This Is Worse Than Missing Out

Everyone talks about the issues with FOMO, and business owners doing things because other people are and they don’t want to miss out.

But there’s a fear that’s worse

FOBO. Fear of becoming obsolete.

This isn’t the fear that it might be a trend. It’s ‘my skills are degrading in real time, the window to stay relevant is closing, AI is going to take my job’. And it’s producing some really interesting behaviour.

I’ve seen quite a typical fear reaction from some people in the industry, posting proactively saying, ‘AI will never replace a real coach, ChatGPT can’t do what I do, people will always want a human.’ And that may be true, but that confidence comes from people who haven’t tested that claim. They are just making that claim out of fear in the hope that it somehow positions them as better than AI just because they’ve said that they are. The uncomfortable reality is that for a lot of surface-level coaching, accountability, goal setting, basic reframes, that gap is narrowing quite quickly, and to pretend otherwise is a coping mechanism for the fear of becoming obsolete.

The second reaction is panic. There are coaches hoarding certifications, signing up to loads of courses, trying to find the best prompts for ChatGPT - hoarding information that isn’t useful, but feels comforting to them - ‘I’m doing what I can to protect myself’. The third and most common reaction - is paralysis. I’m seeing coaches who can tell something has shifted, feel it - and maybe not know what to do about it, so they do nothing. They keep delivering the way they did before 3 years ago and hope the wave passes over them.

Nobody is being clear enough that AI doesn’t threaten your human side, it threatens the parts of coaching that weren’t particularly human to begin with. The templated check-ins, generic accountability messages, programmes that could have been a PDF.

What doesn’t get replaced is your ability to notice what someone isn’t saying, capacity to sit in discomfort with another person. The idea you’ve built from years of curiosity and lived experience. The intellectual position that only you hold because only you have your particular combination of inputs. You can’t outrun OR pretend AI doesn’t exist - you can use it to help you build something distinctly human, with AI augmenting the build and maintenance.

I’m no scaremongerer by any stretch - but this is the only way I see coaching working in the future.