Yesterday I was asked how I see the future of coaching. I am not a futurist, so I don’t know how to predict future trends professionally, but I can make a few hypotheses based on my experience.
1. Coaching as a platform for thinking – coaching is one of the best ways to think purposefully, effectively, creatively, critically, deeply, reflecting not only on work situations and issues, but also on oneself for the sake of a better and better decoding and knowing of oneself. I think it is becoming increasingly clear that the better we know ourselves, the more we can, as I often say, ‘use’ ourselves in a purposeful and adequate way in every situation. Moreover, we tend to repeat our usual response strategies, without realizing that situations that seem to be like the past are nevertheless very different from the past. Instead of the behavior that worked then, completely different solutions are needed. I believe that in a changing world, coaching is a time for reflection that needs to appear in our calendars just as regularly as other activities. Coaching may be the time and the way that will help us to gain clarity, certainty and save time and energy.
“Deep thinking is best described as going beyond what you can easily see and think of. But deep thinking demands that we ignore popular slogans and preconceived ideas because neither one knows or can discover the truth. Only people who have the capacity to think deeply feel free to dive into the raging seas of knowledge, discover the truth and prepare humanity to face the ever-increasing challenges of everyday life.” (M. Rabie)
2. Coaching as a form of dialogue – coaching competences are simply highly effective communication competences. I believe that the more people adopt coaching competences and coaching attitudes, the more likely it will be that coaching will not be used as a one-way, client-centered form of coaching, but as a two-way form of dialogue, with each participant in the conversation applying both coaching and self-reflective competences simultaneously.
3. Coaching as a learning process – McKinsey predicts that the key to a good future will be the ability to learn and retrain as quickly and efficiently as possible. The buzzword nowadays, learning, is much deeper than being interested in something new, memorizing and reproducing information. Deep and lasting learning involves understanding, linking ideas, and making connections between previous and new knowledge, reflection and critical thinking, and the ability to transfer knowledge to new and different contexts. Change in learning can occur at the level of knowledge, attitudes, or behavior. In adult development theories, we speak of horizontal and vertical learning. The former involves the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, while the latter implies a change in the way we evaluate phenomena, concepts, and ideas in the world. Learning is not about participating in training but is the direct result of how the learner interprets and responds to his or her experience. According to scientific and empirical research, coaching, or the combination of coaching with training, is several times more effective as a learning platform than training alone, because coaching ensures integration and customized application. I believe that coaching will be increasingly and professionally integrated into organizational learning processes.
4. Coaching as a process to understand and achieve goals that matter to ourselves and to find solutions in the here and now – again, I think that in the future we will increasingly use formal or informal coaches when we want to move forward, when we want to figure out the right direction or the best solutions. This can take the form of a whole process or of a series of unrelated conversation with the same or a different coach. I think it will be common to say: ‘I need help, can you spare 20-30 minutes to coach me?”.
As my friend and colleague, a coaching expert, said: people will realize that coaching is not a luxury, but a very effective way to live in the 21st century that is available right here.
Will we still call it coaching? I have pondered for some time that the coaching thinking and behavioral skills may become so integrated into our repertoire of skills that we may gradually stop calling the coaching-like phenomena coaching. But not just yet…
