The coaching field is in the midst of a revolution.
From the 1960s through the early 2000s the executive and life coaching fields were nascent. A small number of pioneering coaches (Bill Campbell, Tony Robbins, Tracey Ward, etc.) helped create the coaching industry by bringing awareness of the benefits of life coaching to the broader world.
These innovators wrote the playbooks on how to coach, what tools to use, and eventually started training other people on how to use the frameworks and methods they used with leaders. Eventually, CEOs and leaders who worked with coaches began talking about the benefits of having dedicated support through the highs and lows of leading teams and word spread.
Coaching Takes Off:
In the last 5 years, the coaching field has grown by 33% (and is now one of the fasting growing professional industries). Today most people have at least an abstract idea of what an executive or life coach is.
How has this changed the work that we do as coaches?
In the past, most coaches were generalists. Each coach had to cater to the needs of the small number of clients available in this niche market. Today, the demand for coaches is much larger, creating opportunities for coaches who specialize in everything from mindfulness to interpersonal communication, money management, sleep coaching, and beyond.
In the last decade, new coach training programs have developed with improved curriculums teaching frameworks and techniques unique to these specialized coaching fields.
Looking Forward:
I call this change “The Unbundling of Coaching”—the field has moved from generalized coaching to highly specialized coaching, creating a far greater impact for clients who can hire coaches who have deep experience and training with whatever specific issue they are looking to overcome.
For example, a year ago, in my own self-growth, I was working on overcoming limiting beliefs and noticed that I could become anxious in certain high-intensity situations. I decided to hire a breath coach as breathing is tied to emotional regulation and can help (among other practices) to mitigate imposter syndrome. Through this expert coach, I learned that my shallow breathing was due to the overuse of my neck during inhales rather than training my abdominals and diaphragm to do the work.
Over the course of 4-sessions, I learned a number of new breathing techniques that when integrated with my personal development work and had a big impact on my presence.
This is the benefit of increased coach specialization—more targeted support that gets to the root of blockers and plateaus.
Coaches For All
Another benefit of coach specialization is that the cost of really good coaching is decreasing.
Before, only a handful of coaches had the training and skill to shift from leadership coaching to mindfulness training to breath work and more; and hiring these individuals was expensive.
Now you can find one coach for each of these areas and work with them as needed.
The end result of all of these changes is that a field that 50 years ago had only a handful of truly great practitioners, is now maturing to the point where more people can easily find the right coaches for their needs and afford this 1-1 support to improve in their life.