The challenge is clear: the life cycles of products and services are becoming increasingly shorter as a result of increasing competition, as well as rapid technological developments.
Unfortunately, our traditional, linear product development processes, are not designed to heed these challenges. This approach, in which new products and services need to run an internal hurdle race in the form of sequential reviews by different business functions, causes delays, a waste of (scarce) resources, and, last but not least, internal rivalry. A rivalry that stems from the fact that the different functions involved in the decision-making process feel they need to prove their added value.
To make matters even more complicated, the competitive landscape is fundamentally shifting: from product development to business model development, and from product portfolio management to business model portfolio management.
In ‘Augmented Collaboration, how teams and AI work together’ Patrick van der Pijl, Patrick Kooij, Alex Knezevic, and Erik van der Pluijm, together with hundreds (!) of co-authors, provide a highly practical (I would almost say ‘hands-on’) guide, on how to successfully address these challenges through a new, customer centric, collaborative, and IT enabled methodology.
I recently had the pleasure of having a conversation with one of the key authors of the book, Patrick van der Pijl, prior to the official release of the book.
Like any industry, the executive coaching industry needs to adapt itself to stay relevant.
For executive coaches, this means—among other things—reconsidering the classic boundary between executive and “life” coaching in a post-COVID-19 world, navigating generational differences (from a long series of face-to-face discussions with baby boomers, to crisp, powerful virtual interventions for Gen Z members), integrating AI (potentially alongside wearables), and acknowledging their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
I recently discussed these topics with Stefan Stenzel, who has been active in the coaching world since the early 2000s and published ‘Die Zukunft des Coaching-Business’ (The Future of the Coaching Business) in 2022. A follow-up book will be published in the first quarter of 2027.
A red thread throughout the interview was Stefan’s advice for executive coaches to differentiate themselves. Asking (only) thoughtful questions is not enough anymore!
In our conversation, we covered the following topics:
The diminishing boundary between executive and ‘life’ coaching
Do different generations have different coaching needs?
The application of ‘wearables’ in executive coaching
AI: A competitor to executive coaches?
Hybrid coaching (Human + AI)
Technology & data privacy
Developments in organizational structures & leadership
The corporate social responsibility of executive coaches
► You can watch or listen to a podcast with our conversation on:
➡️ No time to watch or listen to the podcast now? Here is a short summary of the key points of our conversation:
Dirk Verburg: In your provocative book, ‘Die Zukunft des Coaching-Business ’you argue that boundaries between work and private life are dissolving, accelerated by COVID-19. Does this mean the distinction between business and life coaching is obsolete?
Stefan Stenzel: Have they ever truly been separate? Executive coaches find that the more senior a client is, the more private life enters discussions. Working long hours impacts health, family, and relationships. The boundary has always been artificial. Organizations like the ICF established “business coaching” partly to protect a lucrative market and create a unique selling proposition. Behind the curtain, executive coaching always touches on personality and private life. To be a responsible coach, you must help clients identify where they draw their energy beyond just business success.
Dirk Verburg: If an executive coach discovers that the root cause of work issues stems from someone’s private life, is it legitimate to explore this in the context of a commercial relationship with the sponsor (the company of the coachee)?
Stefan Stenzel: The client serves as the guide and boundary for these questions, and you must be sensitive to that. If you are unsure whether you are crossing into a space that is too private, simply ask. You will get an immediate answer through interaction and negotiation.
Dirk Verburg: Are there situations where you must consult the sponsor, or ask the client to do so?
Stefan Stenzel: It is always a negotiation, and everyone involved should be comfortable with the outcome. That discussion process can even become part of the coaching intervention itself by introducing another perspective.
Dirk Verburg: You wrote that coaching needs to be adapted across generations, in content as well as in terms of format. Could you elaborate on what this means for baby boomers, millennials, and Generation Z?
Stefan Stenzel: Generation Z consumes information primarily via smartphones. For them, processes must be seamless—from engaging a coach to making payments. They value authenticity and will evaluate you quickly, shifting to another coach if they are unsatisfied because options are abundant. Furthermore, human coaching must offer distinct value beyond AI. You cannot just ask basic questions and provide generic to-do lists; attention spans are shorter, so you must be impactful, sharp, and directly to the point. Clients need to experience immediate value from your presence.
Dirk Verburg: You mentioned the use of ‘wearables’ to collect data, for instance, a coachee’s heart rate during stressful interactions. Do you expect these tools to become standard for coaches?
