The Future Belongs to Leaders Who Coach

Earlier this fall, on a warm morning in Navasota, Texas, a circle of clergy from the Texas Annual Conference leaned forward in quiet conversation.  Somewhere in that retreat session—somewhere between deep breaths and honest confessions—I heard myself saying something that has become truer each year: “The future of leadership belongs to those who know how to coach”.

Not in the sense of sprinkling a little coaching language into our leadership.
Not in the sense of adding it to a growing toolbox.

But in the way Herminia Ibarra and Anne Scoular describe in their Harvard Business Review piece The Leader as Coach: coaching is becoming the core of leadership itself.
The leaders who thrive are the ones who shift from directing to discovering, from telling to listening, from solving to empowering.

When I entered the world of coaching almost fifteen years ago, I didn’t know I was walking toward a different life. I only knew I was worn thin. I loved the people I served—but I was tired in a way that a good night’s sleep didn’t fix.

Then something happened that I now see as grace. When I was first learning about coaching, one of the trainers said, “Vicki, what if your job is not to solve anything? What if your job is to trust that the wisdom is already in them?”

I felt something shift in my body before my mind caught up. My shoulders loosened. My breath dropped deeper. I felt space open up inside me.

That sentence didn’t just change my leadership. It changed my wellbeing.

Futurist Bob Johansen writes that our current world—volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous—requires leaders who can navigate uncertainty with openness, curiosity, and humility.

In other words—the exact mindset coaching cultivates.

Coaching mindset is built around four qualities I teach often:
Open, curious, flexible, and client-centered.

These are not techniques. They are a way of being—a way that reduces anxiety because it releases the burden of having all the answers. They cultivate a deeper trust in God’s presence and in the wisdom God is already speaking in the life of the person across from you. 

I see this transformation in every coaching retreat and in every individual clergy coaching session.

You can literally watch it happen.

The moment a pastor stops trying to carry the congregation’s anxiety…
The moment they let go of solving every conflict…
Their face softens.
Their breath steadies.
They begin to listen—not only to others, but to their own soul.

Leadership grows lighter.
Participation increases.
Conflict shifts.
Creativity returns.

Ibarra and Scoular note that coaching unlocks people’s potential to “maximize their own performance.”
In ministry, I see something even more sacred: Coaching unlocks calling.  It invites leaders and congregations alike into greater ownership of their growth, their challenges, their discernment.  

Coaching is the posture that makes these shifts possible.

It forms leaders who can stand in the unsure places without gripping for control.
Leaders who listen for what wants to emerge.
Leaders who trust the Spirit more than their strategic plan.

In liminal seasons, when the path is unclear and the old ways no longer serve us, the coaching mindset offers a way forward marked not by striving but by attending, as Susan Beaumont so beautifully names. Moving from knowing to unknowing. From advocating to listening. From forcing outcomes to surrendering to emergence.

This is why I believe—wholeheartedly—that coaching mindset and coaching skills are not optional for the future church. They are essential.

They strengthen wellbeing.
They deepen trust.
They lighten emotional load.
They make room for collaboration, discernment, and Spirit-led wisdom.

And perhaps most importantly—
they invite us, as leaders, into a way of being that is more spacious, more hopeful, and profoundly more humane.