The Coaching Cafe Podcast

2026 trends in coaching

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Our newly refreshed Coaching Café Podcast kicks off 2026 with our annual crystal ball on trends in coaching and leadership conversations.

Each year, we start by asking a simple question: What’s going to be at the forefront of coaching and leadership conversations this year?

So, we stare into our double espresso coffee cups—and the latest research—to bring you our predictions for the conversations, trends, and challenges shaping workplaces right now. We explore what’s on the minds of leaders, what coaches are being asked to support, and what to stay alert to as the year unfolds.

By exploring these trends, you’ll gain insight into the latest thinking and how it’s likely to show up in real coaching and leadership conversations in 2026.

You’ll walk away with:

✔️ The key coaching and leadership trends shaping 2026 ✔️ Insights into the conversations leaders are having—or avoiding ✔️ Emerging challenges and capability gaps to watch for ✔️ Ideas you can apply immediately in your coaching and leadership practice

Join Natalie (yes, Dr Natalie Ashdown 😉) and Paula as they kick off the Coaching Café year with insight, curiosity, and practical relevance. This is your space to stay informed, reflect on practice, and connect coaching to what’s happening in real workplaces—right now.

We’re delighted to be back and look forward to learning, sharing, and making a difference together in 2026.


Transcripts can be found here: 

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Watch the webinar of this episode on YouTube or read the blog by visiting our website.

