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Will tech do a better job at being human than we can?

14 Mar 2025

By Dr Julia Kukard with Rikus Combrink and Lucille Greeff

We humans are not doing very well at looking after our planet, each other, or even ourselves.

“It’s astonishing that we are still around”, says Tech Philosopher and Aephoria AI guru Rikus Combrink. “I wonder whether tech would do a better job at being human than we are currently doing, especially if being rational included being kind”.¹

Most of us value our humanity, and it’s clear to most that this quality needs some propping up in the world at the moment. We are facing seismic socio-economic and political change, burgeoning inequality and migration, climate change volatility, and fragmentation. We are definitely going somewhere, but where? Perhaps if we can remember to be more human, we have a chance at influencing this shift in a way that serves us all and the planet.

Tech and our humanity are the biggest factors influencing the coaching market at the moment. Our survival as an industry and as individual coaches depends on how we integrate these two strands.

Let’s start with humans.

People are buying more coaching than ever

Humans are clearly valuing coaching because the coaching market is the second fastest growing industry in the world after the Tech sector².

The coaching market is growing (booming)

In 2024 the coaching market was sized at approximately $6.25 billion and is expected to reach around$7.30 billion in 2025. The online coaching market will be a $11.7 billion market by 2032. It has experienced 62% growth since 2019³.

The biggest market for coaching is in the USA which has growth 30% in the last 5 years to $2.08 billion.⁴ The UK and EU market for coaching are also growing although there is some suggestion that the UK market is becoming saturated with coaches⁵. In Asia Pacific growth is slower than that of the USA and UK, but it is still trending upward⁶.

There is no solid and integrated data for the coaching market in Africa although it is widely understood that the most developed markets can be found in South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, and Kenya. South Africa is the third-fastest growing market for coaching in the world, after China and India⁷.

Coaching is growing in every market.

Industries adjacent to coaching are growing

Linked to the growing and fragmenting market for coaching is the burgeoning of coaching training schools globally. The web offers a mind-boggling array of coach training modalities, add on courses for trained coaches, as well as supervision products. The executive coaching certification market will grow from $10.39 billion in 2024 to $11.72 billion in 2025 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.8%. Clearly, the industries around coaching are also experiencing growth⁸.

The coaching market is globalising

Coaches are coaching outside of their geographic boundaries for several reasons. Sometimes global corporates prefer to use their country-of-origin coaches in the broader world for cultural alignment reasons. Sometimes they see benefits in lower rates, more diverse views, and a stronger understanding of conditions in emerging markets. Either way, it is becoming a norm for coaches to coach globally, especially for emerging market coaches.

The coaching market is fragmenting

As the market for coaching grows, new niche markets are being created for example menopause, neurodiversity, legal, and other sector-specific forms of coaching. There are also numerous tech coaching products and learning platforms that further fragment the coaching market.

Social justice and systemic coaching interventions are increasing

There is greater recognition that supporting the transformation of the inner worlds of individuals can support systemic change.

An example of this would be the Inner Development Goals which are designed to create the inner worlds necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Coaching in social justice environments such as NGOs, community healthcare facilities, and government agencies is also growing.

Linked to social justice groups, we have noticed the increase in interest group coaching, for example, CEO groups, men’s groups, women’s groups, cancer survivor groups, and more.

In corporates, we are seeing coaching become a critical part of system and culture change initiatives, the assumption being that system change needs to be accompanied with individual inner world change.

In-person coaching, high-touch coaching, LIFOW coaching

There is evidence that there is some return to in-person coaching. Similarly, there is an increase in high touch retreats with psycho-education components. Ironically there is also a move towards continuous learning in the flow of work (LIFOW) coaching⁹.

What is behind this trend?

The numbers show that humans and organisations experience coaching as valuable and that appreciation for our work is growing.

Perhaps this interest has to do with how coaching can enhance performance, reduce conflict, or improve workplace morale. Perhaps this relates to an increased recognition that humans need to renew how we do work and life in the current context. And lastly and more hopefully, this probably relates to the desire to hold on to our humanity in the face of enormous change and challenge.

Whatever the reasons, it’s not just coaching’s performance outcomes that are influencing this trend; it is also coaching’s implicit offer of making the world a more human place. And it is this offer – that of strengthening our humanity- that we must deliver on as coaches.

Tech and coaching are already intertwined

Tech influences the coaching space in many ways. Here are a few we, as coaches, should consider.

