HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat Podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics covered include HR Tech, HR, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham, Bob Goodwin, Pauline James, and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week.
The show is approaching 1000 episodes and past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, Gartner, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, McLean & Company, UPS, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, McKinsey and Co, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
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Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
HRchat Podcast
AI Meets Coaching: The Future of Performance with Joel DiGirolamo
Are we ready for the AI revolution in coaching? This episode features an insightful dialogue with Joel DiGirolamo from the International Coaching Federation. We delve into how AI is reshaping the coaching landscape, enhancing communication and productivity while also raising ethical questions. Joel shares valuable insights on the rigorous standards necessary to harness AI in a way that prioritizes clients' needs, addressing both the promises and risks associated with this technology.
From data privacy concerns to the potential for algorithmic bias, we explore the complexities of integrating AI in coaching. Joel emphasizes the significance of clear agreements around client data and the need for transparency in AI processes to ensure ethical practices. As the coaching profession evolves, we discuss the responsibility of coaches, organizations, and tech developers to create an environment where AI can be a supportive tool rather than a disruptive force.
Tune in to hear about the ICF's initiative to set standards for AI in coaching, ensuring that best practices lead the way. If you're curious about the future of coaching and how it can adapt to technological changes, this episode is a must-listen. Join the conversation, and let’s explore how we can build a future where coaching empowers individuals, supported by the advancements of AI. Don’t forget to subscribe and share your thoughts on this fascinating intersection of human engagement and technology!
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Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, Bill Bannum, and in this episode we're going to focus on connections between AI and training. Joining me on the show this time is Joel DiGirolamo, Vice President of Research and Data Science at the International Coaching Federation. Joel, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the HR Chat Show. Thank you very much for joining me.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, bill, I'm honored to be here. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Why don't you start by taking a minute or so and introducing yourself to our audience?
Speaker 3:My name is Joel DiGirolamo and I work for the International Coaching Federation, or otherwise known as ICF. I've worked there for about 10 years. I have an eclectic background. I started out as an electrical engineer, got an MBA along the way and then have a master's degree in industrial and organizational psychology, published a lot. I'm an editor for an academic journal, consulting psychology journal, and uh, get to have lots of fun doing research, learning how people work ai is quickly informing elements of nearly every industry, and human resources is no exception, of course.
Speaker 2:Simultaneously, coaching is rising in popularity as an hr tool proven to increase individual team performance, improve communication skills and increase productivity, well-being and so on. Amid this evolution, how is the International Coaching Federation maintaining the highest standards?
Speaker 3:Well, so for us, for ICF, we feel that the primary value that we do bring is the value of the standards, and so it's very important for us to have rigorous standards.
Speaker 3:So we use best practices that are, you know, considered good things to do for job analyses in for any given job, and so coaching is a job, and so we use those practices to bring in SMEs, subject matter experts, into whatever it is that we're studying, and so we want to be as rigorous as possible and to help the marketplace different.
Speaker 3:So in a former life, as an electrical engineer, I worked on some standards. If you Google my name out there, you'll find that I did some home networking standards back in the late 1990s, and so that helped as a springboard for me to understand what it is that might be productive in this space. So, back in December of 2020, I invited four software developers who were working on AI coaching standards to join an effort, along with two very experienced coaches who are open to technology, to see what we could put together and to see how we could help the profession. Because, you know, I feel that's one of the biggest uh, one of the biggest things that ICF can do is one of the largest coaching bodies out there. So um, so that's kind of core to what we do.
Speaker 4:Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR chat podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show.
Speaker 2:How did ICF develop its recently published AI coaching framework and standards? Tell us more about that.
Speaker 3:Well, so, as I mentioned, I went out in December of 2020 and asked these four developers who I'd like to mention Matt Barney, with TrueMind and XLNC. David Drake he's the founder of the Moment Institute. He's been around for a long, long time very extremely thoughtful person time, very extremely thoughtful person. Olivier Malafront, from France, who he's a PhD student at Cote d'Azur in France and founder of Pocket Confidant. Harry Novick was the founder of Rockyai they're still going strong. Jonathan Reitz is CEO of Flexify. It's a coaching education group.
