What is future coaching?

Miten ohjausalan ammattilaisen tulisi käsitellä tulevaisuutta nuorten kanssa? Mitä siinä tulisi ottaa huomioon? Millaisilla menetelmillä nuorten tulevaisuusajattelua ja -uskoa voisi vahvistaa?

The future coaching programme presented in this guide is a guidance package consisting of group and individual coaching, the topics of which are the future and its examination from both general and personal perspectives. This chapter provides a brief overview of the theoretical background of coaching and highlights some key terms that should be kept in mind while reading this guide.

The future coaching has been based on future research and development work previously carried out in Finland. Developed since the 2010s, the model of future guidance launched by the Finland Futures Research Centre of the University of Turku has been a major inspiration for the coaching. The model in question utilises futures research methods and the foundations for developing and steering futures thinking.

Futures research is a field of knowledge that strives to produce an understanding of possible events and developments that may exist in the future.

Developing futures thinking refers to examining one’s own thinking about the future more extensively, critically and reflecting on it. In other words, it does not just mean thinking about the next choice related to one’s own life.

In futures guidance, an effort is made to examine the future so that it contains several different opportunities and that it can be influenced by one’s own choices and actions. Futures guidance is used, for example, in several educational institutions to support the planning of studies and careers. (Ollila et al. 2022, 417–421).

Future coaching has many similarities with these principles of futures guidance. The purpose of the coaching is to support young people’s willingness to make choices about the future and to strengthen their futures thinking, self-knowledge and resilience.

Resilience refers to the ability to act even if the environment changes and is uncertain (Sitra 2024b).

Young people as an active participant

The coaching also promotes the participants’ social skills, their ability to recognise their own competence and working life skills. In essence, the future coaching programme strives to provide young people with guidance that helps them to perceive a desired and meaningful life and find their own path.

The aim is to evoke optimism and hope towards the future in young people. A further aim is to reinforce the notion that it is possible to influence future developments, despite numerous threat scenarios and potentially weak outlooks, and that these developments can present interesting opportunities.

In the development of future coaching, special emphasis is placed on the perspective of youth employment, which emphasises the use of functional, gamified and creative methods and a youth-centric approach.

Youth-centricity means that the participant has a major active role in the planning and implementation of the activities.

It’s about interaction

Another important element in youth work is encounters through which young people are supported in a manner that promotes a good life and an ethical approach (Cederlöf 2017, 68–69).

One of the key objectives of future coaching is to provide young people with the opportunity to discuss their thoughts, perceptions, and emotions related to the future with a trusted adult who does not have the same level of assessment responsibility as a teacher, for example.

It is essential that the coaching has enough time and space to discuss the future extensively and to show genuine interest in each young person’s own reflections, regardless of whether they are related to a distant future or current situations in everyday life.

Future coaching can thus be seen as interaction: together, it can be seen as a reflection on the relationships between the past, the present and the future, supported by various exercises.

Game-like approach

Future coaching emphasises functionality and learning through active work more than traditional lectures and presentations, in which young people easily remain in the role of passive recipients. For example, different games have worked well as guidance tools.

It has been noticed in the coaching programmes that it is often easier for young people to share their thoughts and concerns within a game-like exercise than, for example, in a situation that resembles a lesson. There is a logical explanation for this phenomenon: Gaming always involves a special play-like space with its own rules and in which the players can immerse themselves, as if they were disconnected from everyday reality.

Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga (1984, 17–21) has described this as a magic circle of the game, a concept that has been widely used in game research, among other things.

In future coaching, this magic circle of the game serves as a learning environment where it is easier for young people to speculate with different visions for the future.

It is easy to accept inside the game that there are no false answers. This way, participants and the coach dare to think together and produce creative and imaginative scenarios.

The gaming environment also makes envisioning more equal. Many young people that are usually quieter has specifically become encouraged to participate in discussions through a game. These exercises have made it natural to talk with young people about what kind of future they actually want.

Sum of multiple skills

In addition to futures thinking, the purpose of the coaching is to strengthen young people’s futures skills.

Futures skills promote people’s ability to assess their own future visions, values and beliefs about the future. At the same time, futures skills support the ability to participate in discussions on the future and the related choices and decisions. (Ollila & Hujala 2004, 404).

Futures skills have been defined in many different ways. For example, Anu Haapala (née Mikkonen) has already written about future capabilities at the beginning of the 21st century (Haapala 2002). Her definitions have also been utilised by the Finland Futures Research Centre of the University of Turku in their description of futures skills, which has been utilised in the planning of the future coaching presented in this guide.

Ollila and Hujala (2022, 403) explain that, according to this definition, futures skills include:

• perceiving diverse futures
• system thinking and understanding of the complexity of the world
• accepting uncertainty
• time perspective
• critical thinking
• self-reflection, value-reflection
• responsibility

Perceiving diverse potential futures means perceiving the future as an open whole that can develop in many different directions. Imagination of different futures and related opportunities enriches futures thinking and expands the foundation for making future-related choices (Ollila & Hujala 2022, 403-404).

Today’s world is filled with complex phenomena that, in interaction with each other, shape the common future of all people. Strengthening systems thinking supports people’s understanding of such complexity in the world.

Systems thinking refers to the ability to perceive different phenomena that change the world in terms of dependency and interaction relationships and the ability to understand the impact of individual changes on larger entities (Ollila & Hujala 2022, 403).

On the other hand, the future cannot be controlled, and the uncertainty associated with it may seem anxious. Accepting uncertainty means the ability to direct thinking and activities towards the future even though the consequences of the activities are not certain (Ollila & Hujala 2022, 405).

Acceptance of uncertainty is also closely linked to the aforementioned strengthening of resilience.

Reflecting on the time perspective is related to the understanding of the relationship between the past, the present and the future. From the perspective of futures skills, an understanding of how the understanding of the past, present and future affects thinking and activities is essential. (Ollila & Hujala 2022, 404).

Critical thinking, then, means assessing future outlooks, different scenarios and the beliefs that affect them. In addition, it means critical self-reflection towards one’s own futures thinking. (Ollila & Hujala 2022, 404–406). Futures skills also essentially include the ability to assess which thoughts about the future are of the person’s own and which may have been produced by others.

It is also important to consider how different choices affect other people and society. This is an example of responsibility, which is one of the most important futures skills (Ollila & Hujala 2022, 405).

This guide will later describe the progress of future coaching and how the aforementioned futures skills are reflected in practice in the coaching.