Chatbots' role in fostering self-reflection is now widely recognized, especially in inducing users' behavior change. While the benefits of 24/7 availability, scalability, and consistent responses have been demonstrated in contexts such as healthcare and tutoring to help one form a new habit, their utilization in coaching necessitating deeper introspective dialogue to induce leadership growth remains unexplored. This paper explores the potential of such a chatbot powered by recent Large Language Models (LLMs) in collaboration with professional coaches in the field of executive coaching. Through a design workshop with them and two weeks of user study involving ten coach-client pairs, we explored the feasibility and nuances of integrating chatbots to complement human coaches. Our findings highlight the benefits of chatbots' ubiquity and reasoning capabilities enabled by LLMs while identifying their limitations and design necessities for effective collaboration between human coaches and chatbots. By doing so, this work contributes to the foundation for augmenting one's self-reflective process with prevalent conversational agents through the human-in-the-loop approach.

This is the third in a series on AI transforming the workplace. As the founding partner of Future Workplace, an HR advisory and research firm, Jeanne Meister spends much of her professional time thinking about artificial intelligence, HR and how the future will shake out. Currently, that's a future that is being rapidly reshaped by the pandemic. As more employers look to AI as part of the solution to the myriad challenges that will arise post-pandemic, Meister, while a strong proponent of AI-based solutions, says organizations must safeguard data, taking steps to avoid potential bias and a lack of transparency. "Employee awareness about privacy and how much they are willing to blithely share is intensifying," she says, "and must be seriously factored into any post-pandemic AI use."

We've allowed artificial intelligence into our lives almost without even realising it. Alexa (or one of her competitors) will tell us what the weather will be like tomorrow from a barely distinct command. Netflix's algorithms suggest what we might like to watch based on viewing habits. Health apps are crunching data and drawing conclusions about our wellbeing as we go about our business. The CIPD's April 2019 report, People and Machines: From Hype to Reality, found that – despite the technology being in its relative infancy – 32 per cent of UK organisations had already invested in AI and automation, with 22 per cent introducing software to perform cognitive tasks. Many HR departments are already using text-based chatbots of the kind deployed by banks or retailers to handle customer service queries by mimicking natural conversations.