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[Music] Well, it's a very big welcome to you wherever you are listening to this coaching cafe either live today with us or on your favourite streaming service. Welcome back to the coaching cafe for 2026. My name is Dr Natalie Ashdown and I am joined by Paula Jones. Hi, hello Paula. Hi Natalie, I am super excited. We are back. We are back and you know that is actually the first time that I have used my new title, Dr Natalie Ashdown. So we are dropping our caps to everybody today. And welcome back. We are looking at the 2026 trends in coaching and leadership conversations and you know we're always excited to be back with you. We have just checked in with the weather report and we have people dialing in from all around the world. So it is very exciting. And whether you're listening to this live or your favourite streaming service welcome back to you. As always we acknowledge the traditional owners of the and custodians of the lands on which we're all meeting or listening today and they continue in connection to the land, waters and communities of Australia and the lands from all around the world where you're joining us today. We pay our respects to them, their elders past, present and emerging and elders from indigenous communities from all around the world. And you can hear the excitement in my voice because this is our first coaching cafe for the year and we are going to be discussing trends in leadership coaching. We like to look into our espresso martinis. Oh, as I should say, espresso is not the two early for espresso martinis. And we like to look into our crystal balls and with you and looking at all the research that we have available to us thinking about those trends in leadership coaching. So that's what we'll be doing today together. And most importantly thinking about what is the role of coaching and ourselves as leaders and as coaches in responding to those trends. So for those of you who are new to the coaching cafe, we sell work, we say welcome. We are all about creating a community, sharing, learning experiences together and most importantly having thought provoking conversations. You can interact with us live via the chat box and we'll pick up your comments. So please feel free to ask questions and your comments. Whatever you like into the chat box there, we'll pick those up. And for those of you that are continuing your professional development, then we do offer free ICF CCUs. They are available at the end of the session if you are listening live. So we have Bangalore South Africa, Belgium, Japan, Sydney. We are really well represented. I'm so delighted that you've all taken this time. And if you're listening on your favorite streaming service, thank you for taking the time out with us to really pursue our leadership development and our coaching together as a community. Alrighty, here we go. Let's get into the trends. Now for those of you that have seen our trends webinar in past years, I try to pick up the top five trends that we're seeing in leadership and coaching. But for this session, I've picked out the top three for you. And those three have subtrends. So we will be looking at the top three, but they're kind of a nest this time, if that makes sense. So let's kick off. And the first one I'd like to talk to you about is the use of AI. So it's obvious, isn't it? If you were going to pick which topic we would talk about first, you probably would have thought it was AI. And just so you know, we have access to an enormous amount of research. And when we're looking at research and presenting it to you, we look at the global research studies, but we also wanted to narrow down to Australia. Now because we have a global audience, anything that we share, you will be able to pick up those global studies and look at your own continent or country. So just letting you know, if we're referencing Australia, the same reports we're using to give you information, you can pick up for your country as well. And we highly recommend you do that, of course. When we're looking at research, we're looking at global studies, but we're also looking at the size of the study and is the study what we call a longitudinal study. So is it something that's been going on for quite a few years so that we can actually look at trends over the years as well. And of course, there's mountains and mountains of research that we could look at. So we are really trying to go for those big brand reputable companies as well. So here we're talking about the use of AI in this trend. We're picking up the latest Harvard Business Impact Global Leadership Development Study and some of the information for you here as well. The study asked organizations, what were their top business related projects for this year? So as the 2025 study going into 2026, well, with the top business related projects for the year and 55% of those companies said they wanted to incorporate generative AI, artificial intelligence or machine learning. So that's the acronyms there into business practices. And that's an increase from 12% back in 2024. So from 12% now up to 55% of all all all all larger organizations that were included in the study. 51% said they were going to implement automatic and robotic based projects. And 50% of them said they were improving cybersecurity and data privacy. So these numbers are probably not as the prize to you, but it's just important to think about what's going on in our external environments. So in organizations that we're working with, what's going on out there in the broader marketplace, if you like. 48% of organizations said they were optimising operational efficiency. So I'm giving you this as context to what's happening in the global environment. Now let's have another look at a different study just to give some context here. So there was a study by Pricewaterhouse, which was quite a large study as well. Looking at 50,000 respondents across 28 sectors and 48 economies. It included Australia. And if you're looking, you can also pick up your country as well. Well, it was interesting. So remember what is happening in those large organizations, the introduction of AI. Have a look at these statistics though, when they asked about the use of AI in jobs in the past 12 months. It's actually only a very small percentage of people that are using the technologies that work, which was quite surprising to me. So 10% of people are using a generative AI on a daily basis, 16% on a weekly basis and 22% in frequently, 51% not at all. So there's only a very, even though there's major global projects going on, there's only a very small percentage of people in our workplace that are actually really using AI in their job at the moment in