The Boom in Business Coaching

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1. Coaching Certifications Abound

2. Executives Headed Overseas Benefit From Expat Coaching
But only 7 percent of companies surveyed by the American Management Association offer executive coaching to top-level managers bound for foreign assignments.

3. Chapter and Verse on Coaching
Experts recommend these books on executive coaching.

4. Huddling With The Coach
Executive coaching has increasingly shifted away from fixing problem managers to helping corporate stars achieve peak performance. In the process, coaching has become, by one estimate, a $1 billion business. Success stories abound, but companies still have to sort out several coaching issues: ROI is not well-defined; there is no standard set of accepted credentials or ethical practices; and some companies have discovered--usually in hindsight--that what their brilliant but problematic executive really needed was not a coach, but a psychiatrist.

Coaching Certifications Abound

In-house and outside coaches can choose between accreditation programs or less intensive university-based programs.
By Michelle V. Rafter

redentials are one thing HR directors can look at when interviewing prospective executive coaches. But they also should consider that there’s no universally recognized accreditation organization that approves the burgeoning coaching training business, according to the American Management Association’s 2008 coaching survey.

The oldest coaching accreditation program is run by the International Coach Federation, a trade group. The ICF has a code of ethics, learning standards and tiered qualifications, including the master certified coach credential, which requires 2,500 hours of coaching.

Other organizations that support coaching training are the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches, International Consortium of Coaching in Organizations and the International Association of Coaching, according to the AMA report.

However, support for the ICF and other old-school coaching programs has waned in recent years, as more executive coaches opt to attend education programs offered by universities and other organizations, according to a separate 2008 survey of 1,292 executive coaches and corporations that hire coaches conducted by Sherpa Coaching, which runs executive coaching training programs. Universities that offer such programs include Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, Stanford and Penn State.

The American Management Association also offers two three-day, non-certificate coaching training courses in multiple venues around the country, including "Coaching: A Strategic Tool for Effective Leadership."

Whether it’s a short training course or a full-blown certification program, some type of training is better than nothing, says Edward Reilly, the AMA’s president and CEO. "There are skills to coaching that aren’t necessarily intuitive and can be improved if you pay attention to them," Reilly says.

On the flip side, "For some people, no matter how well they pass tests, it won’t make them good coaches," Reilly says.

Workforce Management Online, July 2008 -- Register Now!

Michelle V. Rafter is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. E-mail editors@workforce.com to comment.

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But only 7 percent of companies surveyed by the American Management Association offer executive coaching to top-level managers bound for foreign assignments.

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