Stefan Stenzel: Younger generations naturally wear smartwatches, making them a smooth entry point for data collection. Coaches can integrate wearables to measure long-term impact. For instance, tracking heart rate changes during public speaking before and after a six-month coaching program provides tangible evidence of progress. Combining wearables with technologies like Virtual Reality—which simulates high-stakes environments and tracks eye movement—allows coaches to demonstrate measurable results, building credibility over “wannabe” coaches.
Dirk Verburg: What is your perspective on AI? Is, or will AI be, a direct competitor of Executive Coaches?
Stefan Stenzel: Currently, generative AI is too talkative and acts like a beginner. Professional coaching requires silence, precise timing, and carefully calibrated provocation—not rushing into simplistic consulting or surface-level management models. AI struggles with complex executive realities, paradoxes, and ambiguous situations where no single right answer exists. More importantly, the coach’s unique personality and personal brand act as the core tool. Human coaches add value by challenging mindsets in real-time, helping leaders navigate deep complexity rather than relying on basic templates.
Dirk Verburg: Do you foresee hybrid modes of coaching, where AI serves as a first-line coach before transitioning to a human coach?
Stefan Stenzel: Yes, hybrid and on-demand coaching are the future. Clients will increasingly arrive having already interacted with AI. Interweaving AI between, before, or after sessions keeps clients engaged with their goals. The key is embedding AI thoughtfully to maximize client impact.
Dirk Verburg: Are professional coaching bodies adequately addressing AI literacy, data privacy, and ethical boundaries, or do we still have a long way to go?
Stefan Stenzel: Associations like the ICF have started developing guidelines, but the true test will be making AI literacy and ethics standard in all coaching curricula. Professional coaches must proactively discuss data protection and boundaries with clients. Transparency and strong ethical standards will ultimately differentiate true professionals from amateur coaches.
Dirk Verburg: How are organizational leadership styles evolving, and how can executive coaches best support their clients through these changes?
Stefan Stenzel: We are moving toward “agentic organizations,” where AI manages end-to-end business processes. As AI generates vast, complex, and sometimes controversial options, a leader’s primary role shifts toward complex decision-making and ethical judgment. Because AI can handle analysis and conceptual work, human managers must focus on implementation, change management, and leading hybrid teams of humans and synthetic entities. Personal authenticity will be essential. Coaches must help leaders navigate these paradoxical realities and understand AI’s limitations, including biases and hallucinations.
Dirk Verburg: Do you think coaches are adequately aware of their Corporate Social Responsibility, given that their work with senior executives indirectly impacts thousands of employees?
Stefan Stenzel: Coaching bodies rarely discuss politics or broader societal issues, preferring to focus on immediate client goals. However, coaches must become more aware of their broader impact. While coaches should not impose political views, they must be equipped to discuss ethical and societal dimensions when clients face major decisions, such as restructuring. Taking a principled stand, encouraging long-term perspective, and helping clients weigh societal impacts separates human coaches from AI, which merely flatters the user.
► About Stefan Stenzel
Stefan Stenzel (Dipl.-Psych.) studied Organizational Psychology at Heidelberg and Mannheim with a minor in Business Administration. He has nearly 30 years of experience in People and Organizational Development.
Since 2001, he has been working at SAP SE as an HR Senior Expert for Learning within the Global Leadership Development team across various areas of responsibility.
Following his initial coaching training in 1998, he has served as an internal coach at SAP since 2002. With short interruptions, he manages the global pool of external coaches across all management levels and is currently implementing a coachbot to complement the service portfolio.
He co-founded DBVC e.V. in 2004, and in 2023, he co-founded the “Future of Coaching” Think Tank alongside Dr. Uwe Böning.
Finally Stefan is the author of various publications on the future of coaching.
An important, and extremely rewarding, service I offer clients in my executive coaching practice, is to help senior leaders who are unemployed, or run the risk of losing their job, to find a new role.
An integral part of the search strategy I define with my clients is to review and test their existing network through activating it very early in their search process. Reason being of course, that networks are one of the best channels to find a new role.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, I recommend that you to do the same: start activating your network as soon as possible. Why? Because there is a considerable chance that, like many of my clients, you will discover that your network is not as strong as you think.
Once you start activating your network for your job search, you will quickly see that all your contacts fall in one of these 5 categories: Ghosts, Sympathizers, Google-Lights, Weak connectors, or Referrers, …and that the first three are completely useless.