Australia. And if you look at AI agents is actually an even smaller percentage as well. So that's really quite interesting to me that even though these that AI such a major part of everything we hear and see and the global projects that are going on, the uptake of AI usage in jobs, and we hear a lot about AI replacing jobs as well, the uptake is actually for me quite a lot less than I would have expected actually. So 10% daily, 16% weekly and 22% said in frequently, but 51% of respondents said never. So I was surprised by that too. Go on Paula, Biggie Pardon. I think too, I saw some research recently said that it was the sea suite who were using it more than the general employee. So I think that's an interesting step too that says it's our CEOs and the sea suite who are trying to figure out what to do with it, how to do with it as a, and it hasn't necessarily filtered through yet. Yeah, that's right. So we are talking about all types of AI as well. So not just your standard bots, I suppose. So generative AI agents or what we're calling machine based learning as well. So yeah, you're right, Paula. I agree with you. Now let's have a look at AI in our industry, in the coaching industry. And I'm taking this from the ICF Global Study. It's a 2025 report that dropped late last year and they were looking at the prevalence and the thoughts about how we would be using AI in the future as well in the coaching industry. So interestingly adoption across the coaching industry actually is quite low. Only 47% of coaches globally are using digital coaching platforms and it's primarily for one-on-one coaching, so about 35% of people using it for one-on-one coaching. Which is quite surprising to me too. I thought many more people would be using digital platforms and of course for scheduling. So using some form of AI for scheduling and an admin if you like. So quite a low usage there. In the past year, 19% of coaches invested in new technology, but that is expected to grow over the next one to three years. So coaches said, yeah, I'm not really using it at the moment, but it is expected to grow or I'm thinking about it over the next one to three years. 37% of coaches indicated that adapting to technology and digital tools is a major concern. And for me, I'm not sure about you, feel free to jump in everybody, tell me what you think. I thought that was low actually. But only 37% of coaches are thinking about the adoption and the adaptation to technology and digital tools as a concern. So it's interesting to me what's happening here. We've got these global projects. We've got maybe not a much significant uptake in Australia. And then we've got coaches going, you know, we're not really using it much either. So yeah, the report was, thank you Simone Simon, a big part in four double checking. Yeah, the report was published late last year. The data was collected in the past six months and you write that as say, a larger six months is a generation in the current world of AI. So you are right in saying that the figures because six months in the AI world could be vastly different. The figures could be changed given that we're February, 2026. So I do agree with you. And I think actually that is leading to one of the major points I want to say is that it does appear with every single study that I'm seeing, the rapid increase in AI. If we're not across it, you know, last year in the global reports, we definitely should be looking at it this year. So thank you for pointing that out. So what does that mean then? What's the role of coaching? And this is really where we are all going to have to do a really great reflection together. And this webinar today is really to present some trends to you. And then of course we want to go away and think about them as coaches as leaders. And then we will be picking up those themes in our coaching cafes coming up. So we'll talk about each of the themes as we go along together. But already, I'm sure that you would think about the role of coaching here. We're thinking about a convergence. So there's a lot going on right now. Everything is converging. It's melding, it's molding. There's a convergence of big projects. It's not here already. It's coming at us. So last year, Paula, it was you that coined this term to be that we need as coaches to be explorers. So we did some webinars on AI and rather than sticking our heads in our sand, let's explore, let's embrace, let's be part of what's happening. And of course that brings up all sorts of things around ethics and whether we agree with it and all this kind of stuff as well. But without a doubt, our role as coaches and our leaders is this coaching through change, coaching in change, helping people work out change, work out uncertainty. So much work we can do around that. And there's this new term that I've been hearing, which you might have all heard, which is F-O-B-O, the fear of being obsolete. So I suspect that for the coming 12 months, there might be some coaching conversations that are really starting to center around the fears of the change in the uncertainty and perhaps that I'm becoming obsolete if I'm not, if I'm not keeping up. Most importantly, our role and the role of coaching is in the human-centered leadership. So I'm not telling anyone on the line anything they don't know. But critically around critical thinking, emotional intelligence, human connection, relationships, all of those kind of things. So our role as coaches and leaders has never been important when we're talking about the trend of AI because of the need for human-centered relationship, because of the need for people to take what they're doing in their chat bots and then turn that into actual critical thinking. To be able to demonstrate and show up with emotionally intelligence with human connection, etc. and trust, most importantly trust. So, and I'll talk about trust as our second trend. But let me pause, Paula. I'm very keen to hear your thoughts about this. You're listening to the Open Door Coaching Coaching Cafe podcast. And for more information on programs run by Open Door Coaching, head to our website at opendoorcoaching.com.au. Now back to the podcast. Yeah, I think everything that you've got coming through rings through for me. I also heard another term which is called the concern is around thinking obesity, which is around de-skilling of people's thinking because they're using artificial intelligence, which I can understand in some respects. But for me, and what you've highlighted here is that the need for critical thinking and for making sure that the information that we're receiving is correct, doesn't make sense, doesn't work for us in the organization. I actually think will help to heighten those skills as we move