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CHAPTER 12

Interpretative Data:

What’s Shaping the

Coaching Marketplace

I

n launching a survey through Linkage, our goal was to obtain important in-

formation on coaching trends. We wanted to report on what’s completely new

in the field, not merely on changes in techniques, tools, and methods. We also

wanted to learn more about focus; for example, where are organizations invest-

ing in coaching? We segmented our questions into internal coaches (employees

providing coaching) and external coaches (outside consultants supplying

coaching services to organizations). We asked about evaluation, measurement,

and assessment, hoping to determine how analysis was taking place.

We also applied qualitative methods in our survey. Every day, Linkage

discusses coaching trends with internal /external coaches all over the world.

These data are included in our summarization.

We believe that over time, as this data is collected on an annual basis, it

will provide valuable information to those inside companies who are making

decisions based on benchmarks; and also be of great service to external

coaches who study the market in order to better meet organizations’ needs.

This chapter is meant to summar ize important data that we collected

from the Linkage Best Practices in Coaching Survey.The survey was sent to

thousands of organizations around the world, representing industries of all

sizes, including those in government services, nonprofits, and associates.

Over 235 surveys were completed, assuring us a stratified random sample

that represented organizations with fewer than 100 employees up to those

with more than 20,000 employees. For the most part, the largest representa-

tive groups included those employee-based company respondents with 1,000

to 5,000 employees and those with more than 20,000 employees. The latter