1. Ghosts
Ghosts are people that do not react if you reach out to them for a meeting (even if they were the ones initially offering this). Here you probably miscalculated the nature of your relationship. Where you saw friendship, or at least some form of a long term relationship, your counterpart only saw one or more (potential) business transactions.
🎙️ In the 30th episode of the Leadership 2.0 podcast, I interview Rebecca Robins CMgr CCMI and Patrick Dunne about ‘Maximising the business opportunity of generational diversity’
During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:
Earlier this week, one of the most important business books on the Future of Work was published by Harvard Business Review Press: ‘Employment Is Dead: How Disruptive Technologies Are Revolutionizing the Way We Work’ by Deborah Perry Piscione and Josh Drean.
The central theme of this book is that traditional employment models are becoming outdated due to the evolving needs and expectations of the modern workforce, in combination with, and enabled by, disruptive technologies.
This will lead to the end of the traditional employment model, as well as the traditional form of companies, as we know them today.
Monday, just hours before the book was released, I had the chance to interview Deborah Perry Piscione for my Leadership 2.0 Podcast.
► In our conversation, we touched on the following topics:
Recently I had a conversation with Saskia Schepers about her book on Neurodiversity in the workplace with the title ‘Als alle breinen werken – Waarom ruimte voor neurodiversiteit op het werk goed is voor iedereen’ (‘When all brains are switched on – Why space for neurodiversity in the workplace benefits everyone’).
Around 80% of mankind is neurotypical, and 20% is neurodivergent. We tend to ‘equip’ people in the latter category with labels like ADD, DHD, bipolar, autistic, etc.
Most leaders find it hard to integrate neurodivergent people in their teams.
The reason is that most of us have preconceived ideas about the way people in the workplace should behave. For instance, we expect people to like attending and participating in meetings, do their work in teams, be productive in open-plan offices, and socialize with their colleagues after work.
People who do not fit this mold are seen as bad ‘team players’, and are often criticized for this behavior, e.g. during annual performance review meetings.
The book almost immediately reached the number 1 position in the Dutch bestseller list of management books, was quickly sold out, and is now in its third printed edition.
An English translation is in the making and will be published in 2024.
During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:
Our society is more complex than ever. For the first time since WWII two nations find themselves at war on the European continent. At the same time our economy is slowing down, inflation is on the rise, whilst technological developments in the AI space are more unpredictable than ever, and we are still trying to find out if these will be our friend or foe…
In times like these ethics, and a sense of purpose are more important than ever. Therefore I was glad to have the opportunity to have a conversation on these topics with John Hollwitz.
John Hollwitz is a University Professor of psychology and rhetoric. Before coming to Fordham, he was the A.F. Jacobson Professor of Communications at Creighton University and dean of arts and sciences at Loyola College in Maryland. He also has been the vice president of academic affairs at Fordham.
Our interview was focused on the why and how of corporate ethics. During our conversation, we discussed, amongst others, the following topics:
Our expectations of leaders and ideas about leadership have changed dramatically in the last couple of years.
Recently I was introduced to Sophia Town, Ph.D. , an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Gabelli School of Business of Fordham University, who is at the forefront of academic research in this area.
In the classroom, Professor Town’s curriculum is guided by the question: “How can we develop compassionate leaders in service of a flourishing world?”
SophiaTown leads Fordham’s Human Flourishing Project (FHFP), a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary research lab that explores behavioral, psychological, communicative, and spiritual development in business education. Related to this project, Dr. Town serves as a Research Affiliate and Advisory Board Member for the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University.
During our conversation, we discussed, amongst others, the following topics:
For those who have never experienced it firsthand, or witnessed it from nearby, scientific research has shown that work can be a considerable source of stress.
This stress can manifest itself in the form of emotions (e.g. anxiety and depression), cognitive performance (e.g. in decision-making), negative behaviors (e.g. unhealthy eating habits, alcohol and drug abuse, aggression), and physical symptoms (e.g. high blood pressure, neck-, head- and shoulder pain).
Not only does stress have a negative impact on individual employees, absenteeism and low engagement for instance can seriously impact the performance of their organizations as well.
Resilience training
The popularity of resilience training in the workplace has dramatically increased in the last couple of years (particularly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic), and there is evidence that, if done in the right format, this training can help individuals in certain target groups to deal with stress.
