[Viveka] Coaching in the New Era

Viveka.  ●  Issue 01
The Craft
Coaching in the New Era: The Shift Toward Trust and Craft

Katja’s Note

A few years ago, coaching was easier to describe.

A coach had a practice. A client had a goal. Much of the work happened quietly, in conversation, and often out of view. What mattered most was the quality of attention, the trust in the room, and the discipline behind the questions being asked.

That is still true. But the profession has changed around it.

Today, 122,974 coach practitioners work worldwide, up 54% since 2019. As coaching becomes more visible, trust and craft matter even more. Visibility may open a door, but it does not carry the work on its own. Coaches still need to show how they think, what contexts they understand, and why their work deserves confidence.

That is why we are starting this newsletter. Not to offer vague inspiration, and not to say more for the sake of saying more. The aim is to share practical ideas, useful examples, and honest observations that help coaches build stronger professional practices.

The lesson I keep coming back to is simple: growth in the profession makes trust more important, not less.

What helps your practice communicate the depth of your craft before you are in the room?

We've been sitting with a question Axel Meierhoefer raised in a recent conversation, and it's stuck with us enough that we wanted to bring it to the rest of the coach community: what if "coach" is simply the wrong word for what we do?

Axel isn't the first person to notice the mismatch between sports coaching (the whiteboard, the play call, the three seconds on the clock) and the kind of coaching most of us actually practice. What sets his take apart is that he tested it. In his doctoral research, he asked practicing coaches directly: if the word "coaching" got retired tomorrow and reserved permanently for sports, what would we call this profession instead? Two answers led the field. Guide, first. Pathfinder, close behind.

"A Guide doesn't tell you the answer. A Guide knows the terrain well enough to let you find your own way through it." Axel Meierhoefer

Both words point at the same idea: presence without direction. Axel connects that back to the Socratic method, asking instead of instructing, and to Otto Scharmer's Theory U, which he uses to describe coaching as a kind of descent. You move down one side of the U by opening up, hit what Scharmer calls the eye of the needle at the bottom, where the real, often uncomfortable material surfaces, and only then have anything to build on for the way back up.

Get to know more about Axel's insights on coaching on Viveka

Axel takes the same lens to a second distinction worth sitting with: management versus leadership. In his experience, most people, even senior ones, can't clearly articulate the difference when asked directly. Management takes someone else's strategy and turns it into operations. Leadership sets the vision in the first place and inspires people to follow it. The two get treated as one long skill ladder, when they're really different disciplines. A great individual performer gets promoted into management for excelling individually. A great manager gets promoted into leadership for managing well. Neither promotion comes with retraining for the very different behavior the new role demands, and that gap, Axel argues, is exactly where a guide (not an instructor) earns their keep.

Boiled all the way down, Axel's own definition of the work is simple: "helping others help themselves become successful." No whiteboard. No play call. Just a path, and someone willing to walk it alongside you until you can see it yourself.

If Axel's distinction between coaching-as-instruction and coaching-as-guidance struck a chord, we'd love to know how you'd answer his question. If we couldn't call it "coaching," what would you call what you do? Reply to this newsletter and tell us.

The first issue of the 10 Best Practices for Coaches in 2026 guide begins with a practical idea: trust is easier to build before a client, organization, or program is actively evaluating you.

A professional profile is more than a short biography. It is often the first structured view a potential client or organizational buyer has of a coach’s work.

A strong profile makes it easier to understand your philosophy, the leadership contexts you know, your certifications, and the kinds of outcomes clients work toward. The aim is clarity, not volume.

The approved positioning is clear: Position yourself to be discoverable by organizations looking for credentialed coaches.

After account creation, a coach can complete the required profile information and receive the automated Coaching Active - your full professional profile is complete and live badge.

Testimonials are strongest when they are collected as part of a regular rhythm, not as a last-minute request. A timely reflection helps capture what changed, what became clearer, and what felt most useful while the work is still recent.

When shared with permission, testimonials help make the client experience visible and give future buyers more confidence in what a coach’s work looks like in practice.

Explore Viveka free for 7 days to access the full guide, along with additional guidance on verification, positioning, enterprise readiness, community, and professional infrastructure.

A quick pulse from the Viveka coach community:

Trust often compounds through small, repeatable actions.

A complete profile can make a coach’s expertise easier to understand. A timely testimonial can help a future client see the relevance of that expertise. A peer conversation can sharpen how the work is described and delivered.

Coaches who join the First 100 by August 31 receive the Coach Growth Studio experience included as a special bonus alongside their Lifetime Verified membership. The First 100 opportunity continues beyond August 31, but the Coach Growth Studio bonus is only included for coaches who join by that date.

Explore the First 100

If Lifetime Verified is not the right step yet, coaches can still explore Viveka free for 7 days and then choose between Network Member or Verified membership.

Explore Viveka free for 7 days, complete your profile, earn the automated Coaching Active - your full professional profile is complete and live badge, and then choose the path that fits your practice: Network Member or Verified. Verified Coaches become eligible for enterprise matching opportunities as the network grows.

Coming next: The Trust Economy - what happens to expertise when AI makes authority easy to manufacture?