Coaches call technology a priority. Most have not implemented any.

ICF''s own position is more careful than the headlines

It is worth separating what ICF actually says from what gets written about what ICF says.

The Coaching Futures Report explores how coaching might evolve by 2036 and names technological acceleration as one of 5 drivers. In setting out its scope it states that while AI and digital tools will increasingly shape coaching, they cannot fully replicate the relational, intuitive and ethical foundation that defines coaching as a professional human practice.

ICF''s blog post on trends for 2026 leads with a section titled AI is Changing Coaching, Not Replacing Coaches.

Even the press release reporting the adoption numbers writes them as "just 19%" and "over half," which is ICF flagging a gap rather than announcing a transformation.

The urgency, in other words, is mostly downstream. It accumulates as the research gets summarised, then re-summarised, by people with something to sell. The source documents are more measured than almost anything written about them.

Where the research gets slippery

Anyone citing these studies should know 3 things.

ICF publishes 2 different growth rates for the same figure. Its press release says the practitioner count of 122,974 is up 13% since 2023. Its executive summary page for the same study says up 15%. Both are ICF, both describe the same research.

The consumer study is described as the latest and largest yet, and covers 26 countries. The 2022 edition covered the top 30 and collected 30,727 responses. No sample size is published for the current one. A study covering fewer countries is being called the largest, with no number attached to check it against.

Neither study page publishes its fieldwork dates. Adoption figures age quickly, and a 12 month window that closed before a major product shift tells you about the past.

There is also a fourth thing, and it is the one most likely to mislead a coach reading these numbers about their own market. These are global averages.

ICF''s Coaching Futures Report, citing the same study, reports that the fastest growth in coaching is in Latin America and Asia-Pacific, and that emerging regions report lower average fees. A single adoption rate drawn across all of that is averaging a coach charging corporate rates in North America together with one working at a fraction of those fees elsewhere.

Those 2 coaches face completely different questions about whether a software subscription is worth it. A global 19% tells you very little about either of them.

None of that makes the research bad. It is the most serious data the field has. It does mean a figure lifted out of it and dropped into an article elsewhere has usually lost the qualifiers that made it true.

What this means if you are deciding whether to buy

The data supports a fairly boring conclusion. There is no stampede you are late for.

Four questions worth asking before any purchase:

• Is the tool replacing something you already do badly, or proposing an activity you have never done? Replacing is a saving. Adopting is a project.
• Does it touch client notes? Coaching conversations contain things people told you in confidence, and where that data lives is your obligation, not the vendor''s.
• Would a client notice it existed? If not, the spend is about your admin, which is a fine reason but a different one from improving the coaching.
• Can you leave? Check what happens to your data if you stop paying, before you start.

The 54% figure is the one to keep in mind. Most coaches do think this matters. They have mostly not found the thing worth buying yet. Those are compatible positions, and sitting in both of them for another year is a defensible place to be.

Where to check

Read the research rather than the articles about it. ICF publishes the Global Coaching Study and the Consumer Awareness Study on its own site, and hosts the Coaching Futures Report on a separate site of its own.

When a figure about coaching and technology turns up anywhere else, the question worth asking is who gathered it and what they sell. In this category that one question removes most of what is written.