What is Coaching Anyhow? Some Insights from FutureDecisions and the ICF!

There are many ways to describe coaching and numerous adjectives used to convey what coaching is all about. Thus, this a survey done by the International Coaching Federation caught our attention. The following are the primary reasons people chose to work with a coach:By far, most coaching clients pay their coach to be a sounding board – to really listen to them and give honest feedback. Clients, who could select as many choices as were applicable, characterized the role of their coach as the following:

• Sounding board: 84.8%
• Motivator: 78.1%
• Friend: 56.7%
• Mentor: 50.5%
• Business consultant: 46.7%
• Teacher: 41.0%
• Taskmaster: 30.5%
• Spiritual guide: 29.5%
• Other: 13.3%

In our experience the primary reasons people initiate a coaching relationship with us are: Sounding Board, Motivator, Mentor and Business Consultant. If you have had a coach in the past we would be interested in your experience.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.