The Future of Coaching

By Terrie Lupberger, MCC
Published pdf format, ASTD’s OD/Leadership News, January, 2004

To talk about the future of coaching, it’s first a good idea to talk about what coaching IS now—not that everyone agrees as to what it is, which is part of the challenge of our emerging profession.

A friend of mine, Alan Seiler, and author of a new book ‘Coaching to the Human Soul’, says that a coach is ‘someone who is able to observe and intervene in the ways people act so that they can take full advantage of their competence and talent in a chosen field.’ Coaching is the process whereby someone (an individual or group) alters the way they take action to take full advantage of their talents and to produce desired results.

What we coaches all seem to agree on when it comes to coaching is that it is a different kind of conversation than we have typically found ourselves in, in our western culture. It’s a conversational ‘field’, if you will, where the individual or group is challenged by the coach to reflect, challenge assumptions, create new possibilities, take new actions—all for the sake of some desired future or outcome.

This is different from the traditional training, teaching, consulting—even therapeutic—kinds of interventions. The expert in the coaching relationship is the ‘client.’ There is little or no ‘advice giving’ or transference of skill. The fundamental pre-supposition in the coaching relationship is that nothing is broken or needs to be ‘fixed.’ Fundamentally, the coaching relationship illuminates for the client what learning is needed.

In my own coaching experience, and from the research already done in the field, organizational leaders are coming to realize the value and return on investment that coaching can bring to their organizations. The leaders I work with realize that as a person takes on more and more managerial and leadership functions in an organization, his/her roles and responsibilities become more complex. The need to engage in innovative thinking increases and the cost of missed opportunities rises dramatically. Yet typically, as the time demands increase, she/he spends less and less time learning.

Coaching interventions in organizations support the organizations’ members in new learning. Coaching, done well, is an evocative and provocative process, a powerful skill-set, a conversational model that helps others create positive change and well-being in their professional and personal lives. The operative words in the last sentence are ‘done well’ and this may well be the biggest challenge to the future of coaching.

So, what is the future of coaching?

One of the biggest challenges facing the coaching profession today is that anyone can call themselves a coach, whether they have been credentialed or not, whether they have any training as a coach, or whether they are competent or not. The more incompetent coaching practitioners, the more consultants out there doing consulting in the name of coaching, the more likely that ‘coaching’ will go the way of another management ‘fad’.

I’m hopeful (but not positive) this won’t happen for several reasons.

First and foremost is the existence of the International Coach Federation (ICF) and the more recently founded International Association of Coaches (IAC), which have as their mission “to be the global forum for the art and science of coaching, where we inspire transformational conversations, advocate excellence, and expand awareness of the contribution coaching is to the future of humankind.”

Among its greatest accomplishments to date, and after much research and thoughtfulness, the ICF/IAC developed ethics and standards as well as core coaching competencies for the profession. It is against these competencies that coaches are tested and credentialed.

It is the goal of the ICF/IAC to have those individuals practicing coaching and calling themselves as such to obtain their credentials. Having a standard for excellence as a coach offers the buying public more assurance that who they hire will at least have minimal qualifications and training. It also potentially keeps would-be government agencies from trying to regulate the profession, and it raises the educational bar among those who are practicing coaching.

Another reason I’m hopeful about the future of the profession is that the ICF has also created a Research and Development Committee that ‘is establishing an online repository of information as a central point for the free exchange of coaching research.’ The more legitimate research done on the ROI and benefits, the more likely coaching is seen as an essential leadership and management process.

I am mostly encouraged because the coaches that I know are all very serious and dedicated to their profession. They are committed to on-going learning. They care deeply about contributing to organizations and individuals in such a way that not only impacts and improves results but heightens personal well-being and satisfaction among the organizations’ members.

Of course, there is no requirement yet, as in other professions such as law, to become credentialed. There is much more to be done in making the buying public aware of what coaching is and what to look for in a good coach. And, with the newness of this profession—as with any profession— comes the natural growing pains associated with creating a strong, unified, well-organized and articulated identity.

What I do strongly believe is that regardless of whether the label “coaching” lasts into the next decade, the actual process or conversational ‘field’ that coaching is will live on.

I believe that we as individuals, and as a collective civilization, are facing enormous challenges today because our traditional way of thinking and acting, which has tended to separate everything into its parts, is now insufficient to deal with the crises we are facing. Coaching is one way to bring the parts back together.

Clearly, as a culture, all of our accumulated knowledge and knowing is not allowing us to live with love, wisdom, or respect for each other and the planet. Our actions may be effective at the production of ‘more’ but clearly not as effective at building respectful, trusting relationships.

As master coach and international speaker, Julio Olalla says: ‘As a civilization we have privileged rational, and predominantly scientific, ways of seeing and acting in the world. We have favored certain theories such as reductionism and positivism as the only ways to get to know the world, becoming trapped and not allowing for the new thinking and acting necessary to take us out of the crises. I believe that coaching arose out of our desire to transform those theories and practices—it’s a rebellion against fundamental assumptions behind our current way of doing things that clearly are not working.’

So, I do believe that what coaching is in its essence and what it produces for others has a strong future—even if we end up calling it something different in the future.

Changes to the original text by Rita Booker, Coachville Country Director, Founding Member of the IAC.

About the Author: Terrie Lupberger is a credentialed Master Certified Coach through the ICF. She has served on the ICF’s Board of Directors for two years. Terrie is also CEO of the Newfield Network, Inc., an international coaching, coach training, and consulting organization.

Our constant curiosity is key
to watching what’s being created.
~ David Moorhead