What's In and Out for 2025: The Big Changes in Coaching and Coachability

As 2025 dawns, there’s a shift occurring in the industrial-organizational psychology space. For years, companies have been focusing on the question, “How do we give feedback?” Recently, these same organizations are instead asking, "How do we build a workforce that craves and effectively uses feedback?" 

This year, companies are catching onto something we uncovered in our research years ago: a coachable workforce isn't just nice-to-have – it's a critical accelerant for organizational performance. 

So, this begs the question – when it comes to coaching and coachability, what’s hot and what’s not in 2025? Let’s get into it. 

What's IN:

1. Developing the highly coachable. The companies of the future are not just developing their leaders into strong coaches; they’re also investing in coachability training for all their employees. These companies know that great coaching (and all developmental initiatives, for that matter) are much more effective with highly coachable players. 

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2. Hiring the highly coachable. Waiting until after you’ve hired a candidate to discover if they’re coachable or not? That’s so 2024. The elite organizations of today are proactively identifying and prioritizing highly coachable candidates through the interview process. 

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3. Peer Coaching Networks. In addition to formal hierarchical coaching, peer-to-peer coaching communities are emerging as a way for companies to expand the influence of coaching. Through these communities, employees are learning how to accept and enact feedback from peers across departments and levels. To this end, CCI has developed a peer-to-peer coaching workshop for our partners. 

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4. Personalized Coaching Programs. Each company is unique, so it’s no wonder when off-the-shelf, cookie-cutter coaching initiatives don’t work. This year, orgs are opting for personalized coaching journeys and experiences that account for employees’ individual needs and coachability levels.

What's OUT:

1. Fixed Mindset Leadership. Leaders who resist feedback from certain sources or believe skills are innate rather than developable are becoming obsolete. The new leadership model embraces humility and continuous learning.

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2. One-Way Coaching Relationships. The traditional "coach speaks, employee listens" model is dead. Interactive, collaborative coaching relationships are the new norm.

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3. Lecture-Based Upskilling. In 2025, I-O psychology is decisively moving away from traditional lecture-based learning toward hands-on techniques like CCI’s experiential training on Mastery, where participants apply concepts we teach from research out on the field with professional soccer coaches and players. Another example of experiential training is our new error encouragement training, where employees learn coachability skills through structured risk-taking and hands-on experimentation in safe-to-fail environments. Just as you can't master riding a bike from watching a PowerPoint presentation, this non-didactic approach recognizes that meaningful skill development requires practical experience.

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The future of workplace development lies in creating environments where feedback isn't just accepted – it's actively sought after. The most successful organizations in 2025 will be those that have mastered the art of developing coachable employees and creating environments where feedback flows between and among employees of all statuses and stations. 

Stay Current with Coachability from CCI 

Want to stay ahead of these trends? Start by assessing your own Coachability Quotient and creating opportunities for your team to develop their feedback-seeking muscles. We look forward to starting your coachability journey with you this year! 

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