Posted on 26th August, 2026 in Blog

Can AI make coaching more human? Rethinking support for working parents

There is an understandable nervousness about AI in coaching. Coaching is, after all, an intensely human process. At its best, it creates space to think, challenges assumptions, notices what is not being said and helps someone find their own way forward. The relationship, context and trust are all critical. So when we talk about AI-enabled coaching, the obvious question is: what gets lost? Arguably, however, there is another question worth asking: what could we gain?

For the past few months, I have been exploring how AI might complement the work I already do with people navigating parental transitions. And the more I work on it, the more I think the interesting opportunity isn’t to replace human coaching at all, but to extend its reach.

The problem with parental coaching

Traditional executive coaching works in sessions – life doesn’t. This is particularly apparent during parental transitions, where coaching is dispersed across many months before and after leave. Parental coaching lacks the regular support and focus of an executive coaching cadence.

In my experience coaching hundreds of parents, I have observed that the difficult moments don’t conveniently arrive when the coaching is planned, particularly during the months not at work. They very often happen during the moments in-between: the night before they return to work; after a meeting in which they suddenly feel less confident than they used to; when a new opportunity comes up and they aren’t sure whether they can make it work; or when they find themselves wondering, often unexpectedly: Do I still want this?

A good coach can help someone work through all of these things. But unless the coach happens to be sitting beside them at the time, that support is necessarily episodic. This is where I think AI becomes interesting.

From sessions to moments

The opportunity for parental coaching is to introduce a coach support that already understands the dynamics of parental transitions in high performance environments. Not a generic chatbot dispensing generic advice, but support grounded in specialist knowledge of leave in high performance environments: the career dynamics that commonly emerge around leave; the importance of relationships, sponsorship and visibility; the identity shift that can accompany becoming a parent; the practical considerations around boundaries and childcare; and the organisational behaviours that can either support or undermine a successful return.

I can see a clear use case where an AI coach can help someone prepare for a conversation with their manager five minutes before they have it, or prompt them to think about relationships that have gone quiet while they have been away, or simply help them untangle what is actually bothering them before deciding what to do next.

None of those interactions necessarily needs a human coach. And AI is only becoming more nuanced and sophisticated in dealing with our very human challenges. Making these interactions available on demand could mean that the human coaching conversations that do happen can be used for the deeper work where human judgement, challenge and connection matter most.

AI shouldn’t pretend to be human

There is an important distinction here. I am not suggesting that the goal should be to create AI that persuades us we are talking to a person, nor do I think every coaching conversation belongs with AI.

There will always be moments where a skilled human coach can see complexity, contradiction or emotion that technology cannot. There are situations where safeguarding, wellbeing or simply the weight of what someone is experiencing means human support is essential. And there is something powerful about another person holding up a mirror to us that technology cannot simply replicate.

But that doesn’t mean AI has no role. The question I’m increasingly interested in is not human coaching or AI coaching? It is: what should humans do, what can technology do, and how can the two work together better?

A different model of support

This thinking is behind Altitude, an AI-enabled parental transition coach I have developed. The principle is deliberately human-first. Altitude isn’t intended to replace the coach. It is designed to sit alongside coaching and organisational support, providing specialist, confidential support in the moments between — before leave, during it, around the return and as people rebuild career momentum afterwards.

For organisations, that potentially changes the economics as well as the experience of support. High-quality one-to-one coaching is valuable, but it is also resource-intensive. That inevitably limits how widely it can be offered. AI creates the possibility of giving far more people access to high-quality, specialist support, while retaining human coaching for the moments and individuals where it adds greatest value.

There are questions to work through: trust, privacy, boundaries, quality and where AI should stop. Those questions matter enormously, particularly when people are navigating sensitive career and personal transitions. But they shouldn’t stop us exploring the opportunity.

Perhaps more technology can mean more humanity

We often frame the AI conversation around what technology will take away from human work. In coaching, I wonder if there is a more optimistic possibility. Used thoughtfully, it could make good support more accessible, more continuous and more responsive to the messy reality of people’s lives.

An AI coaching conversation does not have to be instead of the human conversation, but in the hundreds of moments that happen between them. And for working parents navigating one of the most significant transitions of their careers, I can’t help but conclude that those moments matter.