Work Smart Series: Evaluating AI Coaching From Human to Agentic

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing what coaching can look like, and coaches and organizations need to know where it adds real value, where human judgement remains essential, and what kind of risks need to be managed. The session will give I/O psychologists, practitioners, and business leaders a practical framework for navigating these decisions. Through real-world demonstrations and an enterprise case, participants will learn how to distinguish between different AI coaching models, evaluate tools, identify appropriate use cases and safeguards, and make more evidence-based decisions about how AI can support coaching and leadership development in their own organizations.

This session examines where AI belongs in coaching across a continuum from human-led to AI-augmented, AI-enabled, and agentic approaches. Participants will see two demonstrations of AI-augmented coaching tools and examine an enterprise deployment of an AI coach. Throughout the session, they will use an evaluative lens to judge evidence, data privacy and confidentiality, ethical risk, and organizational fit rather than relying on vendor claims. The session also addresses consent, dependency, boundaries between coaching and therapy, and whose interests AI tool design serves. The session connects current research with real-world applications and will help I/O psychologists, coaches, leadership development professionals make more evidence-based decisions about AI coaching, identify proper safeguards, and recognize where additional research is needed.