Fast Company Article: Coaching: The Fad that Won’t Go Away

by Jim Bolt

Five suggestions for getting the most out of a coach.

I ended my last column noting that we would examine three very popular leadership development methods (Action Learning, Coaching, and Leader-Led Learning) in more depth. So let’s start with executive coaching, which is now a billion-dollar industry experiencing explosive growth. Frankly, it wasn’t very long ago that having coach was sort of a dirty little secret -- you kept it to yourself.

Read the rest by clicking here. There are some very interesting statistics from a study that they conducted.

However, the vast majority of our respondents indicated “leader development” to be the primary reason coaches were engaged. The biggest change is from coaching being used as “fix it tool” for leaders with problems, to helping successful leaders get even better. In many firms, having a coach is seen as a badge of honor. And we found that coaching now reaches into the highest levels: 43% of CEOs and 71% of the senior executive team had worked with a coach. And here's the bottom-line: 63% of organizations say they plan to increase their use of coaching over the next five years. Most telling, 92% of leaders being coached say they plan to use a coach again.