Coaching has emerged from L&D as a distinct industry, accelerated by the pandemic — now estimated at $14 billion annually in the US alone. Enterprise clients looking to soften the psychological toll of Covid-19 on their workforces gave digital coaching providers the opening to scale rapidly, and they took it.
Platforms like BetterUp, CoachHub and EZRA have made coaching scalable, accessible and data-driven. They handle everything from client relationships to billing, freeing coaches to focus on coaching, and their multilingual, multi-timezone convenience makes them attractive to enterprise buyers. AI coaching bots are emerging as the new sidekick, automating the nudging and encouragement that keeps clients following through on commitments. Whether that sounds like utopia or dystopia depends largely on whether you are defending an existing coaching business model or trying to break into the industry.
Importantly, the new platforms extend coaching well beyond the traditional C-suite and HiPo programmes — coaching whole teams is driving new effectiveness in many organisations. In the full article I look at what this shift means for L&D professionals eyeing a career in coaching, including the pathways in: experience, short courses or degrees.