Coaching in a digital age : can a working alliance form between coachee and coaching app?

The field of coaching could be seen as a late entrant in appreciating the potential that technology can help to play in the delivery of successful outcomes for individuals seeking support. The advent of new digital communication modalities, alongside the development of artificial intelligence, particularly the advancement of natural language processing algorithms, provides the opportunity for technologists to work in partnership with the coaching field to develop new methods of delivering coaching services. The aim of this study was to investigate whether a working alliance can develop between coachee and an artificial agent, and through this agency deliver positive outcomes. Research to date suggests that a good working alliance is a predictor of positive coaching outcomes. One coaching outcome which seems to be the focus of corporations at present is that of helping employees build selfresilience, which is seen as having a positive impact on an employee’s ability to handle stressful situations. This research seeks to consider whether a working alliance can develop between an artificial agent employing coaching tools and a coachee. The 48 volunteers participated and were given access to WYSA, an AI-based mental well-being chatbot app (“coaching app”) over an eight-week period. Participants’ self-resilience and working alliance was tested, using known Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) (Horvath and Greenberg, 1989) and Self-Resilience (SR) (Naswall et al., 2015) measures, before and after the quasi-experiment, providing the quantitative data. Semistructured qualitative interviews explored how the user’s engaged with the app and also examined the concept of working alliance with the technology and whether they believed their self-resilience improved. The results from the quantitative analysis, Wilcoxon signed rank test, showed that despite no statistical change in working alliance with the coaching app during the testing period, the majority (80%) of participants’ self-resilience improved, with a large effect size (r=.61). In the results from the qualitative thematic analysis of post quasi-experiment, expressions of hope, positivity and motivation were more frequently observed. The results from the convergence of quantitative and qualitative findings provided elements of coherence: that working alliance did not develop, yet without this agency, self-resilience did improve in the majority of participants. The study suggests that digital technologies can provide specific support through coaching techniques and have the potential to democratise coaching. However, these forms of technology, using artificial intelligence, lack sufficient contextual responses to widely engage users, but arguably do provide an opportunity for coachees to experience specific skills coaching. In addition it could be an opportunity for coaches, through adoption of such technologies, to augment their coaching practices.

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Year dc:date

2020

Author dc:creator

• Ellis-Brush, Kevin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Iordanou, Ioanna
• Jackson, Peter
• Crook, Nigel

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/4tee-hp33

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:b03b0fb5-05ba-49ce-a9ef-8d82b64c0005:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1