Coaching Industry: COVID-19 and Beyond
Iam pleased to showcase one of my reports from my internship at Peak Resonance. I am truly grateful to Mr. Jovan Medrano for permitting me to feature this work in my Medium portfolio.
Introduction
Coaching industry was challenged by COVID-19. Face-to-face interaction that is the usual and primary way in delivering coaching services was restricted by most of the government. Thus, coaching hours declined that commonly will result in decrease of income for coaches.
Most coaching organizations lead their members for upskilling and promoting services offered. On that, coaches have pivoted, innovative ways and continue to lend their helping hands for those in need of guidance. This small report will identify coaching pre, during and beyond the crisis of COVID-19.
Coach and Coaching
Many people were confused with the differences of coaches between mentors, or coaches between counselors or psychologists and to begin this paper, we need to distinguish what a coach really is and what they provide.
Coach helps the client to achieve their personal best and to produce the results they want in their personal and professional lives (International Coaching Community). As per International Coaching Federation, coaches do provide objective assessment and observations that foster individual’s or team’s self-awareness and awareness of others, listen closely to fully understand the individual’s or team’s circumstances, act as a sounding board in exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making, champion opportunities and potential, encouraging stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations, foster shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives, challenge blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios and maintain professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession’s code of ethics.
The word coaching has been used as a defined procedure only a few decades back (Wildflower, 2013). Coaching is a process focused on working with a person’s needs, wants, goals, or vision for where they want to go, and then designing steps for getting there (Stober & Grant, 2006). On that premise aroused different coaches in different areas of life with diverse approaches.
Coaching Pre-pandemic
Due to the steep expectations from boss, to partner, to health; coaching became popular not only because of recommendations but due to results and goals achieved by the coachee and companies.
Results indicate that individual coaching and group training were effective in reducing procrastination and facilitating goal attainment. Individual coaching created a high degree of satisfaction and was superior in helping participants attain their goals, whereas group training successfully promoted the acquisition of relevant knowledge (Traut-Mattausch, Mühlberger, Jonas, & Losch, 2016).
Thus the global growth and wide spread of coaching profession was evident in 2020 ICF Global Coaching Study:
Crisis Hit
Everyone was affected when COVID-19 hit and when countries were shut down one by one not only their international borders but also the strict implementation of face-to-face meetings; coaching career deeply felt the impact. Coach practitioners have adjusted their methods used to coach clients. Reflecting the nature of the pandemic, there has been a sharp decrease in coaching in person (80%). Mainly, coach practitioners have increased their use of audio-video platforms (74%) (International Coaching Federation, 2020) and even though digital pivoting was applied, the decrease of numbers of clients were not avoided.
In the chart above, 1 of 4 coaches in North America reported no impact neither on income nor employment but Eastern Europe has the greatest financial shock of 85%.
Unlike the 2008 Market Crash where coaching explores in driving financial leaders into transparency and social responsibility to rebuild the brand of their financial organizations (Davis, 2009), 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic is calling for Crisis Leaders in solving cash flow and liquidity, family and friends relationships, employees well-being, managing multiple changes and to prepare for uncertainty (Asia Pacific Alliances of Coaches, 2021).
With that demand, the 2020 survey of the International Coaching Federation gave a 41% average of coaches that has a somewhat positive outlook that their profession will bounce back in 6-months.
Future of Coaching
Blackbyrn blogged that coaching clients are becoming sophisticated and they are willing to pay for coaches with great coaching skills and profound results. In the latest study by Jarosz (2021), the participants of the experiment group noticed positive shifts occurring in their thinking patterns as well, especially in how they evaluate and think about themselves and suggest that the application of coaching in the workplace improves employee well-being and performance.
Based on 5th Coaching Survey an Asia Coaching Benchmark 2019; Singapore has a relatively more mature coaching market yet some companies find coaching very expensive and not a ‘powerful tool’. Philippines’ growth of coaching services could be attributed to the deeper penetration in existing markets as well as expansion into new markets and industry sectors. In China, coaching is a relatively young concept. One out of three firms planned to use coaching services but the others hindered by lack of awareness, high cost and support from top management. Recent growth in Indonesia’s coaching market reflects expansion opportunities and 5% indicated to adopt coaching in the next 12 months.
Clearly, in every crisis coaches are ready to explore and build new resilient models/tools in helping their clients to face vulnerability, unsafe and uncertain paths. As forecasted, the coaching industry is setting a mark not only in companies but also in different aspects of life.
References:
International Coaching Community. (n.d.). What is Coaching? Retrieved 07 23, 2021, from International Coaching Community: https://internationalcoachingcommunity.com/what-is-coaching/
International Coaching Federation. (n.d.). FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS. Retrieved 07 23, 2021, from International Coaching Federation: https://coachingfederation.org/faqs
Wildflower, L. (2013). The Hidden History of Coaching. Great Britain: CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire .
Stober, D. R., & Grant, A. M. (2006). Evidence Based Coaching Handbook. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Traut-Mattausch, E., Mühlberger, M. D., Jonas, E., & Losch, S. (2016, May 03). Comparing the Effectiveness of Individual Coaching, Self-Coaching, and Group Training: How Leadership Makes the Difference.
International Coaching Federation. (2020). COVID-19 and the Coaching Industry. COVID-19 and the Coaching Industry .
Davis, A. A. (2009). Coaching: Navigating the Emerging Trends in Financial Services. IJCO The International Journal of Coaching Organizations .
Asia Pacific Alliances of Coaches. (2021, April). Newsletter. Retrieved Jul 28, 2021, from Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches — The Coaching Voice of Asia Pacific : http://www.apacoaches.org/news/newsletter/
Blackbyrn, S. (2021, June 11). Blog. Retrieved July 28, 2021, from Coach Foundation: https://coachfoundation.com/blog/30-coaching-trends/
Jarosz, J. (2021, February 01). The impact of coaching on well-being and performance of managers and their teams during pandemic. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring .
Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches. (2020). 5th Coaching Survey an Asia Coaching Benchmark, 2019. Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches.
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