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Coach on Tap
December 20, 2025If 2025 felt like a “cleansing year” for you—stripping away what looked good on the outside but didn’t hold up in real life—you weren’t alone.
Across the coaching world, 2025 carried a similar energy: more people seeking support, more coaches entering the market, and higher expectations for quality, ethics, and measurable outcomes. Global coaching continued to expand, with the International Coaching Federation (ICF) reporting 122,974 coach practitioners worldwide and an estimated $5.34B USD in total annual revenue in its latest Global Coaching Study.
But growth doesn’t automatically mean maturity.
This year asked a sharper question:
What does “good coaching” look like when the market gets crowded, technology gets louder, and people get tired of generic advice?
This is our 2025 wrap—grounded in research, shaped by what coaches and clients actually experienced, and written to help you enter 2026 with more intention (and less noise).
Coaching is no longer a niche service for executives only. The profession has scaled globally, and that scale brings both opportunity and pressure:
More coaches than ever (which is good for access, harder for differentiation).
More revenue in the profession (which increases competition and buyer sophistication).
More emphasis on evidence, standards, and ethics, especially as AI and digital coaching tools expand.
If you felt the market shifting from “post motivational content and clients will come” to “prove your value, structure, and integrity”—that shift is real.
2025 rewarded coaches and platforms that could answer:
What outcomes do you support?
What process do you follow?
How do you protect client trust and confidentiality?
What makes you meaningfully different?
The strongest coaching research doesn’t claim that coaching is magic. It shows something more useful:
Coaching reliably improves outcomes—when it’s done well.
A widely cited meta-analysis in organizational coaching found significant positive effects across outcomes like performance/skills, well-being, coping, work attitudes, and goal-directed self-regulation (effect sizes ranging roughly from moderate to strong).
Other workplace-focused meta-analyses similarly report positive effects on organizational and individual outcomes.
And systematic reviews of executive coaching outcomes conclude that coaching can improve outcomes such as performance and satisfaction—while also highlighting a recurring limitation: the field needs more consistent measurement and stronger study designs (a reminder that “evidence-based” is a direction, not a marketing label).
Coach takeaway: Coaching is effective, but the market is increasingly filtering for coaches who can demonstrate a clear process, ethical practice, and outcome alignment.
Client takeaway: Coaching can be a powerful investment, especially when you choose a coach whose approach fits your goals—and when you commit to the work between sessions.
If 2024 was a year of acceleration, 2025 was a year of discernment.
For many coaches:
Fewer “vanity” offers survived (too broad, too generic, too trend-driven).
Niches sharpened.
Systems mattered more than inspiration.
Trust became the real currency.
For many clients:
Surface-level motivation stopped working.
“Quick fixes” got exhausting.
The desire shifted from advice to a sustainable way to change.
In other words, 2025 didn’t just ask, “What are you building?”
It asked, “What are you willing to stop doing so the right thing can grow?”
This year, AI wasn’t just a tool for marketing or note-taking. It began to show up directly in coaching-adjacent experiences: journaling assistants, reflective chat tools, coaching platforms, and hybrid human+AI workflows.
Because of this, the industry started formalizing guardrails:
ICF published an AI Coaching Framework and Standards to guide ethical, effective, and accessible AI-enabled coaching.
EMCC released ethics guidance for coaching using technology & AI, emphasizing informed consent, privacy, transparency, and responsibility for outcomes.
At the same time, peer-reviewed research began exploring how clients and coaches perceive chatbot-assisted coaching and where the benefits and limitations may be.
Our stance for Coach on Tap (and a useful 2026 rule):
AI can support coaching, but it should never replace the foundations:
confidentiality and consent
human judgment and context
ethical boundaries
clear scope (coaching vs therapy vs advice)
In 2026, the winners won’t be the loudest “AI coaching” claims.
They’ll be the most trustworthy and well-governed implementations.
In a crowded market, clients don’t buy information. They buy outcomes, safety, and transformation.
What stood out in 2025:
Specialization > generalization
Process > personality
Trust > hype
Consistency > intensity
If you’re a coach, consider this 2026 shift:
From “I can coach anyone” → to “I help this person achieve this outcome in this way.”
Coaching isn’t the hour you spend with your coach.
It’s how that hour changes the other 167 hours of your week.
If you’re a client, your 2026 power move is simple:
bring real situations
pick one experiment per session
track what changes (behavior, energy, decisions, relationships)
This is how coaching becomes real—not inspirational.
Use these as journal prompts—or answer one in the comments when you share this blog.
What did you stop doing in 2025 that made you a better coach?
Where did you “perform expertise” instead of holding space?
What boundaries protected your energy and improved your work?
What part of your process is now non-negotiable?
What pattern did 2025 finally make you face?
What did you release that you’re proud of—even if it hurt?
What was your smallest consistent win this year?
What do you want support with in 2026 that you can’t do alone?
Make your growth measurable, human, and sustainable.
Not dramatic. Not perfect. Not performative.
Just real:
one honest goal
one supportive relationship
one consistent practice
one review moment each month
2026 can absolutely be a great year—especially if you enter it lighter than you entered 2025.
To every coach who held space with integrity, and every client who chose the hard work of change—thank you for being part of the coaching ecosystem that’s growing up, not just growing bigger.
What did 2025 cleanse from your life - and what are you carrying into 2026?
Share your reflection. We’ll be reading.
- Coach on Tap