, neutral and available. Not to mention that the amount of data that one human is able to handle is limited, so some insights tend more to experience and intuition, rather than thorough data analysis.
AI coaches can be persistent and available, but they can’t go very deep emotionally, nor manage the vagaries of complicated, human feelings. They might miss important emotional needs outside of their programming.
Conclusion: Which is Right for You?
Ultimately, whether to go with an AI or a human coach comes down to your needs and your goals. If you have a busy schedule and plan to be constantly available, and if you’re comfortable with data-driven insights, then Dr FeelGood or any AI coach can be a great choice. However, if you need someone to be truly empathetic and you’re dealing with complex areas of your life, then a human coach is more likely to help your journey. Of course, there might be people who will prefer to have a holistic view on it and opt for a combination of the two most effective approaches – combining the power of empathy and human touch as well as AI efficiency, to go only where one delivers more value for the growth ambitions of an individual.