Positioning
The problem is that resilience training is almost always only a part of the solution, and that is almost meaningless if offered in isolation to mitigate work-related stress.
Last week I attended an interesting Webinar from Gartner about change fatigue.
According to data collected by Gartner, change fatigue is quickly becoming the number 1 priority for most HR organizations in 2023.
The reason is that the number of change initiatives in organizations is increasing exponentially; simultaneously, the enthusiasm of the workforce to embrace, or at least support these changes, is plummeting.
As a result, many organizations are currently looking for resources to address this, for instance in the form of change management methodologies (e.g. ADKAR), or by asking for support from specialized consulting boutiques.
The why of change
However, as valuable as these resources might be, it is important not to jump to the ‘how’, without paying attention to the ‘why’, the ‘what’ and ‘the team’.
In my personal experience, most people do not resist change if they understand the ‘why’, the ‘what’, and if they recognize ‘the team’.
One of the big temptations we as leaders face is our urge to add value to the work of our staff. Typically, we add this value in the form of change or additional requests.
There are three reasons why adding value is tempting for us:
Accountability – We are accountable for the work of our staff. If something goes wrong, we as leaders suffer the consequences (‘It happened on your watch’)
Know-how – We know it better than our staff. Seriously. That is most often the reason why we were appointed
We like it – As leaders it is often tempting to take a break from the daily grind of budgets and office politics, to dive back into the content we love(d) so much (‘Let me show you how it is done’)
As with every temptation in life, we need to fight this one as well. There are fivereasons for this:
Everyone who ever worked in a large organization, can probably relate to at least one of the following examples of conflicts that regularly occur in organizations:
A sales leader wants to close a deal with a low margin to meet her targets and to safeguard the relationship with the customer. The product manager does not want to sign off on the deal, because she wants to protect the margin of the product in the longer term
A business leader wants to hire a star performer working for another company, and is prepared to pay her more than the maximum of the corporate salary band for these types of roles. The HR Business Partner tries to prevent this because he does not want to create a precedent that can create upward pressure on the salary costs of the company
The head of a shared service department wants to hire an independent contractor for a project for USD 1.200 a day. The Purchasing department forces him to work with a consultant from a well-established firm on the preferred supplier list, for a fee rate that is 3 times as high as the one of the independent contractor
These, and other types of conflicts, seem to be an inevitable part of life in large organizations. The question is: why we have those types of conflicts, and if and how we can prevent them?
What do the notorious former marketing director of American Apparel, Ryan Holiday, and renowned Dutch reformed theologian Bram van de Beek have in common? They both have written a book about the danger of egocentricity.
Social media…are not to blame
Social media offers endless possibilities to promote ourselves and serve as outlets for our vanity. It enables us to humble brag about our professional achievements on LinkedIn, share evidence of our successful ‘friends & family’ life on Facebook, and demonstrate our cutting-edge lifestyle on Instagram.
However, looking at our current society and world history, it seems we as human beings always have been prone to self-centeredness and self-promotion. Social media therefore merely enables us to express something that is already deeply rooted in us.
Ethics deal with what makes something morally right or wrong.
Almost any sizeable company nowadays has a code of ethics. The main catalysts for these were the corporate scandals in the early 2000s (Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and others). Also, in the last couple of years having a sense of purpose has become pretty much en vogue.
As a result, every year millions of employees now dutifully complete e-learning modules and sign declarations (‘To the best of my knowledge…’).
If you think about this on a philosophical level, it is actually quite sad. Apparently, companies need to invest millions of dollars each year because a shared understanding of what is morally right or wrong to do on behalf of the company, is not a given.
Obviously, from a pragmatic point of view, companies have no choice but to invest in this type of training. First of all, it helps individuals to avoid taking decisions that can create reputational and compliance-related problems for the company. The second reason is the need to demonstrate institutional compliance to governments, regulatory bodies and other stakeholders.
The world will fundamentally change in the next decade
Whether you are listening to McKinsey, the IMF or the Economist, all modern-day prophets of doom agree that COVID-19 is having a devastating impact on our society and the economy. This impact will be felt long after this pandemic has passed.
Although I am not an incarnation of Alvin Toffler, the famous futurist and author of ‘Megatrends’, merely by observing the news and talking to clients and colleagues, I see a couple of clear trends and tipping points, which lead me to believe that the ‘new normal’ will look different than the ‘old normal’.
Dirk Verburg 