Introduction: The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into workplace coaching represents a significant disruptive factor that is reshaping the coaching market, along with the roles and identities of coaches. However, empirical research on its real-world implementation remains scarce, creating a critical gap in understanding how professional coaches actually adapt to this technological shift.
Purpose: We investigated how human coaches respond to the organizational adoption of AI-coaching (AIC) and how they negotiate their professional roles and identities. Specifically, we explored how the organizational context shaped this negotiation and identified key adaptive mechanisms coaches used to navigate role ambiguity and make sense of their practice in a human-AI environment.
Method: Guided by the automation-augmentation paradox, occupational role identity, and role ambiguity theories, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 professional coaches in an Asian coaching company, capturing their dual perspective as coaching professionals and coachees of AIC. Additional pre- and post-adoption interviews with the company CEO and the AIC provider contextualized these insights.
Results: The organizational context of AIC adoption created role ambiguity, catalyzing a dual process of protective and expansive identity work. Coaches protected their identity by anchoring their value in uniquely human skills (e.g., empathy), while expansively using AIC as a 'technique modeler' and 'mentor coach' for professional development. The key outcome of their interaction with AIC was the proactive development of novel blended coaching models, where coaches redefined their practice by assigning tasks to either human or AI coaches.
Conclusions: Our findings culminate in a conceptual model demonstrating how organizational context shapes adaptation to AIC. The model illustrates how this context triggers identity work that serves as a central mechanism through which coaches transform a disruptive mandate from a threat into an opportunity for professional renewal and the creation of new human-AI collaborative models.