Why scepticism is growing towards the coaching industry – and why it’s a good thing.
I was speaking with a business mentor who pointed out that people are increasingly suspicious of the big promises made by marketing-heavy coaches.
While the coaching industry appears to be growing, the way people engage with coaching seems to be changing.
It’s about time.
As an independent coach for nearly 9 years, it’s been a big journey staying in integrity while participating in the coaching market. Coaching programmes promising how to 10X your profits and impact, find the perfect career or partner, and ‘have it all in 5 easy steps’ are sold to countless clients every day. It’s extremely frustrating when you’re trying to maintain a healthy degree of realism while offering your services in a noisy marketplace..
The growing scepticism is a positive development, showing a maturing of the market. It puts pressure on the industry to evolve. Hard questions need to be asked:
1) Is individualistic coaching still relevant in a world where interdependence is becoming increasingly obvious and necessary? Private 1:1 coaching may still be useful, but only if it enables insights and tools that break isolation and separation to support relational intelligence and a sense of connection to life.
2) Is the concept of growth harmful in an ecological reality where we have reached planetary boundaries? Growing a small business or even a healthcare organisation is one thing, but are all industries and companies meant to grow? If a CEO or employee is struggling with existential dread at contributing to the unnecessary growth of a company whose activities are harmful in some way, should their coach still support them to 10X the company’s results?
3) Is it ethical to implicitly endorse conventional markers of success, such as exotic luxury travel that is carbon-intensive with colonial undertones, or the acquisition of property, assets, or capital, when inequality is rising and leading to increasing global political instability? It seems that supporting clients through sensemaking and the disorientation that can occur from shifting from inherited or dominant value systems to values that bring more wholeness, clarity, and liberation might be a better agenda for the coaching industry, even if it’s harder to ‘sell’.
This is not a judgement on professionals or coaches who are simply doing their best to make their lives work. These are some of the questions that I have grappled with as an independent coach, and where I believe important conversations need to occur to evolve the role of the coaching industry.
Have a great weekend,
Amina
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