As we move into 2018, we asked prominent industry leaders and thinkers to share what they think lies ahead. Part 1: trends and challenges in the coaching space for individual practitioners and organisations
By Liz Hall
Continued uncertainty, supply of coaches exceeding demand, an even greater need for flexibility and creativity, more demand for team coaching along with more debate about what it actually is, more prominence of wellbeing and health coaching, neuroscience, mindfulness and positive psychology: this is a flavour of what’s ahead for individual coaching practitioners.
“Positive psychology has become one of the leading disciplines informing coaching and coaching psychology practice. This was one of the findings of our two surveys (Palmer & Whybrow at the ISCP International Centre for Coaching Psychology Research),” said Stephen Palmer, co-ordinating director of the ISCP International Centre for Coaching Psychology Research.
On team coaching, Erik de Haan, director of Ashridge Centre for Coaching, said, “I think we’re beginning to realise how little we know about team coaching and how ‘unreflectively’ we’ve been working with so many teams. If team coaching is not OD/team consulting, if it is not facilitation or chairing teams, then what is it and what can be its impact on hardworking teams? I think that’s a very powerful question precisely because enhancing reflectiveness/ reflexivity in teams can make such a powerful and sustained difference. But we haven’t got much understanding yet as to what it means for coaches and their interventions.”
Jonathan Passmore, director of Henley Centre for Coaching, Henley Business School, said, “We are seeing a continued interest from practitioners in themes such as neuroscience, team coaching and evidence-based techniques such as motivational interviewing, mindfulness and third-wave cognitive behavioural coaching.”
Sally Bonneywell, director of Bonneywell Development, predicted, “[There will be] increasing pressure to understand human development on a holistic basis so knowledge of areas such as neuroscience and somatic experiencing and many others will be needed by coaches in order to be credible at the highest levels.”
Other trends are likely to include a greater emphasis on accreditation with a continued debate around how to assess coaches.
An overcrowded market combined with uncertainty among buyers is making it harder for individual practitioners to get work, particularly when first setting out, and the pressure is on when it comes to rates.
“The market is overcrowded, with very low barriers to entry meaning it’s full of people with not much experience prepared to work for very low fees. Starting out in the profession is a challenge – how to gain experience and grow your business in a professional way. Differentiation for experienced executive coaches remains key – finding the way of articulating what you do remains key to gaining and maintaining clients. The use of managed service providers cuts down opportunities for difference and direct contact with the organisational buyers and users of coaching,” said Bonneywell.
Lise Lewis, EMCC special ambassador and EMCC International past president (2011-17), owner of Bluesky International, said, “There is anecdotal feedback in the general market that there may be more coaches than work available. This may reflect the growth in organisational coaching perceived to be more cost-effective than contracting external services. Organisational coaching programmes are likely to increase for this reason. Where this trend becomes a reality for external practitioners a possibility is that they will be faced with distinguishing their offering or finding alternative employment.”
Others, too, highlighted the “saturation of the coaching market” (Lis Merrick, president of the EMCC UK and managing director of Coach Mentoring) and “a saturated market with fewer opportunities for coaching assignments”(Eunice Aquilina, director of EA Consult).
Tiffany Gaskell, global director of coaching & leadership, Performance Consultants International, said, “We’re seeing multinationals shifting to a more strategic and streamlined approach to coaching within organisations, which is likely to mean greater challenges for individual practitioners.”
Practitioners will need to be more creative and better able to respond to what’s actually needed.
Peter Welch, executive and team coach, coaching supervisor, and co-founder and board director for the Association of Coaching Supervisors (AOCS), said the focus needs to be on “evolving to meet the changing needs of clients, especially millennials; delivering a high-quality service within ever-restrictive budgets, eg, internal coaching.” He said there was likely to be less time and attention given to supporting people in their roles, especially internal coaches.
Gaskell said, “Coaching integrated into a leadership style provides THE magic ingredient that creates leadership fit for the 21st century – one that not only engages employees, but also provides the much-needed purpose and passion to harness the enormous potential of millennials.”
