“AI has finally come for us.” These were the words of Padilla’s Kris Patrow, leader of her agency’s coaching practice, who recently presented “The Brave New World of AI-Driven Communications Coaching” webinar hosted by the PRSA Technology Section. While Kris was specifically talking about coaching, this can really apply across any part of PR or industry. But let’s focus on coaching!
In recent years, several apps have popped up that offer public speaking, presentation and interview coaching. You simply download the app, hit “record” and the app provides real time feedback on your delivery, content and audience engagement skills.
Kris shared that while there are many AI coaching apps out there, some of her favorite include:
- Microsoft Speaker Coach – If you have PowerPoint on your computer, you have this too. Just hit record on the PowerPoint you’re creating and it gives you feedback on your delivery (including your pace, filler words, and pitch), content (originality, inclusiveness, speech refinement, and repetitive words) and audience engagement (body language).
- Yoodli– This app was recently endorsed by Toastmasters International. It asks you some pre-session-questions to build your plan then judge you appropriately. Kris likes that this app has a young, fun vibe; but it might be too basic for seasoned speakers.
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Orai – Similar to Yoodli, it starts by asking you pre-session questions but is a little more “serious” with regard to its tone. It recommends a coaching program based on your answers and provides categories of the types of coaching you can select from. Under each you can do exercises by goal or skillset. One feature Kris likes is how it provides audio examples of what it wants you to sound like, which is helpful. A possible downside – you have to complete all the exercises in order before you can move on to the next skills.
With AI coaching apps, you get help with :
With human coaches, you get the added benefit of being coached on how to engage with and persuade audiences to help achieve business success. This involves coaching on:
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Overall strategy : knowing what you want to achieve with this audience, in this setting, with this information
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Substance: how to make it compelling for this audience with the right key messages, structure and stories, and
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Style/Tactics: how you can best engage with your audience, stay on message and achieve your goals with your own unique style.
Kris shared how these AI coaching apps can be especially valuable for young professionals wanting to develop the fundamental communications skills for career growth and success. For more seasoned professionals, these apps are best employed as enhancements to the more customized coaching we give as PR practitioners; Specifically, to help reinforce what they’ve learned in their sessions with us and gauge their progress. In advance of future sessions.
As always, when using these AI-enabled coaching apps, we should proceed with caution. Anything you upload into these apps – your content, audio and video – becomes the property of the app (meaning, you lose control over it). While some apps allow you to request sessions to be deleted, the machine learning part of AI has already “used” your content to evolve and improve. Her counsel to clients (and coaches): never upload anything proprietary into these apps until security is improved.
As with all AI apps, Kris emphasizes the importance of understanding how they work, their limitations and opportunities and how we can best leverage them as coaches and counselors for our clients.
Kris had more to share. You can watch her presentation on-demand here (available to PRSA members only).