Speaker 3:And Nikki Turblanch, from South Africa, who has a product called CoachVichy, has been very prolific in the publishing space on AI and coaching, and so when we started out in this effort, we considered several audiences. You know we're wondering what are the coaches going to want, what are the to know and feel is important? The organizations who purchase these products what are they going to want to know? And there's the software developers. It's extremely important for software developers to understand what are the essential elements of these platforms, of these tools. You know the essential elements that they need to be focusing on, and so I'm also an author on another paper of the role of industrial and organizational psychologists and consulting psychologists in the IA space. And you know what we do is we bring in the human element. So the software developers are really good at the bits and bytes, right, and it's absolutely necessary to make sure that the human element is in there, that we're trying to minimize bias, we're trying to have transparency and so forth, which I'll go into a little bit more in a minute.
Speaker 3:But yeah, what we ended up doing was creating a framework so that people would understand what does this look like. So in psychology we sometimes talk about schemas. Schemas are just models and so if you can take something new and put it into an existing schema, people will learn it more quickly. We know that very well and so what we tried to do was create this schema, this framework, to help people understand what are the important elements and how do they plug in. So the standards are kind of framed in the same structure as the ICF core competencies. So if you're a coach and you understand the core competencies, you can go down the list of standards and you can see how the elements fit into those standards and it helps to more quickly grasp what those pieces are. So we also want the broader public to be able to be more educated. So you know this is a really good benefit of what we've done.
Speaker 5:We'll be right back to this episode, but first, did you know that the Neocase digital HR platform includes collaborative case management, business process automation, document management, onboarding, transitioning workflows and analytics? Neocase integrates with core HR platforms, including Workday, sap, oracle and other third-party applications to achieve seamless user experience and automation, and we are proud to be a supporter of this HR Chat episode.
Speaker 2:Learn more at neoksoftwarecom. Given who I'm talking to today, I just have to ask you. Last week I was at an AI Summit and I presented a topic. The theme was back to the future, actually, and I was talking about the evolution of HR tech and somehow a couple of slides around DeepSeek snuck into my deck. I wanted to keep it as current as possible. Deepseek was very much in the news last week. As we record this episode in early Feb, wiping off billions of stocks and so on and so forth, I'd just love to get your take actually on DeepSeek, if you don't mind, joel. Are they a disruptor for the good? What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3:Well, it remains to be seen, because these deep learning platforms are very complex, and so it remains to be seen what the quality will be with a technology such as DeepSeq. You know, the architecture is a little bit different. Are there ways? One of the big things for us is bias. Where is bias in the system? And with the existing deep learning architectures, we understand how to find the nodes that might be biased and how to. You know, I want to say eliminate those nodes, but take those nodes out, and maybe you can change the algorithm for that node or just not use it. And so, with the new architecture, as I say, it remains to be seen. We don't know how it's going to perform. I personally will hold off on using it and I'll stick with the existing architectures that are out there. But yes, it absolutely could be a disruptor by reducing the cost of building that technology.
Speaker 2:For me, the main feature that I love is the real-time data that you get from it. A chat GPT, by comparison, is limited to the last update date when I was with DeepSeek. It scours the internet in the moment and I just think that's very cool. But anyway, this is not an interview with me, it's an interview with you, so let's continue through. Can you maybe now talk a bit about some of the risks posed to coaches and coaching clients as AI continues to infiltrate the profession?