Jackee Holder, leadership coach, coach supervisor and facilitator, said, “A far bigger focus will be developing a stream of brands and approaches that reflect the current marketplace. Coaches will need to…offer a range of coaching programmes that move beyond the familiar territory of one-to-one coaching and team coaching. The culture of learning has changed and coaches will be required to engage in new learning environments not necessarily driven by coaches, but by the learner.”
She highlighted a need and opportunity for coaching to have more of a voice: “A move away from traditional one-on-one coaching will require new skillsets and new ways of thinking and applying coaching in a range of different ways and approaches. Coaches will be required to speak out more. We will be challenging the neutrality that permeates the coaching culture. We have to have more of a voice, particularly in light of current events and the culture of society. We can’t keep sitting on the fence.”
The wider political climate is likely to present challenges beyond impact on availability of coaching assignments, including an impact on health and wellbeing, and the need to be more flexible. “Professional coaches working with senior leaders are likely to face more ‘stressed’ clients … and may have to draw even more on their resilience, flexibility and agility,” said Maria Symeon, founder of Executive Coaching Edge/Future’s Edge.
“Another welcome (from my perspective) trend is that for self-care. When I started coaching, I knew I’d never be a dynamic Tony Robbins type, but over the years, with all my other therapies, self-care for mind, body, heart and soul became my ‘niche’. As with everything, it can become a bit diluted when popularised (it’s not just about taking a spa day, but putting sustainable practices in place for everyday life and work). Still, I think the more we all tune in to our inner wisdom and take care of ourselves, the better equipped we are to handle turbulent political times, stay grounded and be effective in the world and in our lives and work,” said
Eve Menezes Cunningham, chair, BACP Coaching.
Eve Turner, coach, supervisor and facilitator, at Eve Turner Associates, said, “[We will need] flexibility in our offer. And while neuroscience will continue to be important, areas of health and wellbeing will also dominate, along with the need to deal with continuous change (VUCA). For experienced coaches, who work in a holistic way, this can provide opportunities.
“The desire for collaboration is being challenged by political events such as the increasing isolationism of the US and the challenges around BREXIT,” continued Turner. She called for “an increasing awareness that there is not ‘one’ answer to any of this because it is so culturally dependent.
“As coaching, mentoring and supervision build across the world, the trend is the need for increasing understanding of difference in practice. For me it is important to ensure we operate in a spirit of inclusion for what coaching, mentoring and supervision mean, rather than imposing a, for example, UK perspective. Our challenge is to ensure we celebrate the proliferation of coaching, mentoring and supervision, and to avoid being polarised in our thinking,” Turner concluded.
Organisations
The wider climate will of course continue to impact coaching sponsors too. Challenges ahead include greater uncertainty and volatility, and tighter budgets. For some organisations, this might mean they choose to implement or enhance a coaching strategy featuring internal coaching, manager-as-coach development and the like. For others, the climate might sound the death knell for hitherto entrenched coaching initiatives.
Symeon said, “As the economy experiences more volatility, organisational buyers of professional coaching may see their budgets decrease as investing in people may be seen as discretionary spend. The challenge will be to do more with less. We may see a more focused approach to how coaching [and mentoring] is provided and to whom. In addition we may see a reversal in the trend reported in the Ridler Report around increases in internal coaching.
“However we may see an increase in coaching practices in general, eg, coaching skills for on the job / performance coaching, as organisations grapple with issues of culture that the impact of various mega trends are raising,” Symeon noted.
Turner said, “In the public sector, budgets continue to fall, and there is no sign this will change in the short term. So, there will be less work for external providers, and there will be a continuing push on driving down the cost of bringing external providers in, or at least on maintaining current levels of remuneration. Internal coaching will continue to grow, and in particular internal coaches will be providing more team coaching.
“[Challenges for organisations include] how to justify every intervention when budgets are being squeezed and when the political situation is so unsure. [They will need] robust evidence/examples that interventions will be effective and support the changes needed. But [coaching] can help retain key staff, for example,” said Turner.
Bonneywell highlighted “increased pressure to use middle men or managed service providers due to shortage of resources internally, and pressure on prices means the quality of coaching for the same money is reduced. A squeeze on resources will mean pressure to get best value for money and to use coaching in the most effective way. Cost pressures will see growth of team and group coaching to address organisational issues.”
