Armen Berjikly Of BetterUp On The Top 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Coaching

An Interview With Chad Silverstein

Ethics will be key, especially in a digital age. The ongoing focus on social justice, environmental matters, and equity shows that today’s consumer is highly attuned to ethics and accountability. In our digital age, this extends to responsible data use and privacy. Coaching companies must tread carefully when it comes to how they treat their customers’ sensitive data and be transparent about how they’re doing so. I’m proud that BetterUp is already at the forefront with our ethical standards.

The world of coaching is undergoing a seismic shift, with emerging trends set to redefine its boundaries and possibilities. From digital transformation and the integration of artificial intelligence to the growing emphasis on mental health and the global rise of coaching cultures within organizations, these developments are reshaping the landscape of personal and professional growth. As we navigate through these changes, understanding the forces that drive the future of coaching becomes paramount. In this interview series, we would like to speak with thought leaders, innovators, and experts across the spectrum of coaching to discuss the Top 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Coaching.

Armen Berjikly is the Chief Technology Officer at BetterUp, the human transformation company driving peak performance through unparalleled access to coaching, content, community, and AI. Armen’s team is at the forefront of applying Generative AI to solve persistent challenges and bring clarity, purpose and passion to millions of people — and high performance to their organizations. Prior to his time at BetterUp, Armen co-founded two AI companies in HRTech, both acquired, and led product strategy at Ultimate software (now UKG).

Thank you for joining us. To start, could you share your “origin story” with our readers? How did you begin your coaching journey, and what challenges did you face in the early days?

I feel like my first coach saved my life constantly. I was founder and CEO at my first startup, Kanjoya, and my coach was the person I could work through anything with, sometimes even talking multiple times per day. She helped not just me, but indirectly all my employees, customers, and investors. Reflecting on that experience, I can’t think of a more valuable relationship to have had during such a monumental chapter in my leadership development.

My official foray into digital coaching began when I joined BetterUp in 2021 as their Director of Product. I’ve been fortunate enough to grow with the brand, as we expanded our impact beyond individuals to enterprises such as NASA, Google, and Hilton, among others. Today, I serve as BetterUp’s Chief Technology Officer, working at the intersection of technology and human performance.

Earlier on, one of the prominent issues I faced was also a common one in the industry — Coaching was considered only truly beneficial to executives, and not really a consideration for the broader workforce. The industry also did not provide tailored solutions to individuals at scale. At BetterUp, we tackled this issue head on and utilized our technology and AI expertise to scale — today, we offer over 4,000 coaches who provide support in 64 languages across over 70 countries. Our robust network of coaches allows us to cater to individuals who are looking to grow through specific stages of their lives and careers where they may need additional support. Companies are catching on, in fact BetterUp has partnered with more than 600 organizations on providing coaching support to their employees for the past 10 years.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

I lead with authenticity. Life’s too short to play games or be something you’re not. I care deeply about what I get to do, the teammates I get to do it with, and the people who will benefit from it. It bleeds through in all my interactions and communications internally or externally, and helps me build teams where we can grapple with the hardest problems with high stakes and unknown answers, but still have fun together doing it.

Tenacity is the next one. In this hyperspeed world of innovation, you must garner the mindset that the journey ahead will be challenging, but worth it and to not give up. What helps is the wisdom to realize that after good days, you’re likely to have a hard one, and vice versa. Having that perspective helps to focus and not get too emotionally caught up in the moment. You have to believe and act like nothing short of family or health will get in the way of you realizing your vision. That’s simply what it takes. There are exceedingly few shortcuts in life and business and more time is burned chasing those than just buckling up, believing in yourself and doing the work.

Finally, empathy — I have an innate desire to look through the eyes of others. It makes life so much more fascinating to consider and feel perspectives other than your own. As an entrepreneurial business leader, it is the only way to reliably spot opportunities and conjure solutions that have a chance at propelling the organization and reaching the long-term goals for you and your team.

Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?

I love the saying, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes, 1:9). It means that life is effectively one giant cycle. Names, faces, and even technologies are constantly changing, but they are all still fundamental dynamics of human nature. And, if you can spot the patterns, it’s fantastically calming and helps me see that no matter how “new” something may seem, in essence it’s been done before in some way. Remembering this helps the world slow down and go from feeling like you’re constantly learning or doing something for the first time, to recognizing you’re experiencing one moment of multiple repetitions in innovation.

Artificial intelligence is obviously the technology revolution of the day, but recall how many other technology revolutions we’ve had in just the past few decades that have also rewritten how we do things, learn, communicate, and so on. Taking a lesson from history, you’ll see that technologies like cell phones, the internet, cars and more have constantly reinvented society and the way humans work with and connect with one another. Being here to witness the same rise with artificial intelligence is thrilling in this context of what’s come before and what’s next.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

We recently wrapped up speaking on stage at BetterUp’s marquee summit, Uplift. It is an annual two-day summit where CHROs, CxOs, and executives connect with industry icons, renowned researchers, and world-class coaches to share experiences, ideas, and inspiration to propel their businesses. Along with myself, attendees heard from luminaries like Adam Grant, BetterUp CEO and Co-founder Alexi Robichaux, Mindy Kaling, James Clear, Laszlo Bock, Jeff Hancock and others. This year’s theme was courageous leadership — an especially timely topic given the continued disruptions people and organizations are working through.

Most notably, we shared new data on AI perceptions in the workplace after tracking trust in AI for an entire year. The two distinct mindsets we found from our insights were those of Pilots, who are optimistic about their ability to use AI tools to their own benefit, and Passengers, who are less confident in their ability to master AI tools and are concerned about the negative impacts AI could have on their work product and autonomy.

We also found that managers are uniquely positioned to shift AI perspectives and take employees along on a journey from being passengers to becoming pilots. In fact, individual contributors who report to a frontline manager with a pilot mindset are 1.9x more likely to adopt one themselves, and frontline managers who report up to a manager-of-managers with a pilot mindset are 2.8x more likely to adopt one themselves. This really creates an imperative for businesses to identify and activate AI pilots across their organizations to position themselves and their people for success in the age of AI.

Without saying any names could you share a particularly memorable success story from your coaching career?

In my career, I’ve hired and managed hundreds of people, especially software engineers, and I’ve loved taking bets on those early in their career who haven’t quite developed their niche but have tons of the traits I mentioned above — tenacity, authenticity, and empathy. Oftentimes a few years in, they’ll have an identity crisis about whether they want to stay in engineering, or move “across the aisle” to product development. I’m proud of coaching those dozens to recognize that their engineering background gives them a superpower to not only dream, but to create! I’m so proud that out of this counsel have come multiple successful startups where they became “product” founders that were empowered to not only envision the product, but to stay current on their coding skills and build the early versions.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview about coaching. How has your approach to coaching evolved over the years, and what personal learnings have you applied to your own development?

While I’m not a certified coach myself, I have a unique perspective as BetterUp’s Chief Technology Officer that allows me to integrate AI in our human transformation platform to give people unparalleled access to content and community through our braided approach to AI. Human resource leaders are uniquely positioned because in the rise of AI, human skills are actually needed more than ever. At BetterUp, I have an opportunity to work with some of the world’s leading Chief People/Human Resource Officers and it’s been an honor helping their workforces find growth opportunities through our human transformation platform.

One of the ways I’ve applied the learnings from coaching is to be comfortable asking more questions, reflecting what I’m hearing, and guiding people’s thoughts, rather than trying to give them the ‘right answer.’ As a leader of executives, this is a critical skill to channel amazing people and set them up for success, as well as truly scale yourself.

Can you discuss an innovation in coaching that you believe is currently underappreciated but has the potential to significantly impact the field?

