Whilst the International Coach Federations’ 2019 global coaching survey waits to be revealed later this year, back in 2018 they predicted some executive coaching trends for 2022.
The ICF surveyed nearly 1,000 organisation coaching practice managers, internal coaches and external coaches, asking them about trends in the executive coaching industry over the next three to five years. What came out strongly was that leadership development with additional coaching are going to be trending, followed by the role of leader as coach and team coaching.
How much of a leap will this be for most organisations is hard to say. I’ve been in many organisations who claim to have embedded a coaching culture, and yet still have a ‘tell mentality’. And, I’ve also witnessed companies who naturally ‘ask rather than assume’ as their approach to conversations at work, who don’t realise they have a coaching approach.
So, what’s the secret? In my experience, it has to be a cascading approach, something to be experienced to then inspire adoption by others. This doesn’t have to start at the top, but it certainly helps, and ultimately it must be adopted and encouraged by senior management. George Binney and Colin Williams said – “Leaning into the future is a potent and practical way of working with change which combines apparent opposites: leading and learning; being forthright and listening; giving direction and allowing autonomy.” For them, real cultural change comes from both ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’ alongside ‘leading and learning’. What else I’ve noticed is that leaders need to recognise when to coach and when to manage. The organisations needs to have the right systems in place to support the coaching approach, from induction to meetings to feedback to use of language.
Some people see the secret to embedding coaching into the culture is to develop concentric circles. Developing a coaching management and leadership style (outer circle), coaching for performance and mentoring (middle circle) and executive coaching (inner circle). Whilst others suggest that it’s as simple as ask instead of tell, actively listen and give positive feedback. However you are inspired, and whatever approach you take, the message is clear, adopting coaching as part of leadership and as part of your culture is the way forward.
Some questions you may want to ask yourself?
1. What plans do we have in place for the short, medium and long term? And how are we going to improve staff effectiveness at each stage?
2. What are our goals and objectives for each stage?
3. If we improved each stage by 30% what would this mean to customers?
4. How committed are we to each stage?
If you would like to explore how to bring coaching into your leadership development or to invite coaching conversations at work, get in touch about our leadership and coaching programmes. Oh, why not sign up for our free 5 Day Challenge on Curious Conversations – a coach approach for managers starting on the 9th March.