Coaching Café
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Friday 13th February 2026
Midday AEDT (Melbourne Time)
Coaching Café – 2026 trends in coaching and leadership conversations
Kicking off Friday 13 February 2026
Our newly refreshed Coaching Café kicks off 2026 with our annual crystal ball on trends in coaching and leadership conversations.
Each year, we start by asking a simple question:
What’s going to be at the forefront of coaching and leadership conversations this year?
So, we stare into our double espresso coffee cups—and the latest research—to bring you our predictions for the conversations, trends, and challenges shaping workplaces right now. We explore what’s on the minds of leaders, what coaches are being asked to support, and what to stay alert to as the year unfolds.
By exploring these trends, you’ll gain insight into the latest thinking and how it’s likely to show up in real coaching and leadership conversations in 2026.
You’ll walk away with:
✔️ The key coaching and leadership trends shaping 2026
✔️ Insights into the conversations leaders are having—or avoiding
✔️ Emerging challenges and capability gaps to watch for
✔️ Ideas you can apply immediately in your coaching and leadership practice
Core Competency 0.5 hours
Friday 20th February 2026
Midday AEDT (Melbourne Time)
Performance conversations: starting the year with intention and focus
We kicked off Coaching Café 2026 by exploring the key trends shaping coaching and leadership conversations this year. One theme stood out clearly: the quality of performance conversations matters more than ever.
In this Coaching Café, we turn our focus to performance conversations and their critical role in setting direction, building engagement, and creating momentum at the start of the year.
Research consistently shows that when performance conversations are done well, employees are more engaged, more productive, and clearer about what’s expected of them. When they’re done poorly—or avoided altogether—engagement suffers and performance declines. That’s why, as leaders and coaches, we have a responsibility to partner with managers and help them get this right.
Join Natalie and Paula as we explore how coaching can elevate performance conversations and support leaders to start the year with intention and focus.
You’ll walk away with:
✔️ The research that explains why performance conversations are so important
✔️ The key focus areas that make these conversations meaningful and effective
✔️ A practical coaching framework you can use straight away—one we know makes a real difference
Core Competency 0.5 hours
Friday 27th February 2026
Midday AEDT (Melbourne Time)
Psychological safety, performance conversations, and coaching
Over the first two weeks, we will have explored the trends shaping coaching and leadership conversations in 2026 and the critical role performance conversations play in starting the year with clarity and focus.
This week, we go one layer deeper.
Workplaces continue to place strong emphasis on psychological safety—and for good reason. Psychological safety builds trust, supports engagement, and enables honest, productive performance conversations. Without it, even well-intended conversations can fall flat.
This is where coaching plays a vital role.
Coaching creates the conditions for people to speak up, reflect, and take ownership—making it a powerful enabler of psychological safety. And as leaders, it is incumbent upon us to create environments where people feel safe to have meaningful conversations about performance, growth, and expectations.
Join Natalie and Paula as we explore the connection between psychological safety, performance conversations, and coaching.
You’ll walk away with:
✔️ A clear understanding of psychological safety and why it matters
✔️ How psychological safety enables strong performance conversations
✔️ The role coaching plays in building trust and engagement
✔️ Practical ways leaders and coaches can foster psychological safety at work
Core Competency 0.5 hours
Friday 6th March 2026
Midday AEDT (Melbourne Time)
Emotional intelligence – the leadership capability that matters most
So far in the Coaching Café 2026, we will have explored the trends shaping coaching and leadership, the importance of strong performance conversations, and the role of psychological safety in building trust and engagement.
This week, we turn our attention to emotional intelligence—consistently identified as one of the most critical leadership capabilities in today’s workplaces.
As work becomes more complex, pressured, and human, leaders are increasingly expected to navigate emotions—their own and others’—with awareness, empathy, and skill. Emotional intelligence underpins how leaders communicate, build trust, handle performance conversations, and create psychologically safe environments.
This is where coaching plays a powerful role.
Coaching creates the space for reflection, self-awareness, perspective-taking, and behaviour change—key elements of emotional intelligence. It supports leaders to respond rather than react, and to lead in ways that strengthen relationships and performance.
Join Natalie and Paula as we explore emotional intelligence through a coaching lens.
