US-based Sherpa’s latest annual survey reveals the value and credibility of coaching is at an all-time high, spreading across the globe and creating corporate cultures

This is the year that high-definition video made its mark on coaching, while the number of practitioners using face-to-face coaching fell for the first time in eight years, according to a global survey.
Webcam, a technology that was hardly mentioned even five years ago, is now an important component of service delivery, with 15 per cent of practitioners using it to coach, according to Sherpa’s eighth annual survey – Executive Coaching at the Summit (www.sherpacoaching.com).
The use of video-conferencing is also rising dramatically. External coaches use it more often than internals, by a 22 per cent to 20 per cent margin. And as live, high-quality video starts to become widely available, it will overtake other delivery methods, predicts the report.
Some 92 per cent of internal coaches see face-to-face coaching as the most effective method of delivery, compared to 76 per cent of externals.
The report has thrown up other differences between how external and internal coaches operate, too. Internal coaches meet their clients more often and have more face-to-face meetings – more than half of internals’ coaching is in person, compared to just 40 per cent of externals’ services, the survey notes.
Internal coaches are twice as likely to have weekly meetings, and strongly favour shorter engagements (90 days or less.) Some 27 per cent of externals believe a coaching engagement should last six months or longer, while only 7 per cent of internal coaches opt for engagements that long.

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