The future coach: What skills will be most in demand?

Coaching is changing. Traditional coaching skills, such as listening, questioning and goal-setting, will always be fundamental. But as AI, data and workplace culture transform coaching future coaches will need new skills and mindsets to remain relevant. Are coaches prepared for what’s coming?

1. From one-to-one to system thinking: coaches must operate at scale

Coaching is shifting from a personal development tool to an organisational capability. Future coaches will need to think beyond individual clients and understand how coaching scales across teams and systems.

Nick Baker and Anna Laird, who led an award-winning coaching transformation at marketing strategy business Stick and Twist, emphasise the need for coaching to be deeply embedded at every level of an organisation. Their approach moved beyond traditional one-to-one coaching models and incorporated:

• Squad coaching to help teams make collective decisions
• Self-managing teams using coaching to drive empowerment
• Coaching for everyone, not just executives, to embed it into daily work

Speaking at a Business Culture Connected event Baker challenged  the traditional model of coaching, arguing that skills-based training, personal coaching and team-led coaching all need rethinking to become more inclusive, continuous and impactful.

"Too often, businesses say they have coaching and training in place but, in reality, it’s difficult for most employees to access. Coaching has to be intentional, continuous and available to everyone, not just leaders. If we want engaged, motivated and accountable teams, we must invest in coaching as part of the culture, not just as a one-off intervention,” he said.

Key skill for future coaches: Systems thinking – the ability to embed coaching into leadership, teams and broader organisational strategy. Future coaches will play a critical role in reshaping coaching cultures, helping businesses embed coaching at all levels, not just the top.

2. Coaching the coaches: developing leaders’ coaching capabilities

Dr Rebecca Newton, an organisational psychologist and CEO of Coach Advisor, highlights that coaching isn’t just for professional coaches anymore but is becoming a core leadership competency.

"Coaching is not the goal, it is the method by which we achieve the things we’re trying to do. It’s how we build engaged, high-performing teams, equip leaders to manage complexity and foster a culture of trust and accountability,” she says. 

Newton highlights psychological capital as a key factor in leadership effectiveness, comprising hope, optimism, resilience and self-efficacy (confidence in one’s ability to succeed). Research from the Academy of Management finds that coaching helps leaders become more self-disciplined, conscientious and emotionally balanced. Leaders who receive coaching become less reactive, less moody and more resilient under pressure – critical traits in today’s high-stakes business environments.

“We need a coaching style of leadership where leaders adopt more of a coaching style in their leadership rather than just saying this is what you should do, go. We need our leaders to coach so that people come with solutions rather than just their problems and waiting to be told what to do. At minimum leaders should have coaching-style conversations,” Newton says, though admits: “I'm always amazed at how many leaders actually have no sense of what a coaching culture really means and don't have the skills or confidence to coach.”

Newton references the CEO of one of India’s largest banks who insisted on coaching training for his top 70 leaders at the London School of Economics. His reasoning? The firm’s culture was too dependent on leaders giving orders. This shift from directive leadership to coaching-led problem-solving creates more agile, self-sufficient teams, reducing bottlenecks and empowering employees at all levels.

For professional coaches, this means more people will develop coaching skills, making general coaching knowledge more accessible. So coaches must bring deeper expertise, moving beyond surface-level guidance to specialist transformation coaching.

Key skill for future coaches: Coach training and mentorship – helping leaders apply coaching techniques, rather than just delivering coaching sessions.

3. Data: coaches must learn to work with insights

Data fluency is becoming a non-negotiable skill. Organisations are no longer satisfied with anecdotal evidence of coaching success. They expect measurable impact. Future coaches must understand, interpret and work with business metrics to demonstrate how coaching drives performance, leadership effectiveness and behavioural change.

Traditional leadership development programmes struggle with ‘stickability’ – studies show that 90% of learning is forgotten within a week. Coaching, however, has long-term impact because it provides space for self-reflection and application. But how do we measure whether coaching is truly effective?

