Journal of Human Values· 2026Q1
Exploring Human Coach Distinctiveness in an Age of AI: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the Roles of Values
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Human coaches view their values as the core of their practice, differentiating them from AI by enabling embodied self-regulation, multimodal alignment, and relational trust.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Values are central to coaching practice, serving as its ethical and professional foundation.
- Human coaches link embodied self-regulation, multimodal alignment, and relational trust to their practice.
- These human-centric elements are perceived as distinct from AI coaching capabilities.
- The study involved semi-structured interviews with 13 experienced professional coaches.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Objective: This study examined how professional coaches understand the role of values in their practice and why they see these as central to what human coaches offer compared with AI coaching agents. Method: Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used with semi-structured interviews with 13 experienced professional coaches. Results: Four group experiential themes were identified: values as the ethical and professional foundation of coaching practice, values as a purposive tool for client development, the reflexive and regulated coach and values as a distinctly human relational practice. Participants described values as central to coaching practice rather than one tool among many. They also linked embodied self-regulation, multimodal alignment and relational trust more strongly with human coaches than with AI coaching. Conclusions: The findings deepen understanding of values in coaching and of what coaches see as distinctively human, with implications for coach training, professional supervision and the responsible use of AI in professional coaching.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Human Values, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Applied Psychology
Applied PsychologyPsychology