The Library of Professional Coaching, in collaboration with choice, the magazine of professional coaching, the Institute for Research on Professional Coaching, and Professional School of Psychology conducted a survey to identify the current and future leadership needs of the field of Executive Coaching. The results were fascinating, and the top three topics revealed were:
- Executive coaching and the new world of organizational life: Given the enduring pandemic impact to organizations (hybrid work, remote teams, remote leaders, The Great Resignation, global economic impacts, supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, etc) what does the profession of coaching need to provide in the future?
- Executive coaching and leadership development: do we need to change our approach to leadership–its development and the ways in which we coach leaders (current and potential) as a result of shifts in the nature and challenges of the 21st Century workplace around the world?
- New brain science and executive coaching: does our increased knowledge of how the brain and our entire biology operates confirm our existing executive coaching perspectives and practices, or does this knowledge make a real difference in our coaching practices? If so, what difference does this new knowledge make?
Comment below! We’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics.
Also, we are curating a small gathering (by invitation only) of masterful coaches to meet in coastal Maine in the spring of 2022 to explore these topics and many more. If you would like to be invited to join us, please let us know via the comments below and we will reach out to see if you’re a match for the group we are curating and send you the registration info/link.
If you’d like to download the results of the survey in PDF form, please click the red button below this post.
Curious about other topics that were revealed in the survey? Here are a few others that were not in the top 3 just to give you a taste:
- Executive coaching and Images of the Future: To what extent are (and should) executive coaches be involved in helping their clients construct (and modify) compelling and guiding Images of the Future in their personal and organizational lives? How do vivid Images of the Future influence (if at all) the actual decisions being made and actions being taken by leaders?
- Executive coaching and Life Stages and Cycles: Does coaching (for the coach and/or client) change over different stages of life. If so, how does it change? How does one provide coaching through the repeated cycles of one’s personal life (and cycles of organizational life)?
- Crisis of expertise and executive coaching: who do we trust as executive coaches and as leaders, and when do other people appropriately trust us (and our expertise)? What is the new nature of expertise and knowledge in our challenge world of complexity, uncertainty and contradiction?
- There are colleagues who are/will be retiring from full active practice soon. How do we capture, preserve and build on their career experience? How do we ensure the profession doesn’t lose their wisdom? And how do these pioneers model brilliant “turn over” of the reins of our profession to the younger professionals?
- Coaching and the very real threat of competing with AI, and how to use AI to our advantage.
- Executive coaching on the need for systemic and structural change (systemic racism & sexism in organizations & executive coaches). Please access the Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Benchmarks World (2021).
- Explore what it might look like if executive coaching were more a part of social justice work.
