COACHING OPPORTUNITIES IN 2019’S WORLD OF WORK If you look round our cities and suburbs, you’ll have seen the new breed of worker. Hunched over a laptop in a café, lounging in a coworking space, riding along the pavement with someone’s lunch, or sitting alongside you on the train, work is being done very, very differently. And the opportunities for coaches are huge. As we hurtle into a New Year, let’s take a look at a few key trends and how you can benefit.
1. Tech dev, apps and AI I do a lot of work with bookkeepers and small creative businesses. Both are being kicked around hugely by developments in the world of tech and the impact of artificial intelligence. Many embrace the changes and recognise the need to improve their own value proposition, but many more are hesitating and missing out.
Take for example a bookkeeper. Historically this person played a support role to an accountant. Sitting in their client’s office every couple of weeks, the archetypal bean counter made the box of receipts go away and buried the business owners lunch bills under ‘client entertainment’. Not anymore. With cloud accounting and a plethora of plugins and apps, data entry is a thing of the past and remote working is the norm. As a consequence, savvy bookkeepers have morphed much more into the ‘trusted advisor’ space and are having great success as many accountancy practices were a little asleep at the wheel and struggling with the practicalities of delivering on such a promise.
And it’s a similar story with say, a graphic designer. With genius businesses like Canva, who needs them? Well happily, the world still does. If only our creatives could see that. If there’s one thing AI will never replace it’s human creativity, even excepting that bonkers sale at Christies recently. Yep, it’s that unsexy ‘value proposition’ stuff again. If you’re no longer doing the easyish commodity stuff (because Canva has pinched it), what are you doing that people will pay you handsomely for? It’s a good question, and one we as coaches can and should be asking.
The Coaching Opportunity These people and many, many more like them need to be challenged to ‘up their game’ and will benefit by being held accountable to a new and exciting path. Our job is to understand their challenges, have the courage to speak up about them and lead them to a brighter future.
