Seeing Beyond the Horizon: Why I Combine Strategic Foresight with Coaching

by Alina Ortega

Introduction: The Missing Puzzle Piece

When I first encountered strategic foresight, it felt as if someone had finally given me the missing puzzle piece.

As a coach, I’ve spent years helping leaders grow—challenging their mindsets, deepening their self-awareness, and supporting their goals. However, as disruption became the new norm—climate volatility, AI breakthroughs, shifting demographics—I began to notice a different kind of tension in my clients. They were not simply navigating change. Instead, they were standing at the edge of the unknown, asking questions like: Where is all this headed? How do I lead when everything feels so uncertain?

That’s when I realized that coaching alone wasn’t sufficient. It required a new companion—one that could help leaders broaden their perspective, explore various possibilities, and confidently step into the future. That companion was strategic foresight.

Now, I combine foresight and coaching in my practice because I believe this blend cultivates not just better leaders, but those ready for the future. Leaders who can look beyond short-term pressures, align with long-term purpose and shape what comes next.

The Why: Why Blend Strategic Foresight with Coaching

Coaching serves as a powerful tool for personal growth. It enables leaders to reflect, clarify their values, overcome limiting beliefs, and take aligned action. However, even the most effective coaching can feel inadequate during periods of deep uncertainty—when the external world is in flux, and no one knows what the next five years will hold.

That’s where strategic foresight plays a role. It provides leaders with a structured approach to explore change, envision alternative futures, and develop adaptive strategies—not by predicting the future, but by preparing for various possibilities.

The leaders I work with—especially in energy, infrastructure, and technology—are under pressure to deliver results while navigating unprecedented transformation. They’re making decisions about systems and investments that will play out over decades. Coaching them only around their personal growth or team dynamics isn’t enough. They need tools to sense what’s emerging, to think beyond what’s urgent, and to shape the future, not just survive it.

Strategic foresight drives this shift. It changes the coaching conversation from “What do you want to accomplish in the next year?” to “What kind of future do you want to help create—and how do we start now?”

When you blend foresight with coaching, something powerful happens: leaders reclaim their sense of agency. They move from reactive to proactive, from overwhelmed to inspired. They don’t just weather the future—they influence it.

The What: What is Strategic Foresight?

Strategic foresight involves exploring and preparing for various potential futures. It does not seek to predict what will happen. Rather, it enhances the ability to anticipate change, identify early signals, and make more resilient decisions today.

At its core, foresight is about stretching time horizons and mental models. It asks questions like:

  • What trends will shape the next 10 to 20 years?
  • What surprising disruptions could change everything?
  • How might different futures affect our strategy, values, and mission?

Foresight tools include:

  • STEEP Analysis: Investigating social, technological, economic, environmental, and political factors that drive change.
  • Horizon Scanning: Monitoring subtle signs and early innovations that could increase in significance.
  • Scenario Planning: Creating alternative futures to test strategies and assumptions.
  • Futures Wheels and Backcasting: Mapping cascading impacts and planning backwards from a preferred future.

Unlike strategic planning, which often focuses on known data and expected outcomes, foresight embraces uncertainty and complexity. It invites imagination and systems thinking, helping leaders stay grounded in purpose while remaining open to new paths.

This approach adds a critical dimension for coaches. It allows clients to explore their inner motivations and outer realities simultaneously, anchoring their personal growth in a rapidly evolving world.

The How: How I Integrate Foresight in Coaching

Blending foresight with coaching does not mean turning sessions into strategy workshops. Instead, it focuses on infusing coaching conversations with future thinking—sometimes subtly and at other times overtly—helping clients develop both clarity and adaptability.

Here’s how I do it:

1. Expanding the timeframe

In early sessions, I often ask clients to describe the future they want—not just in their role but in their industry, their community, and the world. This facilitates values-based visioning and aligns personal purpose with long-term impact.

2. Introducing scanning and trends

For leadership teams or strategic clients, I conduct horizon-scanning exercises. Together, we examine emerging trends and weak signals, reflecting on how they might affect us. What assumptions are we making about what won’t change—but might?

This ignites curiosity and often reveals blind spots. It also invigorates clients who have been trapped in operational mode.

3. Exploring scenarios in strategic conversations

When clients face complex decisions, I employ scenario prompts. Instead of selecting one path, we explore several plausible futures and then test our decisions against them. For example, what would this look like in a world where AI replaces 50% of your workforce? What if regulations doubled? What if sustainability became the core value driver of your industry?

Suddenly, decisions are no longer reactive; they are strategic, rooted in context, and aligned with various contingencies.

4. Connecting foresight with inner work

Some of the most impactful foresight work occurs at the intersection of identity and mindset. I might ask:

  • What future are you unwittingly preparing for?
  • What beliefs regarding the future are influencing your leadership today?
  • Which futures feel desirable yet unattainable—and why?

These questions uncover inner narratives that can be reexamined. Coaching facilitates inner transformation; foresight broadens the perspective.

5. Using frameworks to foster systems awareness

I often incorporate tools like causal layered analysis or the futures triangle to explore systems and cultural patterns. For clients navigating organizational change, this enables them to see their roles not only as leaders of people but also as stewards of systems and shapers of narratives.

 

The Impact: Benefits for Clients

When leaders engage in coaching informed by strategic foresight, they start to lead from a new perspective. They gain:

  • A clearer long-term vision that aligns with their values and context.
  • Increased adaptability when faced with disruption.
  • The fear of the unknown is reduced and replaced by curiosity and a sense of agency.
  • Innovative strategies that consider uncertainty and capitalize on opportunity.
  • A deeper leadership presence that is grounded in both self-awareness and systems awareness.

After a foresight-infused coaching engagement, one client told me: “I finally feel like I’m leading ahead of the curve, not just catching up to it.” That’s the goal—not to predict what’s coming, but to be ready for whatever comes.

Closing: Coaching for the Future-Ready Leader

The future is arriving faster than ever; it is more complex, interconnected, and uncertain than anything we have faced before.

In such an environment, leadership development requires an upgrade. Coaching demands foresight- not as a gimmick, but as a mindset, a method, and a commitment to looking beyond the immediate and preparing leaders to intentionally shape what’s next.

That’s why I blend these two disciplines: the most impactful leaders aren’t just present—they’re future-ready. They lead with purpose, foresight, and heart.

I'd love to connect if you’re ready to explore what that looks like for you or your organization.

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