Despite its rapid adoption, and the ensuing marketing hype, I still find AI’s core value in coaching to be underappreciated. The general excitement for AI and coaching is to immediately jump to emulating or replacing human coaches with AI. But at BetterUp, we’ve recognized AI’s incredible ability to work hand in hand with the uniquely human components of coaching. Coaches who begin adopting AI earlier will find themselves well ahead of the game in the years to come. At BetterUp, we noticed this trend quite early, and have been building out our roster of AI tools to best support both our coaches and members.

One such development is Smart Messaging that applies our decade of data on what behaviors build the most durable, effective coaching relationships to helping coaches draft and send the perfect message at the perfect time to their coachees at any point in their transformation journey. The proof is in the results — our coaches who use smart messages see members book more overall sessions with them!

Similarly, we have an AI experience, Session Preparation, that helps users prepare for their upcoming coaching sessions in a delightful and productive way. Not only does the experience have a 90%+ satisfaction rate, it leads to a better use of live time with the coach — which then leads to more booked sessions and higher ratings for the session’s experience. This is BetterUp’s way of braiding our industry-leading knowledge of AI with the vast array of human input we received throughout our time as a coaching platform.

In addition, we also rolled out two new AI tools developed for human improvement. These are “Daily Dilemma,” a personalized, bite-sized daily challenge that helps users practice and get coaching on role and tenure-specific scenarios, as well as a full roleplay capability that offers users a safe place to practice and receive guidance on difficult conversations such as giving feedback or conflict management.

BetterUp’s vision for AI in coaching has been to create a “braid” combining human coaches, AI coaching, and science, to improve the results we see from our coaches and customers. These new tools are a perfect example of how we are accomplishing this, as it makes use of cutting-edge AI technology, and human inputs from thousands upon thousands of coaching sessions and participants. In this way, we can create real-time, practice opportunities for our members, that elegantly weave into coaching relationships where our coaches have more time to focus on the human parts of their job and increase their scale and impact on members.

In what ways can coaching address the evolving mental health needs of diverse populations in a digitally connected world?

Coaching is a tremendously powerful tool to provide personalized support — be it career or wellness — to anyone at nearly any point in their journey. At BetterUp, we built a product called Care to bring resilience and readiness to entire organizations through the power of expert coaching braided with digital experiences. The product is not only wildly popular with members, it is extraordinarily efficacious, with our case studies showing 30% increases in employee engagement, 45% gains in productivity, and 35% gains in resilience.

We also recently launched BetterUp Manage™ which braids the science of coaching with the power of AI to evolve manager enablement in a way that drives the outcomes that matter most to business leaders. Managers are a particularly impactful workplace population in that they are often juggling the well-being and performance of their direct reports, while managing up to senior leadership and simultaneously being in the weeds driving the business forward. Managers need personalized accountability and support in the flow of work for when new challenges emerge. BetterUp Manage is always on and adapts as organizational priorities shift ensuring that, whatever the challenge, managers have a partner in facing it.

How do you foresee artificial intelligence and machine learning transforming the coaching industry in the next decade?

There’s no question whether AI will revolutionize the coaching industry over the next decade. As I mentioned before, frontrunners including BetterUp are already leading the charge by developing our own AI tools to enhance our offerings. From our products such as IdentifyAI™ which matches users to a fitting coach, to Daily Dilemma and Roleplay which confronts the user with realistic scenarios they may very well encounter in their everyday life, you can get a glimpse into the potential AI has to transform the coaching industry.

A decade is a long time to attempt to credibly look ahead. What we can say with some certainty is that every time there is a technology leap forward, the “bottom rungs” of tasks get taken over by the technology, and the ladder itself rises ever-higher. Meaning technology takes on the basics, while the expectations gain altitude. That’s what I believe we will see within the coaching industry as a microcosm. Things that used to be tons of manual labor — note taking, nudging clients, finding the perfect resource will be automated with technology, and the opportunity and wants from coachees will focus on deeply human capabilities that they neither expect nor want from computers. We’ve studied these at BetterUp and the list of these traits includes mentorship, empathy, authenticity in the overall framework of guiding, including, and inspiring others.

