What are the trends for hiring an executive coach?  According to a press release by the Novations Group out of Boston (with a hat tip to Management-Issues.com), here are the figures, taken only from companies that actually use coaching:

We increasingly rely on coaching   -  19%

We rely on coaching at about the same rate as in the past  -  48%

We rely less on coaching  -  33%

This appears to be the first time that use of executive coaches is actually declining.

According to the article at management-issues, similar research in the UK indicates that two-thirds of companies believe coaching has become an industry riddled with cowboys and the same proportion never measure whether their money is being spent wisely. [emphasis mine]

 Okay, two things here:

1. Coaching being riddled w/ cowboys
2. Companies never measuring their ROI when using coaching.

First, regarding the accusation that the profession has become riddled with cowboys, I happen to agree.  Just in the past 24 hours I met two different people who fit this description. 

While working a booth earlier today at the Greater Boise Chamber of Commerce Trade Show, I danced the conversational dance with hundreds of people visiting the event. Several people told me they were coaches.  Two of them failed the sniff test.

Neither had received any formal training in coaching—They pretty much just decided they wanted to be coaches. Scaa–ary.

The second complaint, about companies not measuring results (ROI), doesn’t necessarily fall on the shoulders of coaches.  If companies won’t ask for, insist upon, nor pay for the time and effort needed to conduct such measurements, they don’t have a leg to stand on when the ROI is not measured.

Getting Back to the “Real” Issue

I have long been an advocate that the coaching profession have some form of minimum standard for people professing to be coaches. Not all of my colleages agree w/ me on this, but I remain firm on this opinion.  If I can ride the analogy just a bit further, free range “Cowboys”  don’t have the know-how to handle a bum steer living in the inner city.

What are you thoughts?  Join the conversation.

Should coaches be required to pass some form of certification?

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