Good morning!
I recently had a tough talk with a robot named Bob.
In a scenario in which I pretended to be his boss, Bob told me he wanted a raise. Sadly, there was no room for that in my imaginary budget. I told him I really valued his work, and tried to offer him other non-monetary benefits, but he wasn’t having it. That’s when I switched to a firmer tone, and told Bob that if he wasn’t happy, he could find a different job that suited him better. Unfortunately, he warmed to the idea immediately, saying that he needed to “seriously consider other opportunities.”
So how did I do as a manager? The good news is that I let Bob know I appreciated him, and tried to offer him some non-monetary benefits. The bad news is that I planted the idea that he should leave—an outcome I never wanted. All in all, as his pretend manager, I could have done much better.
Bob is part of a new generation of AI coaching products created for bosses to perfect their management skills in a controlled setting, so that they can ultimately improve their performance with human beings. These bots are designed to do things like practice salary negotiations, feedback conversations, or other potentially fraught office interactions. That’s particularly interesting to companies trying to solve for under-trained and burnt-out managers—a group that has an outsized impact on things like productivity, retention, and morale.
Although top executives have had access to high-level corporate coaches for many years, this technology holds the promise of bringing that to a much larger group of workers. But can a robot really teach a human how to be a better manager? Even the product creators are careful to say that these bots are not a substitute for things like mentoring and long-term professional development.
“I would still not consider this as a replacement for more traditional management training,” says Apratim Purakayastha, the general manager of talent development solutions at Skillsoft, a talent development company that has released an AI manager training product. “I think this is a good practice tool at this moment, right? But this does not replace coaching.”
Bryan Ackermann, the head of AI strategy and transformation at Korn Ferry, agrees that it would be a big mistake for companies to use a set it and forget it approach to this technology. “I think any sentence that starts or ends with, ‘I’m going to let the bot handle this and then walk away,’ is wrong,” he says.
Instead, he argues that AI performance coaches can be part of a toolkit for companies taking a more holistic approach to training their bosses. That includes setting goals, checking in on how they’re doing, and speaking with their direct reports to gauge how they’re improving.
“Now you have my attention,” says Ackermann. “Now you’re talking about a more fully formed effort to develop the population of managers.”
You can read more about Bob and the new generation of AI management coaches here.
Azure Gilman
azure.gilman@fortune.com
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