Coaching Trends: 2022 Predictions

A few years ago, I played around with a newly launched coaching app called Wysa.  It didn’t end well.  No really, it was a frustrating experience.

The first question that I asked it was how to manage uncertainty.

The answer was: “Visualise what you want to happen and you may find some tools in my toolkit.”

I didn’t find that very helpful and it CERTAINLY didn’t feel like a coaching conversation.

I won’t bore you with how the rest of the “coaching session” went.

Hopefully we’ve progressed.

The Hello Coach app has been developed for employee wellness, there are online AI medical coaches and more.

Of course, we are all familiar with the coaching apps that give us workouts etc…but then that’s not really coaching as we know and accept it.

One of the huge advantages of AI/chatbot coaches and coaching apps is the accessibility and consequential democratization of coaching experience.

They aren’t going to replace us – real live people and human relationships – but we can use these tools to ENHANCE our offering.

I think that they definitely a great tool for us to include in our baskets and to be able to offer our clients to enrich their coaching journey.

4.Virtual Reality

I think this offers some super exciting possibilities to enhance our coaching.

Imagine this introduction of virtual reality into a team coaching session to deal with scenario planning and decision-making under simulated circumstances.

It’s got the potential to help in assessing the risk/reward of planned strategies.

5.Wearable Technology

Many of us, including our clients are wearing what is called “wearable technology”.  We have smart phones and smart watches that can measure everything from heartrate variability to stress levels and sleep quality.

10% of the world’s population is now wearing accessories or apparel connected to the internet (quantumrun.com)

In fact, I often ponder how we are complicating our lives by having watches, phones, books and so on that all need to be kept charged and whose software needs to be regularly updated.

I was excited to read that neuroscience is starting to make inroads into the sporting arena.

At Liverpool Football Club, the coaches have realised that the athletes are at peak possible fitness and performance levels.  There’s really very little that can be tweaked in terms of diet, training and conditioning.

What they’ve done is to introduce EEG’s with key players like Mo Salah where they are looking at brain activity in set pieces to see if they can create a greater competitive edge by changing neurological responses and reactions.

How gobsmackingly exciting is that?