What was previously science fiction is now a reality in the work environment: artificial intelligence opens new ways of working and communicating.
Bonum is a business coaching platform that seeks to democratize access to coaching, making it more accessible to workers and, thereby, improve productivity.
“Coaching is a discipline that has existed for a long time, but was reserved for the top of the pyramid. Democratizing this discipline, companies can offer more people within the organization,” says Daniel Bittner, founder and CEO of Bonum.
The discomfort of the conflict
Only 15% of companies have mature internal communication, which reveals a worrying reality: most face serious deficiencies in the way they communicate with their collaborators, according to an HR Research Institute report.
In addition, it is estimated that 70% of employees avoid having difficult conversations, a factor that directly affects productivity and deteriorates the work environment.
In the day -to -day work there are uncomfortable conversations that many people prefer to avoid. Two out of three people want to address them, but they don’t know how to do it, so they choose to shut up.
“In general we do not like the conflict, we do not want to hurt another person or make the effort to clarify the situation a bit,” Bittner explained.
However, by avoiding these issues we do not realize that we are affecting, in the long term, the team and productivity.
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Unlike cultures such as the French, where the conflict is assumed as a natural part of teamwork, in Latin America it tends to be avoided by fear of bothering. “In Latin culture we avoid the conflict because we do not want to make the other feel bad,” Bittner adds. “In France, it is strong and then one goes to drink coffee.”
In the case of Mexico, companies have managed to have difficult conversations thanks to a better preparation to address them. This has resulted in an increase of up to 25 % in productivity and improvements in retention rates of 18 %, allowing more satisfied and committed employees.
Clear and the future of coaching
Bonum developed Clara, a chatbot that uses the Grow model and the Smart objectives to help leaders and collaborators to structure difficult and assertive conversations.
Does this mean that human presence in coaching is no longer necessary? On the contrary. Clara is a complementary tool that accompanies the user at all times. “With Clara you can connect to any time, anywhere, and practice that difficult conversation doing a rolelay that complements what is worked with the coach,” Bittner explains.
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Clara is focused exclusively on difficult conversations. She was trained with real talks of the Bonum team and her coaches, generating a repertoire of interactions that were integrated into her system.
Thanks to this training, plus Smart and Grow methodologies, Clara can generate specific action plans. Unlike other chatbots, it does not seek information on the Internet: it operates from a private server and is trained exclusively for this purpose.
“Clara is completely confidential. At the end of the conversation, she sends you a summary with the topics discussed and the Action Plan. Then, it reminds you of monitoring according to your advances and needs,” says Bittner.
Mexico has been especially receptive to Coaching solutions, partly because of its cultural proximity to the United States. Despite certain legal or cybersecurity barriers, many companies in the country have shown interest in adopting tools such as clear to support their collaborators.
Artificial Intelligence: The great tool of the future
Artificial intelligence has had a remarkable advance in recent years, opening new possibilities to help people. “There are 110 thousand certified coaches that can serve 4 million people (…), but there are 3.5 billion workers in the world. You can’t attend everyone,” says Bittner. Tools as clear allow to climb that impact, not to replace the human coach, but to expand its scope.
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According to Bittner, Clara represents a natural evolution of business coaching that complements the human experience with technological advancement.
He states that this new coaching tool opens the way to develop new ways of supporting companies, but above all to their workers.
He adds that the changes should not be fearful, but to look at them with optimism, since we can take advantage of the opportunities that technology gives us.
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