Research
HCI
Research
Building a Coaching Culture
with Managers and Leaders
In partnership with
Human Capital Institute
The Global Association
for Strategic Talent Management
2016 ICF Global Coaching Study
The 2016 ICF Global Coaching Study, based on a
2015 survey commissioned by ICF and conducted by
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), uses information and
insights from more than 15,000 professional coach
practitioners and, for the first time, managers/leaders
using coaching skills. Findings from the data collected
in 2015 were rolled out during the third quarter of 2016.
Building a Coaching Culture with
Managers and Leaders
Conducted in collaboration with the Human Capital
Institute (HCI), this is a continuation of ICF and HCI’s
suite of ongoing research on the building blocks of
a strong coaching culture. The results were based
on a survey of 879 managers, leaders and other
professionals working in the human resource, talent
management, and learning and development functions
of their organizations.
Key takeaways:
• The profession appears to be growing, with an estimated
53,300 professional coaches generating approximately
$2.356 billion USD in annual revenue/income.
• Both coach practitioners (77%) and managers/leaders
using coaching skills (72%) agree that people and
organizations who receive coaching expect their
coaches to be certified/credentialed.
• Globally, 62% of coach practitioners mentioned one
of the four Business Coaching specialties (leadership,
executive, business/organizations, small business) as
their main area of coaching.
• The main opportunities for coaching were identified
by coach practitioners as an increased awareness of
the benefits of coaching (38%) and the emergence of
credible data on the ROI/ROE from coaching (26%).
• When looking at the biggest obstacle for coaching, the
main concern expressed by coach practitioners was
untrained individuals who call themselves coaches
(44%), followed by marketplace confusion about the
benefits of coaching (28%).
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Key takeaways:
• Organizations with a strong coaching culture report
recent revenues above that of their industry peer
group (51% compared to 38% of other responding
organizations) and experience higher employee
engagement (62% and 50%, respectively).
• Among the three coaching modalities discussed in the
research (i.e. external coach practitioners, internal coach
practitioners, managers/leaders using coaching skills),
it was determined that organizations with a strong
coaching culture were far more likely to have presence
of all three modalities (64%) when compared to other
responding organizations (33%).
• Eighty-seven percent of respondents in organizations
with strong coaching cultures report that their decision
to train for managers and leaders to use coaching skills
has been instrumental to their strategic success in
building a coaching culture.
• Establishing trust and practicing active listening were
among the core competencies rated most important by
managers and leaders using the coaching skillset.
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WE ARE ICF | 2016 Annual Report
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