New Study Articulates Advantages of Business Coaching

A new study on coaching, "COACHING - A Global Study of Successful Practices" prepared by the American Management Association, has some valuable information for organizations that are thinking of hiring a coach.

Some of their key findings:

• Coaching is used by only about half of today’s companies. 52% of US companies report having such programs in place, compared to 56% of international companies sampled.
• Coaching continues to gain in popularity. Among respondentswho say their organizations don’t yet have coaching programs, a sizable proportion (37% in the North American sample and 56% in the international sample) say such programs will be implemented in the future.
• Coaching is associated with higher performance, reporting two kinds of advantages: 1. They’re more likely to report that their organizations have higher levels of success in the area of coaching. 2. They’re more likely to say that their organizations are performing well in the market, as determined by self-reports in the combined areas of revenue growth, market share, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
• Coaching is primarily aimed at boosting individual performance.
• The more a company has a clear reason for using a coach, the more likely that its coaching process will be viewed as successful.
• External training (coaching) seems to work best. Externally based methods of providing training on coaching are most strongly correlated with overall coaching success, though they are less often used.