Lisa in Career Coaching
A superb opportunity for Lisa (coaching chatbot) lies in lifelong integrated career coaching. The goal is finding work happiness, purpose and meaning in a way that also serves the greater good.
Career coaching
Eventually, this is indeed a person’s coaching that is meant to be ongoing over an entire career, also already during their studies, and going from job to job or even workplace to workplace ― not very feasible up till now. Meanwhile, any part of this trajectory can also be called ‘career coaching.’
In healthcare, a personal medical record can be used to store healthcare data from one person over a lifetime. Can we also envision a personal career record? Such a record and Lisa could be integrated, or Lisa could function as such with the utmost focus on privacy issues.
Integrated career coaching is crucial
With this, I mean the follow-up of career and healthcare information together.
Mind, body, and environment are one whole in which any individual (un-divided) lives a unique life. This way, the workplace has a huge impact on a person’s health and vice versa. Present-day pain in this is evident, for example:
- According to a recent Belgian study, a quarter of diagnoses at the start of sick leave is of a psychosocial disorder. (https://www.medi-sfeer.be/nl/nieuws/beroepsnieuws/kwart-arbeidsongeschikte-mensen-zit-thuis-door-psychosociale-aandoening-mloz.html). Psycho-somatic disease is not even included. This Belgian study is no exception to the European situation.
- According to Gallup, “76% of employees experience burnout at least sometimes … not just the number of hours you work; it’s how you’re managed and how you experience work during those hours.” (https://www.gallup.com/workplace/288539/employee-burnout-biggest-myth.aspx)
The pain is global. In my view, integrated career coaching is necessary to mitigate this. It should be objective, unbiased, inclusive, scientific, and Compassionate, honoring each person’s uniqueness.
Lisa
Through performing pattern recognition and completion at different levels of abstraction, Lisa [see: “Lisa“] can support the user throughout his/her career as described above, and with the goal to influence work-related burnout, stress, and motivation. Meanwhile, Lisa further supports the user in human growth (genuine self-awareness, self-insight, self-respect) and diminishing suffering (anxiety, psycho-somatics…)
Also, dialoguing with several concerned persons at the same workplace (and broader), Lisa can recognize broader patterns that may, for instance, lead to gender inequivalence coming from specific leadership issues. Lisa can thus also coach leaders towards more open leadership.
Being scalable to many users and languages, cultural differences only make this more interesting. The uniqueness of individuals includes many cultural aspects. If this is not taken care of, ongoing and upcoming sociocultural changes may enhance conflicts at the work floor.
Competences
In healthcare, Lisa doesn’t diagnose diseases. Likewise, it’s better for Lisa not to ‘diagnose competences’ as this is not something that organically pertains to coaching. Moreover, the idea of competences is itself not uncontroversial. [see: “Is Competence Classification any Good?“]
Nevertheless, as part of career coaching, competence conceptualizations can function as an input for dialogue. Competence-related, and through self-reflection, the user can get more precise goals, additional insights, the motivation to act upon these, and a reflection on possible obstructive elements within the person and the environment. One recognizes G.I.M.O. [see: “G.I.M.O.“]
The final goal of career coaching
I see this as finding work happiness, purpose, and meaning.
Towards the future, we can see ‘work’ more and more as focused on the individual. Of course, a genuinely meaningful occupation contributes to the general welfare and well-being of all. This was simple in a very small society ― for instance, thousands of years ago. At present, ‘society’ is becoming a worldwide environment. What is meaningful to this is shifting tectonically. This causes problems for companies: shortages of qualified staff, despite many unemployed. Also, lots of absenteeism and presenteeism. Most of this is related to motivational issues.
As a result, we can come back to the individual, but in a most Compassionate way. The grand picture is one in which we can see the value of every small detail. There is no contradiction in this.
The purpose of lifelong integrated career coaching lies in the purpose of every single person, including, for instance, people with a handicap or psychological problems.
That is also the purpose of Lisa in this endeavor.