Victoria Lewis and Richard Thompson, co-founders of Odyssey Consulting, highlight the growing pressure for coaches to demonstrate ROI in business terms. While client testimonials may be feel-good moments they are not enough. Instead, coaching must be linked to clear, measurable metrics, such as:

• Hard data markers – Employee retention, innovation acceleration, revenue growth, engagement scores
  Behavioural data markers – Team cohesion, stakeholder collaboration, leadership effectiveness.

Lewis and Thompson emphasise that future coaches must support businesses in defining meaningful coaching metrics, ensuring that outcomes are both quantifiable and aligned with business priorities.

Coaching is not just about self-awareness. It must drive action.

Key skill for future coaches: Future coaches must be able to track, analyse, and demonstrate coaching effectiveness using both business and behavioural metrics, ensuring coaching aligns with organisational goals and delivers measurable ROI.

4. Tech-literacy will be essential: AI is an opportunity, not a threat

The biggest barrier to artificial intelligence coaching adoption isn’t clients, it’s coaches themselves.

A 2023 study by Nicky HD Terblanche, associate professor in leadership coaching at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, showed that coaches are more resistant to AI coaching than coachees. However, while employees and managers are happy to embrace AI coaching tools, they want their human coaches to endorse them. 

AI is not replacing human coaches but it is changing how coaching happens by offering real-time feedback, behavioural tracking and scalable coaching solutions. AI tools are being used to analyse coaching conversations, measure sentiment and track behavioural trends over time. AI-powered coaching assistants are helping organisations identify leadership gaps, engagement risks and areas for development.

But coaches will still play a critical role in translating AI-generated insights into human-centred coaching conversations.

Future coaches must stop seeing AI as a competitor and start leveraging it as an enabler. The best coaches will:

• Experiment with AI-powered coaching assistants
• Use AI-driven coaching nudges between sessions
• Incorporate AI-powered assessments into their practice

Key skill for future coaches: Tech fluency – understanding how to integrate AI tools into coaching rather than resisting them.

5. Adaptive coaching: flexing styles for a changing world

The best coaches of the future won’t stick to one coaching model. They’ll adapt based on the situation, the coachee, the organisation and the evolving business environment. The pace of change in organisations means that coaches will need to be versatile, responsive and skilled at guiding people through complexity, uncertainty and emotional challenges.

• Rigid coaching models no longer fit today’s fast-changing workplace. Organisations face constant disruption, requiring coaches who can flex their approach based on the situation and needs of individuals and teams.
• Leaders and employees need coaching that prepares them for uncertainty. Future coaches must be skilled in helping clients develop resilience, emotional agility and the ability to navigate rapid change.
• Wellbeing and psychological preparedness are now core coaching needs. Coaching is shifting beyond performance improvement to helping individuals manage stress, build confidence and sustain motivation.

Helen Hilton, head of resource and capacity development at Cambridge University Press and Assessment, highlights this shift: “More employees are requesting coaching around wellbeing. Hybrid working has made a difference. COVID obviously made a difference. The level of change in organisations makes a difference. There's so much complexity and people get fatigued with it all. And sometimes they just need a space to think about things. That's what coaching can do.”

This means future coaches must broaden their expertise beyond leadership and skills coaching, they must become guides for psychological resilience as well.

Organisations will increasingly seek coaches who can support employees through transitions, industry shifts and organisational change. Coaches must be skilled in helping clients reframe challenges, manage ambiguity and maintain motivation amid change.

Key skill for future coaches: Future coaches must develop the ability to flex their coaching approach, tailoring methods to different individuals, teams and organisational challenges while also helping clients build psychological resilience, emotional agility and preparedness for uncertainty.

The future coach is a resilient, adaptive thinker

Coaches who cling to outdated models and narrow focus areas will struggle in the future workplace. The most successful coaches will be:

• System thinkers, embedding coaching into leadership and organisational change
• AI-aware and data-informed, leveraging AI without losing the human connection
• Versatile and adaptive, able to flex coaching approaches based on context
• Experts in wellbeing and psychological preparedness, helping leaders manage uncertainty and complexity.

Coaching is becoming more strategic, embedded and tech-enabled. The future coach will shape leadership, performance and organisational culture in entirely new ways.