forward. The other thing from the role of coaching in this space and from a leadership perspective is leaders really thinking about how do I want to lead in this space of AI. And what will that look like for me? What will that look like for my team? And then behind the scenes, I think there's a lot of work going on in this space around the governance of AI in organizations. Making sure that there are systems behind the systems that are making sure that that's all being managed correctly. Absolutely, I really agree with you. And therefore our role as leaders and our role as coaches, you can see where we hold all of this and we hold a space for all these leaders to be able to have these conversations to work on all these things as well. So our role here is quite critical. Let's move on to our next trend. And as I mentioned, feel free to anybody to pop a message in the chat to for us as well. And so the next trend that we're seeing really strongly it leads on from AI is converging with AI. So all of these trends are like a like a like a in a cauldron. And they're all being mixed up together as the way I can't see it. So if and this is this is the the thing that we call and that we've noticed in the in the research that's called the trust gap. So the trend we want to discuss with you next is addressing actually the trust gap and this will be more important than ever in 2026. I'm going to the alderman trust barometer. It's the 25th annual trust survey, 25th time they've done the trust survey. It was with 33,000 respondents, 28 countries and 1,150 respondents per country. So again, if you are listening to this outside of Australia, please go and have a look at your research as well. And interestingly, Australia's overall trust index fell from 50 in 2024 down to 49. So our trust index as a country as as a as a community is actually decreasing. Now the trust index is all about what's happening in our environments, what's happening with our leaders and our politics, et cetera. So it's an index of an as a global index. It gives us a global external view of the world. So one into Australians are less less trustworthy than they were last year. So that gives us kind of a global and an environmental external view of the world. And but our range, our country is in the global average. So the global average is 56 in terms of trust with this index. And that's about one in two people. Now what's interesting have a look at this price water house did a big study at the end of last year, which was the 2025 high. So 2025 hopes and fears survey was a very large study as well. And they then focused on workplaces and there's a big concern in our workplace right now about trust. They asked to what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements about your direct manager. And for people who said moderately agree and strongly agree, I trust my manager or top management. So my direct manager people said 61% said yes, I agree or strongly agree that I trust my direct manager top management was 50%. So it's a it's a big issue here in our workplaces that 50% of people do not agree or strongly agree in the trust of the top management. Same for top management will do what they say they will do top management cares about my wellbeing is even lower. So so what we're seeing here is that people have more trust in their immediate manager less so in top management. This is a massive issue we're facing in our workplaces today because as you know, trust impacts everything we do in our workplaces. And that last one around I can speak openly with my manager 60% so there's still you know six out of 10 not bad. You know, it's not bad, but it's it's it's not obviously as good as it can be and one in two people not trusting top management is a huge issue in our workplace. So I won't go into all the detail of what underpins trust and and what the indexes are so thank you for those people that are asking the questions because this is too much information to share with you in a short time. That's why I've got the studies there you can go and have a look at them. I've got all the references all the links go in have a look at your country really dig down into the data and the research as much as you want to there. And because these are actually informing what's happening in our leadership and and what's informing what's going to be happening in our coaching without a doubt. She'll put thank you for jumping in and saying the trust gap is causing teams to tip toe around candid conversations about work. Yeah, so if there's not enough trust, we can't do what we need to do in terms of speaking up, etc. One more thing and then Pauler, I'll get your opinion, the impact of trust. So we know that in a trust impacts and underpins the other major trends in our workplaces. So that's where I'm am nesting these trends this time. It impacts and underpins engagement in our workplace. Gallup said that employees who feel trusted and supported by their manager are 3.4 times more engaged and 75, 70% of the variance in team engagement is down to the manager alone. So you can see where these studies are not all saying the same thing, but they're all in my opinion pointing us in exactly the same direction. Thank you Sebastian, you've picked it up already. You said trust has a big impact on psychological safety. It aligns with being able to speak openly to the manager and look at my next bullet point. You gave me goosebumps there, you're reading my mind. We know that trust impacts psychological safety exactly as you've described it Sebastian. Thank you. It impacts well being. It has a direct impact on absenteeism, sick days, mental health, all of the metrics that we're measuring in our organisations. It has a direct impact on diversity, equity, inclusion and my particular focus is here in coaching, which is neurodiversity as well. So we have AI as a massive trend. We have a gap in trust as a massive trend. I think you can start to see where these are going to converge, explode something. But there's a lot going on in our workplaces that we as coaches can make a contribution to. Paula, let me pause. Go ahead. Yeah, and I think this really highlights one of the areas too is that our middle managers, there's a disconnect from middle management to senior management, which makes things difficult. And it means that they're not connected in with, there's a disconnect to from an organisational strategy perspective and that there's a lot of work that needs to be done around what is the communication of blowing down how our decisions being made, how is my manager. And we know that that middle management is a really tough role. It has a lot of operational in it that we're thinking pure leadership. It should be leading the people. And