Similarly, the quality of coaching can be expected to rise as these tools provide feedback- even in real-time — on how a coaching session is going, what could be done to make it better, and guidance on what’s working for others.

We’ll continue to see significant developments in the coming years, but the transformation has already begun, and I’m excited to see what the next months and years bring our way.

What role do you believe ethical considerations and privacy concerns will play in the future of coaching, especially with the increased use of digital platforms?

It’s a matter of philosophy, that human coaches are inherently and indelibly valuable, and that users should have agency over what they’re doing when interacting with digital experiences. Everyone should, at least, be expected to comply with legal requirements that lay the basic boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not. But the culture of the vendor and their approach to ethics and security will make all the difference.

At BetterUp, one of the first features we implemented for AI interactions was the ability to go “off the record” meaning the interaction would not be preserved, transcribed, and so on. An extraordinarily few actually use this capability in real life, because the value provided by the AI experiences is so high. But our research confirmed that the mere presence of this option sends powerful and validating signals to users that this company is choosing to provide agency beyond the “basics” and that has a tremendous impact on trust and being able to get the most value out of the tools.

With the proliferation of our digital lives and more instances of data misuse brought to light, it is understandable why privacy is a growing concern for today’s consumers. Coaching is based on a foundation of trust, and for platforms like ours, that extends to digital trust. Companies focused on delivering an excellent experience have a vested interest in keeping their users’ private data just that — private. At BetterUp, we take client privacy very seriously, which is reflected in our privacy policy detailing what data we collect, how we use and share data along with users’ choices, rights, and obligations. We also employ multiple safeguards to ensure the safety of this sensitive data, including periodic industry-standard security risk assessments, using various sources of input such as vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, and other forms of security review to ensure we’re best positioned to protect user data from bad actors.

Could you list and briefly explain “Top 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Coaching” based on your experiences and insights? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

1. AI is quickly revolutionizing the space.

As part of the research on perceptions of AI we conducted (Pilots and Passengers), one nugget was that while most people prefer the idea of working with a human coach vs an AI coach (~80% to ~20%), people also reported that there were certain topics they would prefer to work with an AI coach to address. As AI in coaching continues to grow, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this 80/20 gap narrow and have coaches and customers lean more heavily on AI to reach their goals. One trend that we’re seeing is that, people who generally wouldn’t be open to working with a coach are more willing to start with AI, and eventually transition to working with a live Coach. As such, AI is expanding the overall pool of addressable talent, priming users before live sessions, and in turn growing the overall “pie” of people to Coach. So, despite AI advancements, the human element of coaching is here to stay.

2. Resilience is the key skill to build.

Constant disruption — be it extended economic uncertainty, geopolitical volatility or rapid technological advancements — is the new normal. Adjusting to constant disruption requires us to be resilient — something that can be learned through coaching. Investing in building this one skill can ensure people are poised not just to survive but grow and thrive through changes in their professional and personal lives.

Earlier this year at our annual Uplift conference, our CEO Alexi Robichaux identified five skills managers need to drive performance. One of these skills is self-compassion, and it is one of the most important drivers of resilience. To build resilience, coaches must help their clients model centered, emotionally regulated responses to challenges.

3. Digital coaching is the future.

While there may always be a place in the world for in-person coaching, it is no surprise that many are leaning towards virtual options, especially in the wake of the pandemic. As people realize the time-saving benefit of online offerings, many continue to opt for this virtual setting, and any coaching company that would not offer a virtual or hybrid alternative may be alienating a growing faction of potential customers. BetterUp is the inventor of virtual coaching, and since our founding in 2013, our goal has always been to provide as many people as possible with a flexible and accessible human transformation solution.

