Abhinav R BharadwajProjectHumanCanvas Core: Executive coaching
Executive coaching is a burgeoning field, and the market of executives and leaders who want specialized guidance is growing.
While this kind of coaching and mentorship has been practised for a while now, there are few platforms or tools specifically designed to help optimize and improve the coaching process. HumanCanvas aimed to address that need, with a single platform to help manage coachees, material, scheduling, session meetings, and taking notes. This platform is coupled with a companion app (HumanCanvas Reach) for coachees to enable structured data sharing and progress management.
The bottlenecks of the coaching process
Nothing can replace a human coach, someone who can understand a person better than any system could. But coaches have a lot to do, and coaching is a process that requires delicacy and thoroughness, which can be difficult to sustain over time.
Here are some of the issues that make things harder for coaches:
Balancing coaching with note taking
An executive coach focuses on listening and engaging with coachees, which requires mental bandwidth that makes simultaneously taking detailed notes more difficult.
Using different platforms and services
A coach has to manage their coachees, schedule appointsments, have session calls, and keep track of notes and coachee progress, all of which can happen on different platforms or applications.
Managing helpful material
Coaches have access to a lot of media resourves that can supplement their coaching, but have to use other platforms to manage them, and use a variety of channels to share them with coachees.
Lack of personal availability
A coach is a time-bound resource, and cannot be available all the time to coachees, especially between sessions.
Addressing these issues
HumanCanvas Core provides tools and features that can help address these issues:
In-platform video sessions
Core can integrate with videoconferencing SDKs to enable a native video call experience, so that the coach doesn't have to hop tabs or windows.
This allows coaches to hop into a session, and have all the required tools available on hand, in one place.
Automatic, AI-assisted notes
Core transcribes sessions and creates smart notes live, so the coach can focus on coaching their client.
Session summaries and action items are automatically created and logged, and can be accessed at any time from the coachee's information page.
The session itself is also recorded, and can be viewed later to revisit conversations.
Session scheduling
Core comes with a native coachee management system, where coaches can keep track of session progress and schedule upcoming sessions. The scheduled session events will be synced to the coach's and coachee's calendars respectively.
Core provides a native calendar view and a brief of the next upcoming session, so that the coach knows when the day's sessions are scheduled, and can directly hop into their next coaching call.
Sharing media and reading material
Core allows coaches to create and maintain a database of relevant videos, audio snippets, and articles.
These media files can be shared to coachees to add context to your conversations with them, and for them to go through between sessions.
Shared material can be viewed by coachees on the HumanCanvas Reach app.
The full design file
Some more thoughts
HumanCanvas set out to work with executive coaches to understand their needs, and come up with ideas to help improve their workflows and allow them to manage their clients more easily.
This concept embodies what this kind of platform should ideally be like, and would grow as we observed more usage from coaches and coachees.
Thanks for reading. Check out my other projects too.