as we have to do less with more, it's been, they're getting, they're having to do more. So it's really one of those groups that needs to get a lot of attention to help build their capability in this area as well. Oh, absolutely. So there's so many ways that you see that that coaching is going to be able to influence our trust in our workplaces. If we are coaching executives, we can have this as a conversation. If we're coaching middle managers, whatever level we're coaching is like, how do we focus on trust? Because we know it's the, it's, it's, it's the thing that's underpinning everything that's going on in the workplace. And it is really at a critical point in my opinion, we are a critical point now that we need to be addressing this together as coaches. We have a massive opportunity. So the role of coaching, we know everyone on the line, you know, you are here, your great coaches and great leaders. Otherwise, you wouldn't be listening to our podcast. We just assume that. So coaching by its very nature is trust based. So I am here to say do more coaching equals build more trust. So, so I don't think we need a fancy equation around this. The more we are coaching in our workplace because coaching is by its very nature trace trap trust base. The more we are doing coaching, the more we will build trust. I think it's an exponential relationship in exponential positive relationship. And I haven't done the research to and and to show you that, but I will to give you the data if you need it as well. And most importantly, I think where we can make the biggest impact in our one on one coaching and our coaching of managers is include trust in the coaching conversations. Include questions about how are we building trust as a leader? Where are we building trust as a leader? How do we show up with trust? And it can be an intangible thing, but it's about how we influencing that. So anywhere where we can build trust into conversations into coaching conversations and have leaders focus on this, I think will be will be one way of making an impact. As a global community this year in 2026. All right, I'm going to move on because I've got a very short time to share this the third leadership trend where building leadership capability is more important than ever. So we've talked about AI, we've talked about the trust gap. And now if you have a look at their global business impact, the 2025 Global Leadership Development Study from Harvard, you can see the top skills that are so important to organizations and they're becoming more important. So these are the skills where in order to meet business needs, what did leaders think they needed and how have it have pulled out the ones where they were even more important than in the past. Demonstrating emotional and social intelligence, managing polarization in the workplace, synthesizing complex information, leading change and transformation, fostering innovation and creativity, collaborating effectively. Yes, agility and resilience and yes, promoting diversity and inclusion and yes, two strategic thinking and decision making. These are all topics that we coach around. They're all topics that we've helped leaders focus on and coaching plays a vital role in building those leadership capabilities and coaching leaders in those topics. So think AI, think trust, think the critical need to develop leadership capability. And I think we are sitting right now at a pivotal point without getting too carried away in terms of our ability as coaches and leaders to make a difference in that way. So here we go. This is my final thing, my inspiration, my challenge. I want to lead you with this thought. So what is the role of coaching in responding to all of these trends? I want to go back to Sejon Whitmore who passed away actually back in 2017, so I was some time ago. And Sejon Whitmore, who was known as kind of the grandfather of coaching, said we must see people in terms of their future potential and not their past performance. When I interviewed Sejon Whitmore before he passed away, he said to me, Natalie, this is, so this is many years ago now. So I'd say over 10 would he's been passed away for nearly 10 years. I'd say they've 15 years ago, I interviewed him. And he said, Natalie, never has there been a more important time for coaching in our workplaces. And if I think if I asked Sejon today, hey, Sejon, what do you think about? What's going on in our workplaces? He would probably update that and these are my words to there's never been a more important time for coaching enabled leadership in our workplace. Coaching enabling leadership in our workplaces, coaching as the critical skill that's going to build trust, allow us to manage change, etc. So I'm adding that those words in. And I think if I said to Sejon, what do you think about what's going on today, Sejon? Remembering that he passed away when he was 80, so he'd probably be in his 90s today if he was still alive. I reckon hand on heart, Sejon would say something like, Natalie, puller, community, open door alumni, ICL alumni, you can have all the AI you want in the world. But without trust, engagement and the focus on human potential, you have nothing. So Sejon said we must see people in terms of their future potential and not their past performance. And I think he would say if there's never been a better time for coaching and if we don't have it, then we have nothing. So I'm going to lead you with those thoughts. I'm going to lead you with hopefully that inspiration and lead you with that opportunity for reflection as well. Puller any final comments for you from you before we wrap up? Only that I believe in people and that people are the centre of your organisation. And so I absolutely agree with the words trust, engagement and human potential. They are at the core of what I think it all is. Thank you so much. That's a lovely way of summarising as well. So thank you everyone for being part of our time together. Of course we have our certificate forum, workplace and business coaching. We have our diploma of leadership coaching, all the great coaching we've got going on has all kicked off for the year. So please feel free to engage in any or all of those programs as well. As always we say thank you for joining us wherever you might be joining us either live or on your favourite streaming service all around the world. We have been listening to the coaching cafe and it's been a pleasure to present these ideas with you. We will say goodbye for now and enjoy your coaching. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Coaching Cafe Podcast. You can watch the full video of this podcast on our website. I'll put a link in the show notes. We'll see you at the next Coaching Cafe.[Music]