4. Ethics will be key, especially in a digital age.

The ongoing focus on social justice, environmental matters, and equity shows that today’s consumer is highly attuned to ethics and accountability. In our digital age, this extends to responsible data use and privacy. Coaching companies must tread carefully when it comes to how they treat their customers’ sensitive data and be transparent about how they’re doing so. I’m proud that BetterUp is already at the forefront with our ethical standards.

5 . Coaching specialization is becoming a necessity.

As people across all organizational levels begin to see the undeniable and measurable benefits of coaching, many will begin to make use of these offerings, regardless of their title or job status. To cater to this more diverse pool, both culturally and professionally, specialized coaching will ensure a valuable growth journey for clients.

Two of the other key managerial skills we identified at Uplift are problem solving and strategic planning, which can often be optimally developed by coaches with niche expertise, for example, a coach with a finance background coaching an employee for a large bank. This is just another reason why hyper-personalized coaching will be necessary for those looking to maximize these skills.

How do you envision the integration of coaching within organizational cultures changing the landscape of leadership and employee development?

While coaching was long considered something only the C-suite needed and had access to, the more people in an organization receive coaching, the stronger the organization and its culture become. BetterUp has taken a particular focus on developing managers following research that showed an incredibly strong correlation between manager traits and employee performance.

Our data showed that effective managers drive 53% greater team agility, 20% higher team engagement and 16% greater team resilience, which just goes to show that managers are the keepers of organizational culture. What’s more, AI can actually help strengthen organizational culture by empowering managers to focus on the culture-building, human part of their jobs. Our data found direct reports really look to managers for motivation (92%), giving (85%) and receiving (90%) feedback, recognizing contributions (86%), and coaching non-technical skills (e.g. communication or interpersonal skills) (85%) while preferring AI for things like tracking performance (65%) and managing deadlines (55%).

While managers also play a crucial role in helping foster pilot mindsets and speed up AI adoption at their organizations, AI itself can uphold organizational culture in many ways, for example, by creating a safe space for managers and employees to practice sensitive conversations and improve upon their human skills. Expanding the benefits of coaching to employees across levels while leveraging AI to take repetitive items off their lists can empower individuals and teams across an organization to grow and thrive in their work together, strengthening organizational culture.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the coaching industry today, and how might we overcome it?

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the coaching industry is companies’ reluctance to invest in coaching at scale and employee wellness solutions. As budgets thin, companies want to invest in programs that are easily quantifiable and have strong ROI. The nature of coaching is a bit more nebulous, as opposed to, say, a sales quota, but on the bright side, those measurable proof points of impact certainly exist. At BetterUp, we’ve conducted a litany of studies that prove the effectiveness of coaching, time and time again. Those with access to coaching see an increase of 28% in meaning and purpose of work, which translates to talent retention and greater profitability.

The next big challenge will be the idea that coaches can be entirely replaced or replicated by digital agents, and we know from our research that this will not be true. To provide a comprehensive transformation platform at scale, we will need to braid human and AI experiences with science to guide the choice on which and when. This fact will not get in the way of significant money being spent to try to introduce complete AI solutions, and it will be important to share the profound value of having the support of both human and AI experiences working in tandem.

How can our readers continue to follow your work?

Readers can find me on LinkedIn and follow BetterUp online and on our social media pages.

Thank you for offering such valuable insights into the future of coaching. We look forward to seeing your work continue to reach new heights, and we wish you continued success.

About the interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur and thought-leader. With over 25 years of business experience, Chad’s entire career has been dedicated to creating a positive social impact in all of his enterprises. His entrepreneurial journey began while in college at The Ohio State University, where he founded Choice Recovery, Inc., which earned national recognition and was twice ranked as the #1 company to work for in Central Ohio. Chad is now a strategic advisor for Authority Magazine’s thought-leader incubator and an Executive Leadership Coach with Built to Lead, where he recently launched an online community for leadership development.

To learn more and connect with Chad, visit www.chadsilverstein.io