David Clutterbuck, founder of the Clutterbuck Partnership and co-founder of the EMCC, said a key challenge for organisations will be “gaining economies of scale while retaining quality of learning relationships”.
For organisations/corporate sponsors/buyers, other trends include increased emphasis on accreditation when selecting coaches, greater opportunities for creativity in approach to coaching including around digital learning, more team coaching and a continued growth in internal coach and manager-as-coach development and building a coaching culture.
Lewis said, “Organisational coaching represented by internal coaches and managers-as-coach is forecast to continue, particularly for larger organisations with the available resources, and external practitioners need to demonstrate how they can add value. SMEs are also seeking to create a coaching culture with a specific focus on training and encouraging mangers to adopt a coaching style.”
She added, “Team coaching is likely to develop as people become more project focused and the importance of working together increases.”
Bonneywell said, “People are becoming more sophisticated buyers of coaching and will demand higher standards from coaches. Organisations and clients will want highly qualified and highly credible coaches, so accreditation becomes more important. This will create a widening gap between highly professional coaches and people who enter the profession with no or very scant qualifications.”
Gaskell agreed, “Companies are telling me they are not happy to have external coaches without certification…they are seeking to address this.”
Lewis predicted the current debate “about whether ‘competencies’ are an appropriate measure of coaching competence is likely to continue”.
According to Passmore, the focus for organisations is on three areas.
“First, Henley’s Corporate Learning Survey identified coaching skills, for the third year running, as a key priority set by HR directors for middle managers in their organisations.
Second, the development of a coaching culture. While the term is used in a variety of ways, this includes developing an internal team of professional coaches, providing support and supervision to this group and helping HR develop criteria and processes to manage coach selection and external coach management.
The third issue is team coaching, with organisations wanting coaching to not only help individual performance, but as a tool to bring teams together to help the team become more than the sum of its parts,” Passmore said.
A pressing issue for some will be how to find the best ‘home’ for internal and external coaching in their organisational structures with a clear relationship with L&D and knowledge management, said Carol Braddick, executive coach.
One welcome trend predicted by some is greater creativity and innovation in coaching, partly as a response to pressure on resources,
but also because the market is maturing and stakeholder needs are evolving or coming to the fore. Embracing new technology is likely to bring not only challenges, but also the birth of more creative approaches (see News, page 8).
Braddick, a core member of the Future of Coaching Collaboration Group’s working group on disruptive technology, said organisations will need to focus on “expanding and joining up digital learning, development and knowledge management resources… making better use of their big employee data to improve work climate and employee engagement, identify and prioritise development needs and make relevant data, continuous feedback, available to coaches.”
Holder said, “Organisations will benefit from exploring more creatively how they can engage coaches in the system not in the purist sense of what is seen as traditional coaching… to collaborate in the design of learning programmes both live and online, for internal support with organisational development and re-organisation in a way that makes good business sense and supports the health and wellbeing of the system.”
- Next issue: Trends and challenges in coaching supervision, coach training, mentoring and creativity and innovation
COACHING: trends and challenges
For individual practitioners
- Uncertainty
- Supply exceeding demand – saturation of the market
- Difficulties gaining experience
- How to differentiate from others
- Gaining access to buyers
- Requirement for different skillsets, including use of new technology
- Challenging political climate
- Greater need for recognition of differences, including cultural
- Greater need for flexibility and creativity
- Prominence of wellbeing and health
- More team coaching and more debate about what it is
- Greater need for coaches to be resilient
- More emphasis on holistic approach
- More positive psychology
- More neuroscience
- More mindfulness
- Higher standards demanded, including more accreditation
- Ongoing debate around competencies
For organisations/corporate sponsors/buyers
- Tighter budgets
- Increased pressure to demonstrate effectiveness of coaching
- More pressure for coaching to be effective and supporting other strategies
- More pressure to streamline approach
- Question over where to house coaching
- Increased emphasis on accreditation
- Greater need for creativity
- Embracing technology, eg, improving digital learning
- More team coaching
- More manager-as-coach development for some
- More embracing of a coaching culture for some
- More internal coaching for some; cutbacks in internal coaching for others