You’ll walk away with:
✔️ A clear understanding of emotional intelligence and why it matters now more than ever
✔️ How emotional intelligence shows up in everyday leadership and performance conversations
✔️ The role coaching plays in developing emotional intelligence
✔️ Practical ways to support leaders to build emotional intelligence at work
Core Competency 0.5 hours
Friday 13th March 2026
Midday AEDT (Melbourne Time)
Critical thinking in the age of AI: the role of coaching
So far in the Coaching Café 2026, we will have explored the trends shaping leadership, performance conversations, psychological safety, and emotional intelligence as a core leadership capability.
This week, we turn our attention to critical thinking—increasingly recognised as an essential capability as organisations rapidly adopt AI, automation, and new technologies.
As AI accelerates decision-making and access to information, the real challenge for leaders is not having answers, but thinking well. Critical thinking enables leaders and teams to question assumptions, interpret information thoughtfully, make sound judgments, and avoid simply outsourcing thinking to systems and tools.
This is where coaching plays a vital role.
A coaching approach slows the conversation down just enough to create space for reflection, challenge, and deeper thinking. It helps leaders and teams move beyond quick answers to considered decisions—especially in complex, fast-moving environments.
Join Natalie and Paula as we explore how coaching enables critical thinking at work.
You’ll walk away with:
✔️ What critical thinking really means in today’s workplace
✔️ Why critical thinking is more important than ever in the age of AI
✔️ How coaching supports better thinking, judgment, and decision-making
✔️ A practical framework for developing critical thinking through coaching
Core Competency 0.5 hours
Friday 20th March 2026
Midday AEDT (Melbourne Time)
Innovation as a leadership capability – how coaching enables new thinking
Across our first Coaching Café series, we’ve explored the leadership capabilities organisations are prioritising for 2026 and beyond—from psychological safety and emotional intelligence, to critical thinking in the age of AI.
This week, we turn our attention to innovation.
Innovation is consistently identified as a top leadership capability, yet many organisations struggle to create the conditions where new ideas can emerge, be tested, and be sustained. Innovation requires more than creativity—it relies on trust, curiosity, challenge, and the willingness to think differently.
This is where coaching plays a critical role.
A coaching approach enables leaders and teams to question assumptions, explore new perspectives, and move beyond habitual ways of thinking. It supports innovation not as a one-off initiative, but as an ongoing capability embedded in everyday conversations and decision-making.
Join Natalie and Paula as we explore innovation through a coaching lens.
You’ll walk away with:
✔️ What innovation really means as a leadership capability
✔️ The conditions required for innovation to thrive in organisations
✔️ How coaching enables curiosity, experimentation, and new thinking
✔️ Practical ways leaders and coaches can foster innovation at work
Core Competency 0.5 hours
We believe that keeping your coaching skills up to date is really important and we’ve made this easy for you by offering
FREE Coaching Cafe Webinars- simply register for the session you want to attend or register for updates below!
The renewal of your ICF credential requires a number of Continuing Coach Education to be completed in the three years since the initial award of your credential or since your last credential renewal, as follows:
For more information about the ICF requirements click here: https://coachfederation.org/icf-credential/renew-credential
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2025-10-24 13:33:572025-11-05 13:56:43What is your coaching philosophy?Terms and conditions
- Open Door is bound by the guidelines issued by the International Coach Federation (ICF) in regards to the issuance of Continuing Coach Education (CCE) hours.
- Open Door uses Zoom to track and report on attendance and you have to attend the entire 30 minute presentation (as evidence on the report) to earn the CCE.
- If you do not attend at least 30 minutes of the presentation, then the CCE cannot be awarded. This is not negotiable.
- The facilitator will log on prior to the presentation for you to check your software, and you are encouraged to log on early to make sure that your attendance will be recorded. It is your responsibility to ensure that you can hear the facilitator and see the slides.
- Open Door will not be held responsible for any reason, if you can’t attend the full session, this includes software drops outs or personal matters including ill health.
- You must attend the live session in order to achieve the CCE – you are not eligible to earn the CCE by listening to recording afterwards.
- Open Door reserves the right to change the topic, time, date or presenter as needed. We obviously try to avoid this, but sometimes it cannot be helped. Thanks for your understanding.