Speaker 3:Well, one of the biggest things is privacy, data privacy. And when a coach is working with a client with an AI platform in the loop, or if a client is working with, say, an AI chatbot, that all that data about the client is going in the system. And the question is who has access to that data? So let's say that an organization has purchased the platform and they say everyone in the organization can use this platform, they can go to this AI coach bot and they can use it. And now the employees are putting all this data in. They're asking questions. You know, hey, I want to work with my team and they may be naming names. Who has access to that data? Do the HR professionals in the organization have access to the data? Do the software developers have access to it? Does anyone in the platform organization have access to that data? And then let's go even deeper. So let's say it's on a Microsoft Azure platform or an Amazon AWS platform, and who in those systems have access to the data? I've been assured by people when I've talked to them at say Microsoft, they're like no, we don't have access, we can't get to that data. I've been assured by people when I've talked to them at, say, microsoft, they're like no, we don't have access, we can't get to that data. But there's always that question and we've seen instances the Cambridge Analytica thing, where data is used for purposes other than what it was intended for and so that's a primary thing is who has access to the data? And so I want to mention here that it's really important, I think, for an organization and for the platform to developer to be very crisp and very clear what it is that's going to be shared between the coach or the client and the chat bot or a coach and a client and whatever's listening in terms of AI or any platform, because even, like you know, take Zoom and it can be doing a transcript, and who's going to have access to that? So you need to have clear agreements, transparent agreements that the client knows about, the coach knows about and everybody's informed, and that's all clear from day one. And that's really no different than what is done in human coaching. I know, when I was coaching, that I would have in my agreements what would be shared with, say, hr about the sessions and what would not. There's that the data privacy is clearly number one. Transparency of the algorithm. So, say, you have coach-client matching in a platform. Well, it'd be really helpful to know how is that taking place? Now, there are problems with that because many organizations view that as proprietary technology, how they're doing that matching, because that could be one of the differentiators doing that matching, because that could be one of the differentiators.
Speaker 3:And finally, well, not exactly finally, but you know, the third big thing is bias. What kind of bias is there in the platform in terms of the training data, the testing data? And here's the really important thing is, if you have what's called machine learning, that is, that the machine, the platform, can learn as it goes along and it's getting new data, new input, and you know, the client may say, oh, that's really helpful or no, this isn't helpful to me. Then the machine is learning what is helpful, what parts of its algorithm are doing a good job and what aren't doing as good of a job. So it'll update the statistics, because all this stuff basically works on statistics. Now, if you, as a developer, work as hard as you can to minimize bias in your system, if somebody starts putting in biased input and the output, the way they're responding, is biased, you're actually going to make the machine more biased than it started out, and so you know a lot of people don't realize this, but that's an important consideration.
Speaker 3:A couple other little things are, you know, the machine telling the clients that they're not human, and then the system looking for markers of mental health issues so that it can refer the client out. You know, hey, you may want to consider to see a therapist on this issue, for example. That's extremely important as well this issue, for example.
Speaker 2:That's extremely important as well. How can our listeners connect with you? So maybe that's linkedin, maybe you might want to share your email address I bet you're super cool and all over the tiktoks and instagrams and places and, of course, how can listeners learn more about the icf?
Speaker 3:sure, uh, feel free to reach out to me. My email address is joel uh j-o-e-l dot d-i-g-i-r-o-l-a-m-o at coaching federation dot o-r-g. And I am on linkedin, so feel free to to reach out to me there. The standards themselves are out on our website, coaching federation dot org. You'll see a technology tab. It'll talk about research and and technology and in there what we did was we created the um.
Speaker 3:It was a long document, it was a hundred pages, and so some of the feedback we got was hey, this is too long, I'm I it's, I'm not going to read it. So what we did was we broke it into three parts. Um, there's a set of questions and answers. So if you're an organization, if you're a coach, if you're a client, what questions should you ask? So there's that document, there's the framework and the standards itself.
Speaker 3:There are examples that are out there of some of the platforms, and then we created an overview document. So if you want to start with the overview, you can do that, and that's an extremely helpful document because it provides, in a little bit more lay language, what's in the document? So we've got over 60,000 members at ICF. We feel like we have a responsibility to help the profession, to be good stewards, to to you know, show where the bar should be, what aspects should be measured, what should how it should be built and and personally I'm very proud of the the work that the team did. It was an extremely collaborative effort and very enjoyable very good.
Speaker 2:Thank you and uh, listeners, I can testify that if you do link, reach out to joel on linkedin. He's a nice chap and he will probably respond, because he did to me and now we're connected, so we're linkedin friends. Very good, joel, uh, joel, that just leaves me to say for today, although I will be bothering you about coming back on, I'm sure, but for today, thank you very much for being my guest. Thank you, bill, such a pleasure as always. Until next time, listeners, happy working.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom.
