Jonathan Passmore

Marshall Goldsmith

Brian Underhill

"You may have heard of this field of "executive coaching" by now. Perhaps only 40-ish years old as a profession, coaching has experienced meteoric growth over the past two decades. There are a now estimated 70,000 coaches worldwide. Various estimates place the industry at anywhere from $2 billion up to $15 billion per year (US dollars). In the 1980s to early 90s, coaching was initially used mostly for those "problem children" leaders who were in trouble as a last-ditch effort to fix them (or to pretend to try) before letting them go. Coaching was often done in secret, with the coach visiting surreptitiously (or meeting at an undisclosed location), with nearly no one knowing about it - even the coaching invoice line item description would be changed to keep prying eyes from noticing. One coach once told us she had a reputation as "the angel of death" - when she showed up, people knew her leader was on his/her final days. Today coaching is often seen as a badge of honor - a sign that a company wants to invest in your growth and development. Coaching for performance problems has actually decreased steadily in use throughout the years. In our (Underhill) 2018 study, 1/3 of coaches reported coaching for performance problems, which decreased to only a quarter in 2020. A 2007 Harvard Business Review study found that just 12% of assignments were used to address derailing executives"--

Brian Underhill

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