The Boom in Business Coaching

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1. Coaching Certifications Abound
In-house and outside coaches can choose between accreditation programs or less intensive university-based programs.

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

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.

Chapter and Verse on Coaching

Experts recommend these books on executive coaching.
By Michelle V. Rafter

ere’s a list of books on coaching recommended by experienced executive coaches and officials from coach training organizations, including International Coach Federation president Diane Brennan:

Adaptive Coaching: The Art and Practice of a Client-Centered Approach to Performance Improvement, by Terry R. Bacon and Karen I. Spear, both with Lore Research Institute, a professional development firm (Davies-Black, 2003).

A Manager's Guide to Coaching: Simple and Effective Ways to Get the Best From Your Employees, by certified executive coaches Brian Emerson and Anne Loehr and published by the American Management Association’s book division (AMACOM, March 2008).

Becoming a Resonant Leader: Develop Your Emotional Intelligence, Renew Your Relationships, Sustain Your Effectiveness, by Case Western Reserve organizational behavior professor Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, longtime Fortune 500 executive coach and co-founder of the Teleos Leadership Institute (Harvard Business School Press, March 2008).

Evidence Based Coaching Handbook: Putting Best Practices to Work for Your Clients, a coaching textbook edited by Dianne R. Stober and Anthony M. Grant (Wiley, 2006).

Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart: A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenges, by executive coach and author Mary Beth O’Neill (2nd edition, Jossey-Bass, 2007).

The Philosophy and Practice of Coaching: Insights and Issues for a New Era, coaching textbook edited by David B. Drake, Diane Brennan and Kim Gørtz (Jossey-Bass, 2008).

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, by Marshall Goldsmith, longtime executive coach to the corporate elite and Dartmouth MBA school professor. Co-written with Mark Reiter. (Hyperion, 2007).

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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