ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the challenges facing tomorrow’s leaders and how coaching needs to become “future-fit” to support leaders and organizations to do so. It draws on a global research project led by Peter through Henley Business School in 2016-17 to explore: “Tomorrow’s Leadership and the Necessary Revolution in Today’s Leadership Development” (Hawkins 2017). The biggest, interconnected, challenges global companies envisaged were:
Unceasing and accelerating transformation
The technological and digital revolution
Disintermediation and ‘Uber-isation’ – an entire industry being changed by a new provider’s completely different operating mode
The hollowing out of organizations and the growing complexity of the stakeholder world – requiring strong collaboration and networks
Globalization
Climate change
The need to learn and adapt faster – leaders prioritize being flexible and adaptable but also of the challenges of learning and reinventing themselves.
So, what role can coaches play by:
raising the level of challenge in coaching
avoiding overwhelming issues in the present at the expense of the future
deliver to the growing complexity of stakeholders the coachee needs to partner with?
The chapter concludes with some suggestions.