Our lived experience of being in a technological environment

Whether we are living in useful or enshitified tech¹⁰, we are living in tech. And yet, we do not fully understand how this may be influencing our inner worlds or even how we coach. Tech is creating a new lived experience for humans, one that we don’t yet fully understand. Just as we need to understand corporate contexts for coaching, so we must learn how to understand the impact of the technological environment on ourselves and clients¹¹.

Many humans, including coaches, are competing with tech, and on parameters created by a tech mindset. Rikus comments wryly “There is no way to compete with something that is enormously better than you in every respect that your context considers valuable”.

To solve this, we need to find appropriate and integrated places for both humans and tech, and this might mean changing how we work and live. Rikus suggests that the answers lie in two areas: to stop reifying tech as a superhuman solve-all-problems God and separating tech from the humans that create it.

When we reify tech, we treat it as an unfailing tool that is always right, rather than understanding that all tools fail from time to time. If we acknowledge this, we are less likely to hand over our lives to tech, and in this way, we retain more agency.

When we don’t acknowledge the humans behind the tech as being the cause of mishap, rather than the tech itself, we risk not utilising the value that tech could bring. We may also have dystopian nightmares of how tech is taking over the world.

The true risk of tech is when we unfailingly believe in it, or when we don’t step into managing the tech and instead let it manage us. We have to ask questions about ethics when choosing to implement and use tech.

Integration of tech within coaching environments

Lucille Greeff notes that the integration of tech within the coaching sector is not new news. We are already using it for scheduling, invoicing, notetaking and other administrative tasks.

There are numerous coaching bots that demonstrate empathy, mirroring, and responsiveness, and these are getting better by the day. We need to ensure these bots place humanity at the centre, are ethical, and culturally appropriate, and we need to make an active choice about where and when to use them. They are not panaceas for all human ills, but rather specialised tools for specific contexts.

Research within the coaching sector has found bots to be useful for performance development, but less effective at supporting people through existential crises. Perhaps neuroscience can offer direction here as suggested by Boyatzis who notes that AI coaching is good for manifesting goals but less good at creating purpose and vision¹².

An area where coaches are finding significant value is in using coaching technology for supervision. For example Ovida, which provides feedback aligned with the ICF competencies through the analysis of video recordings of coaching sessions.

The ICF and EMCC have already developed guidelines and ethics around the use of AI in coaching. This is an evolving space that both are investing in. Coaches may also be interested in the AI in Coaching podcast episodes from Coaches Rising.

As coaches, we must engage actively with tech, learn about what is on offer and how best to use it. We cannot continue to sit on the sidelines and tut-tut that tech cannot replace a human.

Coaches have fully embraced social media

Coaches have embraced social media to sell their services. A quick search on LinkedIn demonstrates the extent to which we have engaged in this platform and how many of us write articles, books, document events, and use podcasts to communicate about our work.

Many of us are spending considerable time and effort in establishing and maintaining a social media presence. Not all of us are presenting a differentiated offer, and many get lost in the flotsam and jetsam of social media. Authenticity and specialised services may be useful to helping us and our work stand out.

The results of our social media activities have been variable, possibly good for brand building but not always effective in generating leads for work. It is likely that most of us are still relying on word of mouth which is then supported by our web presence.

What does this mean for coaching?

Lucille says, “We have no option but to engage in tech.” Firstly, we have to understand our own and others’ lived experiences in technology because we need to be able to coach around this. We also need to think about if and how we want to integrate tech into our coaching. If we don’t want to integrate bots into our coaching, then we need to understand why and position our work accordingly.

Conclusion

Edward O. Wilson noted, “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”. He said this in 2009, and it is still very relevant.

We have two jobs, safeguarding our own and our client’s humanity and staying relevant and tech-enabled. We must make sure we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, or the bathwater out with the baby. We need to think long and hard about how we integrate tech and our humanity together.

And so, will tech do a better job at being human than we are doing? We asked ChatGPT who was rather self-effacing in its answer.

“In essence, while technology can mimic certain human functions and assist in various tasks, it currently lacks the intrinsic human qualities of emotional depth, consciousness, and genuine social connection. Therefore, it is unlikely that technology will surpass humans in embodying the full spectrum of human attributes in the foreseeable future.”

So no, we are not yet replaceable, and tech can, in fact, be our greatest tool for strengthening our humanity if we engage with it appropriately.