Latest Trends in Executive Coaching

Sherpa Coaching's  5th annual survey shows that the executive coaching industry survived the downturn, and is looking toward radical change in the near future. 


Key findings from the survey:

• When there is turnover in top management, there’s a need for leadership development. 
• Emerging leaders must learn how to listen and communicate well, deliver clear expectations and make accountability a positive force in the workplace. 
• Ideally, executive coaching creates those positive changes in business behavior in a limited time frame.
• Executive coaching is seen, more and more, as part of succession planning.
• Do executive coaches follow a published process?
• 40 percent of executive coaches ‘develop a unique approach from one client to the next'.
• An additional 40 percent have ‘developed their own process for coaching’.
• Only 20 percent follow a published process that guides their coaching engagements.
• Since 2006, the delivery of executive coaching services has moved decidedly toward in-person encounters. 
• In this year’s survey, there's change in practice that goes against the tide: phone coaching held steady, while webcam coaching took a couple of percentage points away from in-person engagements. What stalled the trend toward live coaching? 2009 was an unusual year, based on budgets drawn during a stock market crash in late ‘08. The call for cost reductions favored remote coaching, hence an increase in webcam engagements.