Global trends in coaching, what’s the impact here?
September 22nd, 3 am nice autumn night, I am calling the local taxi company to catch a plane for Oslo, via Riga.
Why this late hours and what’s the reason for that? For starters is related with the best connection I found short notice to be in Norway and speak as part of ICF European tour, for coaches and managers that use coaching in Norway.
What is this tour, why now and yes, why coaching?
Well, is simple, 20 years celebration of this new profession, now because I have been invited as one the speakers who can work with international audiences on specific subjects, in Norway’s case is about being able to demonstrate the efficiency of the coaching in bringing results.
For me, the main challenge, apart from waking up at 1 am, was to understand this market and why are they so driven to prove the results.
So I made my own research on the local market and with that I felt bit confused and in the same time open for any outcome from this interaction with them, I said, I will treat the event as an experiment being open for what wants to happen.
This was the easy part, arriving in beautiful Oslo and being welcome by Toril Grave; the ICF Norway acting president was not so easy.
She invited me in her nice and warm house in Nottoroy, a small island in the vicinity of Tonsberg and asked me when we had a moment to talk: what is your message for us?
If you are not familiar with the Nordic approach, this is something like, why should we listen to youJ
The simple agenda was: discuss the main global trends in coaching, check their current situation and measure impact and practice some things in a transformational framework, plus conclusions.
The context for coaching at global level is that we have more than 47.000 coaches belonging to main professional organizations, so it is hard to survive with a general, standard approach.
- There is an ocean of INFORMATION, and is packed as education many times, so the noise is huge, from the prospect perspective is a total disconnect, for protection reasons and also for not being promised unrealistic things.
- Many so-called coaches promise results and miracles, it is a non-ethical approach which makes the prospects very skeptical, and non-listening
- There is a tendency of positioning by knowledge, in today’s world, with a simple search on Google you see who the coach IS! It is strategic to have a story based on expertise, clients, projects, and clear results.
- Leadership is in a new paradigm, which is VERTICAL development. The VUCA world requires new approach for leaders, who are now acting in the global village, remote, with complex problems to solve, the expansion towards potential is necessary, the old-fashioned horizontal problem solving is not enough.
- Bigger mind required in VERTICAL is now present in the neuroscience studies that prove that coaching works, so we do have an evidences-based framework, many projects are now developed based on this.
The main topic for that market was leadership, which is interesting for a mature coaching market, which has integrated coaching in big public sectors in a percentage over 90%. The discussions and questions were in this area and of course the impact of coaching from the perspective of a small coaching practice.
I felt well, audience was polite and to the subject, one thing I noticed they all arrived 5 minutes prior the event start, nobody was late!
I was prepared to listen the last presentation, from a master coach based in Norway and to receive feedback for my speech afterwards in a cozy restaurant.
One big surprise was from Berit Ohn, who presented a case study of accelerating and sustaining leadership by developing a coaching culture in a big global consulting firm. She is a specific example of this trends: working globally in the village, remote teams, located in Norway but travelling all over the world for this project that will impact the company long-term.
Actually she was back from Aruba where she spent time with her coaching team and back home in Oslo she was delivering this case study with us, within one week.
What is my main lesson from Norway? I enjoyed their way of looking into the future and listening for the potential of nature, I admired the electric car Tesla and the amazing way they preserve and honor resources. I will be back to see more of the fiords and enjoy local coffee.
Stay in touch with my lessons from Poland and Vilnius.
