Coaching Trends: 2022 Predictions

This is the perfect segue-way into the next topic…

7.Diversity, Equality and Inclusion

This is currently hot topic globally.

It’s been exacerbated and accelerated by progress towards 5^th IR.

With the “Internet of Things”, robotics, and Artificial Intelligence replacing people in the workplace, doesn’t this create greater diversity, exclusivity and inequality?

Coaches working with people in leadership and management positions will be dealing with these general issues – automation, remote workplaces, DEI – to greater and greater degrees.

In fact, remote working environments are predicted (by Forbes) to lead to an increase in hiring contractors so there is increasing pressure on leaders and managers to create strong team bonds and also to foster strong team or corporate cultures.

Leaders will be making complex decisions – sometimes based on fields that are WAY out of their areas of expertise or comfort.

How do we support them? What do we need to add to our coaching knowledge, skills or competencies to effectively partner our clients?

Also, with this increasingly online world where we are able to play in a global space, we will now be coaching across borders.

This means that we will need to develop cultural competence – an understanding of different cultures – as well as (potentially) being multi-lingual.

Anyone adding studying a foreign language to your list of CPD activities this year?

8.Personalisation, Individualisation and Customisation

With growing lack of interpersonal contact and communication, I see a HUGE trend towards militant personalisation and identity politics.

One real life example is that – with more and more people using online dating apps as a direct result of Covid – the dating apps have met clients needs to feel included and to be able to express their identity by including categories like LGBTIQ+, non-binary, non-monogamous, pan-sexual and many more.

We’re also going to need to become more experienced in recognising the words behind the words, meta-language, body language and micro-expressions in the virtual coaching environment.

In an age where we may see clients where we are all wearing masks, our eyes truly become the window to our souls

In fact, I don’t know about you, but I sometimes struggle to understand what another person is saying to me from behind their mask.

I never realised how much I relied on lip-reading to “hear” what is being said.

For this reason, I rather like the see-through plastic or PVC masks, not that I would wear one.

People are even using their masks as a form of self-expression.  Just a trawl of a site like Amazon shows how mask manufacturers’ imaginations have run wild!

On a frivolous note, wearing masks does take away that stress of “do I have some spinach stuck in my teeth?” or “Did I remember to put on lipstick?”

We are navigating an era of identity politics and of individualism and we need to be aware of this as coaches.