Four Reasons this Fast-Growing Profession Just Might Save the World
At a time when we hear daily about AI and the coming replacement of most forms of employment with robots and tech, it may be surprising to hear that coaching is one of the fastest growing professions. Studies have reported a 5–10% annual increase in the number of life, leadership and wellness coaches worldwide — such that today over fifty thousand people make at least part of their sustenance from coaching others. Why such a huge increase?
As someone who has been coaching leaders in a wide array of industries for over twenty years, I sense that desire for the support, feedback and human connection coaches provide is meeting an important human need — especially in this time of disruption and upheaval. As the saying goes: people need one another to bring them into being.
But wait, there’s more.
As coaching has developed into a full-blown profession over the past 20 years, evidence-based research into its effectiveness (and its ripple effect on others) has evolved as well — proving what those of us in the profession have known intuitively: coaching changes lives.
But could it save the world? Well, perhaps a bit of hyperbole, but coaching can be truly transformative, for leaders and for their organizations. When done well, coaching helps clients shift and expand four key human capacities, all of which are crucial if we are to stave off climate change, make our political systems more just, and build humane and sustainable communities:
1. Self-awareness — From self-referential to self-aware
2. Dialogue — From “talking at” to “listening to”
3. Meaning — From transactions to transformations
4. Systems perspective — From “my view” to “whole view”
Sounds great, you might say, but how does this work in the real world?
When I first met Phillip, CEO and founder of a two-year old tech start-up, he was working 100 hour weeks, making most key decisions for the business, taking on challenges in sales, product development, marketing, finance — you name it he was doing it, mostly all by himself. His growing team of eighty plus employees was certainly helping him move the ball forward, but one aspect of the budding organizational culture was evident: all roads led to the CEO.
Typical of an entrepreneur, Phillip, in effect, embodied “the business.” With a proven skill at amplifying his vision and a great product, the company was doing well, on the outside. But he was fast burning out and his staff were becoming wary of — and frustrated by — his command-and-control style.
As with all successful coaching engagements, the first major shift for Phillip was in the area of self-perception: he began to recognize that he was ultimately not going to succeed unless he had a better sense of how he was perceived as a leader, what kind of impact he was having on others, and whether he was leveraging his strengths and attending to his blind spots (which we all have).
Self-awareness: At its core self-awareness has two components: 1. the ability to reflect with humility on one’s strengths and limitations and; 2. the capacity for seeing yourself through the eyes of others. Growing one’s self-awareness can, of course, be accomplished alone. One can seek feedback from colleagues and develop a self-reflective stance towards one’s growth edges, but with a coach the process is accelerated.
With a greater awareness of the benefit and drawbacks of his alpha, lone-wolf leadership style, Phillip started to delegate and direct others with greater sensitivity, but even this change would only take him so far. One of the most challenging shifts every entrepreneur must make as they grow the business is moving from “push” to “pull” leadership. Truly empowering the creativity of others around him would require Phillip to operate in ways that encouraged others to speak up, to challenge him, and to bring their unique talents to bear on everything from product development, customer engagement, and organization design. He had to do something counter-intuitive yet key: learn to follow.
This shift required Phillip to become more curious, more open to input, to listen deeply to others. He needed to develop habits that reflected a sense of respect for the value of diverse perspectives. Slowing down to listen and attend thoughtfully to possible ways of “doing things differently” was challenging at first, as he was accustomed to pushing forward his own agenda. Yet, with the help of a coach — and tracking support from colleagues he trusted — he was able to step back and foster a deeper level of engagement with his team.
Dialogue: When was the last time you walked away from a tête-a-tête with a loved one or colleague, and really felt heard? I don’t mean the feeling of camaraderie that comes from cocktail banter, but the heartfelt sense of relatedness that emerges when each party listens to the other with eyes, ears and open heart. In a world where so much of our daily interaction is fundamentally transactional — not sure that Siri really feels our pain — it is enlivening when you encounter someone who takes the time to listen with empathy.
Coaching conversations provided Phillip an opportunity to reflect on why he was passionate about the business and what success really meant for him, which he was then able to share in dialogue with others. Phillip’s employees were inspired by his openness to questions like: What is the purpose of this business? Who are we serving? Are we positively impacting the planet? Dialogue around these questions resulted in team members discovering their own particular “why” for joining the growing firm — thus galvanizing their commitment to doing the hard work that leads to success.
Meaning: When you stop and think about the purpose of coaching — to help another person or team craft a vision, set goals and develop habits that lead to accomplishment — it becomes clear why a good coach can make a huge difference in a world where it is easy to get depressed, demoralized, even despairing about the future. Coaching, at its best, is a container of positivity, and of possibility.
Once Phillip understood the value of co-creating, through dialogue, a deep sense of meaning with his team, he started to see himself more as a coach, not just the boss — or as the vernacular in our profession puts it: a leader as coach. This shift toward operating like a coach — cultivating a growth mindset in others — for an entrepreneur like Phillip was transformational. Reflected in small gestures (e.g. speaking from the heart, using inclusive “we” focused language, exhibiting more vulnerability) — and in broad structural forms (e.g. re-designing jobs to be empowering, flexible, less siloed), Phillip and his team were able to recalibrate the burgeoning organization to be dynamic and responsive in a fast-changing business landscape.
Systems-thinking: The most advanced practitioners in the field of coaching, research, write and develop tools that help clients expand their perspective beyond a narrow field of vision to encompass the wider system — to reflect on the broader cultural, societal fields of endeavor in which they operate. These systemic-focused coaches look to support clients to “raise the periscope” to incorporate the ripple effect of their decisions within the wider systems in which they operate. Research has shown that coaching, as a container of confidentiality, safety and human relatedness — when done well — ultimately impacts the entire system in which it is embedded.
Once Phillip began to see the benefits of his shifts towards listening, cross-functional collaboration, and power-with (instead of power-over) team dynamics, it wasn’t too far a stretch for him to engage with his team on broad strategic questions: how does what we do in the market impact the communities we serve? In essence, Phillip became more aware of the implications for the ecosystem “nest” in which his start-up was embedded.
Coaching is one profession where this kind of thinking — self-reflective, relational, empathic, systemic — is not only welcomed but encouraged. Surely, even as some of the basic activities of coaching — building good habits, for example — may become automated with “bots”, human-to-human coaching will continue to “pay-it-forward” as organizations try to solve the biggest challenges facing humanity — and the planet. In so doing, coaching just may — drum roll please — play a part in saving the world.
